The Genocide Forum

Table of Contents

  1. Letter to the Editor
  2. A Review of the Freie Stadt Berlin Senate Session
  3. Museuming History, Exhibiting Genocide
  4. The Restitution Problem: Jewish Property and the Holocaust
  5. A Poem

Letter to the Editor

I regret to say that you made a serious factual, and, hence mathematical error in your piece entitled, "A Requiem for the Hutu Refugees," one which seriously undercuts a valid moral point that you wanted to make.

You wrote, "let us assume it (the numbers of refugees) was somewhat less than a million Hutus who originally escaped Rwanda - let us say conservatively 750,000; there were, by May 1997 only around 70,000 still alive, a 90% attrition rate, about the same percentage as that suffered by Polish Jewry in twice the time."

The factual error: the omission of the fact that after the refugee camps were attacked by Kabila's forces and freed from the Hutu extremists who, as you say, "ruled over the refugee camp," most of the refugees - an estimated 600,000 - spontaneously repatriated to Rwanda.

The mathematical error:

Assume (using your figures) 750,000 refugees

Number spontaneously repatriated - 600,000

Number who fled west repatriated - 70,000 (your figures)

Balance Unaccounted For - 80,000

Some of those refugees - especially members of the former FAR and interahamwe - undoubtedly refused to be repatriated and escaped. Others, as you say, and many reports indicate, were slaughtered. Even if virtually all of them died of disease, malnutrition or were murdered by either their own leaders or Kabila's forces, the numbers killed would not have exceeded 75,000, or 10% (NOT 90%) of the original complement.

As one who co-authored the international report on the western response to the genocide in Rwanda of about one million Tutsis, and as one who, from the beginning, tracked the numbers and path of the Hutu refugees in Zaire and made my analyses available on the internet, I find that many international agencies and NGOs were very concerned about the plight of those refugees. My own country [Canada] initiated humanitarian and aborted military missions to guarantee the delivery of food and health services to the refugees cut off by the war, a mission in part cut short by the spontaneous return of the bulk of the refugees.

There is a problem of indifference. There is a problem of the inability to investigate the alleged slaughter and deaths of tens of thousands of those refugees. But there has also been a number of concerted efforts both to save the refugees and report on what happened to them.

Howard Adelman (York University)

Huttenbach replies:

The dispute, I am pleased to note, is not over the merits of the moral argument, but over the facts. Sadly, the exact numbers are presently not known and, outrageously, they remain the secret of the equatorial jungles in which the mass murder of Hutu refugees took place.

But if my conservative (low) total of an initial 750,000 refugees is generally accepted, Adelman's total for those so-called "repatriated" is a much disputed figure. There exists no official tally of this high figure. In fact, using the same internet he advises, most sources are unable to corroborate that total, 600,000. Rwandan authorities of the Tutsi-dominated government have disputed this claim and have come up with their own counterclaims, equally uncorroborated

Yet, for the sake of argument, let us accept that number of over half a million. Then we must ask: how many are alive today? How many have survived the many killings that have taken place since their "repatriation"? How many died because of the total lack of facilities once they crossed the border from east Zaire to Rwanda? It was often reported how armed Tutsi soldiers awaited them and not officials with food, clothing and housing. Nothing has improved since. Many have not returned to their villages, afraid to go home. Where are they? I am afraid the category of forced repatriation (which brings back nightmarish memories of post-World War II forced repatriation at Stalin's insistence of tens of thousands of Ukrainians and Cossack by US and British troops to the Soviet occupation authorities) merely opens up another chapter of the genocidal tragedy of the Hutu refugees. According to my essay most died murdered and abandoned in Zaire, slaughtered by Tutsi soldiers in Kabila's rebel army; according to Adelman they likely perished in Rwanda at the hands of Tutsis not eager to have them return. My 90% may be high I hope so; but his 10% is beyond credibility and the known facts, though I wish he were right and I egregiously wrong.

Yes, the NGOs were concerned but hopelessly ineffective under the circumstances. My fingers point less at the NGOs than at governments with the power to intervene. NGOs are not instruments to prevent genocide governments are.

A Review of the Freie Stadt Berlin Senate Session

Just a few weeks ago, I returned from a Freie Stadt Berlin Senate Session where the illustrious colloquium debated the building plans for a monument to the six million murdered European Jewish victims of the Holocaust, scheduled for unveiling on January 27, 1999. The debate was endless. The exchanges covered questions about the site, the potential problem of traffic obstruction, the advisability and feasibility of inscribing all available names, the general population's perception that such a multi-billion-Deutshmark disbursement dedicated to the memory of these dead Jews is not politically correct at this moment, given the high rate of unemployment in Germany today. Six million long-dead Jews from a variety of countries are not voting constituency.

Many questions were raised: was IT to be a place of encounter? Of Reflection? A tombstone in the manner of Thermophilae, Leonidas' battle site with the Spartans, and that inscription '...tell the world that you have seen us lie here as ordered by law...' ("Wanderer...wie das Gesetz es befahl)". I am persuaded that no one but I saw the irony of his comparison: since it was by law that the victims they seek to honor now were slaughtered then.

Fifty-five years ago, Reinhard Tristan Heydrich and his minions met at the confiscated Wannsee villa of a Jewish industrialist to plan the extermination of eleven million Jewish men, women and children throughout all of Europe. It's been over fifty years since their Führer committed suicide in the Bunker, while the city and his soldiers died overhead. And we are still discussing the appropriateness of such a monument to the victims?!

I was told that the cost of the meeting on January 10 came to DM 100,000. Two further such sessions were scheduled: on February 14 (to decide the final location) and on April 11, at which time topography, technology and Typology were to be decided. The monument is scheduled for dedication on January 27, 1999. An artists' design competition was held long ago, the decision made, prizes awarded, but now they are not so sure. At times, there were heated discussions about the fact that Berlin was not really the proper location: after all, 3 million plus victims were Polish Jews, 2.9 million Russian Jews, only about 100,000-200,000 were German-Jewish citizens. Should homosexuals be included in the inscriptions? Sinti-Roma victims? Political dissenters and murdered opponents of National Socialism? Communists? Mental patients, victims of the euthanasia measures?

Should the monument not rather be a landscape, a purifying eternal flame, a waterfall symbolizing cleansing from sin, rather than the contemplated monstrous stone slab? "This painful past experience must be transformed into a historic concept" was one call by a member of the assembly with the unfortunate name 'Dr. Albert Stürmer'. The Honorable Frau Augusta Aßmann pointed to the passing of time by reminding us that three quarters of all Germans now living were born after the War. Jacqueline Görgen suggested a minute of silence throughout the land, in lieu of the monument, a suggestion only partially motivated by the fact this would be a far less costly undertaking. Further questions were raised: Was this intended to be a politically-motivated cult of the dead? A public expression of shame?

The discussion alone spoke volumes about the current state of Germany's admission of guilt or the country's willingness to acknowledge past national sins which were not committed by their nation alone or unaided, certainly not by today's young Germans. There was no clear, conclusive outcome to the conference. No doubt, much of the expected delay will be blamed on the planned move of the administrative seat for the unified German government from Bonn to Berlin. I would be willing to bet some money, a lot of money, all my money on a delay of the 1-27-99 (i.e. Auschwitz liberation anniversary) deadline.

Charlotte G. Opfermann (Houston)

Museuming History, Exhibiting Genocide

In the last decade, museums have turned increasingly to portraying political history, perhaps to keep in step with those chronicling natural history: the evolution of dinosaurs as a case in point. The latter's showcases, however, quickly become obsolete as new scholarship rapidly overtakes the institution's expensive exhibits; in-house bureaucratic hurdles, chronic budgetary restraints, and, most vital, donors' sensitivities delay and even obstruct updating of exhibits.

When it comes to covering the theme of genocide, "history" museums fare no better, similarly profoundly flawed institutionally, seriously hampered in coping with continuous scholarship, and in dealing with basic philosophical disputes and on-going academic debates. Instead, the conservational nature of museums and their inherent artifact-focus tend to nurture over-cautious conservatism and simplification, at once freezing older interpretations and discouraging new ones for essentially institutional and often non-scholarly reasons.

To date there are several museum-like institutions devoted to displaying genocide: for example the Holocaust (Yad Vashem, Jerusalem), the Armenian genocide (Erevan, Armenia), Pol Pot's murderous regime (Phnom Penh, Campuchea), and the Museum of Serbian Victims of Genocide (Belgrade, Yugoslavia). Only one has the unachievable Congressional mandate to deal simultaneously with several genocides and non-genocides (the U.S. Memorial Holocaust Museum, Washington, DC.) All of these institutions are under some kind of government supervision, thereby reflecting crassly or more covertly officially condoned versions of the genocide(s) entrusted to their care.

Thus, for example, there is little likelihood that sensitive issues will reach the viewing public; attention is given largely to the non-controversial. It is unlikely that the Washington Holocaust Museum will abandon its politically correct but erroneous handling as genocidal Nazism's anti-homosexual campaigns; nor will it treat even-handedly the deep roots of European anti-Gypsyism, some of whose history antedates aspects of the development of European antisemitism. For similar reasons, it is unlikely that the authorities in Belgrade will devote significant time, space and importance to non-Serbian (e.g. Jewish) genocide victims in Ustashe Croatia, unless prompted by political expediency, certainly not by academically-driven arguments. In the same vein, it is unlikely Erevan's museum will feature prominently the lethal collaboration with the Turks on the part of land-hungry Kurds if this meant distracting attention away from the culpability of the Turkish authorities. Besides, contemporary political needs such as sympathy for Kurds in post-Soviet Armenia and Azerbaijan dictate omitting the crucial, lethal role played by Kurdish bands in the everyday slaughter of Armenians in eastern Anatolia.

There is no better example of the simplification and quasi-falsification of history by "museuming" it than the new Museum of Contemporary German History in Bonn. Here we have an exhibited version (largely through photography) of German history à la Chancellor Kohl par excellence. Its prime purpose is to highlight the unification of the post-war, cold-war Germanies. The preceding half century is made to point towards the moral logic of 1989 when the two entities were merged. (There is no mention of the undemocrat, plebiscite-less, high-handed annexation of the Democratic Republic (East Germany) by the Federal Republic (West Germany). World War II is neatly depicted as prelude to the territorial dissection of Germany. The Holocaust shown side by side with other crimes against civilians committed by the Third Reich is used as one of several explanations for the division suffered by Germany at the hands of the victorious Allies. As such the Holocaust becomes a political rationalization rather than a crime, a convenient piece in a chronological jigsaw puzzle to help promote the German government's interpretation of events and their evolution in the wake of the defeat of Hitlerite Germany, culminating in the triumphant fusing of East Germany to West Germany.

There is little chance of altering this distillation of the Holocaust-as-background to the path towards the "new united" Germany, here portrayed as eminently qualified to take its global place in the approaching 21st century. There are no signs of protest by the general public, on the part of academic historians, by concerned journalists, or by prominent politicians. Their silence amounts to a tacit imprimatur. The exhibit is carefully constructed, each part linked to the next. There is no room for any basic "correction"; the whole chain of showcases and placards winding their way through the building would snap if one seriously restructured any link of the exhibit. On a recent visit, none of the staff was willing to engage in a substantive discussion about the simplistic treatment of the Holocaust and the one-dimensional overall interpretation of German history since World War II. Their hands, of course, are tied, institutionally; the museum itself is beholden to the government (literally across the street) that conceived the exhibit in the first place.

Which brings us back to the original point: is the museuming of genocide possible, in which academic decisions are made strictly independently, and exhibits are subject to constant revision in line with recent scholarship? That, of course, is a pipe-dream. Museums are ultimately beholden to their donors; each board of trustees operates under specific and general guidelines, some imposed by donors. All museum employees know this, if not initially then the hard way as they find themselves at loggerheads with the explicit or, more commonly, implicit policies of the institution. No matter how "democratic" or "open" or even collegial the running of a museum may seem, unfettered academic primacy does not prevail in such a setting. How can it?

Modern museums are measured by public attendance. The public in turn must be dramatically entertained with images, with virtual reality: with computerized exhibits, with hands-on experiences, with audio-visual props, with short and over-simplified captions, etc. Of course, minimal educational benefits are there, but on a mass scale, by no means in an incremental manner. Museum officials always assume the entering public knows virtually nothing, with little pre-knowledge. Hence, exhibits are designed as if one had to reckon with a viewer in a state of zero acquaintance. That means all exhibits are geared to the lowest common denominator, hardly in concert with the aim of promoting and disseminating more complex learning about the Holocaust in particular and genocide in general (or about any other historical topic museums seek to portray). And then there is the rank commercialism.

To presume for a moment: if the Museum of Natural History in New York can display (as it does prominently) sound bites from Steven Spielberg's "Jurassic Park" - a central thread of one of their most popular exhibits - can it be far away when a Holocaust museum introduces clippings from Spielberg's much-vaunted but historically flawed if not fraudulent "Schindler's List"? In the former "scientists" are shown watching dinosaurs "hatching." Thus, virtual "irreality" substitutes for "virtual reality." Can "curators" of genocide museums resist the temptation of resorting to similar crowd "pleasers", especially if attendance ratings are at stake? Already we are told how "successful" the museum in Washington is judging from by sacrosanct statistics: so-many-visitors-per-year, per-month, per-week, from so many states and so many countries. This is all very good; but does it not lead further down the road of entertainment and showmanship to attract still larger crowds? Consider the downward spiraling fate of the prime-time national news programs on television: with ever fewer viewers and more reliance on entertainment.

What assurance is there that genocide museums will not (indeed have not already) fallen victim to the combined forces of donor politics, mass public pressure, and techno-pyrotechnics? This is not meant as a jeremiad, only as a warning of the anti-intellectual dangers posed by each of these three sources of negative influence on the academic integrity of museums. Realistically, there is little reason to believe that, in the context of a museum, the memory of genocide will be well-served, (appended research facilities notwithstanding.) Memory of a kind, perhaps; but not knowledge as understood scientifically. These edifices to historical memory will not be dismantled, of course, nor should they be. The academic community, however, should maintain its very discreet distance, which at present is certainly not the case, creating the false impression that museums of genocide are a purely academic venture and politically neutral.

An exchange in Israel says it all. During a recent six-day meeting on the Dead Sea scrolls, Professor Norman Gold of the Oriental Institute of the University of Chicago seriously criticized the one-sided exhibit of the scrolls at the Israel Museum. It leaves, he protested, no room for alternate interpretations on the much disputed origins of the scrolls. To which the museum's curator Adolfo Roitman replied, significantly, that a museum exhibit had to take a single point of view. Such a bureaucratic, institutional mind-set leaves little room for scholarly dialogue. On Roitman's side, of course, are the streams of enthusiastic tourist visitors to the dramatically moving exhibit hall, the Shrine of the Book. Their numbers and the income they generate are what Roitman has to worry about, and not the "esoteric" concerns of specialists, as he reports to his superiors. Architecture, drama, hype these are the stuff of modern museums. Even the respectful church-like silence imposed on visitors to the Holocaust Museum in Washington is part of the "package," of the choreographed "experience." One needs only to recall the former tomb-like silence imposed on the once devout and curious throngs waiting to pay hommage to "their" revered refrigerated Lenin in his mausoleum in Red Square. One likes to think these superficial effects leave a lasting impression. But, of course, they do not, no more than a good Broadway musical is remembered. No, to learn about genocide sufficiently to be "changed," it is wiser to steer clear of museums.

Henry R. Huttenbach

The Restitution Problem: Jewish Property and the Holocaust an Historical Perspective

Much land now owned by American citizens was acquired as late as the second half of the nineteenth century by the U.S. government from American Indians by the breaking of treaties.

These illegalities were part and parcel of a genocidal policy that often forced the relocation of entire Indian nations with scant concern for human life. Generations later is it possible to right these wrongs, to compensate descendants, to return to Native Americans this illegally acquired property? Is it reasonable to return this property? Can territories the size of entire states or cities be given back to descendants of these initially wronged people without committing another injustice against the people living on this land, but who over time have assumed legal possession? Can means of compensation be found other than returning the land? What are the juristic and moral implications of trying to right a wrong such as genocide and the illegal acquisition of wealth it always entails? This aspect of American history anticipates recent European history, namely, the case of Jewish properties illegally or quasi-legally acquired through confiscations or forced sales. Who should receive compensation? Who are the heirs? What were the properties worth then, what are they worth now? In a word, what is justice? In the near future these kinds of legal problems will also develop in a non-Jewish context in countries like Bosnia.

This question of justice in Europe today is not just the legacy of Hitler's antisemitism. In Poland, for example, 25,000 Jews were forced to flee the country in 1968. In fascist Slovakia between 1939 and 1945, without the pressure of Nazi occupation, 80,000 Jews were deported and their property appropriated. If property once belonging to the Slovakian Jewish community of 100,000 were returned now to a community numbering only 3,000, how could the small community maintain so much real estate? In the Polish city of Krakow 200 Jews now live where before 1939, 60,000 lived. What is the best way to use these properties and to compensate communities and individuals?

Of the 3,500,000 Jews in Poland before 1939 only about 25,000 remain. In Poland a law that went into effect in May this year permits Jewish religious congregations to apply for properties owned on September 1, 1939, but only if these properties are now in the hands of state or municipal authorities. The problem of confiscated properties in private hands is not addressed.

The Czech Republic within its current borders was the home of 120,000 Jews in 1939. The Jewish population there now numbers only about 20,000. The government has returned 202 properties and is planning to compensate the Jewish community for the non-returned properties, but no formula has yet been worked out.

Before World War II 650,000 Jews lived in Hungary. The 100,000 remaining Jews are being compensated by a fund of $23.5 million. In Bulgaria 5,000 Jews remain of a prewar population of 50,000, but Bulgaria has no legislation to deal with the problem of restitution. In Romania where 15,000 of 850,000 Jews still live only six properties have been returned, and no legislation governing compensation exists.

Attempts at restitution have not been without problems. In Poland a synagogue in Warsaw was firebombed in response to the new restitution law. Some Polish citizens fear losing their homes through the government's attempts to right past wrongs even though the present law only addresses the issue of former Jewish property now controlled by the state. The restitution issue raises deep fears in Europe about the existential question of the security of the home one lives in. The likelihood of backlash against Jews is an important factor in this struggle for social justice as nations seek answers to problems resistant to perfect solutions.

Robert C. Conard (U. Of Dayton)

 

His Poems

Sheila Golburgh Johnson
Berl Pomerantz; born 1900, Poland.
Killed Dec. 1942, by German soldiers while hiding with other Jews
in the forest. His poems lie buried with him.

 

With what tongues shall they speak,

those poems? Prisoners dig

a mass grave in frozen ground.

Soldiers curse, then shoot.

The poems, white birds scattered on

red snow, are kicked into the trench.

A scab soon crusts the running wound.

Even in that place, that time, spring arrives.

Snow melts, seeps through loose

packed dirt. Woods germinate. Green

flames lick through the crust, divide,

feather into wings, carpet the ground

with burning green.

Lovers strolling beneath the canopy

hear a strange chant. Listen, they say.

It is the song of the forest.