About the Genocide Forum

A Platform for post-Holocaust Commentary

  1. At the Museum:  Strike Three!
  2. The Consequences of Auschwitz Centrism
  3. Overheard on Visiting Auschwitz: A Pastiche
  4. The Clinton Apology: Much too Little, Much too Late
  5. A Poem by Hanoch Guy

Nov-Dec 1998
Year 5, No. 1

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

At the Museum:  Strike Three!

Holocaust Political Brouhaha All over Again
A Clear and Present Danger for Genocide Studies

One would think that reason would eventually prevail among the custodians of the Great House of Nazi criminality on the Potomac River.  Evidently not.  But why protest?  What has this to do with concerns for the study of genocide?  One would think that those entrusted with the responsibility of presenting things genocidal to an entire nation would avoid, at all cost, strife and conflict, in-house and public.  It does little good if the partially federally funded museum exhibits and organizes its affairs imprudently, arousing more controversy than respect (as was feared by some at its very inception in almost the precise manner in which events have unfolded in recent years, much to the detriment of scholarly progress)

First — the original sin — there was and remains the flawed concept to justify a Holocaust Museum on the Mall: the assumption that American citizens require a constant reminder about the genocidal dangers of racist prejudice — that Germany's slide from antisemitism into the abyss of the Final Solution could happen in the United States.  Nonsense!  None of the Museum' s eminent Founding Fathers seems to have asked the obvious: how and why was it that slavery, the great inherited evil from colonial times, did not — we repeat — did not(!) culminate in extermination but rather in emancipation, civil rights, affirmative action, open admissions, Black Studies etc., a veritable on-going triumph of liberal, constitutional democracy, no matter how hard the struggle or how controversial.  The direction is not and never has been towards a Treblinka US-style.  So if the initial assumption is demonstrably false what remains?  Are Gypsies and homosexuals similarly endangered in the USA?  The former certainly are discriminated against in today's Europe, but whether they are threatened with genocide remains to be seen.  Perhaps the Museum should move there where antisemitisms of the Radical Right and Left are once again on the rise from Madrid to Moscow, not  to mention lethal anti-gypsyism.

Secondly there was the pre-opening triumph of the Shoah-First lobby which relegated all other victims of Nazism to an also-ran, quasi-invisible status: Gypsies, Poles, etc.  (Now there is mention of including Ukrainians!)  This singular focus is in direct violation of a clear congressional mandate that the Memorial Museum deal fairly and in a balanced manner with eleven million murdered and not overwhelmingly and almost exclusively with six million Jewish victims of Nazism.  As palliatives, various sized crumbs have been thrown by its managers at such non- or peripheral Holocaust constituencies as homosexuals and the deaf, clear signs of severe institutional disorientation (see George Will's incisive column in his June 19, 1998, Washington Post column).  What, for example, we ask, of the over 3 million ethnic Russian prisoners of war who were systematically starved to death simply because they were Russians, Untermenschen in Nazi parlance?  (So much for that old canard that Jews exclusively were exterminated for what they were: let us not forget that the Roma's sole "crime" was that they were Gypsies.)

Third there was the serious but semi-comic, well-publicized two-week episode of the mal-appointment and dis-appointment of Professor Steven Katz from Cornell University to be director of the Memorial Museum.  Instead of conducting a careful, unhurried search, the Museum 's powers behind the institution, the big donors, pressed in favor of the candidacy of Professor Katz whose voluminous, tautologically argued book corroborated their overt bias — the "uniqueness" of the Holocaust as the 'mother' of all genocides.  All other scholarly interpretations lessening its status were, by implication, deemed anathema and, therefore, unacceptable.  An internal party-line was established, a sine qua non criterion for any acceptable candidate.  And the results of this flawed search?  A highly publicized appointment and, two or three weeks later, the equally embarrassing denouement — Professor Katz's forced resignation — with all the accompanying back-biting, recrimination, counter-allegations and salacious press coverage.

Next came the Yasser Arafat fiasco (or should one say 'fandango' for its element of the bitter humoresque?)  For a long week, the interested public was entertained by the rhythm of the on-again/off-again/on-again public relations disaster of the Palestinian Chairman's cordial and enthusiastic invitation, then his unceremonious dis-invitation, and finally his forced re-invitation followed by his bemused non-acceptance.  The sound and fury over this farcical episode included stern behind-the-scenes State Department promptings (pro-Arafat) and intense survivor counter -lobbying (anti-Arafat).  Considering that President Franjo Tudjman of Croatia — a man who openly flaunts his sympathies for World War II antisemitic genocidist Ustashe Croatia — was among the front-row honored guests at the Museum's opening, one would think that Arafat of the still-operative Palestinian Covenant to erase Israel from the map be accorded equal time and exposure.  The fall-guy for this shameful entr'acte was Museum director Walter Reich, Steven Katz' s successor.  Reich was promptly fired by Miles Lerman, chairman of the Museum's highly politicized board, whose members, in turn, were pressured, it seems, by prominent donors.

And now the latest brouhaha — l'affaire Roth — which has been covered by the spectrum of the US press, from the Los Angeles Times, Washington Post and New York Times to the Jewish Week and Forward, and even the Chronicle of Higher Education.  At issue was the selection and appointment of Professor John Roth from Claremont McKenna College as director of the Museum's new Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies.  No sooner was the selection announced than vocal and influential critics shouted their objections.  The besieged appointments committee immediately called an emergency meeting and reconfirmed their continuing unanimous support of their choice.  They reinforced their decision with the ubiquitous and predictable imprimatur of Elie  Wiesel and the support of a clutch of academic eminentos from far and wide in favor of Professor Roth who (one was constantly reminded — why remains unclear) is not Jewish.  On the other side, Roth's critics lined up Republican congressmen who hinted darkly that they would bring up for reconsideration the Museum's future Federal support if the appointment of Roth were not retracted.  The outcome: Roth meekly resigned within days of his appointment, as much victim of his imprudent choice of language a few years past as of implacable Washington cut-throat politics

What is going on here?  A hint comes from the pro-Roth camp: he is, they claimed, strongly committed to the Holocaust's "uniqueness."  This suggests that the Center will not promote healthy, open scholarly debate on this quintessential or any other related issue: but it will encourage this  a  priori interpretation of the Holocaust.  Hardly an academic posture; hardly indicative of "Advanced Studies."  The contra-Roth camp has also shown some of its cards.  It evidently harbors a strong animus about the way the Museum conducts its business, making  appointments without fully checking into a candidate's credentials and background: recall the Katz affair.  In this case they also challenged Roth's pro-Israel credentials, that is, his political views which, they felt, in view of certain publications, necessarily seriously impacted negatively on his academic qualifications, enough to disqualify him.

Meanwhile the Museum has got itself embroiled in yet another highly publicized controversy abroad.  Miles Lerman represented the Museum at a recent high-level meeting of Holocaust prominentos convened in Auschwitz.  He is reported to have favored an on-site visitors' center and given his tacit consent not to have a large cross removed.  Whether accurate or not, the imbroglio once again highlights how the Museum is increasingly enmeshed in disruptive politics, seriously undermining its ability to promote bona fide, disinterested research and scholarship

This is precisely the heart of the matter.  The Memorial Museum at present is clearly not a proper venue for disinterested and dispassionate scholarly research.  It has too many institutional vested interests.  Genocide, in particular Holocaust, scholarship needs to be housed in a more conducive environment such as offered by a university free of the claustrophobic confines and inhibiting climate of a museum.  This is the lesson to be drawn from the near soap-opera melodramas of the Memorial Museum.  The pursuit of genocide studies must not be hamstrung by the biases presently inherent in such a place as the US Holocaust Memorial Museum

The Washington-based Museum has set itself a political goal not only to promote the Holocaust's "uniqueness" but to assure this interpretation's future by selected scholarship and key managerial appointments.  The new research Center, it seems, is explicitly designed to assure this party line and to protect it from any outside challenge.  Those interested in keeping Holocaust studies within and not apart from Genocide Studies will have to look elsewhere for truly non-partisan scholarship free from this kind of institutional meddling.  (A recent article by Steven Jacobs in Center News published by the University of Nevada's Center for Holocaust, Genocide and Peace Studies makes this abundantly clear.)

The inauguration of the new scholarly Journal of Genocide Research,  a publication committed to providing a peer-reviewed vehicle for genocide studies (which includes the Holocaust) free from the restrictions of ethno-biased or otherwise encumbered scholarship, comes at a propitious time.

Henry Huttenbach

The Consequences of Auschwitz Centrism

In the study of the Holocaust, the tendency has been to focus on  Auschwitz as the centerpiece of the Final Solution.  Given its dimensions as the largest concentration camp complex, the selection of Auschwitz is only understandable.  It allows one to study the many facets of National Socialism's violent racist assaults on humanity.  Auschwitz was the major Death Camp in the entire concentration camp system; it was also one of the largest political prisons; and, finally, it was the preeminent forced labor center.  Besides, it embraced the widest prisoner population from throughout Nazi dominated Europe.  In a nutshell, Auschwitz was the paradigm of the Third Reich's racist, expansionist and imperialist ambitions.  So far so good

There is, however, another way of assessing Auschwitz-centered scholarship.  One consequence is knowledge impoverishment.  A glance at a map of Europe during World War II of the continent-wide Nazi network of camps illustrates graphically the broader context in which Auschwitz has to be perceived.  It was one of several major camp complexes, not the epicenter.  The study of Auschwitz is not the key to understanding the others (anymore than the Holocaust qua genocide answers all the questions raised by other genocides.)  Each camp played its own role, regionally or otherwise.  Auschwitz was and remains but one piece in the larger picture of Germany's radical deconstruction of Europe. 

However, as emphasis is placed more and more on Auschwitz, the rest of the camp system is necessarily neglected or relegated to a secondary and even tertiary status.  Increasingly, everyone who has heard of Auschwitz finds it difficult, other than to name other Death Centers, to speak knowledgeably about them.  When was the last time a conference was held on Bergen-Belsen, Gross-Rosen, or Sobibor?  The bibliography speaks for itself

This reduction of knowledge is encouraging a certain parochialization of understanding.  All too often references to Auschwitz are substitutes for ignorance; it is enough to know Auschwitz, we are told.  Auschwitz, in many circles, has become a metaphor for the arch crime, for the ultimate evil, for absolute sin, etc.  It is a lengthening list. 

A recent three-day conference was held at Kingsborough Community College on Jasenovac, the Nazi-inspired and sponsored Croatian concentration camp during World War II.  Despite its academic deficiencies, the meeting stressed how essential it is to study intensely other locations.  Jasenovac was no mere mini-Auschwitz but a phenomenon with its own central issues about the multifarious campaigns to eradicate ethnic groups.  On a micro level, Jasenovac highlights how careful one must be before embarking on the slippery path of 'uniqueness.'  No matter how much is known about Auschwitz, it does not and must not serve as an excuse to cast a blind eye elsewhere.  While the Holocaust qua Auschwitz does not raise the question of "prelude," of worse to come, Jasenovac does.  It is clearly a first round prompting a second blood-letting in the future when circumstances permit.  Hindsight tragically confirms this

Auschwitz centrism tends not only to diminish knowledge and foster a measure of intellectual myopia, but — significantly — it also encourages a distortion of its own proportion.  For decades, an Auschwitz focus has lent it a status of being — literally and figuratively — ground zero of the destruction of European Jewry.  Statistics, however, say otherwise.  For decades Auschwitz was associated with the murder of up to 3 million Jews, a total for which there was no evidence, but a sum total enough to warrant promoting Auschwitz to the status of "camp of camps."  Unfortunately, more recent and careful scholarship have put this assertion into question

There is now a consensus that no more than 1.3 million perished in Auschwitz, and, of those, around 900,000 were Jews.  That figure lowers Auschwitz to the level of Treblinka and Sobibor or, one could say, it elevates the latter two to the same category as Auschwitz as primary sites of the genocide

This calls for serious reassessment and revision of how the Holocaust should be  taught in the light of a "demonic" Auschwitz.  Holocaust scholarship and pedagogy have to catch up with the implications of these findings.  Perhaps it will lead to a more balanced approach, less marred by exaggeration of one camp and the neglect of others.

Underlying the issue of Auschwitz-centrism is the broader controversy, that of Holocaust centrism: namely, 1) whether to teach the Holocaust as "the genocide of genocides," and, thereby encounter the same problems of content dilution and intellectual parochialism, or 2) whether to present the Holocaust in the context of numerous other genocides, as part of a greater theme confronting all peoples of the world.

Henry Huttenbach

Overheard On Visiting Auschwitz: A Pastiche

May 1998

Tour Guide: "Folks, it is noon.  Before starting the tour I advise you to have lunch.  You'll enjoy the tour better on a full stomach."

Another Tour Guide: "We have reached the midpoint of our tour.  We'll take a rest stop here before visiting the camp's latrine.  While you wait, you can visit the souvenir store next door."

A Sign: "Postcards of Auschwitz."

   "Ansichtskarten von Auschwitz."

A Quote from a Postcard: "Dear Folks, I'm having a great time in Europe.  Right now we're in Auschwitz.  Awesome!"

A Third Tour Guide: "This is the gas chamber.  Here is where the Zyklon B gas came out.  Now, please follow me quickly to the next room."

Overheard: "Let's hurry and do the shooting wall.  The bus is leaving in 7 minutes.  I'm starving."

On Exiting: "So what did you think?"  "Pretty awful."

A Visitor's Comment on a Film: "There's an introductory film in half an hour.  It tells you all you need to know.  I think I'll skip the tour.  My feet hurt."

On Jews and Poles: "It's all about Jews.  I'm tired of them."

On Poles and Jews: "They are still antisemitic."

Schoolteachers (Polish): "Now be very quiet.  Our Polish martyrs died here."

A Group of Germans: "So listen carefully.  Let's check our watches and meet here exactly in 45 minutes.  Don't be late."

A Group of Americans: "These stony paths are a drag.  They should pave them nice and smooth."

One American: "Are you Jewish.  You don't look it.  Take my picture, please.  Geez it's hot.  I should have worn a T-shirt.  Thanks, man!"

A Question: "Who were those "Essess" groups they keep mentioning?"

A Comment: "It's nothing but barracks.  Doesn't look too bad."

Discovery : "Hey Ma!  Come over here and see all those shoes!  Some collection!"

A French Curse: "Merde, Sh-t!  I can't find my lens.  This is such a great view."

Love: Two teenagers stroll by arm in arm.  She is giggling; he is nibbling her earlobe.  "Not here!" she whispers.  He: "Why not, the dead can't see us."

Across the Generations: "Hey grandma!  Was this your barracks?"  "Yes."  "That's neat!"

A Japanese Comment: "Hiroshima much worse.  No buildings left standing.  Here everything so neat."

A Friendly Greeting: "Where you from?"  "Brooklyn!"  "Great!"

A Child's Lament: "I'm thirsty!  Can I have a drink?  I'm tired!"

A Personal Thought: "Why am I here?"

A Passerby: "I'm glad I came."

A Second Personal Thought: "I don't belong here!"

Another Passerby: "How was it possible?"

A Third Personal Thought: "There is no exit from here."

1st Passerby: "Why did they build it here?  Why here?  It has scarred Poland forever."

2nd Passerby: "It has scarred the world forever.  Auschwitz is not in Poland."

Personal Thoughts: "When I leave here, I'll still be here.  There is no escape but to forget.  To forget it all.  To eat and to drink; to love and to live; to live and to love; to love life, to live loving and be loved; to be life's lover in Auschwitz."

An Advertisement: Choose your combination sightseeing tours, comfortable and convenient.  Visit the Salt Mines and Auschwitz in one day.  Top it off with a glamorous evening in Krakow's Old City.

Discounts available for students and children under 12.  Make your reservations soon.

A Final Thought: Reservations for Auschwitz?!

    Discounts for Auschwitz!

A logical end to the Final Solution.

Henry R. Huttenbach

The Clinton Apology
Much Too Little, Much Too Late.

How does one relate apology to genocide?  Those associated with the Holocaust have recently been subjected to a spate of apologies.  One came from the French Catholic hierarchy for the Church's role during the years of German occupation of France and Jewish deportations from that country.  Another post-facto apologia for sins of omission and commission during the years of Nazi domination emanated from the Vatican.  It is unclear what to make of these belated expressions of sorrow: are they calls for forgiveness — if so, from whom?  The dead victims?  Or are they public statements of repentance?  If so, precisely for what specific crime or sin or other misdeed?  And then, what?  The slate is clean?  We can now go ahead "normally" because the past is now fully confined to the past?  Is that a safe assumption.  No chance of recidivism?

These questions are raised not to engage the dynamics of Holocaust apologies but to focus attention on another recent apology — better, expression of regret — by the President of the United States given on his recent tour of the African continent.  During his stop-over in Rwanda, President Clinton made an impassioned declaration admitting to an egregious and grievous error of US foreign policy.  He acknowledged that the United States in particular had waited too long and missed an opportunity to halt the genocidal killings of Tutsis and the discriminating massacre of their Hutu allies.  In that speech Clinton also admitted that by not calling the mass killings by their proper name — genocide — the United States government had misread the crisis.

The apology rings hollow and is riddled with prevarication.  The Clinton policy vis-à-vis Rwanda, as it was with Bosnia, was structured on non-intervention at all costs.  Even as he spoke, the same fraudulent U.S. policy is being framed for Kosovo, a genocide in the making.  Instead of asserting an unambiguous policy of determination and commitment on the part of the United States to force President Slobodan Milosevic to defuse the crisis in Kosovo, the Clinton administration is, to put it mildly, fudging, leading Serbia to believe, correctly, that it will not have to face massive US intervention.  Likewise the refusal to call the massacres of Tutsis genocide let the situation degenerate to the levels we now all know, including a counter-genocidal wave of killings against innocent Hutu refugees from Rwanda.  That was no "mistake" — Mr. President — your statement is a deliberate obfuscation; the "mistake" was a willful mislabeling of an event.  It was no error of judgment.  It was a purposeful political lie, further compounded by yet another diplomatic lie given in the Rwanda speech.  It is one thing to apologize with sincerity and another with a political agenda in mind.

It could be argued that the apology of the French bishops, though drearily tardy, was made in good conscience with a minimum of calculation as to timing and mutual benefit.  That of the Vatican is the product more of external pressure than of inner moral conviction.  It was grudgingly given after eleven (!) years, not of soul-searching — that was Vatican II — but of careful assessment of each word, phrase, and sentence.  It is deliciously slippery, a lawyer's delight, open to much interpretation, at once precise and exquisitely imprecise.  As for Clinton's crocodile tears, all one can say is that it was pure mendacity by the leader of a nation that idly stood by as genocidal slaughter raged first in Bosnia, then in Rwanda.  At least in the former, Clinton did not deny the scope of ethnic cleansing, but he did act as a powerful denier in the case of the latter.

It will be interesting to contemplate what speeches and pronouncements will come from the White House during and in the wake of the potentially bloody crisis in Kosovo and the murderous one in progress in south Sudan.  Scholars of genocide should be alert to this dimension of genocide studies: namely, the pronouncements of the powerful bystanders.

Henry Huttenbach

 

 

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