The Genocide Forum
Editorial Introduction
As those familiar with the format of The Genocide Forum will readily see, this is not a regular issue. Instead we have chosen to devote it primarily to circulating a short article by Michael Levin, a professor of philosophy at the City College of New York.
Professor Levin's "Enough, Already" falls far short of originality. Nevertheless, he makes some serious arguments that could, if not properly countered, make some headway in the minds of the uninitiated. It explicitly proposes a relativist approach, indiscriminately placing the Holocaust alongside other genocides and non-genocides. Levin makes the argument that in this century of mass slaughter, the Holocaust is but one tragic incident, and not necessarily statistically speaking the worst. Predictably, he points to the numbers of victims of the Stalinist Terror and or Communist China under Mao Tse-tung who far exceeded those who fell victim to Nazi Germany. Each example of state crime, Levin suggests, deserves its memorials and embodies lessons equi-significant to those of the Holocaust.
We felt, therefore, prompted to circulate the article discreetly among The Genocide Forum readers in the hope of eliciting short but to-the-point rebuttals that would be helpful to teachers and others engaged in teaching the Holocaust and genocide. We urge you, therefore, to focus on one or two egregious errors of fact or argument in Levin's piece and compose a terse response. We would like to publish most or all of them in subsequent issues.
Henry R. Huttenbach
The Long Shadow of Guilt And the Light of Forgiveness
When is association with genocide a sign of guilt? Martin Heidegger, the existential philosopher, who in the mid-30s briefly assumed the rectorship of Freiburg University, publicly found moral justification in Hitler's regime. In Belgium, during the Nazi occupation, a young Robert LeMan the post-war disciple of Derrida and guru of literary deconstructionism at Yale University wrote virulently antisemitic paeans, hailing the cultural millennium introduced by National Socialism. Walter Gieseking, the world-renowned pianist, played command performances for Hitler and his cohorts. Then there is the case of the conductor Furtwängler who staged symphonic concerts whose programs included "Germanic" composers. Leni Riefenstahl, the famed photographer, who filmed the ground-breaking propaganda documentary, The Triumph of the Will, showed no revulsion for the regime before and after its fall.
After the war, all of the above were more or less stigmatized by their connection to the Third Reich. But how consistently were they marginalized and/or rehabilitated? Heidegger lived out his post-war life in relative disgrace, though his philosophy remains internationally influential and his books are still part of the canon. LeMan's posthumously discovered Nazi, however, have led to a mass rejection of his teachings. Gieseking, at first boycotted, was eventually allowed to return to the recital circuit (presumably because there was no Aryan interpretation of Beethoven's sonatas). A similar late welcome was accorded Furtwängler who was eventually invited to conduct in London but not in New York. As for Riefenstahl, despite a small and loyal admiring circle, she is still in the wilderness, fifty years after the collapse of Nazi Germany. There seems little consistency here.
What general criteria apply in dealing with artists and intellectuals who worked in German-dominated Europe between 1933 and 1945? Or is it always a matter of (each) individual case? In retrospect, what do we expect them to have done? Should they have protested like Bonhoefffer and end up in jail to face execution? Or emigrated like Thomas Mann to the US or Willie Brandt to Sweden? Ought they to have withdrawn from public life? "Emigrated internally," like the Soviet author Boris Pasternak during the height of Stalin's dictatorship?
It is quite clear that they were caught in a moral trap after Hitler's assumption of power. Their pursuit of careers as if all were normal is not unlike that of the vast majority of citizens in Nazi Germany: doctors, lawyers, academics, engineers, actors and composers. Many found opportunities for personal advancement as Jews were purged from the ranks of university faculties, orchestras, editorial boards, laboratories, research institutes, etc. By so doing, they collectively lent prestige to what turned out to be a genocidal regime, though they themselves were not necessarily active participants in the process of annihilation. Still, by dedicating their skills to the regime they provided moral authority to an increasingly murderous government. So what should they have done?
The question is aimed at their critics, at us. No one denies their varying degrees of political complicity and, therefore, moral responsibility. Nevertheless, those of us who point fingers from the outside and from the safety of the present need to answer the question: what should they have done to satisfy our post-facto accusations? What would have absolved them in our eyes? More to the point, what would we have done differently in their place without the self-serving bravura of Monday morning quarterbacking? Let us keep in mind that even Thomas Mann was taken to task for going into exile when, it was said, he and other personalities of stature should have stayed behind and protested. In so doing, it is argued, they might have helped topple or moderate Hitler's regime. Is this to be taken seriously? Even Albert Schweitzer ensconced in Lambaréné on the west coast of Africa, bringing Christ, Bach and western medicine to the "natives", has been chastised for shirking his duty by not returning to Germany to fend off the evil that had taken over his country. But is that a fair charge?
Teachers of the Holocaust might pose this question to young students? Under the circumstances, what was right behavior? What should each one have done? Should Heidegger have left and found employment at a university abroad and sat out the war? But where was he to go? Was the Sorbonne far enough? And how was he to know who would win the war? Should Schweitzer have come home and preached Billy Graham-style opposition to Hitler? Would his inevitable martyrdom å la Dietrich Bonhoeffer have had any effect at dislodging the Nazi grip on power?
As for LeMan, is there a straight connection between his youthful Nazi nihilism and that of his later philosophy of extreme textual decontextualization? Once a Nazi always a Nazi? Or are we throwing away the baby with the bathwater? And what of the artists, the musicians and actors who thrived during the Third Reich, many of whom joined the Party? Should they have been silenced life-long? Again, the real question is: what advice do we extend them retrospectively and retroactively? They did what they did, and we know, in many cases, they were wrong, egregiously wrong. But how would we have behaved differently? The principle of self-survival is as strong in us at it is (was) in others. So, realistically, what do we advise those who transgressed in a totalitarian, genocidal context? The issue is not their sins but our own realization of the dilemmas of the human condition. One admonition should be kept in mind: not to ask more of others than we demand of ourselves.
In so doing we do not absolve them. Quite the contrary. By being cognizant of the moral quagmire that was Germany of the 1930s, we can exercise a measure of understanding not sympathy for those trapped in the crisis of the century, a crisis that entrapped all of Germany's intellectuals and artists. Their universities, seminaries, academies, laboratories and conservatories had not prepared them for this crise des crises. There was no institutional training to prepare them to face unhesitatingly the challenge that confronted these people half a century ago. Is it, on our part, proper to condemn without some humility and even a measure of compassion, if only because we were never confronted by the same challenge?
Which brings one to the final point: what of today's Germans, the children and grandchildren of the generation who committed genocide in their names? Do they carry a greater responsibility than their peers elsewhere? Is there a national or collective responsibility which separates younger Germans from other populations? Is there such a moral heritage? Is there a historic burden that must be shouldered along national lines? Is there such a heritage? And how long should it last? Should the French bear the responsibility of the carnage Napoleon's armies wreaked on Tsarist Russia? Should white Americans whose ancestors immigrated after 1863 be held accountable for slavery? And what of those whose ancestors did own slaves? Is there a moral statute of limitations? Those interested in this perplexing topic should read a moving study by Ursula Hegi Tearing the Silence: Being German in America (New York, Simon Schuster).
Henry R. Huttenbach