Ethno-Academic Appointments: The Slippery Slope
During the warm days of July, a disturbing morality play took place at Queens College of the City University of New York: the appointment of Professor Thomas Bird to head the college's Jewish Studies program was challenged on account of his being a non-Jew; whereupon, sensing religious bias and unwarranted attacks on his academic integrity, Professor Bird promptly resigned. A search has now begun for a more "ethno-qualified" person to lead the Jewish program at Queens. What is the moral of this sad tale?
One of the first acts of the Third Reich was to purge the ranks of academia of its Jewish professors, no matter what their competence and international achievement. The mere fact that they were Jewish disqualified them from teaching non-Jewish students, or, inversely, German (Aryan) students should not be exposed to the "Jewish" thinking of the "semitic" professors. Of course, the analogy with what happened at Queens College is not altogether apt, but the modes of thought underlying each event are too closely related to be ignored.
In the late 1960s, institutions of higher learning throughout the United States opened up new programs founded not on criteria of discipline (e.g. History or Biology) or on scholarly topics (Russian history or medical biology), but on non-academic factors: religion, ethnicity, gender and race.
These programs were then organized along essentially anti-intellectual guidelines: teachers of their courses were to be endowed with the same characteristics as the program in question, on the specious assumption that they "knew" their subject matter better; by virtue of their gender, race, etc., it was crudely reasoned, they had greater "insight" and could, therefore, sympathize (identify) with their students blindly assuming also that their students would also be homogeneous (all women, all Jews, all whites, etc.). Thus Afro-Americans taught Black Studies courses, Jewish instructors taught things Jewish, and so on. With few exceptions this was the standard operating procedure, a policy stemming from a mystification of ethno-knowledge: that Jewish professors had a special affinity for the Holocaust; that Black American professors had unique feelings for slavery; that women had an acute sense for literature by female writers, ad nauseum.
The trap was set. Multiculturalism rested on premises whose ethno-logic forced the unhappy Bird situation at Queens College. It simply was inconceivable for his shrill opponents and the passive majority who did not silence them that a Catholic academic could lead a Jewish program of studies. Not only was it politically incorrect to appoint him, but it seemed to violate an ethnic "principle" to permit someone lacking the proper non-academic, extraneous characteristics to be in charge of a program to which he (she) was "alien."
To push the matter further, in this case on a personal level: I am a professor of Russian history and was once director of the Russian Area Studies Program. However, I am not Russian, nor an Orthodox Christian, and, therefore, have no native command of the language. Obviously I am not, according to the logic of ethno-thinking, qualified to teach and research this subject. I come to it "from the outside," as a stranger, scholarly training, language competency, and extensive travel notwithstanding. Given my German (non Russian) origins, I am, according to ethno-ideologues, hardly capable of "objectivity" to things Slavic, automatically making me a slave to innate cultural prejudices, etc., etc. No doubt, my Jewish origins would further weaken my qualifications to introduce Russia to university students and scholarly readers alike.
Twice in my career I encountered this kind of specious ethno-resistance from colleagues. Once in the late 60s I pioneered a course in Ukrainian history at the New School in New York, only to be met by a chorus of objections from stalwart Ukrainians to my lacking any "Ukrainian" credential; luckily, the strident voices of the ethno-chorus were neutralized by the good sense of a majority who commendably did not subscribe to ethno-criteria as a prerequisite for an instructor.
A second experience occurred in the early 1970s when I volunteered to teach a course on "Women Revolutionaries in Eastern Europe in the 19th century" for the Women's Study program of my college. The suggestion was flatly (and rudely) turned down. Charges of "sexism," "gender bias," "male intrusion" ended the inclusion of a course that might have enriched the curriculum.
Given this kind of exclusionist ethno-think, what is one qualified to teach? Obviously, not what one has acquired through formal study and not what one has demonstrated as one's developed skill. Instead, it is what one was "born" to, what one "experienced," regardless of one's "external" intellectual identity. It is what one culturally, and communally, "belongs" to that is preeminent. The Nazis called this "blood." The claim that "anatomy is destiny" belongs to this dangerous ethno-rhetoric.
Professor Bird, a renowned expert on Yiddish language and culture, is in principle, disqualified by virtue of his Catholic faith. He lacks Jewish "blood," he lacks the "intimate" bonds which'''tie" Jews together.
Having flirted with non-academic criteria for a quarter of a century, we in academe must now pay the price. The piper beckons. The Bird affair is a microcosm of the Faustian pact made twenty-five years ago when ethno-racial thought was given credence and credibility as a means of "enriching" academe. Instead, it has become a slippery road leading to a moral and intellectual cul-de-sac, at whose end ethno/racist-thought beckons with its evil, anti -humanitarian temptations.
Henry R. Huttenbach (CCNY)
Judaism Without Jews: A Case Of Judeophilia
With respect to Jewish history in Poland after World War II, tragicomic irony came with a vengeance in the wake of catastrophe. Much to its national shame, the Polish post-Holocaust era began with half-a-dozen lethal pogroms, criminal events even yet not fully integrated into the national psyche, where denial is still a strong determinant. Then came the first two decades of communist rule, in whose regime a few hundred highly visible Jews worked, helping the forced transformation of Poland into a subservient Soviet satellite. That era came to an abrupt halt in 1968, when, during the anti-Soviet/Russian crisis, a wave of antisemitism, fueled by recent resentments, drove out virtually every remaining Jew (by any definition of the term).
This phenomenon of Polish communist-nationalism cum antisemitism was soon dubbed in academic circles as "Antisemitism without Jews." It pointed to the irony that a Christian or post-Christian community need have in its midst no Jews to speak of to harbor and vent a virulent, nationwide antisemitism. While pre-World War II greater Poland (which included western Byelorussia and western Ukraine) had three-and-a-half million Jews, by war's end over 90 percent of them had been exterminated by the Nazi German occupation forces. Most of the surviving 10 percent opted not to return to Poland, immigrating largely to Israel and the United States. Only a handful, perhaps a few ten thousand, mostly communist sympathizers, remained behind, not qua Jews, but as communist Polish patriots. Practically all were concentrated in Warsaw and Krakow, very few in other major cities, certainly not in the small towns and villages, where the bulk of the Polish population resided in, literally, judenrein circumstances, thanks to the efficiency of the German imported Final Solution in Poland.
Antisemitism without Jews had its irony, but it also pointed to the deeply ingrained judeophobia of Polish culture, regardless of the regime: pre-war Conservative, post-war Communist, or wartime German overlordship. The 1968 outburst, which virtually emptied Poland of its tiny handful of remaining Jews, was a dramatic example: namely, the independent continuation of official and grassroots prejudice in the virtual absence of the scapegoat. Needless to say, this realization was met with considerable distress on the part of Jews and, especially, Zionists. They had anticipated a decline in enmity towards Jews with their disappearance as a national minority in the Diaspora and with the erection of a Jewish state which, supposedly, would "normalize" the Jewish condition in non-Jewish minds.
The Polish example of antisemitism without Jews has proved to be less exceptional than typical. As Jewish minority populations declined globally (absolutely and proportionally), animosity towards them did not diminish commensurably; just the reverse has all too often been true. Thus, despite an infinitesimal Jewish population, antisemitism reared its head in post-communist Croatia, as it did in post-World War II Slovakia. Shrinking Jewish populations in Russia have, if anything, been met with intensifying expressions of hatred in the Russian Federation. The entire Arab world, from whom virtually all Jewish minorities have left (with the sizable exception of Morocco and a tiny presence in Syria), has nurtured a specious form of antisemitism that actually radicalized with the departure of the last Jews in the form of violent anti-Israelism or anti-Zionism (which includes all Jews).
And now, there seems to be an ironic twist with the emergence of judeophilia, the flip side of judeophobia; and once again the focus is on Poland, and, of all places, the focal point is not only Warsaw but also Krakow, that architecturally charming city, second only to Prague in its picturesque setting and old-world ambiance. All three cities are devoid of Jews, except for poignant, carefully preserved, silent monumentalia and invisible, haunting memories of a once thriving but murdered Jewish communal life. The signs are everywhere: articles of Judaica (candelabra, etc.) are prominently displayed for sale in antique stores and open-air bazaars. (Nobody asks where they came from or how they were obtained;) the majority of customers would be Poles, but, they complain, they cannot afford them. A clutch of Kosher restaurants have sprung up; the denizens are largely young, curious Polish couples, intrigued, perhaps, by the mystery (or romance?) of times-no-longer, when most Poles had a Jewish neighbor. Klezmer music attracts large and enthusiastic, non-Jewish audiences. But, there are no Polish Jews to speak of, to buy, to eat, to listen and to dance.
A ghostly Jewish, pre-Holocaust past hovers over Poland, in which, somehow, awakens an unspoken nostalgia in the hearts of the grandchildren of those Poles who once embodied a virulently antisemitic Catholic culture. This was the direct antecedent of post-Holocaust Polish communist antisemitism, which, in turn, gave rise to antisemitism without Jews, a voice still audible in Poland. And now, as if a by-product of a macabre dialectic, alongside Polish Judeophobia there flourishes Judeophilia without Jews, in a Poland whose territory is almost synonymous with Hitler's Jewish graveyard. It is, today, a Poland with a significant interest in its Jewish past but also makes a business for a mass clientele out of Disneyland-like guided tours to Auschwitz, most of whom are not foreign tourists but native Poles. Another example of such exploitation in post-communist Poland is a new "attraction:" "Tours through Schindler's Krakow." This manufactured-in-Hollywood "Jewish" product provides a lucrative opportunity for the Polish practitioners of philosemitism, as a genuine demonstration of local interest in things Jewish. Though the real Schindler never visited Auschwitz (Spielberg's forgery notwithstanding) the two Krakow tours are linked; tourists of the one tour are urged to take the other and "see from where Schindler 'rescued' Jews." (See Forum 1/4).
Interestingly, skeptical and even cynical responses to these macabre expressions of Polish sympathy or solidarity with things Jewish in Poland, past and present, expressed by this author/observer were met by revealingly angry replies and countered with accusations of "Jewish ingratitude" and "we should have known better than to expect praise for our gestures of solidarity." I even heard complaints by Poles that "foreign Jews" are "greedily buying up Poland's National Jewish heritage." The insinuations are clear, the bitterness is obvious, and the logic of blaming a Jewish scapegoat is also painfully inescapable.
Beneath the tinseled, glittering surface of Polish judeophilia lurks the age-old enemy: judeophobia. The price for the descendants of antisemites of a genocide past is indeed bitter, perhaps even more so than for end-of-the century Jews. The post-genocide costs to Polish society need to be thoroughly explored before there can be a meaningful reconciliation not built upon the shaky foundations of judeophilia. Judeophilia is intrinsically no less an evil than its inverse, perhaps worse: it is less honest!
Yet, before one casts too much attention on poor Poland, one would do well to look closer to home for examples of judeophilia in other countries. After all, it is nourished by stereotypes of a "positive" nature. Here in the United States, tolerance for Jews often rests less on the Constitutional ideal of universal tolerance than on Christian guilt for political sins past. Under certain kinds of pressure, these overt signs of judeophilia quickly evaporate to expose a far more durable judeophobia.
Henry R. Huttenbach (CCNY)
The Great Holocaust Debate: German Antisemitism Exceptional, Traditional or Secondary?
Locating and classifying antisemitism in the context of the Final Solution has become a baffling task. Most recently, three hefty books have made three separate and widely differing, if not contradictory, cases for raising and answering key questions fundamental to an overall understanding of what transpired in the heart of Europe at mid-century, when Nazi Germany launched its racist war of extermination against European Jews, a widely scattered minority of twelve million people. One book questions the centrality or primacy of antisemitism as a sufficient explanation for the racist war set off by the seizure of power by National Socialism. The other two affirm antisemitism as a necessary cause for the Hitlerian decision to engage in the genocide of the Jews, but they part ways on the character of that Judeophobic ideology. One author argues that the antisemitism marshaled by the Nazi leadership was but a variant perhaps a higher density variation of mainstream European antisemitism; the other strenuously builds an argument for the existence of a special and peculiarly German brand of genocidal antisemitism that distinctly sets it apart from all other brands of European antisemitism.
Henry Friedlander's The Origins of Nazi Genocide: from Euthanasia to the Final Solution (University, of North Carolina Press, 1995) makes strenuous efforts to demote antisemitism as a primary cause and promotes National Socialist racism in it's stead as the essential explanation for the genocide of the Jews. The argument, however, is flawed logically as well as contextually. Euthanasia per se is not, nor pretends to be genocide; literally, it is a kind of "pruning," the removal of excess or unwanted categories of individuals in order to preserve a race of which they the mentally retarded, the emotionally disturbed, the dependent aged, the physically crippled, and the otherwise handicapped are, nevertheless, biologically an integral though imperfect part. Because of their intellectual, emotional, physical and other deficiencies, they have forfeited their right to life, hence their classification as Lebensunwertenlebens, those deemed to have lost their innate right to life. Yet, their killing was not on account of their race, although some victims of euthanasia were disposed of more readily due to their racial (Semitic or gypsy) identity.
The leap from euthanasia (the killing of individuals) to genocide (collective killing) required a radical shift, from the goal of preserving the purity of the Aryan race from the enemy within to destroying the entire Jewish race, the enemy outside. Superficially, some of the same bureaucratic mind-set might seem to link one to the other. On closer examination, though, they are psychologically fundamentally distinct. The methods may resemble each other, but the underlying philosophies, respectively promoting euthanasia and encouraging the annihilation of the twelve million Jews of Europe, are distinct and only indirectly related. Are we to believe the Ghettos and Killing Centers would not have been had there been no euthanasia Hadamar killing hospital? That the organization and training of the Einsatzgruppen was contingent on the euthanasia program? There is little grounds for such a syllogism. Historical evidence makes it a lie.
The facts the hard evidence points to a parallel development of euthanasia practices and increasingly genocidal anti-Jewish policies. Kristallnacht was much more integral to the acceleration of lethal violence against Jews than the hundreds of murders of patients by the euthanasia establishment. Indeed, in tracing the origins and significance of the mercy-killing program, Friedlander adds little to what has already been said by Ernst Klee in his classic monograph Euthanasie im NS-Staat (1983); not even Friedlander's archival findings differ much. Of course there was some dove-tailing of the "mercy-killing" program and genocide: the euthanasia staff found itself recruited into the Endlösung program; but they were not its inventors, nor were those inventors led towards their visions of genocide by knowledge of the mercy-killing operations. These were two parallel developments, both of course inspired by racial goals: one to assure the future, the biological health, of the Master Race; the other was to guarantee the extermination of the Jewish people, ideologically branded a "race." The former was influenced by National Socialism's theory of Aryan racial superiority, the latter by its apocalyptic brand of racist antisemitism and its stress on the absolute racial inferiority of the Jews. These were two sides of the same ideological coin, no doubt, but not logical outgrowths, one of the other.
A strong case could be made that euthanasia would certainly have emerged in Nazi Germany had there been no Jews and/or antisemitism. Similarly, the escalating violent campaign against Jews would have climaxed with genocide even if there had been no euthanasia program of non-Jews. In other words, antisemitism remains a central force in the Final Solution.
But what kind of antisemitism was it? European or specifically and uniquely German? According to John Weiss' Ideology of Death: Why the Holocaust Happened in Germany (Chicago, 1996) it was an intensified variant of what afflicted most peoples of Europe. Primarily antisemitism in Germany was a confluences of circumstances that led to the Holocaust originating in that country; however, it could, given certain events, just as well have started in France. Though Weiss does not say so explicitly, the thrust of his text does implicitly lay the groundwork for such an analysis. The case for the Holocaust happening in Germany is circumstantial but not determined. Weiss, therefore, leaves ample room for a complex Germany in which large segments of the population were either not primarily antisemitic or had other priorities that led them to back the Hitlerian regime with "soft" support.
In sharp contrast, Daniel Goldhagen, in his much publicized and overrated work, Hitler's Willing Executioners (New York, Knopf, 1996) brashly concludes that by 1933, virtually all Germans were in the grips of what he dubs "exterminational antisemitism." By this term, he claims that even before the Nazi seizure of power, the German population had internalized a reflexive "eliminationalist" genocidal hatred for Jews: hence the mass complicity with the regime. He leaves virtually no room for millions of Germans who clearly demonstrated no such signs of an overt desire to have any Jews killed.
Through his biased anti-German lenses there is no way to account for the millions who harbored other social non-racist agendas, much to the chagrin of the SA, whose leaders had to admit that the German population had to be taught a radically new psychology of collective racial identity. Practically all Germans in 1933 defined themselves according to traditional, regional, religious and national categories. Almost none understood what it meant to be an Aryan. The Nazis did, but they would have to instruct an entire people to be racially conscious of themselves and others, beginning with Jews. That Jews, as a race, were incompatible with Germans qua Aryans and had, therefore, to be expunged from civil society was not a dominant thought and popular conclusion in 1933. It is doubtful it ever was among the population as a whole by 1939 or even in 1945 when Germany lay in ruins. There is ample evidence of a profound ambiguity of self-identity in the ranks of the German population. Goldhagen's chiaroscuro version of reality, much of it motivated by a meta-scholarly agenda, still persists, obstructing a more flexible and humanistic interpretation of German grassroots antisemitism during the Holocaust.
All three books are now on the shelves ready to influence future generations of scholars and students who will have to continue the debate on the centrality and character of antisemitism at the time of the Third Reich. The outcome may have serious political implications in the near future. Each of the books enriches the discussion considerably despite their conflicting conclusions.
Henry R. Huttenbach (CCNY)