Subject: JUICE Holocaust 7
Date:    Wed, 13 May 1998 01:30:08 +0000
To:      "Hebraic Heritage Newsgroup"<heb_roots_chr@geocities.com>

 

From:          JUICE Administration <juice@virtual.co.il>
To:            holocaust@virtual.co.il
Subject:       JUICE Holocaust 7

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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:  7/12
Lecturer: Elly Dlin

Lecture 7: Can the Holocaust be Explained?

"Sometimes days passed and stupid Ludmila did not appear in the forest.
Lekh would become possessed by a silent rage.  He would stare solemnly at
the birds in the cages, mumbling something to himself.  Finally, after
prolonged scrutiny he would choose the strongest bird, tie it to his wrist,
and prepare stinking paints of different colours which he mixed together
from the most varied components.  When the colours satisfied him, Lekh would
turn the bird over and paint its wings, head, and breast in rainbow hues
until it became more dappled and vivid than a bouquet of wildflowers.

Then he would go into the thick of the forest.  There Lekh took out the
painted bird and ordered me to hold it in my hand and squeeze it lightly.
The bird would begin to twitter and attract a flock of the same species
which would fly nervously over our heads.  Our prisoner, hearing them,
strained towards them, warbling more loudly, its little heart, locked in its
freshly painted breast, bleating violently.

When a sufficient number of birds gathered above our heads, Lekh would give
me a sign to release the prisoner.  It would soar, happy and free, a spot of
rainbow against the backdrop of clouds, and then plunge into the waiting
brown flock.  For an instant the birds were confounded.  The painted bird
circled from one end of the flock to the other, vainly trying to convince
its kin that it was one of them.  But, dazzled by its brilliant colours,
they flew around it unconvinced.  The painted bird would be forced farther
and farther away as it zealously tried to enter the ranks of the flock.  We
saw soon afterwards how one bird after another would peel off in fierce
attack.  Shortly the many-hued shape lost its place in the sky and dropped
to the ground.  These incidents happened often.  When we finally found the
painted birds they were usually dead.  Lekh keenly examined the number of
blows which the birds had received.  Blood seeped through their coloured
wings, diluting the paint and soiling Lekh's hands." (Jerzy Kosinski, THE
PAINTED BIRD, London: W.H. Allen, 1966, pp. 52-3).

The first theory that we will look at suggests that evil is in the basic
nature of people. We all hate, especially "the other", i.e. people different
than we are.  The jargon term is xenophobia.

THEORY 1: "THE DISLIKE OF THE UNLIKE"

Not without substance, it alone cannot explain the Holocaust.  By explaining
everything, it actually explains very little.  If the universal
characteristic of all of us is to be evil, to hate, to attack and to be
cruel, then why don't Holocausts happening all the time?  Why wasn't there a
Holocaust at work this morning, or in the bus?  And why was THE Holocaust
perpetrators by Germans?  Against Jews - especially given the fact that
German Jews, assimilated and steeped in German culture were strong local
patriots and some of the least "unlike" of any Jews, anywhere in the world.)
Is it coincidental that it began in the East, in 1941 and not elsewhere?

To push this theory to the absurd, why not a Holocaust by Swedes against
Danes or by left-handed soccer players against red-headed bicyclists?  And
if this were the true nature of man, then how can we explain the Righteous
Among the Nations who acted so differently?

THEORY 2: GERMAN NATIONAL CHARACTER

The focus here is on a particularly violent and deadly strain of
antisemitism that is seen to be inherent in German society.  From Luther to
Hitler, it expresses itself on occasion in speeches, writings and in violent
outbursts and, when married with the supposed "authoritarian personality
profile of Germans", is able to produce a Holocaust.  Versions range from
the crude (Lord van Sittart), to the popularist (William Shirer), to the
academic (Erich Fromme), to the newest bestseller (Daniel Jonah Goldhagen).

But the second theory also tends to universalize too much; history is very
particular.  The idea of a single, homogeneous, constant and immutable
character which explains national behaviour is at the same time too narrow
and too broad.  Not all (or even the very worst) of the mass murders were
Germans, whereas the German stereotype of strict obedience, blind
discipline, militaristic Prussian aristocrats more accurately fits the July
1944 plotters against the Fuehrer than it does Hitler's closest followers
who were South Germans. 

The theory of a German national character is a bad example of "reading
history backwards", i.e. knowing what happens at the end and then
selectively searching the historical record in order to pluck out ONLY those
pieces of the puzzle that conveniently fit into the picture that has already
been set.  Pieces from the same past that do not fit the theory are totally
ignored.  Where are Lessing, Beethoven and Goethe?  Are they any less a part
of the German character?

THEORY 3: HITLER'S PERSONALITY AND CHARISMATIC ATTRACTION

The Holocaust is explained in theory 3 as the personal mania of a
totalitarian dictator who manipulated people to do his bidding.  Through the
force of his personality he "brainwashed" or "hoodwinked" others into blind
obedience.  

His own antisemitic hatred was personal and may not have been shared widely.
Perhaps it could be traced to his relation-ship to his mother who died of
cancer under the care of a Jewish doctor and to a psychological shift in
Hitler's mind to seeing all Jews as lethal cancers infecting the body-
politic of Germans. Or perhaps it's related to doubts regarding his own
ancestry since Hitler's paternal grandmother became pregnant while serving
as a domestic in a Jewish home.  Regardless of the reasons for Hitler's
obsession with killing the Jews, this theory assumes that he was able to
foist his full agenda (including the Final Solution) on a passive,
submissive, hypnotized people.

Clearly proponents of this theory must either rule out "free will", at least
among people born in Europe, or assume that it was temporarily eclipsed
under the Third Reich.  Since no one else fully shared Hitler's personal
psyche, the basic question being asked here is "Why did WE KILL?" and that
has been dealt with in the 4th lecture of this series.

THEORY 4: TOTAL WAR

The Second World War was an extraordinary situation and the war in the East
was particularly brutal on all sides (which goes some way to answering the
question: why there and why 1941?).  The fate of the Nation lay in the
balance.  Surrounded by enemies who wished its destruction, the defenders of
Germanhood were convinced that it was "kill or be killed".  Brutalized by
the mass deaths of the First World War and numbed by the anonymity of death
in modern warfare, a decisive pre-emptive strike was required to hit the
common source of the enemies of the Reich - Judaism.  Destruction and death
was all around them; huge numbers of people were being uprooted, were on the
move.  The fighters were told that the Jews were behind both plutocratic
capitalism and godless communism, behind prostitution and international
crime.  The Jews were a powerful, yet invisible lobby that worked behind the
scenes to exploit and pervert the people Yet just as in previous theories
and not discounting it completely, this theory is too all-encompassing.  It
is overgeneralized and inexact.  Must total war bring about scapegoating and
an increase in inter-group hatreds?  No!  Antisemitism that was on the rise
in turn of the century  Czarist Russia but yet it was put on hold during the
Russo-Japanese War of 1905.

More importantly, the Final Solution was NOT a result of World War II but it
was a "separate war", arguably the core of the whole phenomenon.  It was not
a mere by-product of War but it is argued by many that the War developed out
of Hitler's obsession with solving the Jewish Problem.

THEORY 5: ANTISEMITISM

The Holocaust might be explained "because Esau hates Jacob", because until
the arrival of the Messiah, the chosen people are burdened with
antisemitism, hatred, exclusion from the rest of society, denomination in
history and the occasional pogrom that, if it gets out of hand may kill
millions.

In the second lecture I dealt with the relationship between antisemitism and
the Holocaust and so it is not necessary to add much.  Suffice it to say
that historical studies consistently show that antisemitism may not have
been a useful means for recruit Nazis or even for motivating the killers
(hence the controversy of Daniel Jonah Goldhagen).

THEORY 6: MODERNITY     

Several aspects of the relationship between Modernity and Holocaust was
raised in the 4th lecture and again there is validity to the theory, but it
is not complete.  The Allies were also deeply in Modernity yet they fought
against the Nazis.  They used the very same tools of social order,
bureaucracy,  technology, etc. to rid the world of Nazism, not to institute it.

More than that.  As a rule, the mass murders in the Holocaust were NOT
products of Third Reich indoctrination; they were the proponents of that
propaganda.   The Nazi leaders had all grown up and matured during the
democratic and liberal Weimar Republic or in the Empire that had preceded it.

THEORY 7: OPPORTUNISM, PERSONAL GAIN, AMBITION, FEAR

This theory postulates that the Holocaust occurred because of the personal
interests of the perpetrators, mostly greed, ambition or the settling of
accounts.

Whereas it may explain some of the actions, it does explain all of them.  It
may explain some of the shooters and looters but it does not explain the
ideologically committed, or the comprehensive bureaucratic machine, or the
passion of the top-level planners who did not need to kill Jews in the
Holocaust in order to gain personally.

THEORY 8: THE NEW MORALITY

Odilo Globocnik was a principal planner in the murder of Polish Jewry.  As
the man responsible for killing more than 2 million Jews in Aktion Reinhard
he later reported on a meeting with Hitler about the progress of the killing
operation.  "'And what did the Fuehrer say?'" he was asked.  "'Faster, get
the whole thing over with faster!'" came the reply.
 
"Then Ministerial Director, Dr. Herbert Linden of the Ministry of the
interior asked 'Would it not be better to burn the corpses rather than bury
them?  Perhaps another generation will think differently of the matter...'
Globocnik then replied 'But, gentlemen, if a generation coming after us
should be so cowardly and so corrupt as not to understand our deeds, which
are so beneficial and so necessary, then, gentlemen, the whole of National
Socialism will have been in vain.  Rather, we should bury bronze plates with
the corpses on which we should write that it was we who had the courage to
accomplish this gigantic task"'  Hitler then commented, 'Yes, my dear
Globocnik, that is the truth of the matter.  I entirely agree with you.'"
(Benno Mueller-Hill, MURDEROUS SCIENCE).

What Goldhagen argues so powerfully is that free will DOES exist, that
people HAVE choices and MAY act differently.  The executioners killed
because, deep down, they were willing to do so or at least they did not want
to say "no!".  In the Third Reich murdering Jews became the highest good,
helping them was a moral sin, and few chose to transgress.

FINAL WORD

Ultimately, if we combine elements from all of these theories and mix them
together wherever they do fit together (and these possibilities are rich)
then we can go a long way towards explaining the Holocaust.  But the bottom
line remains that it happened because those who had the power to do it
wanted to and those who had the power to stop it reacted too little and
late, and those who were targeted could not stop it from happening to them.

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