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The Holocaust and Historical Explanation

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The Holocaust and Historical Explanation 9 THE HOLOCAUST AND HISTORICAL EXPLANATION Robert G.L. Waite I Those who reflect on the nature of the Holocaust will confront the question of its uniqueness. Was the Holocaust the culmination of over 2,000 years of active anti-Semitism and persecution, or was it unique, forming a radical break from the past? Both sides of this ancient historical debate, continuity versus change, are important. Certainly there is much continuity with the past. Indeed, the Holocaust was made possible, in large part, because German history had shown a continuum of virulent anti-Semitism. It is of course true that anti-Semitism existed in every country of the Western and Slavic worlds. But in no country in the world did so many influential leaders over so long a time champion so vicious a hatred of the Jewish people. Martin Luther, for example, preached hatred and persecution of the Jews 400 years before Hitler. As early as 1543 Luther demanded that Jewish synagogues and schools be set afire, that their silver and gold be taken from them, their houses and prayer books seized and destroyed, that brimstone and pitch should be thrown upon them, and that they be driven away "like mad dogs"l-a program which Adolf Hitler would put into practice on a national scale beginning with the infamous Reichskris- tallnac ht of November 9-10, 1938, a date which, by a quirk of chronology, fell on Luther's birthday. For centuries Catholic bishops and priests joined Lutheran pastors in thundering against an imaginary "Jewish menace." Indeed, the anti- Semitic record of both Christian confessions is one of the most appalling chapters in the entire history of religion. Published statements made by 164 Robert G.L. Waite saints of the Catholic Church were later used as texts for scurrilous anti- Semitic broadsides. Saint Gregory of Nyssa (d. 396) described Jews as "slayers of the Lord, murderers of the prophets, haters of God, advo- cates of the devil, a brood of vipers." St. Ambrose, Augustine's teacher, said that Jewish synagogues should be burned to the ground and boasted that he personally had set fire to one. St. John Chrysostom (d. 406) called Jews "lustful, rapacious, greedy, perfidious bandits." He preached that "it is the duty of Christians to hate the Jews" and con- cluded that the Jews are "fit for slaughter."2 Saint Thomas Aquinas, the most influential theologian in the history of the Catholic Church, argued that it was morally justifiable for Jews to serve Christians as slaves be- cause, as the slayers of God, they were bound to "perpetual servitude. "3 The Church practiced what its Fathers preached. Official Church councils set forth decrees which clearly foreshadowed Hitler's infamous Racial Laws. The Synod of Elvira of 306, for example, forbad inter- marriage and sexual relations between Christians and Jews. The Synod of Claremont (535) decreed that Jews could not hold public office. The Third Synod of Orleans of 538 made it illegal for Jews to walk in public streets during Passion Week. The Fourth Lateran Council of 1215 decreed that Jews must mark their clothing with a special badge. The Council of Oxford (1222) forbad the construction of new synagogues. The Council of Basel of 1434 prohibited Jews from obtaining academic degrees.4 One day in April 1933 when Catholic bishops protested to Hitler that his government was mistreating Jews, Hitler replied that he was "only putting into effect what Christianity had preached and practiced for 2000 years. "5 He had a point. The historian Uriel Tal is therefore probably justified in concluding that the Christian church bears heavy responsibility for the virulent anti- Semitism of the Third Reich. 6 German Christians agree. In January 1980, the Synod of the German Evangelical Church of the Rhineland, the most populous of the twenty-seven regional units of the EKD, passed overwhelmingly the official declaration, Zur Erneurung des Verhaltnisses von Christen und Juden (For the Renewal of Relations between Christians and Jews). The first sentence of this historic declara- tion reads: "Stricken, we confess the co-responsibility and guilt of Ger- man Christendom for the Holocaust. "7 Religious anti-Semitism, it bears repeating, had shown great conti- nuity in Germany. But it was only in the Second Reich-Imperial Ger- many after 1871-that religious persecution gave way to a racial anti- Semitism which explicitly anticipated the Third Reich. When Adolf Hitler was still a babe in his doting mother's arms, Germany's most influential thinkers were inciting racial anti-Semitism with slogans which Hitler would later take over as his own. In the 1890s, for example, the prodigious scholar Paul de Lagarde (whom The Holocaust and Historical Explanation 165 Thomas Mann hailed as "one of the giants of our people")8 coined portentous metaphors: "Jews are decayed parasites ... usurious ver- min" and warned that "with bacilli one does not negotiate: one extermi- nates them as quickly as possible."9 The long list of racial anti-Semites includes Germany's most popular historian, Heinrich von Treitschke, a best-selling novelist, Gustav Freytag, and probably the most influential Jew-baiter of them all, Richard Wagner.IO Hitler exploited this legacy of hatred. But while showing continuity with the past, Nazi anti-Semitism was different from its predecessors. Here was not merely prejudice, persecution, and invective. Here, for the first time, was a calculated program of mass murder set forth by the legal government of Germany-a government unique in all history. This was no mere "authoritarian state" of which we have so many and varied examples in world history. This was a government conceived in oppression and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created un- equal. This was social and moral cannibalism. This was the very "nega- tion of God erected into a system of government." This government promised that Jews would be traduced, persecuted, vilified, destroyed. Such was the promise and such was the practice. The horror of Hitler was this: he was no hypocrite; he meant what he said; he practiced what he preached; he kept his promises. Indeed, as Elie Wiesel has noted with bitter irony, "Hitler is the only one who kept his promises to the Jewish people."11 Hitler's policy of genocide was not designed to remove subversives who were a threat to the German state. Quite to the contrary, German Jews through the centuries had proven their devotion to the Fatherland by supporting its government and fighting gallantly in its wars. Their loyalty was shown even after Hitler came to power in 1933. One example: the Reichsbundjadischer Frontsoldaten (National Association of Jewish War Veterans) hailed the advent of Hitler in 1933 and publicly promised support of his government.12 (They soon changed their minds.) Nor were the Nazi executions designed to punish criminals and male- factors. The Jews were killed not because they had done anything but merely because they existed-because they had been born. Jews were criminals by definition. In occupied Russia, for example, the Nazi con- querors decreed death for the following crimes: ( 1) sabotage, theft, es- pionage, and (2) also for "Judenverdacht"-those suspected of being Jewish. 13 The Nazi Holocaust was also different in the extent of the cooperation it received from the German social infrastructure. The Holocaust en- joyed the support or the benevolent neutrality of Christian churches, the civil service, the judiciary, educators, and thousands of the railroad offi- cials who handled the complex logistics of transporting millions of people to their death. Army generals-the evidence is now incontro- 166 Robert G.L. Waite vertible-also knew of the mass murders and gave their approval.14 Thus this genocide succeeded because its perpetrators could count on the cooperation or acquiescence of German state officials, of religious, civic, and military leaders, and of the German public at large. Recent studies have shown that the German people really did know about the genocide and reacted with "a mixture of private sympathy and public passivity." 15 A German historian of public attitudes toward Jews during the Third Reich has concluded that there was "scarcely another country whose population accepted the carrying away of its Jewish fellow citizens with so little opposition. "16 There is another reason why the Holocaust could take place: the vic- tims cooperated with their executioners; they collaborated in their own destruction. I find this to be one of the most disturbing and least under- stood problems of the Holocaust. But here we must sound a clear note of warning about the use of the words "cooperative" and "collaboration." If they suggest a voluntary desire to be helpful, the words are badly misused. As Lucy Dawidowicz has emphasized in her valuable studies, there was no voluntary Jewish cooperation; there were no Jewish col- laborators in the sense of the word made infamous by Quisling and Laval. Not one Jew wanted to cooperate with the Nazis. No Jew wanted Hitler's "New Order" in Europe.17 The Judenriite (the Jewish Councils approved by the Nazis and elected by the Jews themselves) cooperated with the SS by selecting Jews for transport to their deaths, but they did so only under the most extreme duress. When the Nazis threatened more drastic enlargement of the death quotas they were obliged to fill, the councils had little choice but to obey. Constantly they confronted soul-destroying decisions: choose for extinction either the young or the old. The Judenriite -it must be repeated-had virtually no choice. They tried desperately to do the very best they could under im- possible circumstances. They were coerced into compliance. That much needs to be said and remembered.
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