Now We Should All Acknowledge Our Holocaust Guilt
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Now we should all acknowledge our holocaust guilt European policymaking isn’t just about the future, it also concerns the past, writes Alfred Pijpers who welcomes moves in the European Parliament and the Commission to make the re-assessment of national responsibilities during World War II a building block for the idea of European citizenship erlin’s moving holocaust monument These feelings received fresh impetus is an acknowledgement that the with German reunification and the Berlin Bannihilation of European Jewry during Republic. In 1998, German writer Martin World War II was Nazi driven and the primary Walser proposed putting a stop to the responsibility of Germany. The country’s country’s collective penance, arguing that post-war politicians and governments those who want to commemorate the conscientiously accepted this responsibility holocaust should do so at home. Walser – in West Germany at least. The Federal became the target of fierce criticism from Republic’s constitution, electoral system, Jewish circles, yet there were many Germans foreign policy and European treaties all are who sided with him, the then Chancellor guarantees that history will never repeat Gerhard Schröder being among them. itself. The official – penitent – attitude of Germans know that the Federal Germany will not change for the time being. Republic has had to be the public But suppose that the younger German embodiment of this huge historic guilt, but generations, with some justification, no the question arises: guilt for how long? The longer want to be the principal bearers of overwhelming majority of Germans were historic “guilt”. Who should then take up born after the war, and are no more guilty the burden? The destruction of European of the Nazi crimes than, say, their Dutch, Jewry is still too recent and too immense to Polish, French or Spanish contemporaries. be neglected. It also very much needs an It is unfair to keep them and future German official, governmental platform of generations forever accountable for the remembrance. In my view, the best way holocaust. As far back as the 1960s, forward is to create a truly European Bavarian leader Franz Joseph Strauss framework, and two arguments support this argued that a state as successful as the idea: European complicity with Nazi crimes, Federal Republic should not forever be and the developing concept of European reminded of Auschwitz. citizenship. 124 | Europe’s World Autumn 2006 Although Hitler’s Germany was the driving force behind the extermination of the Jews, COMMENTARY other European countries had a considerable By William Schabas hand in the catastrophe, and most of them are now member states of the European But still we should be Union. Austria, for instance, became after the Anschluss an integral part of the Third Reich, careful about how and offered a rich pool of highly-placed Nazis. A disproportionately large number of we define “guilt” them served in the extermination camps, predominantly as volunteers. Mussolini’s lfred Pijpers is right to remind us of the anti- Italy was an ally of Hitler’s Germany, although semitic elements in countries occupied by Italian fascists adopted a more moderate Athe Nazis, and their involvement in the attitude towards their Jewish countrymen. persecution of the Jews alongside whom they had Vichy France was a German satellite with an lived for centuries. He will surely upset some who openly anti-semitic regime. When at the end are embarrassed about the forgotten history, or of 1942 the Germans occupied that part of who are still in denial. The Germans certainly had France too, and began large-scale no monopoly on anti-semitism. There are even deportations, the ground had already been some omissions in his list of offenders. For well prepared. To his credit, President Jacques example, he doesn’t mention Greece, where there was a vibrant Sephardic community in Salonika Chirac has publicly admitted France’s guilt for that now no longer exists. these crimes. The war record of the Netherlands is hardly better; Dutch police And let us give credit where credit is due. Of officers, civil servants, railway personnel and all the “European” states, perhaps Turkey other collaborators made a substantial performed the best. It provided sanctuary for contribution to the destruction of the Jewish Jews from around the continent (including my community in a country that has long own relatives, who fled Berlin in the late 1930s). enjoyed such a strong – albeit false – image It is worth reminding those who argue that of staunch resistance. Turkey is not European enough to join the European Union of this noble time in its past. In eastern Europe, the Baltic states and Turkey’s problem is with another Holocaust that in the regions under Soviet rule, notably it would like to forget. Ukraine, the local populations played a But the Dutch and the Poles and the French significant part in the Final Solution. Anti- and the Ukrainians and the Austrians and all semitism in those regions was as, if not the others in Europe, who stood by while Jews more, endemic as in Germany. Many saw the were rounded up for the extermination camps, Nazis as allies against Soviet communism, did not collectively plan or implement the and after their invasion by Germany, “final solution”. They joined in the thousands of Lithuanians, Latvians and persecution, but they did not carry out the Estonians volunteered for the notorious extermination. Pijpers says we need to ascribe police battalions and auxiliary forces that guilt, and I agree with that. But it is important then launched pogroms on a massive scale. to recognise degrees of guilt. Autumn 2006 Europe’s World | 125 In other eastern European countries the republics. After the collapse of the Soviet picture is equally terrifying. In Hungary empire, most of the new Eastern European hundreds of thousands of Jews were regimes more or less accounted for earlier deported by the SS during the closing phase war crimes, but compared to the West of the war, with the full support of the German Vergangenheitsbewältigung they Hungarian government and the notorious only did so scantily. Arrow Cross militias. The latter proceeded to massacre their Jewish countrymen in great The second argument for a different numbers. In Romania, a similar role was approach to commemoration of the played by the Iron Guard under the command holocaust relates to the whole process of of the pro-German dictator Ion Antonescu. European integration. Germany has, over the Even before the Germans stepped in, years, become one of the most “European” of Antonescu had already slaughtered a quarter the EU member states, in terms of economic of a million Romanian Jews. The Romanian interdependence, political affiliation and fascists also often operated outside their own support for the EU institutions. According to borders, as did their Austrian, Baltic and the EU treaties, German citizens are also Ukrainian comrades. In February 1941, for European citizens, and as such completely instance, some 30,000 Jewish citizens were equal to their French, Polish, Danish, or killed in Odessa by Romanian troops. Belgian brethren. Germany not only shares sovereignty with Europe but also citizenship. Bulgaria and Slovakia were also pro- So why not also share its memory of the past German satellites during World War II, too, without violating the historical facts? although surprisingly the Bulgarians managed to limit the scale of the The notion of European citizenship has so persecutions. This cannot be said of the far been mainly associated with the free notorious Ustashe fascists in Croatia, which movement of people across national borders, like Bulgaria, is now a candidate for EU and with the fundamental rights listed in the membership. The Ustashe slaughtered with European constitution. But these rights are in their own hands nearly 40,000 Jewish fellow any case available under the various national citizens as well as Roma gypsies. Even the constitutions, and have not added much Nazis were at times dumbfounded by the value, so European citizenship still lacks the cruelty and the fanaticism of their Croat, feeling of belonging to a true political Lithuanian or Romanian sympathisers. community, with common roots in the past. A collective awareness of the holocaust and the Until 1989 and the fall of the Berlin Wall, shared responsibility of most EU member communist rule in those countries had to a states, would surely contribute to developing large extent obscured these national a more substantial European identity, as well contributions to the holocaust. Hitler’s perhaps to relieving the conscience of fascism was generally deemed responsible, younger generations of Germans. and the post-war communist takeovers had cleared things up in that respect – that at It is very welcome therefore that the least was the reasoning in the peoples’ European Parliament and the European 126 | Europe’s World Autumn 2006 Commission are both beginning to see the collective European memory of the World War II, COMMENTARY William Schabas and of the holocaust, as the building blocks of European citizenship. Slovakia’s Commissioner Jan Figel suggested at the time of the 2005 There are two important distinctions. First, launch of the Consultation Forum on the accomplices in crime do not generally deserve the Future Programme for Active European same reprobation as the perpetrators. As recently Citizenship (2007-2013) that “public acts of as 2004, the Appeals Chamber of the International remembrance [of Auschwitz] may indeed help Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia reduced the sentence of one of the Serb commanders at to determine an always fragile yet evolving Srebrenica, General Radislav Krstic. The trial judges collective memory, capable of contributing to had convicted him of genocide, but the appeal the expression and sentiment of a European judges said he was only an accomplice.