The Genocide Forum
Table of Contents
- Heroic Teachers: A Summer Thought for Holocaust Instructors
- The Christian Memory Hole: Christian-Jews during the Holocaust
- Homosexuals and the Holocaust: Victimization is not Genocide
- Three Asides
- A Poem by Charles Fishman
Heroic Teachers: A Summer Thought for Holocaust Instructors
August is a hot and lazy month, hardly conducive to serious thought, let alone to giving much thought to a Holocaust anniversary. Yet, for teachers of the Holocaust basking in the warm sun, pushing away thoughts of the impending school year, August 3 should not go by unnoticed. It was on that day a teacher's heroism raised spiritual resistance to a moral high, allowing one to assess the mystery of pupil-teacher relations during the fatal Holocaust years.
On that day in 1942, in the Warsaw ghetto, Janusz Korczak formerly Henryk Goldschmit led his young charges to the Umschlagsplatz (assembly point), from where they were deported to Treblinka and certain extermination. He was murdered along with the children on August 5. The noble act of Korczak not to abandon his orphans when he easily could have remained behind is a lasting testimony to a selfless act, to an extraordinary loving loyalty. It stands as a powerful testimony to the sacrifice usually made by parents for their endangered children. As their teacher and parent in loco parentis, Korczak's heroism is an inspiration to all teachers, especially in today's jaded, value-relative world.
But, though exceptional, Korczak's brave march through the streets of the Warsaw Ghetto was not an isolated act. There are other examples of men and women teachers forfeiting their lives on behalf of their Jewish pupils. Korczak was not alone in seeking to provide "his" children a measure of solace in what he must have known would be their last terrible moments. Herewith two example:
Gori J. (last initial is all that is known) from Würzburg volunteered to join the transport to Riga on November 27, 1941, because the entire class of his schoolchildren had been consigned to that transport. In Riga, he was sent along with the children to Camp Jungfernhof, where he tried and, of course, failed to ease their lot. On March 26, 1942, on his return to camp from a work assignment he found all the children gone: they had been killed in the infamous Dünamunde Aktion. Gori J. later perished in Bergen-Belsen in 1945, shortly before the end of the war.
Another unpublicized teacher was Herta Mansbacher from Worms. Though she had had the opportunity to emigrate to Egypt, she chose to stay till the last of her pupils was safe abroad. She had spent years recording the emigration of the Jewish community. In March 1942, she and eight of the remaining children were deported to Piaski near Lublin; she perished later that year in one of the nearby death camps.
There are, no doubt, other examples of those who, in the same spirit as Henryk Goldschmidt, embodied the highest human ideal of self-sacrifice in the face of the ultimate evil the enemy of human life.
Henry R. Huttenbach
The Christian Memory Hole: Christian-Jews during the Holocaust
With but few exceptions, Christians who have joined Jews in memorializing the Holocaust and its Jewish victims tend to focus on the Final Solution as an act of genocide solely afffecting Jews and their descendants for which, they feel, they share a measure of guilt. They acknowledge that Christian antisemitism and Christian collaboration were an integral part of the Third Reich's racist assault on European Jewry. As contrite Christians, they feel compelled to express in prayer and public confession the sins of the established churches and their correligionists during the Nazi era. But that is a slightly myopic view, however laudable in its intention.
There is a far more direct connecting thread linking Christians to the annihilation of Jews by Nazi Germany. In most middle-sized and large German Christian parishes, both Catholic and Protestant, there was at least one parishioner who was a convert from Judaism. In many cases, there were several such parishioners, even second and third generation descendants of Jewish converts in the nineteenth century.. By 1933, most of these Christians had all but forgotten their Jewish origins. For the most part, their fellow congregants also gave little thought to their fellow Christians of Jewish origin.
September 1935 changed all that abruptly; the issuance of the Nuremberg Racial Laws identified every person biologically (genealogically) as "Aryan" or "Jewish," regardless of contemporary religious affiliation. Overnight, several thousand people fully integrated into Christian communities became officially Jews and, by extension, Jewish Christians, or Christians of non-Aryan standing, that is, Jews in the eyes of the state, and therefore to be treated as Jews throughout German society, including the parishes.
What were the responses of the Catholic and Protestant clergy and hierarchies to these racial classifications of congregants? Were there loud protests? Did the millions of Catholics and Lutherans in Germany rally in Christian fellowship and solidarity around their fellow Christians, regardless of "race"? Did they offer these outcasts the warmth of spiritual comfort? Did priests and pastors encourage their flocks to walk in the compassionate footsteps of the Master who empathized with all outcasts, from lepers to prostitutes? Where are the sermons that embodied the essence of Christian teaching to defy Caesar,, to turn against the unchristian values of the godless German City of Man? How many volunteered to protect, to hide, to protest, to help, etc.? How many survivors owed their lives to the congregation? Did the majority Aryan Christian spouses married to a "Jewish" Christian refuse to heed the Nazi state's admonition to divorce or separate? And in the end, how many Christians volunteered to be deported along with their "Jewish" loved ones?
The questions are, of course, primarily rhetorical. They answer themselves. The exceptions to the mass betrayal all well known simply underscore the point. Thousands of "Jewish" Christians were left largely abandoned by their intimidated congregations, practically all of them religious communities infected by the toxins of traditional Christian and social German antisemitism, standard racism, chauvinism, and the culture of political passivity and subordination to state authority.. They were obedient citizens first, fearful individuals second, and, thirdly, if at all, Christians in the original sense, sadly reminiscent of Peter's servile threefold denial before dawn of his Master, Jesus.
Parishes today should ask if, knowing the failures of past Christian congregations, can one expect a heightened sense of loyalty to each other in the face of similar governmental pressures in the future. What happened in Rwanda is less than inspiring. There, Christians quickly degenerated into blood-thirsty Hutus, including priests.
So what happened to the Jewish or non-Aryan Christians? All too many were deported as Jews. Those sent to the gas chambers may have gasped a final Christian prayer prior to asphyxiation, but no one knows. What is known is that in half-a-dozen ghettos, including those in Riga (Latvia) and Lviv (Ukraine), "Jewish" Christians formed prayer circles in the absence of pastors and priests, true to their adopted religious belief to the deadly end.
Should not the names of these Christian victims be rescued from oblivion? Should not every parish and seminary adopt one of these "Jewish" Christians of the Holocaust as a permanent embodiment of spirituality and a constant reminder of what happens when congregations and their leaders lose their bearings? Should it not be a Christian undertaking Catholic and Protestant to raise in sermons, in homilies, in Papal Bulls, in Sunday schools and seminaries the burning questions and searing answers that the lives and deaths of these "Jewish" Christians embody? Should there not be a Yom Hashoah-like occasion for Christians to focus exclusively on their betrayed Christian neighbors? For if the congregations could forsake their own correligionists sixty years ago, then little wonder that they could turn away from their Jewish neighbors.
Henry R. Huttenbach
Homosexuals and the Holocaust: Victimization is not Genocide
Again and again, proponents of victimized groups strive to hitch themselves onto the genocide bandwagon as a way of gaining status and winning public sympathy. The politics of interest groups seeking to obtain public recognition is understandable, but their distortions of history ought to be challenged by scholars as consistently and persistently as their misguided efforts. It is the duty of the scholarly community to guard against these emotional assaults on the truth, no matter how commendable the intentions. Instead, far too many scholars tend to tolerate if not condone this false equalization of victim experiences.
What motivates this piece is the issue of the homosexuals and their supposed genocidal experiences during the Third Reich. In The Genocide Forum (I/6) the controversy over ascribing genocidal qualities to the victimization of homosexuals (gays, not lesbians) was raised in connection with the US Holocaust Museum's research agenda. It was then argued that it was tantamount to historical falsification to elevate the treatment of homosexuals to that of the Jews. To rank the extermination of European Jewry alongside the persecution of male homosexuals was ipso facto an intellectulally immoral conclusion by virtue of its inherent dishonesty.
But such protests by no means end the controversy. The campaign to include the Nazi anti-homosexual campaign alongside the Final Solution persists despite incontrovertible statistical evidence to the contrary, facts that readers of The Genocide Forum, both researchers and teachers, ought to bear in mind.
To begin with, the Nazi mistreatment of male homosexuals was based on a pre-1933 law dating back to 1871 (Law #175). Homosexual practices by men were criminalized in the code adopted at the founding of Bismark's Second Reich. The fathers of the Third Reich added no new legislation; they simply applied the law more stringently, especially if compared to the Weimar years. That was not true of the legal assault on Jewry; there were no antisemitic laws inherited by the Nazis. As of 1933, the Nazis launched de novo a legal campaign against the German Jewish minority, besieging them with a tidal wave of restrictive and exclusionary rules and regulations, all of them new to the statute books. This pre-genocide legislation sought to undo the entire structure of Jewish emancipation, an unmaking of over 100 years process of legitimizing Jews as equal citizens of a German state. Nothing comparable confronted homosexuals under Nazi rule, though, of course, some faced extremely cruel treatment by the authorities.
The figures speak for themselves: between 1933 and 1945 no more than 50,000 men were charged with the crime of homosexuality. (It would be enlightening to know how many faced that charge between 1871 and 1933, not to mention how many were found guilty and what the punishment was.) According to Germany's leading historian of homosexuals, Joachim Müller, around ten to fifteen thousand were found "guilty" of whom a majority was sentenced to incarceration in a concentration camp. In other words, 35,000 to 40,000 of the accused homosexuals were not sent into the German Gulag! Hardly a sign of genocidal intent!
Of those 10,000 to 15,000, most survived their sentences, though several hundreds (again according to Müller) died from the brutal treatment meted out to them. But again, this is not a percentage suggesting a determination to exterminate all those imprisoned. Thus the victimization of male homosexuals under the Nazi regime in no way approaches the category of genocide and should not be classified as such.
Nevertheless, despite these findings to the contrary, the promoters of linking the issue of the suppression of homosexuals to the genocide of Jews steadfastly ignore the facts. Instead of openly debating this controversy, they hide behind the skirts of those whose agenda makes the inclusion of homosexuals as suffferers of prima face genocide a high priority. They stubbornly delude themselves that in time their "version" of history will become mainstream and the evidentiary correctives of their opponents will conveniently fade away. It is a little like the mantra that reiterates the false fact of the "liberation" of concentration camps that never took place. (See The Genocide Forum. "The Myth of Liberation," I/3.) There is no reasonable convincing these partisans of the manipulation of history that they are wrong.
It was Jews and Gypsies who were systematically rounded up and killed en masse throughout occupied Europe. That was not the case for homosexual men; no Einsatzgruppen fanned out over the continent to catch every gay man. There was, for example, no such raffle of gays practiced by the French police on behalf of the German occupiers as there was of Jews. Paris had been a haven for French homosexuals since before World War I. Yet why did not the Nazis "collect" them in toto? Why not in Prague? Or in Warsaw? Does this smack of universal persecution, let alone of the intent to annihilate? We anxiously await a response.
Henry R. Huttenbach
Three Asides
1. For Antisemitism: Against anti-Semitism
This seems like a small issue, but it makes a bigger point. Authors, editors and publishers seem to be evenly divided between "antisemitism" and "anti-Semitism." Does it matter? We all know what is meant. True enough. With or without the hyphen, readers are conveyed the same thought. That is so. But there is more to it than that.
"Anti-Semitism" by virtue of the hyphen implies the existence of at least the concept "Semitism." Yet, as an "ism" like Communism and Catholicism or even existentialism and Fascism, "semitism" does not exist. "Semitic" does have a function in linguistics, but not "semitism." It is a word without a concept.
In the same vein, the hyphenated "Semitism" coupled with the prefix "anti-" inadvertently suggests a parallel concept, "pro-semitism." That, too, does not exist, except here as a hypothetical neologue. Someone who is an anti- "anti-Semite" has, in fact, no specific term, except for "philo-semite." But, it, too, is highly problematic, for it by no means is the "virtuous" side of "anti-Semite" as it seems to imply. On the contrary, "philo-semite" is the obverse side of the same prejudice(s) connoted and denoted by "anti-Semite": instead of focusing on the negative attributes ascribed to Jews by anti-Semites, such as "cheats," "lechers," "schemers" etc., so-called philo-Semites stress a positive stereotype of Jews: according to them, Jews are "brainy," "over-achievers," "family oriented," "temperate," etc. In short, philo-Semitism is the flip side of anti-Semitism. Both rest on stereotypes.
But, in the absence of a meaningful "Semitism" note the emphatic capitalization of the "S", as if to lend credence to its claim to substance it is more appropriate and correct to resort to both a hyphenless "antisemitism" and, in turn, to its more polite though rarely used twin, "philosemitism."
2. A Case of Poor Logic: Memory and Genocide
On February 7, 1997, The New York Times columnist A. M. Rosenthal, in an essay titled "Victims Always Return" about Secretary Madeleine Albright's Jewish background, opined as follows: "There is no lesson to be learned in the Holocaust except this: Evil beyond evil was done and can be done again, unless the living remember."
For the sake of brevity we will ignore the rather stentorian mind-set in part one, namely, that, other than what Rosenthal designates as a "lesson," there is/are no other(s) to be gleaned. What leads him to this conclusion so definitively escapes this reader. After all, it is possible to postulate that history embodies no lessons at all, not even the Holocaust!
More important is the "logic" of the second part of Rosenthal's plaint: namely, remembrance is the best preventive against genocide. Were it only so! Where was the memory-steeped, post-Holocaust West when multiple genocidal "ethnic cleansing" broke out in Yugoslavia in 1992? And where was the memory traumatized Jewish community for the first two or three years of this ethno-inspired mass slaughter? Between 1992 and 1995 there were three Yom HaShoah and countless conferences, workshops, and lectures dedicated to the Holocaust. Other than an occasional token reference or aside, the genocide of the past took precedence over any genocide of the present. What kind of evil is that, Mr. Rosenthal? It is one of the classic evils, that of the onlooking bystander. It is another tragic example of the abyss between the informed mind (memory) and the un-moved conscience (the will to act.)
Unfortunately, what Rosenthal treats as axiomatic is far from being a demonstrable fact. Remembrance is no guarantee. It might even be a hindrance to contemporary action: those who remember a traumatic past are so fixated on a bygone genocide that they are rendered impervious to contemporary genocides. Obsession with the past can all too easily blind one to the present. Mourning the dead of the past too much can lead one to forgetting the living and the dying.
Those engaged in Holocaust Studies teaching and researching have been anything but in the vanguard of studying the recent genocides in the former Yugoslavia and, even more recently, those raging in the center of the African continent between Tutsis and Hutus, in Rwanda, Burundi, and now in eastern Zaire. Glib logic concocted by Rosenthal may be good journalism, but that is all. Is there a lesson in this, perhaps?
3. Another Case of Poor Logic: The Holocaust in the Present.
Commenting on the sordid (golden) mess in which the Swiss government presently finds itself mired, Abraham Foxman, National Director of the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith, stated in an interview: "What I find so disturbing and perplexing is how long the tentacles of the Holocaust are."
But why? Why "disturbing"? Why "perplexing"? Simple logic would dictate otherwise. Given what we have learned about the Holocaust across the span of half a century, how can one possibly be surprised by its continuing repercussions over a wide spectrum? Just at the moment of writing, one minor and one major tidal wave are washing across the post-Holocaust landscape, both originating with the Holocaust of half a century ago.
The latter reverberation stems from the dirty business of international trading in gold and art works, some belonging to Jews; at its epicenter are the Swiss banks and the Swiss government. But all too many countries were and remain involved: Poland and Portugal, Britain and the US for starters. With each new revelation, another country emerges as part of the network of those inextricably involved in the illegal disposition of the possessions of the murdered. Is this perplexing? Distressing perhaps. Yet it is, after all, quite logical, given human nature and its amoral behavior patterns when it is a matter of the politics of the impersonal on the part of institutions and governments.
Gold is a commodity to be traded, especially stolen gold. Gold needs to be protected, above all criminally acquired gold. Illicit wealth, including gold bars, needs to be laundered. This brings into play, in particular in times of war, willing "neutrals." Portugal, Switzerland and Sweden conducted business-as-usual, profiteering from the wartime calamities of others, including the victims of genocide and their killers. Business, after all, is, morally value neutral, except for the virtue of profit at all costs.
At long last, Switzerland joins the list of countries who thought they could bask in the sunshine of their own self-deception. For decades, those associated with Occupied and Vichy France avoided a confrontation with the Holocaust, as did the Austrians supposedly "the first victims of German aggression." And now we watch a deeply embarrassed Switzerland clumsily coming to terms with its wartime exploits. Distressing certainly, but hardly perplexing. All of Europe, all European nations at the time, were somehow involved, and are now implicated for playing some part in the elimination of the Jews and of their property.. The shadow of Auschwitz is ever so long, much longer than Foxman's (aptly coined) "tentacles of the Holocaust." Indeed, they will grow much longer as time passes and knowledge accrues; too much still remains unaccounted for.
This should not be distressing. Quite the opposite. One should be exhilarated as each crime and misdeed surfaces and accountability is called for. This is nothing to dampen the spirits; it should elevate them. Justice, however slow in coming, is being served. No one, nothing of the Holocaust, remains hidden for ever, pace Kurt Waldheim. Newly-opened archives shed damning light on those most hidden, allowing the tentacles of justice to reach into the furthest crevice. This is nothing that warrants distress; it should invite relief, gratitude and a well-earned sense of vindication.
Let there be no doubt, the long tentacles of the Holocaust have by no means stretched to their limits. In time, all questions will be answered; everyone will be held accountable, posthumously if need be. In the long run there is no permanent hiding. If anyone should be distressed and perplexed, it ought not to be the surviving victims and their descendants but those guilty of erecting the Holocaust Kingdom of Europe and later trying to hide the truth of their involvement.
Henry R Huttenbach
A Poem
The Youngest Known Holocaust Survivor
(For Dani and Haya)
Charles Fishman
At 3, she was caged above the ovens
a twin with her sister: small wooden cage
no windows Only Mengele holds the key
and opens that darkness to the flames
What he needs is their bones
and their pain whiter than the first flare of light
after blindness Who can she cling to
but her sister who shudders and gulps death
in the darkness who stutters her name which is
Sora so that to soothe herself Sora she can only
stammer back? And when she dies
in her own arms Mengele breaks her fingers
What can survive this death which comes
pouring out of her even now? Only the twin
of her anger the twin of her sorrow.
Endnote
With this issue, The Genocide Forum completes Year 3. It will resume publication in September 1997. Expect significant changes and an exciting announcement.
We wish our hundreds of readers a restful summer; we thank our loyal readers for advice and criticism. A special expression of gratitude to all those who sustain us intellectually and materially, thereby making possible Year 4!