The Genocide Forum
Table of Contents
Letter to the EditorDear Editor, I read with curiosity your May 1997 issue of The Genocide Forum in which you seemed to be picking a fight with gays over whether genocide was involved in their persecution under Nazi domination. I have no idea why you want to pick this fight. Surely persecution is what we are all trying to identify and overcome, and the label genocide, which surely is an extreme form of persecution, has no exclusive claim to human injustice and the infliction of terror upon innocent human beings. Better to spread awareness of the misapplication of power than to fight over someone's pet peeve. Yours appears to be gays who want people to recognize their persecution under the Nazis. What's wrong with that, I ask you? Don't we need to realize this and seek means to eliminate that form of prejudice and abuse along with anti-Semitism and other abuses perpetrated then and to some extent now? Genocide is not the only crime that needs redress. Sincerely, David M. Bossman (College of Charleston) Huttenbach Replies The issue of homosexuals under the Nazis as victims of genocide is a controversial one. The numbers suggest persecution, not genocide. I agree with Bossman that persecution should not be overlooked. However, The Genocide Forum is limited to one specific category of crime genocide. This, however, does not deny the existence of other state crimes perpetrated by the Nazis or by any other state, crimes that deserve to be addressed in other arenas. Moral Equivalence and Moral Relativism: Some Clarification.The two terms have entered the general vocabulary of scholars and have become common parlance, in particular of students of genocide, and of the Holocaust in particular. Those involved in the so-called Historikerstreit a decade or so ago will recall how these terms were frequently invoked in the heated and very public partisan exchanges; scholars defending the Holocaust-is-unique theory were most incensed by the introduction of the concepts implied by the two terms. It did not help then nor now that the precise meanings of moral equivalence and moral relativism remain anything but clear. Much smoke has been added since all too many scholars use them interchangeably, tacitly suggesting a certain synonymy. It might be useful, therefore, to explore their inherent differences of meaning, to pinpoint where and if the two terms overlap, and to determine how they relate to one another. Apart from their application to the understanding of genocide, moral equivalence and moral relativism are concerned with values, specifically moral values. As such they express two nearly antithetical philosophies of moral value. In brief, moral equivalence claims that there can be absolute goods and evils of equal stature. Just as there are distinguishing degrees of good and evil, which allow one to ascertain the levels of a particular good and evil, so are there absolutes of good and evil, the highest attainments of virtue or vice that are distinct from one another but comparable in their nobility or enormity. Thus, there are numerous paths to sainthood; but once attained the quality of their goodness is morally the same. On the other end of the moral scale, there is an infinite number of ways towards damnation; yet all the damned souls share a commonalty as extreme sinners. Hence the argument underlying the concept of moral equivalency. In the context of genocide studies, this moral philosophy allows one to place the Hitlerian concentration camp system alongside the stalinist Gulag and find them equal violations of human rights, neither one more or less committed to the dehumanization of the victims. As instruments of mass suppression and mass murder they are only distinguishable in their details. But on the moral scale, they balance each other. Both represent the absolute in the crime of political incarceration by the state. Thus runs the logic of the student of moral equivalence. In sharp contrast is the concept of moral relativism. It rests on the moral philosophic theory that there are no absolutes. (There is a healthy irony here: moral relativism, which denies the absolute, itself rests on a negative absolute!) That is to say, moral perception varies; therefore, what is evil or good for one can be the reverse for another. Morality, like beauty, lies in the eye of the observer. Beyond that there are no fixed objective moral standards. Everything pertaining to value assessments rests on constantly shifting variables. According to the theory of moral relativism, nothing is absolutely right or wrong; it all depends on the criteria selected for making a moral judgment. Thus, one person's saint is another's sinner; what some see as a freedom fighter others regard as a terrorist. There is no way of overcoming this dilemma; it is all a matter of value perspective. For the genocidist Hutus, the killing of all Tutsis is a 'good'; for the victimized Tutsis it is an 'evil'; the reverse holds true when Tutsis slaughter Hutus. Interestingly, were this circumstance of genocide and counter-genocide assessed according to the principles of the theory of moral equivalency, the results would be somewhat different. The arguments through the lenses of moral equivalency would, ironically, lead to two separate conclusions: 1) both of the genocides committed by Hutus and Tutsis are equi-evil; and by logical extension, 2) both the 'goods' claimed by each ethnic group of genocidists are also equi-valid, if not commendable. It is here where the two moral philosophies overlap. Wherever moral equivalency fails to establish clear-cut standards of moral right and wrong, it can easily fall into the trap of moral relevancy as illustrated above. 'Good' and 'Evil' assume equi-status; everything just becomes a matter of perspective, the same argument of moral relativism. Thus, unless those who practice more equivalence make it quite clear that things are either good or evil and not good and/or evil (depending on perspective) their logical strength is commensurately weakened. It is because of the latter (mis)application of the theory that moral equivalence has mistakenly (by logical default) been equated with moral relativism. It is incumbent of those working in the fields of comparative genocide studies to keep these characteristics of moral equivalence and moral relativism in mind. There are, of course, other options for moral assessments of genocide; but they must wait for a future occasion in these pages. Henry R. Huttenbach The Medium and the Message: Priming for GenocideOf all the films generated during the twelve long years of the Third Reich, two stand out as propaganda masterpieces. Each one embodies a command of the medium and of the message combined in an extraordinarily powerful union. Both Leni Riefenstahl's Triumph of the Will (1934) and Joseph Goebbel's The Eternal Jew (1940) won over countless millions to the twin mystique of the Nazi regime: the Führer-Prinzip (the Cult of the Leader) and the mortal danger of the Jew. The former raised the concept of the political Savior of the race to it highest artistic form yet, and the latter enunciated the darkest aspects of the demonized race, World Jewry, the enemy from which mankind had to be saved. In the first years of his life, Hitler spent much energy forging an image of the invincible national leader. As he brought material prosperity and social equilibrium to Germany so did he restore Germany's stature abroad. The two went hand in hand; each success at home such as full employment thanks to the non-violent 1936 Four Year (re-armament) Plan was matched by a victory abroad such as the non-violent 1936 crossing of the Rhine into the demilitarized zone. The Führer, one is told, with his unmatched, god-like genius, simultaneously brought international and domestic enemies to their knees, whether the communists at home, who exploited human misery,, or the French abroad, who controlled the demilitarized German left bank of the river Rhine. In retrospect, the cinematographic portrayal of the transformation of Hitler into a visceral political force impervious to failure was an unmatched tour de force. His speeches thereafter had the ring of the oracle, his public appearances electrified, and his predictions proved correct. While Austria was annexed quasi-peacefully and Czechoslovakia cut up without war, and while living standards rose throughout Germany, the myth of Hitler as the epitome of the nation's spirit took root. If in 1933 on his appointment to Chancellor Hitler had but a minority following, then in 1939 on the eve of World War II, he enjoyed the enthusiastic support of a majority of the German population. And much of that popularity was due to film and its capacity to disseminate images. No other film did more to lay the groundwork for the cult of the leader than did The Triumph of the Will. It is an uninterrupted flow of images uplifting the mortal Hitler into a demi-god. The brilliant photography surrounds him with halo-like light, with mass adoration, with the glow of serene self-confidence, a Wagnerian hero capable of surmounting all odds. There is no telling how many millions saw the film which was shown in whole and in extracts throughout the pre-war years. With each passing year and with each new achievement the film's power to convey the leader as a deity grew commensurably. Little wonder that most Germans accepted their entrance into World War II with the assurance of a nation protected by a Moses-like leader about to take Germany into the Promised Future. Hitler, it seemed, could vanquish every enemy, including the ubiquitous threat of the Jews, from the Rothschilds to the "Roosevelts." Since 1933, the Nazi architects of a new Germany had sought to inculcate the population with their racial doctrines, including antisemitism. Though Germans were infused with the traditional kinds of anti-Jewish sentiments, most patriotic, nationalist and conservative Germans were not rank racists. Their notions of being "Aryans" as hammered home by Nazi propaganda was foggy at best. Though they allowed the regime to practice its doctrine of extreme Jew hatred, most Germans remained passive and skeptical onlookers of the Hitlerian state's assault on German Jews. On the contrary, neither the April 1933 Boycott nor the November 1938 Kristallnacht pogrom generated much public enthusiasm on the contrary. Though most Germans harbored few positive feelings for Jews, few were fanatical Jew haters prepared to exterminate them. The Jews they encountered as neighbors and remembered as colleagues and co-workers seemed far from the abstract Jew portrayed in caricatures in Der Stürmer and demonized in Hitler's public harangues. Something drastic was needed to alter the public's image of Jews. Hence the film Der ewige Jude. Like The Triumph of the Will, The Eternal Jew is a carefully constructed piece designed to disseminate an image - this time not of the nobility of the leader but of the lowest characteristics of the Jewish "soul": dirty, conspiratorial, criminal, disloyal, lecherous, etc. If the Triumph relies on brilliant light and pictures of healthy youths, Der ewige Jude uses shadows, sickly faces, aged bodies. One promotes the Good, the other Evil. The former film glorifies life, the latter encourages murderous thoughts of death. If Hitler emerges as the hailed Savior of the Nation, of the race, of mankind, then "The Jew" is the very antithesis in the emotions it fans: the Jew here is to be despised, feared, and exterminated. No film is a greater primer for the masses on the wholesale destruction of the Jews, indeed for genocide, than Goebbel's propaganda masterpiece. For years, Hitler's speeches had depicted Jews as the enemy of world peace, as scheming war-mongers, as Germany's irreconcilable enemy. But none had the graphic impact of this film. Many who in 1941-3 saw newsreel clips of destitute Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto recalled the fictitious imagery of the 1940 film, convinced of its authenticity confirmed by the reality from Warsaw. Interestingly, there is little evidence that the newsreels of Jewish squalor and decadence caused much distress, possible proof of the priming power of the film that was designed to manipulate Germans into acceptance of the state's existential war against the Jewish "race". Readers interested in the Third Reich's use of film ought to acquaint themselves with a superb monograph, Stig Hornshoj Möller's Der Führer Mythus. Henry R. Huttenbach The Holocaust Comes to Harvard: Beyond the Goldhagen Flap Two QuestionsInstitutions like Harvard are not pleased when events beyond their control draw attention to themselves. Their public relations policy is to provide the world with good news, hoping to enhance their image. These truisms generally hold for most of us. No one likes to be the object of detrimental publicity (except perhaps certain politicians who abhor the vacuum of no photo-ops at all; better a scandal with name recognition than oblivion!) Most recently Harvard's peace and tranquillity have been disturbed by revelations of its seeming mishandling of efforts to fill an endowed chair of Holocaust studies. It has not helped that the flap came on the heels of the mixed reception given to a book by one of its junior professors, Daniel Goldhagen's controversial, semi-academic best-seller, Hitler's Willing Executioners. No sooner had the repercussions of that publication had begun to subside when the world learned of Harvard's on-going difficulties in appointing someone to a new endowed chair of Holocaust Studies with funds donated by an alumnus, Ken Lipper. Usually such appointments are made discreetly and judiciously, culminating with an in-house ceremonious and festive occasion. But not this time. Instead, almost three years later, the chair remains empty in the wake of much bitterness, anger, disappointment and puzzlement, both inside and outside the porous walls of academe. What went wrong? To answer that and related questions adequately implies being fully informed. Unfortunately perhaps that lies at the heart of the matter much of the entire episode remains partly shrouded in rumor and suspicion. Nevertheless, some useful lessons can be drawn from the affair as it has evolved so far. One of these lessons deserves careful re-consideration, for it is by no means new. Among the voices raised from within the Harvard faculty, several questioned the wisdom of locating the Holocaust chair in Jewish Studies. It was argued that the Holocaust is not a Jewish topic per se, nor is it an integral part of the discipline of Judaism. It belongs, one claimed, elsewhere. But where? Is the Holocaust part of history? Political science? International Studies? Or does it lie more within the provenance of philosophy? Should the chair have a leg in all of these four departments? Is the Holocaust a part of German history? Of modern European Studies? Of genocide history? Or should it stand alone outside of the traditional departmental structure of a university? In short, where is the intellectual academic home of the Holocaust, indeed of genocide? Does it clearly belong anywhere? It seems as if Holocaust instructors automatically teach the subject from their own disciplinary perspective: theological, philosophical, psychological, literary, etc. This suggests that the teaching of genocide in general and of the Holocaust in particular depends on the professional training of the instructor. Some ignore the historical dimension altogether; others studiously weave each genocide into the tapestry of its time, giving it a strictly temporal character. Are these sound pedagogical approaches? Is genocide, is the Holocaust so multi-dimensional that it transcends all academic disciplines? Does it really not matter that it is taught equally "well" by anyone coming from any discipline on the college spectrum, as long as he/she is knowledgeable? At present we see how the absence of consensus on this question is reflected in the status of Holocaust/genocide courses in several dozen colleges and universities in the USA. A quick survey shows a wide range of "locations," from a divinity school, to liberal arts divisions, to a school of engineering and even medical schools. A dozen or so disciplines have claimed or reluctantly "house" Holocaust/genocide courses. Does this reflect flexibility the inherent multi-faceted character of genocide which prevents it from being neatly compartmentalized? Or is it symptomatic of a general departmental discomfort in extending permanent hospitality to the subject of Holocaust and genocide? In either case, it leaves the subject wide open as to who should teach Holocaust/genocide courses. A historian? A moral philosopher? A political scientist? A psychologist? Or should it be team-taught? And what qualifications should the instructor(s) have? In the case of the Holocaust, is Hebrew a prerequisite? German? Yiddish? Polish? Russian? Some of them? All of them? As yet there is no clear-cut job description. No doubt, the Harvard search committee ran afoul of this problem, judging from the variety of those candidates on their long and short lists. It must have been confusing to hear each one's reply to what academically speaking is the Holocaust, and where and why does it belong in a certain slot on the university's organizational chart. This debate began in the USA in the late 1960s, in 1968 to be exact, and has not been resolved satisfactorily since then, partly due to neglect, partly due to "intellectual laziness," and partly as a spin-off consequence of the wholly unnecessary Holocaust-is-unique dispute. The more the proponents of uniqueness stressed their case, the more the Holocaust became isolated from mainstream scholarship, and the more did its researchers come from all over the intellectual map, each one claiming a "unique" perspective, with the predictable result that anyone could claim a disciplinary priority.. Consequently, this conceptual fragmentation of Holocaust Studies, courses lacking firm institutional roots, has led to its being housed in over a dozen academic niches, judging from information gleaned from college catalogues. A second lesson from the stalled Harvard search for a candidate is more an observation of the state of the rank-and-file of Holocaust scholars. The Harvard Search Committee had no difficulty finding a dozen or so prominent professors. The trouble was that they were all too old retired or near retirement. This is the generation of the pioneers the Raul Hilbergs and the Saul Friedlanders, all of them self-taught. Harvard, however, had to make an appointment of someone with enough years left to build the foundations of Holocaust Studies, someone middle-aged. But as the university widened the net, it encountered a clutch of promising scholars, almost all in their mid-30s and early 40s, yet lacking sufficient maturity, experience and prominence, and without a corpus of solid scholarship, among them Goldhagen. They were the second generation, the gifted students of those of retirement age. Missing is a large enough pool of prospective candidates in the middle range, those in their late 40s or mid-50s. This is a simple fact, and one not anticipated by those entrusted with filling an endowed chair in Holocaust Studies at Harvard. It is a pity that the press focused exclusively on the unseemly side of a petty academic conflict without also looking at the broader issues. Unless they are attended to, the future of Holocaust Studies at Harvard is less than clear. By extension, the future of a coherent program of genocide studies in general does not look any better, for here, too, there exist various factions claiming "uniqueness" for "their" genocide. As long as this proprietary parochialism persists, it will be difficult to integrate meaningfully the Holocaust and genocide into the Harvard curriculum. Henry R. Huttenbach
A Poemby Richard Sherwin Lodz, Wodz, say it how you will, it was like other cities before the Christian flood, a Jewish town the best part of it once, a textile center, the shmatteh trade, the clothing shop that covered Poland's wild indecencies of soul, that sold the Pope his honor before he sold it to the Nazis with the Jews. Grandfather. may he rest in peace, abandoned Lodz before Auschwitz Ash Wednesdays. Erratum: Due to an oversight in an article entitled "The Long Shadow of Guilt" (Forum 4/2) Paul de Man was referred to incorrectly as Robert Le Man. We regret this oversight. |
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