People’s Democratic Republic of Algeria Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research Larbi Ben M’hidi University-Oum El Bouaghi
Faculty of Letters and Languages Department of English
The Holocaust and the American Culture: The Perception of the Holocaust in Novick’s The Holocaust in American Life
A Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master in Anglo-American studies
by: BOUTABBA Halima
Supervisor: Mr. FILALI Billel
Examiner: Dr. MAAMRI Fatima
2014-2015 I undertake that all materials presented for examination in my own work have not been written for me, in a whole or in part, by any other person(s). I also undertake that any quotation or paraphrase from the published or unpublished works by another person has been duly acknowledged. Accordingly, I assume liability for any mistakes or inadequacies that may appear in any part of the final product.
Oum el Bouaghi ……./ ……./ 2014
The condidate’s name and signature: ABSTRACT
The perception of the Holocaust in the American life traces the American attitudes towards the Holocaust from the immediate post WWII Era until the 1990’s.
Unquestionably, the American reception of the Holocaust endured a drastic shift due to a set of factors that shaped and crystallized the American public memory concerning the
Holocaust. Certainly, the Holocaust has always been addressed as the world’s bloodiest devilish events of all times and consequently became the paradigm of ultimate evil. The uniqueness of the American acuity of the Holocaust lays in the fact that the Holocaust eventually became a part of the American collective memory especially after the establishment of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum as the indictor of the
Americans’ absolute commitment to the remembrance and commemoration of the
Jewish legacy. Essentially, the most important outcome of the examination of the
American outlook of the Holocaust is that the Holocaust would remain valid, as long as, the Jews would exist and possess the power to control the human minds and shape their awareness about anything they desire.
Key Words: Holocaust, Perception, Americans, Attitudes, Memory, Awareness, Jews,
Examination. RÉSUMÉ
La perception de l'Holocauste dans la vie américaine retrace les attitudes américaines envers l'Holocauste du période après la Seconde Guerre mondiale jusqu'à ce que les années 1990. Incontestablement, la réception américain de l'Holocauste enduré un changement drastique, en raison d'un ensemble des facteurs qui ont façonné et cristallisé la mémoire public américain de l'Holocauste. Certainement, l'Holocauste a toujours été abordé dans les plus sanglantes manifestations diaboliques du monde de tous les temps et par conséquent est devenu le paradigme du mal ultime. L'unicité de l'acuité américain de l'Holocauste réside dans le fait que l'Holocauste est devenu finalement une partie de la mémoire collective américaine, en particulier; après la création du Musée de Mémorial d’holocauste Des États-Unis comme l'indicateur de l'engagement absolu des Américains pour le souvenir et la commémoration de l'héritage juif. Essentiellement, le résultat le plus important de l'examen des perspectives américain de l'Holocauste est que l'Holocauste resterait valable, aussi longtemps que les Juifs seraient existés et posséder le pouvoir de contrôler les esprits humains et façonner leur prise de conscience à propos de tout ce qu'ils désirent.
Mots clés: Holocauste, Perception, américains, les attitudes, la mémoire, la sensibilisation, les juifs, examen. ﻣﻠﺨﺺ
ان ھﺬه اﻟﺪراﺳﺔ ﺗﺘﻤﺤﻮر ﺣﻮل اﻟﻤﺤﺮﻗﺔ ﻛﻈﺎھﺮة ﺗﺎرﯾﺨﯿﺔ ﺑﺎﻟﻐﺔ اﻻھﻤﯿﺔ ﻓﺒﻌﺪ ﻣﺮور اﱞﻛﺜﺮ ﻣﻦ ﻧﺼﻒ ﻗﺮن ﻣﺎ زاﻟﺖ
ﺗﻌﺘﺒﺮ رﻣﺰا ﻟﻠﺸﺮ وﻧﻤﻮذﺟﺎ ﻟﻠﻮﺣﺸﯿﺔ .ﺑﺎﻹﺿﺎﻓﺔ اﻟﻰ ذﻟﻚ ﻓﻠﻠﻤﺤﺮﻗﺔ ّ اﱞھﻤﯿﺔ ﻛﺒﯿﺮة ﻓﻲ اﻟﺤﯿﺎة اﻻﱞﻣﺮﯾﻜﯿﺔ ﻓﻤﻦ
اﻟﻤﻤﻜﻦ ﺗﺘﺒﻊ اّراء اﻻﱞﻣﺮﯾﻜﯿﯿﻦ و ﻣﻮاﻗﻔﮭﻢ ﻣﻦ اﻟﻤﺤﺮﻗﺔ ﻣﻦ ﻓﺘﺮة ﻣﺎ ﺑﻌﺪ اﻟﺤﺮب اﻟﻌﺎﻟﻤﯿﺔ اﻟﺜﺎﻧﯿﺔ اﻟﻰ ﺳﻨﻮات
اﻟﺘﺴﻌﯿﻨﺎت. ﻣﻤﺎ ﻻ ﺷﻚ ﻓﯿﮫ اﱞن ﻣﻮاﻗﻒ اﻻﱞﻣﺮﯾﻜﯿﯿﻦ ﻣﻦ اﻟﻤﺤﺮﻗﺔ ﻋﺮﻓﺖ ﺗﻐﯿﯿﺮا ﺟﺬرﯾﺎ ﻋﻠﻰ ﻣﺮﱞ اﻟﺴﻨﯿﻦ و ﯾﺮﺟﻊ ﻟﻚ
اﱞﻟﻰ ﻋﺪة ﻋﻮاﻣﻞ و اﻟﺘﻲ ﻟﻌﺒﺖ دورا اﱞﺳﺎﺳﯿﺎ ﻓﻲ ﺑﻠﻮرة اﻟﺬاﻛﺮة اﻻﻣﺮﯾﻜﯿﺔ اﻟﻤﺘﻌﻠﻘﺔ ﺑﺎﻟﻤﺤﺮﻗﺔ ﺣﺘﻰ اﺻﺒﺤﺖ ﺟﺰءا ﻻ
ﯾﺘﺠﺰأ ﻣﻨﮭﺎ . ﻣﻦ اﻟﻤﺆﻛﺪ اﱞن اﱞﺳﺘﻘﺒﺎل اﻻﱞﻣﺮﯾﻜﯿﯿﻦ ﻟﻠﻤﺤﺮﻗﺔ و ﻧﻈﺮﺗﮭﻢ اﱞﻟﯿﮭﺎ ﺗﺨﺘﻠﻒ ﻋﻦ ﺑﺎﻗﻲ دول اﻟﻌﺎﻟﻢ ﻓﻘﺪ
اﱞﺻﺒﺤﺖ ذﻛﺮاھﺎ ﺧﺎﻟﺪة ﺑﯿﻨﮭﻢ ﺧﺎﺻﺔ ﺑﻌﺪ ﻗﯿﺎم اﱞﻣﺮﯾﻜﺎ ﺑﺈﻧﺸﺎء ﻣﺘﺤﻒ اﻟﻮﻻﯾﺎ ت اﻟﻤﺘﺤﺪة اﻻﱞﻣﺮﯾﻜﯿﺔ ﻟﺘﺨﻠﯿﺪ ذﻛﺮى
اﻟﻤﺤﺮﻗﺔ و ﻋﻠﻰ ھﺬا اﻻﺳﺎس ﯾﻤﻜﻦ اﻟﻘﻮل اﱞن ذﻛﺮى اﻟﻤﺤﺮﻗﺔ ﺳﺘﻈﻞ ﺧﺎﻟﺪة ﻣﺎ دام اﻟﯿﮭﻮد ﻗﺎدرﯾﻦ ﻋﻠﻰ اﻟﺘﺤﻜﻢ و
اﻟﺘﻼﻋﺐ ﺑﻌﻘﻮل اﻟﻨﺎس . ii
DEDICATION
To my endearing mother, sister and brother.
And
To the spirit of my Father Abd El-Wahab. ACKNOLEDGEMENTS
First of all, I would like to thank my supervisor, Mr. Filali Billel who gave up his time and support, his kindness and continuous encouragement were effective throughout my support. The most important acknowledgements that must be made go to all my teachers of English Department especially, the Anglo-American studies. Really, I feel blessed to study under the supervision of such competent teachers.
My warmest and deepest gratitude is directed to my beloved, the one and the only, my precious mother Houria. I love you so much, you are the reason behind everything I have without you I have nothing. My world revolves around you. I would like to thank my only sister and brother Chahrazed and Aniss for help and support. To all of family and cousins especially Malek Nor el-Houda I love you sweetie. I thank from the bottom of my heart my intimate friends Fedou, Kouki, Rahma, Nour, Zamen, and Bouthina I love sisters, it has been a pleasure to know such lovely devoted friends I will never forget all of the memories we have together.
I would like to thank the special one in my entire life Walid. Getting to know you is blessing for me, I would never forget everything you have done and still do for me. I feel happy every single time I am around you. I love you more than I can express. LIST OF ACRONYMS
ANP American Nazi Party
HRP Historical Review Press
IHR Institute of Historical Review
KKK Ku Klux Klan
MAUP Interregional Academy of Personal Management
NAZI Nationalist Socialist German Workingmen’s Party
NF National Front
NPD Nazi Democratic Party
PFLP Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine
RAF Red Army Faction
SA Sturmabteilung: Storm Troopers
SNWPP National Socialist White People Party
SS Schutzstaffel: The Internal Security Force of Nazi Germany
USHMM The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum
WRB War Refuge Board
WWII The Second World War
Yad Vashem The World Center of Holocaust Research iv iv LIST OF TABLES
Table I: The Major Headlines of The American News papers in 1945 Census……66-67
v TABLE OF CONTENTS
Abstract
Résumé
ﻣﻠﺨﺺ
Dedication…………………………………………………………………………...... ii
Acknowledgements……………………………………………………………………..iii
List of Acronyms………………………………………………………………………..iv
List of Tables…………………………………………………………………………….v
Table of Contents……………………………………………………………………….vi
General Introduction…………………………………………………………………….1
CHAPTER 1: The Holocaust: A Historical Overview…………………….5
Introduction……………………………………………………………………………...5
I. The Holocaust, Definitions, Etymology, and Use of the Term……………………….6
II. Nazism: Leadership, Political Beliefs, and Ideology……………………………….12
III. The Nazi Rise to Power and the Persecution of the Jews…………………………20
1. Timeline of Persecution (1933-1945)………………………………………20
Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………...30
CHAPTER II: Holocaust Distortions: Holocaust Denial……………….31
Introduction…………………………………………………………………………….31
vi vi I. The Official Version of the Holocaust………………………………………………32
II. The Categories of Holocaust Distortions…………………………………………...33
1. Holocaust Justification……………………………………………………...33
2. Holocaust Promotion……………………………………………………….34
3. Holocaust Deflection and Whitewashing…………………………………..34
4. Holocaust De-Judaization…………………………………………………..34
5. Holocaust Equivalence……………………………………………………..35
6. Holocaust Inversion………………………………………………………...35
7. Holocaust Trivialization……………………………………………………36
8. Holocaust Denial…………………………………………………………....36
9. Motivations of the Distorters……………………………………………….37
III. Holocaust Denial/ Revisionism…………………………………………………....37
1. The Revisionist Thesis……………………………………………………....39
2. The Claims of the Revisionists……………………………………………...40
3. Holocaust Denial: A Historical Survey……………………………………..41
IV. Holocaust Denial: An International View…………………………………………44
1. Holocaust Denial in the Middle East ( The Muslim World)………………..44
2. Holocaust Denial: Major European Countries……………………………...48 a. Germany…………………………………………………………...... 48
a. 1. Main Figures of Holocaust Denial in Germany……………………….....50
a. 1. 1. Horst Mahler……………………………………………………...50
vii a. 1. 2. Germar Rudolf………………………………………………………...51 b. France………………………………………………………………...... 52
b. 1. Main Figures of Holocaust Denial in France……………………...... 53
b. 1. 1. Jean-Marie Le Pen…………………………………………………….53
b. 1.2. Robert Faurisson……………………………………………………….54 c. Britain………………………………………………………………………………..55
c. 1.Main Figures of Holocaust Denial in Britain…………………………….55
c. 1.1.The David Irving Case……………………………………………...... 55
Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………...57 CHAPTER III: The Perception of the Holocaust in the United States.59
Introduction…………………………………………………………………………….59
I. The Holocaust in the American Life………………………………………………...60
1. The American Attitudes towards the Holocaust from 1945-1960s………....60
2. Scholarships on the Holocaust between 1945 and the 1960s………………..65
3. The American Attitudes towards the Holocaust from the 1960s Upwards….71
II. Towards a Holocaust-Aware Majority in the United States………………………..77
III. Holocaust Denial in the United States…………………………………………….79
1. Main Figures of Holocaust Denial in the United States…………………….83
a .Willis Carto…………………………………………………………………83
b. David Duke…………………………………………………………………84
viii viii viii viii c. Fred Leuchter…………………………………………………………...... 85
Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………...87
General Conclusion…………………………………………………………………….88
Work Cited……………………………………………………………………………..92
ix ix General Introduction
The twentieth century witnessed the world’s most shocking series of events in the history of human civilization. These events were characterized by horrors, extremism, and violation of human rights. This world crisis came into closure with the terrors in Bosnia, Rowanda, and Kosovo. Nazism as an ideology that advocated totalitarianism and promoted Aryan exceptionalism during the Second World War had an undeniable impact on the history of mankind. The perspectives and attitudes of this new system manifest in the mass murder and extermination of the European Jews which became known as “the Holocaust”.
The first chapter of the research is devoted to introduce the Holocaust as a term proving its definitions, etymology, and its use. More, it explores Nazism as an ideology starting with the foundation and the development of the Nationalist Socialist German
Workingmen’s Party (NAZI) with a special focus on its leader Adolf Hitler as the founder of the Nazi ideology. Moreover, the chapter explains the Nazi beliefs and ideology through Hitler’s book Mein Kampf which reflects the Nazi attitudes, beliefs, and perception of the Jews. In addition to that, it demonstrates a timeline of events and persecution starting from 1933 until 1945. The included timeline shows and informs the reader about the extremist measures and procedures adopted by the Nazi regime to eliminate the Jewish race from Europe.
As the symbol of evil and the exemplar of human atrocities, the Holocaust has been the subject of great controversy. Between denial and acceptance, scholars diverge
1 in their approaches toward this fundamental historical event as the” Exterminationists” and the” Revisionists” debate on whether it is the “Genocide of the century” or the
“Hoax of the twentieth century”.
The second chapter presents the Holocaust as a controversial subject. In this chapter the reader would be introduced to the different categories of Holocaust abuses and distortions concentrating on Holocaust denial as the most commonly adopted distortion. More, it offers a complete presentation of Holocaust denial including, the revisionist thesis, the claims of revisionists, and the motivations of the distorters. In addition to that, the chapter traces Holocaust denial around the world mainly: the
Islamic world, Germany, France, and Britain. Moreover, the chapter presents the main figures of Holocaust denial in the previously mentioned countries along with the punishment the deniers suffered from as a consequence of their deliberate expression of denial which is taken to be a criminal offence in many countries.
Obviously, the Holocaust has different perceptions in different parts of the world. However, the perception of the Holocaust in the United States seems to provoke ones’ mind to question the factors behind the establishment of a Holocaust memorial museum in the United States instead of Israel or even Germany which was the logical thing that should have happened. Unquestionably, the foundation of the United States
Holocaust Memorial Museum reflects the American sentiments towards the Jews and demonstrates their attitudes towards the Holocaust.
The third chapter spots light on the perception of the Holocaust in the United
States. Hence, it examines the American attitudes towards the Holocaust from the post-
Second World War period until the 1990s. In addition to that, the chapter explores
2 scholarships on the subject during that period of time focusing on the works that impacted and shaped the American awareness about the Holocaust. Moreover, it analyzes the reasons behind the acknowledgement of the Holocaust in the United States after decades of ignorance and highlights the factors that led to the establishment of the
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Furthermore, the reader would be introduced to Holocaust denial in the United States with the main figures who have adopted this side of the struggle.
In this respect, the reader should be aware of the fact that the researcher is not responsible for any misuse or misunderstanding of the dissertation data. The aim of the researcher is to introduce the readers to one of the bloodiest events in the history of mankind. Moreover, this research seeks to examine the significance of the Holocaust as a subject of dimensional importance so that the reader would not only be acquainted with the term, its real context, and all of the controversies related but, he would be able to coin his own views about the Holocaust.
However, the research covers the ways in which the Holocaust became a focal point in the structure of the American public memory, in order to; unveil the ambiguity surrounding this human experience in the American context. Furthermore, the reason behind choosing this particular theme is to answer the question, why the United States was and still interested in the Holocaust more than any other county in the world, more than Israel itself?.
However, it should be clear that the researcher tried to be objective since the issue deals with different opinions and viewpoints. But, she was faced by many obstacles namely the remarkable lack of sources on the subject which was very surprising and even shocking. Since the Holocaust is deemed to be a controversial issue,
3 even the available sources lacked the objectivity needed for the research or lacked the data required in order to be used as a reference in a research.
Actually, most of the works the researcher relied on in this research were subjective and indicated their writers’ bias to one of the conflicting sides. More, the theme of this research seems to have approximately no references and the only work worthy to be mentioned is Peter Novick’s The Holocaust in the American life in 1999, and the few researches which were conducted on this theme relied heavily on Novick’s work as it was a pioneering research on this topic.
Moreover, the reader should be aware that the researcher relied on the United
States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s official website (USHMM) as a primary source of information, despite the fact that; it represents the Holocaust as the genocide of the twentieth century.
Nevertheless, the purpose of the researcher of this work is very clear so that, any other understanding or interpretation of this work is to be taken on behalf of the reader; the researcher is not responsible for the readers’ responses to any of the materials embedded within the work.
4 CHAPTER I
The Holocaust: A Historical Overview
Introduction
The Holocaust is one of the world’s most despicable series of events yet, this manmade calamity is still ambiguous to young people of this generation. At the first glance, one may take the term Holocaust for granted as a crime, crematoria, or even as the genocide of the twentieth century without any further attempts for questioning or deeper understanding.
Although the Holocaust highlights the historical, political, and the cultural aspects of the first half of the twentieth century but, there are a lot of mysteries surrounding these everlasting events, consequently; there are a set of questions that need to be answered in order to understand at least what the Holocaust is? What caused it?
Who is the master mind behind it? Why the Jews? What were the methods applied to exterminate the targets?
This chapter aims at introducing the Holocaust as a term providing its etymology and use, in order to; give the reader a clear idea about the exact meaning and context of the theme this research would examine. Since the Holocaust was triggered by the Nazi
Party and its racial philosophies; the chapter would provide a detailed description of the
5 Nazi Party, its earlier development and rise to power along with a demonstration of
Adolf Hitler’s life and ideologies which would facilitate the understanding of the Nazi racial ideology and make the reader realize the real motives and causes behind the
Holocaust.
I. The Holocaust: definitions, etymology, and use of the term
There are a variety of terms used to describe what happened to the Jews during the Second World War, namely, genocide, crematoria, massacre, shoah, and holocaust.
After the end of the Holocaust, historians and popular writers used the term “genocide” to refer to the series of events that led to the extermination of the Jews in Germany and the German occupied territories.
The Webster Third New International Dictionary defines the word genocide as follows:
Geno-cide : gen+cide 1 : the use of deliberate systematic measures ( as killing, bodily or mental injury, unlivable conditions, prevention of births) calculated to bring about the extermination of a racial, political, or cultural group or destroy the language, religion, or culture of a group. 2: one who advocates or practices genocide (947).
The most commonly used term is” Holocaust” which was applied since the mid-
1970s to indicate the mass murder of the Jews in the Second World War by the Nazis.
Tracing back the origins of the term “Holocaust”, historians found that it comes from the Greek word (Holokaustos: holos, “whole” and kaustos, ‘’burnt’’) meaning sacrifice by fire (Dawidowicz, The War xxxvii).
According to The Century Dictionary, The first recorded chronicler to use the word “Holocaust’’ was the 20th-century monk Richard of Devizes in his account of the
6 coronation of Richard The Lionheart in 1189, to describe the mass murder of the Jews of London, but the term in this case refers to a “whole (holos) burnt (kaustos) sacrificial offering to god” (2859). Since 1960s, the term came to be used by scholars and popular writers to speciphically indicate the genocide of the Jews by the Nazi regime and its brutal ideologies (Niewyk and Nicosia 45).
The Holocaust has always been a controversial issue in addition to that the use of the term itself was debatable. The scholar Manfred Gerstenfeld argued that’’ the meaning of the term Holocaust has changed over the millennia.’’, and he continued to say that” the expression ‘Holokauston’ is found in the Septuagint, the Greek translation of the Hebrew Bible, where it translates the Hebrew word ‘Olah’, which signifies a burnt offering’’ (23).
Before the genocide of the Jews, the term was used in different contexts mostly to describe natural and manmade catastrophes and massacres, for instance, a 1918 forest fire in Minnesota, the 1914 San Francisco earthquake, and the Turkish massacre of the
Americans (Gerstenfeld 23). Some writers argued that the first use of the term
Holocaust occurred after the burning of the banned books by the New Nazi government when the News week magazine on May 1933 used the term “Holocaust” in its headline to describe the incident while, at the same time, The Time magazine preferred to use the term “bibliocaust”.
Among the other names of the Holocaust is Shoah. Shoah is a biblical word meaning “calamity”, it has become the standard Hebrew term for Holocaust since
1940s. This new term has widely replaced the word Holocaust. In France and Israel the scholars prefer to use this term due to many reasons including, the theologically offensive nature of the word Holocaust which they take it to refer to the Greek pagan customs (Gerstenfeld 23).
7 Moreover, the scholar Jurgen Craf asserted that “ the terms Holocaust and
Shoah are an indictment of the German people and its government from 1933 to 1945, an indictment which, in terms of severity , has been made against any other people or government at any time in history’’( Hoax 23). However, from their side the Nazis used the phrase ’’Finale Solution to the Jewish Question’’ or “The Final Solution’’ to describe or even to justify their deeds against the Jews to the world as if the extermination of the Jews was the only solution they had in order to fulfill their vision in which they pictured Germany free of Jews. Despite the fact that these terms vary in their meanings and usages from one culture to the other; they still refer to the same horrifying series of events that characterized the first half of the twentieth century.
Furthermore, The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum defines the
Holocaust as “The systematic, bureaucratic, state-sponsored persecution and murder of approximately six million Jews by the Nazi regime’’. This definition is not totally accurate, because the Nazis did not only persecute the Jews but, they targeted other non-
Jewish groups. Hence, a more accurate definition would demonstrate that: the
Holocaust is genocide in which six million Jewish and non-Jewish people were killed by Nazi Germany and its collaborators whether in Germany or in German occupied territories between (1933-1945). The non-Jewish groups were persecuted on ideological, political, racial, physical, and behavioral grounds among them:
Communists, Socialists, Roma (gypsies), some of the Slavic people (Poles), Soviet prisoners of war, Jehovah’s witnesses, people with mental and physical disabilities, and homosexuals.
While the persecution of the Jews began in 1933, the actual extermination took place during the Second World War. The Nazis and their accomplices were vicious to eliminate the Jews from the surface of the earth; it took them four and a half years to
8 kill six million Jews. They dedicated themselves to the murder of people whom they considered’’ unfit “to the German ideological, political, and social standards. They showed the Jews everything but mercy; they were just brutal murderers who never slowed down until they began to run out of Jews to kill. Yad Vashem, The World
Center of Holocaust Research describes the German’s hatred and devotion to the eradication of Jews as follows:
The crime of being a Jew was so Great, that every single one
had to be put to death-the men, the women, the children; the
committed, the uninterested, the apostates; the healthy and
creative, the sickly and the lazy-all were meant to suffer and die,
with no reprieve, no hope, no possible amnesty, nor chance for
alleviation. Most of the Jews of Europe were dead by 1945. A
civilization that had flourished for almost 2,000 years was no
more.
It would be true to say that the Germans committed the Holocaust not because they considered the Jews a potential threat, but because the victims were Jews, so the holocaust was motivated by pure racial hatred, this hatred was the reason behind killing not only men but also women, children, and even the newborn, simply, everyone who could be called a Jew.
Yet, as history indicates, the Jews were not the only victims of the Holocaust. It can be striking to realize that the primary targets of the Nazis, at least in the few first months of the new regime, were the Communists. Having ideologies which were incompatible with the Nazi ideology, the Communists were deemed to be eliminated from Germany (Friedlander 6).
9 On February 27, 1933, the Reichstag was set on fire and the Communists were falsely accused of arson by using fire as a signal of Communist insurrection, as a result, there were series of events that followed this incident including, manhunt which led to the arrest of almost thousand party members and sympathizers and to their imprisonment in newly created camps (Friedlander 6).
On February 28, the morning following the Reichstag fire, a presidential decree had already given Hitler emergency powers. More, it suspended the German citizens from their liberties and freedoms, including, freedom of speech, assembly, and expression. This power enabled Hitler and his followers to arrest five thousand
Communist officials justifying their actions by claiming that they were protecting
Germany from a communist Revolution. Importantly, although the Nazis failed to gain the majority in the election of March 5, there coalition with the Ultraconservatives
German National People’s Party obtained it. When in power, the Nazis started their campaign of terror by establishing the first concentration camp Dachau to imprison the communists who were misfits in the ideal Germany that Hitler wanted to preserve.
Dachau has been established on March 20 and was officially
inaugurated by SS chief Heinrich Himmler on April (The
Schutzstaffel, or SS, was the Nazi Party’s elite force […] In
June SS Group Leader Theodor Eicke became the camp’s
Commander, and a year later he was appointed ‘Inspector of
concentration camps’: under Himmler’s aegis he had become
the architect of the life-and-death routine of the camp inmate in
Hitler’s new Germany (Friedlander 6).
Among the ethnic groups that were victimized during the era of the Holocaust are the Slavs. The extermination of the Slavs was needed, in order to; create what the
10 10 Germans called Lebensraum or a living space for the Aryans who represent Hitler’s manifestation of the “Master Race”. In this respect, Hitler believed that the Slavs belong to an inferior race, so they must just vanish living the space they occupied to the masters (Germans), therefore, the Nazis used everything ranging from brutality and neglect to mass murder, in order to, make the Slavs disappear while the land should be invested in favor of the Aryans for the fulfillment of their expansionist ideas.
The Nazi revolution was broader than just the Holocaust. Its
second goal was to eliminate Slavs from central and Eastern
Europe and to create a Lebensraum [living space] for Aryans
[...] As Bartov [The Eastern Front; Hitler's Army] shows, it
barbarised the German armies on the eastern front. Most of their
three million men, from generals to ordinary soldiers, helped
exterminate captured Slav soldiers and civilians. This was
sometimes cold and deliberate murder of individuals (as with
Jews), sometimes generalised brutality and neglect [ ... ]German
soldiers' letters and memoirs reveal their terrible reasoning:
Slavs were 'the Asiatic-Bolshevik' horde, an inferior but
threatening race (Kershaw 150).
In addition to that, homosexuals as divergent from the Nazi social and ideological norms were also targets that must be eliminated. According to the United
States Holocaust Memorial Museum Website, the Nazis considered gay men effeminate and weak and could not be able to protect and fight for Germany. More, the homosexuals were unproductive as they were unable to produce children or members of the Aryan race. The Nazis strongly believed that the inferior races were able to produce
11 11 children more than the Aryans deed so, producing children was every German’s duty, so as to; preserve and guarantee and Aryan continuation.
In addition to that, the homosexuals were considered contagious so, they were deemed to perish so that, they would not contaminate the master race. Under existing new anti-gay laws the Nazi government started a campaign of terror and persecution against homosexuals led by Heinrich Himmler in 1936, consequently, he created the
Reich Central Office for the Combating of Homosexuality and Abortion (Longerich
237).
According to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, “Nazi Germany did not seek to kill all homosexuals. Nevertheless, the Nazi state, through active persecution, attempted to terrorize German homosexuals into sexual and social conformity, leaving thousands dead and shattering the lives of many more.”
II. Nazism: leadership, Political Beliefs and Ideology
Although most people are acquainted with names of figures who affected the world in a way or another whether positively or negatively such as: Mahatma Gandy,
Mussolini, and Hitler…etc. Yet, there are such names that became the exemplar of ultimate evil in world history and will remain as much as evil still exists, namely, Adolf
Hitler and Mussolini. However, the history of the twentieth century is still unknown to young people, as a matter of fact, they have no idea about this figures’ ways, values, and specifically their ideologies and political movements which had an immense influence on Europe and the rest of the world during the first half of the twentieth century. Unquestionably, the expression “Nazi Ideology” immediately provokes the human mind to think about horrors, terror, and death. It usually connotes dictatorship,
12 12 persecution, and racism in all its meanings and forms against anyone and everyone except the Aryans.
Before speaking about the Nazi Party (National Socialist party) or the development of Nazi Ideology and political beliefs, people should at first learn about the master mind behind the creation of this doctrine or as some scholars call it Nazi
Philosophy.
Adolf Hitler was born on April 20, 1989 in Braunau am Inn, a town in Austria-
Hungary (known in present day as: Austrian), in a modest traditional German family.
His father was a civil servant and Hitler’s idol as he grew up. More, Hitler was fascinated by the fact that his father succeeded in creating a better life for himself starting from scratch to become a well respected civil servant ( Hitler 17-18).
At school Hitler failed to distinguish himself from the others. After many attempts to study at the College of Fine Arts in Vienna; Hitler worked as a manual laborer, but he was dissatisfied from his situation. It is there In Vienna where he started to develop feelings of hatred towards the Jews as he realized that they were eminent in the cultivated society in Vienna.
In addition to that, he gradually became annoyed by the fact that they controlled and occupied high positions in Germany “my eyes were opened to two perils, the names of which I scarcely knew hitherto and had no notion whatsoever of their terrible significance for the existence of German people. These two perils were Marxism and
Judaism” (Hitler 28-29).
Hitler served in the German army during the First World War, he fought bravely to the extent that he was wounded and became temporarily blind. When in hospital he heard about the German defeat and blamed the socialists for that, because he was
13 13 convinced that the Socialists betrayal (they made the November Revolution) led to the defeat of Germany. As an acknowledgement for his bravery and commitment to defend his motherland during the war; he received both the Iron Cross First and Second classes; the Iron First Cross was rarely handed to given an enlisted man (Shirer 30).
After the end of the war and like any other soldier, Hitler found himself unemployed, he joined the German Workers’ Party which was a semi-military, semi- political organization. In 1920, the German Workers’ Party adopted a new name The
Nationalist Socialist German Workingmen’s Party (The Nazi), as a member of this party
Hitler really succeeded to stand out as a skilled orator and organizer which enabled him to became the Fuhrer(the leader) of the party. The party adopted a specific salute and greeting, in addition to that, the party published a newspaper through which Hitler denounced the Treaty of Versailles because he believed that Germany should take back what he considered German land. Besides, he explicitly expressed his intolerance towards the Socialists who organized strikes in 1918 which caused Germany to lose the war (“Nazi Germany” 6-7).
Moreover, he assigned the Stormtroopers (S.A. or the Brown Shirts) to protect
Nazi meetings and to ruin and distrust the meetings of their opponents and rivals, such as, the Communists and Socialists. In an attempt to overthrow the Weimar Republic,
Hitler and his S.A., joined by Ludendorff (former chief of Staff) and other militant reactionaries organized a rebellion when they announced a coup d’état in Munich, but they were suppressed by the Bavarian government, as result, Hitler was sentenced to five years imprisonment yet, he was released after nine months (“Nazi Germany” 7).
When in prison He wrote his book Mein Kampf in which he mentioned and explained the basics of the Nazi movement along with its goals and their vision of new idealistic and self-preserved Germany.
14 14 In his book, Hitler widely expressed his pride of being German or more specifically a member of the Aryan race or as he likes to call it “The Master Race”.
Hitler divided mankind into three categories-founder of culture, bearers of culture, and destroyers of culture; and he argues that the Aryan is the only race who represents the first category. In this respect, Hitler maintained that” It was he [the Aryan] who laid the ground work and erected the walls of every great structure in human culture […] it was the Aryan who has furnished the great building stones and plans for the edifices of all human progress; only the way in which these plans have been executed is to attributed to the qualities of each individual” (226).
More, Hitler strongly believed that the Aryan race is the “Superior race” and labeled the other races as “Inferior races”, and he continued to argue that the Aryan is the founder of civilization and that the establishment of superior forms of civilization demanded the use of inferior races which “formed one of the most essential pre- requisites” in building a civilization not animals as people may think (230).
Moreover, he asserted that “ it is certain that the first stages of human civilization were not based so much on the use of tame animals as on the employment of human beings who were members of an inferior race[ …] only after subjugated races were employed as slaves a similar fate allotted to animals not vice versa”(230). Here
Hitler argued that the foundation of the earlier great civilizations was achieved via the use of inferior races as slaves not by the use of animals as people have always believed.
By this he was saying that the key element behind the triumph of the “Aryan” as the master was the exploitation of the other races.
It was not by chance that the first forms of civilization arose
there where the Aryan came into contact with inferior races,
subjugated them and forced them to obey his command. The
15 15 members of the inferior race became the first mechanical tools
in the service of a growing civilization […] as a conqueror, he
subjugated inferior races and turned their physical powers into
organized channels under his own leadership, forcing them to
follow his will and purpose (231).
In addition to that, Hitler asserted that, although the manners of employment imposed by the Aryan on the inferior races may have been hard, but it saved their lives and made it easier more than their former state or the so-called freedom did. Moreover,
Hitler argued that the Aryan ruthlessly maintained his position as a master, but at the same time he advanced civilization. At this point, he became a kind of critical toward the Aryan when he stated that “The Aryan neglected to maintain his own racial stock unmixed […] he became submerged in the racial mixture and gradually lost his cultural creativeness” (231). By this Hitler meant that the Aryan race failed to preserve his purity as an exceptional leading race due to his engagement with other races, mainly; through intermarriage. This gradually led the Aryan to lose the cultural position he had before.
After explaining his ideology of race which clarified his later attitudes towards the non-German people; Hitler moved to explain his hatred towards the Jews or as scholars call it Anti-Semitism. He stated that the Jews had always been spread all over the world and that the Jewish state had never had delimited borders or frontiers, besides, he thought that Judaism was not a religious doctrine but rather some teachings that regulates the Jews’ relations with others, namely, it forbade sexual relations with non-
Jewish people that’s way Jewish communities were exclusively Jewish, as a result, they had always formed a state within state. Nevertheless, he went further to describe the
Jew as a “Monkey Imitator” as he declared that the Jews had done no original creative
16 16 work in the domain of art, namely, music and architecture , therefore; they appropriate civilizations constructed by others or rather corrupt it.“ The Jews have not the creative abilities which are necessary to the founding of civilization[…] therefore the Jewish intellect will never be constructive but already destructive” ( 237).
Hitler mentioned Schopenhauer’s description of the Jew as the “Great Master of
Lies” and seemed to agree with him since his argued that the Jew is able to live among others, as long as, he can convince them that the Jews are not distinguished people but, they are the representatives of a religious faith which Hitler considered among their greatest falsehood. Consequently, they are obliged to conceal their true deceptive character and way of life which totally differs from the German character, in order to, ensure their existence within other nations and states.
In addition to that, Hitler maintained that the appropriation of their hosts’ language is in among the tactics and strategies the Jew utilizes to fit in other societies.
In describing the Jew’s use of the German language; Hitler said that “The Jew did not possess the slightest traces of the German character. He had only acquired the art of twisting the German language to his own uses, and that in a disgusting way, without having assimilated any other feature of the German character […] therefore this command of the language was the sole ground on which he could pretend to be a
German”. In indication to the fact that the Jews would never be considered as Germans,
Hitler asserted that it is by the tie of blood that members of a race are bound together not by language (244).
The Nazi Ideology or Philosophy embraced many political movements within its tenets. This had the effect of coining the Nazi ideology as the whole world recognizes it.
Starting with ‘Totalitarianism’, the Nazis believed that the Nazi Party should have total control of every aspect of the German life because Hitler’ aim was to gain a total
17 17 control of the Germans’ social life “Nazi Germany” 12). More, they believed that total control and loyalty should be placed in the hands of the leader or (Fuhrer) of Germany
Hitler himself.
Moreover, the Nazis considered democracy as weak and incompatible to the needs of the constantly growing world, and the proof was the Great Depression of 1929, which did not only effect the United States but also Germany. As the American investors proclaimed their loans from the Germans and since The German economy was largely dependent on American loans it started to decline. In 1931 one of Germany’s three largest joint-stock banks collapsed. In 1933, the German government failed to solve any of the existing problems including: inflation, mass unemployment, and industrial slump (“Nazi Germany” 8)
Nationalism is one of the core beliefs of the Nazis. The Nazis were eager to establish the nation of Germany, a nation whom they envisioned to be racially and culturally superior. However, this would be achieved through territorial and cultural unification and most importantly through self-determination. In this respect, Hitler asserted that” The question of ‘nationalizing’ a people is first and foremost one of establishing healthy social conditions which will furnish the grounds that are necessary for the education of the individual” (38). More, The Nazis had a series of plans that would help them to fulfill their vision; first, the purification of the German race by encouraging marriage and they even encouraged sexual relation between girls, who proved to have the characteristics of the Aryan race, and officers in order to produce children which was considered a duty. Second, the denunciation of the Treaty of
Versailles and, taking back what belonged to Germany Third, the extermination of the inferior races and taking the land they occupied to provide a living space for the Aryans.
Forth, the solidification of Germany’s powers by building military strength. Fifth, the
18 18 reduction of Germany’s dependency on imported goods and the establishment of a self- sufficient nation (“Nazi Germany” 7).
The Nazis advocated Socialism so that they would be able to posses complete control of the nation and the citizens. Socialism meant that, the government and particularly the Nazis should take control of big businesses as to ensure the fair treatment of the employees and to prevent the abuse of power or the making of personal profits on behalf of the national interests. But the Nazis did not accept the idea of the common ownership of the means of production advocated by the Communists who were considered the enemy. Eventually, the Nazis were able to control every aspect of the German life, including, mass media, education, and economy (“Nazi Germany” 13).
Moreover, Hitler’s own family represented the traditional German Values which
Hitler wanted to be the characteristics of every German family. Among these values were the upholding of Christian faith and morality, the appreciation of traditional arts such as music and theater which reflected Hitler’s passion and appreciation of Fine Arts for he believed that among the criteria of a superior civilization is originality and creativeness in the domain of art. Lastly, the Nazis wanted to establish a society in which men and women had clear roles; that’s way they oppressed, persecuted, and even exterminated homosexuals who threatened to ruin their picture of the German ideal family.
The Nazis believed that people should experience struggle at all its levels personal, national, and international; because struggle makes people fitter and healthier and more resistant to the hardships and difficulties of life. The aim of the Nazis was to make the Germans live securely within their expanded borders because as the representatives of the superior race they are destined to rule the world.
19 19 III. The Nazi Rise to Power and the Persecution of the Jews
The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Website mentioned that in
1933, the Jewish population of Europe exceeded nine millions and most Jews lived in
Germany or in countries that the Germans occupied or at least influenced during the
First World War. In 1930s the Jewish population in Germany has been deeply integrated in all aspects of the German social and professional life. The Jews had lived in Germany for generations and developed a strong sense of identity and loyalty to their
German heritage; over than 100.000 German Jew served in the army 12,000 among them died in the line of duty.
1. Timeline of Persecution
The following timeline of events demonstrates the Nazis rise to power and the commencement of the Jewish persecution:
On January 30, 1933 President Hindenburg invited Adolf Hitler, the leader of the
Nationalist Socialist German Workingmen’s Party one of the strongest parties in
Germany, to be Chancellor of Germany (Friedlander 6).
On March 5, 1933 the elections took place. Although the Nazis failed to gain the majority in the elections, there coalition with the Ultraconservatives enabled them to obtain it. Anti-Jewish violence spread after the elections (Friedlander 6).
On March 9, 1933 the Storm troopers seized dozens of Eastern European Jews in the Scheunenviertel, one of Berlin’s Jewish quarters, traditionally, the Jews were the first targets to be sent off to concentration camps (Friedlander 6-7).
On March 13, 1933 forcible closing of Jewish shops was imposed by the local
SA Mannheim, in Breslau, Jewish lawyers and judges were assaulted in the court
20 20 buildings; and in Gerdern, in Hesse, the SA( Sturmabteilung: Storm Detachment or
Assault Division, or Brown shirts) broke into Jewish homeas and beat up the inhabitants
(Friedlander 7).
On March 23, 1933 the Reichstag divested itself of its functions by passing the
Enabling Act-emergency decree of the German constitution which suspended individual freedoms and gave extraordinary legislative and executive powers to the Chancellor
(Hitler) (Friedlander 6). This act solidified Hitler’s position and put an end to democracy in Germany.
Importantly, Hitler quickly launched his campaign of intimidation, terror, and violence; then he moved to ostracize the Jews in all sectors of German society: economic, political, cultural, and social. In his book Adolf Hitler showed his admiration of violence as a tool to impose obedience, he asserted that “ I came also to understand that physical intimidation has its significance for the mass as well as for the individual[…]intimidation in workshops and in factories, in assembly halls and at mass demonstrations, will always meet with success” (Hitler 46).
The Nazis were able to use the government, the police, the courts, the schools, the newspapers, and radio to implement their racist ideology. This ideology announced that the Germans were racially superior and other races were inferior and that there were a struggle between the “Master Race” and other races who were deemed to be the enemies of Germany, namely, Jews, Communists, Socialists, Trade Unionists, and religious dissidents such as Jehovah’s Witnesses.
Essentially, Hitler used Anti-Semitism as a political tool to gain popular support by blaming the Jews for all of Germany’s problems, importantly, the defeat in WWI, economic depression, and the Bolshevik threat of Communism.
21 21 Since the Nazis considered the Jews as their misfortune; from 1933-1939 they legislated restrictions against Jews designed to push them out of Germany. It would fair to say that the Germans had tried anything they could to wipe out the Jews from the map of the world.
The following provided timeline of events and statistics are taken from the
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Website:
On April 7, 1933 the Nazi government declared that the Jews were debarred from working in the Civil Service and strips them of their equal rights.
On April 25, 1933 the school quota system limited the number of Jewish high school and university students in Germany.
On May10, 1933 the Nazis burn thousands of Anti-Nazi Jewish-authored and
“degenerate” books.
On July 14, 1933 the forcible sterilization of German citizens with congenital disabilities began. Consequently, about 500 children of black French soldiers and
German women living in the Rhineland were forcibly sterilized. In addition to that, the medical establishment’ approval of these campaigns led to the adoption of the so-called
‘euthanasia’ or mercy killing. Over 450,000 people were sterilized or killed in special institutions and hospitals before the program was ended. Obsessed with obtaining a pure
Aryan race, the Nazis began a program designed to “improve the human race” through selective breeding as a consequence Eugenics Laws were passed to reduce the number of inferior people through a program of forced sterilization, making them incapable of reproduction. The first victims of this program were people who doctors decided were
“mentally deficient.”
On January 13, 1935 Germany reclaimed the Saar region in accordance with the
Treaty of Versailles.
22 22 On March 16, 1935 military conscription in Germany begins, violating the Treaty of Versailles.
On May 31, 1935 the German army became all-Aryan meaning that the Jews were no longer allowed to serve in the German army.
On September 15, 1935 the Nuremburg Laws were enacted, defining who is a
Jews according to racial theory, banning marriage between Jews and non-Jews, and making Jews second-class citizens. These laws created a climate in which Jews were viewed as inferior or subhuman. Besides, trade unionists, political opponents, gays, and others labeled by the Nazis as enemies of the state were arrested and sent to concentration camps.
In 1936, the German troops marched into the Rhineland and Hitler signed an agreement with Italy’s fascist dictator, Mussolini, to establish the Berlin- Rome Axis.
On July 19, 1937 Buchenwald (Germany) concentration camp is established.
On March 13, 1938 Germany annexes Austria. The German troops invaded
Austria and were met with no resistance, Austria became part of greater Germany in what was known as “The Anschluss” or joining.
On August17, 1938 compulsory middle names (Sarah for women and Israel for men) for Jews in Germany were required in order to identify them as Jews.
On September 29, 1938 under the Munich Agreement England and France accepted the German annexation of parts of Czechoslovakia.
On October 5, 1938 passports of German Jews were marked with the letter ‘J’.
On November 9 and 10, 1938 ramping mobs throughout Germany and the newly acquired territories of Austria and Sudetenland (it refers to those northern, southwest, and western areas of Czechoslovakia) freely attacked the Jews in the street, in their homes, and their places of work and worship.
23 23 On November 12, 1938 all Jewish businesses were forcibly handed over to
Germans, Jews are forbidden from practicing medicine or law or attending universities; a fine of one billion Reich marks is imposed on Jews.
On November 15, 1938 Jewish children were banned from German schools.
In 1938, the Nazis unleashed new levels of state-sponsored violence against the
Jewish community, 17,000 Jews of Polish citizenship many of whom had been living in
Germany for decades, were arrested and relocated across the Polish border. The Polish government refused to take them back, so they were admitted to ‘relocation camps’ on the Polish frontier.
On March 15, 1939 the Germans occupied Bohemia and Marvia ,thus; the liquidation the Czechoslovak Republic took place.
On September 15, 1939 Germany invaded Poland, beginning the Second World
War. It was apparent that Hitler could not be held at his word. German tanks and bombers entered Poland and within three weeks crushed all organized resistance.
On September 3, 1939 England and France declared war against Germany; it was the beginning of the Second World War. For Hitler the War meant the fulfillment of
Germany’s destiny because it provided two opportunities: first, to gain additional territory to provide a living space for the Aryans; second, to forcibly rid Europe of all
Jews. By the time the war broke out, Hitler had already turned Germany into a police state and had long begun its campaign of terror and persecution.
On September 21, 1939 Reinhard Heydrich (Head of Security Police) ordered the establishment of Jewish Councils (Jubenrate) and the concentration of Jews in the larger cities of Poland.
On October 4, 1939 the Warsaw (Poland) Jubenrate was established.
24 24 On October 7, 1939 Jewish ‘resettlement’ in the Lublin District of Poland began; plans are made to establish a Jewish “reservation”.
On October 8, 1939 the first ghetto was established in Fiotrkow Trybunalsti,
Poland.
On November 23, 1939 Jews in Poland were required to wear the Jewish Badge
(star of Davis).
By the 1930s, the Jews were completely separated from non-Jews. They could not eat, drink, go to school, or socialize with German Christians. Jews could no longer own cars, bikes, or pets; the list of legal prohibitions was extensive. To legislate, to enforce, and administer his systematic campaign of persecution, Hitler used the local police, judges, and legislators, the very people entrusted to serve, protect, and administer justice to all people. Jews at all times had to carry their identification documents, which were stamped with a capital ‘J’ or the word ‘Jude’ (the German word for Jew). All Jews were forced to use Hebrew middle names, these names were officially recorded an all birth and marriage certificates.
While Hitler and the Nazi Party did not invent the use of propaganda to influence public opinion or built loyalty, the Nazi brought the use of it to new extremes during the years preceding the war. Joseph Gobbles, as the Minister of Public
Enlightenment and propaganda, made sure every form of expression in Germany from textbooks, to music, to art and film-carried the same message of the purity and righteousness of the German Aryan race and evils and evils of the Jews.
Massive rallies were held to build obedience and loyalty to the Nazi Party and national holidays were created to celebrate the German’s leader and party. Beginning at the age of six, the Aryan children of Germany were admitted in Nazi Youth groups. By
25 25 1939, 90% of these children belonged to various groups of the Nazi Youth Movement.
Hitler was quoted saying the key to his success was taking advantage of the youth of
Germany and that his aim was to create “violently active, dominating, intrepid and brutal youth” and it was obvious that he has succeeded.
At the same time as the Nazis waged their hateful campaign of terror to expel to
Jews from Germany, he strengthened and extended his private army by establishing the
SS (Security Police) as his elite force which had the mission of eliminating any opposition. The SS built concentration camps all over Germany without being officially charged, anyone suspected of disloyalty or disobedience would be sent to there without trial, most prisoners died due to diseases, maltreatment, or starvation.
Almost half of the German Jewish population between 1933 and 1939 left
Germany to escape the increasingly difficult and dangerous circumstances. But many countries including the United States were unwilling to take in Jewish refugees. In
1938, twenty-nine countries participated in the Evian Conference to discuss problems of refugees. With the exception of the Dominican Republic, no country agreed to rise its quota of immigration and except the miserable suffering Jews.
On April 9, 1940 Germany invaded Denmark and Norway.
On May 10, 1940 Germany invaded Belgium and the Netherlands; Chamberlain resigned, Winston Churchill became the Prime Minister of England.
On June 14, 1940 Germany occupied Paris; the first deportation of Polish political prisoners to Auschwitz (Poland) concentration camp began.
On November 15, 1940 the Warsaw ghetto was sealed.
On June 6, 1941 “Commissar Order”: prior to the German invasion of the Soviet
Union, the Wehrmacht ( the unified armed forces of Germany between 1935-1946)
26 26 High Command authorized its soldiers to murder any suspect of opposition, mainly;
Jews and Communists, thereby making the German army involved in war crimes the occupied territories.
On June 22, 1941 “Operation Barbarossa”: the German invasion of the Soviet
Union marked the beginning the “Final Solution”. The military units were accompanied by Einsatzgruppen (special action groups their whole task was to annihilate Jews through mass shooting). When a territory was occupied and secured; they would gather its locals and send them to killing sites located usually on the edges of the town , they soot every man, woman, and child, these groups killed over two million Jews in the
Baltic States, the Ukraine, and Russia. For the Nazis, even the mass shootings were not quick efficient enough so, Hitler ordered the construction of six death camps in Poland:
Auschwitz-Birkenau, Betzec, Chelmo, Majdanek, Sobibor, and Treblika. The primary objective of the creation of these camps was to kill as many people as fast as possible.
On June 23, 1941 the Einsatzgruppen (the German task forces) began mass killings in the Soviet Union.
On July 3, 1941 Herman Goring (a politician, military leader, and leading leader in the Nazi Party ) ordered Himmler Heindrich to plan the “Final Solution”.
On September 3, 1941 the experimental gassings were conducted at Auschwitz.
On September 19, 1941 German Jews were ordered to wear the Jewish badge.
On September 29-30, 1941 33,221 Jews were murdered at BaliYar near Kiev
(Ukraine).
On October 15, 1941 the deportation of German and Austrian Jews to ghettos in the
East begins.
27 27 On October 1941 the first transport of prisoners of war reached Majdnak (Poland) extermination camp.
On December7, 1941 The Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor; the United States enters World War II; four days later Germany and Italy declare war on the United
States.
On December 8, 1941 Gas Vans were introduced at Chelmno (Poland) extermination camp.
On December 20, 1942 the Wannsee Conference took place. The decision was made to transport Jews from ghettos all over Europe to be gassed in these death camps.
Until the ghettos were completely liquidated, Jews were rounded up and forcibly taken to the local “Unschlaplatz” or railway siding. Often people were obliged to wait in brutal hit or bitter cold, sometimes for days, for trains to become available. When the trains finally arrived, families were often torn apart as SS guards and police men shoved them into railroad box cars designed to transport lives stock.
The journey, whether for hours or often for days was made standing, without food, water, or sanitary facilities. Upon arrival at the camps the Nazis began their
‘selection’ sending victims to the right or the left. Strong young prisoners were sometimes “lucky”and were kept alive for slave labor. But even most of them eventually suffered from starvation and disease. For the vast majority of women with children, people who were sick, older adults, and others “of no further use” death was almost immediate. These people were marched hurriedly to buildings containing gas chambers. They were ordered to undress then marched naked to a ‘shower rooms’. Up to 2,000 people at a time could be accommodated in some of these rooms. The chambers’ massive steel doors were shit and Carbon Monoxide or Zyklon B (a form of
28 28 Cyanide), came pouring out of the shower nozzles. In a matter of a minute everyone was dead. Approximately half of all Jews were killed in Holocaust died in the gas chambers of these death camps.
On July 22, 1942 the mass deportation from the Warsaw ghetto to Treblinka
(Poland) extermination camp began.
On August 10, 1942 the deportations from Lvov to Belzec(Poland) extermination camp began as a result 50,000 Jews are gassed.
On April 19, 1943 the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising began.
On June 21, 1943 Himmler ordered the liquidation of all ghettos in occupied
Soviet territories.
On October 2, 1943 the Germans launched “Operation Harvest Festival”.
On June 25, 1944 the D-Day.
On June 25, 1944 the Sonderkommando (work units made up of German death camp prisoners) uprising at Auschwitz-Birkenau took place.
On November 1944 the Germans stopped gassing at Auschwitz.
On April 30, 1945 Hitler and Eva Braun committed suicide.
On May 7, 1945 Germany surrendered to the Allies.
On May 8, 1945 victory in Europe.
On August 6 and 9, 1945 Atomic bombs were dropped on Hiroshima and
Nagasaki (Japan).
On October 18, 1945 the Nuremburg Trials began.
29 29 Conclusion
As a conclusion, the Nazi ideology would remain the subject of great controversy as long as history would remember and commemorate the Holocaust or the
Jewish tragedy as some scholars name it. The reader should be aware that the basis of the Nazi ideology is built upon Hitler’s extremist racial ideas in addition to his perception of the non-Aryan people as inferior or subhuman. These racist notions represent the core beliefs of the Nazi Party which created the Nazi constitution that led to the legislation of a set of laws and procedures which completely excluded the Jews from every aspect of the German life and even eliminated them from the surface of the earth.
In addition, most people or even scholars define the Holocaust as the mass murder of six million Jews, but in fact this is not true because this definition deliberately neglects the other non-Jewish victims such as the Poles, the Slavs, the
Gypsies…etc who suffered a lot during the Holocaust and it would be a kind of falsification of history to ignore their sufferings and grievances in one of the world’s largest crimes.
30 30 Chapter II
Holocaust Distortions: Holocaust Denial
Introduction
Unquestionably, the Holocaust through history was and still a debatable issue as it endures many conflicts and struggles between exterminationists and the revisionists and between the revisionists and their governments. As a landmark in the history of the twentieth century, the Holocaust is considered as a taboo that bears no doubt or questioning. Any attempt to question any aspect of its aspects would be considered as a distortion of history and a manipulation of the world’s collective memory.
The chapter aims at presenting the Holocaust as a debatable conflicting matter by introducing all kinds of distortions related to the Holocaust, which many historians consider an abuse of history and a deliberate ignorance of the sufferings of an entire race. This chapter highlights the question of Holocaust Denial/ Holocaust Revisionism its definition, ideologies, motivations, and arguments. It also traces the perception of
Holocaust Denial around the world emphasizing on the Middle East and European countries, mainly; Germany, France, and Britain. More, it demonstrates the main figures of Holocaust Revisionism perpetrators.
31 31 I. The official version of the Holocaust
According to Paul Hilberg, many Orthodox historians argued that, Nazi leadership, having determined to erase the Jewish race from the surface of the earth, established six extermination camps whereby six million Jews were brutally persecuted, oppressed, and consequently exterminated or more specifically gassed to death. All of the six killing factories as some historians prefer to call were set out in Poland or in territories which were Polish before the war and were annexed by Germany in 1939 before being reannexed to Poland in 1945. The six extermination camps were: Belzec,
Treblinka, Sobibor, Chelmno, Majdanek, and Auschwitz. While the first four of them were pure extermination camps, namely, Belzec, Treblinka, Sobibor and Chelmno and only few Jews could survive them, Auschwitz and Majdanek were a combination of extermination and work camps (qtd. in Craf, Holocaust Revisionism 10).
As both extermination and labor factories, all Jews arriving to these two camps were selected and divided into two categories the ‘fit’ and the ‘unfit’. The ‘unfit’ for labor were immediately gassed while the ‘fit’ for work were used for compulsory labor.
Although the Jews were murdered in all of the camps yet, the methods used to eliminate them varied for example, at Belzec, Treblinka, Chelmno and Sobibor the murders were held in gas chambers through the use of Diesel exhaust gases. At Auschwitz and
Majdanek, the murder weapon was the insecticide Zyklon B. More, Carbon Monoxide was also used at Majdanek (Craf, Hoax 61).
In order to conceal the mass murders from the rest of the world, the Germans applied two methods to dispose the bodies of the gassed Jews so that, no mass graves would be found and the evidences of the crime would disappear without a trace:
32 32 At Auschwitz and Majdank, this was done partly in crematoria,
partly in the open air. In Chelmno, in addition to cremation in
the open, there is supposed to have been an underground
crematorium (which has disappeared without a trace); in
Treblinka, Sobibor, and Belzec, all the bodies were burnt in the
open. The ashes and bone fragments were then scattered, so that
no trace remained of the millions of victim (Craf, Hoax 62).
II. The Categories of Holocaust Distortions
Obviously, recent years witnessed many attempts to manipulate history and its collective memory which many writers considered as an abuse, a distortion, or even a rewriting of history. The Holocaust is among the widely spread controversies in world history as it endures many complications and struggles between those who accept the
Holocaust as truth, and those who doubt its existence. There are a variety of distortions and falsifications surrounding the Holocaust, namely, Holocaust Justification and
Promotion, Holocaust Deflection and Whitewashing, Holocaust De-Judaization,
Holocaust Equivalence, Holocaust Inversion, Holocaust Trivialization, and Holocaust
Denial.
1. Holocaust Justification
It consists of explaining and claiming that the Jews are the only responsibles for their enemies’ hatred and anti-Semitism towards them, consequently, they are responsible for their own destruction. Blaming the Jews for the hatred against them is a common theme in anti –Semitism (Gerstenfeld 24).
33 33 2. Holocaust Promotion
It is based on the encouragement of crimes and specifically genocide against the
Jews or the state of Israel. This can be conveyed explicitly by stating that the Jews must be killed as it propagates that the state of Israel has no right to exist and that the only means to achieve this would be through mass murder and genocide (Gerstenfeld 24).
3. Holocaust Deflection and Whitewashing
Holocaust Deflection consists of admitting that the Holocaust happened but, it does not accuse or blame any individual or a specific group for the genocide. This can be related to the fact that the Germans had many collaborators during the war, in addition to that, there were countries were local citizens had helped the Germans in the despoliation, the deportation, and the killing of the Jews. The advocators of Holocaust deflection consider it unfair to accuse the Nazis and their leader by the genocide while the Germans had many cooperators who helped them in the process of eliminating the
Jews during the war.
While Holocaust deflection entails the shifting of responsibility of individuals, specific groups, and nations to other parties; Whitewashing functions in order to clean an individual of blame without any deliberate accusation of others. In this case, it cleans the name of Adolf Hitler from the guilt but, simultaneously it accuses no one of the planned murder of the Jews (Gerstenfeld 24-25).
4. Holocaust De-Judaization
One of the types of De-Judaization is to minimize, as much as possible, the
Jewish character of the Jews as victims. Another subcategory of Holocaust de-
34 34 Judaization is the extension of the Holocaust to include many people other than the
Jews who were victims of the Second World War (Gerstenfeld 25)
5. Holocaust Equivalence
There are a variety of subcategories under this category for which motivations differ. Prewar and war time Holocaust equivalence is based on the allegation that the
Germans’ genocidal behavior during the Second World War should not be surprising as it resembles the attitudes of other nations before and during the war. The perpetrators of this distortion aimed at whitewashing or diminishing the German crimes. Another category is Postwar Holocaust equivalence which is based on the claim that there are many events in the postwar society that are similar in nature or equivalent to those caused by the Germans under the Nazi rule (Gerstenfeld 25-26) .
6. Holocaust Inversion
It is one of the categories of Holocaust abuse that is derived from Holocaust equivalence specifically targeting the Jews and Israel. Its perpetrators often claim that
Israel treats the Palestinians as the Germans did with the Jews during the WWII.
Holocaust inversion manifests itself through different means such as: speeches, writing, and visual media including: cartoons, graffiti, and placards. It may take the form of Nazi genocidal terminology to describe Israel’s actions. Moreover, it may also employ sinister characterization of Israel and the Israelis.
In other words, by associating Israel with the symbol of evil and criminal behavior, Nazi Germany, Holocaust inversion seeks to delegitimize its occupation of
Palestine and the creation of the state of Israel. It attacks and humiliates the Jewish
35 35 people by equating them with the perpetrators of the Holocaust as it serves to sanitize war crimes committed by the Germans and other European countries (Gerstenfeld 26).
7. Holocaust Trivialization
It is another subcategory of abuse derived from Holocaust Equivalence. It occurs when some ideologically and politically motivated activists metaphorically compare phenomena they oppose with the industrial-scale destruction of the Jews during the Second World War by the Germans and their collaborators. They may compare the Holocaust with issues like: environmental problems, the use of tobacco, the slaughter of animals, abortion, and human rights abuses.
Usually trivialization is not motivated by anti-Semitism but from the desire to take advantage of the Holocaust for their own purposes. Holocaust trivialization manifests itself through the insertion of Holocaust issues into a variety of disparate events that have no connection to the Holocaust which distorts and abuses its memory; such comparisons would diminish and even ignore the sufferance of the Jews during the war (Gerstenfeld 26-27).
8. Holocaust Denial
According to Manfred Gerstenfeld, Holocaust Denial can be defines as the rejection of the main events of the extermination of the Jews during the WWII. Among the main pillars of Holocaust denial is that the majority of the so called victims of the
Holocaust died of illnesses contracted in the death camps. Another central argument to denial is that the Nazis did not plan to kill all Jews. In addition to that, one of the central claims to Holocaust denial is that the Nazis did not plan or order for the elimination of
36 36 the Jewish race and even if they did so, there exists no single proof that associates Adolf
Hitler with the crimes committed against the Jews (24).
9. Motivations of the Distorters
Holocaust distorters are driven by different motivations to name a few:
Most of Holocaust manipulators are motivated by anti-Semitism and/or its latest
forms anti-Israelism. Many major anti-Semites deeply believe that the Holocaust
is the driving force of those who have positive perception and attitudes towards
the Jews and Israel.
Since Holocaust deniers have a special admiration for Hitler; their aim is to
weaken the accusations against Hitler’s Germany.
Copycatting or peer pressure. Many people know a little about the Holocaust
that’s way they can be easily influenced by members of media or societal elite or
even by public figures who are Holocaust distorters.
These motivations often lead to the desired result which promotes and propagates activities such as: boycotts and sanction campaigns against Israel (Gerstenfeld 30-31).
III. Holocaust Denial / Revisionism
Holocaust Denial or Holocaust Revisionism as most historians would like to name it is the most commonly advocated category of Holocaust distortion. Davis
Williams stated that “Holocaust Denial is, quite simply, the denial of the deliberate, systematic and industrialized mass murder of approximately six million Jews by Adolf
Hitler’s Nazi regime, the majority of those who were killed during the Holocaust” (11).
37 37 He moved to declare that the original Holocaust deniers were the Nazis themselves which was obvious as they sought to cover all the traces of their attempted extermination of the Jews” contemporaneously through the use of euphemistic language referring to it as ‘evacuation’ and ‘special treatment’ […] yet in private, the Nazi hierarchy could be quite open about its genocide of the Jews whilst simultaneously acknowledging the need for the utmost secrecy (11).
This approach was encapsulated on a speech by Hitler’s Reich Fuhrer SS
Heinrich Himmler, made to a gathering of one hundred and fifty SS (Schutzstaffel: the internal security force of Nazi Germany) officers in Posen on 4 October 1943:
I also want to talk to you frankly on a very grave matter. Among
ourselves it should be mentioned quite frankly and yet we will
never speak of it publicly […] I mean the evacuation of the
Jews, the extermination of the Jewish race […]it is in our
programme-elimination of the Jews; and we are doing it,
exterminating them[…] most of you know what it means when a
hundred corpses are lying side by side or five hundred or a
thousand[…]this is a page of glory in our history which has
never been written ( qtd. in Williams 11).
During the Battle of Stalingrad and the Allied invasion of Europe, the Nazis hurried to cover up their crimes. Gas chambers were buried by dynamite, camps were abandoned and the surviving Jews were dragged on
“death marches” and those who were too ill to march were either shot or left to die. Even when the Nazis’ rule started to decline, they still attempted to kill as many Jews as possible. Since the destruction of the Nazi military
38 38 forces in 1945, Holocaust Denial was viewed by the West as a desperate attempt made by the surviving Nazis and their post-war acolytes to whitewash the Third Reich’s monstrous crimes of the past hoping to rehabilitate the Nazi regime( Williams 11-12)..
1. The Revisionist Thesis
The persecution of the Jews during the WWII is something that can never be denied because it was nothing but a real and brutal murder of innocent people. Recent years have endured the development of a small but influential group of scholars who name themselves ‘Revisionists” but their opponents prefer to call them ‘Holocaust deniers’. The Revisionists do not deny the fact that many Jews were shot by the Nazis during the Second World War but, they argue that the figure given by the Orthodox historians( one to two million Jews were shot ) is” heavily inflated.”In addition to that, they consider the number of six million Jewish victims as an irresponsible exaggeration
(Craf, Holocaust Revisionism12).
For the revisionists the Jewish tragedy, as exterminationists would like to call
it, is not radically divergent from the tragedies other nations have suffered during
wartimes. It is not strange that wartimes are gory and characterized sufferings and
oppression which manifests through: the persecution of ethnic and religious
minorities, the shooting of civilians, the establishment of concentration camps, and
forced labor. All of these things have occurred countless times through history, so
there is nothing special or exceptional about the Jewish case. Thus, the revisionists
claim that what happened to the Jews was by no means a historically unique event
or the most hideous crimes in the history of mankind as the official historians claim
(Craf, Holocaust Revisionism 12).
39 39 2. The Claims of Revisionists
Since Holocaust deniers aim to turn history upside down; they base their thesis upon a set of arguments to reinforce their thesis,
Hitler and the Nazis were not responsible for the outbreak of the Second World
War.
That there was no Nazi plan to wipe out the Jewish race.
That all evidences of extermination camps are faked.
That gas chambers did not exist but, they were erected after the war.
That Zyklon B, the gas allegedly used to kill Jewish victims, was an insecticide.
The Jews and others who died in concentration camps died from diseases like
typhus.
The Holocaust was a myth invented to force Germany to pay for the
establishment of the state of Israel, by this they attempt to delegitimize the
creation of the state of Israel.
That the Holocaust is a Jewish conspiracy (Williams 15).
Seeking to challenge their Orthodox historical opponents, Holocaust deniers have adopted many methods and techniques to solidify their claims and give them credence. Holocaust deniers devoted themselves to imply that a genuine, two-sided historical debate about the actuality of the Holocaust as a historical fact exists.
These methods include:
The use of phony academic titles, false descriptions and scientific status to
gain recognition and to give their views credibility and respectability.
The claim that they used to believe in the Holocaust but, their eyes were
opened by ‘evidence’ that convinced such as: David Irving.
40 40 The claim that the Germans murder of the Jews was just a reaction from
them to protect themselves against many threats, for example, the
declaration of war against Germany by the Jews, the Allied terror
bombing…ect. (Williams 15).
The emphasis on the concentration camps because; holocaust advocators
allege that the six million Jews were killed in this death camps while
neglecting the murders committed by the mobile SS officers which was a
part of the Nazi murderous T4 euthanasia programme.
Literalism over expression such as “special treatment” and “final solution”
used in Nazi documents in which they feature senses that in no way relate to
the historical context or events.
The use of the lack of a direct, written order by Adolf Hitler for the
termination of the Jews to suggest that it never come to pass.
The suggestion that, the massive documentation of the Holocaust and the eye
witness accounts of survivors have no validity and are to be totally
discounted (Williams 15).
3. Holocaust Denial: A Historical Survey
Most historians and scholars argue that Holocaust denial emerged after the end of the Second World War. Gerry Gable editor of the London-based anti fascist monthly Sear Chligh asserted that:
In 1944, people who were SS, who were propagandists, who
involved in the camp system, knew they lost the war, and left
Germany. Sweden was one of the places they went. Some went
to the Arab states, and into some South American countries.
41 41 There they began to work for the readjustment of history.
Holocaust denial material first appeared very early after the war.
(qtd. in Stern 6).
In 1947, the French fascist Maurice Bardéche published Nuremberg or the
Promised Land in which he claimed that “the final solution of the Jewish problem” In fact, the resettlement of the Germans in the East which fitted their intentions. Bardéche was followed by figures such as: Paul Rassinier. Paul Rassinier, a French social democrat who had fought for the resistance and had been imprisoned as a slave laborer in Buchan Wald concentration camps. He is considered amongst the earliest Holocaust deniers in Europe. His denial of the Holocaust was motivated by a mixture of both anti- communism and anti-Semitism, and fueled by his own experience (Williams 16).
As a Holocaust survivor he was expected to be one the Holocaust perpetrators yet, Rassinier used every inconsistency he could find in Holocaust documents and testimony accounts of the survivors to cast doubt on both the Nazi intention to kill the
Jews and the figure of Six million Jews killed was a shameful invention by the Jews. He believed that the testimonies of Jewish inmates who had survived extermination camps like Auschwitz-Birkenau was also false although he had no experience in the facility.
He solidified his position as a prominent Holocaust denier by publishing his book Le
Monsonge D’ulysse in 1949 and The Drama of the European Jews in 1964, his claims and arguments were advocated by Holocaust deniers in Europe and the United States such as: Harry Elmer Barnes (Williams 16).
The Americans were among the pioneering contributors to Holocaust denial literature. Harry Elmer Barnes was best known for his writing to whitewash the Nazi rule. In 1962 he published a pamphlet called Blasting the Historical Block out in which
42 42 he asserted that the Germans who were barred from Poland and Czechoslovakia after the Second World War suffered more than those Jews considered to be exterminated by the Nazis. In 1966, he published “Revisionism: A Key to Peace” in which he alleged that the carnage committed by the Allies in the same period were by far more cruel and vicious than the asserted termination of the Jews in gas chambers (Stern 6-7).
Unquestionably, Holocaust denial reached its peak in the 1970s with the publication of such determining works such as: Did Six Million Really Die? by Richard Harwood in
1974(Williams 16).
Denial literature was first introduced to the world outside of its neo-Nazi sphere in 1976, when Dr Arthur R. Butz, an American Professor at North-Western University wrote The Hoax of the Twentieth Century. Butz confessed that the Jews were persecuted but, he denied the claim that they were exterminated. More, Holocaust denial was initiated as a serious enterprise by the professional anti-Semites. In 1979, Willis
Carto, opened the Institute for Historical Review, in the same year the Institute had its first annual conference which was attended by deniers from around the world. This conference was crucial to Holocaust denial as it exposed American white supremacists and neo-Nazis to this new idea. Carto and his colleagues collected a group of professors and began publishing the Journal of Historical Review. It publishes journals, pamphlets, and audio and video tapes of books of its conferences which are sent all over the world
(Stern 7).
In fact, Holocaust denial was initially distinct by its crude anti-Semitism and a prevailing desire to recuperate the Third Reich, later works were characterized by the application of footnotes which gave their publications a more authoritative appearance designed to persuade the reader the readers that they were reading a work based on scientific scholarship rather than anti-Semitic propaganda and promotion. Holocaust
43 43 deniers did not only change the register of their writings but, this change was combined with a shift in emphasis in the content of the Holocaust denial. Holocaust deniers were aware about the fact that they should prove that there works were just anti-Semitic or hatred motivated material but a well constructed ideology.
In this respect, they progressed to examine and reinterpret the historical documentary evidence and even to destroy it in order to dispute the already established facts about the Holocaust by causing their readers to doubt historical proofs and testimonies. Whatever the methods and techniques adjusted by the deniers; the history of Holocaust denial shows that the basic line of their attacks has always been to assert that the Holocaust is a “hoax” and a “myth” used to vilify Germany and “invented” to justify the existence and continuation of the state of Israel since its foundation in 1948 (
Williams 17).
IV. Holocaust Denial: An International View
1. Holocaust Denial in the Middle East (Muslim World)
Holocaust denial in the Middle East can be traced back to the period after
WWII, when the former Nazis thought that the best refuge for them existed in the countries that had never suffered from Nazi occupation like other European countries did. Thus, people there were less hostile towards the Fascists than those who lived under their rule and witnessed their deeds.
Between 1930s and 1940s, the European Fascists who seemed to hate the Jews even more than the Nazis did, had courted Arab nationalists to push them to revolt against British Colonialism. In an effort to promote their anti-Semitic ideas and influence the Arabs of the region in order to gain support for their cause; Holocaust deniers started to react against the accusations by publishing newspapers and organizing
44 44 conferences as a kind of anti-Semitic propaganda. For example, Julius Streicher published an Iraqi edition of his anti-Semitic newspaper Der Sturmer.
In Cairo, the Deutcher Verein held an anti-Jewish lectures and distributed anti-
Semitic propaganda. Finally, there work paid off in Iraq when the new Premier Rashid
Ali, attacked a British air base in the country and called on Hitler to help him send away the British; consequently, an uprising accompanied by a pogrom took place in Baghdad and left over 120 Jews dead (Williams 69).
The Palestinian wartime leadership realized that there was no hope for sympathy from the British, mainly due to the Balfour Declaration of 1917 in which the British government had promised to form a Jewish national home in Palestine as if the foundation of the state of Israel was guaranteed by the British government and the
Palestinians could do nothing about it. Haj Amin al Husseini, the Palestinian Mufti of
Jerusalem, deeply believed that a German victory in the war would offer much greater hope for success in the Palestinians’ fight against the Zionists and give them a chance to get rid of the Israeli control in the area. He spent most of the wartime in Berlin coordinating German propaganda that was broadcast throughout the Arab world (
Williams 29).
Choosing the Middle East as a shelter, Fritz Stangl, the commandant of
Treblinka, lived in Damascus for many years then, he traveled to Brazil where he was caught and sent to Austria to stand trial. Alois Brunner, who played a great role in the extermination of the Jews of Slovakia and Greece, spent most of the post war era in
Egypt and Syria and it was believed that he died there at old age (Williams 69).
Although the Muslim countries provided an asylum for the former Nazis; Egypt in particular did not only unlocked its doors for them but, it has welcomed and
45 45 perceived them positively, and this was not merely a case of offering a refuge as the
Egyptian president Gamal Abdl Nasser stated that “we will use the services of those who know the mentality of our enemies.” (The leader gave the former Nazi officials the opportunity to hold positions in the Egyptian government during the 1950s and 1960s.
To name a few: Franz Bartel, previously the assistant Gestapo chief of Katowitz, worked in the Jewish Department of Egypt’s War Office.
Another figure is Standarten Fuhrer Baumann, who took part in the liquidation of the Warsaw ghetto, worked for the Palestine Liberation Front-based in Egypt. In addition to that, several Nazi doctors found jobs in Egypt, namely, Dr Herbert Heim, who was responsible for the medical experiments on prisoners at Mauthausen camp also, Dr Willerman who committed similar crimes at Dachau. Gamal Abdel Nasser persisted on his support of the Nazis as he needed their expertise in the field of anti-
Jewish propaganda; as a result, several former officers of the Goebbels’s department were employed in the Institute of the Study of Zionism which was established in Cairo in 1959 (Williams 69-70).
The belief that the state of Israel was created by Western powers, in order to; flush out their guilt for the Holocaust and that Israel utilizes the Holocaust to justify the occupation of Palestine encouraged the notion that Holocaust denial would aid the
Palestinian cause by delegitimizing Israel. This strategy is widely adopted by Arabs in the Muslim World. In 1976, the Saudi Arabian representative to the United Nations revealed his Holocaust denial in a speech to the UN Security Council in which he stated that Anne Frank Diary was a forgery and that gas chambers were an invention of the
“Zionist mass media”.
The Saudi Arabian government has always showed its support for Holocaust denial as kind of commitment towards Palestinian case. In 1977, the Saudi government
46 46 provided 25000 dollars to American neo-Nazi William Grimstad of the National
Alliance seeking to write anti-Zion, a collection of quotes from anti-Semites throughout history. In 1981, the head of the Pakistan-based World Muslim League, Inamullah khan provided more money for AntiZion and The Six Million Reconsidered also by Grimstad to be mailed to every British MP and member of the US Congress and Senate. Although many Arabian countries have welcomed Holocaust deniers, yet Iran has always been in the centre of focus because of its extreme state-sponsored Holocaust denial. In addition to that, it is by no means the only country to welcome Holocaust deniers with open arms
(Williams 71).
David Duke, the Ku Klux Klan leader and a bold white supremacist tried to reach the Middle East as anti-Semite and advocator of the Palestinian case. In 2002, he gave two anti-Semitic lectures in Bahrain on the topic “The Struggle against Zionism” and
“Israeli involvement in September 11”.Duke was interviewed by Qatar-based Al-
Jazeera Satellite Station, he also wrote an article for the English language Saudi Arabian
Arab Times in which he claimed that Israel was involved in the events of 9/11 and that the Mossad, The Israeli Intelligence Service, controlled Al-Qaida. Such allegations made by an American really delighted the Saudi Arabian government especially that fifteen of the nineteen 9/11 hijackers were from the kingdom in addition to al-Qaida leader Osama Bin Laden. Holocaust denial in the Muslim world is perpetrated by several individual propagandists who are worthy of mention. Namely, Ahmed Rami a former Moroccan military officer who lives in Sweden from which he broadcasts his
‘Radio of Islam” show over the internet, these activities have caused him to serve several sentences in prison (Williams 71-72).
Another figure who was based in Sweden is Israeli Shamir, a professional anti-
Zionist who supports a one-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian struggles and
47 47 conflicts; he converted from Judaism to Christianity in the 1990s. Shamir is not a
Holocaust denier in the strictest sense of the word” denial” that’s way other writers prefer to call him a “doubter” rather than a “denier”. In one of the interviews he asserted that it is the duty of every Muslim and Christian to deny the Holocaust (Williams 79).
2. Holocaust Denial: Major European Countries
a. Germany
As much as Germany is the one and the only responsible for the Holocaust; the perception of the Holocaust in Germany may be surprising and even ironic. At the same time when the German government is hunting down and persecuting the remaining Nazi war criminals; the later German born generations are convinced that the Holocaust was just a “lie”. The deniers’ interest in Germany was deliberate and intentional in the sense that professional deniers were mesmerized partly by Germany and partly by Hitler’s life and ideology. In an attempt to make the history of the Nazis positive; Willis Carto published and promoted materials glorifying Hitler and the Nazis (Stern 27).
Holocaust deniers in Germany seek to transform the prototype of the Germans as the personification of evil by saying that the Germans are not the only ones who had done some bad things during the Second World War but also everyone else did.
Holocaust deniers in Germany are very active in promoting Holocaust denial, for example, since its foundation the Institute of Historical Review has been translating
Holocaust denial materials and sending them to Germany which really empowers and strengthens Holocaust denial as an ideology seeking to wipe out the picture of Germany as “guilty”. The IHR published Dealing in Hate: The Development of Anti-German
Propaganda by Dr. Michael F. Connors in which he stated that:
48 48 At the heart of the conviction that German World War I1
atrocities were quantitatively and qualitatively without parallel
in the annals of human experience is the as yet unverified
allegation that, in the pursuit of a macabre "Final Solution,"
6,000,000 Jews were cold-bloodedly murdered in gas chambers
and before Einsatzkommando (mobile killing squads)firing
squads. The "evidence" presented in support of this charge to
date has not been more persuasive than that used to substantiate
the gruesome stories of German atrocity horrors spelled out in
the long since discredited Bryce Report of 1915 (qtd. in Stern
28).
As an advocator of Holocaust denial, the American Ku Klux Klan is working with other groups; hoping to establish a future of Germany free from the guilt of the Holocaust. Kenneth S. Stern argued that “As part o f their plan to help bring about a Fourth Reich, KKK organizers, Canadian skinheads, and British far-right extremists are working to make the memory of the Third Reich more "politically correct" (28-29).
It is worthy to mention that in 1991 they marched in the German town of Bayreuth in memory of the Nazi, Rudolf Hess. The New York Times reported that 2,000 people were gathered from at least seven European countries despite the fact that the gathering was illegal (qtd. in Stern 29).
Accordingly, Relativism is also present in the controversy of the Holocaust, after the documentary Shoah was televised MP Dr .A. Dregger suggested a common commemoration for both the victim and the perpetrators. The
Germans are eager to overcome the memories of a bitter past that’s way
49 49 David Irving’s book Hitler’s War became a best-seller in Germany because, he declared that Hitler never knew about the sadistic murder of the Jews and if he knew he would have stopped (qtd. in Stern 29).
This is something that the Germans would love to believe especially that, history would never forget what has happened during the Second
World War and, as long as the Jewish race exists they would never let the world forget about the Holocaust which they consider a highlight in the
Jewish history. According to a poll conducted by an American Jewish
Committee, 58 percent of Germans agree that time has come to overcome the memory of the Holocaust, and 39 percent agree that Jews are taking advantage of the Holocaust and exploiting it for their own purposes (qtd. in
Stern 30).
a. 1. Main Figures of Holocaust Denial in Germany
a. 1.1. Horst Mahler
Horst Mahler is one of the leading figures of Holocaust denial in Germany, and a leading member of the openly Nazi Democratic Party (NPD). He gained a reputation as a radical left-wing lawyer, when he decided to represent Andreas Baader along with other figures of the Baader-Meinhof out of which the Red Army Faction (RAF) evolved
Germany’s most prominent leftist terrorist group which killed over thirty people.
In 1970s; he helped Baader to escape prison and both of them fled to Jordan where they were trained in guerrilla tactics by the Popular Front for the Liberation of
Palestine (PFLP). When he returned to Germany; he was arrested and sentenced to fourteen years and his license as lawyer was suspended.
Mahler served ten years at the prison and was allowed to practice the law in
1988. On 9 November 2003, he contributed to the foundation of a new project, The
50 50 Society for the Rehabilitation of Those persecuted for the Refutation of the Holocaust
(VRBHV). He argued that the society aims “to eliminate the isolation of the persecuted which has dominated so far, is to guarantee the necessary public awareness of their struggle for justice, and is to provide the financial means for a successful judicial struggle”.(Rewriting History 107). Mahler has been imprisoned in several occasions due to his activities; in 2009 he was charged to six years without the possibility of getting an early release and he was stripped from his passport by the German authorities, a month later he received an additional five years for Holocaust denial and the trivialization of Nazi war crimes (Williams 107-108).
a. 1.2. Germar Rudolf
Germar Rudolf was born in 1964; he is a productive publisher of Holocaust denial materials. After the publication of his work the Rudolf-Gutachten (Rudolf
Report) in 1993, a pseudo-scientific booklet which denied the gassing of the Jews; he was fired from his work.
This publication got him an international notoriety in the mid 1990s, and brought him the attention of the German authorities who pursued him for Holocaust denial and sentenced him to fourteen months imprisonment in 1996. He fled to Spain when he stayed with Nazi Stalwart Otto-Ernest Remer; then he moved to Britain with the aid of
Pedro Varela in order to escape the German authorities. In Britain, he visited David
Irving and Nick Griffin and worked closely with the late Anthony Hancock, the
Brighton-based fascist printer who ran the Historical Review Press (HRP) which distributed many of Rudolf’s works in Britain.
In 2000, he moved to the United States and established an American outlet for his writings entitled “Theses and Dissertation Press”. Under his name and pseudonym
‘Ernest Gauss’, he authored hundreds of articles and booklets denying the Holocaust.
51 51 After a decade on the run, he was deported to Germany after many unsuccessful attempts to claim political asylum.
In 2007, he served two-and –a-half years in jail and was released in 2009. The year of 2008 witnessed the discontinuation of Rudolf’s quarterly Holocaust denial journal, “Vierteljahreshefte für freie Geschichtsforschung” (Vffg –“Quarterly journal for independent historical research”) which he had founded in 1997 as the only German- language publication set up with the sole purpose of denying the Holocaust (Williams
118).
b. France
Since the end of the Second World War, France has had a growth in the industry of Holocaust denial,especially that, the earlier Holocaust deniers were French, namely,
Paul Rassinier whose claims were adopted by many other deniers such as: Robert
Faurisson, a former associate professor of contemporary literature at the University of
Lyon, who argued that the Holocaust was a ‘lie’ and that gas chambers never existed.
In 1976, he wrote in the French paper Le Monde, that “The number of Jews destroyed by the Nazis is Zero” in which he alleged that the genocide never happened.
Along with Faurison, there were other Frenchman who advocated Holocaust denial including: Henri Roques who received a doctorate from the University of Nantes for his thesis in which he argued that Auschwitz had no gas chambers. In 1990, France passed a law against “criminal revisionism” under which Faurison was charged after a magazine interview in which he argued that the Nazis did not plan for the extermination of the Jews (Stern 33-43).
However, Denial in France was aided by the leader of the right-wing, xenophobic, racist National Party, Jean –Marie Le Pen. In an interview in 1987, when he was asked about Faurison and Roques he said” I do not say the gas chambers did not
52 52 exist. I could not see them …But I think this is minute detail of Second World War history.”(qtd. in Stern 34). At schools students are being exposed to Holocaust denial two young neo-Nazi college graduates-Fabrice Robert and Pier Gaiizerre-were trialed in
Paris in 1991 after they had pasted posters stating "Faurisson is right: Gas chambers = rubbish". As a result the students were deprived from their civil rights for five years.
Meanwhile, a new periodical, Revue d'histoirie revisionniste, has appeared. Directed by
Henri Roques, with editorial assistance from Robert Faurisson, the journal also translates IHR material into French.
b. 1.Main Figures of Holocaust Denial in France
b. 1.1. Jean-Maries Le Pen
Jean-Marie Le Pen was the former president of the French Font National (FN) since its initiation in 1972 to 2011. He had been prominent in Holocaust Trivialization which he had described as a “detail” in history. His personal electoral triumphs include being elected to the French National Assembly in 1986. He has run for president on five separate occasions. In 2002, he revolutionized contemporary French politics when he came second in the first round though he was subsequently defeated in the later round.
He was recently succeeded by his daughter Marine Le Pen (Williams 102).
In 1987, Le Pen was fined and ordered to pay 1.2 million francs, for stating: “I ask myself several questions. I’m not saying the gas chambers didn’t exist. I haven’t seen them myself. I haven’t particularly studied the question. But I believe it’s just a detail in the history of World War II.” In 1996 whilst in Germany Le Pen stated “If you take a 1,000-page book on World War II, the concentration camps take up only two pages and the gasnchambers ten to fifteen lines. This is what one calls a detail.” Having been stripped of his European parliamentary immunity, Le Pen was convicted and fined.
53 53 He has also been convicted for his remarks against Muslims and for assaulting a female
Socialist MP during the 1997 general election. Le Pen’s former deputy Bruno Gollnisc, has also been convicted for saying “I do not question the existence of concentration camps but historians could discuss the number of deaths.
As to the existence of gas chambers, it is up the historians to speak their minds.
He was found guilty of “an offence of verbal contestation of the existence of crimes against humanity” for which he was fined and handed a suspended prison sentence. This was overturned upon appeal in 2009 (Williams 102).
a. 1. 2.Robert Faurisson
Robert Faurisson is considered as one of the worlds’s recognized Holocaust deniers. A former professor of French Literature at the University of Lyon II, he has been active in the field of Holocaust denial since 1974. In 1991 Faurisson was removed from his position as professor under the provisions of the Gayssot Act. His works were distributed by La Vieille Taupe (Old Mole), a left-wing publishing house later re- launched as a Holocaust denial emporium by Pierre Guillaume. Faurisson’s extreme denial of the Holocaust and his claim that Anne Frank’s diary is a fake was very daring and has earned him a level of notoriety that enjoyed by many other Holocaust deniers.
In 2006 Faurisson was put on trial which was the result of an interview he gave on February 2005 with Sahar 1, the Iranian television station.
The next year, he addressed the Iranian Holocaust denial conference staged in
Tehran in a speech entitled “The Victories of Revisionism” in which he reaffirmed his belief, first expressed in 1980, that “The alleged Hitlerite gas chambers and the alleged genocide of the Jews form one and the same historical lie, which has permitted gigantic political and financial swindle whose main beneficiaries are the state of Israel and international Zionism and whose main victims are the German people – but not their
54 54 leaders – and the Palestinian people in their entirety.”( qtd. in Williams 90-91).His eightieth birthday was celebrated by a crowd of racists and anti-Semites in the Parisian theatre owned by Dieudonné M’bala M’bala who, during the course of the proceedings, made a number of anti-Semitic utterances that led to him bring fined by a French court. c. Britain
The British historians are among the pioneering figures of Holocaust denial.
David Irving has been Britain’s most recognized holocaust denier. Although he lucks a college degree; he succeeded in building a career out of writing books rehabilitating
Hitler and the Nazis on behalf of the Allies and the Jews. Unlike the works of other
Holocaust deniers; the works of David Irving were published by major publication houses, for instance, Viking Press in the United States published his book Hitler’s War.
In Hitler’s War, Irving claims that Hitler did not order, and did not know about, any extermination of Jews until 1943 or 1944.
According to Irving, it was Heinrich Himmler who was responsible for the extermination of Jews; Hitler only wanted Jews relocated, once the war was over. For four decades, Irving has been described as the “soft core” promoter of Holocaust denial.
Despite his efforts to establish himself as a respectable historian, he has never been a serious scholar (Stern 30-31). c. 1. Main Figures of Holocaust Denial in Britain
c. 1.1. The David Irving Case
The matter of Holocaust denial and the collective memory of the Second World
War were brought sharply into the centre of attention, particularly in Britain, due to the libel action brought by David Irving, Britain most famous Holocaust denier against an
American academic, Deborah Lipstadt. The story can be traced back to the publication of a book entitled Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory,
55 55 by Professor Lipstadt, the Dorot Chair in Modern Jewish and Holocaust Studies at
Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, which demonstrated this a history of Holocaust denial.
The book was just a representation of the history of Holocaust denial as many other books did, but what was special about this particular book was the response it perceived from one specific reader, namely, David Irving Caldwell Irving. At that time he was known as Britain’s premier “revisionist” historian. He has built his controversial careeron the back of a raft of books relating to the history of the Third Reich, including,
The Destruction of Dresden in 1963, and Hitler’s War in 1977. In 1983, he shocked the world by offering 1000 dollars to anyone who could prove that Hitler knew anything about the Holocaust.
The conflict between David Irving and Deborah Lipstadt started when she mentioned him in her book even though she referred to him on only sixteen of the book’s two hundred and thirty five pages. Lipstadt described him as “one of the most dangerous spokesman of Holocaust denial” and she went further to describe him as “Hitler partisan wearing blinkers” who manipulated and distorted documents for his own hands. As an attempt to silence her and to do what he has threatened her with; Irving issued a libel case in 1996. Irving decided to sue Lipstadt and her publishers, Penguin Books, in this case he chose to represent himself.
However, the case ended when Judge Justice Withering Verdict, delivered on11
April 2000, throwing out the libel action and ruling that Irving was a right-wing pro-
Nazi polemicist” pursuing a political agenda rather than being the professional historian he should be, this was a damning personal indictment of Irving and equally damning indictment of the entire political, social, and cultural movement that supported him in his denial of the Holocaust.
56 56 Since the loss of his label case; things have not been so easy on him. Consequently, his failed case bankrupted but, the worse was to come. In 2005, he travelled to Austria to address a student meeting, where he was arrested and trialed for identifying and glorifying the German Nazi Party. In 2006, he was sentenced to three years in jail as a consequence of two speeches he had made back in 1989 which violated the Austrian law. In these speeches he had dismissed the gas chambers at Auschwitz as a “fairy tale”.
Although his appeal in the case was dismissed, another judge released him in 2006 stating that the crimes were committed some time ago and that Irving had undergone an
“impeccable conversion”. At a press conference after his release, he stated that the Jews should ask themselves the question, why have they been so hated for 3000 years that there has been a pogrom after pogrom in country after country? It’s the one question they seem to be very shy of.
In 2009, Irving’s e-mail address book and his private e-mails published on line revealing not only the list of his contacts and relationships, eventually, he had to leave the house he rented after losing his own house when he declared his bankruptcy in 2002
(Williams 101).
Conclusion
Holocaust denial is having different perceptions in different countries. While some countries consider Holocaust denial as an expression of freedom of speech; other countries regard it as an abuse of history and a distortion of the memory of the Second
World War. Up to this day, seven European countries have adopted repressive laws which make Holocaust revisionism a criminal offence. For example, in Germany anti-
Repression laws, procedures, and measures are furious and vicious because, the survival of the entire German political system is built upon the acceptance of the Holocaust as a common sense. As an automatic consequence of these authoritarian suppressive laws;
57 57 many Holocaust deniers were persecuted for being open about what they really think has happened during the Second World War.
58 58 CHAPTER III
The Perception of the Holocaust in United States
Introduction
The Holocaust in the American life refers to the American attitudes towards the
Holocaust including how this phenomenon was perceived and treated by the American public. The chapter is devoted to the examination of the American attitudes towards the
Holocaust from the immediate postwar period until the 1990s. More, it traces the factors that shifted the American reception of the Holocaust from oblivion during the pre-1960s period to acknowledgement since the 1960s concentrating on the role of the American media, particularly, newspapers.
In addition to that, the chapter demonstrates a short history of the most prominent and influential scholarships on the subject of the Holocaust. Moreover, as a part of the
American public memory, the US government established the United States Holocaust
Memorial Museum in order to unable the Jewish minority in America to fully integrate within the American life.
Furthermore, the chapter aims at introducing the reader to the history of
Holocaust denial in the United Stated, because it is intriguing to know how a country which celebrates the Holocaust through the establishment of a Holocaust museum and a special commemoration day contains such prominent figures and institutions of
59 59 Holocaust denial. Finally, the chapter introduces America’s major Holocaust revisionists.
I. The Holocaust in the American Life
As one of the world’s most influential events, the Holocaust transformed the history of mankind forever. It simply became the symbol of ultimate evil and the exemplar of human atrocities. Obviously, the history of the Holocaust clearly demonstrates that it endured many controversies, falsifications, distortions, and perceptions. Unquestionably, the Holocaust had different perceptions in different parts of the world for example: while the Muslim world seems to deny the Holocaust; the
European countries are clearly Holocaust perpetrators.
The Holocaust in the United States or the perception of the Holocaust in
America appears to be very intriguing as it undergone a drastic shift from ignorance to recognition and from oblivion to awareness. More, the Holocaust in the American public memory can be divided into two major phases. The first phase ranges from post- war years 1945 until 1960s, and the second phase refers to period from the 1960s upwards.
1. The American Attitudes towards the Holocaust from 1945-1960s
After the end of the WWII, the Holocaust barely made an appearance in the
American life as if the Americans were completely unaware about what happened to the
European Jewry under the Nazi regime. In this respect, Novick maintained that
“Between the end of the war and the 1960s, as anyone who had lived through those years can testify, the Holocaust made scarcely any appearance in American public
60 60 discourse, and hardly more in Jewish public discourse_ especially directed to gentiles”
(103).
When describing the American views of the Holocaust he asserted that “surely there were some American Jews […] for whom the Holocaust was a traumatic experience. But the available evidence doesn’t suggest that, overall; American Jews were traumatized by the Holocaust, in any way worth wile sense of them” (Novick 2), by this Novick was clearly stating that the only ones how cared about the Holocaust at that time were the American Jews who sympathized the sufferings of their race.
During this period, the Holocaust was examined as a part of history and nothing more than an event that took place in Germany during the WWII that’s way; it had received approximately no attention from both the Americans and even the Jews themselves. Novick continued to argue that “In the first postwar years, the Holocaust was viewed, by Jews as well as Americans in general, as a part of history. It was an event that had taken place there not here; it was aspect of a period-the era of fascism- that was now ended; it has been the result of a particular constellation.”(177-178), he continued to say that, in the period following the war the Jews were not generally distinguished for specific attention as Nazi victims (65).
Furthermore, among the factors that led to the treatment of the Holocaust as a plain event of history is the temper of the postwar years which was more supportive of an “optimistic hopes for the culture, not appalling memories of the past”. In addition to that, fears of ”anti-Semitism” had compelled the Jews to remain silent about their tragedy, and prevented them from “calling attention to themselves” (Blum 258).
In support of this notion, Novick argued that during the war, fright of Anti-Semitism which was quite spread during the pre-war and post-war years inhabited the Jewish
61 61 organizations from calling attention to the specifically Jewish dimensions of Nazi atrocities (41-44). Consequently, one might say that the Jews themselves tried to bury the memories of what happened to them in order to protect themselves from the feelings of hatred towards them.
Another reason that may explain the American attitudes towards the Holocaust is
America’s geographical location. While the European countries were a part of the
Holocaust or had contained the Jewish population that were targeted by the Nazis; while the United States was geographically isolated from the crime scene. In addition to that, the American immigration policy admitted a small fraction of survivors as immigrants
(Novick 2-3).
Although they disagree over the dynamics that sparked the interest in the
Holocaust in the 1960s and 1970s; they appear to consent upon why the memory of the
Jewish catastrophe was either forgotten or repressed between the end of the WWII and the 1960s. Moreover, the clouds over Hiroshima and Nagasaki occurred to many as smoke rising from the crematoria of Auschwitz. With the break of the Cold War, within the context of a bipolar world on the edge of a nuclear war, the Final Solution was either relativized as just one example of mass murder perpetrated by a totalitarian regime or avoided in order not to disturb America’s new ally, West Germany ( Novick
63-123; Dawidowics, The Holocaust 4-19).
Undeniably, the beginning of the Cold War had a great effect on American receptivity of the Nazi genocide. The enemy was no longer Germany but the Soviet
Union, the Germans became allies. The Cold War itself represented a struggle against
Totalitarianism, a concept that embraced both Nazism and communism equally.
Moreover, refugees from communism became the new favored victims, simultaneously,
62 62 Jews’ fears of being associated with communism, especially intensified by the
Rosenberg Spy Trials in 1953, made it difficult for American Jews to depart attention from the Cold War to German crimes during the WWII ( Novick 93).
Another element that affected the American perception of the Holocaust was the bombing of Hiroshima. To clarify, considering the circumstances of that period of time; the bombing of Hiroshima seemed to be more important than the Jewish tragedy. It was an atrocity of more ongoing concern, both because Americans committed it and because of the fears on nuclear attack against the United States (Novick 177-178).
Between 1942 and 1944, the U.S. Sates Department and the Office of War
Information covered up reports of Germany death campaign against the Jews (Novick
2-3). The reason behind concealing these reports was that both agencies were afraid that such stories would be perceived as kind of war propaganda or would be concentrated on
Jewish victimization and the European Fronts (Novick 22-29). However, despite this opposition, the United States joined Britain and the Soviet Union in a December 17,
1942, declaration assuring that Germany was implementing “Hitler’s oft-repeated intention to exterminate the Jewish people in Europe” and warning that “this responsible for this crime would be prosecuted after Germany was defeated”( Wayman
72-76).
However, by 1944, the American views of and policy toward the Holocaust were changing (Baron 64). In this sense, Wayman maintained that in January President
Roosevelt established the War Refuge Board (WRB) in order to help displace refugees fleeing Axis territories (178-215). In 1945, when the Allied troops freed the lasting survivors in the German concentration camps, the WRB prepared the American public
63 63 for news of the extent of German massacre with its official statement in November 1944 that 1,765,000 Jews were killed at Auschwitz and Birkenau alone (Baron 64).
In his book Inside the Vicious Heart: Americans and the Liberation of Nazi
Concentration camps, Robert H. Abzug mentioned that a Gallup poll conducted at the time indicated that seventy-six percent of Americans believed that Germany had murdered many concentration camp inmates ( qtd. in Baron 64-65). According to
Wayman, this constituted a sharp increase in the American public awareness compared to the January 1943 poll in which only forty – seven percent believed the claims that two million Jews were killed by the Germans (326).
Furthermore, Earl G. Harrison, dean of the Law Faculty at the University of
Pennsylvania, led a commission aimed at investigating whether the Allied treatment of
Jewish refugees was appropriate given the unique circumstances as survivors of a protected policy of extirpation. At the end of September 1945, Harrison filed a report to
President Truman highlighting the reasons why Jewish refugees deserved a special care from their new guardians. More, he recommended that the Jews displaced persons should be moved from camps as soon as possible and evacuated rapidly from Austria and Germany, that Great Britain permit 100,000 Jews to settle in Palestine, and that
“reasonable numbers” of them be permitted to immigrate to the United States:
The first and plainest need of these people is a recognition of
their status and by this I mean their status as Jews. Most of them
spent years in the worst of the concentration camps. In many
cases, although the full extent is not yet known, they are the sole
survivors of their families, and many have been through the
agony of witnessing the destruction of their loved ones.
64 64 Understandably, therefore, their present condition, physical and
mental, is far worse than that of other groups (qtd. in Baron 65).
2. Scholarships on the Holocaust between 1945- 1960
At that period of time, it can be easily noticed that there was a lack of scholarships on the Holocaust because “nobody besides survivors seemed much interested in the Holocaust” in the immediate postwar period (Novick 272-273). In this sense, Lucy Dawidowicz asserted that” it is plain from even the most review of text books and scholarly works by English and American historians that the awesome events of the Holocaust have not been given their historic due”( The Holocaust 22-23).
The Americans’ perception of the Holocaust at that time was heavily shaped by the American press, mainly, newspapers which portrayed Nazi crimes as one of the world’s most hideous crimes in the history of human civilization. Writer Rebecca
Weston maintained that” when confirmed stories and photos of liberation reached the
West in 1945, the horrors of Nazi atrocities in American public. Subsequent questions of how and why were surely demanded by its empathetic citizens” (28).
Laurel Leff , author of “Buried by the Times: The Holocaust and America’s Most
Important Newspaper” stated that” this simply was so and it proved to be erroneous assumption that nation-wide press reports, including the New York Times, delivered evidence of Germany’s crimes against European Jews; to believe that their unique tragedy emerged vis-à-vis liberation is simply untrue”(qtd. in Weston 28).
By this Leff was deliberately arguing that the American newspapers, mainly, The
New York Times had a great impact on the perception of the Holocaust in the United
States. To clarify, the photographs of skeletal survivors and stacked corpses, and the
65 65 wrenching accounts of mass killings became a staple of American publications and news reels. By May 1945, eighty-four percent of Americans polled believed that
Germany has slaughtered millions in its camps and in other operations (Wayman 326).
As a result, it can be said that the Holocaust or the fate of the European Jewry has always been seen “through an American lens and represented through styles of the imagination and modes of cultural production at work in our society” (Mintz 81-84).
Table I. The Major Headlines of the American Newspapers in 1945:
The Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, Chicago Daily Tribune, and The
Washington Post.
Date Newspaper Headline Page
12/4/1945 Washington Liberated by Yanks: Extermination Camp Gassed 5 1
Post Million Jews, Survivor Says
2/5/1945 New York All Jews Hounded Under Hitler Rule: More Than 9 3,000,000 Slain in Germany and the Nazi- Times Occupied Countries.
14/5/1945 Los Angeles 6,200,000 Jewish Deaths Laid to Nazis: Welfare 1 Group Says One 'Mein Kampf' Plan Carried Times Out
1O/6/1945 New York 80% of Reich Jews Murdered by Nazis: All Those Left 13 in Europe Were Marked for Death by Times 1946, AMG Investigation Shows
25/11/1945 Chicago Tell How Naked Women Waited Nazi Gas Death: 5 Nightmarish Horror Scene Depicted in Daily Court
Tribune
30/11/1945 The New President Orders Eisenhower to End New Abuse of 1 Jews: He Acts on Harrison Report, Which York Times Likens Our Treatment to That of the Nazis
66 66 15/12/1945 Los Angeles Nazi Plan to Kill All Jews Disclosed: Germans Admit 2 Millions Destroyed and Slave Status for Times Poles Set Up 2
15/12/1945 New York Trial Data Reveal 6,000,000 Jews Died: Evidence at 8 Nuremberg Cites Brutality Used by Times Germans in Extermination
Source: (Weston 49).
This table demonstrates the Headlines of America’s most popular newspapers at
that time which shows clearly the role the American press plied in order to; envision
and picture the Nazis as murderers which most of the Americans believed.
In 1946, the Jewish Black Book Committee which consisted of representatives
from a variety of Jewish organizations released a book entitled The Black Book: The
Nazi Plan against the Jewish People. This book charged Germany for its crimes against
the Jewish people. It traced the escalation of German anti-Semitic measures, policies,
and procedures starting from its campaign of terror and impoverishment of the Jews of
Germany to the wartime annihilation of Jews throughout countries conquered by or
allied with Germany (qtd. in Baron 66).
Novick referred to the deficiency and the lack pre-1960 scholarly studies about
the Holocaust as one indicator of how little Americans knew about the subject. He
particularly mentioned Gerald Reitlinger’s The Final Solution (1953) and Leon
Poliakov’s Harvest of Hate (1954) as the only two exceptions that prove this significant
shortage in publication on the Holocaust. He describes both works as “imports from
abroad” with low sales in the United States which had never been reviewed by the
major historical journals (103).
67 67 According to Baron there were two other pioneering studies in the field, namely,
Eva Reichmann’s Hostages of Civilization: The Social Sources of National Socialist
Anti-Semitism (1951) and Joseph Tenenbaum’s Race and Reich: The Story of an Epoch
(1956) (67). In her work, Reichmann traced the German intellectual, political, and historical precedents for Nazi anti-Semitism. More, she demonstrated how Hitler took advantage of the Jews and used them as escape goats to exploit the economic and governmental crises of the Weimar Republic. She argued that, Hitler’s racism culminated in what is called” the catastrophe” her term for the Holocaust (Reichmann
172-235).
Similarly, Tenenbaum also focused on anti-Semitism as the driving force of the
Nazi ideology. In his preface, he presented this thesis”the Jew was considered race enemy number one and upon him the full Nazi fury was unleashed.” He analyzed the way in which Hitler had tried more moderate options such as mass immigration before pursuing a more radical approach which was executed through the extermination of
Jews in death camps (qtd. in Baron 67).
The 1950s endured the growth of scholarly literature on the methods applied by the Germans to subjugate and dehumanize camp captives and on inmates’ responses, treatment, and sufferings. At that time four survivors used their personal experiences into analyses of the concentration camp system and of the psychological mechanisms employed by the German guards that enabled them to murder their captives; simultaneously, it examined the means that helped prisoners endure and survive death.
These books are: Eugen Kagon’s The Theory and Practice of Hell: The German
Concentration Camps and The behind them (1950), Elie Cohen’s Human Behavior in the Concentration Camp (1953), Victor Frankl’s From Death -Camp to Existentialism:
68 68 A Psychiatrist’s Path to a New Theory ( 1959), and Bruno Bettelheim’s The Informed
Heart: Antonomy in a Message (1960) became standard works on how concentration- camp experience was interpreted until the 1976 publication of Terrence Des Pres’s The
Survivor: An Anatomy of Life in The Death Camps, which disputed Bettelheim’s unflattering interpretation of how most inmates survived (qtd. in Baron 69-70). In addition to that, in his book Himmler: The Evil Genius of the Third Reich (1953), Willi
Frischauer, examined the role the SS played in mastering the “science of killing” and using it to the extermination of the European Jewry (148-212).
Unquestionably, scholarships on Jewish reactions to Nazi reactions ranked behind the works dedicated to the advocators of the Final Solution. Importantly, significant studies were conducted and published in English before the 1960s. A range of books from the immediate postwar period represented and memorialized European communities with their cultural richness and religious heritage.
According to Baron the extermination of European Jewry manifested in for books that became bestsellers during the 1950s (75-76). The first book to be mentioned is John Hersey’s The Wall (1950). This novel was a fictionalized diary based upon documentary sources about Jewish uprising in the Warsaw Ghetto. Novick observed that the American Jewish committee sponsored a radio play adopted from the novel and broadcasted in 1950 (306-307).
The second book that impacted the American perception of the Holocaust was
The Diary of Anne Frank. In his book Selling the Holocaust: From Auschwitz to
Schindler; How History Is Bought, Packaged and Sold (1999), Tim Cole argued that the success of The Diary of Anne Frank boosted the Americans’ fascination with the fate of the Jews under the Nazi rule. The book quickly became the best seller after the first
69 69 printing of the American edition in 1952; by the end of the year 100,000 copies had been bought. The book was also transformed into a Broadway play which premiered in
1955. It was performed more than 700 times as it was staged in America’s most large cities (qtd. in Baron 76). Moreover, the scholar Alan Mintz pointed that the novel was powerful and had such great impact on Americans, in the sense that, it was able” to create a bridge of empathic connection, even identification, between the fate of the
European Jewry and ordinary American readers”(17).
The third influential book in the fifties was Leon Uris’s Exodus (1958). It became the bestselling novel in America at that time. More, an epic movie inspired from the novel was widely screened after its premiere in 1960. Despite its immense success in the United States showed millions of American how the Holocaust shaped
Jewish politics; Novick regarded the novel as “schlock fiction”. The movie did not only demonstrate the Israeli War of Independence, but the movie’s protagonist compared the
Israeli War of Independence to the American Revolution (157).
The forth book to be mentioned is Jeffrey Shandler’s While America Watches:
Televising the Holocaust (1991), in which he provided proofs that between 1960 and
1960 television familiarized and acquainted the American public with the Final
Solution. Shandler maintained that the Jewish life under the Nazis served as a theme for Sunday-morning religious shows and reality programs. He concluded that “By the late 1950s, American television had already fashioned a variety of presentations of this subject ... and it had begun to establish a relationship with viewers as a distinctive venue for encounters with the Holocaust” (qtd. in Baron 77).
70 70 3. The American Attitudes towards the Holocaust from 1960s
Upwards
The American attitudes towards the Holocaust endured a radical change in the
1960s. A one may ask what caused this shift, and what really triggered this huge modification at that particular period of time. It is interesting to know how the outlook of an entire nation transformed from oblivion to recognition over night. In this respect,
Novick stated that:
The Holocaust took place thousands of miles from America’s
shores. Holocaust survivors and their descendents are a small
fraction of 1 percent of the American population, and a small
fraction of American Jewry as well[…]Americans, including
many American Jews, were largely unaware of what we now
call the Holocaust while it was going on[…]so, in addition to
“why now?” we have to ask “why here? (2).
He argued that the 1960s witnessed the emergence of the “Holocaust” into consciousness as a distinctive event, separate in historical and moral character from other Nazi atrocities (65). Furthermore, Novick maintained that the term” Holocaust” became prominent in American Jewish life only after a series of events took place. The first event is The Eichmann (Adolf Eichmann) Trial in Israel in 1961 in which Adolf
Eichmann was charged with administrating “the Final Solution”. The trial brought the details of the Holocaust forcefully to public awareness because at that point of time people recognized that the Jews were really persecuted.
The second event is Israel’s 1967triumph in the Six-Days Arab-Israeli war. The third event is the surprising attack by Egypt and costly victory by Israel in the 1973
71 71 Yom Kippur war, which exposed the vulnerability and intensified a tendency to link the
Holocaust to the dilemma of Israel. This link increasingly pressed by the Israeli government and pro-Israeli lobbyists in the US (127-167). Most scholars accept and share Novick’s dating of the rise of America Holocaust awareness in the 1960s.
These factors were a catalyst for change, in the sense that, they transformed what people, specifically; the Americans used to think about the Holocaust and showed them what the Holocaust really stands for. In addition to these historical contributors, there were other factors that motivated the spread of Holocaust awareness in the United
States.
The American insight of the Holocaust was coined mainly via the media in all of its genres, including, newspapers, magazines, journals, and television…ect. To clarify,
Novick explained this point by stating that thanks to the “important and influential role”
Jews play in the media; it now often seems that one cannot pickup a newspaper without reading something related to the Holocaust. He stated that “After being gone through thousands of newspaper stories on the Holocaust, I’m struck by how often the photos of interviewing or quoting a local survivor was the peg on which such stories were hung”
(276).
How did this European event came to loom so large in American
consciousness? A good part of the answer in the fact[…]that
Jews play an important and influential role in Hollywood, the
television industry, and the newspaper, magazine, and book
publishing worlds. Anyone who would explain the massive
attention the Holocaust has received in these media in recent
72 72 years without reference to that fact is being naïve or
disingenuous (Novick 208).
A one may wonder and even ask what derived the American media to be dedicated in such a way to the cause of the Jews, despite the fact that, the Holocaust with all of its aspects happened far from America and did not touch or influence
America or the Americans in any way. The key element to realize what really happened that made the Americans appreciate and commemorate the Holocaust is to accept the fact that, Jews in America played a great role in politics and held positions that enabled them to construct and embed the Holocaust in the American culture.
When reading about the history of the Holocaust and its perception around the world, the reader may question and even wonder why the United States established the
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) in order to commemorate the
Holocaust. It is something striking to realize that there is a museum dedicated to inform and remind the worlds that once upon a time European Jewry were persecuted. In this respect, Novik stated that “[President Jimmy] Carter’s initiative [to create the United
States Holocaust Memorial Museum] was an attempt to placate American Jews, who were increasingly alienated by what they saw as the president’s “excessive evenhandedness” in dealing with Israeli and Palestinians”(216).
The Jews in America were powerful enough to create their own museum as a kind of popularization and memorization of a genocide committed against them. The
USHMM came into being “it was American Jews’ wealth and political influence that made it possible for them to bring to the Mall of Washington a monument to their weakness and vulnerability” (Novick195). Consequently, the American Jewry’s power,
73 73 influence, and control of American politics made it possible for them to achieve whatever they wanted.
American Jews were by far the wealthiest, best-educated, most
influential, in-every-way-most successful group in American
society- a group that, compared to other identifiable minority
groups, suffered no measurable discrimination and no
disadvantages on account of that minority status. But in so far as
Jewish identity could be anchored in the agony of European
Jewry, certification as (vicarious) victims could be claimed, with
all the moral privilege accompanying such certification
(Novick8-9).
When considering the Victims of the Holocaust; it can be easily noticed that the
Jews were and still on the top of the victimization pyramid. The Nazis did not only persecute the Jews but also Poles, Ukrainians, gypsies, and gays …ect. But the Jewish character of victim seemed to blow out in contrast to the other groups which were victimized by the Nazis simultaneously with the Jews.
The idea is that, the Jews were hunted by anti-Semitism whenever they go, as a result; they faced the problem of inclusion, in the sense, that they were perceived as foreigners or strangers who were completely alienated from the American society during the pre-1960s era.
Unlike other groups that wanted to be recognized as victims of
the Holocaust, gays do have political and cultural resources, and
they don’t face the same hostility to inclusion, based on prewar
and wartime experience, encountered by Poles and Ukrainians.
74 74 Their inclusion, moreover, could be seen as a contribution to the
cause of combating homophobia. And many of their spokesmen,
who press for inclusion, are Jewish (Novick 233).
Nevertheless, despite the fact that, they are atop of the victimization pyramid, the Jews’ competition was and still from other Jews as being representatives of other groups who also were victims of the Nazis.
However, the Jews were smart enough to use the Holocaust and take advantage of the Jewish character, in order; to support the State of Israel. In this respect, the
Jewish fund-raisers knew how to use the Holocaust funds for Israel “ the Holocaust came to be regularly invoked[…]indeed, brandished as a weapon[…]in American
Jewry’s struggle on behalf of an embattled Israel”(Novick 145).
Furthermore, when the Holocaust came to be known to the world as the Nazi’s most horrifying atrocity of all times; the Jews sought to use the world’s sentiments of empathy towards them in order to achieve and realize anything they desired mainly supporting their homeland Israel .The Holocaust was used to raise money for the State of Israel “the peak of monetary contributions to Israel was in 1967 and 1973 when the
Jews of Israel were thought to be on the eve of another Holocaust” (Novick 165).
This proves that the Jews started to use the Holocaust for their interests as soon as they were distinguished as the unique victims of Hitler’s regime. According to Greg
Raven the “Jews were essentially silent about the Holocaust claims when they were relatively powerless in American society, and increasingly vocal about these claims as their power grew” (63). Unquestionably, the more the Jews gained power the more they played the victim card to fulfill their aims. In this sense, Jews sometimes present
75 75 themselves as the same as Americans when they are powerless, or in need of help, and that they sometimes present themselves as being different (158).
More, the Jewish leaders seemed to use the Holocaust every time they needed to raise money for a cause they appear to advocate. To demonstrate, Novick mentioned that the millionaire who provided most of the original funding for the Simon Wiesenthal
Centre told a reporter that it was “a sad fact that Israel and Jewish education and all the other familiar buzzwords no longer seem to rally Jews behind the community. The
Holocaust, though, works every time” (188).
The Jews were the driving force behind the establishment of the Holocaust as a central element in the American life the “Jews have taken the initiative in focusing attention on the Holocaust in this country” (Novick 6). For the Jews, the Holocaust was the only thing that bond them together, to extant that; it became the symbol of the
Jewish identity and even its main constructor because, the only thing that all of the Jews shared was the heritage of the Holocaust.” The Holocaust, as virtually the only common dominator of American Jewish identity in the late twentieth century, has filled a need for a consensual symbol” (Novick 7). As a result,”…in what might be called American
‘folk Judaism’—less bounding tradition less scrupulous about theological consistency— a de factor sacralization of the Holocaust has taken place”(Novick 200).
In addition to that, the Holocaust has always been used as a weapon to give
Israel the legitimacy it needed to justify its creation and deflect any kind of criticism.
Novick asserted that “the Holocaust framework allowed one to put aside as irrelevant any legitimate grounds for criticizing Israel” (155). Moreover, the Holocaust was the
Jews’ most effective tool whenever they needed something they could just they could use and reuse the Holocaust over and over again generation after generation “this has
76 76 happened to those who think that history […] including Holocaust History […] has more to do with facts and context than that with feelings and whim, that every generation frames the Holocaust, represents the Holocaust, in ways that suit its mood” (
120).
Wherever the Jews existed their loyalty would always remain for Israel. More than that, anything they had ever done was for its sake, as they dedicated themselves to serve the home of all Jews Israel. A survey conducted on American Jewish volunteer fund-raisers in the late seventies found three quarters agreeing that” I feel more emotional when I hear Hatikvah[ Israel’s national anthem] than when I hear the Star-
Spangled Banner[ the American national anthem]” (Novick 189).
The Holocaust had an immense impact on the Americans because; they sympathized with the Jewish cause. In the late 1990s, in small village named
’whitewall’, almost entirely white, Christian fundamentalist, with no Jews a class of eighth graders (thirteen-years-olds) decided to collect six million paper clips, represent the Jews killed in the Holocaust and make them into a sculpture. The Whitewall paper clip project, as it came to be known, exemplifies the sort of penetration of the Holocaust into American consciousness (Smith C01).
. 4. Towards a Holocaust –Aware Majority in the United States
Significantly, Holocaust consciousness in the United States changed over time from unawareness to awareness. Furthermore, There are two pieces of evidence often referred to, in order to; prove that the American Jews felt only “minimal emotional” or
“intellectual attachment” to the Holocaust in the early 1960s (Baron 78). The first evidence to be cited consists of the responses of thirty-one Jewish scholars who participated in a symposium, “Jewishness and Younger Intellectuals, sponsored by
77 77 Commentary in April 1961 in which only two participants mentioned the extermination of European Jewry as an influence upon their identities (Novick 106).
The second highly important evidence to be cited is the published findings of a public-opinion survey about the Eichmann trial, entitled The Apathetic Majority, in which only thirty-three percent of those who followed the trial could answer that six million was the number of Jews murdered by Germany during the war.(qtd. in Baron
78).
Remarkably, among the factors that led to the emergence of the Holocaust as an
American memory was the United States’ contribution and help in the liberation of some of the concentration camps on the Western Front, in addition to the conduction of war crime trials that documented the Final Solution and represented the Holocaust not only for the American but also to the rest of the world through newspapers and documentaries.
Most Jewish explanations and interpretations viewed the Holocaust as a result of uncensored racism and invoked it to promote civil rights in general. Importantly, most postwar representations also projected the pride the Americans felt over defeating
Germany and the non-stopping obligation to fight Germany. Notably, the intensity of the Holocaust lent itself to fascinating depictions in books, plays, movies, and television programs. Before the tragedy was studied widely and extensively by scholars, incorporated into public education, and commemorated in a national museum, popular culture probably played an even greater role in informing the public than it does today
(Mintz 16-17).
Despite its incomparable effect in the United States yet, some writers argued that the Holocaust has been overestimated. While scholars such as Deborah Lipstad and Elie
78 78 Wit and Novick maintained “the assertion that the Holocaust is unique…like the claim that it is singularly incomprehensible…is, in practice, deeply offensive” (9). He continued to state that” For all of the extent to which the Holocaust has reverberated throughout American society, it’s not clear that the Holocaust is an American collective memory in any worthwhile sense” (278).
II. Holocaust Denial in the United States
Arnold foster argued that Holocaust denial found a positive reception in the
United States during the 1950s and 1960s, specifically; among individuals known to have strong connections with anti-Semitic publications and extremist groups. Their
Holocaust denial was driven by anti-Semitism (qtd. in Lipstadt 73). In this respect,
Stern asserted that Holocaust denial “although widely ridiculed”, has occurred in many
American institutions, namely; in classrooms, on the campus, in libraries, on computers, on radio, television, and politics. But the reception was not always positive. He conducted that “The Institute for Historical Review and its fellow deniers know that if they target their message wisely and widely, they will have some success; and where they don't, the, controversy they create will be success enough” (10).
More, Lipstadt maintained that until the commencement of the 1970s; Holocaust denial in the United States was primarily exclusive to these “fringe, extremist, and racist groups,” which were surprisingly supported in a number of seemingly respectable circles (73). She conducted that the earliest deniers were heavily influenced by the ideas and arguments of the French revisionist Paul Rassinier who claimed that the Holocaust had been created by Jewish leaders in order to control the world’s finances and increase support for the State of Israel. Like Rassinier, they attempted to show that it was statistically impossible for millions of Jews to have died (73).
79 79 Furthermore, in 1952 W.D. Herrstorm, an American Anti-Semite, declared in
Bible News Flashes that there were five million illegal aliens in the United States, most of whom were Jews. These were the Jews who were supposed to have died during the
Holocaust.” No use looking in Shickelgruber’s [Hitler] ovens for them. Walk down the streets of any American city. They are here” (qtd. in Lipstadt 73). By this Herrstorm meant that the claim that five million Jews were killed in the crematoria is invalid and completely false because, the Jews who were supposed to have died in Nazi concentration camps were actually living in America at that time.
In addition to that Foster mentioned that James Madole, who published the racist
National Renaissance Bulletin, wrote: ”Although the World’s Almanac attests to the fact that fewer than 600,000 Jews ever lived in Germany the Jews persisted in their monstrous lie that Nazi Germany had cremated six million of their co-racials.” In support of the same argument, Benjamin H. Freedman who provided financial support for the anti-Semitic publication Common Sense in 1951 argued that the Jews who had
“allegedly” died were actually in the United States (qtd. in Lipstadt 73).
In addition to that, Arnold Foster demonstrated that the famous American Nazi leader George Lincoln Rockwell called the Holocaust “a monstrous and profitable fraud.” He sustained Freedman’s notion that the six million “later died happily and richly in the Bronx, New York.” In June 1959, in an article entitled “Into the Valley of
Death Rode the Six Million. Or Did They?” Moreover, The American anti-Semite
Gerald L.K Smith’s Cross and the Flag informed its readers that the six million Jews were in the United States (qtd. in Lipstadt 73)
It would be accurate to say that the earliest deniers had overcome their association with the extremist groups as they managed to make their publications in more mainstream and moderate publications (Lipstadt 74). Moreover, Foster mentioned
80 80 that newspaper editors who received denial materials from Boniface Press, the publishing outlet run by App, were compelled to ask the Anti-Defamation League about clarifications, however; one editor demanded documentaries that prove that six million
Jews died during the Holocaust (qtd. in Lipstadt 74).
Denial literature was first introduced outside the Nazi sphere in 1976, when Dr.
Arthur R. Butz, an American Professor at North-Western University published his revolutionary work The Hoax of The Twentieth Century in which he admitted that Jews were persecuted, but denied they were exterminated. He insisted that the Jews” should be elated to discover that large numbers of people were not deliberately destroyed.”
Frequently, people who had never knew about the Holocaust learned about it through the controversies surrounding Butz’ work (Stern 7).
In 1987, in Aurora, Colorado, a high school teacher named Dorothy
Groteluschen informed her students that the Holocaust was a “holohoax, in addition to that, she gave the students copies of an article entitled “Swindlers of the Crematoria”, as a consequence; she was disciplined and removed from her position as head of department because her expressions were termed” highly offensive to Jews and others and are adequately supported by fact” that way, she sued the school. Finally, the school district ended up paying her $ 3,850 (Stern 10-157).
In 1990, in Winnetka, Illinois, The Jewish Advocate reported that couple removed their daughter from her junior high school classes when the Holocaust was studied. In fact, Holocaust study was permitted by Illinois law. The parents complained that the curriculum was the product of a "demented mind," namely Jewish propagandists who wanted the world to learn "gross distortions and myths" about the
Holocaust. In support of their decision, the girl's parents quoted The Hoax of the
Twentieth Century by Arthur butz (Stern10-157).
81 81 Furthermore, in 1990, Donald Hiner taught a Western Civilization 101 class at
Indiana-Purdue University. He said the Holocaust was a "myth"; that "the worst thing about Hitler is that without him, there would not be an Israel"; and that "If the
Holocaust really occurred, you wouldn't have 2.5 million in Israel getting reparations."
Considered a "good" teacher by students and administration alike, Hiner's Holocaust denial went unnoticed for more than half the academic year, until one student taped a lecture and brought it to a dean's attention (Stern 11).
In addition to that, during the 1991-92 academic year, as a denier Bradley Smith offered Holocaust denial ads to college newspapers, but most of them did not ran them.
According to Smith Holocaust “revisionism” was “roundly ridiculed, as if someone wanted to recast the experience of slavery as a myth, stating with a straight face that the slave ships were actually pleasure boats” (Stern 4). Before targeting college newspapers; he was interested in radio talk in which he expressed his revisionist ideas, as a result; various talk-shows’ hosts such as Barry Farber, refused to give him air time
(Stern 14).
Immediately, in 1990, the American Jewish Committee published Hate on Talk
Radio in which they exposed The Institute of Historical Review, the Liberty Lobby, and
Smith’s constant efforts to advance Holocaust denial through talk radio (Stern 14).
Interestingly, Holocaust deniers in California, New Jersey and elsewhere located
Holocaust denial literature into books, and several libraries adopted Holocaust denial material into their shelves and placed them alongside credible scholarships. For instance, in 1981, the public library in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, participated in a project to construct a “living monument” to the victims of the Holocaust. Shockingly, conducted a list books it wanted to buy including Arthur Butz’ The Hoax of the
Twentieth Century and David Hoggan’s The Myth of the Six Million (Stern 16).
82 82 Politically speaking, in 1990, the former Ku Klux Klan wizard David Duke won the majority of the white votes and became the governor of Louisiana despite his full- fledged Holocaust denial. He was not only caught buying Hitler’s book Mein Kampf
(My Struggle), he deliberately expressed his belief that the Holocaust was fiction.
Likewise, Patrick Buchanan a Republican presidential candidate in 1992 challenged the fact that Jews were gassed at Treblinka. He based his claims on a story of trapped children who survived a Washington, D.C., tunnel partially contaminated with Diesel fumes (Stern 18).
Moreover, when the United States declared that the United States Holocaust
Memorial Museum is to be established in Washington D.C., in 1983; the national president of the German American National Congress wrote that the “Capitol of the
States should not be utilized to memorialize events that happened elsewhere involving other people. If such a Holocaust Memorial is to built, let it be done in Israel with the tax money of their citizens” (Stern 22).
1. Main Figures of Holocaust Denial in the United States
a. Willis Carto
Willis Carto is considered to be one of the prominent figures of the international
Holocaust denial movement. In 1955, he established the Liberty Lobby along with its newspaper The Spotlight. Together they became the font of anti-Semitic conspiracy theory. In addition to that, he founded the Noontide Press which was specialized promoting Holocaust denial materials and the works of the American neo-Nazi Francis
Parker Yockey.
In 1979, Carto created the Institute of Historical Review (IHR). The institution was dedicated to the publication of Holocaust denial material with the assistance of the
83 83 former National Front (NF) activist Lewis Brandon a pseudonym for David McCalden.
It soon became the world’s major center of Holocaust denial. More, the institution issued its magazine, The Journal of Historical Review, along with the conferences it staged which became a magnet of Holocaust deniers all around the world. The institute with its revisionist publications represented a beacon of hope for all Holocaust deniers across the globe to publish their revisionist writings that led them to be persecuted.
The turning point in the history of the IHR was a dispute between its members over a
$7.5 million bequest which led to the split of the institute and Cato was fired from the organization he created. It is worthy to mention that the institute is still active on the internet struggling to regain the prestige it lost.
Finally, Carto was compelled to close the Liberty Lobby in 2001 after it was declared bankrupt as a part of his quarrel with the IHR. But, he continued his activities as a revisionist; he started by replacing the Spotlight with The American Free Press and founded a new journal, The Barnes Review to serve as a propagating Holocaust denial
(Williams 85).
b. David Duke
David Duke is considered as the world’s most recognized racist extremist. He joined the National Socialist White People Party (NSWPP) which succeeded the
American Nazi Party (ANP). Duke gained his reputation in the Ku Klux Klan, ascended to become the Grand Wizard of his own group, the Knights of the (KKK). However, he was determined to sell extremism as a commodity to a wider public by attracting the disillusioned white voters who felt alienated from conventional politics.
Duke preferred to call himself as a “race realist” instead of a “racist” and switched the KKK old robes to smart suits. In 1989, he joined the Republican Party and stood for election in the Louisiana House of Representatives but the great shock was that he was
84 84 really elected. However, in 2003, he was imprisoned for mail fraud and tax evasion, and served thirteen months in a Federal Penitentiary after he confessed that he stole thousands of dollars from adherents. Despite all of the speculation about how his time in jail would end his career, Duke proved to be more resilient and strikingly, he managed to retain his devotees.
As an appreciation for his efforts, he was rewarded a doctorate from the Interregional
Academy of Personal Management (MAUP) a Ukrainian anti-Semitic organization.
More, Duke seemed to have strong relationships with other extremists around the globe.
To mention, he had a solid relationship with Don Black the owner and operator of the
Stormfront website, the largest forum in the world for white supremacists, racists and other anti-Semites.
Lately, he was dynamic in Russia and Eastern Europe as well as in the Middle
Eastern States of Syria and Iran. He was also a major speaker at the Iranian Holocaust denial conference in December 2006 notifying the audience that:”The Zionists used the
Holocaust as a weapon to deny the rights of the Palestinians and cover up the crimes of
Israel [l…]This conference has an incredible impact on Holocaust studies all over the world […]The Holocaust is the device used as the pillar of Zionist imperialism, Zionist aggression, Zionist terror and Zionist murder.” In addition to that, Duke authored many books for example, My Awakening (1998) and Jewish Supremacism in 2002
(Williams87).
c. Fred Leuchter
Unlike the other Holocaust deniers; Fred A. Leuchter is an American engineer who was specialized in the construction and installation of execution equipments in US prisons. He entered the field of Holocaust revisionism during the trial of Ernest Zundel as he was approached by two Holocaust deniers, namely, David Irving and Robert
85 85 Faurisson who hoped that his would use his expertise to prove that the Holocaust was a myth and that Ernest Zundel was innocent.
In attempt to persuade Leuchter with this idea, Faurisson flew to Boston to talk and spent two days with him and succeeded to convince him that it was physically impossible for the Nazis to have gassed the Jews. In fact, several days later Leuchter flew to Poland with a draftsman, interpreter, and a cameraman supplied with $35.000 from Zundel. The spent several days analyzing the site illegally obtaining what he called “forensic samples” from a set of buildings related to the Nazi extermination programme.
The results of Leuchters research were published by Zunder in a book entitled The
Leuchter Report: An Engineering Report on the Alleged Execution Gas Chambers at
Auschwitz, Birkenhau and Majdanek, Poland. Importantly, Irvin was fascinated with the report that he wrote the introduction of the book himself. After the publication of the report, it was not long that it was discretedand Leuchter reputation as an expert was openly questioned by the judge during the trial.
After the trial, his reputation as an American’s leading expert on the construction and installation of gas chambers were proven to be a deception. Since he was charged with misrepresenting himself as an engineer by the state of Massachusetts, Leuchter was obliged to sign a consent agreementconfessing that he was” not and never had been” a professional engineer and had fraudulently presented himself as such to a number of states in order to consult on issues of “execution technology”. Despite all of these matters Leuchter seemed gain respect among Holocaust deniers and addressed their conferences in 1989, 1990 and 1992 (Williams104).
86 86 Conclusion
As a conclusion, the Holocaust has a great significance in the American life in the sense that, it constitutes an important part of its public memory. It would be accurate to say that, after the Jews, the Americans were the most affected by the Holocaust as they felt committed to present, defend, and commemorate its memory not only to the
Americans but also to the rest of the world. However, the perception of the Holocaust among the Americans was shaped via many factors, mainly; the American media. In addition to that, the Jews are considered the most powerful and influential minority in the United States which enabled them to control and shape the American consciousness about the Holocaust.
87 87 General Conclusions
Today, after more than half a century, the Holocaust continues to be a landmark event of the twentieth century and a turning point in the history of human race.
Undeniably, the Holocaust exposed the extent to which a human being can go to realize his dreams and fulfill his vision. This research examines the American attitudes towards the Holocaust from 1945 until the 1990s giving a special attention to scholarships targeting the subject, namely, books, novels, and diaries written by survivors. These works impacted the Americans’ insight of the Holocaust and informed them about the sufferings and grievances of an entire race in a country previously known as Nazi
Germany. Additionally, it reveals the motives that shifted the Americans’ perception of the Holocaust from repression and ignorance to acknowledgement, recognition, and commemoration.
In analyzing the topic, the research finds out that the Holocaust is simply a part of the American public memory. Hence, the establishment of the United States Holocaust
Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. in 1993 indicates the extent to which the
Americans consider themselves responsible for the protection of the Jewish heritage. In this sense, one may question the motives behind the memorization of a European catastrophe alongside America’s most influential figures such as: Jefferson,
Washington, and Lincoln. However, the answer of this question shows that the
Holocaust has in a way or another contributed to the crystallization of the American
88 88 principles and perspectives in terms of religious tolerance and the protection of human rights and liberties.
In addition to that, the research demonstrates that the Holocaust would remain a controversial and conflicting issue as long as the world would remember it.
Nevertheless, the struggle between the revisionists and exterminationists would never be ended since the only person who could prove that the Holocaust did or did not happen is dead. Given the fact that there is no single document or evidence that associates Hitler with the Nazi crimes accept of a bunch of survivors and remains of the alleged concentration camps, no one seems to be able to put an end to this everlasting conflict. In any crime, the presence of a solid evidence seems to convict the suspect and solve the case once and for all yet, in this case the absence of the evidence goes along with the death of the suspect, Adolf Hitler, the one and the only who could really prove it or deny it is dead. Consequently, both parts of the conflicting sides can never be proven to be right or wrong.
The research reveals that the Americans are fully committed to the memory of the Holocaust yet, at the same time, it shows that they were among the pioneering figures of Holocaust denial. It would be accurate to mention that the American writers introduced what came to be known as Holocaust denial literature. However, it is really striking to realize that in a country like America where people tend to be Holocaust perpetrators, it appears that Holocaust denial found its way to the American minds and created a kind of confusion among the American public. Nonetheless, this trend makes them think about the truthfulness of something they have always taken for granted.
Actually, the foundation of the Institute of Historical Revision exposed them to
Holocaust denial material and gave them the chance to choose their own perspectives and outlooks towards the Holocaust instead of being thought what they should think
89 89 about the Holocaust. However, the American legislation appears to be kristal clear concerning any violation targeted to abuse any aspect of the Holocaust. In this respect,
Holocaust denial is considered to be a criminal offence that requires the punishment of its practitioners.
This research comes to the conclusion that Holocaust denial is not a new trend that aims at revising and changing the history of the first half of the twentieth century. Rather, it can be traced back to the immediate period following the WWII.
Actually, unlike what most people seem to believe, Holocaust denial or revisionism occurred in period were the world was still under the shock of the Second World War that manifested on the European lands. In addition to that, it was impossible at that period to imagine that the world can recover from the great destruction that took place during the WWI and WWII. Eventually, Holocaust deniers at that time were so convinced that the Holocaust never occurred that they deliberately announced their denial. Despite the fact that Holocaust advocators consider denial as a desperate attempt to whitewash Nazi Crimes, people should at least consider some aspects and facts about the Holocaust that may change their perception of the Holocaust once and for all.
The research finds out that the Jews were and still consider themselves on top of the victimization pyramid which enables them to take advantage of the character of the victim whenever they need to. Consequently, the Jews are no longer the only victims in this world rather; there exists other groups who suffer every single day more than the Jews once did for example, the Palestinians, the Pakistanis, and the
Iraqis…ECT. It is common sense that the oppressed once in power becomes the oppressor this is exactly what happened with the case of the Jews. In fact, the Jews enjoyed the fact that they were victims for decades, but it is time for them to step out of
90 90 the victim zone so that the world would recognize them as the victimizers not the victims.
Finally, one may conclude that the Holocaust would remain valid, as long as, the Jews would exist and remind the world that once they were victims. Moreover,
The Jews were and still intelligent enough in the process of mind controlling and brainwashing. Certainly, the Jews’ control of media, politics, and possession of wealth enables them to show, feed, and convince their receivers anything and everything they want to. As a result, the American public has always been bias to the Jews no matter what they do may be because of the strong religious relationship that binds them together and may be because of the Jewish power of control. Thus, the Americans and even the Jews should ask themselves one single vital question what is it about the Jews that they have been hated ever since they existed.
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