Testifying to the unspeakable: on not Transcending the Intellectual Limitations of Interpretation

Despite mounting evidence to the contrary, the proponents of the theory that language lacks the power to penetrate the darkness of genocide stubbornly continue to restate their unauthenticated claims. Why is that? From whence this need to uphold a fundamentally anti-intellectual view of language and, by extensions, of life itself?

Ironically, it was the peddlers of National Socialist ideology who promoted the very same premise. In their radical fervor to conjure up the fantasy of a fictitious, reborn "elemental" Germany, they resorted to tidal waves of unsubstantiated clichés and rhetoric. Abandoning coherent thought and disciplined speech, the demagogues and ideologues of Aryan racism plunged into the murky abyss of pseudo-language and bogus meaning, claiming to pioneer the way to a new non-verbal, Wagnerian-like consciousness that lies beyond the parameters of human verbal expression. In so doing, they sponsored a pot-pourri of self-serving subjectivism, quasi-impressionism, and hysterical mass revivalism, stimulated by emotively charged code words supposedly serving as vehicles to transport one to a new trans-verbal level of awareness. The hyped speeches of the Nazi elite are samples of this Nazi-speak which became a means to open up new realms of meta-verbal meaning: of person, of nation, of duty, of life itself. It was, of course, a tragic hoax, this "meta-speech" language.

Similarly, the all-too often misuse of and reliance on superlatives, of hyperbole, of the use of overcharged terminology to promote exaggerated interpretations of the historical Holocaust are largely self-serving "soft" thought in lieu of "hard" thinking, a way of conjuring up trans-historic "truths." There is a slippery slope from justified verbal emphasis to the needlessly bombastic; extravagant vocabulary quickly leads to the preposterous, indeed to the caricature of what one seeks to endow with meaning. All too often, reality in its most radical forms is best couched in simple words, especially the stark facts and horrific effects of genocide.

The practitioners of langage outré might be sobered by Cicero's words of caution in ones zeal to use the language of melodrama: "Excitabant enim fluctus in simpulo." Those who insist that the Holocaust must be couched in "hype" to emphasize what lies beyond the range of words, ought first to read Tzvetan Todorov's Facing the Extreme: Moral Life in the Concentration Camps; the book, for all its imperfections, is a masterful example of the English practice of the understatement, and, therefore, of effective communication of the so-called "unspeakable."

Unintended, it suggests the fundamental and, I believe, definitive distinction between the Holocaust's best known witnesses, Elie Wiesel and Primo Levi: the former takes refuge and revels in the notion that words can only hint at the enormity of the Shoah, and many of his readers prefer to be so persuaded and comforted; the latter, in contrast, is known for his crisp, matter-of-fact, unadorned style to depict the core of the Holocaust experience and, hence, convey its genuine shock effect. The one, the semi-poet/anecdotalist and spinner of legends, is forever evasive of a direct confrontation with human experience in extremis, understandably afraid of the psychic pain he might awaken in himself. The other, the scientist/narrator has no need for such conceits; he simply holds up the mirror and unmercifully asks the reader to look, affording no opportunity to look away and avoid the relentless suffering of the innocents. For Wiesel, Auschwitz remains unspeakable; for Levi it is all too much within the range of human speech and comprehension, of the facts and of meaning. Wiesel leaves the ultimate significance of genocide to his G-d. Levi takes umbrage at no such deus ex machina; the Death Camps are for him far too readily understandable. It is just that too few care or have the courage to know, preferring to hide behind home-made "mystery.".

The ultimate, secular de-mystified Holocaust interpretation was supplied by the ever provocative(and much maligned) Hannah Arendt: we are, she insists, all capable of genocide if given the opportunity (power) under the right circumstances. To delve or revel in other "interpretations" such as "was G-d in Auschwitz?" is to engage in near-obscene intellectual exercises at the expense of the known reality. One should begin with Arendt's insight and test it fully, and see who dares, honestly, to deny the central truth about the human condition, a condition by no means out of range of human expression and comprehension. Arendt's thesis is as simple as it is Ciceronian.

If there are any limitations to interpretations of the Holocaust, or of any genocide, they are those of commonsense and not those of the paucity of language in being able to reach vague metaphysical levels. What is relegated to a (fictitious) realm of "mystery" or to a pseudo-sphere of the so-called "trans-verbal" must automatically be dismissed as irrelevant or false. There is neither evidence nor supporting logic to uphold such "meanings;" for no interpretation rooted in the historic Holocaust can point directly to such quasi-interpretations, but only indirectly by way of an act of unsustainable imagination or free association but not by a strictly syllogistic progression of thought from evidence and premise to conclusion. There is ample meaning to be mined from within the parameters of the here and now of the Shoah without lapsing into the murky world of sheer speculation. It is enough to testify about the "speakable" whose limits, so far, have not yet been fully plumbed and for which there are ample words and expressions for an infinite variety of valid interpretations. There is certainly no need for mystification, i.e. obfuscation.

Henry R. Huttenbach

Racism: Clarifying a Term

Ever since the eighteenth century when race entered the vocabulary, its application has increased to such an extent that, in order to make practical and practicable sense, it needs to be broken down into specific sub-components. If not it will lose all meaning other than serving as a good-for-all epithet: thus, European civilization is "racist"; Louis Farrakhan is a "racist"; Republicans are "racist"; Zionism is "racist"; antisemitism is "racism"; affirmative action is "racist/anti-racist" (take your pick); Nazism, Fascism, colonialism, imperialism, Apartheid, Black Nationalism, White Supremacists, College Fraternities, ethno-nationalism, Right-to-Lifers, The daughters of the American Revolution, Le Pen, opponents of Israel have all at one time or another been dubbed as racist.

Do they all enjoy a common denominator called "racism"? If so, what is its definition? Or does each one embody a different kind of racism as part of their ideological make-up? Or is racism more of less central to each of these items? Or perhaps it is inappropriate as a label in some or all of these cases.

Since racism has played a prominent role in some genocides, it seems incumbent on scholars and teachers to be able to distinguish discreetly the varying types of racism that characterize people, organizations and political movements, and apply the term rationally and justly.

In general there are two categories of racism: i) racism based on physical criteria and ii) racism drawn from cultural criteria. The former is the older, dating back to the time when humans were first organized according to looks: skin color, shape of eyes, hair, size, etc.; the latter came about when racial designations began to include or emphasized exclusively cultural traits: language, religion, history, customs, and territoriality. Increasingly, aspects of both categories have been combined; "racial" groups were either identified by others or by themselves on the basis of a mix from both categories.

No matter how strictly one wished or wishes to limit the term race to its original parameters delineated by physical criteria, the concept has irrevocably broken through these restriction. Thus, by the turn of the century one spoke of the Anglo-Saxon race, the Gallic race, the Germanic race, and of the Slavic race. In the case of the last, there was even mention of Slavic races. According to the nationalistic rhetoric of World War I, the conflict was an epic collision within the same civilization of contesting races who were distinguished not by looks but by cultural values. As some would argue, it was an intra- rather than an inter-racial contest within the white race and not the white races.

So how can one sort through this terminological confusion, since humans are periodically organized according to "race", a term which increasingly seems to be a partial substitute for nation, civilization, etc.? Below are samples of 'modified' racism, that is, a list of sub-racisms identified by a modifier which indicates more precisely the kinds of racism that may more appropriately be linked to the political and social philosophies of individual persons, organizations and movements.

  1. Physical (Neutral) Racism: the simple (non-value) recognition that mankind can be grouped according to general physical criteria;
  2. Separatist (Social) Racism:The Theory that the races (however defined) should be kept apart (e.g. prevented from inter-marrying) to preserve their respective identities. Essentially, at least theoretically egalitarian towards all races;
  3. Hierarchic (value-based) Racism: The attitude that some races are superior to others by virtue of physical, cultural and mental characteristics;
  4. Biological (Ancestral) Racism: The method which ascribes racial identity by virtue of birth and ancestry.
  5. Nationalistic (Political) Racism: The idea that a race is a nation and ought to have commensurate territory and statehood.
  6. Mono (exclusivist) Racism: The theory and policy that advocate a uni-racial population within the borders of the state.
  7. Volkish (imperial) Racism: The vision that the power of the state be used beyond the nation's borders in the interest of the (dominant) race;
  8. Genocidal Racism: The practice of exterminating 'lower' races. (A radical combination of #3 and #6.) In the light of the twentieth century developments, two other categories of racism should now be recognized:
  9. Cultural Racism: The tendency to distinguish "races" by one or more cultural criteria regardless of physical features. This variation, can range over the entire spectrum of attitudes outlined above, from #1 through #8, namely, from the benign, relativist view that all cultures are equal and worthy of respect and preservation, to the most radically intolerant stance, seeking the extermination of another cultural group.

Cultural Racism often equates, conceptually, cultural and physical criteria. Thus, citizenship can be denied in a mono-cultural state on the basis of not having been born into the dominant group's language circle; language fluency by acquisition is considered insufficient qualification according to this purist view. Similarly, religious conversion may not always be sufficient for absolutists, impuning that the original religious affiliation left a permanent "spiritual" mark on the convert, whose loyalty, therefore, will always remain suspect.

It is from this melange of physical and cultural racism that a third "reality" or category of racism has emerged, namely, psychological racism.

10. Psychological Racism: The school of thought which infers there are fixed, innate psychological characteristics that are the products of cultural heritage. These are inherited "attitudes" which cannot be erased by a simple act of volition and change of cultural membership. Thus, there is the "Gallic" mind, the "Oriental" view, the "Anglo-Saxon mentality" the "African" heritage, the "Russian" soul, etc.

These "mind-sets" are tantamount to biological facts, to physical features embedded in the mind. This line of thought allowed the Nazis to speak, in this case disparagingly, of "Jewish" science.

Readers may not concur with this attempt to unravel the complexity surrounding the uses of race and racism. Some may feel even more confused. If so, let others volunteer their voyages into the conceptual quicksand of racism. To sweep the problem under the rug is merely to postpone it. The uses and misuses of racial categorization will continue both in informal and in academic parlance. The sooner some clarity is shed, the better our teaching and research about genocide. Much work remains on unscrambling the turgid notion of racism in National Socialist thought and how, if at all, * it applied to the Holocaust.

Henry R. Huttenbach

* This aside alludes to the present debate over the primacy of antisemitism or racism in the Nazi campaign to exterminate all Jews.

The Holocaust and Gender: Women as Victimizers

With the introduction of Women's Studies social scientists have expanded their horizons by acknowledging more openly the gender dimension. That was a welcome move. At the same time, this approach also developed a certain one dimensional character, its own parochial parameters, noticeably in the context of Holocaust Studies. Predictably, focusing attention on women tended to be exclusively on women as victims, highlighting the specificity of the woman's experience of suffering genocide during the Holocaust. In itself there is nothing wrong with this as long as it opens up new avenues for understanding the sum total of the world of the victims as children, women, and men.

Nevertheless, over the years, this approach has tended to foster an unwritten paradigm: namely, 1) women were among the victims and 2) women were victimized by men. The first assumption is correct, but the second is only partially so. In the ranks of the victimizers were not only men; during the Holocaust years women played a crucial role as significant actors in the formation of the Nazi state and society, even as central participants in carrying out racial policies.

First, in response to the Nazi exhortations that parents raise children according to racist precepts, countless German mothers nurtured their infants to become faithful members of Nazi society. All too many encouraged their children not to play with Jewish children, not out of fear but out of conviction, not in compliance with their husband's wishes but out of personal racist bias. This nurturing accounts for the tens of thousands of eager teen-age volunteers towards the end of the war, a war they entered as confirmed antisemites.

Second, the majority of grade school teachers in the Third Reich were women. As of 1933, few of these teachers refused to promote the racist "philosophy" of the Nazi regime, comfortably teaching their non-Jewish pupils about their newly acquired Aryan identity. From 1933 all too many primary school teachers abused their Jewish pupils, cruelly humiliating and mistreating them in front of the "Aryan" children, until all the Jewish children were forced out. Some women teachers, of course, toed the Nazi line out of fear; but the majority walked sympathetically in step with the racist "pedagogy" introduced by the state; too few refused to teach their pupils the doctrine of race and just as few showed the moral courage to treat Jewish pupils with kindness and respect. This overall violation of professional ethics by women teachers was no less than that of male teachers, who also were engaged in rearing a new racist generation. Memoirs of German Jewish survivors and emigrants attest to the frequency of these experiences.

German women in the Hitler Youth Movement:

One of the most important devices employed by the Nazi regime to indoctrinate the population was the youth movement. Strictly segregated along gender lines, it sought to impart a deep loyalty to the state's radical racist doctrines. While young boys had men for instructors, the girls had highly politically motivated women leaders who taught their youthful charges the values of an Aryan society, which required a blind loyalty to Hitler and demanded a total hatred for Jews as a race desirous of defiling the purity of Aryan women. In the spirit of the 1935 Nuremberg Racial Laws, the Nazi Youth Movement's women leaders taught the young girls to socialize only with Aryan boys and never to have any dealings with Jewish men. The latter, they were taught, were the embodiment of lust and congenital despoilers of the Aryan race.

Thirdly, in the staffs of the euthanasia program, there were lots of women privy to state murder. Nurses and other female workers and supervisors used their power to categorize patients in their care as candidates for mercy-killing, signing forms to that effect, in full knowledge of the lethal consequences to the innocent patients. Very few, if any resigned out of conscience; the majority stayed on the job and participated in the bureaucratic tasks that categorized lives as being "unworthy of life." Children, adults, and the old, all were condemned to deadly injections, a program in which women worked side by side with men. There was no gender difference in their efficiency and commitment, despite the potentially inhibiting fact of knowing what was happening.

Fourthly, women worked overwhelmingly for the German Red Cross. As such they saw, in part, what happened to Jews, especially in Eastern Europe. The Red Cross used ghetto inmates, in Riga for example, to help care for and feed wounded German soldiers returning from the front. The Jewish prisoners were hungry and in dire need; but the Red Cross workers did nothing for them, no complaints to their superiors, no honest reports of the inhumane things they saw. Instead, the Red Cross went into ghettos and took warm winter garments confiscated from Jews and distributed them to non-Jews. There is no record that these women Red Cross workers showed any compassion for Jews incarcerated in ghettos and whose cheap labor they regularly exploited. They seemingly felt no need to provide these wretched people with food, clothing and shelter. Instead, the Red Cross staff stole from Jews and used their labor, women employees as callously as their male counterparts.

And fifthly, there were notorious women camps guards. We have all seen the photographs of their cruel, grim faces. Indistinguishable from the male guards, women guards administered brutality against helpless men and women alike. They possessed the same power over life and death as male guards. They murdered as easily as their male counterparts. Their sadism was no less. They felt no compassion for "fellow" women prisoners. Their antisemitism and/or devotion to their superiors blinded them as it did the men engaged in genocide. They killed with impunity; there are no recollections by survivors of SS women guards being "soft" or more "lenient" than their male colleagues.

Women victimizers are an important and sobering category. It prevents one from writing a pseudo-feminist morality play that suggests simplistically that the Final Solution and the Third Reich were exclusively an all-male enterprise. Thus, if one must (and should) pay scholarly attention to women as victims, then to maintain a balanced view, one must pay attention to women as victimizers. Not to do so is to abuse the scholarly integrity of Women's Studies and to introduce into the drama of genocide (of evil inflicted against the innocent) an unintended but disruptive pseudo-morality play, casting women (the victims) against men (the victimizers)

The lesson is an obvious one that, given the agendas of today's politicized social scientists, when it comes to (im)moral human behavior, women are like men and men like women. They face the same choices and temptations. Women and men in the grips of racist hatred, once given the opportunity, will commit genocide under the right circumstances. This is far more significant to remember than the secondary knowledge gained from particularizing women as victims. In some respect looking at women as "different" victims diminishes their experiences alongside their fellow men victims. Their humanity was equally demeaned.

Gender considerations should expand the range of understanding and not parochialise it through false particularity and reasoning. Seen through the lens of gender there is much to learn about the Holocaust and its victims and perpetrators as long as simplifications are eschewed, simplifications that border on caricatures and create unnecessary stereotypes.

The precise suffering of women needed and needs to be underscored: the well-known mass rapes of women during the war over Bosnia is a stark contemporary reminder. The mass seizure of Cambodian children from their mothers during the genocidal Pol Pot regime is less known. Now that the phenomenon of female victimization has found its proper place in the consciousness of all scholars of the Holocaust and genocide, it is time to ask questions about the disturbing flip side of this phenomenon, the roles and extent of female victimizers during the Third Reich (or in any other genocide), not so much as an artificial device to distribute blame and/or guilt for mutual responsibility, but to shed further light on the complex society that operated in Nazi Germany or elsewhere and to expose further the wide range of corruption that degraded German women to become co-partners with men in the Final Solution, certainly not as coequals in an essentially male-dominated state, but, nevertheless, all too often as willing and eager enthusiasts of the racist war against European Jews.

There is a sobering book gender scholars harboring biases or entertaining certain assumptions should read. It is Glen Jeansonne's Women of the Far Right (U. of Chicago Press, 1996). Though it focuses on a movement in the United States, not in Nazi Germany, there is much that opens the eyes. These were women extreme isolationists, but also avowed racists and unabashed antisemites who promoted, simultaneously, patriotism, anti-communism and xenophobia. They could easily have been transplanted to the Third Reich and quickly found common cultural soil in which to take root. There they would have found many more sympathetic "sisters," eager devotees of similar ideas and, to boot, a willing government to recruit them. Fortunately, there was no such government in the United States. Had there been, would these women have traveled down the slippery road to genocide as did some women in Germany? Though we will never know, it is worth asking the question and attempting an answer.

Henry R. Huttenbach

The Holocaust Circuit: the Shoah Go-Around

The conference format was conceived as a means of exchanging thoughts by persons of common interest and concern in relatively optimal congenial surroundings. It is a pre-e-mail, indeed pre-telephone "invention," which is beginning to show signs of obsolescence, an institutional variation of terminal irrelevance to its original purpose, namely, the promotion or generation of new ideas. It is time to ask seriously how far down the path of conference-itis the Holocaust gatherings ("happenings"?) have traveled. And, if so, can we ascertain how debilitating or healthy the patient is and what the symptoms of this "disease" are?

For purposes of arguments, two such "signs" or indices will be examined, here labeled "conference frequency" and "speaker frequency."

The number of conferences is less and less a measure of the increase in qualitative knowledge. More often conferences are staged because of either an artificial occasion that reflects a calendric moment and not a scholarly breakthrough ("Ten Years After Auschwitz"; "Twenty . . ."; "A quarter century . . ." etc.); or they are scheduled because they have become an institutionalized annual or bi-annual event, slavishly or automatically planned to keep up with a remorseless calendric commitment, even though little of worthwhile substance conveying to justify assembling hundreds of people may have transpired since the previous meeting. It never seems to occur to anyone that a year's respite or the avoidance of an occasion (e.g. "Five Decades after Nuremberg") may be wiser than having to endure a relatively bland if not mind-numbing program.

And what embodies most the sterility of such programs? None other than the keynote speakers and other featured "eminentos." A close look at conference programs of Holocaust events starkly illustrates this. Over and again the same 6-12 Holocaust "stars" are called upon to provide a "new" insight by request. More often than not, these presentations are warmed over talks from conferences past and not fruits of recent research. The best one can (and does) expect is a post-publication speech by an author of a recent book. For those who have read the book, this is an arid experience; for those who have not, it is a cheap substitute, justifying future non-reading.

A real sin is the improvised banquet talk, one written, if at all, at the last minute as hurriedly scribbled notes. These pronunciamentos are not only insulting to an audience of scholars, but they prove to be error-riddled, careless on facts, and sloppy on reasoning. These Holocaust "performances," often given with bravura by a Holocaust "dignitary," have bordered on the disgraceful, and often contain blatantly unethical ad hominems such as ones heard by this author at a recent conference in the Mid-West by a very prominent "prominento."

A related sin of the "illustrissimi" on the international Holocaust circuit (all expenses paid, of course) is the "theme and variation" talk. Already back in the late 70s and early 80s I have heard colleagues give virtually the same warmed-over presentation at four of five consecutive conferences on both sides of the Atlantic. Rather than being scholarly treatments, they were oratorical occasions. Rhetoric replaced substance.

Why this severe criticism, as if an explanation were necessary? Is it fair? Is it too severe? The replies ought to be implicit.

Perhaps one could begin an answer with the following cluster of questions: Are these "sins" necessarily evil, and ought they to be rectified? If so, what are the remedies? What directions ought future Holocausts gatherings take? The same ones as in the past? If new ones, what are they to be? These questions in themselves ought to pose a challenge to future Holocaust conference impresarios. Will they be up to the task? Dare they buck tradition? If not, so what? What harm is done by declaring in favor of the old ways?

This last query, perhaps, is the question that this criticism evokes. Why bother? Why rock the boat? Things are seemingly going well. Never has there been more Holocaust activity: classes, lectures, conferences, articles, books, audiences, and the key money. The temptation to measure success quantitatively seduces all of us. "More" has become synonymous with "better," a common trap. So, how to return to a primary commitment to quality and the principle that "less, if good, is better"? Fewer "eminentos," fewer panels, fewer conferences; instead more quality control, more scholarly criticism and less mutual friendly praise. The present inflation of academic Holocaust events will eventually deflate, like an over-blown balloon, leaving little memorable in its wake.

If Holocaust Studies are eventually to leave their present self-imposed methodological and susbstantive isolation and be fully integrated into the scholarly mainstream, then some conceptual and structural reforms are certainly in order, with but one caveat: that the "reformers" not come from the ranks of the "sinners." A little "lustration" may do some good in jostling awake a profession on the verge of becoming too comfortable with its successes.

Henry R. Huttenbach