About the Genocide Forum
A Platform for post-Holocaust Commentary
- Sentimentalizing the Holocaust and Other Sins
- So There Were Decent Germans!
- Hedging and Fudging about Genocide in Kosovo and Elsewhere: Wiesel et. al.
- The Book War: Nazism vs. Jews and Jehovah's Witnesses
- What Niemöller Did and Did Not Say
- Politicizing Genocide History
July-August 1999
Year 5, No. 1
Bonnie Falchuk: Managing Editor
Carol Rittner: Associate Editor
Henry R. Huttenbach: Founder- Editor
Sandrine Dikambi: Assistant Editor
Sentimentalizing the Holocaust and Other Sins.
Lawrence Langer's Frontal Critique
Langer is a well-known commentator on the shock-waves left behind by the Final Solution. He has written widely, making biting analyses of the foibles of some post-Holocaust interpretations. Most efficaciously, Langer has exposed fallacies in a number of prominent rhetorical statements. He has, for example, shown little sympathy for the martyrological approach towards an understanding of the victims—(as has been similarly expressed in these pages from time to time.) He has labeled this kind of view as "consoling" and of little academic value. In former issues The Genocide Forum has similarly objected to the liberal usage of religious terminology and other ways of injecting a "mysterious" element into the Holocaust: e.g. the concept of Kiddush HaShem (the respect for G-d's holy name), or of Salvation and Redemption. On Langer's part, this vocabulary distracts rather and does not describe and enlighten the phenomenon of the Holocaust. Correctly, Langer has sought to weed out the emotive and otherwise inappropriate language that beclouds one thinking about this example of genocide rather than shedding light through clarification, which generally follows a sparing use of words.
Langer's most recent book Preempting the Holocaust (Yale University Press) continues this campaign to sweep aside verbal and conceptual cobwebs, whether in film and fictional renditions or in academic monographs. In half the essays, Langer registers his approval of a variety of Holocaust-related works. He is, laudably, most praiseworthy of Primo Levi's stark prose, which is unremittingly unsentimental and non-romantic. For Langer, Levi's is the purest language, unadorned, free of the temptation to provide needless metaphysical explanation for what Levi had seen, heard and felt in Auschwitz. There is no pretense of shrouding the Death Camp with obfuscating thoughts. For Langer, renditions of the Holocaust must be free from polluting words that dilute the central fact of the Holocaust: the ubiquitousness of death, not Death, but death after death, after individual death, murder after murder, monotonously routine till, undramatically, the victims number into the millions. There is little need for further expostulation. It is enough to know it happened and to remember it as such.
Other essays in Langer's collection highlight new targets. He has little if no patience with academic hypothesizing: in turn, Langer casts aside the pretensions of feminism, theologizing and romanticizing. He is least sympathetic with those who look for the triumph of the human spirit in the world of Musulmänner, the walking dead. He refuses to focus on exceptionality: decency amidst criminal injustice, goodness in an ocean of lethal cruelty. Langer insists that one never lose sight of this, the core reality of the Holocaust.
In short, Langer wishes that the Holocaust be fully exposed, stripped naked of any distraction, an on-going process, whether by the artist or the academic. For Langer, excessive and inappropriate words can be as weeds, which must always be plucked out, so one not lose sight of the object under observation, in this case a crime of genocide that must not be hidden under needless layers of tangental thought.
Henry R Huttenbach
So There were Decent Germans! Pace Daniel Goldhagen
As everyone knows, a teacup storm howled through the corridors of academe over the question of the Germans' role during the Holocaust. It is a legitimate question and it has been raised since the International Military Tribunal held its hearings in the late 1940s when it put top Nazi leaders on trial for crimes against humanity. Unavoidably, one asked about the depth of criminality within the rank and file of Germany's population. Anger tended to fuel suspicion that a vast majority supported Hitler's genocidal war against the Jews of Europe; international politics, however, preferred to conclude that the Third Reich was the exclusive doing of an elite and their numerous functionaries, regardless of German public sentiment about Jews. The evidence, however, was and remains unclear.
Two years ago in 1997, Daniel Goldhagen's Hitler's Willing Executioners sounded the call for an overall indictment of the bulk of the German people. They had been, he argued, collectively in the throes of an "eliminationalist antisemitism," but he failed to come up with the supporting evidence. For over a year, a trans-Atlantic quasi-debate – often a shouting match – erupted. Most of it was silly, emotional, ad hominem, and melodramatic. Collections of essays by scholars and of newspapers op-eds are testimony to the wind-filled exchanges, often giving the impression no one was listening and everyone was speaking, often at once.
Strangely, no one took note of the 1995 publication of an extraordinary document, the diary of Victor Klemperer. In this massive – nearly 1700 printed pages – personal report of life in Germany from 1933 to 1945, Klemperer paints a panoramic view of the day-to-day existence of a Jew surviving in Nazi Germany. As one makes ones way through the rich Proustian tapestry of this text, one thing becomes clear: there was a broad layer of Germans deeply disturbed by the state's brutal treatment of their Jewish neighbors. Klemperer records this faithfully without over-emphasizing it. The fact remains that German citizens (whatever their views) were terrorized into compliance, many, perhaps most, of them harboring less than friendly dispositions towards Jews; but there were more than a few with a conscience, as is apparent in Klemperer's daily encounters.
A study of the SA between July 1934 (after the SS's murderous assault on their leadership in June) and November 9, 1938, (up to Kristallnacht) makes it all too clear that the bulk of the German population remained unresponsive to repeated calls for "spontaneous" grassroots acts of violence against Jews. Nor were they particularly enthusiastic about their enforced change of identity from a national – German – to a racial one –Aryan. Thousands of documents in the German Bundesarchiv in Koblenz attest to this, leaving one to wonder why the stellar academic opponents of Goldhagen neither referred to Klemperer's monumental work nor drew on their knowledge of the unpublished sources.
Now that the Goldhagen canard has been put to rest, it is time to launch a broad, multidisciplinary research project focusing on the so-called "good Germans": Who were they? How numerous were they? Where did they reside? What motivated them? There have been some studies, but by no means enough. A new (third) generation of young and highly competent post-war German scholars should be encouraged to embrace this task and lead the way for other academics to follow suit. Quite possibly this endeavor will hone the tools of those looking beyond the Holocaust at other incidents of genocide where the population was trapped and indiscriminately made to look guilty. Rwanda springs to mind, as does Bosnia.
Henry R. Huttenbach
Hedging and Fudging about Genocide in Kosovo and Elsewhere:
Wiesel et. al.
Events can move rapidly, and those governing today's comments may be superceded by the time these pages reach the reader, though, we believe, the following remarks will stand the test and endure in their appropriateness. While Kosovo was being systematically emptied of ethnic Albanians – by a latter-day scorched-earth policy against its villages and towns, by mass expulsions, massacres (of men) and terror (including rape) – those who should know better minced their words, hedging and fudging, whether the crimes of Slobodan Milosevic are or are not genocide.
In an April 12 Newsweek article, Elie Wiesel once again puts primacy of the Holocaust ahead of Kosovo. Instead of expressing his unalloyed concern, he devotes his very first sentence to safeguarding the singularity of the past: "The Serbs' inhuman treatment of their Albanian countrymen, horrifying as it may be, is not the Holocaust." The rest of the article – while deploring Milosevic as a criminal; depicting the plight of Kosovars as a "bloody list of tragedies… and a massive violation of human rights" – concludes that what is happening in Kosovo does "not constitute genocide" only, perhaps, "genocide-in-the-making."
What is Wiesel up to? Does he want to wait until 30 percent of Albanians are dead (30 percent of European Jews perished under Hitler) before "favoring" the crimes with his imprimatur, conferring on the dead the status of victims of bona fide genocide? The rest of Wiesel's article is self-serving and filled with self-evident pieties, never for a moment abandoning his crusade to preserve and reiterate the uniqueness of the Holocaust. "I saw the prison camps … but it [sic] was not Auschwitz." A sentence later he pontificates: "Now we are witnessing a nightmare in Kosovo; it demands action, not comparison." Indeed! Who has been doing the negative comparison all along? Not Holocaust; not Auschwitz, not genocide? This kind of myopia will not do. Wiesellian Holocaust-centrism is an intellectual cul-de-sac and not a fitting gesture towards the Jewish victims of the past and the Albanian dead and soon-to-be dead.
A similar tone of condescension came from the lips of Zbigniew Brzezinski in a March 30 article in the Washington Post. Before criticizing the government he once served on how he would conduct the NATO war on rump Yugoslavia, Brzezinski dubs the Kosovo events as "a mini-genocide." Mini?! What is going on here? What turgid thinking is being inflicted on us? He concludes with the need not to "tolerate genocidal barbarity." If that is what is going on, why refer to it initially as "mini," whatever that may mean. What standards does he compare genocide with? When does "mini" become a "great" genocide? We are not told. Brzezinski on a roll cannot control his rhetoric, and the reader is left more confused than ever while Milosevic continued his campaign of making Kosovo Albanian-rein. Already more than a third were dead or refugees. Is that a mini violation of the UN genocide convention? No doubt, one day, historians, looking back, will give us an answer, as once did President Clinton.
On his recent trip to Africa, Clinton made an extraordinary confession. In a brief speech, he asked forgiveness for not having recognized that the Hutu-inspired killings of mainly Tutsis was indeed genocide. The US, he acknowledged, should have intervened. Does that mean mass killings not of a genocidal nature do not deserve international intervention? Once again we are privy to some unusual forms of mental gymnastics that strain credibility, helping neither those struggling for clarity in determining genocide or those victimized by genocidal behavior.
Henry R. Huttenbach
The Book War: Nazism vs. Jews and Jehovah's Witnesses
This story might seem tangential to the history of the Final Solution and the Third Reich; on the other hand, it might, symbolically, represent in microcosm the essence of the titanic struggle of enlightened civilization versus rampant barbarism embodied in the rise and fall of Nazism. This is the story about books, books as weapons in the epic battle for people's hearts, minds and bodies on the part of Hitler and his opponents. It is about resistance and compliance, about real power and real impotence, about lethal violence and gentle persuasion, and about faith in the triumph of goodness over evil. It is, perhaps, a quintessential story about the drama that was acted out on the stage of Central Europe at a time of extreme crisis, when – to use a cliché – the future truly hung in the balance. It is about books and how people used books to define right from wrong, to distinguish between a genuine friend and a true foe.
Throughout the 30s, Nazism sought to consolidate its power and become the sole authority in all matters across the entire German national landscape. Its goal was to dominate politics and to monopolize all public and private life and the values upon which it rested. In this war over morality and ethics, the Nazis purged the press, the publishing houses, and universities of all less than loyal voices; it finally sought to synchronize the churches by Aryanizing Christianity.
The Nazi regime managed to gain official support from more than 90% of the Protestant ranks; though a brave 7-8% refused to be politicized. A similar small percentage of writers and other intellectuals also had the courage to express their varied oppositions to the totalitarian and immoral demands of the Nazi racist doctrine. In other words, it was openly and covertly resisted by a determined minority whose consciences refused to embrace the radical, racist teachings of National Socialism. The doses of New Truth administered by the National Socialist party did not take effect on everyone: a few independent – courageous – minds maintained their moral integrity and did not sacrifice their credibility to the New Faith imposed by the Nazi state – and embodied in the "credo", Hitler's Mein Kampf.
As part of the Nazi campaign against traditional values, the Nazis declared war on books and their ideas. In an orgy of anti-intellectualism, "decadent" books were taken from the library shelves and publicly burned. The condemned authors and their heretical books were prominently publicized. In their place, the German public was urged to read the Führer's revolutionary work written while he had languished in jail in the mid-20s. Literally tens of millions of copies of Mein Kampf were distributed, most of them free, so no household would claim it could not afford a copy of Hitler's "sacred" text.
In this context an extraordinary counter-attack took place, one, so far, little known, recognized and assessed. It is virtually absent from the proliferating literature on the much inflated theme – "resistance to Nazism." In this case it was not a one-shot instance like the Attentat on Hitler's life, but an extraordinary, sustained campaign. It was waged by the Jehovah's Witnesses, launched in 1933, even as Hitler assumed power, and continued till 1945, despite persecution.
Followers of the sect in Germany numbered but 19,000 at the time and all belonged to the banned society of Earnest Bible Students. Year after year, devotees of the teachings of the Jehovah's Witnesses, men and women, went from home to home quietly preaching their peaceful, non-violent message of decency and tolerance. On each occasion they would leave behind a Bible – Old and New Testament – as a counter to the new "bible", Mein Kampf. They did so by the thousands, risking denunciation, persecution, arrest, incarceration and even death. By 1939, nearly 10,000 had experienced imprisonment in concentration camps. Their proselytizing was especially intense in eastern Germany, in Breslau, Danzig, Königsberg and throughout East Prussia, according to Gestapo records. Nor were their children spared humiliation and outright prejudice in school for steadfastly refusing to make the Nazi salute and shout "Heil Hitler," for them a violation of their belief in the exclusive moral supremacy of G-d and His commandments.
Most significantly, the Jehovah's Witnesses in Germany made common cause with the suffering of the Jews. They ignored the boycott of Jewish stores; thay provided destitute Jewish neighbors with food and other basic provisions as the Nazis tightened the economic noose around the necks of German Jewry. Even in the United States, in July 1939 in Madison Square Garden, they publicly declared their opposition to Nazi Germany explicitly for its inhuman treatment of its Jewish citizens. No other religious group had come out so directly expressing its solidarity with of Jews inside and outside the Third Reich.
Henry R. Huttenbach
[For further information readers are referred to an article by Yitzhak Kirschbaum, former editor of the Yiddish language Dantziger Informator, published on July 2, 1939 in Der Tog in New York on page 5. I am grateful to Ms. Jolene Chu for sending me the article.]
What Niemöller Did and Did Not Say
Pastor Martin Niemöller (1892-1984) has become a hero if not an icon in Holocaust circles, especially among those looking for rare examples of "good" Germans. That is understandable. In support of his anti-Nazi stance is his all-too-oft-quoted dictum:
In Germany, they first came for the Communists and I did not speak out because I was not a Communist.
Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out because I was not a trade Unionist.
Then they came for the Catholics, and I did not speak out because I was a Protestant.
Then they came for the Jews, but I did not speak out because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me – and by that time no one was left to speak out.
To the best of one's knowledge, this pithy self-summation of his political post-facto testament and apologia has never been thoroughly scrutinized.
What, for example, if Niemöller had never been arrested, never been made to endure imprisonment by the Nazis? What if he had simply been ignored? What would have been his response to Nazism? Had the thunderbolt of Nazism not struck him personally and forced him to acknowledge his myopia, would he have had his belated retroactive epiphany? Had he not been made to suffer incarceration, would his eyes have been otherwise opened to the suffering of others? He admits as much: No! As we all know, suffering forces our conscience to recognize the suffering of others. Lack of personal suffering tends to minimize empathy. As an anti-Nazi but a profoundly patriotic German, would Niemöller have experienced his post-facto epiphany – let us stress, his post-war enlightenment – without the jolt he received? At best he might have remained relatively silent. After all, there is no evidence he had concern for the plight of the Jews until he found himself in the Nazi cauldron near them. It was only when his faith – Protestantism – was in jeopardy that he acted in self- group interest. The Protestants – including the minority, the Bekennende Kirche, of which Niemöller was a part – battled for its values and seldom – as a collective - for the interests of others.
Equally important in Niemöller's simplistic list is its implications. Communists, trade unionists, Catholics, and Jews are mentioned in that order. What does that order imply: an order of importance or a chronological sequence? To be sure, as far as was possible, Hitler tried to destroy the Communist/Socialist leadership, but not the rank and file of the German left-oriented workers. As for the assault on Catholics qua Catholics, when did that happen? The Nazi Party and its apparatus, the SS, SA, etc. was filled with practicing Catholics. Hitler's regime eventually signed a treaty of understanding – a concordance - with the Vatican; what was there for Niemöller to protest had he had the courage to do so? Anyway, did the German Catholics, both the hierarchy and/or rank and file, ever spring to the defense of the Bekennende Kirche? Of course not. Indeed, did the Catholic Church in Germany soundly and unequivocally denounce Hitlerism and its policy towards Jews? Only the German Communists in the concentration camps showed any signs of solidarity with other inmates and groups when it came to resistance.
Which brings us to the Jews listed by Niemöller as number four. Is this a chronological listing or ranking by importance in degree of victimization? If it is a sequential list, then it is inaccurate. Jews were targeted without interruption, en masse, from day one of Hitler's assumption of power. Yet at no stage of their accelerated persecution till his arrest, did Niemöller see fit to voice his "Christian" conscience until his own personal victimization. If the list is topical, does Niemöller imply parity in victimization? He may not have intended to, but his inaccurate list does so anyway. An uninitiated reader would get the impression that, in order, beginning with the communists, all the groups that followed were equally targeted, existentially like the Jews or, perhaps, the Jews like the Communists. Put kindly, that is sheer nonsense. Did Niemöller intend this? Probably not. But constant, mantra-like repetition of his less than convincing confession perpetuates this false impression, especially if always quoted uncritically and out of context.
Finally, had Niemöller's post-war eyes really been pried opened by some kind of inner reflection claimed by him, he might have mentioned the fate of the c. 20,000 Jehovah's Witnesses in Germany. These fellow Christians were truly existentially threatened by the Nazi regime. (A reading of Gabriel Yonan's article in Church and State (41/2) pp. 307-322 would be helpful in this regard.) Yet they remain generally invisible in mainstream Holocaust studies. Why is unclear, though one suspects the same operative myopia that troubled Niemöller, who remains and, no doubt, will continue to remain a useful "hero."
Like so many other examples of false or inaccurate statements, little will be done to correct the distorted heroics of Niemöller. Concentration Camps are still "liberated"; 3 million Jews were killed in Auschwitz; "Schindler's List" remains used more as a documentary than a film, etc. It is so much more convenient to cling to the old, familiar ways, not to mention salvaging self-interest and perhaps pride by avoiding revisions (corrections) – not Revisionism (wanton falsification) – of the past.
Henry R. Huttenbach
Politicizing Genocide History
Should governments and legislators determine the historicity of a particular genocide? This question has been raised before in these pages from another perspective, namely: should the actuality of a genocide be determined by media publicity campaigns led by prominent citizens, including Hollywood stars, none of whom are trained scholars and qualified to make an authoritative judgment? Put another way, should politics and public opinion buttress or even dictate scholarly debates? Recently the government of France tried to prevent or discourage the National Assembly from voting on a motion that the 1915-1922 massacres of Armenians in Turkey were indeed genocide.
One player in the drama was the 300,000-strong influential, largely ethno-nationalist Armenian community in France, which put pressure on French legislators to vote in favor; another was the irate Turkish government exerting its opposition to the motion by threatening the French government with canceling lucrative arms contracts unless it intervenes to encourage a "no" vote.
It requires little analysis to point out that such heated disputes are counter-productive; they add little, if anything, to disinterested academic dialogue. On the contrary, the political feuds unavoidably pollute the atmosphere of calm, non-polemic, scholarly discourse. Not only does partisan ethno-politics disturb and distort the life of academe, but activist scholars unwisely insert themselves into the all-too public exchanges of rhetoric, thereby compromising their academic integrity.
What can be done? Is it realistic to expect anything else under the circumstances? Can and should academics remain studiously neutral in what many view as the manufacture of lies? Do they not have a professional and civic duty to act against anti-intellectual forces in society and its political ranks? By the same token, do not politicians in a democracy have an obligation to heed the wishes of their constituents? Obviously these questions are more rhetorical than quizzical. The answers - yes or no – are as simplistic as the questions themselves. So what does common sense say?
A rule of thumb might be to treat each case individually and allow room for the circumstances. However, through ethnocentric eyes, each case is as meritorious as the next, making this approach not very useful. One is left then with no recourse but a general policy, either condemning or approving in principle the ties to or separation from the world of politics and that of scholarship.
Prudence suggests that even in the case of the denial of genocide – as was recently the issue in France, where the Turkish government's persistent policy of denial is the object of dispute – nothing is gained from a vote by politicians. Scholars should remain apart. A vote in favor of or against the classification of an event as genocide neither enhances nor diminishes its historicity. Laws forbidding the "falsification" of history, as in Germany, add or subtract nothing to historiography.
There is always the fine line where denial and honest opinion or reasoned interpretation overlap and become blurred. It is better to promote an open society where scholars and charlatans live side by side and where the unlimited marketplace of exchange of views prevails. Once an exception is made – forbidding this or that statement about genocide – one steps onto a slippery slope heading towards the tyranny of the politically correct and even judicial and/or legislative censorship.
Already scholars are booed in public when saying the unpopular such as: the Holocaust is not unique; the Serbian activities in Kosovo are no worse than what the Croats did to Serbs in Krajinia and east Slavonia; anti-Gypsyism prior to 1933 was worse in Germany than antisemitism; or Jewish resistance against the Nazis is a highly inflated topic. There is enough anti-intellectual impatience within the ranks of the general public that is far more dangerous than the expression of isolated cases of willful prevarication. Genocide study will thrive better in an atmosphere of open inquiry than quasi-morally misplaced laws regulating what may and may not be said.
Henry R. Huttenbach
A Correction:
Dr. William Shulman (re TGF 5/4) sent the following remarks for which we are grateful:"…The Wilkomersk book was not given an award in the Holocaust category. It was given an award in the memoir category. I am one of the judges in the Holocaust category…" [That still leaves the question of accountability unanswered. Who were the judges in the memoir category and why did they fail to notice the obvious flaws of the book?]
Erratum:
We regret the typo on the front page of the last TGF (5/5). Mc Cathyism should have been McCarthyism.
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