10861.Ch01.Pdf

© 2007 UC Regents Buy this book University of California Press, one of the most distinguished university presses in the United States, enriches lives around the world by advancing scholarship in the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences. Its ac- tivities are supported by the UC Press Foundation and by philanthropic contributions from individuals and institutions. For more information, visit www.ucpress.edu. Sections of an earlier version of chapter 1 appeared in Michael Berkowitz, “Unmasking Counterhistory: An Introductory Exploration of Criminality and the Jewish Question,” in Criminals and Their Scientists: The History of Criminology in International Perspective (Washington, DC: German His- torical Institute; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 61–84. Pho- tos from the collections of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) are reproduced by permission. The views or opinions expressed in this book, and the context in which the images are used, do not neces- sarily reflect the views or policy of, nor imply approval or endorsement by, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. University of California Press Berkeley and Los Angeles, California University of California Press, Ltd. London, England © 2007 by The Regents of the University of California Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Berkowitz, Michael. The crime of my very existence : Nazism and the myth of Jewish criminality / Michael Berkowitz. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn: 978-0-520-25112-0 (cloth : alk. paper) isbn: 978-0-520-25114-4 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Antisemitism—Germany—History—20th century. 2. National socialism. 3. Propaganda, German—History—20th century. 4. Holocaust, Jewish (1939–1945)—Causes. 5. Jews—Germany— Public opinion. 6. Public opinion—Germany. 7. Germany—Ethnic relations. I. Title. ds146.g4b484 2007 305.892'404309043—dc22 2006029807 Manufactured in the United States of America 16 15 14 13 12 11 10 09 08 07 10987654321 This book is printed on New Leaf EcoBook 50, a 100% recycled fiber of which 50% is de-inked post-consumer waste, processed chlorine-free. Eco- Book 50 is acid-free and meets the minimum requirements of ansi/astm d5634-01 (Permanence of Paper). contents list of illustrations / xi preface / xiii acknowledgments / xxiii 1 / Above Suspicion? Facts, Myths, and Lies about Jews and Crime / 1 2 / The Construction of “Jewish Criminality” in Nazi Germany / 24 3 / The Self-Fulfilling Prophecy of the Ghettos / 46 4 / Inverting the Innocent and the Criminal in Concentration Camps / 74 5 / Re-presenting Zionism as the Apex of Global Conspiracy / 112 6 / Lingering Stereotypes and Jewish Displaced Persons / 145 7 / Jewish DPs Confronting the Law: Prescriptions, Self-Perceptions, and Pride of Self-Control / 197 Epilogue: The Estonia Enigma / 220 notes / 229 index / 301 one Above Suspicion? Facts,Myths,and Lies about Jews and Crime Being perceived wrongly is no less painful than being treated wrongly. franz rosenzweig for many germans the linking of Jews with criminality might have seemed less speculative than “scientific racism” as a basis for Nazi policies. Although some scholars detect the roots of racial anti-Semitism in pre- Christian antiquity,1 for the sake of illuminating the Holocaust, it suffices to begin with the broad Christian background. In European Christendom a rationale for discriminating against the Jews, accompanying the apparent incompatibility of the Jewish and Christian belief systems, was that Jews were socialized toward criminality and overrepresented in the realm of criminals. This conviction long predated the rise of racism, although some- times the persecution of Jews based on heredity, such as during the Span- ish Inquisition, is characterized as racist.2 To be sure, racial theories developed since the eighteenth century buttressed and embellished the connection between Jews and crime. Yet a notion of Jewish criminality could exist—and even thrive—without knowledge of or belief in “racial sci- ence” and its various offshoots. As Raul Hilberg and other scholars have demonstrated, National Social- ism often elicited “Christian” and “Reformation” persecution of the Jews as a precedent.3 The Nazis made an effort to demonstrate the good sense of their anti-Semitism by showing that discrimination against the Jews was part of the normal business of every modern state that wished to defend it- self. Simultaneously they sought to prove that their actions were consistent 1 with the development of Christian theology and even with the history of nations such as England and the United States. A huge pseudoscholarly tome, reissued at least three times, expounds on the idea that anti-Semitism has been a major theme of English history, and there were efforts to “prove” that Benjamin Franklin attempted to thwart the acceptance of Jews in the founding of the United States.4 Although the decision to recast Franklin as an anti-Semite was not quite as absurd as the Nazi campaign to identify the gangster Al Capone as a Jew,5 it was a poor example. In fact, Franklin is well remembered for his design for the official seal of the United States, which pictured “Moses standing on the Shore, and extending his Hand over the Sea, thereby causing the same to overwhelm Pharaoh who is sitting in an open Chariot, a Crown on his Head and a Sword in his Hand. Rays from a Pillar of Fire in the Clouds reaching to Moses, to ex- press that he acts by Command of the Deity.” Even more inappropriate for Nazism was Franklin’s “Motto”: “Rebellion to Tyrants is Obedience to God.”6 Germans, however, did not fare so well in his estimation. Consid- ering “the German settlers in the hinterland of Pennsylvania” in 1764, Franklin wrote: “Should the Palantine Boors be suffered to swarm into our settlements, and by herding together establish their language and manners, to the exclusion of ours?”7 A reputed anti-Semitic diatribe of Franklin’s cited by the Nazis (still circulating on hate-mongering web sites), was eas- ily revealed as a fake, not least because it assigned the incorrect date to the Continental Congress. On more conventional grounds the Nazis portrayed the inception of Christianity as the watershed of Jews’ supposed revelation of their “criminal” character. Through Judas’s betrayal of Jesus in the Christological drama, it is possible to render Judas as the prototypical Jewish criminal— for allegedly undermining the nascent church and threatening Christians as individuals. The assumption that Jews are deceitful, following the example of Judas, is one of the most dogged anti-Semitic tenets.8 If one as- sumes that Jewry had been willfully obstinate in its ongoing refusal to ac- cept Christianity, as was pronounced in church authorities’ “disputations” in the Middle Ages, it is not a giant leap to suppose that Jews are more in- clined toward criminality than Christians. Martin Luther expounded on the “treachery” of Jewry in his “little book” On the Jews and Their Lies (1543), after it was clear that the Jews could not be enticed to his movement en masse. For the most part he fulminated against Christians who had per- mitted the Jews’ practice of “usury” to become transformed into acceptable 2 above suspicion? “thievery”: “Moreover, they are nothing but thieves and robbers who daily eat no morsel and wear no thread of clothing which they have not stolen and pilfered from us by means of their accursed usury. Thus they live from day to day, together with wife and child, by theft and robbery, as arch- thieves and robbers, in the most impenitent security.”9 Luther blurred the distinction between “thieves and robbers” in a literal sense and Jews engaged in the legal pursuit of money lending who were nonetheless “guilty” of “robbing” unwitting Christians. “Usury” as a ne- farious trade of the Jews was a major theme of Jud Süss (1940), a hugely pop- ular Nazi film loosely based on the legend of an eighteenth-century “Court Jew” who served as an adviser and financier to the duke of Württemberg.10 The professed necessity for “Aryanization,” which was little more than in- stitutionalized theft of Jewish property and assets, was that any and all Jew- ish economic relations with “Aryans” were destructive and duplicitous and therefore had to be eliminated.11 One of the initial campaigns against Jews as criminals—which did, unlike the vast majority of anti-Semitic allegations, have some basis in reality—was a reaction to the involvement of Jews in prostitution. Charges that Jews were procurers of prostitutes had been lodged in Venice in the early fifteenth century. This activity was seen as part and parcel of a community that was prone to no good—one that fenced stolen goods and took undue advantage of Gentiles through pawnbroking.12 Prostitution did not, however, continue to be identified with Italian Jewry, as “white slavery” was primarily seen as spreading from the most impoverished quarters of East- ern Europe to Berlin, London, Paris, New York, and Buenos Aires, espe- cially in the last decades of the nineteenth century. Thus, it came to be as- sociated with the international traffic in both willing and coerced women. Jews overwhelmingly regarded this practice as abhorrent and managed to virtually eliminate it as soon as they developed their own “policing” savvy in the early twentieth century in their own communities and by undermining global networks.13 Yet the highly sexualized “racial pollution” charge could also have appeared more plausible when mixed with the white slavery canard—which did contain a kernel of historical truth. When the Nazis wrote about the phenomenon in 1939, they failed to attach more than a handful of names, and no pictures, to their accusations.14 Nevertheless, the charge that white slavery was esteemed and protected by Jewish communities was wildly overstated in the 1930s and 1940s, with anti-Semites con- veniently ignoring Jews’ protests against the practice and their successful above suspicion? 3 efforts to eradicate it within their community.

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