About the Genocide Forum

A Platform for post-Holocaust Commentary

  1. A Letter to the Editor from Helen Fein
  2. On Terminology: Genocide and Martyrdom
  3. The Young Shall Inherit the Earth
  4. In Search of Connections: Linking the Holocaust to Israel
  5. A Poem by Irene Grimberg

Sept-Oct 1998
Year 5, No. 1

Bonnie Falchuk: Managing Editor
Carol Rittner: Associate Editor
Henry R. Huttenbach: Founder- Editor
Sandrine Dikambi: Assistant Editor

Letter to the Editor

I wish to respond to your article about genocide in Sudan in the last issue. This is not a new phenomenon and not all genocide scholars have been silent about this; the Institute for the Study of Genocide has raised this issue at several times during the last decade and I have focused on it in a recent article.

Most famines are caused by political and social organization and political decisions. Genocides and civil wars force people to flee, abandon farming, and become dependent on government and international relief. Authoritarian rulers throughout the world have been using food as a weapon in the last decade. It is not the shortage of food but inability of the hungry to obtain food through the market or governmental system that usually leads to hunger and malnutrition in cases in which poverty is endemic. Famine and malnutrition lead to death both directly and indirectly, by making people more susceptible to disease.

According to Article 2 of the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group as such:

The denial of food to the Dinkas in southern Sudan through forbidding international aid flights (in February and March 1998) is part of a pattern of genocide by attrition that has gone on in Sudan for over a decade: the victims die primarily from hunger, disease (their vulnerability raised by malnutrition), and lack of clean water — women and children are also enslaved and subject to sexual assault. Aid has been denied or diverted to political allies of the government (e.g., the Baggara) who are antagonists of the groups in danger — they loot, burn and enslave the Dinka. Enslavement and sexual assault against the Dinka and Nuba have been reported by several human rights organizations. Based on my research (using sources of such groups and others), government policies in the Sudan fit the criteria of genocide under II (a), (b), (c) and (d) above and the intent is clear: to destroy particular groups. The denial of aid repeats practices enforced by the present Islamic government, begun under previous governments which imposed Islamic law on the South, re-igniting rebellion by the Sudan Peoples Liberation Army and consequent civil war. Ethnic strife is created by government policies of divide and rule, and the resultant war, devastating settled agriculture (aggravating "natural" causes of famine), and government misuse of aid creates famine.

Although several human rights and refugee organizations and the ISG have publicized the genocidal consequences, this has not led to any effective American, European or international pressure to change Sudanese government policy. Given the present government — an extremist Islamic regime antagonistic to the United States and a sponsor of terrorism — it is not clear what the US can do.

However the roots of the West's failure are manifold. Many aid and humanitarian groups show little concern about the causes of famine or how aid is distributed — they take for granted that complicity with the government (not speaking out about the causes) is the price they pay for distributing food. The causes of famine and disease are frequently masked in policy tanks by focus on civil war, ethnic conflict, and "complex humanitarian emergencies" — all neutral labels that deny the primary responsibility of the government of Sudan. Further, many human rights groups do not consider the uses of food to destroy groups as part of their mandate. Thus, it is not surprising that human rights and humanitarian aid groups have not formed an effective coalition to expose the causes of recurrent famine in the Sudan and consider strategic choices in a chronically difficult situation. If the Religious Persecution Bill becomes law (HR 2431 has already passed the US House of Representatives), there will be additional US sanctions against Sudan. And if Sudan negotiates peace with the SPLA and accepts the autonomy of the rebel provinces, the underlying conditions instigating genocide would be removed.

The ISG has publicized this in the last decade but this has had little impact. Jason Clay wrote in the ISG Newsletter No. 2 in Fall 1988 about "Food as a Weapon: State — Produced Deaths by Starvation in Ethiopia and Sudan." At our 1989 "Genocide Watch" conference, there was a panel on Sudan, with panelists arguing about who was responsible for letting the Dinkas (southern Sudanese) perish — the government of Sudan, the rebels, or the United States which had failed to respond appropriately at an early time (see ISG Newsletter No. 4 (Fall 1989). In the fall of 1993, the ISG Newsletter No. 11, reprinted excerpts from a US Committee for Refugees report by Millard Burr, "Quantifying Genocide in the Southern Sudan, 1983-1993, headlined, "Genocidal War in Southern Sudan Continues: 1.3 Million Die 1983 1993. 1 did an analysis of the design, historical precedents, and possible responses to such genocide by attrition in a recent article, "Genocide by Attrition, 1939-1993 — The Warsaw Ghetto, Cambodia, and Sudan: Links between Human Rights, Health, and Mass Death," Health and Human Rights, Vol. 2, No. 2 (1997). In this article, I suggested both invoking a public health model of prevention and invoking the Genocide Convention to institutionalize steps to deter such genocides: "This [the Convention] could be used to authorize a monitoring system of minority and other groups in high- risk situations around the globe, integrating indices of political and economic discrimination and differential signs of malnutrition and public health in early warning systems for genocide and humanitarian emergencies .... Proximate means of checking genocide by attrition include both imposing food aid — whether through armed intervention or cross-border operations, as in Sudan — and imposing conditions on development aid and transfer of resources propping up perpetrators."

It is clear that the agenda of genocide studies should be expanded to include genocide by attrition, sexual assaults as part of genocide (torture, violation, and coerced pregnancy), and the destruction of conditions enabling indigenous people to exist. However, the responsibility for overlooking and not exposing genocide by attrition is not that of Holocaust scholars primarily.

Helen Fein, Institute for the Study of Genocide
(John Jay College of Criminal Justice)

On Terminology: Genocide and Martyrdom

It is only through the proper choice of words that we manage to shed light on events; improper terminology distorts the reality we seek to understand.  Quite often, the wrong selection is in response to a pre-conceived notion, reflection of a desire to superimpose an interpretation that is, in fact, not supported by the evidence, and, all too often, by uncritical repetition, becomes the accepted truth.  On several occasions in these pages we have grappled with this phenomenon; to mention only two: 1) that concentration camp survivors were consciously "liberated" when, in fact, it was sheer coincidence that the camps lay in the paths of advancing armies, and 2) that those who perished during the Holocaust "died" rather than were murdered.

For some, this kind of criticism may seem quibbling, a focus on minutia.  And yet, the Devil does lie in the details.  If these terms are allowed to stand,  severe distortions follow.  Those who persist in holding on to incorrect vocabulary are then responsible for the consequences that flow from the inappropriate words they have adopted.  For example, the first illustration has led to a new category — the Liberators; these are now commemorated routinely as integral players in the Holocaust tragedy and are now permanently ensconced in museum exhibits and preserved in perpetuity in text books, each author slavishly borrowing the flawed terminology of his predecessors.  The second example, in more subtle ways, erodes the idea of a Death Camp: there is a fundamental difference between a place where people "die" (e.g. a hospital) and where they are systematically brutalized and denied  the basics to preserve life.  A third example may further underscore this point

The word "martyr" appeared relatively early in the context of the Holocaust.  Those killed were repeatedly portrayed as having died for their faith.  Survivor groups were especially prone to accept this status to highlight the fate of the murdered Jews.  The idea of Kiddush HaShem — to have embraced death rather than defile the sacred name of G-d — was also adopted by several religious scholars seeking to lend the Holocaust a trans-secular dimension, making out of it a moral drama, a struggle between good and evil, above and beyond a criminal act committed by racist genocidists on innocent Jews, not necessarily practicing Jews.  Yet, at no time were Jews asked to abandon their faith in return for life.  The Final Solution was no Spanish Inquisition or pogromist Russian Empire offfering a cruel alternative.  National Socialism defined Jews biologically and not according to degrees of religious observance.  To be sure, Jews were exterminated as Jews, but, not by self-definition or in accordance with Halachic criteria.  The criteria used were strictly those conforming with the standards of National Socialist ideologues, beginning with those set on 15 September 1935 and expressed in connection with the Nuremberg Laws.

There is, of course, always the strongest of temptations to superimpose additional dimensions onto historical events.  The Holocaust is no different in offering its interpreters an opportunity to go beyond the dimensions of history.  Philosophers of history have always searched for signs suggestive of metaphysical significance in human affairs.  The fundamental methodological flaw with this line of reasoning is that it  is purely hypothetical, if not just personal speculation based on subjective impressions.  These ventures into the trans-historic do not  rest on fact; they do not arise from concrete evidence but reflect much more the individual penchant of the interpreter.  It is all too easy to shift from crime — violation of the law — to sin — the disturbance of a particular moral order.

It may be true, of course, that the Holocaust does run counter to religious tenets.  But it is quite another matter to look upon it as the intervention of Evil, thereby reducing the genocidists to instruments of a supra human agent.  This kind of portrayal of the Holocaust introduces a  persona dramatis that is not present.  It fictionalizes the historical event, in this case by making it unnecessarily more than it actually was and is.  It is resorting to the emotive.  The Holocaust was criminal enough without the hype of distorting  language, which, in this case, dehumanizes the crime and its victims by adding a non-human dimension.

Labeling the exterminated as martyrs robs them of their precise victimization — the mass murdered in the secular context in which it happened.  Nothing took place to warrant martyrdom.  To insist on this nomenclature is to shift attention away from what actually transpired.  Non-observant Jews, Jews converted to Christianity, atheistic "Jews," Marxist "Jews," "half Jews," along with pious Jews were targeted for death without regard for their piety.  They were never asked if they believed in G-d before being arrested, deported, incarcerated and annihilated.  They may have been brave in the midst of that horror; many found solace in their faith.  But their murderers did not care one iota about that.  Religion was not the issue; race was.  And nothing ought to detract from that.

Henry Huttenbach

The Young Shall Inherit the Earth

A striking fact of the National Socialist elite is their youth.  Between 1933 and 1945, the Third Reich was ruled by a generation of men unprecedentedly young in the European context, and their fateful decisions would impact on tens of millions throughout Europe.  A brief survey of a sample of the Nazi upper echelon reveals how young they were compared to their counterparts elsewhere.

The absence of an older generation in key posts helps explain, perhaps, the extreme radicalism of the Nazi revolution envisioned for Germany and the world it intended to dominate.  For the moment this is sheer conjecture and will have to be explored in depth.  Nevertheless, what is indisputable is that extraordinary total political power fell into the hands of a young generation, relatively unmodified by a more experienced and, possibly, cautious older generation whose ranks were decimated by the carnage of World War I . 

The complete break with the past envisioned by the Nazi leadership evidently was facilitated by the sidelining of the established politicians and officials.  The enthusiasm of the take-over in January 1933 meant the triumph of a new generation and the unleashing of all its youthful zeal, literally to conquer Europe and beyond through the exercise of totalitarian power of a full industrialized state.  This included the launching of a racial revolution of which the annihilation of Jews became an integral part.  It should not come as a surprise, therefore, that a large majority of the architects and executors of the Final Solution belonged to the age cohort indicated above.

It is too often forgotten that Adolf Hitler, born in 1889, was one of the "older" of the Nazi ruling generation.  Yet, in 1933 he was only 44 years old, and 56 when he died by his own hands.  Thus, the central figure of the Third Reich began to preside over Germany about the age of President John F. Kennedy, himself considered by many as far too young to take over the reins of state. 

Hitler's two leading and younger subordinates were Hermann Goring (born 1893) and Joseph Goebbels (b.1897).  The former was 40 years and the latter 36 when the Nazis came to power.  If not Goring, then certainly Goebbels tackled his job as Minister of Propaganda with all the zest of a brilliant young man armed with excessively brutal ideas of unchecked hate and violence.  No one was more articulate in progressively propagating the climate of animosity towards Jews than Goebbels.

When scanning the ranks of the chief conceptualizers and administrators of the Final Solution the same holds true; at the top were relatively young men.  Heinrich Himmler (b. 1900), probably the most influential official with respect to forging a plan to destroy the Jews, was but 29 years old when he assumed leadership of the SS in 1929 and a mere 32 when Hitler became Chancellor in 1933.  His closest associate was Reinhard Heydrich (b.1904), who, when he was appointed head of the Sicherheitsdienst (the SS security branch) in 1933 was but 29 years old.  As head of the RSHA (Reichssicherheitshauptamt — the Central State Security Bureau) Heydrich was the leading facilitator of the program to annihilate the Jews of Europe.

Equally close professionally to Himmler was Adolf Eichmann (b. 1906).  In 1939 at the tender age of 36, shortly after the start of World War II, Eichmann  was put in charge of all Jewish matters in the notorious Amt IV (Gestapo Section) of the RSHA.  His leading aide, Theodor Dannecker (b. 1913), became part of Eichmann's staff in 1937 at the age of 34.  It was Dannecker who oversaw the Final Solution in occupied and Vichy France, between 1940 and 1942, when he was 37-39 years old.  Another right-hand man of Eichmann (his de facto deputy during the war) was Dieter   Wislicecy (b. 1911).  At first he worked in Amt IV-B4 of RSHA and then in 1940 at the age of 29, Wisliceny supervised the expulsion to death camps of all Jews from Greece, Slovakia and Hungary respectively.

Turning to those directly connected with the actual killing of the Jews, we again encounter the same generation as that of their superiors who made racial policy and issued the general orders of the Final Solution.  Most notorious or well known is Hans Frank (b. 1900); when he was appointed governor-general of the recently established Generalgouvernement (Central Poland).  Frank was just 40 year old when he exercised absolute power over its population, millions of whom ended up in extermination camps.  One of these was Auschwitz headed by Rudolf Hoess (b. 1900), who was 40 when he became its first Kommandant.  On his staff was a young doctor of the Auschwitz camp complex, Josef Mengele (b. 1911).  Endowed with the power to select inmates, it was he who decided the life and death of over a million people at the venerable age of 32 years.

Another primary actor in the destruction of Jews was Odilo Globocnik (b. 1904).  Among his several duties was to supervise the Operation Reinhard extermination camps (including Majdanek, Sobibor and Treblinka) in 1941 at the age of 37.  Himmler literally gave him carte blanche, with the result that over two million Jews were killed on his watch.  One of his underlings was Franz Stangl (b. 1908), Kommandant of Sobibor and Treblinka.  He assumed command of both in 1942 at the age of 34; a million Jewish dead are credited to him alone.

A counterpart of Globonick and Hoess was Otto Öhlendorf (1907).  At the age of 26 he took over section Amt III (Security Service) of RSHA.  In 1941, only 34 years old, Öhlendorf led unit D of the mobile killing units (Einsatzgruppen) which operated in the south Ukraine.  Judging from the record, he did a thorough job in making the region judenrein.

What can one deduce from this data?  Would an older generation at the helm have behaved differently?  If so, why?  Would it have moderated genocidal thought and practices?  If so, how?  Is the fact of their youth accidental or significant?  If so, according to which criteria?  And how can these questions be answered?  What discipline is appropriate?  Psychology?  And what methodology would be more appropriate to provide reliable answers?  These are, at least initially, not idle questions.  Their answers may shed light on past regimes and help in understanding present ones and, perhaps, influence the selection of political leadership in the future.  Stalin's personal revolution and terror of the 1930s, for example, did not take off until he had purged the entire older generation of Bolsheviks from the ranks of the Communist Party.  The Pol Pot auto-genocide in Cambodia was conducted by very young leaders of the Khmer Rouge.  Similarly, the Maoist revolution in China was entrusted to the very junior ranks of the Chinese Communist Party, though overseen by a geriatric party elite.

It may turn out that age per se has no bearing on genocidal behavior.  But until a definitive answer to the contrary is given, the question remains a serious one, not to be dismissed out of hand.  Certainly in the case of the Holocaust, in the light of the facts, the questions may provide evidence of a reality that has yet to be confronted.  Given the abundance of power wielded  by a small group of young men and the resultant European-wide carnage, there is an inherent obligation to go beyond mere speculation and untested assumptions guided more by bias and personal impressions.  At this stage there is as yet no way of telling precisely whether the relative youth of the Nazi leadership had any bearing on the path to genocide.

 

Henry R. Huttenbach

In Search of Connections: Linking the Holocaust to Israel.

Finding specific causal connections between events has always been a methodological stumbling block for historians.  Questions such as "What were the causes of World War I?" or "What were the causes of the French Revolution?" are remembered by all who went to college.  The impression or, better, assumption was that the dynamics of cause-and-effect in the physical/material realm also operated in the world of human events.  There are, of course, philosophies of history that support just such an assumption, but most are more prudent in making such a blanket assertion.  By now, most historians, even the most positivistic, exercise greater caution before ascribing logical linkage to historical narrative, aware that there are too many unknowns to permit attributing a direct relationship between one human event and another.

Those more cautious about applying concepts of the sciences to the social sciences resort to a safer term — "background."  Instead of insisting on a linear or vertical sequence of events, background allows for a broader, horizontal approach, not necessarily bound — to a strictly chronological arrangement.  But this method is far more dependent on the inherent prejudices of the historian than on the available information.

There is an intermediate position between the school of certitude — of those who treat the past as having rational structure — and the school of uncertitude — those who claim history has no inherent meaning except that imposed by the observer.  The latter focuses on "antecedents."  This position suggests that some events are more relevant — chronologically and/or topically — than others to the subject under investigation.  Such historians stand midway between the optimists — everything can be explained, i.e. understood — and the pessimists — nothing can.

It is said, correctly, that it is impossible to predict even the nearest future; what will be is perpetually an open question until the event takes place.  Yet it is also said, equally correctly, that once an event occurs, expected or not, the historian can "explain" or account for it.  That is to say, there is always a "logical" accounting for any of the myriad of potential results that could have been.  That, of course, means that the "causes" can go in any direction, simultaneously "causing" and/or "not causing,"  for example, the Holocaust as "cause" of the establishment of the state of Israel.

The question has been posed periodically over the past fifty years.  In brief, the claim is that without the Holocaust there would have been no Israel, the former being an instrumental cause of the latter.  Their very proximity 1933-1945 and 1948 tempts any observer to speculate some kind of linkage.  After all, few would deny that dropping two atom bombs within a few days of each other forced/"caused" Imperial Japan to surrender.  Yet, upon closer examination that is not the case at all: for example, prior to the bombings, the Japanese government had already been engaged in intensive negotiations, via Moscow (which was not yet at war with Japan), to open cease-fire and peace talks with the United States.  The USSR chose not to relay these probes to the USA, hoping to postpone the end of the war in the Pacific until its own declaration of war against Japan.  Thus, unbeknownst to the United States, and well before its deciding to drop the bomb, Imperial Japan was ready to end the war.  The bombs, therefore, did little towards creating a fundamental change of heart in the minds of Japan's leaders.

Turning to the supposed Holocaust—Israel axis, the same problems of methodology and analysis prevail.  Originally, for some, the mere suggestion that Israel came out of the ashes of Auschwitz was seen as an abomination of moral and theological thought.  The suggestion that the "price" of Israel was the Holocaust was unacceptable, no matter how reasoned.  For others, the Holocaust became the sine qua non of the founding of the Jewish state.  And there the dispute stood till a recent set of meetings held in Israel.

Not surprisingly, scholars were deeply divided over the resolution of the Holocaust-Israel problem, in large measure because of a priori reasoning — working towards a preferred conclusion.  There were stalwart partisans favoring a link — the Holocaust made possible the state of Israel — and equally vocal proponents for separation — Israel and the Zionist movement were  sui generis and not dependent on the Holocaust.

A proponent for linkage was Professor  Anita Shapira.  She argued that international sentiment in favor of a Jewish state was lukewarm until the tragedy of the Holocaust.  Zionism, in itself, lacked sufficient momentum; it needed the multi-psychological impact of the Holocaust.  In brief, she argued that the Holocaust created a moral climate that made a Jewish state a "just" cause.

Professor Saul Friedlander rejected the argument of the Holocaust as a moral imperative.  Post-1945 facts, he claimed, dictate the contrary.  Yet despite this stance he was unable to uncouple the Holocaust from the founding of Israel, opting only for a looser connections, one resting more on sentiment than rational analysis.  But, other than rejecting a direct link, he provided no persuasive alternative.

Professor Israel Gutman employed the argument from chronological proximity.  According to him the Holocaust and Israel had to be associated, the Holocaust providing the crucial catalyst.  In his obvious, psychological need to keep both events intertwined, Gutman relies more on emotive than concrete evidence.

In stark contrast, Professor Yehuda Bauer emerged as a "realist."  In his estimation, the Holocaust almost made a Jewish state impossible by virtually destroying the population pool in Europe on which Zionism depended.  Even the international community, he pointed out, remained unsympathetic towards the establishment of a Jewish state.  It was only the diplomatic skills of Jewish politicians who pulled the Israel rabbit out of the UN hat, men and women who played on post-Holocaust sympathies.  Then in a tour de force, Bauer paints over the obvious contradiction between his 1) the Holocaust was not, yet, nevertheless, 2) was accountable for the birth of Israel.  He rejects the Holocaust as "cause" but accepts it as having an "impact."  That, at best, is a semantic escape but absolutely no resolution of the basic problem of a causal or non-causal connection.  Bauer seeks to be in both camps at once, to have his cake and to eat it too. 

At present, to disassociate the Holocaust completely from the momentum towards Israeli statehood is worse than political incorrectness in Israel.  To divorce them is, for today's Israeli intellectuals, psychologically unrealistic.  It will take another generation to find the emotional neutrality and professional skills (methodology) to tackle this intriguing question.  It is relevant to all scholars of genocide in their quest to grasp both what led up to the crisis of genocide and what followed in its wake, whether in Nazi Germany or in Bosnia and Rwanda. 

We need to understand: that is a psychological imperative.  To go about understanding, though, is an intellectual endeavor and must be performed in a strictly disciplined manner.  The how must be divorced from the desire to know.  At present we have a long way to go before satisfactorily unraveling the complex paths leading to and from genocide.

Henry Huttenbach

 As I walked the streets of Ghetto
  I saw
Two children dancing
Two little skeletons dancing
Black eyes like coals in the
emaciated faces.

I saw them everyday
Dancing, ceaselessly dancing
To amuse passersby, so they
Would pity them
And give them a few cents
To keep  death at bay...
a little longer.

Many years have passed
Ghetto is now a memory
And in my memory it lives.
Wherever I remember it
  I see
Two little children dancing
Two little skeletons dancing.

Irene Grimberg

 

 

Announcement: A New Publication
___________________________

The Journal of Genocide Research

Editor in chief: Henry R. Huttenbach
Publisher: Carfax Publishing Co., (UK)
___________________________

Genocide Research's editorial policy seeks to further a deepening understanding of annihilationist events by promoting three paths of investigation:

  1. Theory
  2. Methodology
  3. Comparative Case Studies


Genocide Research will appear three times a year, beginning with Vol.I, No.1, in Spring 1999.

Genocide Research's Editorial Board is presently in formation and will be composed of an interdisciplinary, international group of scholars.

Genocide Research is a peer-review academic journal.

___________________________

Call for Papers:

Scholars are urged to submit their manuscripts to:

Professor Henry R. Huttenbach
   History Department
   The City College of New York
   Convent Ave. at 138th Street.
   New York, NY 10031
Fax (718) 624 - 0450
___________________________

For further information about Genocide Research — subscriptions, book reviews, etc. — contact Professor Huttenbach at the above address.

 

About The Genocide Forum

 The Forum is a publication of the Center for the Study of Ethnonationalism located on the campus of the City College of New York.  The founder and editor of The Genocide Forum is Professor Henry R. Huttenbach.

 The Genocide Forum, which appears bi-monthly, is intended to serve as a convenient vehicle of exchange to discuss critical issues of common interest to students of Holocaust and Genocide Studies.  The Forum is designed to accommodate experts in the field to share their concerns via concise (1,500 words) analytic essays.

 Contributors are invited to submit their essay on a 3.5" disk (Macintosh/MicroSoft Word) with one double-spaced print-out to Professor Henry R. Huttenbach, History Department, The City College of New York, Convent Avenue at 138th St., New York, NY 10031. Tel: (212) 650-7384; Fax (718) 624-0450.

 Back Issues of The Genocide Forum are available on request as long as supplies last.  Complete sets of back issues are available on 3.5" diskette (Macintosh/Microsoft) for $25.

 Quotations may be made as long as proper credit is given.  Duplication of long passages or entire articles require the written permission of the editor.

  The Genocide Forum is made possible through the partial support of the Division of Humanities of the City College of New York. 

  Nota Bene: Views expressed by authors are not necessarily those of the editor.

Henry R. Huttenbach
c/o History Department
City College of New York
Convent Ave. at 138th Street
New York, NY 10031
 

A Publication of The Center for The Study of Ethnonationalism
The City College of The City University of New York