The Genocide Forum

This issue is devoted entirely to select responses to Professor Levin's article which appeared in the October 1997 (4/2) issue of The Genocide Forum. We were pleasantly surprised by both the variety and number of responses elicited by Levin's piece. Collectively they afffirm the raison d'etre of this publication.

Contributor

Emil Fackenheim writes:

Alan Rosenbaum's Is the Holocaust Unique? has much the same theme as Professor Levin's Enough is Enough: both compare sufferings and find the Holocaust far from unique; other sufferings are comparable or worse. But who wants to join the current race for prizes in victimhood? The race is demeaning and destructive to all involved, and currently fashionable "apologies" to sundry past victims are just excuses for feeling free to forget.

To compare at all one has to know before, as one says, being truthful. Rosenbaum's book came to my attention, because it lumps me together with Rabbi Eliezer Schach's "God used the Holocaust to punish Jews for their sins." (p.45) For Rabbi Schach, then, the Holocaust is not unique, for divine punishment happened many times before. It is unique for such as me because Hitler (i) killed Jews not for beliefs or actions but for birth no sin, indeed, a mitzva, (ii) sought to kill all Jews, (iii) if he had won the war the carpenter of Nazareth would have been one of them, and (iv) we cannot thank God for winning the war, for Hitler won the Holocaust.

I would consider this a problem for philosophers minimally Jewish and Christian even if a thousand years passed before they faced it. But Levin, though a fellow philosopher and Jewish, lets Lethe, the pagan river of oblivion, take care of it.

The Hebrew University

John Weiss writes:

So much is wrong with Michael Levin's essay, "Enough Already," that I must confine myself to just a few points. To start with, Levin confuses Bolshevism with Marxism, and Marxism with democratic socialism, in order to hold the left responsible for the murderous slaughters of Stalin. Does he not know that Lenin and Stalin replaced Marxism with a tyrannical, totalitarian and terrorist doctrine, in accordance with their belief that, by the use of force, they could skip the "bourgeois-capitalist" phase of history that Marx insisted must come before socialism? Bolshevism had nothing to do with the original ideas of Marx and Engels, let alone with the peaceful and democratic socialism of the West. Its major representatives Kautsky, Luxemburg, Jaurès and Bernstein, as well as the Russian Mensheviksdetested and denounced Lenin's and Stalin's tyranny.

Levin seems unaware that the anger over the Goldhagen thesis derives from the author's simple-minded accusation, which Levin approves, that almost all Germans shared the Nazis' belief that the Jews must be exterminated. Goldhagen even made the ridiculous claim that any "ordinary German" could have done what the killers did. Perhaps Levin does not want to admit, as Goldhagen refuses to, that fully fifty percent or more Germans voted against all anti-Semitic parties, even in the year of Hitler's greatest electoral triumph in 1932and thirty-six percent of these were leftists. Moreover, it was the German Left that resisted the Nazis, costing tens of thousands of them life and liberty in the 1930s. The only other opposition came from a handful of military officers in July 1944; but they moved only when they realized the war was lost. The officers, by the way, were antisemites and had previously supported the Nazis.

Levin should know that it was the German Conservative Party elites who supported Hitler for the Chancellorship in the first place, joined his first cabinet, and then granted him full dictatorial powers. Moreover, the German Conservative Party supported antisemitism officially, publicly and in all of its political campaigns since 1892. Indeed, if one reads conservative campaign literature after the Great War, one cannot distinguish it from Nazi attacks on the Jews. Furthermore, the German conservative elites also cooperated in the destruction of the Jews. One third of the officers of the death squads had higher degrees, were opposed to democracy and proposed death to socialists and democrats as well as to Bolsheviks and Jews.

When Levin says, "after all, the Nazis were National Socialists" he shows his ignorance of the use of the word "socialism" by a variety of European Rightist and antisemitic movements. As Nazi campaign literature illustrates, it meant that all must subordinate themselves to the ethnic needs of the national community for the conquest of territorial space, that democracy should be destroyed, that the working class should stop complaining about low wages and high profits, and their socialist representatives should be destroyed. By the way, without European socialism and progressive liberalism, we would not have a European welfare state. Levin does not approve of the welfare state, of course, but it hardly ranks as contributing to the "frightful human cost" of socialism, as Levin maintains. And just who informed Levin that Mao was a product of socialism? Mao was a product of Bolshevism; he detested socialists and tried to force his peasant nation into the modern world by way of a bloody tyranny.

As for Levin's insults about "liberal Holocaust mongering," it is not only liberals who want us to remember. It is a concern of all those who are fearful of the consequences of racism and ethnic violence. Even the Christian Right gives much attention to it. And why should we allow the Holocaust to "fade into history"? And are there no more incidents of ethnic violence awaiting us, such that remembering the Holocaust and analyzing its origins can provide no useful help combating it? Indeed, many of those who need to know about it do not yet understand how, let alone why it happened in Germany.

Has Levin ever read anything about the Gulag, or is he content to chatter away about the alleged liberal failure to deal with it? All scholars, Right or Left, have long since agreed that the Bolsheviks slaughtered millions. And, Mr Levin to the contrary, Russian liberals are building memorials and museums to the victims of Stalin in the former Soviet Union. After all, one should allow them a little time: it took two decades for the Holocaust to become important to the public awareness of Americans. And no reputable scholar attributes the Gulag to economic envy or even class warfare, but to the terror of Stalin's attempt to quash all dissent against his totalitarianism, which was neither class nor economically basedthe bulk of the enemy classes had already emigrated long before the purges. Indeed, Stalin's first victims were in fact old Mensheviks and Bolsheviks. Then came the army because he suspected it of being pro-German. And the millions of Ukrainians he allowed to die by famine

were poor peasants who were not motivated by class antagonisms against the regime, but by the simple desire to have their own land and nation, free from all forms of Russian tyranny, Stalinist or Tsarist.

As for the rest of us, we will continue to bring to the attention of all we can reach the greatest disaster that occurred in any civilized western nation in our time. And the Soviet historians and dissident groups will do what they can to perpetuate the memory of the mass slaughter of innocents in what was essentially a Third World tyranny even before Lenin. Should Levin wish to found a museum to the victims of ethnic violence in Rwanda, Armenia, Kurdistan, Yugoslavia, Sri Lanki, India, Pakistan and Afghanistan, I am sure he will find much support. But he will find it mostly in the liberal community who has always been the most concerned with the violation of human rights and not in the Republican Party's concern to protect their business interests in China. But of course, he will start no such project, because the nation he lives in does not have groups who want to destroy the above-mentioned peoples. But the various militias, Christian Identity movements and other anti-Semitic and anti-black organizations are still in our nation.

Finally, I know of no Holocaust scholar or Holocaust museum or institution which is not concerned with racism in all its forms.

Well, "Enough Already." I cannot go over all of Levin's propaganda -for it is evident that he just wants to score debating points in the irrelevant current liberal-conservative debates. Perhaps it is his conservative values that ought to be allowed to fade into the past, not the Holocaust, as he suggestshis views do no credit to true conservatism.

Lehman College, CUNY

Helen Fein writes:

It is hard to know where to begin to rebut this choleric argument, motivated apparently by political animus against academics still soft on communism (after all these years) and liberal anti-racists (or liberal racists, some would say). I will confine myself to the question of ranking atrocities by the numbers, based on the Guiness Book of World Records, a source not heretofore discovered by genocide scholars.

Levin errs in his ranking of state crimes by focussing solely on numbers, rather than effect, and misuses statistics to that end. Genocide differs from state terrorcommon to all totalitarian systems, fascist and communistin that genocide is specifically intended to eliminate a group (a collectivity with a common culture) from the human family. In passing the UN Genocide Convention in 1948, the world community recognized this as new and intolerable and made it an international crime.

By contrast, terror is both directed at opponents and is random, aiming to control a population. The percentage of the target group killednot the total populationis a more appropriate index of genocide while the percent of the total population killed is an index of terror. Neither index is exhaustive of the effects of these practices.

The Final Solution, the 1915 genocide of the Armenians, and the genocide of Tutsis in Rwanda in 1994 killed the great majority of the victims targetted. Most genocides kill a smaller percentage.

Communist states (excepting Cambodia where terror and genocide was combined) have killed far fewer people as a proportion of their total population than perpetrators of genocide have of the targetted groups: the Soviet Union, .42% (42 in 10,000) a year from 1917-1987; the Peoples Republic of China .12% a year (or 12 in 10,000) between 1949 and 1987 according to R. J. Rummel. (See Death by Government). However, there are instances where communist states have targetted specific groups which have been considered genocide by several genocide scholars in which deaths have been much greater; e.g. the Soviet Union in the Ukraine in 1933 and in the cases of the deported peoples during World War II, and China in Tibet in the 1950's.

I do not question the necessity for scholars to study and seek out the causes of all forms of state violence and condemn ideologies justifying murder. Comparisons of Nazi and Soviet systems and camps are not new. Further, most genocide scholars have acknowledged the greater likelihood of communist states than other authoritarian states to commit genocide since 1945 (this was one finding of my article "Accounting for Genocide after 1945...", International Journal of Group Rights I (1993): 79-106) and the linkages between genocide and totalitarianism before then.

But I do question equating the concepts of genocide and terror, or genocide and slavery, or genocide and nuclear weapons, because it negates productive inquiry and confounds phenomena.

President, Association of Genocide Scholars

Steven L. Jacobs writes:

The fallaciousness of Professor Levin's arguments"Enough, Already" [The Genocide Forum, 4:2, October 1997, 2-5] may be addressed as follows:

Granted that the genocides of both China and Russia far outnumber the actual deaths of Jews during the Holocaust/Shoah at the hands of the Nazis and their allied minions, demographic and statistical data tell only part of the story of this tragedy, while Levin ignores two other significant factors in addressing our so-called "preoccupation" with these events. First, the sophisticated use of assembly-line technology in the death campsfrom arrival in the evening to human ash for fertilizer within twenty-four hours, or less in some caseshas only recently begun to be addressed. Omer Bartov's phrase "industrialized killing" points us towards an arena with much contemporary implication

Second, the globalist agenda of Hitler and his agents, self-appointed and other, has for too long been ignored. Had the Nazis been successful in their European agenda, we must still come to grips with the realization that the United States, her northern and southern neighbors, Asia and Australia, too, would have seen the implementation of the death camp system to achieve the goal of a world Judenrein.

Rabbi, Temple B'nai Shalom, Huntsville, Alabama

Victor P. Ehly writes:

Michael Levin's opinion piece, "Enough Already" raises two very important questions, both with enough substance and evidence to force us to take them very seriously: (1) "Why is it that the Holocaust of European Jews has caught the popular Western imagination especially in America and grown into a mass media 'event' of major proportions?", and (2), "Why is it that the Holocaust has taken precedence in contemporary historical and cultural scholarship over other equally or even more compelling cases of genocide in the twentieth century?" While some might legitimately question the assumptions behind these questions, Michael Levin's essay certainly offers some significant evidence that they are not only valid but important questions.

However, it is disappointing that his single, one-dimensional and simplistic answer to both of these questions is stated as a simple assertion with no evidence at all to back it up. He asserts, namely, that the contemporary academic and popular interest in the Holocaust is driven by a "left-wing bias" on college campuses, which is drawn to this particular example of the excesses of the far Right (namely, fascism), while these same scholars are likewise interested in avoiding the genocidal excesses of the far Left, namely, communism.

This assertion is so simplistic that it need not be taken seriously. Political biases do indeed find their way into academic research; yet college and university culture in America is so complex and many-sided that anyone who sees any kind of unity behind such biases is himself or herself looking through the kind of biased lens that sees a political conspiracy behind every tree. However, with this said, the two questions do not go away. Why has the Holocaust become a mass media event of mythic proportions? And why is the Holocaust seemingly studied by scholars more than other cases of genocide? Any serious attempt to answer these questions would take far more thought and study than I can reflect here in this brief response.

However, I can offer some suggestions for further study. (1) Perhaps the answer to both of these questions lies in the fact that both public and scholarly interest in the Holocaust reflects a continued Eurocentric perspective in America, in spite of the obvious cultural diversity that is now so clearly changing the face of the United States. (2) Perhaps, also, the answers in part reflect the remaining deep root of anti-German propaganda that was purposely sown as seeds during World War II and continued to be fertilized after the War. (3) Perhaps the answers are reflected in part by what one might term "reverse anti-Semitism," where the Jews as victims cause us to bury our historic and more overt anti-Semitism so deep that it is camouflaged by an interest in the Holocaust out of a pseudo-moral obligationbending over backwards, if you will. (4) Perhaps it is a deep sense of familiarity of a fratricidal tendency within the Judeo-Christian community, in which we have been locked since the formative era of Christianity as a Jewish heresy in the Middle East of the first century. None of these suggestions is original. They are all explored in detail by many scholars of the Holocaust. Each of these possible explanations places contemporary American culture in a very strong and harsh critical light.

However, I offer here yet another possibilitya much more positive one: Perhaps the fifty-year work of hundreds of dedicated scholars to bring this particular case of genocide to light has begun to pay off, regardless of their reasons for doing so. Perhaps, we are seeing the results of many years of hard work of many unsung heroes, most of whom realize that the work of bringing carefully documented cases of genocide to the attention of the American and world public is never done. I here congratulate all scholars, all survivors and all public officials and professionals and lay persons in all walks of life who have made this kind of awareness possible. One down, and literally hundreds to go! No, it is sad to admit that it is not yet... ENOUGH ALREADY!

Norwich University

Milton Goldin writes:

Professor Michael Levin evidently wanted to provide readers with a neo- conservative tour d' horizon of thinking about the Holocaust in "Enough, Already". The main idea to emerge is the extent to which he believes that the Holocaust has an unwarranted mythic stature. Incisive surveys of the many different schools of thought and interpretive controversies relating to the subject, such as Michael Marrus ' s The Holocaust ln History, go unmentioned. It would have been useful had Dr. Levin made clear exactly what he wants besides silence from "liberals."

Meanwhile, the problem of determining what meanings the Holocaust has may be far more complex than can be addressed solely by philosophical critiques such as Dr. Levin offers. For example, how is it that a high point of interest in the Holocaust has been reached just as a low point in cohesion in the American Jewish community has developed? Can memory of the Holocaust replace Judaism as a means to hold together a group that increasingly flies apart?

Not least, and with respect to Dr. Levin' s concern about suitable Holocaust topics, of what conceivable use is it for him to gloss over Swiss greed during the war years? A gigantic criminal transfer of wealth took place; sanctioned by some of Europe' s most esteemed bankers and civil servants; after the war, the same bankers and civil servants traduced Washington. Is it better to simply lament, along with present-day conservatives, that esteemed men of business and government behaved like common thugs, than to demand that stolen goods be returned?

President, Goldin Associates

Stephen D. Shenfield writes:

That the Nazi destruction of the Jews receives much more than its fair share of attention, relative to other atrocities of comparable magnitude, is obvious. To find out why this should be so would require an in-depth study of the motives and assumptions guiding those who make key decisions concerning the building of museums and memorials, the design of school curricula etc.

Levin blames left-wing intellectuals who denounce racism but prefer to downplay the killings carried out by communist regimes. However, the memory of many other racially conditioned genocides suffers from equal or greater neglect the Tasmanians, the Hereros of South-West Africa, the Congolese under Belgian colonial rule, and indeed the Romanies who shared the fate of the Jews in Nazi-occupied Europe.

Can it be incidental that Jews as a community have acquired influence and respect, while Romanies remain despised and persecuted outcasts? Clearly one important factor at work is the role the Jews play in both Jewish and Christian theology as a people with a special relationship to God.

And might not cultivation of the memory of the "Holocaust" (a word with definite religious connotations) interpreted à la Goldhagen serve certain extraneous purposes of Jewish nationalism? To combat intermarriage and assimilation by reminding Jewish young people that they are first and foremost Jews, that "the whole world is against us"? And to perpetuate the image and self-image of Jews as essential and eternal victims, thereby suppressing any awareness that Jews may also in some contexts be victimizers (of Palestinians, Lebanese etc.)?

Brown University

Frederick M. Schweitzer writes:

A number of points occur to me in response to Professor Michael Levin's article, "Enough, Already." One is struck by the mucker tone and by the egotism that gets in the way of the subject. It may be that the subject of the Holocaust is "inescapable" in "public discourse," but that is not true of the classroom. At the very best, a quarter of the students in schools across the country are exposed, often the merest smattering, to any instruction about the Holocaust.

My chief objection to Professor Levin's polemic is his argument that, except for Jews, we should all renounce any further concern for an understanding of the Holocaust. Since the Holocaust could not have occurred without centuries of Christian antisemitism, it is incumbent upon Christians to reckon with the Holocaust. The twelfth and thirteenth centuries marked the decisive stage in the formation of antisemitism as a lethal mode of hatred, which, though it ebbed and flowed in intensity, had a continuous existence until its genocidal climax in the German destruction of European Jewry. The churches were transmitters rather than combatters of medieval myths (ritual crucifixion, ritual murder-cannibalism, host desecration, poisoning of wells, and much else of the same tenor), which endured and were modernized, transposed into the secular racial idioms. Such myths made the Jews a "criminal people" and profoundly affected the thinking of the elites and the masses. When the test came, the churches were true to their traditions - with few exceptions, Christians failed to resist and fell among the bystanders who were indifferent to the victims or the supporters of the perpetrators. Thus the burden of Christian responsibility for Jewish suffering over the centuries is very great. I am not competent to say whether or not antisemitism is intrinsic to Christian belief, but the reckoning with the Holocaust by some denominations has brought them to the point of addressing that question. And, indeed, "the teaching of contempt" is giving way to "the teaching of respect." Of these developments, Professor Levin is unaware or indifferent; following his manifesto would undermine if not interdict these most welcome changes of heart and mind. When the Holocaust, in due proportion and scope, becomes a normal part of courses on the twentieth century, modern Europe, and Western civilization, then we will be able to act on some of Professor Levin's prescriptions seriously, but not before the historio graphical normalization has occurred. In the meantime, I welcome a comparative approach to the study of genocide, but hardly for the reason he offers.

Manhattan College