Subject: JUICE: Meanings of the Holocaust - Part 1
Date: Wed, 11 Mar 1998 23:30:57 +0000
To: "Hebraic Heritage Newsgroup"<heb_roots_chr@geocities.com>
From: JUICE Administration <juice@virtual.co.il>
To: holocaust@virtual.co.il
Subject: JUICE Meanings of the Holocaust 1
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World Zionist Organization
Jewish University in CyberspacE
juice@wzo.org.il birnbaum@wzo.org.il
http://www.wzo.org.il
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Course: Meanings of the Holocaust
Lecture: 1/12
Lecturer: Elly Dlin
Lecture 1: Is the Holocaust Unique?
Isn't this a stupid question? Isn't every event unique?
What is uniqueness? If by uniqueness we mean the dictionary definition of
"one and only; single; sole" them isn't every event unique? Aren't you
reading this lecture for the very first time ever? (You must be, since this
is the first time that I've ever submitted anything to JUICE.) But would
anyone call this a unique historical event? Likely not. Yet why not?
One answer is that dictionaries reflects usage, and people use words in
contradictory, confused and inconsistent ways. Webster's gives two more
definitions for unique: "2. having no like or equal; unparalleled" and "3.
highly unusual, extraordinary, rare". From this we learn that the same word
might mean different things according to the subjective intention of the user.
Let's look at a dramatic, contemporary event. Was the assassination of
Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin unique? Well, that might depends. It
was certainly "highly unusual, extraordinary, rare" but was it "having no
like or equal; one and only"? Politically motivated assassinations are not
unknown in Israel (I can immediately think of Haim Arlasorov, Reszo Israel
Kastner, Emil Greensweig). Nor is the murder of a Head of State in the
Middle East unprecedented (King Abdallah of Jordan was killed in Jerusalem)
and then there is the example of Anwar Sadat, a Head of State who was
murdered as a direct result of his peace policies.
The 2 aspects of Uniqueness
So what might make something unique? I wish to argue here that there are
two (2) key aspects: subjectivity and universality. Subjectivity refers to
whether the event is personally significant to ME. An event of enormous
significance to one person (such as a near fatal car accident) is likely to
be largely irrelevant to the drivers in the cars behind it (at least once
they get by the bottleneck). The shooting of President John F. Kennedy was
"an epoch-making experience" (in the terms of Emil Fackenheim) for many of
my generation, but is likely to engender blank stares from today's
"screenagers" .
The second aspect is Universality, meaning that its significance is
recognized on a broad and wide-ranging basis. The event must be seem to be
personally significant for many people, in many places, and over time, i.e.
across generations. In a paraphrase of E. H. Carr I would argue that any
big historical event may be a candidate for uniqueness but that few events
actually make the grade. On the face of it, the Holocaust is a very strong
candidate indeed.
Absolute Uniqueness versus Relative Uniqueness
The absolutist side in the uniqueness argument assert that the Holocaust
can't (often confused with the moral/ethical stand that it shouldn't) be
compared with any other event. It is grasped as being sui generis, an event
that is, by definition, totally unique. This is a position that reflects
the first usage in the dictionary (one and only; single; sole). The second
dictionary usage (having no like or equal; unparalleled) cannot be asserted
in isolation but must be shown through comparison with "unlike", "unequal"
or "non-parallel" events. For an event to be termed unique in the second
sense of the definition the responsible user must be familiar with all
possible parallels. This is at the heart of the "relativist" side.
The "absolutists" often use mystical or theological frames of reference and
it is hardly coincidental that they tend to be philosophers or theologians.
They talk in terms of "knowing" the unique essence of the Holocaust, and of
realizing it as a kind of awakening, a revelation of some hidden truth.
"Either you get it or you simply don't" says Theology Professor and
Methodist Minister Franklin Littel (Temple University) and it seems to me
that this same paradigmatic approach (albeit expressed in different,
sometimes contradictory ways) is also present in the works of Rabbi Emil
Fackenheim, Rabbi Richard Rubinstein and survivor- spiritual guru Elie Wiesel.
Who are the relativists? They tend to be political and social scientists or
historians. Their approach is predicated on comparative human behaviour and
they believe that understanding comes through the detailed study of
conditions in their wider contexts and in relationship to other events, both
more similar and less so. My own training (history) and my personal
predilections put me in the latter category as a relativist. The rest of
this lecture strives to expose the salient features of what makes sense to
me around this issue of the relative uniqueness of the Holocaust..
Levels of Relative Uniqueness
There are 3: within Nazi Germany, within Jewish history and within General
history.
a) Within Nazi Germany
Perhaps as many as 55 million people died in the Second World War, and 30 or
35 million in Europe, of whom nearly 6 million were Jews. The Nazis
oppressed and murdered a very large number of innocent human beings and that
included a rather long list of "politicals" (communists, socialists,
democrats, liberals, and even monarchists), "social deviants" (homosexuals,
prostitutes, vagabonds, the chronically unemployed), "religious opponents"
(Jehovah's Witness, priests and ministers that took their religious beliefs
seriously), common criminals, as well as the "racials" (slavs, gypsies or
Romi peoples, Jews) and the "defectives" (those with physical or mental
handicaps).
But the Nazis did NOT lump all of these prisoners together. Rather, they
carefully marked each separate category of prisoner with a sophisticated
system of colour coordinated badges - red for communists, pink for
homosexuals, black for priests, green for criminals, yellow for Jews...
More than that. The camps themselves were categorized to reflect the
severity of the institutions (not unlike the principle of maximum, medium
and minimum security prisoners.)
A document from 15 January 1941 drafted by Reinhard Heydrich head of the
RSHA and presented as evidence at the Nuremberg Trials of War Criminals
distinguishes concentration camps according to three (3) levels, and gives
examples. Dachau was on level 1. There was no mass extermination program
at Dachau and out of a total of 206,206 registered prisoners there were
31,591 deaths . Mauthausen is his example of a camp at level 3. Post-war
estimates are that 199,404 prisoners passed through Mauthausen; 119,000 of
them died and 38,120 of those victims were Jews.
Simply put - most prisoners survived Concentration Camps. If the Nazis
wanted to build a place where every prisoner was to be killed, they both
could and did. The Death Camps were such a hell-on-earth and the few who
escaped them did so against explicit Nazi intentions. They were designed
and built for the purpose of murdering each and every Jewish person that
was sent to them.
It is not a contradiction to maintain that Concentration Camps were not
intended for Jews and that many hundreds of thousands of Jews were in
actuality interned in the Concentration Camps of the Third Reich. Initially
(in 1933) 90% of the camp population was non-Jews and Jewish prisoners had
not been arrested because they were Jewish. The use of yellow badges
coincides with the arrest of significant numbers of Jews (some 30,000) in
the wake of the Kristall Night pogroms of November 9-10, 1938. But those
Jewish prisoners who could get out of Germany were given their release from
the camps and few Jews were interred in Concentration Camps when the War
began 10 months later. After 1939 the destination of choice for Jews were
ghettos in the East and then Death Camps. Jews return to Concentration
Camps (particularly their satellite labour facilities) after 1942, as slave
to be worked to death while many others were marched westwards in 1945 when
the Death Camps were liberated. But as a rule Jews are not directed to
Concentration Camps.
Concentration Camps were intended for "politicals", "social deviants",
"religious opponents", and common criminals - not "racials". These were
prisoners whose crimes were seen by the Nazis as having come as a
consequence of their own choosing. A communist chooses to be a communist.
Just as any criminal who commits an illegal act, he must be punished,
society must be protected. But a person can change their politics, or their
religion just as a bank robber can decide to stop robbing banks.
Not so the "racials". A Jew is a Jew because his blood is Jewish; being
racially a Slav or a Gypsy is an immutable condition. "Prisoners of choice"
are curable (at least in theory) whereas "Prisoners by race" are not.
Nothing they do or is done to them will affect their racial make-up. They
are "terminally diseased", like the handicapped who, by the way, were the
first victims to be gassed to death.
Yet there was neither the drive nor the over-riding need to murder all
handicapped persons or all Slavs. Some could be useful; some could have a
place in the New Order that was to be created in the Nazi-dominated
World-to-Come. A document presented to Hitler by Heinrich Himmler on 25 May
1940 outlines his plan for the enslavement of the Slavs . It is a ghastly
plan of oppression and subjugation, but it assumes that most of them will
continue to live on this earth - an option that the Nazis deprived from
Jews. Until 1943 the German army knowingly allowed officers who were
Gypsies to serve in its ranks whereas a decade earlier Jews had been
relentlessly hounded out of the most casual social clubs in Germany.
The Nazis (Hitler and his cabal of true-believers) were fervently convinced
that they were locked in a cosmic battle with the forces of Jewish evil for
control over the whole world. They were totally convinced that Jews were
the source of all of the evil in the world and that evil would exist as long
as the Jew remained in the world. They knew that their struggle (Mein
Kampf) was the battle to the death against the multi-faced Jewish enemy.
Only one side could emerge victorious; the other would be totally eliminated.
And only the Jew was seen in these terms; only the Jew was the total
embodiment of evil; only the Jew was without any place in the world of the
future; and only the Jew was to be totally murdered to the very last one.
The final solution (die entloesung) applied to Jews and to Jews alone and it
meant the death of each and every Jew.
This is the uniqueness of the Jew within the Holocaust.
b) Within Jewish history
The Jewish people have suffered pogroms and massacres before - but never
like this, never on this scale, never applied to all. The mass murder
planned in Shushan was never implemented but even so, it was localized to
Persia . The Pharoah limited his killing to first-born sons and the
Spanish Inquisition did not actually target Jews (who were supposed to all
be gone from the area) but focused on ostensible Christian converts who
retained Jewish beliefs and practises in secret. Like Bogdan Chmielnicki
in the mid-17th century and the Legions of the Black One Hundreds (for
example Kishinev, 1903) these attacks were geographically limited. To none
of them did it matter that there were Jews living in Amsterdam or
Thessaloniki.
But to the Nazis all Jews were the same; all Jews were part of the same
deadly enemy and all Jews had to be eliminated, from wherever they would hide.
c) Within general history
The Turkish massacre of Armenians was centered geographically in Anatoly
province. Except for two limited operations in Istanbul in April 1915,
Armenians living outside of the area of dispute were left alone. The
Turkish authorities controlled Jerusalem until December 1917. While the
brutal massacres were proceeding in Turkey, not a one of the residents of
the Armenian Quarter - or any other Armenian living in the Land of Israel of
any other part of the Turkish Empire were in danger for their lives. In
this comparative context it is more similar to a big pogrom than to a Holocaust.
Biafra, Rwanda, Cambodia are contemporary examples of civil wars, tribal
conflicts (partially with religious and regional overtones) and, at least in
the case of the last example, self-inflicted "auto-genocides" - a people
killing itself. When CNN transmitted pictures of starving inmates standing
behind barbed wire fences in Bosnia, everyone thought "Holocaust". Yet when
we look carefully at the similarities and the differences I think that we
see more differences than similarities. It is this which leads me to
conclude that the Holocaust has "no like or equal; unparalleled".
In itself though, the observation that the Holocaust is unique in history
doesn't necessarily mean anything at all. In later lectures I will try to
sketch out what I think it might mean (or rather, what it means to me) and
in the final lecture I intend to raise the question of whether or not there
is anything to learn from the Holocaust and, if there were, is it desirable
that we do so?
Final Word
I do not want to engage in a kind of "Genocide Sweepstakes" - we suffered
more than you did; our pain is greater than yours. A death is a death is a
death and pain cannot, should not, must not be quantified or ranked in order.
What is being compared is NOT the suffering of the victims but the
intentions of the perpetrators. The uniqueness of the Holocaust is not
connected to anything that the Jews did or did not do; it is rooted with the
Nazis and their accomplices.
In my understanding uniqueness is NOT an inherent quality of an historical
event that exists "out there" for anyone who wishes to discover it.
Uniqueness exists in a personal relationship with an event and it is held
only by those who choose to recognize it.
Many people around the world consider the Holocaust to have marked a turning
point in human history (an epoch-making event) and some of these see it also
as a seminal event or "root experience" (Fackenheim again) that challenges
them to reach a new faith, identity or understanding of the world. Are you
one of them?
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