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The Vienna Wiesenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies (VWI) is funded by: S: I. M. O. N. SHOAH: INTERVENTION. METHODS. DOCUMENTATION.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

ARTICLES Andrew Clark Wisely From Humiliation to Humanity 4 Reconciling Helen Goldman’s Testimony with the Forensic Strictures of the Frankfurt Auschwitz Trial

Anna Corsten A Different Perspective on Innovation in Holocaust Studies 36

Katarzyna Person A Link to the Past? 52 Poland and its Memory in the Lives of Holocaust Survivors in DP Camps in the American Zone of Occupied Germany

Rasa Baločkaitė Dealing with the Family Past 63 (Grand)children of Nazi Collaborators in Lithuania

György Majtényi The Memory and Historiography of the Porrajmos 86 Making a Transnational National Site of Memory

SWL-READER Paul Hanebrink A Spectre Haunting Europe 104 The Myth of Judeo-Bolshevism

EVENT Sabeth Buchmann und Dani Gal Ein Gespräch 114

Istvan Pal Adam, Tipping the Rescuer? TABLE OF CONTENTS OF TABLE 3 S: I. M. O. N. Vol. 8|2021|No.1 SHOAH: INTERVENTION. METHODS. DOCUMENTATION.

Andrew Clark Wisely From Humiliation to Humanity Reconciling Helen Goldman’s Testimony with the Forensic Strictures of the Frankfurt Auschwitz Trial

Abstract On 3 September 1964, during the Frankfurt Auschwitz trial, Helen Goldman accused SS camp doctor Franz Lucas of selecting her mother and siblings for the gas chamber when the family arrived at Birkenau in May 1944. Although she could identify Lucas, the court considered her information under cross-examination too inconsistent to build a case against Lucas. To appreciate Goldman’s authority, we must remove her from the humiliation of the West German legal gaze and inquire instead how she is seen through the lens of witness hospitality (directly by Emmi Bonhoeffer) and psychiatric assessment (indirectly by Dr Walter von Baeyer).

The appearance of Auschwitz survivor Helen (Kaufman) Goldman in the courtroom of the Frankfurt Auschwitz trial on 3 September 1964 was hard to forget for all onlookers. Goldman accused the former SS camp doctor Dr Franz Lucas of selecting her mother and younger siblings for the gas chamber on the day the family arrived at Birkenau in May 1944.1 Lucas, considered the best behaved of the twenty defendants during the twenty-month-long trial, claimed not to recognise his accuser, who after identifying him from a line-up became increasingly distraught under cross-examination. Ultimately, the court rejected Goldman’s accusations, choosing instead to believe survivors of Ravensbrück who recounted that Lucas had helped them survive the final months of the war.2 Goldman’s breakdown of credibility echoed the experience of many prosecution witnesses in West German postwar trials after 1949. Unfortunately, failure as a juridical eyewitness for the court’s narrow forensic ends rarely led to any acknowledgment of their higher phenomenological authority. As Sibylle Schmidt writes, to acknowledge the atrocities endured by survivor witnesses “does not mean to regard them as living traces and monuments of | www.vwi.ac.at the catastrophe whose testimonies are above criticism, but rather it means to take them seriously as givers of knowledge, and this does not preclude a critical attitude

1 See: Vernehmung der Zeugin Helen Goldmann, 3. 9. 1964, in: Fritz Bauer Institut (Frankfurt am Main)/State Museum of Auschwitz-Birkenau (ed.), Der Auschwitz-Prozess. Tonbandmitschnitte, Protokolle, Dokumente (DVD-ROM), Berlin 2007, 16880-16984 (henceforth cited as AP followed by page number). For background to and analysis of the Frankfurt Auschwitz trial, see especially: Devin Pendas, The Frankfurt Auschwitz Trial, 1963–1965. Genocide, History, and the Limits of the Law, New York 2006; Werner Renz, Auschwitz vor Ge richt. Zum 40. Jahrestag des Ersten Frankfurter Auschwitz-Prozesses, in: Hefte von Auschwitz 24 (2009), 191- 299; Irmtrud Wojak (ed.), “Gerichtstag halten über uns selbst”. Geschichte und Wirkung des ersten Frank- https://doi.org/10.23777/SN.0121 furter Auschwitz-Prozesses, Frankfurt am Main 2001; Irmtrud Wojak/Susanne Meinl (ed.), Im Labyrinth der Schuld. Täter – Opfer – Ankläger, Frankfurt am Main 2003. 2 The point is not to measure the pain of exculpatory witnesses against Goldman’s loss and subsequent disori- entation, but to point out that a perpetrator’s actions on their behalf late in the war could be interpreted as a calculated investment on returning to civilian life or as a genuine result of growing disgust with his SS responsibilities, or both.

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towards their accounts”.3 Since trust is implicit in the speech-act between witness and audience, my aim is to ultimately release Goldman from the strictures of the Frankfurt courtroom where such trust was largely absent. I will begin by reviewing the role of the survivor witness in postwar trials, ending with the Frankfurt Ausch witz trial. I will then examine the court transcript that captures her humiliation both in Auschwitz-Birkenau and twenty years later before an incredulous audience. After addressing her brief appearance in an essay by Hannah Arendt, I will investigate two other audiences that regarded Goldman in more than her capacity as an evidence-giver. The first and direct audience is Emmi Bonhoeffer, her volunteer host in Frankfurt; the second and indirect audience is Heidelberg psychiatrist Dr Walter von Baeyer, in whose assessment of Jewish survivors testifying in a Darmstadt criminal court in 1970 I include Goldman implicitly. While not touting these witnesses as perfectly reliable, Baeyer nevertheless validated their narratives by discussing the effect of their trauma upon memory, based on his knowledge of them not in criminal courts, but as claimants in West German compensation courts.4

The Survivor Witness in Court, 1945–1963

Wolfgang Benz has noted how rare it is for a witness to camp atrocities to double as a reliable historian. In his view, at least two persons are required for capturing ex- periential and empirical truths: The eyewitness illustrates the personal dimensions of memory while the historian fills in the details.5 As Erich Haberer notes, another territorial divide exists between the historian and the jurist, wherein historians “ap- proximate the truth of past events” and jurists “seek justice within rigorously pre- scribed legal standards of argumentation and evidence”.6 A third opposition is the memory contest between defendant/victimiser and witness/victim. Here the stakes are especially high, because the witness supplies the court with evidence “beyond reasonable doubt” to determine the guilt of the defendant, while the defendant usually denies everything. Survivor witnesses supplied the Allies in Nuremberg with statements and affi davits about perpetrator crimes. Many of their stories remained in the background, however, based on the determination, mostly of the Americans, to try top-ranking criminals for their role in a conspiratorial war of Nazi aggression. In the Nuremberg International Military Tribunal trial, which lasted from 21 November 1945 to 1 Oc- tober 1946, Chief of Counsel Robert Jackson chose to structure the prosecution around hard evidence rather than interrogate the witnesses who had already given

3 Sibylle Schmidt, Perpetrators’ Knowledge. What and How Can We Learn from Perpetrator Testimony? in: Journal of Perpetrator Research 1 (2017) 1, 85-104, here 93. 4 For a history of the turbulent indemnification process, including the West German Bundesentschädigungsge- setz (Federal Indemnification Law) of 1953, 1956, and 1965, see: Christian Pross, Paying for the Past: The Struggle over Reparations for Surviving Victims of the Nazi Terror, Baltimore 1998, and Constantin Goschler, Schuld und Schulden. Die Politik der Wiedergutmachung für NS-Verfolgte seit 1945, Göttingen 2005, esp. 176-214. 5 Wolfganz Benz, Wenn die Zeugen schweigen. Anmerkungen zu einem seit langem aktuellen Problem, in: Dachauer Hefte 25 (2009), 3-16, here 7. 6 Erich Haberer, History and Justice. Paradigms of the Prosecution of Nazi Crimes, in: Holocaust and Genocide Studies 19 (Winter 2005) 3, 487-519, here 487-488. See also: Thomas Henne, Zeugenschaft vor Gericht, in: Michael Elm/Gottfried Kößler (ed.), Zeugenschaft des Holocaust. Zwischen Trauma, Tradierung und Ermitt lung, Frankfurt am Main 2007, 79-91, esp. 79. Ideally, the historian models the exactitude required by a judge to announce a one-time verdict, but does so to fine-tune emphases, sympathies, and allegiances provoked by new evidence. Haberer, History and Justice, 490.

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statements.7 Captured German documents along with film footage and photographs taken by camp liberators illuminated the crimes, but only a fraction of the documents could be featured during the hearings themselves.8 Confronting the defendants with their own documents was meant to thwart their allegations of witness revenge, hyperbole, and implicit bias.9 As a result, the defence called more witnesses than the prosecution did. For the sake of due process, then, the tribunal heard “plat- itudinous endorsements of the character of the defendants” – those who gave genocidal orders without bloodying their own hands – instead of the riveting stories of survivors.10 The IMT did not ignore the Holocaust itself. Jackson’s opening address and the summation remarks of the United Kingdom’s attorney general Sir Hartley Shawcross framed the issue of crimes against humanity, specifically the Judeocide.11 The Nazi expert witnesses not (yet) on trial, Rudolf Höß, Otto Ohlendorf, and Dieter Wisliceny, delivered some of the most startling revelations.12 Indeed, as perpetrators testified either for the defence or for the prosecution (as though this ensured impartiality), their accounts of atrocities sounded every bit as exaggerated as the tales that the prosecution believed survivor witnesses might spin for the sake of revenge. As it happened, the few Jewish survivors called by the Soviet prosecutor gave measured, powerful testimony, but their contributions remained a moot point for the indictment.13 In the subsequent American-hosted Einsatzgruppen trial, which lasted from 29 September 1947 to 10 April 1948, Ohlendorf confessed to having supervised the killing of 90,000 Jews as commander of Einsatzgruppe D. With the acknowledge- ment of guilt in place, what need was there for a response from eyewitnesses to the slaughter? Donald Bloxham writes that having no witnesses meant “no troublesome cross-examinations, no contradictory recollections of events, and no debates over the identification of the accused”.14 Admittedly, the court was busy debunking other myths of the defence, such as Befehlsnotstand (defence of superior orders) or the danger of Jewish Bolshevism as expounded by Ohlendorf’s lawyer Rudolf Aschenauer.15 In trials where courts considered conviction an urgent matter, what the witnesses knew about defendants’ crimes rarely matched what the court thought it needed to

7 For examples of prosecutorial choices made at Nuremberg, see: Paul Weindling, Nazi Medicine and the Nuremberg Trials. From Medical War Crimes to Informed Consent, New York 2004, esp. Part II (“Medicine on Trial”), 93-256. 8 “More than one hundred thousand captured German documents were examined for use at the trial, and around four thousand were entered as trial exhibits. Millions of feet of film were examined for their eviden- tiary value. Twenty-five thousand captured still photographs were reviewed, of which eighteen hundred were prepared as trial exhibits.” Lawrence Douglas, The Memory of Judgment. Making Law and History in the Trials of the Holocaust, New Haven 2001, 12. See also: Michael R. Marrus, The Holocaust at Nuremberg, in: Yad Vashem Studies 26 (1998) 5-41; Kim C. Priemel/Alexa Stiller (ed.), Reassessing the Nuremberg Military Tribunals. Transitional Justice, Trial Narratives, and Historiography, New York 2012; Nathan Stoltzfus/ Henry Friedlander (ed.), Nazi Crimes and the Law, New York 2008; Patricia Heberer/Jürgen Matthäus (ed.), Atrocities on Trial. Historical Perspectives on the Politics of Prosecuting War Crimes, Lincoln 2008; and Donald Bloxham, Genocide on Trial. War Crimes Trials and the Formation of Holocaust History and Mem ory, Oxford 2001. 9 Ibid, 16-18. 10 “The prosecution had called 33 witnesses compared to the defense’s 61, and an additional 143 witnesses testified for the defense through written interrogatories”. Ibid, 15. 11 Ibid, 66, 93. 12 Ibid, 69. See also: Donald Bloxham, Jewish Witnesses in War Crimes Trials of the Postwar Era, in: David Bankier/Dan Michman (ed.), Holocaust Historiography in Context. Emergence, Challenges, Polemics and Achievements, New York 2008, 539-553, here 541. 13 Douglas, Memory of Judgment, 78. 14 Bloxham, Jewish Witnesses, 553. 15 On Aschenauer and his client Ohlendorf, see: Hilary Earl, The Nuremberg SS-Einsatzgruppen Trial, 1945– 1958: Atrocity, Law, and History, New York 2010.

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hear. Prisoner doctors might describe with precision the medical crimes of Dr Josef Mengele or Dr Carl Clauberg, for example, without knowing whether they were members of the SS or NSDAP; they might associate Eichmann with their own deportation without ever having seen him except in newsreels.16 Most prisoners knew their captors neither as saviours nor as executioners per se, but as the ones who beat, insulted, deprived, and sterilised them – actions unforgettable to them but of less concern to the court. As the Allies passed on the adjudication of Nazi war criminals to West German courts beginning in the early 1950s, complaints about victor’s justice and unfair convictions predominated. Rudolf Aschenauer, along with clerics, jurists, and other Nuremberg lawyers, insisted that the United States turn its attention to the more current threat of the Soviet Union. Although Aschenauer’s client Ohlendorf was hanged, John McCloy, the US High Commissioner for Occupied Germany, turned the death sentences of seven of Ohlendorf’s co-defendants into penitentiary terms, which became pardons during parole negotiations.17 The fact that the final pardon occurred on 9 May 1958, after the opening of the Ulm Einsatzgruppen trial, signals competing perspectives toward the unmastered past.18 On the one hand, an atmosphere of amnesty was an appropriate way to repatriate 9,626 prisoners of war from the Soviet Union after a decade of hard labour. On the other hand, since 749 of the POWs were forced to answer for severe war crimes, it is clear that some pockets of society were no longer willing to turn a blind eye toward Kripo and Security Police members and others who had hitherto escaped detection either through imprisonment in the USSR, such as Dr Carl Clauberg, or by hiding their ‘brown’ pasts in plain view, such as Bernhard Fischer-Schweder.19 Before the establishment of the Central Office for the Investigation of National Socialist Crimes in Ludwigsburg in 1958, district attorneys pursued, with varying fervour and cooperation from other districts, the criminals of whom they became aware in their own districts, often brought to their attention by former prisoners.20 The genesis of the Ulm Einsatzgruppen trial came when the Lithuanian rabbi Felix Bloch, living in Stuttgart, recognised, from a newspaper photograph, Bernhard Fischer-Schweder, the former commander of the Einsatzkommando Tilsit, which had murdered thousands of Jews in Lithuania in the summer of 1941.21 One of Fischer-Schweder’s nine fellow defendants involved in this operation was Werner Hersmann, leader of Sonderkommando 11a of Einsatzgruppe D, who was defended by Rudolf Aschenauer. If recognition was important to bringing to light criminals and their organisations during this Nuremberg-sized West German trial, the testimony of one witness in particular called by prosecutor Erwin Schüle carried super- lative relevance, helping to bring the atrocity itself into the courtroom, not just the pathology of the criminals. Because she herself was not Jewish, Ona Rudaitis es-

16 Thanks to my anonymous reviewer for pointing out the gap between court and witness expectations. 17 Earl, Nuremberg SS-Einsatzgruppen Trial, 265-295. 18 Annette Weinke, Eine Gesellschaft ermittelt gegen sich selbst. Die Geschichte der Zentralen Stelle Ludwigs- burg 1958–2008, Darmstadt 2009, 14. 19 Ibid, 11-14. 20 On the particularities of West German justice in the 1950s, see: Norbert Frei, Vergangenheitspolitik. Die An- fänge der Bundesrepublik und die NS-Vergangenheit, Munich 1997; Adalbert Rückerl, Die Strafverfolgung von NS Verbrechen 1945–1978. Eine Dokumentation, Heidelberg 1979; Hermann Langbein, Im Namen des deutschen Volkes. Zwischenbilanz der Prozesse wegen nationalsozialistischer Verbrechen, Vienna 1963; Marc von Miquel, Ahnden oder amnestieren? Westdeutsche Justiz und Vergangenheitspolitik in den sechziger Jah- ren, Göttingen 2004; and Devin Pendas, Seeking Justice, Finding Law. Nazi Trials in Postwar Europe, in: The Journal of Modern History 81 (June 2009) 2, 347-368. 21 Weinke, Eine Gesellschaft ermittelt, 13.

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caped, but nevertheless witnessed the execution of 300 Jewish women and children in a field outside her village of Virbalis in Lithuania. Unable to identify the ten defendants in court, her uncanny recollection of details still exposed their denials and reinforced the charges against them. Patrick Tobin writes: “The prosecution had already well established the way that these murders were carried out, the numbers killed, and other precise details. But until Rudaitis, they had not succeeded in putting a human face on the atrocities. When Rudaitis, an old woman, recounted seeing her neighbor lying dead in a mass grave and witnessing mothers shot alongside their children, she brought home to the courtroom and to the West German public the unbelievable inhumanity and cruelty that underpinned every moment of Ein- satzkommando Tilsit’s existence.”22 It is not the case that eyewitness testimony simply trumped the evidence from documents. More accurately, what Erwin Schüle discovered in the documents from Nuremberg, the Berlin Document Center, and the Deutsche Dienststelle für die Benachrichtigung der nächsten Angehörigen von Gefallenen der ehemaligen deutschen Wehrmacht (WASt) helped him locate the witnesses who could lend their voices to the investigation, making the trial about more than just the criminals alone.23 The Ulm trial thus became a watershed event thanks in large part to Schüle’s prosecutorial zeal – he also became the first director of the Central Office– and the resonance of Rudaitis’s testimony. Prosecutor Gideon Hausner had less detective work to prepare for the Eichmann trial in 1961. As the documents in Nuremberg functioned to impugn the defence arguments in front of the IMT, so too the documents compiled in Jerusalem demonstrated Eichmann’s guilt many times over. This allowed Hausner to make the trial educational by inviting the many witnesses in attendance to “tell what they had seen with their own eyes and what they had experienced on their own bodies”.24 Unlike at Nuremberg or Ulm, Jerusalem could focus more on the experience of the Jewish victims themselves.25 As powerful and helpful as Ona Rudaitis was in the Ulm trial for recounting the murder of the Jewish villagers, she herself had not been the target of the purge. In Jerusalem, however, a Jewish survivor like Ada Lichtman could become the first to offer “a story with a double aim: to recount her own survival, but, above all, to remember the dead and how they were murdered”.26 Using Geoffrey Hart- man’s terminology, Annette Wieviorka describes these immediate first-person accounts as having the effect of “burning through […] the cold storage of history”.27 The decision to isolate Eichmann by means of a glass cage from the Jewish survivors who survived his transports was in keeping with Nuremberg psychiatrist Leo Alexander’s view that survivor aggression was the result of pent-up stress and fear that imitated the emotions experienced by war veterans, which he had seen first-hand in the Doc-

22 Patrick Tobin, Crossroads at Ulm. Postwar West Germany and the 1958 Ulm Einsatzkommando Trial, Univer- sity of North Carolina–Chapel Hill, 2013, Dissertation, 278-280. 23 Weinke, Eine Gesellschaft ermittelt, 15. 24 Annette Wieviorka, The Era of the Witness, Ithaca 2006, 67-70. 25 Ibid, 88-89. 26 Ibid, 78. 27 Ibid, 70. See also Andree Michaelis, Die Autorität und Authentizität der Zeugnisse von Überlebenden der Shoah. Ein Beitrag zur Diskursgeschichte der Figur des Zeugen, in: Sibylle Schmidt/Sybille Krämer/Ramon Voges (ed.), Poetik der Zeugenschaft. Zur Kritik einer Wissenspraxis, Bielefeld 2011, 265-284. With respect to Nuremberg, Michaelis points out that the defense (mis)used the proximity to the events to discursively trau- matise the victim witnesses through manipulative cross-examination. However, it was their distance to the events that the defence used almost two decades later to disgruntle the survivor witnesses in the Frankfurt Auschwitz trial. Michaelis, Die Autorität und Authentizität, 270.

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tors Trial when a witness attacked the defendant he had identified.28 Nevertheless, to isolate Eichmann behind glass was also a way to isolate his guilt from the guilt of even more ruthless and high-tiered criminals for whom he became an unwitting scapegoat.29 And though a victim’s recognition of a former victimiser could trigger a response from indignation to aggressiveness, it was more often the case that witnesses in Jerusalem did not have one SS face so much as the entirety of their experience to blame for their trauma. I mention the Eichmann trial in passing to show the importance of the victims’ stories that arose in the courtroom but were unnecessary for Eichmann’s indictment. Meanwhile, the number of West German trials featuring mass murders between 1958 and 1963 were nearly double the number of such trials completed before 1958 (42 and 23 respectively), with the number of defendants climbing by nearly 500 per cent, from 28 to 136.30 In the Frankfurt Auschwitz trial, before a West German court, explaining the historical context of genocidal crimes was crucial. The attorneys assisting Hessen Attorney General Fritz Bauer since 1959 – Joachim Kügler and Georg Friedrich Vogel, joined later by Gerhard Wiese and Hanns Grossmann – submitted a petition to begin the pretrial phase on 12 July 1961. That document discussed the history of Jewish persecution, the SS, the camps, the extermination programme, and Auschwitz itself. References stemmed from scholars and survivors such as Gerald Reitlinger, Eugen Kogon, and Jan Sehn (head of the Polish Haupt- kommission zur Untersuchung der Nazi-Verbrechen), but also the memoirs of Auschwitz Commandant Rudolf Höß.31 On 29 January 1964, barely a month into the main hearings, Bauer called on Hans Buchheim, Martin Broszat, Hans-Adolf Jacobsen, and Helmut Krausnik of Munich’s Institute of Contemporary History to provide background information that would help judge and jury bridge the tempo-

28 The Doctors Trial (i.e., the United States of America v. Karl Brandt et al) was the first of twelve American- hosted “subsequent trials” in Nuremberg. It lasted from 9 December 1946 to 20 August 1947. 20 of the 23 defendants were German medical doctors. Called on 27 June 1947 to identify the defendant Dr Wilhelm Beigl- böck, the German Sinto Karl Höllenreiner attacked him in the courtroom while calling him a “murderer”. Höllenreiner had lost his wife, his sister, and her two children in Auschwitz. After transfer to Dachau, he immediately became part of the saltwater experiments there. Adding to the volatile situation was the fact, as Leo Alexander noted, that Höllenreiner had been warned in cross-examination “not to be evasive in the way Gyp- sies usually are”. Paul Weindling notes that whereas victims carried the physiological and psychological scars – Höllenreiner complained that Beiglböck had disappeared after the experiments without the faintest regard for his victims – their victimisers only had to deny consistently in court that the objects of their experiments ever came to any real harm. See: Paul Weindling, “Unser eigener ‘österreichischer Weg’”. Die Meerwasser- Trinkversuche in Dachau 1944, in: Herwig Czech/Paul Weindling (ed.), Österreichische Ärzte und Ärztinnen im Nationalsozialismus. Jahrbuch des Dokumentationsarchiv des österreichischen Widerstandes (DöW), Vienna 2017, 133-177, here 158. 29 Idilo Globocnik, Friedrich Jeckeln, Hans-Adolf Prützmann, Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski, and Kurt Daluege had either avoided justice through suicide or had been executed – except for Bach-Zelewski, who testified in a statement supplied for the Eichmann trial in May 1961 (he had also testified in the Ulm trial) that many mass killings happened in orbits outside of Eichmann’s authority. On Bach-Zelewski’s escape from the fate of his colleagues, see: Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem, 14-16. Arendt also shows that the new arrests of the Eich- mann Commando that followed the Israeli seizure of Eichmann, which included such associates of Eichmann as Otto Hunsche, Hermann Krumey, Otto Bradfisch, and Karl Wolff, resulted in “fantastically lenient sentences” compared to Eichmann’s sentence, and that most had already been “denazified”. Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem, 15. 30 Nine of the 136 defendants were convicted of murder, 77 as accomplices, and 36 were acquitted. Of the 77 defendants deemed accomplices – i.e., they did not ‘will’ the murders or carry them out with ‘bloodlust’ – 43 received three to five years in prison and, of these, thirty were charged with assisting in the murders of between 100 and 15,000 victims. See: Langbein, Im Namen des deutschen Volkes, 117-118. 31 Werner Renz, Der erste Frankfurter Auschwitz-Prozeß. Völkermord als Strafsache, in: Zeitschrift für Sozial- geschichte des 20. und 21. Jahrhunderts 15 (2000) 2, 11-48, here 27.

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ral and geographical distance from Auschwitz to Frankfurt.32 In the foreword to the volume Anatomie des SS-Staates, the authors argued that the Gutachten (assessments) they provided for criminal trials were intended to “illuminate the network of intellectual, political, and organizational conditions that led to the action […] and convey a picture of the historical and political landscape in which the individual occurrence took place”.33 Because their facts and background helped decide the fate of the accused, the authors took their cue from the law’s meticulous treatment of evidence and proof. Emotional ‘mastery of the past’ was not enough – only a detailed and analytical confrontation with National Socialism could “shake awake the sleepy conscience”.34 Buchheim and others clarified the milieu – “the objective institutional, organi zational, ideological, and jurisdictional circumstances in which the crimes took place”35 – in order for the court to determine whether the defendants were guilty under Article 211, Paragraph 2 of the Penal Code.36 They fielded questions in court and provided written records. Besides the memoirs of Rudolf Höß, the court was also privy to Nazi-generated documents such as Professor Dr Johann Paul Kremer’s Auschwitz diary and the (Pery) Broad Report. However, because they were from the perpetrator’s perspective, these documents were inadmissible as evidence, unless they gave implicating proof of criminal actions.37 Instead, the court had to rely on survivor witnesses to establish the wilfulness factor of the defendants as accessories to murder or initiators of murder. For this task, survivors of Auschwitz were available who had suffered directly at the hands of the defendants and could identify them, but they were warned that unless they were articulate, consistent, and free of vengefulness, the Frankfurt court would ignore their statements.38 It was not that the courts, Frankfurt included, were guarding against the cathartic effect of a witness recounting her or his story of suffering, if one could even hope for such an effect. It was just that witnesses quickly realised that Frankfurt was nothing like Jerusalem, and the trial was really about the perpetrators, like any other criminal trial. Any cathartic benefit of testimony was secondary and coincidental.39

32 Ibid, 32. Beginning in February 1964, Buchheim reported first on the organisation of the SS and the police under Nazi control, and later on Befehlsnotstand; Krausnick on Nazi policies toward Jews; and Broszat on Nazi policy in Poland and on the development of the concentration camps. Hans-Adolf Jacobsen (Bonn) and Bruno Baum, a former prisoner, also provided expert testimony. See also: Irmtrud Wojak, Herrschaft der Sachver- ständigen? Zum ersten Frankfurter Auschwitz-Prozeß, in: Kritische Justiz 32 (1999) 4, 605-616. Wojak notes that scholarly attention to the camps and their victims only really began in the early 1980s. Wojak, Herrschaft der Sachverständigen, 605. 33 Hans Buchheim/Martin Broszat/Hans-Adolf Jacobsen/Helmut Krausnick, Anatomie des SS-Staates, Munich 1967, 9-10. 34 Ibid, 11. 35 Haberer, History and Justice, 497. 36 According to paragraph 2: “A murderer is anyone who kills a person out of a lust for killing, to satisfy sexual instincts, out of greed or other base motives, maliciousness or cruelty, or by means dangerous to the public or in order to facilitate or conceal another crime.” The task of the prosecution was to “prove intent, initiative, and motive” and “to demonstrate that the ‘inner disposition’ of an offender’s intent or motive in committing or assisting in the commission of the crime of murder met the criteria of criminality”. Haberer, History and Jus- tice, 497. 37 Renz, Frankfurter Auschwitz-Prozeß, 40. Renz captures the typical Auschwitz spectrum of actions as a one- sentence, preterit-tense-heavy litany on p. 18. On the dangers of taking Nazi perpetrators such as Höß at their word, see: Alan Rosen, Autobiography from the Other Side. The Reading of Nazi Memoirs and Confessional Ambiguity, in: Biography 24 (2001) 3, 553-569. 38 Renz, Frankfurter Auschwitz-Prozeß, 41. 39 Henne, Zeugenschaft vor Gericht, 82.

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The Audience of the Frankfurt Auschwitz Trial

The defendant against Helen Goldman’s accusations, Franz Bernhard Lucas (1911– 1994), grew up in Osnabrück, attended a Catholic Gymnasium in Meppen, and studied medicine in Münster beginning in 1933, where he was involved in the SA. After moving to Rostock in 1937 to continue his studies, he joined the SS and NSDAP in 1937. He moved to Danzig in 1939, where he completed a dissertation in gynaecology in 1942. As part of the Waffen-SS, he then received training at the SS Military Medical Academy in Graz, after which he was assigned to an SS clinic in Nuremberg. In No- vember 1943, a month after being transferred to an SS paratrooper unit near Prague, he was promoted to Obersturmführer and remained at that rank. His duties in the camp system began in Auschwitz-Birkenau on 15 December 1943, where he became a camp doctor in charge of the Zigeunerlager (the ‘Gypsy’ compound) and the There- sienstadt compound, both of which had been set aside for entire families and were eventually ‘liquidated’. In early August 1944, Lucas was transferred from Auschwitz to Mauthausen, then to Stutthof, then to Ravensbrück, and finally to Sachsenhausen, where he deserted the SS in mid-April 1945, a week before the camp was closed and the prisoners were forced to march westward. He then found his way to Elmshorn, north of Hamburg, lied about his war involvement, and worked as a gynaecologist in the city hospital until he was fired in late 1962 when news of his SS past reached the press. Lucas’s accuser, Helen Goldman, was born Ilona Kaufmann on 16 February 1925 to Mendel and Ethel Kaufmann in the Ukrainian village of Dubove. She had three sisters and four brothers. Hungarian soldiers took away her father, a shoemaker, in 1941. She worked as a tailor after high school, beginning her training in 1943.40 She was nineteen when she was expelled along with her family and a thousand other Jews in April 1944 to the ghetto of Tiachiv (Hungarian: Técsö), about 40 kilometres from Dubove.41 Al- though she recalled her family being transported to Auschwitz in the middle of May 1944, her entry document from Dachau lists her arrest as having occurred on 28 May 1944.42 According to the historical literature, transports departed the ghetto of Tiachiv for Auschwitz “either on May 22 or May 24, 1944, carrying mostly provincial Jews. The second transport departed on May 26, carrying Tiachiv’s local Jewish population.”43 On 28 May, the Tiachiv train passed through Košice/Kassa with 2,208 Jewish deportees.44 When the train arrived either on 29 or 30 May in Birkenau, the official photographer for the Political Division’s Records Department, Bernhard Walter, took pictures of the Tiachiv deportees that have been preserved in the well-known “Auschwitz Album”.45

40 Landesamt für Finanzen Saarburg, Amt für Wiedergutmachung (hereafter LfFS/AfW), Helen Goldman VA 130 611, Form B, Schaden an Körper oder Gesundheit (Par. 28-42 BEG). 41 See the account of this humiliating expulsion in: Raz Segal, Genocide in the Carpathians. War, Social Break- down, and Mass Violence, 1914–1945, Stanford 2016, 95. 42 Arolsen Archives, ITS Digital Archive (hereafter ITS), Individuelle Häftlings-Unterlagen Dachau, Ilona Kauf- mann Copy of 1.1.6.2 / 10126859. 43 Alexandra Lohse, Técsö, in: Geoffrey P. Megargee (ed.), The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Encyclopedia of Camps and Ghettos 1933–1945, Vol. 3, Bloomington 2009, 380. 44 Death Trains in 1944. The Kassa List, http://degob.org/tables/kassa.html (21 July 2020). 45 See: Tal Bruttmann/Stefan Hördler/Christoph Kreutzmüller, Die fotografische Inszenierung des Verbrech- ens. Ein Album aus Auschwitz, Darmstadt 2019, esp. 210-228, and Ulrike Koppermann, Challenging the Per- petrators’ Narrative. A Critical Reading of the Photo Album “Resettlement of the Jews from Hungary”, in: Journal of Perpetrator Research 2 (2019) 2, 101-129. The RSHA’s Hungarian pogrom was thus in high opera- tional mode before the end of May. At Auschwitz, SS organisational changes affecting garrison commander Rudolf Höß, Birkenau commandant Josef Kramer, Auschwitz commandant Richard Baer, and killing experts such as Otto Moll showed the SS commitment to disposing of the majority of deportees as they arrived. For a complete account, see e.g.: Christian Gerlach/Götz Aly, Das letzte Kapitel. Der Mord an den ungarischen Juden 1944–1945, Frankfurt 2004.

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It is almost certain that Goldman received her tattoo (A-12010) two months after ar rival, based on Danuta Czech’s Auschwitz calendar entry for 26 July 1944. This was the day that the numbers A-11819 to A-13826 were given to 2,008 female Jews who had arrived with Reich Main Security Office (RSHA) transports from Hungary -be tween 15 May and 19 July and were detained in temporary ‘depot’ compounds for women such as BIIc.46 Goldman reported being assigned to the BIIc kitchen, where she was hit and pushed around by a supervisor named Grau who represented the “bad SS woman” in her subsequent narrative.47 From Auschwitz, Goldman was transferred to the Da chau subcamp Kaufering on 27 October 1944.48 At the end of April 1945, Goldman spent a few days in Dachau and then in Buchberg, which the US Army liberated on 2 May 1945.49 Instead of immediate repatriation to Czechoslovakia – she feared how the communists would treat Jewish refugees – in late May she made her way to a Displaced Persons camp in Brussels along with Eric Goldman, a prisoner from Buchberg, whom she married in June 1946.50 On 18 December 1948, the couple boarded a ship in Antwerp bound for New York.51 Helen Goldman became a US citizen on 25 June 1954 while living in Pittsburgh.52 Helen Goldman’s efforts to receive compensation for captivity and her damaged health lasted for over a decade. During her time in Pittsburgh, the first standardised state restitution law in West Germany (Gesetz zur Wiedergutmachung nationalsozia listischen Unrechts) was passed on 26 April 1949, which also applied to DPs from Eastern Europe like herself.53 This allowed her to fill out Form C (compensation for imprisonment), which she signed on 1 March 1950 and filed with the Bavarian State Office for Compensation.54 Four years passed before the United Restitution Office (URO) in Munich wrote to the International Tracing Service (ITS) to request her Certificate of Incarceration and Residence.55 Since 1948, the URO had been helping former prisoners living abroad apply for reparations. At some point, Goldman either was assigned or enlisted the help of Konrad Höra, a lawyer from Frankfurt appoint- ed by the URO and familiar with the restitution law. In 1956, Höra requested that the URO send Goldman’s file to the Trier district office. His client sought damages for the period from 1 April 1944 to 2 May 1945, during which she was forced to wear the yellow star and was mistreated as a prisoner in the Tyachiv Ghetto, Auschwitz-

46 Danuta Czech, Kalendarium der Ereignisse im Konzentrationslager Auschwitz-Birkenau 1939–1945, Rein- bek 1989, 830. 47 LfFS/AfW, Helen Goldman VA 130 611, Affidavit of 6 March 1956. 48 ITS, Individuelle Häftlings-Unterlagen Dachau, Ilona Kaufmann, Copy of 1.1.6.2 / 10126859. 49 LfFS/AfW, Helen Goldman VA 130 611, Affidavit of 6 March 1956. 50 ITS, Korrespondenz T/D 352230, ITS to Konrad Höra, 15 August 1957, Copy of 6.3.3.2. / 98250076. 51 Ibid. It appears that they travelled with their second daughter Adele (born in 1948) and that their first daughter Fanny, born in 1946, came in February 1949, although it is unclear who accompanied her. A third daughter, Henrietta, was born in 1953. ITS, Registrierung und Betreuung von DPs innerhalb und außerhalb von Lagern, Listes des personnes transitaires ayant quittes la Belgique [List of Persons in Transit Who Have Departed Bel- gium], February 1949, Copy of 3.1.1.3 / 78794035. 52 LfFS/AfW, Helen Goldman VA 130 611, Konrad Höra to Bezirksamt für Wiedergutmachung Trier, 9 October 1957. 53 Christian Pross, Paying for the Past. The Struggle over Reparations for Surviving Victims of the Nazi Terror, translated by Belinda Cooper, Baltimore 1998, 21. 54 Applications from outside of West Germany were distributed across the federal states. See: Norbert Frei/José Brunner/Constantin Goschler, Die Praxis der Wiedergutmachung. Geschichte, Erfahrung und Wirkung in Deutschland und Israel, Göttingen 2009, 25. 55 ITS, Korrespondenz T/D 352230, United Restitution Office (Munich) to International Tracing Service, 10 May 1954, Copy of 6.3.3.2 / 98250084.

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Birkenau, Kaufering, and Buchberg.56 She was eligible for a pay-out of 150 DM for every month that she could prove her captivity.57 On 10 May 1956 and again on 17 January 1957, the URO requested a certificate for Goldman from the ITS.58 On 17 October 1956, Höra wrote the first of five letters to the ITS also requesting the certificate, which the Trier compensation office had promised him would wrap up the case.59 The ITS stamped all of Höra’s letters “for immediate scrutiny”, even as each letter vented his frustration that Goldman blamed him for the slow handling of her case.60 On 26 November 1957, the ITS finally provided Goldman’s International Red Cross Certificate of Incarceration and Resi- dence.61 The Trier court reached its decision on 21 May 1958, with the result that on 19 June 1958, eight years after applying, Goldman received her payment of DM 1,950 for having spent thirteen months and eight days in captivity in 1944/1945.62 Goldman and Höra then went to work on a much longer Form B, “Damages to Body and Health”, now associated with the Bundesentschädigungsgesetz (Federal In- demnification Law, BEG) of 1956. This route to reparation was also filled with delays, especially for persecutees living abroad.63 The form required fastidious accuracy and proof that an applicant’s symptoms stemmed from persecution and not from pre- existing conditions. Like thousands of others in her position, Goldman listed those ailments traceable to her stay in the camps, the conditions that brought them about, and the time that she first noticed symptoms. Her doctor in Miami, Dr Epstein, had operated on her several times for chronic pancreas infections. Her ongoing pain, al- leviated only by strong medication, had prompted seven hospital stays over the past three years, and her episodes were marked by fever, weakness, vomiting, and muscle cramps. Dr Epstein evaluated Goldman’s incapacity to work as 100 per cent and her need for medical treatment as permanent.64 Goldman attributed her pain to the repeated blows she had received in Auschwitz-Birkenau and Kaufering, and to the effect of insufficient food under brutal work conditions. In the camps, she had first felt water on the lung and a pain that stretched from her right lung to her gallbladder. While in Brussels from 1945 to 1948, she had received medicine, injections, and radiation, and undergone one unsuccessful operation. Two further operations fol-

56 LfFS/AfW, Helen Goldman VA 130 611, Konrad Höra to Bayrische Landesentschädigungsamt München, 4 April 1956. 57 In the middle of these endeavours, on 29 June 1956, the Bundesentschädigungsgesetz (BEG) was passed with retroactive effect to the Bundesergänzungsgesetz of 1 October 1953. BEG 1956, Par. 45 states that compensation of 150 DM would be granted for every full month of freedom deprivation. Under Restriction of freedom (Frei- heitsbeschränkung), Par. 47 states: “The persecutee has claim to compensation if he wore the Jewish star (Juden- stern) in the time from 30 January 1933 until 8 May 1945 or lived in inhumane conditions in illegality.” The law treated the yellow star as if it were intrinsically “Jewish” and failed to note that this badge, meant to mark and humiliate, was introduced only in 1941. 58 The URO reminded the ITS of this in a follow-up letter on 17 January 1957. ITS, Korrespondenz T/D 352230, Copy of 6.3.3.2 / 98250082. 59 ITS, Korrespondenz T/D 352230, Konrad Höra to International Tracing Service, 17 October 1956, Copy of 6.3.3.2 / 98250083. 60 ITS, Korrespondenz T/D 352230, Höra to ITS on 6 December 1956, 29 January 1957, 3 April 1957, 23 May 1957, Copy of 6.3.3.2 / 98250079-85. 61 ITS, Korrespondenz T/D 352230, Comité International de la Croix-Rouge, No. 333352, Certificate of Incar- ceration and Residence for Helen Goldman (Ilona Kaufmann), (b. 16. 2. 1925), Copy of 6.3.3.2 / 98250091. 62 Interestingly, Feststellungsbescheid C of the Trier court gives the date of Goldman’s application as 1 March 1951, a year later than the date Goldman wrote on the form. It thus took either seven or eight years for her to receive just shy of 2,000 DM. The court used the language of BEG 1956 in its declaration. 63 “Once the application was received, the reparations office commissioned a doctor in the persecutee’s locality to submit an evaluation. Months and even years could pass before a medical examination took place, and an equally long time before the evaluation was formulated, written, and submitted to the office.” Pross, Paying for the Past, 71-72. 64 LfFS/AfW, Helen Goldman VA 130 611, Form B, Schaden an Körper oder Gesundheit, undated.

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lowed in Pittsburgh before Dr Epstein took over her treatment in Miami. On 11 June 1958, the Trier District Office for Reparations received Goldman’s Form B application regarding Damages to Body or Health, along with certificates of her treatment in Brussels in July and August 1945 for pleurisy and scissuritis.65 Goldman’s application regarding Damages to Body and Health was denied on 9 September 1959, but no documents explain why. The denial is mentioned in a con- tract between Goldman and Höra, by which Goldman transferred her representation to two lawyers in Trier to assist in her appeal and agreed to pay Höra five percent of any compensation she received.66 The Trier Bezirksamt für Wiedergutmachung certified on 17 May 1962 that Goldman was a persecuted party in the sense of BEG Par. 1, determined her qualification on 7 June 1962, and regulated the precise compensation amounts on 12 December 1962. The assessments that a certain Dr Cent- ner provided on 12 July and 24 November 1962 identified the organic origin of her suffering as “disease of the gall bladder or biliousness affecting the upper abdominal organs and clear secondary vegetative dystonia”.67 Her Kapitalentschädigung for the period from 1 January 1949 through 31 October 1953 totalled 14,500 DM. The retroactive pension payment for the period from November 1953 through March 1963 totalled 31,378 DM. In April 1963, Goldman began receiving a monthly pension of 319 DM, based on an eighty per cent reduction of work productivity calculated from 1 November 1953 onward. Her next medical assessment was scheduled for February 1965.68 Goldman’s reaction to the settlement is unknown, as is the extent of her ongoing legal efforts. It is doubtful that either her medical or her psychological condition improved. There is little evidence that the courts took into account the damage to her pancreas, to her lungs from pleurisy and scissuritis, or the aftereffects of typhus or typhoid fever – let alone Goldman’s psychological suffering, the result of persecution trauma inside and outside the camps, to which especially French, Danish, and Amer- ican psychiatrists had drawn attention since the end of the war.69 For various reasons, West Germany did not engage seriously with the concept of “survivor syndrome” until a vanguard of psychiatrists insisted on finding a label to describe its reality. Many of these psychiatrists delivered hundreds of assessments to legal experts and federal compensation offices, particularly in the wake of increased BEG applications after 1956. Only very slowly did their official guild acknowledge that not all enduring damage to survivor victims was organic in origin or constant in its manifestation. Due to figures of authority like Dr Karl Bonhoeffer, who for most of his career argued that the psyche was strong enough in principle to recover from the heaviest onslaughts, compensation courts maintained that any nerve damage that did not repair itself after half a year signalled a pre-existing condition and was thus

65 A hint of the thoroughness required for proving damages: Goldman received care from the University of Brussels Medical Clinic from 26 July to 3 August 1945 and from the Assistance Publique from 3-23 August 1945. Her application included a statement from Dr Petitfrere for treatment in May 1945; from Dr Benjamin Levant for treatment from 1949 to July 1949; from Dr Sidney Rosenburg for treatment from March 1949 to March 1954 in Pittsburgh; from Dr H.A. Fober for the years 1953/1954; from Dr B. David Epstein for treatment from 1954 onward; and certification from Montefiore Hospital in Pittsburgh for treatment from Sep- tember 1949 to December 1953. 66 LfFS/AfW, Helen Goldman VA 130 611, Vereinbarung zwischen Dr. Konrad Höra (signed 29 January 1960) und Helen Goldman (signed 23 November 1959). 67 LfFS/AfW, Helen Goldman VA 130 611, Bezirksamt für Wiedergutmachung Trier, B Bescheid (Mitteilung) über Entschädigung, 16 January 1963. 68 Ibid. 69 Pross, Paying for the Past, 83.

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not eligible for compensation.70 There is more to say about this in the discussion of Dr Walter von Baeyer’s findings. It suffices to repeat that Goldman’s reparations file did not contain descriptions of psychological suffering, the likely causes of which were the radical uprooting from her home and witnessing the loss of immediate family members in Birkenau. To help her with her compensation case in Trier, Goldman had relied locally on her lawyer Harry Bassett in Miami. Shortly after Lucas’s first cross-examination by the Frankfurt court on 27 January 1964, Bassett wrote to the Frankfurt State Attor- ney’s Office that Goldman had read Lucas’s name in the newspaper. Goldman told Bassett that when her transport arrived at Birkenau, Lucas tore her two-year-old sister from her arms to throw to her mother, who was already holding Goldman’s younger brother with another sister close by. Goldman was ushered into one line, watching as her mother and her three younger siblings joined the other line.71 After having her clothes taken and her hair shorn, she was pushed under the shower and given prisoner clothing. An SS woman told Goldman later that day that her family had perished. Goldman remembered Lucas’s name because another official involved in the selection had addressed him as “Dr Lucas”. Once she was settled in her barrack in BIIc (one of the Birkenau transit compounds for female Jewish prisoners), Lucas also ordered her to give blood and stool samples to clear her for working in the kitchen. About a week later, Lucas returned to inform Goldman that she had passed the health tests and could work in the kitchen. She never saw him after that.72 When she appeared in person in Frankfurt on 3 September 1964, Goldman reported that she had discovered Lucas’s name among the 22 defendants listed in the Jewish Floridian.73 Asked how she could have stumbled upon Lucas’s name in an American newspaper, Goldman responded: “Because people are looking for the names. And I was looking for Doctor Lucas because he killed my mother and my two sisters and little brother. He’s the cause of it.”74 She went on to explain: “I had my little sister, she was two years old, on my arms, you understand. Because somebody had said, if you have a little baby, then you would go with your mother. So my mother dressed me up a little, so I would look a little older. She gave me her little baby, we had a three-year-old and two-year-old […]. When Mr. Lucas saw that, he saw through me, that I was young and healthy. And he said I would be good for work, strong for work. And he grabbed my little sister and threw her to my mother.”75 Goldman’s separation from her family never became the subject of cross-examination, but several doubts surfaced about her account. Who had furnished her with the proof that her family had perished? How did she know that the man doing the separating was an SS officer named Dr Lucas? Would he not have been addressed as “Herr Obersturmführer”? Could she please be more specific about his appearance

70 Svenja Goltermann, Kausalitätsfragen. Psychisches Leid und psychisches Wissen in der Entschädigung, in: Frei/Brunner/Goschler (ed.), Die Praxis der Wiedergutmachung, 427-451, here 429. 71 These numbers contradict Goldman’s affidavit of 1956, when she reported having three sisters and four brothers. LfFS/AfW, Helen Goldman VA 130 61, Notarielle Verhandlung, Miami, 6 March 1956. Whether these siblings were with Goldman on her transport to Auschwitz-Birkenau is unknown. Emmi Bonhoeffer recalled that Goldman mentioned that the two-year-old was a boy and that Goldman’s other four siblings were present, aged four, seven, ten, and fourteen. Emmi Bonhoeffer, Zeugen im Auschwitz-Prozeß. Begegnungen und Ge danken, Wuppertal-Barmen 1965, 39. 72 Fritz Bauer Institut Archiv (Frankfurt am Main, hereafter FBIA), Lucas file, Letter of Harry L. Bassett to the State Attorney General in Frankfurt/Main, 31 January and 20 February 1964. 73 Vernehmung der Zeugin Helen Goldman, 3. 9. 1964, in: AP, 16966-16967. 74 Ibid, 16953-16954. 75 Ibid, 16892-16893.

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and his “nice” SS uniform?76 Goldman’s memory of Lucas as a “fairly good looking” man of average build in his mid-thirties, slim and fairly tall without distinguishing features, had faded with time, but his name had not.77 She also had no trouble that day identifying him from among the defendants: “I’m not sure, but it seems to me that this is Dr Lucas.”78 One detail that disturbed the court was Goldman’s claim that a man from the shower room, wearing a plain prisoner’s uniform and claiming to be part of the crematorium detail, singled her out to inquire about the scars on her back, which stemmed from a German having hit her with his rifle in one of the freight cars: “If Doctor Lucas was at the station picking them right and left, he says, then my mother and the children are not going to be living long, they’re going to be killed the same day.”79 Hence the news, but not proof, of her family’s murder in the gas chamber seemed to come both from this Jewish prisoner and the “bad SS woman”. Defence attorney Rudolf Aschenauer was especially bothered by the lack of proof and Gold- man’s inability to pin the news on one person. He and Judge Hofmeyer were also insistent that no crematorium workers would ever have seen the inside of the women’s shower room. Nevertheless, as Filip Müller, a rare survivor of a crematorium squad, reported much later, such boundaries were never as impenetrable as outsiders imagined.80 To the court, the most bothersome aspect of Goldman’s account was her sense of time. She reported that after her separation from her family on the ramp, she saw Lucas a second time four to six weeks later, when he chose her to work in the kitchen pending the results of her hygiene tests in Berlin.81 Pressed further, she maintained that he had picked her out already at the ramp to work in the kitchen, which was the reason he wrested her sister away from her. Judge Hofmeyer asked her to reconsider her answers, because the letter from her lawyer Bassett indicated that Lucas had approached her regarding kitchen duty the day after her arrival. The issue was whether she had seen Lucas twice or three times, and now she was insistent that it was twice. But how could Lucas have made such arrangements with her in the confusion and chaos on the ramp? For the defence, attorney Rainer Eggert asked questions about the blood, urine, and stool samples, drawing attention to the difference in Bassett’s account and her current report on how long she had waited before Lucas conveyed the results from Berlin (from one to six weeks) and what kind of work she was doing

76 Ibid, 16898. 77 Ibid, 16929-16932. Goldman would have overlooked the scar on Lucas’s left cheek, most likely a Schmiß from student sword-duelling in a politically conservative fraternity. This mark was visible in photographs from his days as a student in Rostock from 1937 to 1939, although it may have originated from Münster, where he began his studies in 1933. 78 Vernehmung Goldman, in: AP, 16994. 79 Ibid, 16903. The man was from Poland and spoke “Jewish” (i.e. Yiddish) with her (16939). 80 Müller wrote that it was difficult but not impossible for a Sonderkommando prisoner to get into the women’s camp. “The bribery which went on in this connection was quite unbelievable, while the men’s inventiveness knew no bounds. Some managed to get inside the women’s camp by joining work teams which had to do jobs there. They secured the tacit connivance of the SS men on duty at the main gate by generously greasing their palms. Still others invented the most ingenious reasons in order to reach their goal”. Filip Müller, Eyewitness Auschwitz. Three Years in the Gas Chambers, Chicago 1979, 62-63. A few days before Goldman’s appearance, Aron Bejlin had testified that the doctor of a Sonderkommando had freedom of movement. Vernehmung des Zeugen Aron Bejlin, 28. 8. 1964, in: AP, 16295. Bejlin may have been referring to Mengele’s prisoner patholo- gist Miklos Nyiszili, who likely arrived in Birkenau around the same time (if not in the same transport) as Goldman and wrote that Mengele had issued him a special all-sectors pass to visit his wife and daughter in the women’s camp. See: Miklos Nyiszili, Auschwitz. A Doctor’s Eyewitness Account [1960], translated by Tibère Kremer and Richard Seaver, New York 2011, 139-140. 81 Vernehmung Goldman, in: AP, 16908.

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during that time (answer: “Oh, nothing”).82 During Goldman’s five or six months working with the giant cooking kettle in the Birkenau transit camp BIIc, she was supervised by a “bad” SS woman and a “good” one. The former never let her forget the fate of her family,83 while the latter hid her in a barrack and brought her medication during her two-week illness and brought her back for rollcall to the barrack where the other kitchen workers worked.84 Deputy judge Hummerich, meanwhile, was bothered by her insistence that she had had no contact with the young women in the adjoining barrack.85 Asked to respond to what he was hearing, Lucas took issue with Goldman’s dates and denied either meeting her or selecting prisoners for kitchen duty. He suggested that she had confused him with Dr Heinz Thilo, Dr Fritz Klein, or Dr Josef Menge- le.86 Undeterred, Goldman’s final statement to the court was that Dr Lucas was responsible for her postwar malaise that confined her mostly to bed.87 The court remembered this remark in its verdict nearly a year later, pointing out that being bed- ridden did not lend credibility to Goldman’s claims that Lucas had selected her for kitchen duty and that a male crematorium worker had infiltrated the shower area to inquire about her scars and to tell her that Lucas was responsible for killing her mother and siblings.88 The audio portion of Goldman’s eighty-minute appearance records her breakdown. Calm at the start, she becomes flustered and then indignant as the cross-examination spirals out of her control. The audio also reveals the hesitations of her interpreter. After state attorney Joachim Kügler and assisting judge Seiboldt complained about Regina Schmidt-Ott’s English translations, Schmidt-Ott made a special effort to meet with their approval, only to have her confidence further rattled when Goldman interrupted Schmidt-Ott’s translations of German passages that she already understood.89 In addition, one hears judge Hofmeyer scoffing at Goldman’s claims and grunting his approv-

82 Ibid, 16941. A report from Auschwitz dated 18 August 1944 of stool samples from sixty BIIc kitchen workers lists Ilona Kaufman, A 12010, as number 35, at the bottom of the first column on the page with her results on the next page. ITS, Laboruntersuchungen des SS-Hygiene-Instituts Auschwitz, Copy of 1.1.2.1 / 555501-02. At the time of the trial, these files from the Auschwitz Museum would have been accessible to the prosecution. The director of the Auschwitz Museum, Kazimierz Smolen, made copies of documents available in 1959, and Vogel and Kügler made their own fact-finding trip to Auschwitz in August 1960. They also had the support of Jan Sehn and thus documents from the archives of the Hauptkommission zur Untersuchung der Nazi-Verbre- chen in Polen – documents that Kügler was able to copy in Berlin in June 1960. On access to these documents, see: Werner Renz, Der 1. Auschwitzer Prozeß. Zwei Vorgeschichten, in: Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissen- schaft 50 (2002) 7, 622-641. The court’s visit to Auschwitz in mid-December 1964 afforded another opportunity, as more documents had been organised and catalogued in the intervening years. See: Inge Deutschkron, Auschwitz war nur ein Wort. Berichte über den Frankfurter Auschwitz-Prozess 1963–1965, Berlin 2018, 306. Assuming they knew that the reports were available, the prosecutors would have had to know to look for Helen Goldman’s Auschwitz name Ilona Kaufman or search by her prisoner number and to know to search in the hygiene report of 18 August 1944. 83 Ibid, 16956-16957. 84 Ibid, 16910-16915. Although Goldman said that she had typhoid fever, which spreads readily in unsanitary food areas, she could also have had typhus, probably spread by body lice that thrived due to overcrowding and lack of hygiene to become the most ravaging infection in the camps. Based on the stool sample results that came back on 18 August 1944, it is likely that she had either typhoid fever or typhus before that date. On the eradication of typhus and the discourse of parasites linking Jews and lice, see: Paul Weindling, Epidemics and Genocide in Eastern Europe, Oxford 2000, esp. 271-321. Prisoner doctors were aware of the long-term effects of typhus. The Jewish prisoner Wladyslav Fejkiel, during testimony on behalf of Lucas, counted himself among those who experienced “certain changes in the brain” following typhus. Vernehmung des Zeugen Wla- dyslaw Fejkiel, 29. 5. 1964, in: AP, 9289. 85 Vernehmung Goldman, in: AP, 16978-16979. 86 Ibid, 16995-16997. 87 Ibid, 16997. 88 Mundliche Urteilsbegrundung des Vorsitzenden Richters, 19. 8. 1965, AP 37907. 89 One misunderstanding was the false conveyance of “fairly tall” as “very tall”, for which Judge Seiboldt sought clarification. Compare AP, 16889 and 16932.

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al as defence attorney Rainer Eggert asked why Goldman was looking for Lucas’s name in the Florida newspapers in the first place. Judge Hummerich’s probing tone showed impatience with her flustered answers and accelerates her breakdown. Nevertheless, judge Perseke recorded nothing of these paratextual events in his notes. What Noah Shenker calls “testimonial literacy” – sighs and screams “often consigned to the periphery”90 – does not appear in the court transcript. Newspapers and eyewitness reports deliver a more complete picture of how volume and tone of voice, hesitations, interruptions, facial expressions, background noise, laughter, and weeping affected the hearings. Even more poignant than the regular trial reports of Bernd Naumann and Hermann Langbein, both eventually compiled as monographs, were Inge Deutsch kron’s observations of non-verbal cues, as will be discussed shortly. One voice that sounded more patronising than offended belonged to defence attorney Rudolf Aschenauer. Calmly and politely, he questioned the length of time it took for Goldman to receive health clearance from Berlin and how it was that she could blame Lucas for the loss of her family in light of her lack of evidence.91 Months later, in his closing remarks on behalf of Lucas, he seized on forensic inconsistencies: that Goldman had been seriously ill without being admitted to the camp hospital and that she was unable to indicate the separate compounds of Birkenau on the courtroom map – a common touchstone of eyewitness credibility. “On the whole”, Aschenauer concluded, “what we have here is the statement of an unhappy, nerve- shattered woman that cannot serve as the basis of a decision.”92 Between Goldman’s appearance in September 1964 and Aschenauer’s remarks in June 1965, however, Lucas had gone from consistently denying performing ramp selections to finally acknowledging in court on 11 March 1965 that he had done so “four or five times” under pressure from Birkenau commandant Josef Kramer and under putative fear of danger to life and limb if he refused. It was this confession, weak as it was, that adjunct prosecutor Christian Raabe had in mind in his own closing remarks when he scolded Lucas for not immediately admitting his ramp service after being accused by a distraught Goldman of steering her family members toward the gas chamber. Raabe saw no reason to doubt the testimony of a woman broken by the camp because her testimony concurred with the reports given by other witnesses about the conditions on the ramp. It was beside the point whether revenge was Gold- man’s motivation for testifying.93 For the prosecution, state attorney Joachim Kügler also considered Goldman credible in crucial points, despite what he called her “effu- siveness” and “hysteria”.94

90 Noah Shenker, Through the Lens of the Shoah. The Holocaust as a Paradigm for Documenting Genocide, in: History and Memory 28 (Spring/Summer 2016) 1, 141-175, here 145. 91 In October 1964, a month after the hearing in question, Aschenauer took over the representation of Lucas along with his existing client Wilhelm Boger, one of the most notorious among the Auschwitz trial defendants. 92 FBIA, FAP 1, V-23, 9-10, Rudolf Aschenauer, Plädoyer für LUCAS, 21. 6. 1965. Based on what the court should have known – that most prisoners knew about the danger of routine or sudden selections in the prisoner hospital – it is not inconsistent that Goldman, thanks to her own or another’s decision, would have avoided reporting sick. 93 Christian Raabe, Plädoyer zu Lucas, Frank, Schatz, Breitwieser, Stark, Boger, Dylewski, Hofmann, Kaduk, Klehr, Baretzki, Scherpe, Hantl, Mulka u. Höcker, 21. 5. 1965, in: AP, 33854-33981, here 33868. 94 Joachim Kügler, Plädoyer zu Lucas, Schatz, Frank, Capesius, 13. 5. 1965, in: AP, 33207-33289, here 33258. ‘Hys- teria’ stands for the incomprehensibility of the female object under the clinical gaze. The psychiatrist Hans Strauss, forced to flee Germany in 1933, used the label when evaluating female claimants in New York, where he did reparations evaluations. Some traced his lack of understanding to his supposed German-Jewish ani- mosity toward Eastern European Jews. Unfortunately, Strauss’s rejections of claims that other psychiatrists considered valid earned him approval from the West German authorities, who believed he could be trusted regarding the claims that he did consider valid. More to his credit, Strauss was instrumental in developing the term Entwurzelungsdepression (uprooting depression) as a major component of survivor’s syndrome. Pross, Paying for the Past, 100-101.

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As adjunct (civil) prosecutors, Raabe and Henry Ormond represented the voices of eleven victims of racial persecution, three victims of political persecution, and the husband of a victim of racial persecution. In his closing remarks, Henry Ormond reminded the court that a co-plaintiff “wants to achieve personal reparations for suffering and injustice resulting from the death of close relatives. […] Some are the only survivors of their entire murdered family.”95 Ormond, who was Jewish and had himself been a prisoner of Dachau in 1939, worked without an honorarium to provide the state prosecutor’s office with “all conceivable means of proof” to help the cause of justice.96 A few of the co-plaintiffs were among the 271 survivors who appeared as witnesses in the Frankfurt Auschwitz trial and like so many others the co-plaintiffs were reticent to dredge up their memories in a West German court that provided few assurances of trustworthiness. No doubt the ideal was for a witness to offer testimony devoid of overwrought emotion. After convincing reluctant but effective witnesses such as Raya Kagan (a Jewish former secretary in Auschwitz for the SS) to testify on behalf of those who could not, Hermann Langbein reminded them to heed both the content and the form of their testimony.97 Although the defence viewed it with suspicion, the resultant incriminating visual and aural information was confirmed when a delegation of the court visited Auschwitz in December 1964.98 Importantly, malicious intentions or unreliable memory did not inherently compromise the incriminating information that witnesses provided. Goldman’s willingness to testify made her an atypical witness; whether she had been encouraged to testify is unknown. In a way, Raabe functioned as her informal lawyer in Frankfurt. Unlike Aschenauer in his defence of Lucas, Raabe could not lie to protect this witness from Miami. Wishing that the court could respect the specificity of Goldman’s statements above their accuracy, Raabe had more success – if not in influencing the verdict, at least for posterity99 – by going on the offensive against Aschenauer and his client Lucas. In her 1966 essay on the Auschwitz trial, the political philosopher Hannah Arendt reflected among other things on Lucas and Goldman. Arendt was struck not only by Lucas’s consistent denial of having had the courage to save Goldman’s life, but by Goldman’s apparent unawareness “that she who had sought out the murderer of her family had faced the savior of her own life”.100 Goldman seemed oblivious that she was

95 Henry Ormond, Plädoyer zu Broad, Capesius, 24. 5. 1965, in: AP, 33982-34102, here 33986. One of the co- plaintiffs, the Jewish prisoner doctor Aron Bejlin, provided exculpatory testimony for Lucas. AP, 16338. Judge Hofmeyer interrupted Bejlin’s narrative as Bejlin, caught in a memory, attempted to explain how much his Polish friend Dzialek, whom Broad had beaten and killed, meant to him, and what it felt to take leave of someone unlikely to return after being ordered to report to the Political Division. Vernehmung des Zeugen Bejlin, in: AP, 16308. 96 Ormond, Plädoyer zu Broad, Capesius, in: AP, 33991. 97 Hermann Langbein, “Ich habe keine Angst gehabt”, in: Wojak/Meinl (ed.), Im Labyrinth der Schuld, 285-296, esp. 291-293. On Langbein’s crucial role in the trial, see: Katharina Stengel, Hermann Langbein. Ein Ausch witz-Überlebender in den erinnerungspolitischen Konflikten der Nachkriegszeit, Frankfurt am Main 2012, esp. 491-561. 98 On the site visit to Auschwitz, see esp.: Sybille Steinbacher, Protokoll vor der Schwarzen Wand. Die Ortsbe sichtigung des Frankfurter Schwurgerichts in Auschwitz, in: Wojak (ed.), “Gerichtstag halten über uns selbst”, 61-95. On the unforeseen existential effects on judge Hotz and many of the defense lawyers, see: Deutschkron, Auschwitz war nur ein Wort, 292-307. Anton Reiners, Oswald Kaduk’s defence attorney, “cried like a boy” during the film about the liberation of Auschwitz shown on 16 December in the Auschwitz Mu- seum. Deutschkron, Auschwitz war nur ein Wort, 299. 99 See: Christian Ritz, Die westdeutsche Nebenklagevertretung in den Frankfurter Auschwitz-Prozessen und im Verfahrenskomplex Krumey/Hunsche, in: Kritische Justiz 1 (2007), 51-72, here 55. 100 Hannah Arendt, A Note on the Trial, in: Bernd Naumann, Auschwitz. A Report on the Proceedings Against Robert Karl Ludwig Mulka and Others Before the Court at Frankfurt, translated by Jean Steinberg, New York 1966, xxx.

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alive only because Lucas had wrested the child away from her on the ramp. Arendt singled out Lucas as the only defendant who “does not show open contempt for the court, does not laugh, insult witnesses, demand that the prosecuting attorneys apolo- gize, or have fun with the others”.101 She was impressed equally by the witnesses from Ravensbrück who testified that during his stint there in early 1945, he had smuggled medicine to them and refused to select sick and frail women for the gas chamber. Arendt reasoned that Lucas’s reluctant answers in the courtroom squared with his re luctant SS affiliation twenty years earlier. “To be sure, none of the acquitted defendants, none of the lawyers for the defense […] could hold a candle to Dr. Franz Lucas.”102 Had Arendt observed Goldman’s appearance in court first-hand, however, she would have seen a witness forced to rest on a stretcher during the recesses.103 As one reporter wrote, two women from the German Red Cross helped Goldman walk to the witness chair. “Lucas stands in the front row of the men who are placed in a semicircle like a men’s chorus. The overly slender witness, her red hair emphasizing her deathly pale face, has stood up. Her gaze passes over the serious faces and rests on Lucas. It is to this former camp doctor that she then points.”104 When Arendt had the chance to attend the trial first-hand several days later on 14 September 1964, it was in the company of historian Joachim Fest, who commented later that Arendt had recognised the “Adolf Eichmann type” in many of the defendants.105 That it was her habit to seek out heroic exceptions to the dutiful antisemitic Nazis was demonstrated by the attention she granted to Anton Schmidt in Eichmann in Jerusalem, who inspired her conclusion “that under conditions of terror most people will comply but some people will not”.106 The urge to apply to Lucas the qualities she claimed to recognise in Schmidt showed Arendt’s tendency to focus on ‘hero’ or ‘pariah’ typology instead of reflecting on witness experiences. Even if she thought that she was simply registering one of many ironies of the Holocaust, Arendt’s condescending remark that Goldman had failed to recognise Lucas as having saved her life by separating her from her family as able to work failed to recognise the prisoner’s compulsion of choosing between bad and worse, then having to live with the unabating visual, aural, and physiological consequences of those non-choices. As Lawrence Langer writes: “An audience trained in the necessity of moral choice to preserve the integrity of civ- ilized behaviour might be dismayed to learn how often in the evidence of these testimonies […] the belief in choice betrayed the victim and turned out to be an illusion.”107 Neither courts keen on reaching timely verdicts nor commentators such as Arendt reflected a nuanced understanding of how trauma affected the arena of choice. Hannah Arendt famously had no patience for melodrama either, particularly in the Eichmann trial, where her model for testimonial steadiness was the witness Zyn- del Grynszpan.108 Besides Langbein himself, Viennese physicians Ellen Lingens and

101 Ibid, xvi. 102 Ibid, xxv. 103 Hermann Langbein, Der Auschwitz-Prozess. Eine Dokumentation, Vienna 1995, originally published 1965, Vol. 2, 607. 104 Herbert Neumann, Zeugin: Dr. Lucas selektierte. Ehemaliger KZ-Arzt erstmals schwer belastet. Es rauchte und rauchte den ganzen Tag, in: Frankfurter Rundschau, 4 September 1964. 105 See: Joachim Fest, Begegnungen. Über nahe und ferne Freunde, Reinbek bei Hamburg 2004, 185. 106 Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem. A Report on the Banality of Evil, New York 2006, 233. Emphasis in the original. 107 Lawrence Langer, Holocaust Testimonies. The Ruins of Memory, New Haven 1993, 33. 108 Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem, 229. While covering the trial for the New Yorker, Arendt famously “de- nounces the right of witnesses to describe events unrelated to the charges” (particularly of those who came from territories not under Eichmann’s jurisdiction) and “rails against the fact that history, in the spirit of the indictment, was at the center of the trial”. Wieviorka, Era of the Witness, 86-87.

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Otto Wolken met the standards of steadiness and precision that the presiding judge Hans Hofmeyer championed, enough for Wolken to testify for six hours.109 At the close of the trial, Hofmeyer explained that as much as the court wanted to grant cre- dence to the entirety of survivor voices, it was limited to accepting only the statements that withstood impertinent interrogation: “Even the ideal witness who wants to tell the pure truth […] is subject to certain memory gaps after twenty years. He is in danger of projecting onto others the things that he himself experienced and to count as his own experience certain drastic things that others in this milieu have recounted. More than anything, he runs the danger of mixing up the times and places of his experiences […]. Nevertheless, the court was aware of the enormous pressure on witnesses, given that most witnesses had no calendars or clocks or recording devices at their disposal, yet were asked to provide the minutest details of their experiences.”110 The danger of false sentencing was too high to relax vigilance concerning eviden- tial claims that were impossible to cross-check against other documentary sources that had long since been destroyed by the Nazis.111 This was no show trial, Hofmeyer reminded his audience. Because the court had to render judgment of a defendant’s concrete guilt, it was constrained to determine first whether, then exactly where and when the defendant committed actual murder. The court followed the criminologi- cal view that memories disintegrated after twenty years and were less reliable even for events “observed by the witness under unspeakable suffering”.112 For Hofmeyer, it was one thing to dismiss witnesses for failing the credibility test – at least they attempted to support the court’s investigation at great personal cost. It was quite another thing to make headway into the silence, denial, and lies of the defendants. If the court ever accepted a witness’s account that was on shaky objective grounds, the defendants were in no position to complain, because they contributed little to truth-finding during the hearings.113

The Audience of Hospitality

Judge Hofmeyer’s remarks reflect the legal climate of the time, beholden to West German laws unequipped to address genocide-scale murder. Certainly, the defence attorneys who grilled Goldman on forensic detail, such as Aschenauer, Laternser, and Eggert, still manifested their own complicity in National Socialism, no matter how neutral they claimed to be.114 This complicity included judge Hofmeyer him-

109 Langbein himself testified for over four hours in his first appearance on the stand. The milieu testimonies of these three key Auschwitz survivors were not among the sixty per cent of witness statements that the court rejected as contradictory or improbable. Deutschkron, Auschwitz war nur ein Wort, 321. 110 Mundliche Urteilsbegrundung des Vorsitzenden Richters, 19. 8. 1965, in: AP, 36679-36681. 111 Ibid, 36683. 112 Ibid, 36678. 113 Ibid, 36684. 114 Aschenauer and Laternser were in high demand as attorneys for former Nazis. The firm of Rainer Eggert and Fritz Steinacker, which earlier included Laternser, represented Lucas during his retrial in 1970. Steinacker included Josef Mengele among his clients, representing him in absentia in the proceedings in Düsseldorf in 1953 after Mengele’s wife Irene submitted a petition for divorce that Mengele did not contest. See: David Marwell, Unmasking the Angel of Death, New York 2020, 163-164; Imtrud Wojak, Fritz Bauer 1903–1968. Eine Biographie, Munich 2011, 310.

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self.115 Instead of inviting respect for helping to establish culpability, Goldman provoked impatience, hostility, and either pity or repulsion. Goldman’s audiences ranged beyond juridical ones, however. The first audience in this respect is Emmi (Delbrück) Bonhoeffer, who attended to Goldman in the courtroom and whose hospitality to her outside the courtroom reversed some of the effects of Goldman’s ex- hausting cross-examination. Bonhoeffer referred to Goldman in one of her letters to Recha Jászi in Oberlin, Ohio.116 Bonhoeffer was part of the Marienschwesternschaft, a German Red Cross and diaconal initiative based in Darmstadt, which cared for the needs of Auschwitz survivors, many of them Polish witnesses, who had travelled to Frankfurt to testify against their former captors.117 Until her friend Ursula Wirth invited Bonhoeffer to join her in the endeavour, though, Bonhoeffer had avoided reading about the trial. Henceforth she began attending three hearings a week to better understand the events about which the witnesses testified.118 Because the German Red Cross evoked associations of the ambulances that had transported the Zyklon B in Birkenau, many witnesses were slow to trust the hosts who offered them items such as reading glasses, hearing aids, and orthopaedic shoes. Once trust was established, guests and hosts took walks or ate dinner together, but the hosts’ most important task was to escort witnesses to the courtroom and return them to their hotel rooms.119 According to Bonhoeffer, public resistance to the trial was rooted primarily in the reluctance to pursue defendants who, despite any role they played in the war, now looked the same as any other respected West German citizen.120 Allied trials in the immediate postwar era such as the IMT had ignored ‘minor’ war criminals in order to focus on major war criminals. If one believed that only major figures were punish- able, then it was a waste of time to discuss the crimes of “Kleinen” (little men) led astray by criminal orders they had been forced to obey.121 To be sure, Bonhoeffer was reproducing, not embracing self-justificatory narratives of seduction and entangle- ment that demonised Hitler, Himmler, and Heydrich, yet it remains unclear whether she too believed that the SS men caught in the net of justice had been led astray by forces beyond their control. After all, any chance to attribute their atrocities to fate or

115 As has come to light recently, Hofmeyer gained career experience in the 1930s as a judge on ‘heredity courts’ that determined compulsory sterilisation for so-called ‘enemies of the state’. See e.g.: Alexander Haneke, Der Richter und sein Geheimnis, in: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 31 March 2019. 116 Bonhoeffer, Zeugen, 38-40. Bonhoeffer’s husband Klaus Bonhoeffer was executed on 23 April 1945 for his role in the 20 July 1944 assassination attempt of Adolf Hitler, two weeks after his younger brother, the religious martyr Dietrich Bonhoeffer. Emmi Bonhoeffer’s Jewish friend Recha Jászi had emigrated to the United States from Vienna and had married a Hungarian historian. Sigrid Grabner/Hendrik Roder (ed.), Emmi Bonhoeffer. Essay/Gespräch/Erinnerung, Berlin 2004, 112. 117 On the Frankfurt hospitality initiative, see: Merle Funkenberg, Zeugenbetreuung von Holocaust-Überle- benden und Widerstandskämpfern bei NS-Prozessen (1964–1985). Zeitgeschichtlicher Hintergrund und emotionales Erleben, Gießen 2016. Frankfurt volunteers lent support to some 170 witnesses. Wirth herself spent thirty weekends with them and drove them over 10,000 kilometers in her car. Funkenberg, Zeugenbe- treuung von Holocaust-Überlebenden, 111-113. 118 Bonhoeffer, Zeugen, 12-14. 119 Ibid, 28. A few witnesses dropped their guard only after being convinced, for example, that German restau- rant proprietors were not trying to poison their food. Was West Germany a land of law and order when they saw their former captors moving about so freely? See also: Julia Wagner, The Truth about Auschwitz. Prose- cuting Auschwitz Crimes with the Help of Survivor Testimony, in: German History 28 (2010) 3, 343-357, and Dagi Knellessen, Momentaufnahmen der Erinnerung. Juristische Zeugenschaft im ersten Frankfurter Auschwitz-Prozess – Ein Interviewprojekt, in: Michael Elm/Gottfried Kößler (ed.), Zeugenschaft des Holo- caust. Zwischen Trauma, Tradierung und Ermittlung, Frankfurt am Main 2007, 116-138. 120 Bonhoeffer, Zeugen, 16-17. 121 Ibid, 20-21.

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a lack of choice gave those ‘little men’ less accountability.122 Bonhoeffer hoped that the victim testimony would reach public consciousness. At the same time, she realised that witnesses preferred to testify about what was on their minds instead of re- sponding only to questions limited to perpetrators, which put them on the defen- sive.123 Helen Goldman struck Bonhoeffer as a woman “so damaged for life that even today she looks as though she had just been released from Auschwitz”.124 The two women spent an entire day together, probably after Goldman’s court appearance.125 Goldman repeated her opening line in the hearing that she had waited twenty years to hear the name of the murderer of her mother and younger siblings in order to testify to the truth.126 But Bonhoeffer, purporting to be haunted by the question, “Did this doctor murder or save?”, conveyed to Goldman what she imagined to be Lucas’s psychological distress. In her view, if Lucas had had no control over the order to select deportees, one could consider him as having rescued some 250 labourers for the camp (i.e., a quarter of every transport of one thousand Jews that arrived at Bir kenau). To Bonhoeffer, Lucas’s quandary was like that of so many SS officers who had “offered the devil their little finger”.127 As Bonhoeffer left Goldman’s hotel room, Goldman wept as she embraced Bonhoeffer and whispered: “Might be you are right – vielleicht haben Sie recht.”128 The image of Goldman breaking down in court is disturbing enough. Even more disturbing is the image of Goldman embracing and thanking Bonhoeffer for helping her understand a remorseless victimiser. Granted, some may greet such a concilia tory gesture, but if we accept her assurance that she had waited twenty years to read Lucas’s name in a newspaper, should we also expect her to muster up sympathy for Lucas’s discomfort with superior orders? Another feature that is perhaps innocent but equally disturbing is Bonhoeffer’s tacit agreement to an argument advanced by defence attorney Hans Laternser in the trial. Laternser took visible pleasure in explaining the supposed stalemate between the SS Main Economic and Administra- tive Office (WVHA) and the Reich Main Security Office (RSHA). He argued that without the doctors on the ramp selecting prisoners for work (a WVHA responsibility), all prisoners would have been directed toward the gas chamber (an RSHA responsibility).129 Yet Laternser’s argument ignored the differences among forms of murder, because Nazi morality regarded the gas chamber as the more humane alternative to letting prisoners die by exhaustion, malnutrition, or disease – or by less ‘efficient’ killing methods such as lethal injections or low-calibre bullets to the back

122 See e.g.: Gerhard Paul, Von Psychopathen, Technokraten des Terrors und “ganz gewöhnlichen” Deutschen. Die Täter der Shoah im Spiegel der Forschung, in: Gerhard Paul (ed.), Die Täter der Shoah. Fanatische Na- tionalsozialisten oder ganz normale Deutsche? Göttingen 2001, 13-90, esp. 16-20. 123 Bonhoeffer, Zeugen, 22-23. 124 Ibid, 38. As mentioned, the account of the ramp encounter with Lucas here shows inconsistency either in Goldman’s account or in Bonhoeffer’s recollection of it. She mentions that the two-year-old was a boy and that Goldman’s other four siblings were there, aged four, seven, ten, and fourteen. Ibid, 39. 125 After the volunteers noticed that their well-meaning questions had the unintended effect that the witnesses would not stop talking, slept poorly, or broke down during the hearing the next day, they decided as a rule to spend the most time with the witnesses after the interrogation, while also helping them with financial logis- tics such as collecting their honorarium. Funkenberg, Zeugenbetreuung, 113-115. 126 Bonhoeffer, Zeugen, 38. 127 Ibid, 40. 128 Ibid, 40. A harmless inconsistency here is that Bonhoeffer dated her letter as 31 May 1964, yet Goldman did not testify in court until the following September. Still, there is no mistaking the identity of Bonhoeffer’s witness. 129 See e.g.: Christian Dirks, Selekteure als Lebensretter. Die Verteidigungsstrategie des Rechtsanwalts Dr. Hans Laternser, in: Wojak (ed.), “Gerichtstag halten über uns selbst”, 163-192, here 177.

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of the neck. Bonhoeffer had her own motives for spending time with Goldman: Per- haps it was a way to appease conscience, respond to a moral-spiritual imperative, or resolve an ethical issue. If she played devil’s advocate for the sake of Lucas, she also filled a profound need for the witnesses. As her fellow volunteer Hildegard Schlach- ter put it: “I was injected with the Holocaust virus, and since then I have a second skin.”130

Where Was Lucas?

Goldman’s account carried singular authority, albeit not in all particulars. Hav- ing her sister torn out of her arms and thrown to her mother saved her life according to the Nazi grammar of selection, and the price of her own survival was having to relive the deadly separation indefinitely. But what if Goldman was accusing the wrong man? What if a rare document had survived the Nazi destruction of evidence that exonerated Lucas and, as ugly as it sounds, made his blanket strategy of denial slightly more trustworthy? While I am uneasy about attributing Lucas’s denials to his self-described poor memory, his urge to forget his crimes (“evasive memory”)131 may indeed stem from an ongoing cognitive block or blackout toward his own actions during the Hungarian pogrom. No doubt an SS officer could suffer from a -ver sion of PTSD that left different scars than those his victims experienced. Very likely, though, Lucas’s fear of prison in 1964 explains his ‘forgetfulness’ and exposes his endless manipulation of dates as an attempt to avoid complicity. Although he was camp doctor in charge of both the Theresienstadt family compound and the ‘Gypsy’ compound in Birkenau, he was quick to deny being anywhere close by when they were ‘liquidated’: at the former on 8 March and again on 11-12 July 1944 and the latter on 2 August 1944. The SS document in question is a telegram exchange that fixes Lucas’s where- abouts more precisely than Goldman’s memory of arriving at Birkenau in the middle of May 1944. Since Goldman and her family arrived after 20 May, she likely confused another doctor with Lucas, because Lucas was almost certainly absent from Birke- nau during the two weeks that the slaughter of Hungarian Jewish deportees became routine. On 19 May, Lucas requested a furlough to Osnabrück after a telegram from his sister reported complete damage to the family house in a bombing raid. Despite a moratorium on furloughs during the killing campaign, Lucas’s superiors granted him a ten-day leave on 20 May. He requested and was permitted an extension in early June, although Auschwitz commandant Richard Baer reminded him that his efforts were urgently required. Lucas returned to Auschwitz sometime around 10 June.132 I mention this telegram exchange to underscore Hofmeyer’s attention to detail and fear of sentencing a defendant on false premises. As it stood, Goldman’s information was insufficient to meet Hofmeyer’s criteria for indictment. Knowledge of the telegram would have only strengthened the court’s view of Goldman’s factual unreliability. Judicially speaking, the telegram serves to correct the memories of

130 Funkenberg, Zeugenbetreuung, 256. 131 Lawrence Langer used this term to describe Lucas’s fellow defendants Josef Klehr and Oswald Kaduk. See: Lawrence Langer, Afterdeath of the Holocaust, in: Henri Lustiger Thaler/Habbo Knoch (ed.), Witnessing Unbound. Holocaust Representation and the Origins of Memory, Detroit 2017, 15-30, here 16. 132 Deutsche Dienststelle (Wehrmachtsauskunftstelle/WASt, now Bundesarchiv Abteilung PA, Berlin-Rein ickendorf), File: Lucas, Franz (1911–1994), Telegram of Franz Lucas to Eduard Wirths and Richard Baer, 19 May 1944; Telegram of Eduard Wirths to Enno Lolling, 20 May 1944; Telegram of Richard Baer to Osna- brück Wehrmachtsstandortältesten Jügen, 2 June 1944.

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both victim and perpetrator, while clearing Lucas of the charge of selecting Jews – at least in the period between 20 May and 10 June 1944.133 Two observations follow from this. First, Lucas’s three-week absence from Birkenau does not absolve him from the other ramp selections he performed that left few if any survivors to testify against him. The selecting SS doctors benefitted from the anonymity granted by their uniforms and from the fact that deportees were too disoriented to remember their features. As one witness remarked sardonically, the SS guards did not introduce themselves with calling cards.134 Second – and here I revert briefly from Lucas’s orbit of responsibility back to Goldman’s loss – the telegram as evidence does not erase the fact that someone from the SS separated Goldman from her family. While the court saw fit not to do so, the historian can acknowledge the empirical value of Goldman’s inaccuracies. James E. Young remarked that the subjective if flawed perspective of the survivor moves our attention from what happened to what the eyewitness saw. “By returning their voices and subjectivity to the historical record, however, we restore a measure of contingen- cy to history as it unfolds, opening up the possibility of historical causes and effects otherwise lost in our projection of a hindsight logic onto events.”135 Suspending hindsight logic allows us to appreciate the lack of redemptive choices and the real- time effect of rumour among deportees, for example. We cannot blame Goldman, given the constriction of time and space that led her from home to ghetto to freight car to arrival ramp, for saying: “Because someone had said, if you have a little baby, then you would go with your mother. So my mother dressed me up a little, so I would look older. She gave me her little baby.”136 To go a step further, we can understand how cognitive confusion or a lack of choice could have prevented Goldman from acting in accordance even with false information. An awareness of her unsettled state of mind under uncontrollable conditions helps us piece together how victims understood events as they unfolded, sti- fling our impulse to ask: How could they not have known?137 In addition, if we consider that Goldman became more cognitively settled and aware after the blurred sequence of events on the ramp, it may indeed be the case that she saw Lucas twice – that is, when he came for the stool and blood samples and then to announce the results and confirm her for kitchen duty – and was in more of a position to remember his face. From Lucas’s point of view, particularly since prisoner doctors recalled that he had more contact with patients than other SS doctors, it is not quite so surprising that he claimed no memory of Goldman.138 This gap in memory is no cause to suggest humility, as Arendt did. It is difficult to fix the precise arenas of Franz Lucas’s actions without the help of the documents that the Nazis so dutifully destroyed. The task is complicated not only by his efforts to prove his absence from the crimes, but also by the inconsistent testimony of his supporters. The prisoner doctors in the Zigeunerlager, for example, were more intent on contrasting Lucas with Josef Mengele than on documenting the date ranges and spheres of his responsibilities. Wladyslaw Fejkiel remembered that Lucas had treated the prisoner doctors and patients kindly and had stopped all selections in

133 Likely the Deutsche Dienststelle/WASt added the document after 1990, following the increased document- sharing from the Moscow Sonderarchiv. 134 Vernehmung des Zeugen Aron Bejlin, in: AP, 16302. 135 James E. Young, Between History and Memory. The Voice of the Eyewitness, in: Ana Douglass and Thomas A. Vogler (ed.), Witness & Memory. The Discourse of Trauma, New York 2003, 275-283, here 282. 136 Vernehmung der Zeugin Helen Goldmann, in: AP, 16891. 137 Young, Between History and Memory, 279. 138 Many thanks to my anonymous reviewer for this insight.

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the prisoner infirmary.139 But it became apparent that he knew this only by hearsay from fellow prisoner doctor Tadeusz Szymanski.140 Aron Bejlin, another doctor and one of the co-plaintiffs, testified that because Lucas worked in BIIf (the men’s prisoner hospital), Lucas had to his knowledge only appeared twice in the Zigeunerlager, once with Mengele and once without him, when he noticed Lucas speaking with Dr Bertold Epstein about the terrible sanitary conditions in the compound.141 Like Fejkiel, Bejlin relied on hearsay. While Fejkiel claimed that Lucas had come to Ausch witz from the front, Bejlin heard from his colleagues in BIIf that Lucas was transferred back to the front for associating with prisoners.142 On 11 January 1965, Tadeusz Szymanski, the prisoner doctor in charge of the in- fectious diseases division for women in Block 26 of the Zigeunerlager, told the court that Lucas took over as camp doctor for Mengele for six weeks to two months beginning in February 1944.143 More important than conveying the date was illustrating Lucas’s behaviour as a true doctor, which allowed prisoner doctors to save the lives of ‘Gypsies’ in a way that under Mengele had been impossible.144 Tadeusz Śnieszko testified after Szymanski. His patients in Block 32 suffered from typhus, dysentery,- ma laria, and tuberculosis.145 He became aware of Lucas after Mengele came down with typhus, which he (mis)remembered having happened at the end of February 1944.146 He had not seen Lucas in the compound before then.147 Śnieszko estimated Lucas’s time in the compound as between four to six weeks. Having heard of Mengele’s service in other Birkenau sectors, including the women’s compound, he was uncertain whether Lucas substituted in other areas besides the Zigeunerlager during Mengele’s bout with typhus.148 After the war, Szymanski and Śnieszko remembered the SS camp doctors as, “in succession, Dr. Josef Mengele, then for some months Dr. Franz Lucas; others such as Dr. Heinz Thilo and Dr. Fritz Klein were engaged for short periods as substitutes”.149 Three other details merit consideration in determining Lucas’s presence. First, on 23 February 1944 Lucas sent a telegram from Osnabrück to Auschwitz requesting a three-day extension to a vacation.150 It is thus likely that he spent the latter half of

139 Vernehmung des Zeugen Wladyslav Fejkiel, 29. 5. 1964, in: AP, 9291-9293. 140 Ibid, 9272-9273. 141 Epstein was a respected, long-imprisoned Prague paediatrician assisting Mengele on the noma project who, Fejkiel stated, reported approvingly of Lucas after the conversation. 142 Vernehmung des Zeugen Aron Bejlin, 28. 8. 1964, in: AP, 16338. For his part, Lucas maintained that he had been transferred from Birkenau to Auschwitz I in early March 1944 because Birkenau commandant Fritz Hartjenstein and chief doctor Eduard Wirths wanted to punish him for showing prisoner favouritism. Here one must caution against gullibility, since prisoners, their SS captors, and trial spectators were rarely unified whether the front constituted a punishment or a reward, the greater or lesser of two evils. 143 Vernehmung des Zeugen Tadeusz Szymanski, 11. 1. 1965, in: AP, 27652. 144 Ibid, 27658-27662. Concerning the date, Śniesko recalled: “I can’t say for sure now because at the time it wasn’t all that important.” What he noticed was the relief that Lucas provided for both the medical personnel and for the sick. Ibid, 27747. 145 Tadeusz Szymanski/Danuta Szymanska/Tadeusz Śnieszko, Das “Spital” im Zigeuner-Familienlager in Auschwitz-Birkenau, in: Hamburger Institut für Sozialforschung (ed.), Auschwitz-Hefte, Vol. 1. Texte der polnischen Zeitschrift Przeglad Lekarski uber historische, psychische und medizinische Aspekte des Lebens und Sterbens in Auschwitz, translated by Jochen August et al., Weinheim and Basel 1987, 199-207, here 201- 202. 146 Vernehmung des Zeugen Tadeusz Śnieszko, 11. 1. 1965, in: AP, 27742. 147 Ibid, 27743-27744. 148 Ibid, 27774. 149 Szymanski/Szymanska/Śnieszko, Das “Spital” im Zigeuner-Familienlager, 201. According to Ulrich Völk- lein, Mengele was camp doctor for the Zigeunerlager officially from the end of May 1943 to the beginning of August 1944, when he liquidated its remaining inhabitants. The SS doctors who substituted for him during absences, vacations, and illness were Fritz Klein, Heinz Thilo, and Franz Lucas. See: Ulrich Völklein, Josef Mengele. Der Arzt von Auschwitz, Göttingen 2000, 114. 150 Telegram of Franz Lucas, Osnabrück to Auschwitz, 23 February 1944, WASt, Franz Lucas file, 00046.

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February 1944 in Osnabrück, not in Auschwitz. Second, Wojciech Barcz, a clerk in the Zigeunerlager, testified that Lucas treated the prisoners fairly, but that part of his duties while substituting for Mengele included ramp selections. While Barcz had not seen Lucas there personally, he knew that his duties included sending monthly reports to the WVHA regarding the sanitary and medical conditions and numbers of prisoners ‘transferred’ (überstellt) either to other camps or, as the barely veiled language intimated, to the gas chamber.151 Third, sometime in February 1944, Lucas drove the young Jewish prisoner Dina Gottliebova in a jeep from the Theresienstadt compound to the Zigeunerlager to present her to Mengele. Lucas had taken notice of her Disney paintings in the children’s barrack and must have known that Mengele was looking for an illustrator to assist him in his studies on twins, most of which were drawn from the Zigeunerlager at the time, until the mass deportations of Hun- garian Jews arriving in May 1944 provided more ‘material’ for Mengele’s interest in twins, giants, and dwarves.152 Does this mean that Lucas was involved in experiments in Auschwitz-Birkenau? Beyond bringing Gottliebova to Mengele’s attention and aside from Lucas’s own early mention that he had photographed cases of noma (which may already indicate a dangerous inclination to observe rather than intervene), there is also Dr Hans Münch’s casual comment at Lucas’s retrial in 1970 that he had heard in conversations that Lucas belonged to a group concerned with sterilisation experiments.153 Until we know more, it seems safe to say that Lucas’s main concern as a trained gynaecologist was to use his time in the camps to learn from prisoner doctors, similarly to the way SS Dr Hans Richter learned operating techniques from Dr Josef Pod laha in Gusen.154 Lucas may have assisted Mengele in administrative tasks, but all the indications are that he lacked Mengele’s manic interest in twin research and was increasingly repulsed by Mengele over time. As best we can tell, Lucas took over as camp doctor of the Zigeunerlager around the time that Mengele contracted typhus. There is record of Lucas having signed death certificates of Birkenau prisoners on Christmas Eve 1943, the day Mengele confirmed his sickness.155 Officially, Lucas took over the duties of Dr Erwin von Helmersen on 15 December.156 In response to questions from prosecutor Joachim Kügler, Lucas maintained that his trip to Osnabrück followed shortly upon his arrival at Auschwitz and that he was given the care of both family compounds upon his return.157 This appears unlikely in light of the Osnabrück telegram. But supervising both compounds was not a hardship, because prisoner care rested largely in the hands of the prisoner doctors.158 In his pre-trial interrogation by Heinz Düx, Lucas

151 Aussage des Zeugen Barcz betreffend den Angeklagten Dr. Lucas, in: AP, 6377-63779. 152 Gottliebova expressed relief that Lucas then drove her back to the children’s barrack after her audience with Mengele, and not straight to the crematorium. Dina Gottliebova Babbitt, Auschwitz survivor, interviewed by Hilary Helstein on September 26, 1998, Felton, CA. USC Shoah Foundation, Testimony Part 1, at 3 hours 50 minutes, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FRMWD8L1xDg (4 March 2021). 153 Hessisches Hauptstaatsarchiv Wiesbaden (hereafter HHW), Abt. 461, Nr. 37638/361, Revisionsverhandlung Dr. Lucas, Frankfurt am Main, 25 August 1970, 33. It bears pointing out that Münch’s confident and forth- coming attitude, which made him a sought-after expert witness, is open to revision, for at Lucas’s retrial he was still able to get away with his lie that Wirths exempted him from ramp duty. 154 See: Tomaz Jardim, The Mauthausen Trial. American Military Justice in Germany, Cambridge, MA 2012, 130. Lucas likely treated Podlaha as a medical mentor, not, as Richter did, to assist in practice operations on healthy prisoners. 155 HHW, Abt. 461, Nr. 37638/382, Sterbebücher 1943 von Auschwitz (Vol. 24), 2 (unnumbered). 156 WVHA, Amt D III to Standortarzt Auschwitz, 16. 12. 1943, WASt, Lucas file, 00017. 157 Brief des Angeklagten Franz Lucas an die Staatsanwaltschaft b. Landgericht Frankfurt am Main vom 5. 12. 1961, in: AP, 4175. 158 Richterliche Vernehmung des Angeklagten Franz Lucas vom 14. 2. 1962, in: AP, 4194.

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noted that his superior in both compounds had been Dr Heinz Thilo and that after he spent a few days acclimating himself to Auschwitz, either Dr Mengele or Dr Thilo had introduced him to his duties in the Zigeunerlager.159 Practically speaking, as Lucas maintained in his first court interrogation on 27 January 1964, he found himself responsible for both camps, since Thilo supported him only occasionally.160 Because of the murder of the Theresienstadt compound inhabitants on the even ings of 8 March and 11–12 July 1944, only two prisoners who escaped the destruction (Dina Gottliebova and Otto Dov Kulka) ever mentioned seeing Lucas in the compound. Kulka maintained that Lucas, whose name he did not know but whom he recognised as the “second doctor” who accompanied Mengele on his rounds, was present and participated with Johann Schwarzhuber (camp leader of the Birkenau men’s compound) and Mengele in the selections that preceded the ‘liquidation’.161 Lucas insisted that he was no longer a physician there by the time of the ‘liquidation’ because he was already serving as a troop physician in Auschwitz I.162 When he had made his daily rounds in the Theresienstadt compound, it had not been with Men gele but with Dr Hans Wilhelm König “who, as witnesses here have already made known, was also present at the liquidation of the compound”.163 The second doctor Kulka must have been remembering was Dr König, according to Lucas.164 No one tried to clarify whether Kulka and Lucas were talking about the same ‘liquidation’. Lucas’s fellow defendant Stefan Baretzki, a non-commissioned officer in charge of rollcalls, was similarly imprecise. In an unprecedented move late in the trial in February 1965, Baretzki not only challenged his rank-superior’s longstanding denial of ramp selections, but also accused Lucas of failing to save forty Jewish girls of the Theresienstadt compound from the gas chamber. Baretzki alleged that Lucas could have brought the girls into the women’s camp in the same way that Schwarzhu- ber had saved seventy to eighty boys by transferring them into the men’s compound (BIId). Although Baretzki failed to be more specific, these boys, between fourteen and sixteen years old, were selected from the Theresienstadt compound on 9 July to enter BIId.165 Thus, it appears that Kulka and Baretzki were referring to Lucas’s presence in the July ‘liquidation’, but Lucas made no effort to be precise. The court did not see the need to clarify matters either, perhaps because it was still processing the scene

159 Ibid, 4186, 4191. Lucas also remembered being in Auschwitz for two to three months, which was far less than the time he was actually stationed there, namely a week shy of eight months. A linear analysis of Lucas’s statements also reveals that he mentioned Mengele less over time, perhaps on the advice of his lawyers – to the extent that by the time of his acquittal in 1970, he was brash enough to deny knowing him at all. Lucas told judge Glasenapp in Hamburg, three years after being acquitted: “Try as I might, I can come up with no circumstances in space and time, during or outside of duty, that I encountered Mengele. With certainty I can report, according to my memory at present, that I never had contact with Mengele in Birkenau in any way.” HHW, Abt. 461/37976/017, In der Voruntersuchungssache Mengele wegen Mordes: Az.: 4 Js 340/68, Ham- burg, 3 September 1973, 102-105. 160 Vernehmung des Angeklagten Lucas zur Sache 27. 1. 1964, in: AP, 4871. In other words, perhaps because Heinz Düx did not give Lucas as much leeway in his responses, he did not mention his February 1944 furlough to Osnabrück. It is doubtful, too, that Lucas reported to Thilo. Lucas changed his information at will to remove any association with culpability. 161 Ibid, 13599-13600. 162 Ibid, 13621. 163 Ibid, 13620, and Aussage des Zeugen Kulka betreffend den Angeklagten Lucas, in: ibid, 13650. 164 Ibid, 13622. Lucas’s answers fell short. Judge Hummerich reminded Lucas that his ten days of leave at the end of February 1944 had happened when his mother died, and now it seemed that Lucas was changing his time of arrival to avoid being implicated in the first liquidation of the Theresienstadt compound: “What’s the real truth? When did you arrive?” Ibid, 13623. 165 Vernehmung des Zeugen Eugen Lazar, 18. 2. 1965, in: AP, 29342-29347. Two days later, on 11 July, BIIb was blockaded and all remaining 4,000 inmates were brought to the gas chambers. See: Czech, Kalendarium der Ereignisse im Konzentrationslager Auschwitz-Birkenau, 817, 820.

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of Baretzki breaking the code of solidarity to call the bluff of his fellow defendant and respectable gentleman, the gynaecologist Dr Franz Lucas. Furthermore, Baretzki announced that Lucas had also been a camp doctor for “Mexiko”, the unfinished holding area for thousands of Jewish women in BIII, and as such he could have ordered more water and blankets for them.166 Baretzki was not the only one to make this accusation. Two months later, the witness Jozef Mikusz, who despite having nothing good to say about Baretzki at least corroborated his testimony by asserting that he had once seen Lucas in the Mexiko holding area selecting a group of naked women. Consequently, a defendant and a victim both con- verged in their memories of one of Lucas’s areas of responsibility.167 Baretzki had already been identified as one of the SS men present at both liquida- tions of the compound who had forced its inhabitants onto the trucks headed to the gas chamber. He knew he was facing a life sentence and had little reason to falsely accuse Lucas. This was a rare case in which a war criminal with little to gain or lose challenged the testimony of the prisoner doctors by pointing out that Lucas had ignored opportunities to save lives. To the prosecution, at least, this was new but not surprising, and hearing it from a defendant was a rare thing. Yet Lucas dismissed Baretzki’s allegations out of hand, claiming that he was hearing about Mexiko for the first time and that his Polish and Jewish prisoner doctor colleagues could vouch that he “was no longer in Birkenau when the Theresienstadt compound was dissolved”.168

The Audience of Psychiatry

The appearance of a document may diminish the cogency of Goldman’s particular charge, but not of the lament behind the charge – that she held certain names and faces responsible for her loss of family and for her chronic malaise. The problem was that apart from its legal truth-finding, the criminal court lacked the language to acknowledge the suffering of witnesses, finding it literally “unspeakable”. Despite having heard assessments from experts in SS history such as Hans Buchheim and his colleagues from the Institute for Contemporary History in Munich as well as from high-ranking SS veterans such as Werner Best who could no longer be tried and clearly lacked remorse, the Frankfurt prosecutors would not have thought to request similar assessments from psychiatrists and neurologists concerning the experience of trauma victims over time. Perpetrator testimony illuminated certain aspects, such as SS chain of command, while keeping shrouded other aspects such as the distances and viewpoints from which prisoners could have witnessed beatings and executions. On 24 January 1969, five years after the start of the Auschwitz trial hearings, the state attorney’s office in Darmstadt provided an alternative to SS testimony: a psychiatric assessment for the trial against Erich Wollschläger and others. The Darmstadt court drew on psychiatrist Dr Walter von Baeyer’s assessment of Jewish court witnesses in its discussion of the murder of Jews deported from the Kielce Ghetto to the

166 Ibid, 29221-29224, 29230. Some women were selected for transfer to labour sites, but the rest were eventually gassed. If it is true that Lucas oversaw the depot compound, it was likely in the same trade-off capacity (e.g., with Josef Mengele and Heinz Thilo) as he shared duties for the other Birkenau compounds. 167 Mikusz knew about Lucas from hearsay, adding that Lucas had been there a short time, perhaps two months, and that he had been told that Lucas was selecting – whether for transports or for the gas chamber he could not say. Vernehmung des Zeugen Mikusz, 26. 4. 1965, in: AP, 32272-32279. He noted, however, that Lucas had a “characteristic face” that stuck in his memory and he matched the name to the face. He had seen Lucas from a distance of about thirty yards. Ibid, 32280-32283. 168 Aussage des Angeklagten Baretzki, 18. 2. 1965, in: AP, 29221; 29235-29239.

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death camp Treblinka.169 Baeyer’s qualifications derived from a complex past that included witnessing the University of Heidelberg dismiss his own ‘half-Jewish’ father five years after Baeyer earned his doctorate there in 1928. Oddly, this did not prevent him from studying psychopathology in Munich under Ernst Rüdin, the infamous commentator of the Law for the Prevention of Hereditarily Diseased Off- spring (GzVeN) of 1933.170 Based on Baeyer’s wartime evaluations of ‘war neurotics’ for military courts and his assessments of hundreds of persecutees – he directed the Psychiatric Clinic in Nuremberg from 1945 to 1955 and the University of Heidelberg Psychiatric Clinic until 1972 – Baeyer determined that the overwhelming majority of claimants for reparations were not the ‘pension neurotics’ that his cynical professional colleagues claimed. Certainly, there were assessors with Nazi sympathies who dismissed the notion of “persecution-induced neurosis” out of hand, and some of these also bemoaned the strain that reparation would impose on West German financial, legal, and medical networks. The denial of claims during the 1950s derived largely from financial fears of a slippery slope and the lack of a standard terminology for trauma diagnosis. The reluctance of West German psychiatrists and reparations officials to accept evaluations from assessors abroad also hinged on political factors. Psychiatric conferences organised by the Féderation Internationale des Résistants (International Federation of Resistance Fighters, FIR), for example, were considered suspect because of the former resistance fighters among them who had communist leanings or resided in Po- land or Czechoslovakia.171 One of the Czech FIR doctors, Josef Podlaha from Brno, had been a prisoner doctor in Mauthausen and certified the good behaviour of Lucas in that camp.172 Thanks to Baeyer and his colleagues in Europe and the United States – Leo Eitinger, Gottfried Ewald, Ulrich Venzlaff, Ernst Kluge, Kurt Kolle, Hans Strauss, Henry Krystal, and William Niederland, to name a few – the science of what eventually received the multivalent term ‘trauma’ emerged from the unbiased evaluations of claimants for compensation in the wake of the BEG in 1956, especially in the late 1950s. The slow change in attitudes corresponded to the pace of Helen Gold- man’s application for restitution on the grounds of damages to body and health, which, as we have seen, was first denied in 1959 but granted on appeal in late 1962. On the strength of his conviction that certain changes in personality were attribu table to persecution, Baeyer provided the Darmstadt court an assessment based on questioning six witnesses and listening to the recordings of 27 others.173 Speaking for his guild, Baeyer wrote: “We have repeatedly experienced court cases in which wit-

169 Walter v. Baeyer, Psychiatrisches Gutachten über Fragen der Glaubwürdigkeit und Erinnerungszuverlässig- keit bei der Beurteilung von Zeugenaussagen rassisch Verfolgter, die weit zurückliegenden Extrembelastun- gen ausgesetzt waren, in: Nervenarzt 41 (1970), 83-89, here 85. 170 Pross, Paying for the Past, 86. 171 Ibid, 88. 172 Lucas and his lawyers repeatedly listed Podlaha (German “Pottlacher”) as an exculpatory witness. One example of Podlaha’s work is a conference article presented with long-time collaborator F. Zeman, appearing in a FIR publication in 1961. Josef Podlaha/Frederic Zeman, Das Hungerödem und sein Einfluss auf die Arterien der unteren Extermitäten, in: Die Behandlung der Asthenie und der vorzeitigen Vergreisung bei ehemaligen Widerstandskämpfern und KZ-Häftlingen, Vienna 1961. 173 Along with the above-cited formative works of Pross (1998) and Goschler (2005), see: William Niederland, Folgen der Verfolgung. Das Überlebenden-Syndrom – Seelenmord, Frankfurt am Main 1980; Hermann Langbein, Menschen in Auschwitz, Frankfurt am Main 1980, 525-557; and more recently Svenja Golter- mann, Kausalitätsfragen. Psychisches Leid und psychisches Wissen in der Entschädigung, in: Frei/Brunner/ Goschler (ed.), Die Praxis der Wiedergutmachung, 427-451; and Dagmar Herzog, The Obscenity of Objectiv- ity. Post-Holocaust Anti-Semitism and the Invention-Discovery of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, in: Nit- zan Lebovic/Andreas Killen (ed.), Catastrophes. A History and Theory of an Operative Concept, Oldenbourg 2014, 128-155. For a critical bibliographic review through 1997, see: Robert Krell/Marc I. Sherman (ed.), Medical and Psychological Effects of Concentration Camps on Holocaust Survivors, New Brunswick 1997.

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nesses, forced to relive traumatic memories, became uncertain, hesitated, stuttered, broke into tears, got a rapid heartbeat, could go no further, and forced an interrup- tion of the hearing.”174 A more fitting description of Helen Goldman’s situation is hard to imagine. To use José Brunner’s terminology, Goldman became a juridical witness through experience (Erleben) and a medicalized survivor witness through survival (Überleben), without ever mastering the suffering in her interior world.175 In the camps, a disease such as typhus was a visible marker of a prisoner’s diminished labour output. Compensation claims after the war measured the loss of productivity resulting from a claimant’s nightmares, depression, irritability, mistrust, fear neuroses, and anxiety. In Baeyer’s estimation, any profound loss that resulted in the failure to recall details under pressure was therefore no sign of a survivor’s diminished love for the truth. Few of the witnesses in the cohort that informed Baeyer’s assessment were ‘hysterical’ or vengeful. Reticent to describe their experiences, they did not intentionally omit, hide, falsify, or exaggerate facts. The science of memory had evolved enough to explain their contradictions or embellishments.176 Their images of suffering, crystallised as an emotional “skeleton” of the original event, “cap- ture more the physiognomy and macabre character of the scene of terror rather than illuminating juridically decisive aspects”.177 Already compromised by overwork in bad weather on an empty stomach, prisoners confused the sequence and duration of traumatic events.178 Thus Baeyer’s consolidation of symptoms with respect to his weary cohort was an admonition to the court not to privilege forensic truth at the expense of appreciating the reasons for contradictions within survivor testimony.179

Conclusion

Helen Goldman’s tangible opportunity for justice came upon discovering Lucas’s name in a Jewish newspaper. For twenty years, while confronting the loss of her family, having children of her own, and moving to a new country, she struggled with the health repercussions resulting from her year in the camps. Visits to doctors barely managed her pain. Goldman waited more than half a decade for compensation of fices to answer the requests of her advocate Dr Konrad Höra, who seemed sympa- thetic to her plight in the face of an overwhelmed legal-medical apparatus that had nothing against her personally but in cases of doubt usually decided against survivor claimants.180 Receiving her token reparations from the German government brought scant relief.181 No law could compensate for suffering that was just as tangible as a loss of property but far less measurable.182 No lawyers, medical specialists, judges, or finance

174 Baeyer, Psychiatrisches Gutachten, 83. Out of the three women and thirty men, fifteen settled in the United States after the war. 175 José Brunner, Medikalisierte Zeugenschaft. Trauma, Institutionen, Nachträglichkeit, in: Martin Sabrow/ Norbert Frei (ed.), Die Geburt des Zeitzeugen nach 1945, Göttingen 2012, 94-97. 176 Baeyer, Psychiatrisches Gutachten, 87. 177 Ibid, 84-87. Baeyer reflects that his phenomenological method values literal transcriptions of witness statements, especially meta-reflective passages in which witnesses explain their own awareness of contradictions and gaps of memory. 178 Ibid, 87-88. 179 Echoing the adjunct prosecutor Christian Raabe, Baeyer considered minor imprecision a vote in favour of the witnesses. 180 See: Weindling, Meerwasser-Trinkversuche, 162-163. 181 Frei/Brunner/Goschler (ed.), Praxis der Wiedergutmachung, 18. 182 Ibid, 26-27.

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ministers could quantify the experience of interminable loss, deprivation, and humiliation in such terms to suggest that a payment of five Deutschmarks sufficed for every day spent in captivity.183 Still, no matter how flawed the concept, financial repa rations at least contained a whisper of acknowledgment of wrongdoing, and the process improved and became more generous over time, albeit for a vanishing number of victims who were still alive to derive its benefit. Did Goldman follow the stories of the Eichmann trial and recognise herself in the witnesses’ stories? She had experienced first-hand Eichmann’s attempt to extermi- nate her, but she was more interested in attributing to Lucas her profound loss of family. She spent five months as a ‘depot Jew’ in the crowded conditions of the BIIc camp, a perfect breeding ground for the typhus epidemic, which, by giving it the derogatory label ‘Judenfieber’, the Nazis blamed on their victims. Goldman appeared to possess enough confidence, a year after receiving damages from the West German government, to volunteer to travel to Frankfurt to testify against Lucas. Even more so than in previous trials, the Frankfurt court’s reliance on witnesses included their identification of the defendants and their crimes. Goldman identified Lucas without hesitation, which not every witness against Lucas succeeded in doing.184 Certainly, identification of the perpetrators in death camps such as Auschwitz, Treblinka, and Sobibór was all the more critical, especially in the absence of such recent discoveries as the photo albums of Auschwitz adjutant Karl Höcker refer- enced above, or of the Sobibór deputy commandant Johann Niemann.185 The absence of documentation due to the Nazi expungement of all possible evidence made the testimony of survivors the sole incriminatory voice and means by which to discover the crimes or prevent forgetting them.186 One may find judge Hofmeyer’s suspicion of testimony too severe and his insight into the survivor syndrome that haunted many witnesses too underdeveloped. By the same token, he avoided the danger of believing, as the court in Jerusalem did in the first instalment of the Dem- janjuk trial (1986–1988) and against the cautionary findings of psychologists of memory such as Willem Wagenaar, that the more intense and enduring the trauma a witness experienced, the clearer and more lasting its imprint was on memory.187 It was precisely the court’s trust of survivor testimony that resulted in the confusion of Ivan Demjanjuk of Sobibór with Ivan Marchenko of Treblinka. Judge Hofmeyer’s concern in the Frankfurt Auschwitz trial about hanging the wrong person almost came to pass.188 Yet one should not attribute inaccurate testimony solely to deception or to the effects of trauma. Whether their testimony is incriminatory or exculpatory, witnesses have an inherently limited perspective. One cannot extrapolate from the behaviour

183 Ibid, 27. 184 Lili Zelmanovic, Goldman’s fellow Floridian and client of Harry Bassett who was associated with the “Ausch witz Album”, failed to identify Lucas correctly in December 1964. She accused Lucas of stabbing her in the arm with a dagger, but when asked to identify him pointed to Klaus Dylewski, Josef Kaduk, and Herbert Scherpe, making the court conclude that she had made up her story or confused him with someone else. Vernehmung der Zeugin Lili Zelmanovic, 3. 12. 1964, in: AP, 26428-26470, esp. 26449-26450. The Dutch Jewish witness Abraham de la Penha also failed to identify Lucas and attributed his misrecognition to frazzled nerves. Vernehmung des Zeugen Abraham de la Penha, 26. 3. 1965, in: AP, 31012-31013. 185 Forschungsstelle Ludwigsburg der Universität Stuttgart (ed.), Fotos aus Sobibor. Die Niemann-Sammlung zu Holocaust und Nationalsozialismus, Berlin 2020. 186 Douglas, Memory of Judgment, 205-206. 187 Ibid, 204. 188 The death sentence was overturned rightly on appeal; fortunately, the corrected details by then ensured that Demjanjuk could be tried again and sentenced to four years prison on 12 May 2011. He died less than a year later.

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of an SS doctor at a certain place in time how willingly he carried out criminal orders earlier or later in his career, or whether he treated ‘Gypsies’ in the Zigeunerlager the same as Jews in the Theresienstadt compound in early 1944 or as Scandinavian women in Ravensbrück in early 1945, or whether he distinguished between young or old, male or female, healthy or Muselmänner. Certitude is not a failsafe sign of truth, because it is possible to offer flawed testimony unflinchingly and convincingly. The sedative that Otto Dov Kulka took before testifying, his coaching by Langbein, his respectable profession as a historian, his youth and health, and his gender all contributed to his credibility. He could have had the same effect on the court even if he had been intent to lead it astray. Any good news about a defendant blew fresh air into a courtroom held captive by the accounts of henchmen like Boger, Baretzki, Kaduk, and Klehr – sadists who nevertheless spared a few grateful survivors from their volatility. Certainly, ‘Stock- holm syndrome’ also played a role in perspectival testimony. Not surprisingly, Aron Bejlin, who lost both his mother and wife at Auschwitz, insisted that Lucas was an angel compared to Mengele.189 For the housewife Goldman, who looked twice her 39 years, the judges, prosecutors, defence lawyers, and attendees could have pity, but because she arrived seemingly uncoached and unaware of her forensic contradictions, speaking simple English and disintegrating before their eyes, her testimony was dismissed on the basis of ‘frazzled nerves’ and ‘hysteria’. For her, the issue was the burden of proof that weighed on her in the sceptical reparations court, where for over a decade she submitted the damage to her body as proof of her persecution, and in the criminal court, where her persecution gave her the credibility to accuse her persecutor – but only to the extent that forensic consistency supported her positive identification of Lucas. The onus was on Goldman to prove Lucas was the cause of her suffering. Less witness trauma does not mean increased reliability, and testimony itself is not a piece of immutable evidence. A political prisoner could err just as much as a prisoner persecuted for racial reasons. For example, Erika Buchmann, elder of Block 10 in 1945, the TB ward in Ravensbrück overseen by Lucas, changed her mind about clearing Lucas’s name. After the war, she had gone out of her way to protect him from Allied prosecution, stressing his contrast to Dr Adolf Winkelmann, who had replaced him in late February 1945 and who selected women for the gas chamber. Buchmann and her communist comrades from Ravensbrück issued a party- approved press release on 20 June 1945, urging the Allies to treat Lucas “in accordance with his courageous and decent behaviour”.190 On the occasion of Lucas’s acquittal in 1970, however, she withdrew all support: “When I wrote my brochure in 1958, my comrades and I were unaware of Dr Lucas’s selections in Auschwitz. Now that the Auschwitz trial has established his active participation in the gassing of 4,000 men, women, and children, I am consciously distancing myself from the positive description in my brochure of Dr Lucas’s behaviour.”191 In a reversal of Lucas’s gesture when separating young from old and strong from frail on the Birkenau ramp – Otto Dov Kulka described it as heavier and slower than

189 Asked about the trucks that took away his own mother and others from the ramp, Bejlin remarks: “I wasn’t able to take it all in so exactly. [So because you were upset you didn’t notice it, I see.] Right. I was far too confused. I lost my mother.” Vernehmung des Zeugen Bejlin, in: AP, 16280. 190 Bundesarchiv NY4178/54, Nachlass Albert und Erika Buchmann, Bandzählwerk 0027, Filmzählwerk 0968. Lucas later used Buchmann’s booklet in his own defence: Die Frauen von Ravensbrück, E. Berlin 1959, especially the passage on 88-89. 191 Ibid.

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Mengele’s quick, light gestures – Lucas became the object of arms raised and fingers pointed at him in court.192 Inge Deutschkron, a Jewish correspondent for the Tel Aviv-based newspaper Maariv in the West German capital of Bonn from 1958 onward, made a point of including descriptions of body language. On 30 July 1964, for example, Lucas’s face turned red when Otto Dov Kulka raised his arm to identify him as the “second camp doctor” whose name he did not know but whom he recognised by sight. Kulka told Deutschkron later that he was repulsed by Lucas’s “trembling and stammering” reaction to being identified.193 Five weeks later, Lucas was standing in the semicircle of defendants when Helen Goldman raised her arm to point at him. After she uttered his name, Lucas stuttered and turned red.194 A month later, Dov Paisikovic, a rare Sonderkommando survivor, pointed to Lucas as one of the doctors he had seen at Crematorium II in Birkenau.195 Lucas had always denied this component of his job description as an SS doctor that followed ramp selections. Like Kulka, Paisikovic had not heard Lucas’s name either, but his recognition was enough to turn Lucas pale, which Deutschkron interpreted as “more than an admis- sion of his guilt”.196 Lucas’s privilege as a defendant was to avoid self-incrimination, but he was powerless against his own visceral reactions of shame. Ultimately, Kulka and Paisikovic, but not Goldman, were reliable witnesses for strengthening the charge against Lucas that resulted in sentencing him to three years and three months penitentiary “for participating in selections and at the gas chambers in an unknown number of cases, but at least four times in which at least a thousand persons found their deaths”.197 Hofmeyer made no mention of Lucas’s face turning red or pale, however. Instead, he disputed Goldman’s memories of space and time – i.e., her alleged conversation with a Sonderkommando prisoner or her claim that Lucas singled her out on the ramp for kitchen duty – and he echoed both Aschenauer’s and Lucas’s conclusion that Goldman had projected her experiences onto the wrong SS doctor.198 Emmi Bonhoeffer offered Goldman a friendlier audience than the Frankfurt court did, despite succumbing to the rhetoric of Lucas’s fateful entanglements and his contrast to other defendants. She came closer to tangible empathy than her father-in-law Dr Karl Bonhoeffer, whose neurological accomplishments in his Berlin clinic have been eclipsed by the painful notoriety of his assessments recommending sterilisation of the persons considered unworthy to have children under the 1933 GzVeN and by his belief that any psyche without pre-existing conditions was resil- ient enough to rebound from trauma caused by war.199 Dr Walter von Baeyer began in the same psychiatric milieu as Bonhoeffer but found his way to a solidarity with outsiders of the ‘ethnic community’ that qualified him as an imagined empathetic audience for Helen Goldman. He evaluated hundreds of witnesses like her, and his analysis of the persistent wounds of the Jews of Kielce who testified against Erich Wollschläger applies to Goldman’s own grievances. Like the Treblinka survivors, she endured intimidation, insults, and an abuse of dignity that escalated into massacre. Dates, numbers, distances, precise descriptions of SS uniforms, or whether her victi-

192 Vernehmung des Zeugen Otto Dov Kulka, 30. 7. 1964, in: AP, 13561-13562. 193 Deutschkron, Auschwitz war nur ein Wort, 243, 246. 194 Ibid, 278. 195 Vernehmung des Zeugen Dov Paisikovic, in: AP 20942, 21051-21063. 196 Deutschkron, Auschwitz war nur ein Wort, 282. 197 Fortsetzung der mündlichen Urteilsbegründung des Vorsitzenden Richters, in: AP, 36963. 198 Fortsetzung der mündichen Urteilsbegründung des Vorsitzenden Richters, 20. 8. 1965, in: AP, 36964. 199 See the contributions in Dag Moskopp/Dorothea Jäkel (ed.), Karl Bonhoeffer – ein Nervenarzt. Vorträge zum 60. Todestag, Berlin 2009.

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miser wore eyeglasses – these observations were absent from her litany of loss. It was smell and sight and sound that haunted her, the scars carved by blows from an SS rifle and the endless fever of typhus. “I know one thing: From the kitchen I could see the chimneys and the smoke and it stank all day long of human flesh.”200 As James Young and others have made clear, the Holocaust resonates in the voices of victims quite apart from their empirical accuracy, including that of a Jewish woman from Miami, still caught up in the undertow of an unhealed body and unresolved trauma from being expelled from Dubove in the Ukraine twenty years earlier. As is the case with most criminal courts, then, the Auschwitz Trial relied on chronological narratives and instrumental evidence.201 Goldman countered those expectations with her narrative of rupture, providing precisely through her appre- hensions and misapprehensions of events a richer view of what it was like to have her family taken from her. Following Avishai Margalit, one can see how Goldman’s inability to deliver the evidence expected by a West German court reinstated her original humiliation: “My main claim is that it is hard to remember a past humiliation without reliving it.”202 In these remarks, I have spelled out that humiliation in order to prevent legal verdicts from having the last word. Instead, I leave the last word to Margalit: “Is it not injustice rather than justice that ‘hurts us into politics’? […] The situation is not unlike medicine as the art of curing and alleviating disease. It is disease that brings us to medicine, not health.”203

Andrew Wisely is Associate Professor of German at Baylor University, teaching all levels of German language and culture. Research interests include medical discourses and ethics, testimony, postwar justice, perpetrator rhetoric, and trauma. He has published articles in Central European History (2019), Holocaust Studies (2020), and a book chapter in Recognizing the Past in the Present. New Studies on Medicine Before, During, and After the Holocaust (2020). E-mail: [email protected]

200 Vernehmung Goldman, in: AP, 16977. 201 Shenker, Through the Lens, 151. 202 Avishai Margalit, The Ethics of Memory, Cambridge, MA 2004, 130. 203 Ibid, 112.

Quotation: Andrew Wisely, From Humiliation to Humanity. Reconciling Helen Goldman’s Testimony with the Forensic Strictures of the Frankfurt Auschwitz Trial, in: S:I.M.O.N. – Shoah: Intervention. Methods. Documentation. 8 (2021) 1, 4-35. DOI: https://doi.org/10.23777/SN.0121/ART_AWIS011 S:I.M.O.N.– Shoah: Intervention. Methods. DocumentatiON. is the semi-annual open access e-journal of the Vienna Wiesenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies (VWI) in English and German. ISSN 2408-9192 | 8 (2021) 1 | https://doi.org/10.23777/SN.0121 This article is licensed under the following Creative Commons License: CC-BY-NC-ND (Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives) In appreciation to the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany (Claims Conference) for supporting this publication.

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Anna Corsten A Different Perspective on Innovation in Holocaust Studies

Abstract When talking about the emergence of Holocaust studies as an academic field in the 1960s and 1970s, we often look at its development from a male perspective by focussing on the academic positions, honours, and the success of books. Thus, women are often excluded from this perspective since they chose different paths due to their career options and gender expectations at that time. Many female scholars therefore sought other possibilities to study the Holocaust, for example through teaching. In this article, I will look at the role played particularly by women but also male scholars through teaching Holocaust studies.

In the United States, Rita Steinhardt Botwinick is well-known for her textbooks about the Holocaust. The historian was born in 1923 in the town of Winzig (now Wińsko), which at that time belonged to the Prussian province of Lower Silesia but became a part of Poland in 1945. The Steinhardt family fled to the United States in 1939 because they were persecuted as Jews by the Nazis. After writing a dissertation in history about the National Socialist era, Steinhardt Botwinick did not embark on a career at the university level but instead taught at high school level. Her professional expertise as a teacher and as an expert on National Socialism, however, contributed to her later career in academia. While the influence of certain scholars in the emergence of Holocaust Studies, particularly of émigré scholars, is currently being studied intensively,1 the correla- tion between teaching and research has hardly been recognised. However, this connection offered an important possibility for participation in the institutionalisation of Holocaust studies, particularly for women. In this paper, I will therefore analyse how textbooks and the institutionalisation of high school and university courses contributed to the study of the Holocaust. I am here particularly interested in the agency that female scholars obtained | www.vwi.ac.at through teaching as well as their role in Holocaust studies. Consequently, I will focus on two examples: Rita Steinhardt Botwinick and Henry Friedlander. However, there

For their valuable comments on my research and this paper I would like to thank Breea Gould, Ronny Neidigk, and the anonymous reviewers. 1 René Schlott, Raul Hilberg (1926–2007). Eine jüdische Biografie im 20. Jahrhundert, in: Simon Dubnow Insti- tute Yearbook 16 (2019), 419-439; René Schlott, “Reflexionen”. Ein frühes Übersetzungsfragment von Urs Müller-Plantenberg, in: René Schlott (ed.), Raul Hilberg und die Holocaust-Historiographie, Göttingen 2019, 223-228; René Schlott, Raul Hilberg and His “Discovery” of the Bystander, in: Christina Morina/Krijn Thijs (ed.), Probing the Limits of Categorization. The Bystander in Holocaust History, New York 2018, 36-51; Anna Corsten, Unerbetene Erinnerer? Emigrationshistoriker in den USA als Impulsgeber für die Aufarbeitung von https://doi.org/10.23777/SN.0121 Nationalsozialismus und Holocaust in der Bundesrepublik, in: Dominik Groß/Julia Nebe (ed.), Forschung zwischen Freiheit und Verantwortung. Die wissenschaftshistorische Perspektive, Kassel 2018, 199-232; Anna Corsten, “Immer wieder, wie ein Gespenst kommt sie zurück”. Überlegungen zur Konfliktgeschichte von Hannah Arendt und Raul Hilberg, in: Schlott (ed.), Raul Hilberg und die Holocaust-Historiographie, 115-130; Anna Corsten, Unbequeme Pioniere. Emigrierte Historiker in der westdeutschen und US-amerikanischen NS- und Holocaust-Forschung, 1945–1998, Leipzig 2020, Dissertation.

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are many different possibilities to shape Holocaust research other than teaching. Thus, I will also briefly hint at Lucy Dawidowicz and her contribution to Holocaust studies. While an intellectual biography of Dawidowicz was recently written and published by Nancy Sinkoff,2 there is only one article dealing with the work of Henry Friedlander, written by Doris Bergen,3 and none dealing with Rita Steinhardt Botwi- nick. This paper relies on research conducted on the archival papers of Henry Fried- lander, which can be found in the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM), as well as research conducted for the dissertation Unbequeme Pioniere that I defended in July 2020. In addition, I conducted an interview in 2018 with Ron- nie Laudner, the daughter of Rita Steinhardt Botwinick, who also provided material from her mother’s papers. However, there are no archival papers pertaining to Stein- hardt Botwinick so far. As a result, this paper is based on different types of sources and secondary materials.

Rita Steinhardt Botwinick and the Career Opportunities for Women in Holocaust Studies

More than twenty years after she had left Germany as a young woman of sixteen years in 1939, Steinhardt Botwinick visited her hometown, Winzig, in her forties in order to participate in a get-together that the former minister of Winzig had planned for the former inhabitants of the town, most of whom had to leave after the town was declared to be part of Poland after the end of the Second World War in the Potsdam Agreement of August 1945. Steinhardt Botwinick, however, had already been persecuted before the Soviets arrived in Winzig.4 She was the youngest of four children. Her parents led a stock-breeding enter- prise.5 Like many members of her generation who fled to the United States, Stein- hardt Botwinick wrote a memoir published in 2015 in which she recalled the memories of her youth. In retrospect, she described the street battles in the Weimar Repub- lic, in which different political organisations fought for or against the government in place. According to Steinhardt Botwinick, many people in Winzig “yearned for the defunct monarchy”.6 Hitler’s rise to power in 1933 and the regime change that followed impacted the daily life of the Steinhardt family almost immediately. Starting in April 1933, SA troops watched the Steinhardt’s house. Neighbours who wanted to visit the family were threatened with violence and soon avoided the house.7 In so doing, the SA expelled the Steinhardt’s from the community of the town. After the Nuremberg Laws came into force in 1935, the parents sent Rita Steinhardt (later Bot- winick) and her youngest brother Friedel to Breslau (now Wrocław) since there was a bigger Jewish community there. Her older brother Dicker had followed a Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS) group to the Netherlands that was planning to leave

2 Nancy Sinkoff, From Left to Right. Lucy S. Dawidowicz, the New York Intellectuals, and the Politics of Jewish History, Detroit 2020. 3 Doris L. Bergen, Out of the Limelight or In. Raul Hilberg, Gerhard Weinberg, Henry Friedlander, and the Historical Study of the Holocaust, in: Andreas Daum/Hartmut Lehmann/James Sheehan (ed.), The Second Generation. Émigrés from Nazi Germany as Historians, New York 2016, 229-243. 4 Rita Steinhardt Botwinick, Gratefully Yours, From Nazi Untermensch to a Patch in the Rose Garden. A His- toric Memoir, Amherst, NY 2015, 150-152. 5 Ibid, 20-21. 6 Ibid, 9. 7 Ibid, 29-31.

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for Palestine. When Germany invaded the Netherlands, he became part of the underground resistance.8 Walter, the oldest brother, had received a student visa to the United Kingdom. After being declared an enemy alien during the course of the war, the UK sent him to Australia, where he was confined in Camp Hay but later allowed to return to the UK. All the siblings survived. By 1938, Steinhardt Botwinick’s parents had started to prepare to emigrate to the United States. In her memoirs, she emphasised the traumatic shock of the November Pogroms, during which her father was able to escape deportation only by accident. She suppressed the memory over many subsequent decades. On 9 November, her mother had taken Rita and her brother home from Breslau since she feared for their lives. In 1939, the parents and both younger children fled to the United States via the Netherlands. They settled in New York City.9 Steinhardt Botwinick and her brother desperately wanted to fit in during the first few months in their new country, particularly after their experience in Nazi Germany. They even planned to convert to Christianity, but never did.10 The family had relatives in New York and could stay with them until they settled. Steinhardt Botwinick went to school in Orange County, New York, where she experienced the support of the headmaster, teachers, and students, which helped her to graduate when she was eighteen years old.11 Steinhardt Botwinick planned to study journalism and history after finishing school. “The power of words had attracted me since I learned to read. History was a natural adjunct, an outgrowth of the Nazi years, of the war.”12 Like many émigré scholars, she perceived her biographical experience as having influenced her decision to study history. Thus, she enrolled at the University of South Carolina in Columbia, where she completed her bachelor’s degree. She decided to go to South Carolina for two reasons: First, the university library had offered her a job and a sti- pend which allowed her to pay her tuition and other costs. Second, she was infatuat- ed with her high school biology teacher, who had studied at the University of South Carolina.13 When her professor encouraged her to proceed with a master’s programme, she applied to different universities that were closer to New York City. At Columbia University, she was met with a refusal because the quota for Jewish students had already been filled.14 Many US universities, particularly the Ivy League schools, applied quotas for Jewish students until the 1960s.15 Other well-known émi- gré scholars, like George L. Mosse, were denied because of the same quota. Mosse, a pioneer of the study of fascism, was also not accepted at Columbia University due to the quota. Mosse went on to do his PhD at Harvard University. For Rita Steinhardt Botwinick, this was the first time that she encountered antisemitism openly in the United States, as she recalled in her memoirs. In Passaic, New Jersey, she started working at a small newspaper but soon decided to proceed with her master’s at Brooklyn College. In the early postwar years, Steinhardt Botwinick received Ameri- can citizenship.16 She taught at a high school after raising her children and simultaneously wrote her dissertation on the history of Winzig between 1933 and 1946 at St.

8 Ibid, 45-46. 9 Ibid, 75-86. 10 Ibid, 91-93. 11 Ibid, 105-108. 12 Ibid, 110. 13 Ibid, 106. 14 Ibid, 136-137. 15 Jost Hermand, Deutsche Juden jenseits des Judentums. Der Fall Gerhard/Israel/Georg L. Mosse, in: Jahrbuch für Antisemitismusforschung 3 (1994), 178-193, here 183. 16 Botwinick, Gratefully Yours, 137-139.

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John’s University in Queens. Primarily due to the typical gender role allocation of the 1950s and 1960s, Steinhardt Botwinick’s career was postponed, although she emphasised that her husband was emancipated and supported her finishing her PhD.17 The historian received her doctoral degree in 1973. Until 1979, she taught psy- chology and social sciences at Herricks High School in Roslyn, New York. In her dissertation, Steinhardt Botwinick studied a topic that was personally close to her. In her memoirs, she recalled that she had intended to write a history of Winzig for some time. One of her professors encouraged her to do so. Although Steinhardt Botwinick did not directly reflect on her decision to study a crucial part of her own life, it becomes obvious that her biographical experience drove her to do so. This can be seen in certain passages of her dissertation. In her book, Winzig, Germany, 1933– 1946, Steinhardt Botwinick included her own memories about her life in the town, which was atypical for émigré scholars. Other Holocaust researchers like Raul Hil- berg, Gerhard Weinberg, and Henry Friedlander, the latter of whom had survived several concentration camps and emigrated to the United States in 1947, did not include their experiences in Germany and Austria in their scholarly work. Hilberg even tried to hide his émigré background by emphasising that he had fought in the US Army during the Second World War in the biographical note to his opus mag- num The Destruction of the European Jews, which was published in 1961, since he feared that his background could be seen as a limitation to his objectivity.18 Stein- hardt Botwinick, however, explained that her main motive to write her dissertation could be found in the “personal relationship of the author to the town”.19 Steinhardt Botwinick analysed sources from the city of Winzig, interviewed former residents, and incorporated her own memories, particularly when describing antisemitism in town.20 She applied a “worms-eye view” in order to understand the behaviour of “ordinary” people.21 Her aim was to explain why so many Germans suggested during the immediate postwar years that they had not been able to fight National Socialism. To do so, Steinhardt Botwinick told the story of Winzig in a chronological way, starting in the nineteenth century and then focussing on the time period from 1933 until 1946. Collaboration with the Nazis, the majority’s passivity, and antisemitism were her main topics of interest. Winzig, a part of Silesia, belonged to Prussia. The majority, about 85 per cent, of the population was Protestant and held conservative views. Only about 15 per cent were Catholic and less than one per cent were Jewish.22 Only five to ten per cent of Winzig’s population had received a high school diploma. A handful of people went to university. Steinhardt Botwinick regarded the revolution of 1918, when the monarchy fell, as a caesura in the town’s history, since most Winzigers had favoured the monarchy over democracy.23 Never- theless, the residents of Winzig were by no means convinced supporters of the NSDAP, as Steinhardt Botwinick emphasised. Instead, they were unable to resist the violent threat of the SA. After 1933, they remained “uncommitted to the Third Reich. They protected themselves with silence and conformity.”24 However, the majority of the population welcomed the regime change in 1933 since it brought economic

17 Ibid, 138-140. 18 Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews, Chicago 1961. 19 Rita Steinhardt Botwinick, Winzig, Germany, 1933–1946. The History of a Town under the Third Reich, New York 1992, 2. 20 Ibid, 43-45 and 70-76. 21 Ibid, 2. 22 Ibid, 42. 23 Ibid, 23-25. 24 Ibid, 64.

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growth.25 Only three people, all of whom had been unsuccessful in their lives thus far and had supported the NSDAP since 1930, were responsible for the antisemitic violence that followed, according to Steinhardt Botwinick. Here, Steinhardt Botwinick analysed the support for the National Socialist regime in ways that had prevailed for the first two decades after the end of the Second World War. German historians in particular were convinced that only a small minority of Germans had given allegiance to National Socialism.26 However, in the 1970s, when Steinhardt Botwinick wrote her thesis, different interpretations had become important. Studies by other émigré historians like George L. Mosse emphasised the role of ideology in the Nazi system – as Steinhardt Botwinick was to do in her later books as well. Mosse argued that a decisive part of German citizens had enthusiastically welcomed and followed Nazism.27 Thus, Steinhardt Botwinick’s interpretation was outside the main current of scholarship in the United States in the early 1970s. Historians like Mosse and Fritz Stern had argued that Nazi ideology and antisemitism had prevailed in large parts of the German population.28 Nevertheless, by writing the history of National Socialism from a micro-perspective, Steinhardt Botwinick applied an approach that was prominent among émigré historians of her generation but not too successful, especially not in Germany.29 Her history of everyday life in Winzig from 1933 to 1946 was not translated into German. In addition, the scholar’s approach differed from those of Holocaust researchers like Henry Friedlander, Raul Hilberg, and Gerhard Weinberg, who had studied the bureaucracy that held the Nazi system together.30 In the United States, her work was disregarded as well. It was only published in 1992, twenty years after she received her PhD, by Praeger Publishers, an educational and academic publishing house which also produces textbooks for middle school through to university level. Winzig seemed to have been too insignificant for the study of National Socialism and did not provide new insights into the system of the dictatorship. The fact that Steinhardt Botwinick depicted most Winziger as bystanders, whereas she later (like Mosse and Stern) perceived many Germans as having been convinced of Nazi ideology, is difficult to explain. One reason might be found in her personal connection to her hometown. Having experienced former friends exclud- ing her and insulting her at school, she was convinced that they did not act out of persuasion for Nazi ideology but because of fear. This belief was confirmed when her former best friend apologised to her when she visited a reunion of former Winzigers in Germany in 1966.31 Ultimately, Steinhardt Botwinick had written a book about friends and neighbours, people she knew, not about anonymous Germans. Although Steinhardt Botwinick focussed on the Nazi era, she also described its consequences until 1946. Soviet troops had occupied Winzig. It was later given to

25 Ibid, 3. 26 Nicolas Berg, The Holocaust and the West German Historians. Historical Interpretation and Autobiographi- cal Memory, Wisconsin 2015. 27 George L. Mosse, The Crisis of German Ideology. Intellectual Origins of the Third Reich, New York 1964; George L. Mosse, Masses and Man. Nationalist and Fascist Perceptions of Reality, Detroit 1987; George L. Mosse, Nationalism and Sexuality. Respectability and Abnormal Sexuality in Modern Europe, New York 1984; George L. Mosse, Nazi Culture. Intellectual, Cultural and Social Life in the Third Reich, Madison 2003. 28 Fritz Stern, The Politics of Cultural Despair. A Study in the Rise of the Germanic Ideology, Berkeley 2002. 29 Henry R. Huttenbach, The Destruction of the Jewish Community of Worms, 1933–1945. A Study of the Holo- caust Experience in Germany, New York 1981; Corsten, Unbequeme Pioniere. 30 Henry Friedlander, The Origins of Nazi Genocide. From Euthanasia to the Final Solution, Chapel Hill 1995; Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews, New Haven 2003; Gerhard L. Weinberg, A World at Arms. A Global History of World War II, Cambridge/New York 2005. 31 Steinhardt Botwinick, Gratefully Yours, 150-154.

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Poland. The Polish local authorities then expelled the citizens who had stayed. “Winzig remains only as a memory, a memory that will grow fainter with the passage of time”, Steinhardt Botwinick concluded.32 She concluded that “justice was badly served” when the last people of Winzig left the town.33 In her first book, she had not emphasised the Holocaust, which was typical for many historians studying National Socialism in the first decades after the end of World War II. Scholars like Friedlander and Mosse had also written their dissertations about other topics and only later shifted their focus.34 The weak academic response to her work and its late translation might have been a result of the outdated interpretations she had presented. Steinhardt Botwinick remained a high school teacher for several years. She received her first academic position as professor of history in the History Department at Sacred Heart University in Fairfield, Connecticut in 1981, where she taught Western civilization and a survey of American history as well as Holocaust history. While the process of institutionalisation of Holocaust studies was still in its beginnings, it advanced in the 1980s. Sacred Heart University was one of the institutions starting to offer courses on the Holo- caust at an early stage. In 1987, Steinhardt Botwinick went to Florida Atlantic Uni- versity (FAU), again as a professor of history, but now focussing on European and Holocaust history. FAU had a reputation for being a pioneer in offering courses on the Holocaust. For Steinhardt Botwinick, the possibility of an academic career opened when interest in the Holocaust advanced in public. However, there was no general need for scholars teaching the Holocaust yet. Nevertheless, interest in Ger- man and European history was higher and Steinhardt Botwinick was able to teach about German history, particularly the period of National Socialism.35 Not many academics were experts in National Socialism with experience teaching in this field. Steinhardt Botwinick combined both expertise in teaching and in the time period that concerned the Holocaust. In this regard, gender stereotypes of the 1970s also played a role for Steinhardt Botwinick’s possibilities in the academic job market. Working as a scholar at universities, particularly in the field of Holocaust studies, was rare during that time. In becoming a high school teacher, Steinhardt Botwinick had chosen a path in which women were able to pursue a career. Holocaust studies at universities was male-dominated during its initial years. A reason for this can be found in the attitude of many prominent male scholars, like Raul Hilberg, who feared that women would damage the reputation of the young discipline.36 Moreover, the principle that the history of National Socialism should be written in an objective manner without taking into consideration personal experiences contributed to the lack of attention towards her dissertation. In addition, she needed a job in which she could work during the morning and could take care of her children in the afternoon. Building a career in academia was not common for women who were seen as responsible for childcare and moreover often discredited by their male colleagues.37

32 Steinhardt Botwinick, Winzig, 133. 33 Ibid. 34 Henry Friedlander, The German Revolution of 1918, New York 1992; George L. Mosse, The Struggle for Sov- ereignity in England. From the Reign of Queen Elizabeth to the Petition of Right, New York 1968. 35 Catherine Epstein, German Historians at the Back of the Pack. Hiring Patterns in Modern European History, in: Central European History 46 (2013) 3, 599-639. 36 Doris L. Bergen, “Vieles bleibt ungesagt”. Frauen in Leben und Werk Raul Hilbergs, in: Schlott (ed.), Raul Hilberg und die Holocaust-Historiographie, 143-160; Corsten, “Immer wieder, wie ein Gespenst kommt sie zurück”. 37 Ibid.

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For Steinhardt Botwinick, changing to a university did not only provide her with an opportunity to teach the Holocaust but also to write about this genocide. One reason for this was that her children had become young adults and did not need as much care as before. Furthermore, while working at different educational institutions, she had witnessed the need for curricula and textbooks focussing on the Holocaust. Only a few other scholars had been active in this field as well. One of them was the survivor and émigré scholar Henry Friedlander.

The Holocaust in Academic Teaching: Rita Steinhardt Botwinick and Henry Friedlander

The possibilities for researching the Holocaust grew during the process of institutionalisation of Holocaust studies. This process, in turn, benefitted from emerging teaching opportunities at high schools, colleges, and universities. In 1973, the sur vivor Henry Friedlander, who had been born in Berlin in 1930, attempted to establish a seminar on teaching the Holocaust in which important scholars would be able to discuss questions and problems in teaching the topic. Many renowned scholars like Peter Gay and Fritz Stern, both émigré historians from Germany working at Columbia University, declined to participate in this project.38 This shows the reserva- tion of many academics in putting efforts into this field since it did not belong to the canon of history writing at that time. Courses on the Holocaust were hardly taught at an academic level in the 1970s. The field of Holocaust studies was not institutionalised then as it is today. Chairs, research facilities, and academic journals had not yet been established. Nevertheless, Friedlander continued discussing the question of how to teach the Holocaust with other scholars from different countries like Israel, the United King- dom, France, Australia, Canada, Poland, and Austria at a conference held in Jerusa- lem in 1988. No scholars from Germany participated since the Holocaust was only taught rarely and in a limited way at German schools and universities at that time.39 Friedlander criticised: “When talking about the unthinkable, reports use clichés. […] Those who are sincere, must often become sensationalist when describing unbelievable accounts like the deportation of the children from Drancy.”40 According to Friedlander, the Holocaust needed to be addressed in a sober manner which was supposed to be implemented in the teaching. For him, the role of a historian and the role of a teacher were intertwined. In this regard, the history teacher was able to influence the relation a student had to history. As a survivor, the meaning of history had changed dramatically in his life. He attempted to pass on the relevance of this history to his students. “As a child, in a school where the teaching of general history was prohibited, I learned the history of Ancient Israel. It provided simple, uncomplicated, and reassuring answers. In 1941 reality intruded. When it was all over, in a

38 United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM), Friedlander/Milton Papers, Acc. No. 2011.138, Con- cept of the seminar, Box 105/Folder “Touro 1973”. Rejections were written by Peter Gay to Henry Friedlander on 27 March 1973, from Fritz Stern to Henry Friedlander on 25 October 1973, from Herbert Strauss to Henry Friedlander on 5 February1997, and from Hannah Arendt to Henry Friedlander on 19 March 1973. 39 USHMM, Friedlander/Milton Papers, Acc. No. 2011.138, Workshop on Teaching of Jewish Civilization, In- ternational Center for University Teaching of Jewish Civilization, 18.–27. 7. 1988, Box 99/Folder “Jerusalem Conference”. 40 USHMM, Friedlander/Milton Papers, Acc. No. 2011.138, Manuscript “Yom Hashoah”, Box 106/Folder “Jew- ish History Lectures”.

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Munich D.P. Camp in 1946, I returned to study history and I am still doing it. There were no longer simple answers; they died in the holocaust. But history has meaning for me. It has made it possible for me to accept an irratio- nal and destructive world. Though history might speak differently to each generation, as a teacher I can only hope that some students will find meaning in the past. After all, I do not make history. I only talk about it.”41 According to Friedlander, the task of the historian did not consist in preventing crises, wars, or genocides in the future. “The historian is not a peacemaker”, he concluded.42 Instead, he stated that “if scholarship has any social value – and after the triumph of Nazism in one of the most educated nations I often doubt that it does – it is its commitment to a humane and disinterested search for the truth.”43 Friedlander also linked his biography to his decision to study and later teach history. After primarily focussing on the question of how to establish a curriculum to teach the Holo- caust at high schools and universities he began researching the Holocaust itself. As a result of this early involvement, his commitment became important in the process of institutionalisation in general. The historian was instrumental in organising the first conferences dealing with the Holocaust in the context of the Nazi regime and the Second World War and as a result of both Nazi ideology and bureaucratic machin- ery. These conferences took place in San José in 1978 and 1979.44 In addition, Fried- lander contributed to the first journal on Holocaust studies in the United States, the Simon Wiesenthal Annual. Friedlander was also engaged in debates on what textbooks on the Holocaust were supposed to address and what curricula at high schools and universities should look like. Like Friedlander, the prominent scholar Raul Hilberg attempted to introduce courses on the Holocaust and “Contemporary Jewish History” since the 1960s.45 The committee responsible for approving new courses at the University of Vermont (UVM) initially declined Hilberg’s application. This shows that establishing courses on the Holocaust was a protracted process not only in the Department of History but also as part of Jewish history courses. Thus, Hilberg himself remained in the Depart- ment of Political Science at UVM, where he felt that the study of the Holocaust needed to be placed at that time. His chair was only moved to the Department of History after his retirement in 1991. Nevertheless, study programmes, teaching courses, and professorships were set up in order to teach the Holocaust at different academic levels from the 1970s on. For that reason, textbooks were written as instruction materials for teaching. At colleges and universities in the United States, in contrast to German-speaking institutions, these books are of paramount importance in academia. For example, the book The Nazi Seizure of Power written in 1965 by William Sheridan Allen, a professor at the State University of New York in Buffalo, remains a prominent book among students and professors five decades after it was first published.46

41 USHMM, Friedlander/Milton Papers, Acc. No. 2011.138, Folder “Mo. Conference on History” 1970, Missouri Conference on History, St. Louis, May 2nd, 1970, Comments on the Panel “Teaching History in an Age of Crisis” by Henry Friedlander. 42 Ibid. 43 Ibid. 44 Henry Friedlander/Sybil Milton (ed.), The Holocaust. Ideology, Bureaucracy, and Genocide. The San José Papers, Millwood 1982; Magnus Brechtken, Raul Hilberg, der Begriff Holocaust und die Konferenzen von San José bis Stuttgart, in: Schlott (eds.), Raul Hilberg und die Holocaust-Historiographie, 47-70. 45 University of Vermont (UVM), Burlington, Special Collections, Raul Hilberg Papers (RHP), Hilberg to Chair- man Wolfe Schmokel, 17. 10. 1969, B 18/ F 9. 46 William Sheridan Allen, The Nazi Seizure of Power, Chicago 1965.

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Rita Steinhardt Botwinick also wrote essential textbooks about the Holocaust. In 1996, her book A History of the Holocaust appeared as her first monograph after her dissertation.47 In 2014, the publishing house Pearson Education published this book’s fifth edition. In her introduction, Steinhardt Botwinick specified the aim of her book: “to offer students a readable, factual history of the Holocaust.”48 Throughout her life, she had kept asking the question why the Holocaust had to happen, but was never able to answer it. Thus, she perceived it as absolutely necessary to keep teaching the Holo- caust in order to educate students who would do research about this in the future and who might be able to find answers to the question of why the Holocaust happened. “My generation has provided the facts; the work is nearly completed. You, the next generation, will have to meet the next challenge: to find the ways and the means to prevent fanatical peddlers of hatred from finding buyers. Use your new technology to warn people around the globe that those who murder the innocent and those who stand by and avert their eyes will be held accountable. ‘Never Again’ must become your promise, your goal no matter where or who the victims may be.”49 In this request, Steinhardt Botwinick went further than Friedlander. Her goal was not only to analyse the facts but particularly for the younger generation to prevent the past from happening again. In this sense, her students were supposed to become activists and transport the notion of ‘never again’ to their contemporaries. Fried- lander, on the other hand, had emphasised that historians were not peacemakers. Here, we can see how different Holocaust scholars perceived their tasks as historians. Interestingly, Steinhardt Botwinick also believed that the fact-based study of the Holocaust had nearly come to an end in her generation. This is remarkable, since many archives in Eastern Europe only opened after the end of the Cold War. Raul Hilberg, for example, estimated in 2006 that we only knew twenty per cent about the Holocaust.50 Unfortunately, there was no material available on why Steinhardt Botwinick came to this conclusion. The availability of Soviet archival sources as well as the proliferation of Holocaust museums in the 1990s not only provided Steinhardt Botwinick with a possibility to enter academia but also other women. For example, Sybil Milton, born in New York City in 1941, became the head of the research facility at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. She connected her scholarly interests, for example in the faith of Sinti and Roma, with the question of how Nazi crimes should be displayed in exhi bits. In this context, Milton worked closely with her husband Henry Friedlander. In her textbook, Steinhardt Botwinick emphasised the ideological reasons leading to the Holocaust more strongly than she had done in her PhD. In her textbook, she did not only outline facts about the Holocaust but also described what daily life in the Nazi dictatorship had looked like. In addition, she addressed the question of what importance leading Nazis like Heinrich Himmler or Joseph Goebbels had played in the regime. However, she did not only look at the perspective of the perpetrators but also that of the victims by asking why many Jews did not decide to emigrate in time. Steinhardt Botwinick hardly contributed new facts to the study of the Holocaust, but she did collect the available knowledge and made it accessible to her

47 Rita Steinhardt Botwinick, A History of the Holocaust. From Ideology to Annihilation, Upper Saddle River/ London 1996. 48 Ibid, xiii. 49 Ibid, xviii. 50 Hans Rauscher, Holocaust: “Wir wissen erst 20 %”, in: Der Standard, 1 September 2006, available online: http://derstandard.at/2475608/Holocaust-Wir-wissen-erst-20-Prozent (14 March 2021).

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students. Various studies of the teaching of the Holocaust have pointed to the relevance of Steinhardt Botwinick’s work. In a quantitative analysis of which books were most widely read in courses on the Holocaust, Steinhardt Botwinick’s A History of the Holocaust was ranked among the first five textbooks in 2009 alongside famous scholars like Christopher Browning, Doris Bergen, and Yehuda Bauer.51 In 1998, Steinhardt Botwinick published a book in which she had collected sources from the time of National Socialism and the Holocaust, called A Holocaust Reader.52 American teachers and professors judged it to be a highly important contribution to courses.53 The Holocaust Reader complemented Steinhardt Botwinick’s first textbook by adopting the same structure and by presenting ideology as a main factor behind the genocide. Many émigré historians compiled source books since they were seen as a way to study the Holocaust and the Nazi era, which did not get enough attention in academia. As a major goal of her courses on the Holocaust, Steinhardt Botwinick emphasised that “we will confront the facts without reserva- tions. […] We will seek the truth and not dilute its realities with platitudes.”54 In this position, she showed similarities to other Holocaust scholars such as Henry Fried- lander, Raul Hilberg, and Gerhard Weinberg, who had declared the unrestricted search for truth to be the major goal of their research.55 By sticking to the facts and the sources presented to them, these scholars advocated a narrow form of empiri- cism. In contrast to Friedlander, Hilberg, and Weinberg, Steinhardt Botwinick particularly addressed students as her audience. This was also the target audience for her last book, Up Close and Personal, which was published in 2007 and contained portraits of historical figures whose perspectives Steinhardt Botwinick tried to reconstruct.56 As we have seen, she also framed a certain activism in connection to the task of the Holocaust scholar which we can also see in the example of Raul Hilberg, who hoped that studying the Holocaust could prevent genocide and mass murder. After the genocide in Rwanda in 1994, Hilberg concluded: “History has repeated itself.”57 While renowned at American universities, Steinhardt Botwinick’s books are unknown in Germany and hard to find in libraries or bookstores. None of her works were translated into German, something Steinhardt Botwinick had not attempted to accomplish either. At the same time, textbooks do not have the same relevance in the German university system as in the United States, which might be a reason for her anonymity in the former.

The Role of Women in Holocaust Studies: Lucy Dawidowicz and Rita Steinhardt Botwinick

The example of Rita Steinhardt Botwinick illustrates two aspects about the role of women in early Holocaust studies. First, it demonstrates the precarious position of women in the area of Holocaust research during the 1960s and 1970s. At a time when there was little interest in the Holocaust, it was particularly hard for women to find a

51 Lawrence Baron, What Do Americans Read When Reading about the Holocaust, in: Steven L. Jacobs (ed.), Maven in Blue Jeans. A Festschrift in Honor of Zev Garber, West Lafayette 2009, 250. 52 Rita Steinhardt Botwinick (ed.), A Holocaust Reader. From Ideology to Annihilation, London 1998. 53 Samuel Totten/Robert Hines, Using Primary Documents in a Study of the Holocaust, in: Samuel Totten/ Stephen Feinberg (ed.), Teaching and Studying the Holocaust, Needham Heights 2009, 81-106, here 101. 54 Steinhardt Botwinick (ed.), A Holocaust Reader, xi. 55 Corsten, Unbequeme Pioniere, 259-264. 56 Rita Steinhardt Botwinick, Up Close and Personal. Portraits from Socrates to Hitler, Youngstown, NY 2006. 57 Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews, 1296.

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place in this academic field. Steinhardt Botwinick received a position at a university when courses on the Holocaust were beginning to be implemented at an academic level. In this situation, she belonged to the few scholars who were able to offer both academic expertise on the topic and teaching experience in the field. Thus, the Uni- versity of Miami relied on her in order to offer a variety of courses on the Holocaust. Second, this constellation points at the different fields of activity that were attributed to women and men. While a career as a high school teacher was open to Steinhardt Botwinick due also to her responsibility for childcare, a career in academia was not. Thus, women looked for other ways in which they could contribute to studying and informing the public about the Holocaust. This was emphasised in an exhibition on the first Holocaust researchers created by Touro College and the Gedenkstätte Haus der Wannsee-Konferenz. “A glance at the majority of publications on the Holocaust gives one the impression that mainly men documented and researched the subject. Addi- tionally, the existing structures and networks are also linked to the names of male founding members: The Wiener Library in London, the Jewish Histor- ical Institute in Warsaw, named after Emanuel Ringelblum and the [Vienna] Wiesenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies. However, there were female researchers in all of the commissions and institutions that gathered documents, recorded survivors’ reports, and published their findings. These female researchers were driven by the same motivations and beliefs as their male co-workers, and they worked side-by-side. […] Female workers sel- domly reached leadership positions. Thus, public perception to this day focuses on male directors and leaders.”58 Nora Huberty, who contributed to the exhibition, hints at an important fact: By looking at scholars only by measuring their achievements, the success of their academic contributions, or the prestigious positions they held, we have excluded women and their significance for Holocaust research since the end of the Second World War. Women, as the example of Steinhardt Botwinick also shows, acted from positions that were less visible than those of their male colleagues. Thus, we need to broaden our perspective on the emergence of Holocaust research by also considering the impact of teaching and research assistants who often worked for male colleagues. Steinhardt Botwinick’s example illustrates that women became active in different areas than men, which does not mean that these areas are less important or less meaningful. However, they have not been studied in great detail. Through the example of the prominent Holocaust researcher Raul Hilberg, Doris Bergen demonstrated that men were often critical of their female colleagues. Since female historians were in many cases not educated as historians or political scientists or had not worked in academia, male scholars regarded them as amateurs who would harm the reputation of Holocaust research in general.59 However, men writing about the Holocaust without an education in history were also stigmatised, as the example of Joseph Wulf shows. Wulf was trained as rabbi but did not hold a PhD in history and was thus denounced as an amateur by West German historians who wanted to discredit his works on the Holocaust.60 In this example, discrediting Wulf was a way to exclude his interpretations from the German discourse.

58 Nora Huberty, Forgotten Female Researchers, in: Hans-Christian Jasch/Stephan Lehnstaedt (ed.), Crimes Uncovered. The First Generation of Holocaust Researchers, Berlin 2019, 176-178. 59 Bergen, “Vieles bleibt ungesagt”. 60 Rorbert Frei, Auschwitz und Holocaust. Begriff und Historiographie, in: Hanno Loewy (ed.), Holocaust: Die Grenzen Des Verstehens. Eine Debatte über die Besetzung der Geschichte, Reinbek 1992, 101-109, here 103.

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In addition, male scholars like Hilberg feared the competition that the works of the few female scholars meant for them. For example, Hannah Arendt’s Eichmann in Jerusalem received broad public attention.61 Lucy Dawidowicz was – in contrast to Hilberg – praised by Jewish agencies in the late 1970s for including the victim’s perspective in her The War Against the Jews.62 As a result, Raul Hilberg felt threatened in his eminent role as a pioneer of Holocaust studies.63 Moreover, Dawidowicz had chosen another interpretation of the Holocaust which he vehemently opposed since he used perpetrator sources in all of his books. During the war, Dawidowicz wrote in Yiddish about the faith of Eastern Euro pean Jewry, a topic about which she was highly aware since she still stayed in contact with friends in Poland. Dawidowicz was born in New York City in 1915. Her family had emigrated from Eastern Europe. After studying English and Jewish history at Hunter College and Columbia University, she decided to go to Poland in light of the events taking place in Europe in 1938 and 1939. She learned Yiddish and worked at the YIVO Institute in Vilnius. Thus, her perspective was different from many Amer- ican Holocaust researchers who, like Hilberg, had fled from Germany and Austria but had not encountered the situation in Eastern Europe. By translating reports of the victims into English after the war, Dawidowicz laid the foundation for her work as a historian later. In addition, she became active in recovering the cultural posses- sions of YIVO for the organisation Jewish Culture Reconstruction.64 Together with Hannah Arendt, she belonged to the major participants recovering Jewish cultural assets and distributing them to Jewish communities all over the world. This example illustrates the early commitment and activism of women in looking for assets stolen during the war. Through this work, they also learned about the looting conducted by Nazis and collaborators during the Second World War. They thus became active and participated in the formation of areas that had not been established before. Dawidowicz was involved in an important network of Jewish scholars, wrote books about the Holocaust, and received various awards for these books.65 She wrote The War Against the Jews in reaction to the scarce literature on the Holocaust, including on the perspective of the victims. When she began teaching at Yeshiva University in 1969, she became aware of this problem through teaching. She therefore started working on her book. At the same time, she was very active in commenting on other studies written by scholars on the Holocaust, especially in the journal Commentary.66 Interestingly, Dawidowicz came to write The War Against the Jews when she discovered the necessity for such a book via teaching, as did Rita Steinhardt Botwinick with her textbooks. In addition, she analysed how the Holocaust was taught at secondary schools and discovered that when talking about National Socialism, the mass murder was not at the centre of the instruction.67 She intended to change this. Dawido- wicz was highly respected among her colleagues. Even Raul Hilberg discussed crucial matters with her at first.

61 Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem. A Report on the Banality of Evil, New York 1963. 62 Lucy S. Dawidowicz, The War against the Jews, 1933–1945, New York 1975. 63 Corsten, “Immer wieder, wie ein Gespenst kommt sie zurück”; Raul Hilberg, The Politics of Memory. The Journey of a Holocaust Historian, Chicago 1996, 148-156; Sinkoff, From Left to Right. 64 Elisabeth Gallas, A Mortuary of Books. The Rescue of Jewish Culture after the Holocaust, New York 2019, 239-241; Lucy S. Dawidowicz, From that Place and Time. A Memoir, 1938–1947, New York 1989. 65 Dawidowicz, The War against the Jews. 66 See for example: Lucy S. Dawidowicz on Karl Dietrich Bracher, The German Dictatorship and Gerhard L. Weinberg, Hitler’s Foreign Policy, in: Commentary 52 (August 1971) 2; Lucy S. Dawidowicz/Neal Kozody (ed.), What Is the Use of Jewish History?, New York 1992. 67 Lucy S. Dawidowicz, How To Teach the Holocaust, in: Commentary 90 (1990) 6, 25-32.

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Raul Hilberg and Lucy Dawidowicz initially respected each other’s work and maintained friendly and cooperative contact. In early 1970, Hilberg wrote a review about a conference discussing the role of ghetto fighters, in which he criticised Yad Vashem for exaggerating the role of Jewish resistance fighters. The piece was declined by the journal Midstream. Hilberg consequently turned to Dawidowicz and asked for her opinion.68 She answered probably by also taking into account an article Hil- berg had written on “German motivations for the destruction of the Jews”: “It was stinking of Midstream not to pay. That they should have done. That’s what I would have done. But I don’t think I would have published your article either. […] … but all I want to say here is that by being harsh and critical and overly suspicious of other people’s motives, you are not necessarily being objective and you are certainly not being dispassionate. Hannah Arendt protected herself against the passion and hatred for Germans by wrapping herself in a heavy cloak of irony. You, on the other hand, are all ice when you write of the Germans and aquiver when you come to the Jews. You protect yourself from the hurt with rage and aggressiveness. I am writing this to you personally and I hope I don’t offend you. I don’t mean to. I would never say this publicly, because I don’t think one should try to psychologize scholars, but should rather deal with the work as it is. Let me say that I have enormous respect for your book. I use it as basic text in my course, but I don’t like what I call the obiter dicta, the remarks about the Jews.”69 Dawidowicz thus expressed her admiration for Hilberg’s work but criticised him for not being objective, but rather aggressive when writing about the Holocaust. This indeed was an accusation that was often voiced in the debate about Hilberg’s major book. Dawidowicz’s main criticism, however, is to be found in her account of Hilberg’s thesis on the collaboration of Jewish leaders with the Nazis, which she rejected. In the years that followed, the differences in their perspectives on the Holocaust remained. While Hilberg had approached the Holocaust from a bureaucratic perspective, Dawidowicz saw antisemitism as a crucial factor in the genocide. Not the bureaucracy, but Hitler himself orchestrated the murder. According to Dawidowicz, ideas and ideology, not structures, were instrumental to the crime. As the title of her 1975 book implied, she claimed that “Hitler’s assault on Europe was singularly focused on the destruction of the Jews.”70 With these interpretations, Dawidowicz contradicted the books by Hannah Arendt and Hilberg that had been published more than a decade before. In contrast to them, she defended the behaviour of the Judenräte, which Arendt and Hilberg had both criticised since, in their view, these had facilitated the Holocaust.71 Given these differences, it may not come as a surprise that Dawidowicz and Hil- berg started confronting each other by the late 1970s. Dawidowicz, who had not reviewed the first edition of Hilberg’s The Destruction of the European Jews, criticised the second edition in 1985 on account of Hilberg’s thesis of collaboration. She also pointed to limits in the diary of Adam Czerniaków, the Jewish leader of the Warsaw Ghetto, which Hilberg had edited with his colleague Stanislaw Staron.72 Unlike Hil-

68 Sinkoff, From Left to Right, 176-177. 69 UVM, RHP, Lucy Dawidowicz to Hilberg, 4 May 1970, B 8/ F 11. 70 Sinkoff, From Left to Right, 173. 71 Ibid, 184. 72 Raul Hilberg/Stanislaw Staron/Josef Kermisz (ed.), The Warsaw Diary of Adam Czerniakow 1939–1942, Washington, D.C. 1999; Lucy S. Dawidowicz, Review: The Warsaw Diary of Adam Czerniakow, ed. by Raul Hilberg, Staron Stanislaw, in: The New York Times, 25 February 1979; Sinkoff, From Left to Right, 173-176.

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berg, Dawidowicz did not find that Czerniakow’s diary could bring new insights to the study of the Holocaust. She called it “so affectless and nonjudgmental that had a German police agent discovered it, he would have found nothing objectionable”.73 A few months later, Hilberg and Staron criticised her for writing that the “diary is a hardly readable text”.74 However, in the next sentence, she clarified that as a document it ought “to be studied and researched”. Being neither history nor literature, she perceived the diary as “raw material from which history can be constructed”.75 Only in the end did she criticise the editors for not adding more notes on the context. In her view, they “appear to be unfamiliar with Polish Jewish history and culture”.76 This was not the first time such a critique was voiced against Hilberg. Scholars working at Yad Vashem had also hinted at his lack of use of sources from Eastern Europe, particularly from Poland.77 Hilberg, in turn, attacked Dawidowicz’s books The War Against the Jews and The Holocaust Reader in a review. “The War against the Jews was not a significant contribution to knowledge, and neither is the Holocaust Reader.”78 Hilberg here took up a criticism that had often been voiced towards Dawidowicz’s The War Against the Jews: that she had depicted antisemitism as the sole basis of Nazi ideology and the key motivation for the Holocaust; that she had portrayed Hitler as the planner of the Holocaust.79 Whereas some of Hilberg’s criticism can be seen as accurate, Hilberg’s and Dawidowicz’s dispute contained emotional arguments as well. Both had accused the other of not fulfilling their task as a scholar, of not being objective (as Dawido- wicz accused Hilberg), or of not having written a significant study (as Hilberg accused Dawidowicz). With these examples, we can see that early Holocaust scholars defended their approaches by portraying each other as unscholarly. This might have been necessary in order to compete for the limited resources in early Holocaust studies. However, we can discover differences in the way Dawidowicz and Hilberg argued with each other. Whereas Dawidowicz emphasised that she only wanted to help Hil- berg understand why his article was rejected by Midstream – after he had asked for her opinion – Hilberg’s comments towards Dawidowicz’s work were often disre- spectful. In their answer to Dawidowicz’s review of the Czerniakow diary, Hilberg and Staron did not voice their position only at a scholarly level. They judged the importance of Czerniakow’s diary as “the most important diary of the holocaust”, and thus differently from Dawidowicz.80 They condemned her account as “paltry” and as a “cavalier dismissal”.81 Voicing their criticism in this manner, they departed from a scholarly form of disagreement with her account and became insulting. As already indicated, this type of criticism was not uncommon in early Holocaust research. Hilberg himself had received almost condemnatory criticism when his first

73 Lucy S. Dawidowicz, “Brothers, Write Down Everything”, in: The New York Times, 25 February 1979, 5, available under: https://www.nytimes.com/1979/02/25/archives/brothers-write-down-everything.html?search ResultPosition=1 (11 February 2021). 74 Ibid. 75 Ibid. 76 Ibid. 77 Nathan Eck, Historical Research of Slander, in: Yad Vashem Studies 6 (1967), 385-430. 78 UVM, RHP, Raul Hilberg, Review: Lucy Dawidowicz, The Holocaust Reader, B 8/ F 11; Lucy S. Dawidowicz, The Holocaust. How To Explain It All, in: The Washington Times Magazine, 19 August 1985. 79 Sinkoff, From Left to Right, 170-176. 80 Raul Hilberg/Stanislaw Staron, Letter, in: The New York Times, 13 May 1979, 11, available under: https://www. nytimes.com/1979/05/13/archives/letters-holocaust.html (11 February 2021). 81 Ibid.

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edition of The Destruction of the European Jews was published in 1961.82 However, Dawidowicz did not portray him as an amateur scholar, which Hilberg did by calling her position “paltry”. In addition, he avoided being presented in the same scholarly programme as Dawidowicz. In 1977, he wrote to the organiser of the B’nai B’rith Lecture: “I do not think that anyone would want to hear us both, and in that sense an appearance by one of us would preclude a presentation by the other.”83 Hilberg and Dawidowicz might have belonged to extreme ends of the early debate on how the Holocaust could happen, which might explain their conflict. However, we can also discover differences in how they voiced and reacted towards attacks from each other. In contrast to Steinhardt Botwinick, Dawidowicz was a well-established scholar who contributed in many different ways to the study of the Holocaust but never theless did not receive a permanent position at a public university. One reason for this could be that she did not hold a PhD. This complicated her position in a male- dominated field that used her – in their view – insufficient academic background to delegitimise her work. In conclusion, the example of Dawidowicz underlines what Nora Huberty wrote about female scholars: Although her work was of paramount importance, her contribution was overlooked due to a male-centred perspective on academic honours and the attention scholars received. However, scholars started to also elaborate on the role of female scholars in Holocaust historiography. In 2019, Nancy Sinkoff, an expert in Jewish history, published a comprehensive biography of Dawidowicz. In addition, other factors played a role for women entering academia. The women’s movement of the 1970s and the 1980s was a crucial reason. Renate Bridenthal, born in 1935 in Leipzig, who emigrated with her family to the United States, became active in the movement through a Consciousness Raising Group and later devoted herself to studying the Nazi regime from a bottom-up perspective and by including the perspective of women in her work.84 As a result, several political and scholarly developments led women to finding their place in academia.

Conclusion: The Necessity of a Female Perspective

Steinhardt Botwinick gave her last lecture on 19 September 2017, in which she spoke about her hometown Winzig and her family history. Throughout her whole life, Steinhardt Botwinick remained grateful to the United States for saving her and her family’s lives.85 She consequently named her memoirs Gratefully Yours. In the United States, she felt at home. At the same time, Steinhardt Botwinick offered her forgiveness to her childhood friend, representatively for her hometown, who had started bullying her after the Nazis came to power.86 Nevertheless, Steinhardt Botwi- nick did not try to find German publishers for the many books she had written, and she did not go on reading tours in Germany, as many of her émigré colleagues did. Her hometown belonged to Poland now anyway. She is therefore hardly known in Germany. Still, an American and a German film producer from Calypso Media are producing a documentary called Auf Wiedersehen in Winzig (Goodbye in Winzig),

82 Eck, Historical Research of Slander. 83 UVM, RHP, Hilberg to Lily Edelmann, 15 December 1977, 8/5. 84 Renate Bridenthal, Out of Germany, in: Andreas Daum (ed.), The Second Generation. Émigrés from Nazi Germany as Historians, New York 2016, 130-140. 85 Steinhardt Botwinick, Gratefully Yours, 152-154. 86 Ibid, 152.

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which will be centred on Rita Steinhardt Botwinick but will also contain other interviews with eyewitnesses.87 Thus, Steinhardt Botwinick’s life and work might finally receive attention in Germany as well. The establishment of Holocaust Studies would be unthinkable without its teaching as well as the collection and translation of sources and cultural goods. Women like Steinhardt Botwinick and Dawidowicz were instrumental in these fields. How- ever, by tending to emphasise academic achievements, we often marginalise the impact of these women, although the efforts of these women are able to tell us a lot about the implementation of Holocaust studies. more studies are necessary to shed light on their relevance in this area.

Anna Corsten is a historian at the Institute for Contemporary History in Munich (IfZ). She is currently researching how the German government dealt with property of the NSDAP and other Nazi organisations. Between 2016 and 2020 she wrote her dissertation on German-speaking émigré historians and their impact on the study of National Socialism and the Holocaust at the University of Leipzig. She held several fellowships, for example, by the GHI in Washington D.C., the Vienna Wiesenthal Institute (VWI) and the Center for Holocaust Studies in Munich. E-Mail: [email protected]

87 Auf Wiedersehen in Winzig, http://www.calypsomultimedia.com/uncategorized/auf-wiedersehen-in-winzig/ (14 March 2021).

Quotation: Anna Corsten, A Different Perspective on Innovation in Holocaust Studies, in: S:I.M.O.N. – Shoah: Intervention. Methods. Documentation. 8 (2021) 2, 36-51. DOI: https://doi.org/10.23777/SN.0121/ART_ACOR01 S:I.M.O.N.– Shoah: Intervention. Methods. DocumentatiON. is the semi-annual open access e-journal of the Vienna Wiesenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies (VWI) in English and German. ISSN 2408-9192 | 8 (2021) 1 | https://doi.org/10.23777/SN.0121 This article is licensed under the following Creative Commons License: CC-BY-NC-ND (Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives) In appreciation to the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany (Claims Conference) for supporting this publication.

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Katarzyna Person A Link to the Past? Poland and its Memory in the Lives of Holocaust Survivors in DP Camps in the American Zone of Occupied Germany

Abstract This article focuses on particular characteristic of Polish Jews and its part of creating of the postwar DP community, looking at its two aspects: political representation and linguistic identity. This allows to examine the role played by the past in creating the future and suggest further research which will focus on the continuity in lives of the DPs, seeing their postwar lives as part of their longer life stories, rather than time completely detached from their prewar past. It argues for the need for further work on the relationship of Polish Jewish DPs with Poland, both at the institutional and private level, and thus the issue of the role of migrants for the countries from which they departed.

Among 55 million people displaced during the course of the Second World War, there were a quarter of a million Jews who after the war found themselves in the Western occupation zones of Germany. This relatively small group, heavily damaged by their war time experiences, lost in the new environment, not aligned within the clear Cold War division of postwar Europe, has to date been discussed in numerous studies.1 In this article, I will argue for a nuanced approach, considering cultural preferences shaped by Jewish communal experiences before the Holocaust in the context of nation states. I will focus in particular on the characteristics of Polish Jews and their part in creating a postwar Displaced Person (DP) identity. This will allow me to show what role the past played in creating the future and to suggest further research which will focus on seeing their postwar lives as part of their longer life stories, rather than time completely detached from their prewar past (even if this is often how they chose to describe it themselves).2

| www.vwi.ac.at Jews from Poland in DP Camps in the American Zone

Even though they are regarded mainly through the prism of their decision to stay in Germany, the first testimonies following liberation show clearly that in the first postwar days a large part of Jews from Poland liberated in Germany at least considered returning to their prewar homes. One of the survivors recalled it as follows: “And it was at that time then, you started thinking, now, what’s next? What’s going to happen to us? Where are we? Where’s everybody else? Who survived? Where is any-

https://doi.org/10.23777/SN.0121 1 See among others: Idith Zertal, From Catastrophe to Power. Holocaust Survivors and the Emergence of Israel, Berkeley 1998; Gerhard D. Cohen, In War’s Wake. Europe’s Displaced Persons in the Postwar Order, Oxford 2011. 2 This issue is further developed in: Katarzyna Person, Dipisi. Żydzi polscy w amerykańskiej i brytyjskiej strefach okupacyjnych Niemiec, 1945–1948 [DPs. Polish Jews in the American and British Occupational Zones of Germany, 1945–1948], Warsaw 2019.

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body? How are we going to find each other?”3 Thus in the first postwar weeks, many of those who could, began their journey: searching for family and friends. Some returned to Poland, others travelled from camp to camp in Germany, Austria, and Italy. On bombed roads and overflowing trains, without food, they moved between occupation zones, often through areas still dominated by wartime actions. They set off with the hope of finding their relatives or those who might have known something about their fate: prisoners of the same concentration or forced labour camps or ghettos. This movement was also caused by the fact that in the first postwar months Jews from Poland, like all DPs, were classified by the Allies according to their prewar nationality. Jews from Poland were thus regarded as Poles and were placed in Polish camps or Polish blocks in international camps and, at least in theory, were to be re- patriated to the postwar Polish territories. The category of Polish DPs also encom- passed Polish forced labourers, former concentration and POW camp prisoners, Poles forcibly enlisted into the Wehrmacht, Polish children deported to Germany (both as forced labourers and for ‘Germanisation’), children of Poles already born in Germany, and all those, including members of the Polish underground, who for political reasons (as well as fear for their safety) did not want to return to Poland. This group also included Polish soldiers who participated in the occupation of Germany and, later, non-Jewish escapees from Poland.4 Unlike Jews, non-Jewish Poles who decided to remain in postwar Germany considered themselves to be above all political refugees. Their identity was based on an idealised image of prewar Poland and the uniqueness of their suffering, even if their motivations to stay in Germany varied considerably: from rejecting the new political system to the wish to build a new life outside Poland for economic reasons. When asked about returning to Poland, Polish DPs answered: “I will return when Lvov is ours again”; “Yes, but only to an independent Poland”; “Yes, when the rightful government returns to Poland”; “No – I fought for a free and independent Poland and I will only return to one like that”; “Not as long as the Bolsheviks rule Poland.”5 Many were (often rightly) concerned about being persecuted after returning to Poland, a fear that was exaggerated by rumours circulating around the camps, claiming among other things that all repatriates from Germany were to be sent directly to Siberia.6 The Polish government, supported at least initially by the occupational authorities, was in the first postwar months deeply interested in repatriating all its citizens,

3 United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM), RG–50.156.0058, Interview with Dora Zaidenweber, 15 August 1984. 4 On Polish DPs, see among others: Laura J. Hilton, Pawns on a Chessboard? Polish DPs and Repatriation from the US Zone of Occupation of Germany, 1945–1949, in: Johannes-Dieter Steinert/Inge Weber-Newth (ed.), Beyond Camps and Forced Labour. Current International Research on Survivors of Nazi Persecution, Osnabruck 2005, 90-102; Wiesław Hładkiewicz, Meandry polityki. Życie polityczne emigracji polskiej w za- chodnich strefach okupacyjnych Niemiec 1945–1949. Liderzy – organizacje – poglądy [Meanders of Politics. Political Life of Polish Emigration in the Western Occupational Zones of Germany 1945–1949. Leaders – Organisations – Views], Zielona Góra 2011; Czesław Łuczak, Polacy w okupowanych Niemczech 1945–1949 [Poles in Occupied Germany 1945–1949], Poznań 1993. 5 Instytut Polski i Muzeum im. Gen. W. Sikorskiego, London, Zespół Akt Polskiej Misji Wojskowej przy USFET. Raport kpt. Zbigniewa Czarnoty-Bojarskiego, oficera kontaktowego przy 7. Armii Amerykańskiej z 31 VIII 1945 dla Polskiej Misji Wojskowej we Frankfurcie nad Menem. Quoted in: Jolanta Chwastyk-Kowal czyk, Obraz edukacji Polaków na obczyźnie na łamach czasopism emigracyjnych, Kielce 2014, 112 [Sikorski Institute and Museum in London, Collection of the Polish Military Mission by USFET. Report of Zbigniew Czarnota-Bojarski, contact officer by the 7th American Army, to the Polish Military Mission in Frankfurt, 31. 8. 1945. Quoted in Jolanta Chwastyk-Kowalczyk, Obraz edukacji Polaków na obczyźnie na łamach czasopism emigracyjnych, Kielce 2014, 112 (Polish education abroad in emigree journals)]. 6 Anna Holian, Between National Socialism and Soviet Communism. Displaced Persons in Postwar Germany, Ann Arbor 2011, 83.

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including Jews.7 Their return was encouraged among other things by increasing propaganda, focussed partially on the possibility of rebuilding Jewish life in Poland.8 Importantly, this propaganda was also aimed towards international public opinion. As late as June 1946, a month before the Kielce Pogrom, the press department of the Polish Military Mission organised a screening attended among others by the chief rabbi of the American army in Berlin, the leadership of the Joint, and a representative of the Jewish Agency. As the head of the department wrote to Warsaw: “I showed them films. The greatest impression was made by the Parade of Victory, which included an appeal to the fallen with a call to ‘heroes of the fighting in the Warsaw Ghetto’ as well as to the ‘Heroes of the Jewish Fight- ing Organisation’. These words made the guests very emotional (they had tears in their eyes) and at the same time convinced them that our government is loyally disposed towards the Jewish issue. I later showed a film about the Western Provinces, which also had an appropriate effect on those gathered.”9 At this point, many Jews who had been liberated in Germany, who were tired out by the first months of life in the camps, managed to be convinced that they stood no chance of emigration and that returning to Poland was the only alternative to spending the rest of their lives in Germany. In some camps, they were not even informed that they had a choice and could reject repatriation. Members of the camp administration told them that if they stayed in Germany, they may never again re-establish contact with their family members in Poland. It was suggested that if they stayed, they would have no rights and would be treated by the occupational authorities as Germans. Finally, there were cases of forced repatriation.10 Even the establishment of separate Jewish camps in the American zone, following the 1946 Harrison Report,11 did not cure all cases of wartime fear. Some of those who survived under a ‘non-Jewish’ identity (especially Jewish women who had been sent for forced labour to Germany) decided to return to Poland as non-Jewish Poles.12 At the end of May 1945, an employee of the Jewish Committee for Relief Abroad described convincing Jewish DPs to define themselves as ‘stateless’ rather than ‘Polish’ as a constant battle.13 As late as the autumn of 1945, there were Jews among the inhabitants of Polish camps who for different reasons did not want to register in Jewish camps. One of them returned to his prewar Jewish name, but pretended in front of other Poles that it was Lithuanian rather than Jewish. As he explained: “As I was exposed to some antisemitism in the American army and in the DP camp, I reached the conclusion by myself that the persecution is going to start all over again. It’s just a matter of time.” Thus, he decided not to own up to his Jewish identity throughout

7 On Polish emigration policy in the postwar years, see: Dariusz Stola, Kraj bez wyjścia? Migracje z Polski 1949– 1989 [A Country with No Exit? Migrations from Poland 1949–1989], Warsaw 2010. 8 Archiwum Żydowskiego Instytutu Historycznego (AŻIH), Warsaw, 302/298, Maria Rose, Wspomnienia, 124 [Archive of the Jewish Historical Institute (AŻIH), Warsaw, 302/298, Maria Rose, Memoirs, 124]. 9 Archiwum Ministerstwa Spraw Zagranicznych (AMSZ), Warsaw, Z-6 W-105 T-1689, Polska Misja Wojskowa przy Sojuszniczej Radzie Kontroli w Berlinie, 27.06.1946, Sprawozdanie [Archive of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (AMSZ), Warsaw, Z-6 W-105 T-1689, Polish Military Mission by the Allied Control Council in Berlin, 27. 6. 1946, Report]. 10 Wiener Library (WL), London, HA6A 3/3/1, Summary of Reports on the Position of Jews in Germany, 5. 11 For the full text, see: Leonard Dinnerstein, America and the Survivors of the Holocaust, New York 1982, Annex, 292-304. 12 USHMM, RG–50.030.0859, Interview with Irena Bach, 12 December 2015. 13 WL, HA6A 1/9, Relief Workers Reports: Jane Leverson (Braunschweig), 1945. Jews in Germany: General. Jane Leverson to Professor Bentwich, 25 May 1945.

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his stay in Germany. He emigrated to the United States as a Catholic Pole.14 The move from the ‘Polish Jewish’ to ‘Jewish’ identity as petitioned by Zionist camp leaders was thus far from smooth and sudden. It should be seen as a process taking place over time and motivated equally by inner need and conviction as by outside factors, in particular antisemitism both in the camps and in postwar Poland.

Political Representation: The Federation of Jews from Poland

There is no doubt that for the majority of Polish Jews, the creation of separate Jew- ish camps was a watershed moment. From that point on, the American zone became their space in Germany, allowing for the formation of a new Jewish DP identity. It also became a space where Polish Jews had to negotiate their relationship and still existing links with Poland, especially as the camps began to be populated not only by Jews who had survived in Germany, but primarily by increasing waves of refugees escaping antisemitic violence in postwar Poland. The story of the Federation of Polish Jews can be seen as a powerful example to illustrate the role of breaking ties with Poland in the Zionist narrative coming out of the DP camps. Established in Munich in March 1946, the Federation was set up on the basis of the Komitet Żydów z Polski (Committee of Jews from Poland) established in the Feldafing DP camp in June 1945. The Committee took upon itself the registration and organisation of aid for Jews from Poland, underlining that “it will carry out its work apolitically and objectively, not forcing on anyone its will, and even more so political stance, especially when it comes to decisions regarding repatriation or emigration”.15 In the strongly Zionist atmosphere of life in the camps, this statement was enough to place the Committee in opposition to the official representation of Jewish DPs. Its membership was open to anyone hailing from Poland in its pre- 1939 borders and living in the American zone. The key positions in the Committee, and later the Federation, were occupied by people who had held a relatively high position in prewar Poland and attempted to play a similar role in the postwar Jewish community. The leader of the Federation was an attorney and a wartime social activist in the Warsaw Ghetto, Władysław Freidheim.16 Its press organ, Ibergang (Passage), was edited by Marek Liebhaber, a prewar collaborator of the Lvov-based Chwila (The Moment). The Federation also published books on the history of Jews from Poland, mainly linked to the history of the Holocaust.17 The aim of the Federation was to represent the interests of Jews from Poland and to “provide them with moral help”.18 In November 1946, the Federation described its aims as: “establishing contacts between Polish Jews and their family members abroad; building a monument to the murdered Polish kibbutz by gathering documents and data; providing Polish Jews living in Germany with moral and material

14 USHMM, RG–50.030.0339, Interview with Joseph Kutrzeba, 6 June 1995. 15 YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, New York, 294.2, reel 91, folder 1280, Protokół z odbytego posiedzenia Komisji Organizacyjnej Komitetu Żydów z Polski dnia 4 czerwca 1945 [Protocol of the meeting of the Com- mittee of Jews from Poland Organising Commission, 4 June 1945]. 16 Powstanie Federacji Żydów polskich [Establishment of the Federation of Polish Jews], in: DP Express, 23 March 1946. See also: Yad Vashem Archive (YVA), Jerusalem, M.20/4, Lista członków [Membership list]. Among those joining at a later date, we find among others the prominent Polish Jewish historian Filip Fried- man. 17 See among others: Filip Friedman, Zagłada Żydów polskich w okresie okupacji niemieckiej 1939–1945 [The Extermination of Polish Jews during the German Occupation 1939–1945], Munich 1947. 18 YVA, M.20/4, H. Pradelski and W. Freidheim to Dr. Silberschein, 12 September 1946.

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help; lifting spirits and supporting those injured and depressed in rebuilding cultural life; and helping those in need.”19 The Federation fulfilled its functions by -at tempting to establish control over the division of all aid coming from abroad for Polish Jews in Germany.20 It was also actively involved in informing Jews on the restitution options for their property left behind in Poland21 and carried out negotiations with the Polish authorities regarding restitution in the name of Polish Jewish DPs.22 One of the key roles played by the Federation was its contribution to the development of the network of landsmanshaftn: organisations set up by groups of survivors coming from the same localities. In fact, the Federation sometimes described itself as the landsmanshaft of Polish Jews.23 The phenomenon of establishing postwar landsmanshaftn was already visible in the first postwar months in Poland and continued abroad.24 These groups were to a large degree gathered around their shared memories of prewar Poland rather than the planning of a shared future understood in the context of Zionism. Despite this attitude, the landsmanshaftn set up by Polish Jews were developing in Germany extremely energetically, often becoming the centre of social life for its members. Within the first days after liberation, Jews who found themselves in Ger- many tended to group together with survivors from the same city or town.25 While they might have had different experiences of the Holocaust, they were linked by memories of life in prewar Poland. Thus, the landsmanshaftn became one of the basic ways of organising life in the camps.26 This is why when non-Jewish Poles named camp streets after the streets of Lvov or Vilna, the Jewish camps came to be referred to as modern shtetls. The Jewish Polish Zionist politician, Ignacy Schwarz- bart, who in 1946 went on a tour of the DP camps, reported to London that entering the Landsberg DP camp in 1946 felt like entering small prewar Polish towns.27 What he meant was that they were still grouped to a large extent around their prewar local identities. Even though the Federation did not support repatriation and did not exhibit any links to the Jewish leadership in Poland, its name was enough to prove that it stood against breaking the links with the history of Jews in prewar Poland. As Tamar Lewinsky noted, the ‘Polish’ character of landsmanshaftn was seen by the Central Committee of Liberated Jews as endangering the unity of Jewish DPs as a

19 YVA, M.20/4, W. Freidheim to Dr. Silberschein, 18 November 1946. 20 YVA, M.20/4, Appeal, 18 November 1946. 21 Wichtike melding [Important Announcement], in: Cum Ojfboj, 20 December 1956, 12. 22 AMSZ, Z-6 W-45-704, Federation of Jews from Poland in the U.S. Occupation Zone do Ministerstwa Sprawiedliwości przez Ministerstwo Spraw Zagranicznych; AMSZ, Z-6 W-45-704, Polska Misja Wojskowa przy Radzie Kontroli w Niemczech do Ministerstwa Spraw Zagranicznych, Departament Polityczny, Wydział Środkowo-Europejski, 15 September 1947 [AMSZ, Z-6 W-45-704, Federation of Jews from Poland in the U.S. Occupation Zone to the Ministry of Justice via the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Political Department, Central European Office, 15 September 1947]. 23 YVA, M.20/4, W. Freidheim to Dr. Silberschein, 18 November 1946. 24 See: AŻIH, Centralny Komitet Żydów w Polsce, Wydzial Ziomkostw [Central Committee of Jews in Poland, Landsmanshaft Department], 1945–1950. 25 For example, in September 1945, out of 452 Jews living in the Bismarckstraße camp in Stuttgart, 439 had lived in Radom before the war. Susanne Dietrich/Julia Schulze Wessel, Zwischen Selbstorganisation und Stigma- tisierung. Die Lebenswirklichkeit judischer Displaced Persons und die neue Gestalt des Antisemitismus in der deutschen Nachkriegsgesellschaft, Stuttgart 1998, 49-50. 26 Erew Pejsach in Warsze [Erev Pessach in Warsaw], in: DP Express, 11 April 1947, 8; Achtung jidn fun pojln [Attention Polish Jews], in: DP Express, 24 January 1947, 10. 27 YVA, M.2/644, Ignacy Szwarcbart, Uwagi z podróży do zony amerykańskiej w Niemczech [Notes from the Journey to the American Zone in Germany].

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group gathered around the common cause of Zionism.28 This explains why DP newspapers commonly featured strong voices of community leaders fighting against history and tradition of life in Poland as values that could unite Polish Jews.29 The criticism of the Federation grew as chances for the rebuilding of Jewish life diminished. News of antisemitic violence in Poland reached the camps almost immediately, through formal and informal channels, in letters, reports, and stories relayed by immediate witnesses of the violence and the refugees who began arriving in the camps from Poland.30 The situation in Poland was only second to developments in Palestine as the most pressing topic in the Jewish DP press from its establishment onwards. The peak of this coverage undoubtedly followed the Kielce Pogrom in July 1946, which was discussed in numerous articles, reports, witness testimonies, and official statements of Jewish organisations and Polish authorities printed in the DP press. Articles in Jewish DP newspapers almost uniformly described the violence in Poland as a proof that there was no future for Jewish life in Europe and of the necessity for the establishment of a Jewish state. Rebuilding Jew- ish life in Poland was treated in these publications as a dangerous illusion, at best a temporary solution, with emigration depicted as the only option for Jews who still remained in Poland. As a result, even though Jews from Poland constituted a clear majority of camp inhabitants in the American zone, they often felt that their particular experience was very much absent from the political narrative coming out of the DP camps. Ignacy Schwarzbart noted that “Polish Jews feel somehow left out”, describing the situation as follows: “Even though our brothers from Poland are in the overwhelming majority in the camps, they have a type of inferiority complex.”31 Indeed, the political representation of DPs in the American zone was made up almost entirely of Lithuanian Jews.32 The three most important men in the zone were Zalman Grinberg, Dovid Treger, Grinberg’s deputy and from July 1946 onward chairman of the Central Committee of Liberated Jews, and Samuel Gringauz, leader of the Camp Committee in Landsberg and chairman of the Council of Liberated Jews. All three men came from Kovno and were surrounded mainly with people from the same region. It was the voice of Lithuanian Jews which was transmitted by the most important publications controlled by the Committee and published in the American zone. The most widely read newspaper in the American zone, Landsberg Lager Cajtung, was published in Yiddish in the Lithuanian dialect. As reported by

28 Tamar Lewinsky, Żydowscy uchodźcy i przesiedleńcy z Polski w okupowanych Niemczech [Jewish Refugees and Displaced Persons from Poland in Occupied Germany], in: Feliks Tych/Monika Adamczyk-Garbowska (ed.), Następstwa Zagłady Żydów. Polska 1944–2000 [The Aftermath of the Holocaust. Poland 1944–2000], Lublin 2011, 116. See also the English version: Tamar Lewinsky, Polish-Jewish Displaced Persons in Occupied Germany, in: Feliks Tych/Monika Adamczyk-Garbowska (ed.), Jewish Presence in Absence. The aftermath of the Holocaust in Poland, 1944–2010, Jerusalem 2014. On the critique of the Federation of Jews from Poland, see: Noch a wort wegn di komitets–waln in Deggendorf [Another Remark about the Committee Elections in Deggendorf], in: Cum Ojfboj, 20 November 1947, 7. 29 R. Olewski, Ułani ułani, chłopcy malowani … [Uhlans, Ulhans, the Painted Boys …], in: Unzer Sztyme, 20 August 1946, 7. 30 See: Katarzyna Person, Pogrom kielecki w prasie DP [The Kielce Pogrom in the DP Press], in: August Grabski (ed.), Pogromy Żydów na ziemiach polskich w XIX i XX wieku. Holokaust i powojnie (1939–1946) [Pogroms of Jews in Poland in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries. The Holocaust and the Postwar Period (1939– 1946)], Warsaw 2019, 453-465. 31 YVA, M.2/644, Ignacy Szwarcbart, Uwagi z podróży do zony amerykańskiej w Niemczech. 32 According to a survey carried out on 1 October 1945, out of 4,976 Jewish inhabitants of Landsberg, 75.2 per cent) came from Poland, 5.7 per cent from Hungary, and 3.3 per cent from Romania. Jewish DP Popula- tion Survey, MK 488 roll 8 frames 1032-37, Leo Schwartz Papers JIWO, quoted in: Avinoam Patt, Finding Home and Homeland. Jewish Youth and Zionism in the Aftermath of the Holocaust, Detroit 2009, 126, footnote 16.

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the Landsberg Lager Cajtung, even newspaper employees who spoke Yiddish in the Polish dialect on a daily basis had to switch to Lithuanian dialect during working hours.33

War of Words

The tension between the prewar Polish-Jewish identity and the new Jewish DP identity was thus also played out in the realm of language. This phenomenon was not unique to Polish Jews, but also affected Jews from other countries, yet due to the number of Polish Jews in DP camps and the legacy of Poland as a principal site of the Holocaust, it was particularly widely discussed in the DP press. One of the key characteristics of the prewar Polish Jewish community was its mul- tilingualism, with Polish having played an increasingly important role in this mosa- ic of languages. For many Polish Jews, coming from diverse social backgrounds and having been educated and socialised in the Polish school system, part of their prewar identity was tied up with the Polish language. In interwar Poland, the choice of a Polish-language school was not necessarily led by a process of assimilation, but was rather increasingly a purely pragmatic choice, undertaken also by traditionalist parents.34 Just as importantly, for poorer families and those coming from small towns and not only urban centres, who could not afford private Jewish schools, the choice of a Polish-language state school was the only one available to them. Polish schools were spaces where many Jewish pupils first came in contact with the non-Jewish world, even if schools and especially universities increasingly excluded and alienated Jewish students throughout the 1930s, both through the nationalis- tically inclined educational message and the antisemitic harassment and attacks to which Jewish pupils were subjected. As the historian Natalia Aleksiun noted: “For some Jewish students universities constituted a complex cultural and political encounter with their minority status.”35 Yet, irrespective of their attitude towards Po- land, members of the younger generation might not have had any communicative ability in the Jewish languages – neither Hebrew nor Yiddish – and used Polish on a daily basis.36 In all areas, many Jews read Polish newspapers, regardless of their national and Catholic character, and, despite the official line of their leadership, often participated to some degree in Polish cultural life. As can be clearly seen in photos from the camps, the Polish language was used just as much as Yiddish in camp signs and advertisements. Even the Zionist paramilitary organisation, Irgun, in August 1946, when preparing anti-British posters to be hung on the streets of Munich, post- ed slogans in Yiddish, Hungarian, and Polish.37 There were also similar issues in kibbutzim, where the use of Hebrew played a particularly important role, symbolising

33 Schejris-Haplejto oder Schejrit-Haplejta? [Surviving remnant or surviving remnant], in: Landsberg Lager Cajtung, 25 September 1946, 2. 34 See: G. Dynner, Replenishing the “Fountain of Judaism”. Traditionalist Jewish Education in Interwar Poland, in: Jewish History 31 (2008), 229-261; Kamil Kijek, Between a Love of Poland, Symbolic Violence and Anti- semitism. The Idiosyncratic Effects of the State Education System on Young Jews in Interwar Poland, in: Polin 30 (2018), 243-244. 35 Natalia Aleksiun, Together but Apart. University Experience of Jewish Students in the Second Polish Repub- lic, in: Acta Poloniae Historica 109 (2014), 110. 36 On Jews who only learned Yiddish in the camp, see: Margarete Myers Feinstein, Holocaust Survivors in Post- war Germany, 1945–1957, Cambridge 2010, 223. 37 The Office of Military Government, United States, POLAD Box 756, James R. Wilkinson, American Consul General to Ambassador Murphy, United States Political Adviser for Germany, subject: Jewish Activity in Munich, 16 August 1946.

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the path to the future and a break with the past in the diaspora. Hebrew was the common language connecting kibbutzim members in Germany and Palestine. Along with the emigration of the most committed Zionists to Palestine, the kibbutzim had also seen a gradual transition from Hebrew as the language of its leaders to Yiddish, and then Polish. In March 1946, the leaders of Kibbutz Josef Kaplan in Jordanbad appealed to Palestine to send them materials in Polish, because “most of the members, despite their great commitment, do not speak Yiddish fluently”.38 Moreover, reports on the activities of the kibbutz sent to Palestine from March to May 1946 were in Hebrew, in May in Yiddish, and in July in Polish.39 As early as Au- gust 1946, one of the members of the kibbutz in Bad Salzschlirf wrote to the head- quarters: “I would like to write more, but I know little Yiddish and I don’t want to use Polish.”40 Unsurprisingly, language as the most visible sign of links to the past in Poland became the forefront of the ideological battle taking place in the camps and, in continuity with the situation in prewar Poland, Yiddish newspapers were the key battle- field.41 The newspapers’ creation – in every camp and in almost every party and social organisation – undoubtedly proves the great need to become independent from the externally imposed camp administration, taking responsibility for oneself and one’s surroundings, and an attempt to shape communal life.42 These newspapers were often distributed throughout Germany and even abroad.43 The majority of the Yiddish press fiercely fought the “epidemic of the Polish language”, the use of which was considered incompatible with Jewish identity. The Polish language was considered symbolic of a “weakness of character and a lack of [national] awareness”.44 The use of Polish by young people, who were destined to become the vital core of the new Jewish nation, was particularly criticised. Thus, caricatures of young Jews aspiring to become “Polish intelligentsia” appeared in the press.45 Mocking articles about the Polish language often depicted Jewish women speaking Polish.46 This was especially true of women who had not received a religious education and had more often attended only primary schools or primary and secondary schools, where they had studied in Polish and acquired a Polish cultural code.47 This again was a continuity of a discussion that had taken place in prewar Poland, where attending non-Jewish schools was seen as a first step towards assimilation and a rejection of Jewish tra dition.

38 Patt, Finding Home and Homeland, 307, footnote 83. 39 Patt, Finding Home and Homeland, 133. 40 Hakibbutz Ha’arzi Archives (HHA) (1).9.13.2, Report of Bnei Midbar in Bad Salzschlirf, HHA/(1).9.13.2, HHA (2).8.13.2. Kibbutz Hashomer Hatzair “Ma’apilim” to the leadership of the movement in Munich (August 1946), quoted in: Zeev W. Mankowitz, Life between Memory and Hope. The Survivors of the Holocaust in Occupied Germany, New York 2002, 150. 41 See: Jacqueline Giere, Eine Brucke zwischen Gestern und Morgen. Die judische DP Presse in der amerikani schen Zone Deutschlands, in: Anne-Katrin Henkel/Thomas Rahe (ed.), Publizistik in judischen Displaced- Persons-Camps im Nachkriegsdeutschland. Charakteristika, Medientypen und bibliothekarische Überlie ferung, Frankfurt am Main 2014, 67. 42 Ruth Gay, Safe among the Germans. Liberated Jews after World War II, New Haven 2002, 62. 43 Jacqueline Giere, Wir sind unterwegs, aber nicht in der Wuste. Erziehung und Kultur in den judischen Dis- placed-Persons-Lagern der Amerikanischen Zone im Nachkriegsdeutschland 1945–1949, Frankfurt am Main 1993, 254. 44 L. Rudnick, Fraje tribune. Noch wegn der frage pojlisz-rejdn [Free Tribune. Still Regarding the Question of Speaking Polish], in: Jidisze Cajtung, 22 November 1946, 9. 45 See: T. Shaykovitsh, Fraye tribune: Vider vegn yidish in Unzer veg, [Free Tribune. Again about Yiddish in Unzer veg], in: Jidisze Cajtung, 25 November 1947, quoted in: Tamar Lewinsky, Displaced Poets. Jiddische Schriftsteller im Nachkriegsdeutschland, 1945–1951, Göttingen 2008, 179. 46 See: Lewinsky, Displaced Poets, 179. 47 Aleksiun, Together but Apart, 116.

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Despite the fact that articles in DP newspapers seemed to repeat the key points of the interwar ‘language wars’, there were also other aspects to this battle, ones which were unique to the DP community. With regard to the Federation of Polish Jews, the fight against the Polish language was another aspect of the game played out in the American zone between the Jews of Poland and the Jews of Lithuania, who were fighting not only over political representation, but also the shape of social and cultural life.48 Commenting on this, the journalist M. Lustig wrote: “People who have no idea about the history of the Jews in Poland, people who unilaterally perceive this issue through the prism of their own interests, or as a result of small-town chauvinism, take the floor on this matter. Even the very way of approaching this matter, the ironic tone and the unskilful and pale wit, clearly shows us who dares to talk about it.” Carrying on with the narrative typical of assimilated Jewish circles in prewar Po- land, Lustig in the next part of his article referred to Ber Meiseles and Berek Josele- wicz, two key Jewish participants in the Polish fight for independence in the nineteenth century, thus underling the place of Jews in the Polish romantic tradition and communal mythology of heroism. He also discussed the issue in class terms as a struggle between the prewar educated elite and those rising to the position of promi nence in the chaos of the postwar months: users of Yiddish were understood here as inferior to users of Polish in terms of cultural achievement. He thus went on to write: “Why is the Polish language boycotted so by a certain group of people? Why is Hungarian and Russian not so offensive? And is German directly favoured? Is it just a sentiment? Is it simply the sound of the Polish language that is so unpleasant? No! A completely different factor comes into play. Polish Jews predominate in this area. Jews who have been educated at Polish universities and acquired their knowledge in Polish. They were brought up in the historical tradition of their ancestors, a history which stretches back seven centuries, the history of the Meizels and Joselewicz families. Polish Jews gave the world some of the most famous scientists, musicians, political activists, and writers. The culture of Polish Jews is dangerous for little people. Too much competition. But how to overcome it? By taking away the language in which all their knowledge has been acquired, they will be rendered helpless.”49 Obviously, Lustig’s claim is contradicted by the fact that Yiddish was as much the language of the DP community in the British zone (where the leadership was com- posed mainly of Jews from Poland) as in the American zone. During the first Con- gress of Liberated Jews in the British zone, in which the vast majority of representatives came from Poland, the official languages were already Yiddish and German, with a few speeches in Hungarian and English, but none in Polish.50 In time, Cho- pin’s funeral march, with which the proceedings were supposed to be launched, was also removed from the programme. Instead, the participants recited the prayer El maleh rachamim (Merciful God).51 The discussion on language taking place in the DP camps was much more than a discussion about the dangers of assimilation. There is no doubt that in the context of

48 Giere, Wir sind unterwegs, aber nicht in der Wuste, 177. 49 M. Lustig, Mowa nie stanowi o wartości człowieka [Speech Does Not Constitute Human Worth], in: DP Ex- press, 5 March 1947, 3. 50 National Archive, London, (NA), FO 1052/283, Jewish Congress: Höhne Camp (Belsen). Report on “Jewish Congress” at Hohne Camp 25/27 Sep. [1945]. 51 NA, FO 1052/283, Jewish Congress: Höhne Camp (Belsen). Report on “Jewish Congress” at Hohne Camp 25/27 Sep. [1945]. Appendix A.; HQ 21 Army Group (Mil Gov), Jewish Conference at Belsen, 30 July 1945.

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the DP camps, the fight over the use of Polish was very much linked to the bitter memory of Polish antisemitism both during the war and in the immediate postwar period and disappointment with the postwar state. There was no more place for the prewar ambivalence in attitudes towards Polish culture. In the historical narrative of the DP leadership, Poland was a hostile space, any links with which should be sev- ered, including linguistic ones. Postwar Jewish identity as understood in the DP community could not be based on any Polish cultural values, including the language.

Conclusion

For a large part of Polish Jews, the camps were a liminal space: suspended between prewar communal Jewish life in Poland, to which there was no return, and an uncertain future after emigration. It is therefore important to ascertain what role memories of Poland and still existing links to Poland played in the context of the strong Zionist impulse taking place in the camps, in particular if we see it not only as imposed from the outside by representatives of the Yishuv, but to a large degree, as Avinoam J. Patt wrote, as “a unique, home-grown conclusion to wartime and postwar experiences, thereby revealing the tremendous agency of the DPs themselves in reconstructing political and cultural life in the aftermath of the destruction”.52 It is thus also a case study in the discussion on how violence (here seen in terms of Polish violence towards Jews during and in the aftermath of the Holocaust) reshapes the identities of those involved.53 The aim of my article was to show how the survivor community imagined its future and thought about its past. I argue for a transnational approach to research on survivors, one that also includes the question of continuities in discourse about the future and the shape of Jewish culture. Despite the ever-growing academic literature on the subject, research into the Jewish DPs which places them firmly in their specific historical contexts, based on documents in their own languages and the resources of local archives, is only just emerging. Only such research will make it possible to commence larger scale comparative studies between the groups which formed the national melting pot of postwar Germany. The history of DPs clearly shows how their choices, fears, and hopes were shaped by what they had experienced before the war and by the networks to which they belonged.

Katarzyna Person works in the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw and is currently a MSCA fellow at the LMU in Munich. She has published over 20 peer-reviewed articles and three books dealing with the Holocaust and its aftermath in occupied Poland. Her most recent book is Warsaw Ghetto Police. The Jewish Order Service during the Nazi Occupation (Cornell University Press 2021). E-Mail: [email protected]

52 Avinoam Patt, Stateless Citizens of Israel. Jewish Displaced Persons and Zionism in Post-War Germany, in: Jessica Reinisch/Elizabeth White (ed.), The Disentanglement of Populations. Migration, Expulsion and Dis- placement in Post-War Europe, 1944–1949, London 2011, 163. 53 See: Max Bergholz, Violence as a Generative Force. Identity, Nationalism, and Memory in a Balkan Commu- nity, Ithaca/London 2016, 312-315.

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Quotation: Katarzyna Person, A Link to the Past? Poland and its Memory in the Lives of Holocaust Survivors in DP Camps in the American Zone of Occupied Germany, in: S:I.M.O.N. – Shoah: Intervention. Methods. Documentation. 8 (2021) 2, 52-62. DOI: https://doi.org/10.23777/SN.0121/ART_KPER01 S:I.M.O.N.– Shoah: Intervention. Methods. DocumentatiON. is the semi-annual open access e-journal of the Vienna Wiesenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies (VWI) in English and German. ISSN 2408-9192 | 8 (2021) 1 | https://doi.org/10.23777/SN.0121 This article is licensed under the following Creative Commons License: CC-BY-NC-ND (Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives) In appreciation to the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany (Claims Conference) for supporting this publication.

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Rasa Baločkaitė Dealing with the Family Past (Grand)children of Nazi Collaborators in Lithuania

Abstract This article deals with the question of how the (grand)children of local Nazi collaborators in Lithuania have dealt with their family histories and with their (grand)parents’ crimes. On the basis of archival materials and interviews, it illuminates how Holocaust perpetrators were convicted, how families were affected by these convictions, and how their lives evolved afterwards, how families coped with uncertainties or family secrets and developed mecha- nisms of denial or family mythologies. Furthermore, the article illuminates developments after 1990 – the revision of Soviet sentences, processes of rehabilitation and de-rehabilitation, the opening of archives, and the clash between imagined and documented realities.

While in Western European countries, there is a large body of literature on how the children and grandchildren of Nazis have dealt with their family histories, in the Soviet bloc, due to the totalitarian regime that lasted for fifty years, there were no free discussions on the subject and the topic is just about to be opened up to public debate. The situation in different post-Soviet states might vary considering their cultural and historical diversity, yet the issue remains under-researched in the region. This article focuses exclusively on how the children and grandchildren of Nazi collaborators in Lithuania have dealt with their family past. In recent years, there were several public confessions like that of American-born Rita Gabis, who addressed her grandfather Pranas Puronas’s involvement in the murder of Jews in Lithuania during the Second World War.1 Another example is American-born Silvia Foti, who revealed her grandfather Jonas Noreika’s involvement in the Holocaust, who had previously been considered a national hero in Lithu ania.2 Finally, there is Lina Pivoraitė, who confronted her family past and her paternal relatives being involved in the Holocaust while writing her bachelor’s thesis at Vilnius University.3 This research explores the histories of people who remained silent about their past. The aim of the article is to illuminate how people have learned about their (grand)parents’ crimes, what they know, how they feel about it, and how they have incorporated their (grand)parents’ crimes into their family history and personal identity. The primary source for this research was the book We Did Not Kill by Arkadijus Vinokuras, which was useful to establish initial contacts.4 Further sources included

1 Rita Gabis, A Guest at the Shooters’ Banquet. My Grandfather’s SS Past, My Jewish Family, A Search for the https://doi.org/10.23777/SN.0121 | www.vwi.ac.at | https://doi.org/10.23777/SN.0121 Truth, New York 2015. 2 Silvia Foti, My Grandfather Wasn’t a Nazi-Fighting War Hero – He Was a Brutal Collaborator, Salon, https:// www.salon.com/2018/12/30/best-of-2018-my-grandfather-wasnt-a-nazi-fighting-war-hero-he-was-a-brutal- collaborator/ (15 August 2020). 3 Pivoraitė Lina. Kai žydai sugrįžta: Molėtų atvejis [When Jews Return] BA thesis, Vilnius University 2017. 4 Vinokuras, Mes nežudėme.

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archival materials (court sentences, letters of appeal, and inquiries written by children and grandchildren) and interviews conducted with (grand)children during the period from 2019 to 2020. The methods employed here were content analysis of the sources mentioned above. This article explores the following research questions: a) How was the Holocaust perceived and interpreted from the Soviet ideological standpoint; how were the sentences of local Nazi collaborators framed and how were their crimes articulated? b) How were the lives of the children and family members affected by the sentences and what kind of family narratives regarding (grand)parents’ crimes have been developed within families? c) How have the change of political regime and the declaration of Lithuanian independence altered the legacy of the crimes and of the sentences? d) How have families learned about the factual circumstances of their (grand)parents’ crimes and how has this factual information been reconciled with family narratives? e) What attitudes towards their (grand)parents’ crimes have (grand)children developed in their lifetimes? The article is divided into two major parts, covering the Soviet period and the post-Soviet years.

The Soviet Years: Censoring and Silencing

The section discusses the major differences between Western European and So viet states with regard to how they dealt with the Holocaust, specifically with regard to how the interpretation of the Holocaust in the Soviet bloc was subjected to particular ideological interpretations, how the Nazi crimes were framed, and how the sentences were carried out. It will moreover investigate how this affected the families and how they developed and stabilised their own narratives of what happened. Anne Marie Roviello, in her interpretation of Hannah Arendt’s theory of totalitarianism, argued that totalitarianism rules by reducing functioning reality to meaninglessness and substituting functioning reality with an imaginary realm of the ideological – meaning that reality matters only insofar as it fits ideological requirements and interpretations.5 In Soviet historiography, the Holocaust was never denied, but was rather subjected to special ideological interpretations. Orthodox Marxism perceived society first in terms of class conflicts, not in terms of ethnic conflicts. In the official discourse, ethnic conflicts of all kinds were seen as by-products of capitalism. Furthermore, it was believed that the major sources of such conflicts in the Soviet Union had already been eliminated and that Soviet society was characterised by fraternity and solidarity among people. The Second World War played an enormous role in official Soviet discourse – the Soviet struggle against Nazi Germany was used to illuminate the antagonism between the Soviet and non-Soviet ideologies and to solidify the idea of fraternity among Soviet nations. The Holocaust as an exclusively Jewish tragedy would therefore have undermined one of the basic ideological premises of the Soviet Union – the

5 Anne-Marie Roviello/Catherine Temerson, The Hidden Violence of Totalitarianism. The Loss of the Ground- work of the World, in: Social Research 74 (2007) 3, 923-930, here 927.

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idea of equality among all Soviet nations – as it would have differentiated between Soviet citizens on an ethnic basis, dividing them into those who suffered more and those who suffered less.6 The ideological framing of the Holocaust in the Soviet Union is well illustrated by the Black Book of Soviet Jewry, a volume about the fate of Soviet Jews during the Second World War compiled by Ilya Ehrenburg and Vasilij Grossman in late 1944. While editing the volume, Ehrenburg wrote in his correspondence to Grossman that “it is extremely important to show the solidarity of the Soviet people”.7 In response, Grossman suggested avoiding the term ‘Jew’ and substituting it with general terms like ‘people’ or ‘civilians’. Ehrenburg in turn proposed omitting the terms ‘Ukrainian’ and ‘Lithuanian’ when speaking about Nazi collaborators and members of the local auxiliary police, and to instead just write “полицай” (transliterated from the Ger- man Polizei), without specifying the nationality of the person in question.8 Despite their attempts to fit the ideological framework, the authors were accused of exaggerating the sufferings of Jews. “In reading the book […] one gets a false picture of the true nature of fascism […]. Running through the whole book is the idea that the Germans murdered and plundered the Jews only”, as the head of the Party Secretariat’s Agitprop department Georgij Alexandrov wrote in 1974.9 Following this statement, the volume was banned and all available copies were destroyed. The Soviet narrative about the Holocaust was based on the premise that Soviet citizens suffered equally and manifested fraternity. This narrative was formulated during the early postwar years and remained dominant up to the fall of the Soviet bloc.

Sentencing Nazi Collaborators in Lithuania: “Traitors of the Soviet Motherland”

To understand how (grand)children cope with their (grand)parents’ crimes, it is important to know how their crimes were framed and how the sentences for these crimes were formulated. Typically, the sentences were framed following the general logic of Soviet ideol ogy, i.e. the belief that any form of cooperation with the Nazis was, above all else, an anti-Soviet crime. On this basis, most of the Nazi collaborators were sentenced according to the infamous Article 58 of the Penal Code, which covered such offenses as counterrevolutionary or anti-Soviet activities. The major focus was thus on the ideological aspect of being ‘anti-Soviet’, whereas involvement in the Holocaust was reduced to a secondary issue. Meanwhile, the term ‘Jews’ was substituted with neutral terms like ‘people’ or ‘civilians’ and remained, to a certain extent, invisible. Here, the case of Mykolas Jankūnas is exemplary:

6 Thomas C. Fox, The Holocaust under Communism, in: Dan Stone (ed.), The Historiography of the Holocaust, London 2004, 420-439; Zvi Gitelman, Politics and the Historiography of the Holocaust in the Soviet Union, in: Zvi Gitelman (ed.), Bitter Legacy. Confronting the Holocaust in the USSR, Bloomington 1997, 14-42; Alex- ander Hill, The War Behind the Eastern Front. The Soviet Partisan Movement in North-West Russia, 1941– 1944, London 2005; Lukasz Hirszowicz, The Holocaust in the Soviet Mirror, in: Lucjan Dobroszycki/Jeffrey S. Gurock (ed.), The Holocaust in the Soviet Union. Studies and Sources on the Destruction of the Jews in the Nazi-Occupied Territories of the USSR, 1941–1945, Armonk 1993; William Korey, Down History’s Memory Hole. Soviet Treatment of the Holocaust, in: Present Tense 10 (1983), 51. 7 Shimon Redlich (ed.) War, Holocaust and Stalinism, New York 1995, 350. 8 Ibid, 353. 9 Ibid, 366.

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“The military tribunal has convicted Mykolas Jankūnas for the following crimes: During the bourgeois regime in Lithuania from 1918 to 1940, he was a member of the pro-fascist organisation Riflemen’s Union. Then, during the first days of the Second World War, […] he committed a betrayal of the [Soviet] motherland – in June 1941, he voluntarily joined the troops of the nationalist uprising […] and took part in the armed resistance against Soviet rule. As a member of the uprising, until September 1941 he guarded arrested citizens and escorted them to execution sites. From June to September 1941, along with other members of uprising, he transported detained people of Jewish origin and Soviet activists to the execution sites. On 1 September 1941, along with other members of the uprising, he escorted around 7,000 Soviet citizens of Jewish origin to the execution site and guarded the execution site. During the night from 1 September to 2 September 1941, he supervised the removal of the victims’ clothes. After the execution of the Soviet citizens, he was given a house and all the belongings of an executed Soviet citizen.”10 Other sentences were framed similarly. For example, Bronius Žvynys was convicted of a “betrayal of the [Soviet] motherland”.11 Leonas Gairionis was convicted of “arresting Soviet citizens and escorting them to the execution sites in July and Au- gust 1941” and of “voluntarily joining the German police in 1943 and taking part in arresting Soviet citizens and Soviet partisans”.12 Juozas Gruodis was convicted, among other things, of “joining the Šilavotas police in June 1941 and of systematical- ly taking part in the execution of Soviet citizens from June to October, when between 7,000 and 8,000 people were killed”.13 Leonas Mazūras was convicted of “joining white partisan troops […] and of escorting unarmed civilians to the execution site”.14 Jonas Narkevičius was convicted of “creating unbearable conditions for the arrested citizens” and “giving orders to shoot at prisoners who tried to escape” while serving as commandant at Riešė concentration camp.15 Finally, Jonas Stanišauskas was convicted, among other things, of “guarding Kaunas Ghetto and taking part in the execution of ghetto inmates”.16 Some sentences referred to Jews indirectly, accentuating other aspects of their identity with terms such as Soviet citizens of Jewish origin, civilians of Jewish origin, and people of Jewish origin. For example, Jonas Alutis was convicted of “guarding German warehouses and arresting Soviet citizens, among them – people of Jewish origin”.17 Stasys Skabeika was convicted of “arresting civilians of Jewish origin in Vil- nius” and of “appointing policemen under his subordination to guard them (civilians of Jewish origin) in the ghetto and to escort them to the execution site”.18 Finally, Ričardas Ukeniekas was convicted of “escorting civilians of Jewish origin […] and guarding them before the execution”.19

10 Quoted from the Supreme Court ruling of 5 June 2008, Lietuvos Ypatingasis Archyvas [Lithuanian Special Archives, hereafter LYA], f. K1, ap. 58-B, b. 373, 12. 11 LYA, f. K1, ap. 58-B, b. 391, 70. 12 LYA, f. K1, ap. 58-B, b. 214 (215), 10. 13 LYA, f. K1, ap. 58-B, b. 260, 8. Later in the text this was formulated as: “cooperated with Nazi Germany in the crimes of genocide and took part in the mass killing of Soviet citizens, mostly Jews, near Marijampolė in No- vember 1941”. 14 LYA, f. K1, ap. 58-B, b. 019, 18. 15 LYA, f. K1, ap. 58-B, b. 106, 9. 16 LYA, f. K1, ap. 58-B, b. 360, 12. 17 LYA, f. K1, ap. 58-B, b. 198, 13. 18 LYA, f. K1, ap. 58-B, b. 404, 42. 19 LYA, f. K1, ap. 58-B, b. 395, 37.

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Some convictions referred directly to Jews. For example, Albinas Jurčiukonis was convicted of “serving in the Nazi police and arresting, in cooperation with Nazi soldiers, around 100 Jewish families”.20 Mostly, however, the Holocaust remained invisible. ‘Jews’ were covered up with different euphemisms as Soviet citizens, Soviet citizens of Jewish origin, Lithuanian inhabitants of Jewish origin, unarmed civilians, ghetto inmates, arrested people, and so on, thus making the Holocaust invisible as an ethnically motivated crime and framing it as a Nazi crime against the Soviet people, motivated by anti-Soviet ideology. Local Nazi collaborators were mostly convicted of anti-Soviet activities. The sentences, which often extended back into the prewar period and covered the collaborators’ patriotic activities, portrayed the defendants as nationalists, patriots of Lithu ania, and enemies of the Soviet regime, thus producing something close to patriotic biographies. This had a significant impact on the perception of their crimes later, during the post-1990 period after the declaration of Lithuanian independence, while until 1990, the issue remained largely undiscussed.

A Ban on Speech: Institutional and Social Silencing

While Western European countries had, at least to certain degree, openly discussed the crimes of Nazis and their collaborators, Soviet rule, with state control and censorship, blocked free communication and free discussions among the citizens. Thus, the involvement of Soviet citizens in the Holocaust, their crimes, and their sentences were almost never discussed. Anne-Marie Roviello, in her interpretation of Arendt’s theory of totalitarianism, called this “a ban on speech” – a situation where “it is specifically prohibited to talk about this violence, recount it, or make it into an object of interest”.21 According to Arendt (1959), totalitarian regimes force people to live in conformity with ideological requirements. The Soviet state, in order to preserve the image of fraternity amongst the Soviet people, avoided escalating issues of crime, conflict, and violence in society. The death sentences were kept secret and even close family members were not informed. Before 1956, citizens whose relatives or family members were sentenced to death and executed were typically given a standard answer to their que- ries, such as “sentenced for ten years without the right to correspondence”. After 1956, official Soviet policy was to inform people that “the person was sentenced for ten years of imprisonment without the right to correspondence and died in prison”. 22 Families were banned from having any access to the fate of their fathers and grandfathers. If the family members were persistent and kept sending enquiries, the ‘death’ was ‘reg- istered’ at the Civil Registry Office and relatives were given a death certificate.”23 According to Burauskaitė, there are more than 100 known cases in Lithuania in which people were presented with false information, i.e. given a false death certifi-

20 LYA, f. K1, ap. 58-B, b. 369, 26. 21 Roviello/Temerson, The Hidden Violence of Totalitarianism, 927. 22 Secret letter from Ivan Serov, formal head of the KGB, to Nikolai Bulganin, Chairman of the Council of Min- isters of the Soviet Union, written in 1956, first published in: Memorial-Aspekt 1 (1993) and Memorial-Aspekt 10 (1994), quoted in: Teresė Burauskaitė, Mirties nuosprendžiai ir jų vykdymas 1941–1944 m. Teisinis-poli- tinis aspektas [Death Sentences and Executions 1941–1944. Legal and Political Aspects], in: Antikomunistinis kongresas ir tarptautinio Vilniaus visuomeninio tribunolo procesas. Komunizmo nusikaltimų įvertinimas [Anti-Communist Congress and the International Vilnius Public Tribunal Process. Investigating the Crimes of Communism], Vilnius 2002, 161. 23 Ibid, 161.

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cate, and there was no way for them to learn about their sentenced and executed relatives.24 In the Soviet bloc, Gulag survivors, deportees, political prisoners, and their surviving families were subjected to silence, enforced through a “volatile combination of internal and external suppression”.25 External suppression refers to legal restrictions, as some of the political prisoners were “subject to a ‘gag rule’; they were asked to sign documents saying they would not talk about their experiences in prison or the Gulag”.26 Jehanne Gheith mentioned a female political prisoner who was released from prison and requested to sign a confirmation that she would not tell anyone about having been in prison, to which she responded with surprise: “Now I was supposed to return to work and where had I been for 3 years?”27 At the ideological level, trauma, grief, and mourning were interpreted as a lack of enthusiasm for and faith in socialist ideals, making the subject ideologically suspicious.28 People therefore tried to suppress these feelings and to silence these histories, both for self-protection and the protection of their children. Whereas external suppression operated at the level of institutional pressure, internal suppression operated at the social level as a fear of losing one’s job, friends, reputation, and social status in general. People remained silent about their past or their parents’ or grandparents’ past for a variety of reasons – in order to fit in, to be accepted by society, due to shame, for fear of further political persecution, due to social and political pressures, being dependent on the state and motivated by economic neces- sities, and so on. In contrast to Western European countries, the Soviet societies were ideologically censored, the Holocaust remained represented strictly according to ideological guidelines, and the Soviet context was characterised by a lack of open discussions about Soviet citizens’ involvement in the Holocaust. This silence was reinforced at every level – political, institutional, social, personal, and so on.

Dynamics within the Family: The Conspiracy of Silence

In the Soviet bloc, the families of the sentenced Nazi collaborators were subjected to the rule of silence just like everyone else. What happens to families affected by trauma or tragedy, especially when the trauma cannot be discussed? Typically, all families develop a certain homeostasis, i.e. a relatively consistent set of internal family rules, roles, and boundaries that provide the family with stability and equilibrium.29 When families are affected by traumas and tragedies, such as crime, suicide, alcoholism, and so on, when a family member is lost or unable to perform their role within the family, the equilibrium within the family is damaged. Then, in order to re-establish the balance, people have to revise the rules, roles, and identities. In cases where families are unwilling or unable to discuss trauma and to perform the emotional labour required due to social shaming or political censorship, families develop a pathological homeostasis. Pathological homeostasis is based

24 Burauskaitė, Mirties nuosprendžiai ir jų vykdymas, 161. 25 Jehanne M. Gheith, “I Never Talked”. Enforced Silence, Non-Narrative Memory, and the Gulag, in: Mortality 12 (2007) 2, 159-175, here 165. 26 Ibid, 164. 27 Gheith, “I Never Talked”, 165. 28 Catherine Merridale, Night of Stone, New York 2001. 29 Don D. Jackson, The Question of Family Homeostasis, in: International Journal of Family Therapy 3 (1981), 5-15; Joseph H. Brown/Dana N. Christensen, Family Therapy Theory and Practice, New Delhi 2007.

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on epistemological error, i.e. denial, ignorance, misinterpretation, half-lies, and false beliefs that allow the family to maintain the imagined normalcy of everyday life and to go on without facing and accepting the change.30 Sandra Butler in her theory on trauma called this a “conspiracy of silence”: Motivated by shame and social pressure, families make attempts to cover the trauma and maintain the imagined normalcy of everyday life, instead of trying to face and resolve it.31 This is what happened to the families of Nazi collaborators in Soviet Lithuania. As open discussions were discouraged, both politically and psychologically, the children of Nazi collaborators grew up surrounded by silence, ignorance, distorted realities, half-lies, partial knowledge, and false beliefs. Many knew little or nothing about their parents’ or grandparents’ past and referred to the postwar years of silence and the culture of silence. For example, Aleksas Bečelis’s daughter said: “You know, we are postwar children. We did not know many things.”32 According to Jonas Stanišauskas’s daughter: “Those were Stalin’s times”,33 while Albinas Jurčiukonis’s daughter reported: “You understand, earlier, in Soviet times, people who were deported and [people] from my husband’s side, they avoided talking about [these times].”34 Within these families, part of the children’s socialisation was learning to be dis interested, not to ask questions, and not to trigger pathological homeostasis. Some people did refer to not being interested because of their young age, like Kazys Sur vila’s child, who said: “I was a child and I did not care.”35 Aleksas Bečelis’s daughter said: “We were children. We did not pay attention.”36 However, it is more likely that they were socialised into being disinterested. For example, Jonas Alutis’s daughter I.G. recalled that she was told “not to ask” such questions: “No, she [the mother] told us not to ask, as she did not know anything.”37 Jonas Stanišauskas’s daughter said: “Our father’s brother, a famous photographer in Kaunas, now dead, warned us – don’t tell anything about your father.”38 For them, their parents’ or grandparents’ past remained a taboo subject. Silence permeated the entire social fabric, at every level. No one talked – neighbours did not talk, schoolfriends did not talk, family members did not talk, nor the sentenced persons themselves. An anonymous person, allegedly Vytautas Striupas’s daughter, said that when her father came back from the camps, he refused to discuss the subject: “He told me absolutely nothing. He absolutely did not want to talk about it. I tried, but he did not talk and that’s all.”39 Jonas Alutis’s daughter I.G. spoke of how she was sent from one relative to another, without success: “For example, I can’t [talk] about my dad, with my relatives, when we talk, with relatives on my father’s side […]they tell me – why don’t you ask your mom? I say, I have asked, but mom did not want to talk, she does not talk, on that subject. You could not get anything from her.”40 Kazys Survila’s child recalled how the entire community fell into oblivion regarding his father’s case: “Father came back [after serving his sentence], he was working in the

30 Gregory Bateson, Steps to an Ecology of Mind. Collected Essays in Anthropology, Psychiatry, Evolution, and Epistemology, Chicago 1972. 31 Sandra Butler, Conspiracy of Silence. The Trauma of Incest, Volcano 1996, 215. 32 Vinokuras, Mes nežudėme, 138. 33 Ibid, 263. 34 Ibid, 223. 35 Ibid, 88. 36 Ibid, 138. 37 Ibid, 168. 38 Ibid, 263. 39 Vinokuras, Mes nežudėme, 216. 40 Interview with I.G., daughter of Jonas Alutis, 20 December 2019.

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same town. No one said anything. […] He came back when I was fourteen. I did not know who he was. No one talked.”41 The interviewees believed that this silence was mostly due to fear or even the legal threat: “Nothing during these times, you know, nothing was discussed, it was scary to talk about it, you know we lived on packed bags, breadcrumbs, lard, clothes, you never knew when they would come and take you away […] until Stalin’s death, afterwards it became easier, of course.”42 “They [the returnees from the Gulag] had signed [a pledge] not to tell. There was criminal responsibility, I don’t remember the article, but I know for sure. For everyone who was deported or imprisoned.”43 A.J.’s father came back from the Gulag in 1956 and refused to remain silent about his camp experiences. He died in a car accident in 1976, but A.J. believed he was killed and that the car accident was staged: “S. Braga, when he came back from prison, was openly talking about his experience in the camps. He was warned about this by the KGB many times. In 1975, he was killed. Clearly, [they] were afraid of the truth.”44 Clearly, there was a conspiracy that silence must be preserved and that those who violated the taboo and spoke out would be punished. Mostly, the taboo operated without explanations: “Whenever you asked why he was deported, you were told, don’t think about it, and all the deportees, whoever – my parents, my husband’s parents, everyone – nothing – it was forbidden to talk about that subject.”45 As Arendt argued in her analysis of totalitarianism, totalitarian propaganda “rests precisely on the elimination of that reality”.46 This is exactly what happened to the local Nazi collaborators – their stories were not falsified, they were simply reduced to taboo subjects, made unspeakable, and simply eliminated.

A Narrative Approach: Coping with an Inconvenient Past

Within families that operate on the basis of a taboo, communication is distorted, and in each family it is distorted in its own way. How do families cope with the loss or unexplained disappearance of family members and how do they deal with uncertainty? How do families tell their stories to themselves, to their younger generation, and to others, without triggering the forbidden content? This section presents several stories, each illuminating different strategies of coping.

1. Family Myth: “No Politics” One way to narrate family history without triggering taboo subjects is the suspen- sion of political elements. N.J., the daughter of Boleslovas Mažeika, wrote in a letter to the Supreme Court in September 1990 about the arrest and ten-year absence of her father as follows: “My father Mažeika Bolesas, born in 1898, was working at the railroad in 1945. During the summer of 1945 – at that time we lived in Baisogala, Kėdainių district – a stranger came to our house, dressed as an officer, and said: Mažeika, prepare yourself, there will be a train this afternoon, and you

41 Vinokuras, Mes nežudėme, 88. 42 Interview with V.J.M., son of Juozas Mažeikis, 13 January 2020. 43 Interview with Edmundas Jakubauskas, grandson of Vladas Jakubauskas, rehabilitated, 6 November 2019. 44 A.J., letter to the Supreme Court of Lithuania, 10 June 1996, LYA, f. K1, ap. 58-B, b.005, 151(7)-153(9). 45 Interview with G.J.K., daughter of Albinas Jurčiukonis, 13 January 2020. 46 Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, San Diego 1979, 384.

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will have to come with me, to Jonava. When the train arrived, the train station was completely empty, there were no passengers there, and my dad was hesitant and he did not know what to do. The train had already started to move and then the officer appeared and they both – my father and the -of ficer jumped on the train. […]. Since then, we did not see our father for ten years. For a very long time, we did not know where he was and for what he had been taken away from home. After some time, we received a letter from him from Raseiniai prison. Later, letters from camps in Omsk and Tomsk arrived. He came back home in the spring of 1957.”47 This story is based on two taboos: the first being the crime committed by the -fa ther (war crimes or genocide), the second being the violence committed by the state (arrest and imprisonment). The daughter is fully aware of the events, even minor details, like the specific time and place, or the train station being empty, but the narrative is totally devoid of any political content. Further, the story has a rigid structure based on the following elements: exposition (a railroad worker doing his job during a regular summer day), rising action (a stranger in an officer’s uniform knocks on the door), complication (the stranger -de mands that he go to Jonava), peak or climax (the empty station, the stranger is not there, the train already starts to move, the stranger appears in the very last moment and both, stranger and father, jump on the train), reversal (the first letters arrive), falling action (waiting for the father to come back), and resolution (the father comes back after ten years of absence). The structure is very rigid, there is no space for spon- taneity, which implies that the structure was established through multiple repetitions and remains the only way to tell the story. Yet the story reported in Vinokuras’s book in 2017, either by the same person or another sibling, had already changed: “I was six years old when two armed men came in and took him away […]. I know he was arrested. They took him out of bed, took him away, and no one knows what happened later. […] I remember the night when he was gone.”48 Following the weakening of censorship, both internal and external, the elements of terror and violence and the awareness of the arrest were incorporated back into the narrative.

2. Family Myth: “Grandpa is Still Alive” Juozas Gruodis was sentenced to death in 1951 by the Soviet military tribunal for cooperation with Nazi Germany and for the crime of genocide. According to the legal regulations of the time, the relatives of the sentenced person were not informed, or they were informed that the person “was sentenced to ten years of imprisonment without the right to correspondence”.49 Gruodis’s three daughters grew up believing their father was alive somewhere in Russia in secret, highly protected mining facilities. As Gruodis’s granddaughter reported: “In the family, there was hope all the time, there was the idea that he was still alive, that he was in a mining facility. Now I know where all this came from, from that period, that they, the political prisoners, how to call them, they were taken to Russia and were working in mining facilities, there were some conversations like that, maybe even my grandmother told me that. The hope that he was still alive, it was there all the time, and my mother used to say,

47 LYA, f. K1, ap. 58-B, b. 355, 9. 48 Vinokuras, Mes nežudėme, 267. 49 See: Burauskaitė, Mirties nuosprendžiai ir jų vykdymas, 161.

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look, if your grandfather came back now, and she was laughing, I can’t recall the context. In some way, mother was expecting him to come back.”50 It is unclear whether the family was aware, partially aware, or unaware of the execution, but the grandfather’s death was never openly spoken about. This allowed the family to maintain pathological homeostasis – the father, although physically absent, remained symbolically present as he might return at any moment, or especially during significant moments in the family, so the family did not have to face grief and mourning or adapt to new roles such as widow, orphan, and so on. This homeostasis lasted after 1990 and up to 2000, when someone from the family discovered in the archives that the father had been executed in 1951: “We went to the archives after the declaration of independence, I think it was after 2000 […]. When we learned, when we found the death certificate in the archives – when we learned, we were shocked, I remember that very well, it was, well, it was shock, well, shock.”51 At the time the interview was conducted in 2020, the granddaughter was not yet aware of the Soviet practice of misinforming people about their executed relatives.

3. Family Myth: A Fatal Mistake Jonas Dačiola was convicted of collaboration with the Nazis and sentenced to death in 1943 and executed in 1944 by the Soviet war tribunal. His family received no official information about the father’s disappearance; his wife repeatedly requested information from the local authorities, but with no success. Soon, the entire family were deported to Siberia and came back in 1951. Then, the wife began searching for her husband again. She received unofficial oral testimonies that her husband had been executed, yet the state authorities remained silent and only in 1956 was she given a death certificate, saying that Dačiola had died due to heart failure in 1944. It was typical at that time not to inform the relatives of executions or, after 1956, to provide them with false death certificates referring to natural causes.52 So the family, while facing controversial explanations, developed a narrative of its own: Jonas Dačiola was the best friend and right-hand man to a local Jew, the mill owner Maize- lis, so he could not have been involved in the Holocaust, but had been mistaken for his brother Alfonsas, who served in the Nazi police and was involved in the mass extermination of Jews and executed. According to the family, the state authorities tried to cover up the mistake twice: First, they tried to silence the wife by sending her to Siberia, and then they issued a false death certificate.53 The family narrative included several unvalidated episodes. The first was when a certain procurator from Pakruojis told the family members that “Maizelis’s relatives from Israel have visited Lithuania and they have praised Jonas Dačiola very much”. The second was an unspecified witness reporting an incident at the execution site: “After Jonas Dačiola was brought to the place of execution, at the moment of execution, a rider, a man on a horse, came with a message, i.e. a list of people who were not guilty and had to be exempted from execution, and he called Jonas’s name, but Jonas was already dead.”54 The family story was elaborated, through multiple repetitions, into a myth, i.e. a narrative with a stable structure – exposition (a decent person with good relations to

50 Interview with R.K., granddaughter of Juozas Gruodis, 9 January 2020. 51 Ibid. 52 See: Burauskaitė, Mirties nuosprendžiai ir jų vykdymas, 161. 53 This story is reconstructed from the 1997 testimonies of Dačiola’s sons, Jonas and Romualdas and the letters of his wife (date illegible) and his daughter-in-law, LYA, f.L-1, Ap.58-B, 2, 90(84), 91(85), 8(12). 54 Interview with V.P., granddaughter of Jonas Dačiola, 14 January 2020.

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a local Jew), rising action (war, a brother involved with the Nazis), complication (being mistaken for his brother), climax (a message that Dačiola is innocent arrives right after the execution), reversal (in order to silence the family searching for the truth, they are deported and issued a false death certificate), falling action (the witness reports an incident at the execution site, the procurator reports Maizelis’s ancestors having a positive opinion about Dačiola), and resolution (formal rehabilitation is not achieved, but the family has established its own narrative and comes to terms with the past). The rehabilitation appeals were rejected and the Supreme Court stated in its decision of 30 October 1997 that “there is controversial evidence regarding Jonas Dačio- la’s death” but they failed to clarify the controversies, leaving the family in confusion.55 In response to the incongruities, the family relied on their own narrative: “One day, we just gave up and said to ourselves: in our memories and the stories that people tell, there is another version. Of course, you can’t know the truth. […] But we believe it was a mistake. As do our relatives and friends.”56

4. Family Myth: The Tragic Hero Jonas Narkevičius was a non-commissioned officer and recipient of multiple state awards in interwar Lithuania.57 After the Nazi occupation, he joined the punitive battalion, made an oath to Nazi Germany, served as commandant of the Riešė concentration camp, and authorised his subordinates to shoot prisoners who attempted to escape. He was sentenced to death and executed in 1945. According to family interpretations, the father was taken prisoner of war and placed into the position of camp commandant, i.e. something he had no possibility to refuse. The father’s innocence was supported by his alleged lack of agency and the selective observation that he personally did not kill anyone, although he authorised others to kill. For the family, the father remained a tragic hero, who was forced to act against his own high moral standards and had to pay for this with moral suffering and later with his life: “He took everything to heart, my mother said, he could not sleep at night, […] they did not kill at the beginning […]. When he learned what was happening, it was too late to step back, there was no way back, he was already stuck there […]. Such a good person, but he got into trouble. Some years in prison or something, that’s ok for now, but execution, oh Lord, for what? There is a letter from the Supreme Court saying he did not kill. […] He did not kill but he was killed himself.”58 The family history is clearly structured into the time before and the time after the loss of the father. Before the “incident”, as the daughter called it, the family had a good life in Vilnius. This ideal life was interrupted when the father did not come to pick up his daughter from the playground, as he usually did. When the other children were taken home, she was left alone, it was getting dark, and she had to make her way home on her own. The abandonment she experienced then became a central theme in her life: “And I am waiting, and all the other kids have gone home already,

55 LYA, f. K1, ap. 58-B, b. 051 (52, 53), 1-2. 56 Interview with V.P., granddaughter of Jonas Dačiola, 14 January 2020. 57 “Well, how to say, he was a [non-commissioned] officer, there are medals and awards. There’s a letter, it says, the Order of the Lithuanian Grand Duke Gediminas, it says, the medal of the Order, here a decree from the Pres- ident of Lithuania for senior non-commissioned officer Jonas Narkevičius for services to his country, reward- ed with the Medal of the Order of the Lithuanian Grand Duke Gediminas III Class, and here we have some more awards”. Interview with R.Ž., daughter of Jonas Narkevičius, 22 January 2020. 58 Ibid.

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and my dad is not there, and I am thinking: I need to go home [on my own] – so I went home on my own and asked, where is my dad, and dad was not there, and we have not seen him anymore.”59 This event signifies the beginning of the family’s decline. From fear of persecution, they left their home in Vilnius and went into hiding, the family members living separately at certain times and reuniting later. The mother never had a legal job again in her lifetime, to remain invisible, and the brother began at the age of sixteen to work and provide for the family. As Boym argued, nostalgia is always the product of the present.60 Likewise, the idealised image of the father here, a symbol of the good life the family once had, is produced retrospectively in the context of hardship and suffering: “All the bad things, all our bad fate … The family was dispersed, destroyed, mother there, we were hiding somewhere else. […] Our life was very, very hard, complicated, and it all began with that incident, our dad, our loss. […] When dad was alive, we lived happily, nor- mally, but when he lost him, everything [went wrong].”61 This is a kind of inherited nostalgia, i.e. a longing for things one does not remember directly but knows from one’s parents – the image of the father is based less on personal memories than on the mother’s narrative: “My mother, she approved and defended him in every way. All the relatives, they used to say that father would not harm a fly. […] I remember he used to take me everywhere, to all the churches in Vilnius, I was still a child, he took me to a confectionary, such memories […]. Dad was very precious to me, more so than my mother. […] He was a very good father, my mom and all of them, they were four sisters, they all praised him very much.”62 Abandonment became the central theme of the daughter’s life. Even general difficulties of the postwar period, childhood illnesses, and her mother’s aging and death were seen from this point of view. These were moments of vulnerability in which the father’s absence was intensely felt. She reported that after the father’s arrest, when the family went into hiding, “I was given up to my mother’s sisters in Kaunas. I became very ill, it was scarlet fever. I was supposed to die, people said, she is going to die […]. But somehow, I survived …”63 At the age of eighty, she has not yet come to terms with the arrest and loss of her father nor with her father’s crimes: “Now, my whole body is shaking when I think about all these issues, you know it was very hard to survive […]. And now, while we are talking, I am just not myself, I feel like I am losing myself, when I remember all these horrible things […]. And for me, now, my heart is trembling, unpleasant, scary, Jesus, I had already forgotten all these issues, I said everything is over.”64 The family was not officially informed about the execution. One day, the mother returned from prison carrying the father’s shirt, which was stained with blood, and she speculated that her husband might have been tortured.65 The family lived either in denial or in partial awareness, as the daughter said: “We still did not believe he was

59 Ibid. 60 Svetlana Boym, The Future of Nostalgia, New York 2002. 61 Interview with R.Ž., daughter of Jonas Narkevičius, 22 January 2020. 62 Ibid. 63 Ibid. 64 Ibid. 65 “My mother went to Lukiškės [prison] to bring some food. She was given back father’s shirts. She said they were dirty with blood, maybe he was tortured there, and she cried so much when she came home, and I have not seen him since, only [his image] in my memories.” Ibid.

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executed, but, of course, if he were alive, we would have heard from him somehow”. Only years later did a family friend inform them that their father had been executed: “I was a full adult already when I learned [about my father’s execution].”66 During her formative years, the daughter did not have a possibility to come to terms with her father’s crimes and his death. The family developed an idealised image of the father in response to trauma and poverty, and by the time she learned the truth, the myth of her father as a hero and her own identity based on that myth had already been consolidated.

5. Family Story: Abandonment During the Second World War, Jonas Bečelis voluntarily joined the 13th battalion of the Lithuanian police. He was responsible for guarding the Kaunas Ghetto, conveyed Jewish citizens to the execution sites, took part in punitive actions against civilians of Jewish origin, and as a member of the 13th battalion took part in the execution of 800 Jewish citizens. In 1945, he was sentenced to twenty years in camps, served ten years, and came back in 1955. Upon his return, Bečelis arrived in a local village to conduct electrification, had an affair with a young widow with two small kids, and married her after she got preg- nant. After the daughter was born, Bečelis got a job offer in the city and invited his wife to go with him, assuming she would abandon her two kids from her first marriage, leave them at their grandparents’ place, and take only the youngest daughter with them. His wife refused to do so, and so he abandoned her, now with three children. Bečelis made no further contact except for regular money transfers. The story was perceived as shameful and was never discussed in order not to trigger the mother’s pain: “We knew nothing, because he left, he abandoned us. My mother was very badly hurt and she raised all of us on her own. […] For my mother, it was a complete shock, as [he] said, I am leaving you and the children and I am going, and later … inhuman, totally inhuman … […] And for me it was painful, for he hurt my mother, abandoned her …”67 The father was eliminated from the cognitive landscape and made into a taboo subject not because of his war crimes, but because of his moral crime, namely the betrayal and abandonment of the family. Neither the father nor his political past were ever discussed within the family.

The Core Experience: Abandonment and Uncertainty

What are the major emotional experiences of the (grand)children of Nazi collaborators? Taking into account the political context – the framing of Nazi collaborators as enemies of the Soviet state and treating their families accordingly, institu tional silence, censorship, and the distorted dynamics within families – most of the (grand)children were burdened not by their (grand)parents’ crimes, but by their own feelings of abandonment and uncertainty. With their parents having simply disappeared, many people grew up feeling abandoned. As Juozas Guzevičius’s child said: “I was abandoned at the age of two

66 Ibid. 67 Interview with N.B.J., daughter of Jonas Bečelis, 19 January 2020.

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months”.68, Jonas Alutis’s daughter I.G. said: “[Father] left us”.69 Finally, Mindaugas Jankūnas’s daughter V.P. stated that her father had been “taken away”.70 The fathers’ unexplained disappearance resulted not only in feelings of abandonment, but also in other hardships, such as families having to go into hiding to avoid deportation, losing their homes due to property confiscation, alienation from their relatives, poverty, children failing to receive an education, and career possibilities being restricted due to the fathers’ past. Jonas Alutis’s daughter I.G. said: “Russians came and they took the father away and told us to leave the room. […] My mother said, I took you both [the two children] by the hand and walked away […]. We grew up, life was hard. […] Mother raised us both alone. Luckily, father’s sister took us into her house, we lived at her place. As I know, mother was unemployed, with two kids, my brother and I. Mother used to go to help other people with their gardens, just to get some grain or a drop of milk.”71 Juozas Batutis’s daughter J.O.A. wrote a letter to the Supreme Court in September 2009 stating: “My mom also lived with threats saying she would be deported to Sibe- ria or killed by shooting. All I know and all I remember is that I was very much afraid for we might be deported or even killed, and I used to cry and ask ‘God’ that we could stay at home.” 72 Leonas Mazūras’s son said he felt discriminated due to his father’s past: “All my life, I had to suffer because of that. We were deported and later I was condemned because of that. […] When I applied to the Kaunas Polytechnic Institute, they did not admit me at first. They said outright: ‘You can’t be an engineer, you can’t construct military objects with this biography [meaning the father].’”73 Jonas Stanišauskas’s daughter J.U. wrote a letter to the Supreme Court on 30 May 2007 stating: “I could not study because we had to hide. My mother could not work and support me. My childhood was horrible.” Then, in a letter dated 23 June 2007, she stated: “I only graduated four classes in the village school.”74 In 2017, she told Vinokuras: “I wanted to live with my paternal grandparents, but by mother did not let me go. She said my father was a criminal and we had to go into hiding because of him.”75 Most children were traumatised not by their fathers’ crimes, but by the silence and incomprehensibility of what was happening. R.Z., daughter of Jonas Narkevičius’s daughter R.Z. asked in her letter to the Supreme Court in October 2010: “And what about the suffering of our family […]? We had to hide from deportations, we had to escape from Vilnius, to Verkiai, to Kaunas. My mother was totally broken. We lived on the edge, all the time. And for what sins?”76 Similarly, Leonas Mazūras’s son said:

68 Vinokuras Mes nežudėme, 182. 69 Ibid, 169. 70 Ibid, 142. 71 Interview with I.G., daughter of Jonas Alutis, 20 December 2019. 72 LYA, f. K1, ap. 58-B , b. 392, 1-2. 73 Vinokuras, Mes nežudėme, 257. Leonas Mazūras was deported for ten years together with his family. His son grew up in Siberia and they only spoke about the issues after the family came back to Lithuania and their son was already an adult facing career difficulties due to his father’s past. The father was convicted of escorting people to the execution site. The father’s version of events is that he did not know about the planned executions and that when he learned about the execution, he refused to kill and withdrew. 74 LYA, f. K1, ap. 58-B, b. 360, 1-3. 75 Vinokuras, Mes nežudėme, 263. 76 LYA, f. K1, ap. 58-B, b. 106, 1-2.

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“One day, I talked to my father, yes, because it was very painful for me to suffer, all my life, and not knowing for what.”77 Furthermore, since death sentences were carried out in secrecy and the families were banned from having any information about the person’s fate, their children did not have a chance to face and accept their fathers’ death and the normal way of mourning or to mourn in a normal way, so they experienced a postponed or unac- complished process of mourning. As Arendt argued, totalitarianism takes away not only life, but also death, i.e. totalitarianism, “by making death itself anonymous (making it impossible to find out whether a prisoner is dead or alive), robbed death of its meaning as the end of a fulfilled life. In a sense they took away the individual’s own death, proving that henceforth nothing belonged to him and he belonged to no one.”78 Arendt was speaking primarily of concentration camps, yet the same is applicable in the case of local Nazi collaborators in Soviet Lithuania, as their families were banned from any access to their fathers’ fates. Death is not only a physical but also a social process, i.e. being informed about death, becoming aware, burying, mourning, accepting, securing a certain memory of the deceased, and so on. For these children, their fathers did not die, they just disappeared. Without knowing when and how their fathers died or where their graves were, the children were not able to reconcile either with their ancestors’ death or with their crimes. Jonas Narkevičius’s daughter R.Ž. said during the interview: “Absolutely nothing, no grave, nothing, he was executed and that’s all […]. I have a brother’s grave, I have a mother buried there, she died in 1997 at the age of 91, and I have their graves, but I do not have my father’s grave. […] Nothing, no body, no message, no grave.”79 Jonas Dačiola’s granddaughter V.P. said: “My dad’s last wish before his death was to find the grave of our grandparent and we tried.”80 Juozas Gruodis’s granddaughter R.K. stated in a letter to the Supreme Court in April 2003: “Our family lives in uncertainty for so many years. We don’t know where our grandfather’s grave is. In fact, we do not know when, specifically, he died. […] Is there a possibility to get information about his burial place?”81 (Grand)children were burdened not by their (grand)parents’ crimes, but rather by incomprehensibility and powerlessness. They did not know what happened, why it happened, or for what reason it happened, and felt like they had no explanation or control over the events. Likewise, they were not informed about the deaths of their (grand)parents and suffered prolonged and incomplete grief and mourning.

Years of Independence: Remembering and Reconsidering

The fall of the Soviet system, democratisation, the end of censorship, and the re- vival of nationalism brought an immense change to all spheres of life. In this context, the ban on language, to rephrase Roviello, was removed, archives were opened, and the past – including the crimes of people sentenced for collaboration with the Nazis – had to be reassessed.

77 Vinokuras, Mes nežudėme, 257. 78 Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 452. 79 Interview with R.Ž., daughter of Jonas Narkevičius, 22 January 2020. 80 Interview with V.P., granddaughter of Jonas Dačiola, 14 January 2020. 81 LYA, f. K1, ap. 58-B, b.260, 1.

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This section covers the post-Soviet developments – the opening of archives, legal revisionism, the openly expressed distrust towards the Soviet jurisdiction, and (grand)children’s confrontations with their (grand)parents’ past.

Legal Revisionism: Opening the Historical Debates

With the declaration of Lithuanian independence, political sentences passed by the Soviet legal system came under review, as the cases of political prisoners, depor tees, and executed citizens were to be revised. The major legal instruments for the rehabilitation of people sentenced by the Soviet authorities for resistance against the occupational regimes were adopted in 1989, 1990 (revised in 1998), and 2008. The core idea expressed in these documents was that Lithuanian citizens sentenced by occupational regimes, either Nazi Germany or the Soviet Union, for their acts of resistance against the occupational regime, were declared not guilty, their full rights were restored, and they (or their surviving relatives) were entitled to financial compensations, except for people who were sentenced for war crimes. Although the legal instruments clearly state that people sentenced for war crimes cannot be rehabilitated, in practice this did not always work. The responsible institutions, namely the prosecutor’s office, the Supreme Court, and the Ministry of the Interior, were overwhelmed with appeals and did not have full access to KGB files.82 As Rūta Vanagaitė noted: “The commissions responsible for rehabilitation were made up of very few people, the responses were due in three weeks, the appeals came huge amounts, thousands, and a case contained from one to seven or twelve vol- umes, each volume consisting of several hundred pages.”83 Rimvydas Valentukevi čius, the former chief prosecutor of the Special Investigation Department at the prosecutor’s office, said: “When the process began, there was no access to KGB archives, so basically, rehabilitation was performed nearly automatically, upon the relatives’ request, and […] many were rehabilitated for no reason.”84 Later, when it became obvious that many rehabilitated people had been involved in war crimes in general and in the Holocaust in particular, the reverse mechanism, namely the process of de-rehabilitation, was approved, although it became complicated and technically impossible to revise all the cases a second time: “Up to 2011, there were 227 people de-rehabilitated, the number is not final, but for sure, the number is not big. […] And rehabilitations, oh, thousands, there, you know thousands, no one can tell you now.”85 If not performed automatically, the rehabilitation process was extremely complex, which is well illustrated by the case of Stanislovas Braga. Braga was sentenced to 25 years in camps, served part of his sentence, came back to Lithuania around 1960, and died in a car accident around 1976.86 His children, A.J. and J.B., wrote multiple appeals for rehabilitation – the first was written and rejected in 1991, the second was written and rejected again in 1996, and then the daughter submitted the third appeal and requested extra investigation, and Braga was rehabilitated on 16 January 1997.87

82 Interview with Rimvydas Valentukevičius, former chief prosecutor of the Special Investigation Department at the prosecutor’s office, 16 January 2020. 83 Rūta Vanagaitė, Mūsiškiai [Our People], Vilnius 2016, 249. 84 Interview with Rimvydas Valentukevičius, former chief prosecutor of the Special Investigation Department at the prosecutor’s office, 16 January 2020. 85 Ibid. 86 LYA, f. K1, ap. 58-B, b.005, 9 (1530). 87 LYA, f. K1, ap. 58-B, b.005, 23 (167).

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Consequently, some children believed that rehabilitation was just a matter of per- sistence and the availability of legal assistance and claimed that although they had no means to engage in a legal struggle, they considered their (grand)parents to be innocent not on a legal, but on a moral level.

Questioning the Legacy of the Soviet Jurisdiction

One of the main reasons why people have difficulties in coming to terms with their parents’ and grandparents’ past is the general distrust towards the Soviet state legal system and the Soviet jurisdiction. In their appeal letters, people referred to the political bias in the Soviet courts, the use of torture for obtaining confessions, or just to the general conditions of illegality, where one could be sentenced on the basis of gossip, false complaints, and without a lack of proper evidence, or to cases that were fabricated for political purposes in order to discredit Lithuanian patriots. Albinas Jurčiukonis’s daughter G.J.K. wrote a letter to the Supreme Court in 2007 stating: “I want to draw your attention to the fact that the case of Albinas Jurčiukonis, born 1915, was fabricated by the institutions of the Soviet occupational regime, only because of his membership in the Riflemen’s Union, his service in the police, and his participation in anti-Soviet resistance.”88 Others rejected the legitimacy of the sentences due to the use of torture during interrogation. While torture was indeed applied during the Soviet era, this fact alone did not make the defendant innocent, but for many applicants the use of violence was evidence of their (grand)parents’ innocence. Juozas Gruodis granddaughter R.K. wrote a letter to the Supreme Court in 2003 stating: “Before writing my appeal for rehabilitation, I got acquainted with his case, number 35721/3. Now, we know how people were interrogated at that time and how their confessions were obtained, so there are no doubts that my grandfather was tortured. The interrogation protocols, consisting of two to three pages, produced at night, in six to ten hours, with my grandfather’s signature becoming less and less visible on every page – obviously, his strength was declining.”89 Albinas Jurčiukonis daughter G.J.K. wrote a letter to the Supreme Court in 2007 stating: “The accusations […] are not supported by any evidence, except confessions obtained by force. Let’s take the fact that the interrogation began on 16 March 1949 at 2 pm and lasted until 2:20 at night – this fact reminds us of the widely known methods of repressive Soviet methods, which allowed you to obtain any confession you wanted.”90 Some others reduced the entire Soviet jurisdiction to a general condition of ran- dom terror and meta-illegality. Mykolas Jankūnas’s daughter V.P. said: “You know, in those days, it was easy [to sentence]. They just said it, and that’s all. No proof, no evidence.”91 Aleksandras Laimutis’s daughter J.Š. said during court proceedings in 2008: “At that time, during the war […] the witnesses might have testified whatever they were told or just to protect their families.”92 Later, she added: “You know, in the postwar years, someone filed a complaint, no one was interested whether you were

88 LYA, f. K1, ap. 58-B, b.369, 1. 89 LYA, f. K1, ap. 58-B, b.260, 1. 90 LYA, f. K1, ap. 58-B, b.369, 1. 91 Vinokuras, Mes nežudėme, 142. 92 LYA, f. K1, ap. 58-B, b.372, 12.

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guilty or not.”93 Bronius Juškys’s daughter B.G. said: “Maybe some neighbours were angry and spread dirty gossip about him.”94 The denial of fathers’ or grandfathers’ crimes was based on distrust towards the Soviet system and deeply seated beliefs that the truth remained veiled beyond the official narratives. As Jonas Narkevičius’s daughter R.Ž. wrote in a letter to the -Su preme Court in October 2000: “I believe more in my mother’s words than in Soviet documents.”95 Similarly, Mykolas Jankūnas’s daughter V.P. said: “He was accused of that, but he has not a Jew shooter, for sure. My mother told me everything.”96 Finally, Bronius Juškys’s daughter B.G. said: “My mother told me he did not kill these Jews.”97 When people are in denial, they are not only in denial of their (grand)fathers’ crimes, they are in denial of the legacy of the Soviet jurisdiction – in their own interpretation, a just sentence cannot be made by unjust authorities.

Motivations for Appeal Letters: Reconciling with the Past

During the Soviet years, the (grand)children of Nazi collaborators grew up surrounded by silence, denial, family mythologies, partial awareness, or half-lies. After Lithuanian independence in 1990, when the political ban was lifted, the children started inquiring about the past and their (grand)fathers’ fates. The appeal letters reveal partial knowledge, selective remembrance, and complex emotional dynamics within families.

Dačiola’s Family: Trying to Resolve Ambiguities Jonas Dačiola was executed in 1945. Dačiola’s wife received no official infor mation, except gossip about the execution. She repeatedly enquired with the local authorities about the fate of her husband. Soon, the family was deported. They came back to Lithuania in 1951 and, after repeated enquiries, in 1956 she was given a death certificate referring to heart failure as the cause of death. Due to controversies, the family doubted this official version and developed a narrative of their own, believing that their father had been mistaken for his brother who had served the Nazis and that their father had been executed by mistake. The family was thus deported in order to silence them and the false death certificate was issued to cover up the mistake. After 1990, the family learned from the archives that Dačiola had been sentenced to death. On 23 August 1997, Dačiola’s daughter-in-law wrote a letter to the Supreme Court addressing particular aspects like distrust in the Soviet jurisdiction, the suffering of her family, and specifically asking for clarification of the actual circumstances of Jonas Dačiola’s death: “How can the same person be a criminal, be sentenced and executed, and then die from a heart failure in his native village at home?”98 The Supreme Court stated that “there is controversial evidence regarding Jonas Dačiola’s death”, but failed to clarify these controversies and, during the interview, the family was not aware that misinforming relatives about executed citizens had been a normal practices around 1956.99

93 Vinokuras, Mes nežudėme, 207. 94 Vinokuras, Mes nežudėme, 229. 95 LYA, f. K1, ap. 58-B, b.106, 1-2. 96 Vinokuras, Mes nežudėme, 142. 97 Vinokuras, Mes nežudėme, 229. 98 LYA, f. K1, ap. 58-B, b. 051, 52, 53, 1. 99 Supreme Court decision of 1997 10 30, LYA, f. K1, ap. 58-B, b. 051 (52, 53), 1-2.

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Juozas Gruodis’s Granddaughter: Family Myths versus Reality Juozas Gruodis was sentenced to death and executed in 1951. Gruodis’s family, following the typical practices of the time, was not informed, so his children and grandchildren grew up being told their grandfather must be alive somewhere in Russia in deeply protected industrial facilities. After 2000, the family learnt in the archives that their grandfather had in fact been executed. Gruodis’s granddaughter R.K. wrote in a to the Supreme Court in April 2003 stating: “The sentence states that the execution was carried out on 7 June 1951, but we received the information that Juozas Gruodis was working in some strictly protected mining facilities.”100 Her letter contained typical components, such as disbelief in the Soviet jurisdiction, pity for the three orphaned daughters, and so on. Yet her major concern was the contradiction between the two narratives – the state narrative and the family narrative – and so she asked for the actual circumstances of her grandfather’s death to be clarified and the uncertainties to be resolved.

Juozas Narkevičius’s Daughter: Seeking Personal Validation Jonas Narkevičius was a Lithuanian officer who received high-level state awards in interwar Lithuania. During the Second World War, he ran Riešė concentration camp and was executed in 1945. His daughter grew up with an idealised image of her father as a tragic hero who was forced to act against his own will and against his own high moral standards due to the circumstances. This idealised image was consoli dated due to the hardships of her fatherless life. In her appeal letter, the daughter wrote the following: “[M]y father was an officer, not an ordinary person. […] Furthermore, my father was a person with a sensitive soul and one can only imagine what he had to go through after seeing this reality? […] I have never doubted the humanistic principles of my father, but how could the Lithuanians, who were occupied at that time, change or influence the situation? […] And what about our family, my mother, my little brother (both are dead already) and me – what we had to go through? Hiding form deportations, escaping from Vilnius to Verkiai and later to Kaunas. My mother was totally broken. We lived in permanent uncertainty, and for what sins?”101 This letter of appeal contains two aspects, the first being the defence of the father, the second being the daughter’s traumatic response to the loss of her father – a lack of awareness or partial awareness, family suffering, displacement, poverty, and an idealised image of her father, produced retrospectively in times of hardship. She failed to develop other alternatives – all the tragedies of her life were the consequence of and part of the original tragedy, the conviction of her father. For her, rehabilitating her father was the only way to resolve the trauma, which would validate the imagined cause of her sufferings.

Jonas Bečelis’s Daughter: Resolving the Trauma of Abandonment Jonas Bečelis was sentenced in 1945 to twenty years in camps, but came back to Lithuania after serving only part of his sentence in 1955. His daughter was born from Bečelis’s affair with a young widow who already had two children from an earlier marriage. The couple got married and Bečelis soon got job opportunities in a bigger

100 LYA, f. K1, ap. 58-B, b.260, p.1. 101 R.Ž.’s letter to Supreme Court of 16 October 2010, LYA, f. K1, ap. 58-B, b. 106, 1-2.

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city and invited his wife to start a new life, under the condition that she will abandon her two children from her former marriage. As she refused to do so, Bečelis abandoned the family and maintained no contact beyond regular money transfers. His daughter wrote to the Supreme Court on 30 October 1990 stating: “Please explain this case and inform me about it” – she was thus not asking for rehabilitation, but for information of who her father was. “I began to search, as I was working myself at eldership, and it was interesting for me. Then, I learned about the deportation and later there were all these changes [in 1990, RB], and I tried to find out what happened […]. And then I learned this story, which is not nice […]. I did not know this before, my mom never told me. I found records in the archive, […] and I got records showing that reimbursement had been paid for the deportation for the second wife, and I got a death certificate. I have it now, I know when he died. For me, it was interesting, and I do not know myself if he – whether there were brothers or sisters – I know nothing about my paternal relatives, nothing.”102 It emerged that her father’s second wife had claimed all reimbursements after Bečelis was rehabilitated in 1991 (he was de-rehabilitated later), so the daughter was advised to seek legal assistance and claim part of the reimbursement. She refused to do so: “I could, I was told, go to court and demand it, but I did not do it – it was too low for me, I think, oh Lord, for a few roubles there. […] And if he abandoned us […], I was too proud, go to hell, this money won’t bring me any luck, and he has hidden and erased me from his further life, and denigrated me in this way. So I said, let it be, I will live successfully on my own.”103 Her father’s criminal past served in a positive way to resolve the trauma and shame of abandonment. The primary trauma of abandonment – internalised guilt and shame about being worthless, being abandoned – was resolved when the daughter learned that her father had not been the kind of person she would have wanted as a father. “You know, when I was a child, I used to think that maybe my life could have been different, I would have had better options, you know, as a child, I felt underprivileged, and for mother, it was very hard to raise all three of us kids alone. But, I am saying, our maternal grandparents supported us and we grew up […]. And only later did I learn, when I had the materials from archives, I learned that he was deported, and this ugly story too.”104 Like many other children, she was traumatised not by her father’s crimes, but by his absence and abandonment. Thus, learning about her father was an attempt to reconstruct her family history and her own identity, as well as to resolve the trauma of abandonment. Since she was abandoned as a child by her father and grew up missing him, her father’s involvement in the Holocaust gave her a different frame of reference – that both she and her mother were in fact better off without him.

Jonas Stanišauskas’s Daughter: Compensation for a Fatherless Life Jonas Stanišauskas was involved in mass executions of Jewish people during the Second World War, before joining the anti-Soviet partisan resistance, and was sentenced to death and executed in 1952. His daughter, J.N.U., who grew up in poverty

102 Interview with N.B.J., daughter of Jonas Bečelis, 19 January 2020. 103 Ibid. 104 Ibid.

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as a result and received a poor education, wrote in a letter to the Supreme Court on 23 June 2007: “I can’t come to the court to hear the case of my father because of my health (I have diabetes, high blood pressure, and I need hip joint surgery). I already went to Vilnius (I live in Kaunas) a few times. I paid for the travel, I paid for written requests for archival data. My pension is only 360 litas, it is not enough to pay for my medicines and for my apartment. […] I only graduated four classes in village school while living at my aunt’s place. My mother could not support me and I could not study. We had nowhere to live, my mother had no job, so we went into hiding. As I did not finish school, I had to work dead-end jobs all my life […]. I trust in the Supreme Court and I believe, while making your decision, that you will take into account my troubled childhood and fatherless life.”105 In her letter, one of the central points was her own suffering, her troubled childhood and fatherless life. This gives a better understanding of the Soviet context: Since her father was sentenced and executed as an enemy of the Soviet state, it affected the family more than merely the loss of the father. The family was further stigmatised, lived in fear of further persecution, and experienced obstacles in achieving edu cational and professional success. So it was not the cause of the punishment (the father’s crimes), but the nature of the punishment (the stigmatisation of the family) that led to an intense feeling of victimhood among the children of Nazi collaborators.

Jonas Alutis’s Daughter: A Lack of Agency Jonas Alutis was sentenced to ten years in camps with property confiscation and died in the camp. His daughter I.G. grew up in poverty and knowing nothing about her father. In 2002, I.G. was informed by the Supreme Court that her father’s case was going to be investigated. She responded with the following letter: “Letter to the Chairman of Supreme Court. I was informed that my dad’s case will be opened in the court on 19 Decem- ber 2002. I am disabled and won’t be able to come to court due to my health condition. My disability pension is 249 litas only, so I cannot afford to hire legal assistance. I cannot even afford to buy most necessary medicines. After I pay the utility bills, the remaining amount is not even enough for modest subsistence and going somewhere is out of the question. I trust in your will, whatever your decision will be. Please be nice and, when you close the case, I do cordially ask you to inform me about your decision. I would like to thank you cordially for your concern, for your invitation to take part in the court proceedings, and for the job that you are doing. I am sending my greetings due to the upcoming holidays for you personally and for your entire team, I wish you strength, endurance, and good health in your difficult work. Once again, thank you for your concern. I.G.”106 In this case, the trauma was not articulated by complaining directly or referring to underserved harsh circumstances, but acted out: It manifests itself through the language and arguments, the indirect and nonintrusive reference to poverty and disability, the manifestation of low literacy, in the non-distinction between formal and

105 LYA, f. K1, ap. 58-B, b 360, 7-8. 106 LYA, f. K1, ap. 58-B, b. 198, 8.

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informal communication styles, the experience of powerlessness, the reliance on emotions rather than formal arguments, the use of emotions, excessive gratitude, lack of agency, and a certain emotional indifference to her father’s case, her learned helplessness and radical acceptance of whatever the decision may be, and finally the desire to be informed. She represents a subject who is pacified, for one or another reason, and has learned to accept her fate without objections.

Conclusions

In official Soviet discourse, the representation of the Holocaust was distorted. Soviet ideology implied that ethnic conflicts were by-products of capitalism and that such conflicts had been resolved in Soviet societies. It was important to maintain the belief that that all Soviet nations suffered equally during the Second World War and that none of them was exclusive. Furthermore, it was important to maintain the idea of fraternity and solidarity amongst Soviet citizens. Nazi crimes were seen as ideologically, not ethnically motivated, while the role of local Nazi collaborators was downplayed and the Holocaust lost it uniqueness as Jewish tragedy. As Lithuania was occupied by the Soviet Union, the local Nazi collaborators were sentenced by the occupational authorities. Due to the Soviet ideological standpoint and the focus on ideological conflicts rather than on ethnic ones, the local Nazi collaborators were convicted mostly of anti-Soviet activities. The sentences covered ‘Jews’ with euphemisms like Soviet citizens or Soviet people, making the Holocaust invisible. Furthermore, the local Nazi collaborators were portrayed as nationalists and traitors to the Soviet Union. Thus, in a paradox way, the sentences produced nearly patriotic biographies. The Soviet societies were characterised by censorship and silence. Capital punishment and death sentences were reduced to taboo subjects. The silence was reinforced by many internal and external factors, such as political requirements, social pressure, or simply shame. Death sentences were kept secret and the families were made to believe that their fathers had been deported or imprisoned without rights of correspondence. The Nazi collaborators who served their sentences and came home were discouraged from talking about their sentences and crimes. The children of Nazi collaborators grew up knowing little or nothing about their fathers. Furthermore, as the fathers were convicted enemies of the Soviet system, the families lost not only their fathers, but also, in many cases their homes, friends, and jobs. Some went into hiding to avoid further persecution. They were often subjected to poverty and fear of political persecution. Many children grew up knowing nothing and were thus burdened not by their parents’ crimes, but by poverty, displacement, uncertainty, silence, and half-lies. In the absence of reliable information and free discussions, families developed their own narratives based on denial, partial awareness, half-lies, distortions, and so on. Many families established a pathological homeostasis based on false believes, such as that their fathers had been mistaken for someone else, that they were still alive somewhere in Russia, that they were moral heroes and forced to act against their will, or the families simply did not talk about the missing family member to avoid facing the truth and to maintain normalcy in everyday life. The breaking point of this silence was the fall of the Soviet bloc and the declaration of Lithuanian independence. People who had been convicted of resistance to the occupational regime were rehabilitated. The problem was that most local Nazi col-

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laborators had been framed as traitors to the Soviet Union and anti-Soviet activists, and so they were rehabilitated almost automatically in the post-Soviet turmoil. After their crimes came to light, some of them were de-rehabilitated again, and the com- plexity of the process of rehabilitation and de-rehabilitation left families in confusion. To sum up, the appeal letters written by (grand)children of Nazi collaborators reveal emotional and cognitive complexities: the search for information and justice, the need to clarify uncertainties, resolve contradictions between archival documents and family histories, economic motivations and the search for compensation for troubled childhoods, radical acceptance and lack of agency, and morally, but not ideologically motivated attempts to rehabilitate fathers and to validate both the suffering of the father and of the family. The reconciliation with and acceptance of (grand)parents’ crimes was badly affected by the Soviet period for several reasons. First, (grand)children doubted their (grand) parents’ crimes, they doubt, above all the legacy of the Soviet jurisdiction: From their perspective, the illegitimate system was not a capable of generating legit- imate convictions. The second aspect is that the Soviet regime reinforced silence and prevented free discussions, so the (grand)children felt burdened not by their fathers’ crimes, but by silence, i.e. abandonment, uncertainty, fears, secrecy, poverty, displacement, and the loss of home, by something that had happened and which was never discussed or explained.

Rasa Baločkaitė is Associate Professor of Sociology at Vytautas Magnus University, Lithuania. Her scholarly interests include Soviet and post-Soviet studies. She was a Fulbright scholar at UC Berkeley in 2011 and a visiting fellow at the Centre for Contem- porary History in Potsdam in 2013. Rasa Baločkaitė has published in leading journals such as Problems of Post Communism, Language Policy, and European History Quarterly. She has also written extensively on traumatic and post-traumatic experiences for Lithuanian media. E-Mail: [email protected]

Quotation: Rasa Baločkaitė, (Grand)children of Nazi Collaborators in Lithuania: Dealing with the Family Past, in: S:I.M.O.N. – Shoah: Intervention. Methods. Documentation. 8 (2021) 2, 63-85. DOI: https://doi.org/10.23777/SN.0121/ART_RBAL01 S:I.M.O.N.– Shoah: Intervention. Methods. DocumentatiON. is the semi-annual open access e-journal of the Vienna Wiesenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies (VWI) in English and German. ISSN 2408-9192 | 8 (2021) 1 | https://doi.org/10.23777/SN.0121 This article is licensed under the following Creative Commons License: CC-BY-NC-ND (Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives) In appreciation to the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany (Claims Conference) for supporting this publication.

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György Majtényi The Memory and Historiography of the Porrajmos Making a Transnational National Site of Memory

Abstract This article investigates the memory and historiography of the Roma Holocaust/Porrajmos. It examines the stages and actors in the process through which the Porrajmos became a ‘site of memory’ within Roma minority communities living in different nation states, and how later, this ‘site of memory’ played a role in the making of a unified, common narrative of Roma history and in the transnational process of Roma national identity building. The Porrajmos, as a site of memory of shared Roma history, has played a significant role in the local, ethnic, national, as well as transnational identities of the Roma, and through this also the creation of ties among different Roma communities.

This study is not concerned with the Roma Holocaust/Porrajmos. In the following, I will examine the memory and historiography of the Porrajmos and their role within the Roma nation-building process. The memory of the Holocaust undoubtedly played an important role in the formation of Jewish and Roma national identities.1 The construction of the collective memory of the Roma Holocaust began later in time, which, in my interpretation, led to decisive differences between the memory constructions of the Shoah and the Porrajmos. The other important difference to be emphasised is that the Roma do not have their own nation state, and consequently no nation state framework of memory could be developed in their case, either. According to Jeffrey Alexander, narratives about the Holocaust changed in the 1960s and 1970s. The earlier narrative, which he called “progressive”, was primarily aimed at reshaping society by remembering the Shoah and combatting prejudice and served the purpose of Jewish nation-building in Israel as well.2 The new “tragic narrative” that emerged from the 1960s presented the Holocaust beyond national histories as an exceptional global historical event, the universal of evil.3 The collective commemoration of the Roma Holocaust did not begin until the 1960s and 1970s, i.e. the era of the “tragic narrative”, at a time when most depictions already showed the Holocaust as a global historical event. Due to this, as well as the lack of a Roma nation state, memory was already connected to transnational space and the universality of the event. Thus, the Roma civil rights movement could al-

1 David Novak, Zionism and Judaism. A New Theory, Cambridge 2015, 225-250; Sławomir Kapralski, Identity Building and the Holocaust. Roma Political Nationalism, in: Nationalities Papers, 25 (1997) 2, 269-283. https://doi.org/10.23777/SN.0121 | www.vwi.ac.at | https://doi.org/10.23777/SN.0121 2 Jeffrey Alexander, On the Social Construction of Moral Universals. The “Holocaust” from War Crime to Trau- ma Drama, in: European Journal of Social Theory 5 (2002) 1, 5-85, here 39-43; Jeffrey C. Alexander, Trauma. A Social Theory, Cambridge 2012; Jeffrey C. Alexander, Culture, Trauma, Morality and Solidarity. The Social Construction of ‘Holocaust’ and Other Mass Murders, in: S:I.M.O.N. Shoah: Intervention. Methods. Docu- mentation, 1 (2014) 2, 156-166. 3 Alexander, On the Social Construction of Moral Universals, 43-46.

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ready be linked to a transnational historical discourse at the time when it presented the Roma Holocaust. Nevertheless, the narratives of the Porrajmos, like the early discourses concerning the Shoah, had a progressive character since, as I will show later, besides other social goals, they also, over time, served the goal of nation-building. Thus, they simultaneously had the characteristics of a ‘tragic’ and a ‘progressive narrative’. My hypothesis is that in Roma collective memory, politics, and historiography, the Porrajmos became a national site of memory, appearing as a tragic historical event in transnational space, and consequently independent of the history of nation states. In terms of recalling national history, it thus became a unified point of reference, which also existed independently of various smaller sites of Porrajmos memory.4 This paper outlines the historical genealogy of this development. Due to the limited scope of this study, however, I will only touch upon events and texts that seem to be of utmost importance below. According to Pierre Nora, memory in contemporary society no longer exists in its real environment (milieux de mémoires), as in traditional societies, but instead exists in sites of memory (lieux de mémoires). Geographical locations, historical figures, events, texts, and concepts can constitute or mediate cultural memory, thus becoming places of memory. Such sites of memory are not constant but always changing. On the basis of his writings on sites of memory, every site of memory is in fact a product of memory policies. The original aim of Nora’s work was to explore the phenomena representing national (French) history at the end of the twentieth century. The notion of sites of memory, as posited by Nora, refers to all the phenomena in which this memory takes shape. From the perspective of French history, in the 1980s it seemed that the national past, still seen in unity in modernity, could only be grasped in frag- ments and details. The conceptual frameworks through which historians had pre viously created national history were no longer sustainable. Instead of the former national history, which seemed unified, it was the diversity of the past that could be presented through the sites of memory. All this called into question the unity of the former national tradition as well. At that time, positivist history also served to create a unified national past, and it seemed to Nora that this was no longer possible.5 More recently, however, numerous studies have addressed the topic of trans national nationalisms, i.e. national movements that are organised in transnational space.6 The Roma national movement and the aspirations of Roma elites and organisations were also described as “transnational nationalism”, which – as Sławomir Kapralski has pointed out – represents a specific form of nation-building7 and can be

4 Today, memory research also applies the concept of a site of memory in connection with historical traumas in general. According to Pierre Nora’s original definition of events described as a site of memory, the judgement of a site of memory is not directly related to its true significance. At the same time, historical tragedies can also be considered sites of memory in that the passage of time has added symbolic meanings to them. Having become universal as a historical symbol, the Holocaust has by now – at least partly – become detached from its contemporary historical meanings. Pierre Nora, Between Memory and History. Les Lieux de Mémoire, in: Representations, 26 (Spring 1989), Special Issue: Memory and Counter-Memory, 7-24. 5 Pierre Nora (ed.), Les Lieux de mémoire, 7 vols., Paris 1984–1993. For a critical review of Nora’s work, see: Stephen Englund, Review. The Ghost of Nation Past, in: Journal of Modern History, 64 (1992), 299-320. 6 Riva Kastoryano, Transnational Nationalism. Redefining Nation and Territory, in: Seyla Benhabib/Ian Shapiro/Danilo Petranovic (ed.), Identities, Affiliations, and Allegiances, Cambridge 2007, 159-180. 7 Sławomir Kapralski, Memory, Identity, and Roma Transnational Nationalism, in: Chiara De Cesari/Ann Rigney (ed.), Transnational Memory. Circulation, Articulation, Scales, Berlin/Boston 2014, 195-218. Jewish nationalism could also be regarded as a transnational movement in the beginning. See for example: Kerstin Armborst-Weihs, The Formation of the Jewish National Movement through Transnational Exchange. Zionism in Europe up to the First World War, in: European History Online (EGO), published by the Institute of European History (IEG), Mainz, 15 August 2011, http://www.ieg-ego.eu/armborstweihsk-2010-en (8 April 2021).

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considered a typical example of that.8 In what follows, I will make an attempt to explore how different memory policies and the related historiography used the Roma Holocaust/Porrajmos to depict the national history of the Romani people. Related to this, I examine mainly the early period of this process, the effects of the Roma civil rights and national movement, and the works written then. These endeavours also seem to be comparable with the activities of those entities and actors who invented – or constructed – the national traditions and created the national historiographies of nation states in the era of modernity.9 Similarly to the Shoah, one can analyse the Porrajmos as a cultural trauma. Ac- cording to the theory of cultural trauma, trauma is created by social actors; without their actions, no historical event could have become traumatic in the collective memory.10 When I examine the tragedy of the Porrajmos as such, i.e. as a construction, I do not, of course, intend to relativise the results of the activities of Roma and Non-Roma activists, historians, and other actors, but rather to point out its significance. In fact, without it, the Porrajmos could not have become a traumatic event, a trauma in national or transnational histories, and for Roma and non-Roma communities, respectively.11 When investigating Roma history, external categories and names on the one hand, and current and historic self-definitions on the other hand, must be distinguished. In the following, I use the label ‘Roma’ as a generic term used internation- ally by the Roma, instead of the many other names, categories, and identities, such as Sinti, Gypsy, or Gitane. In this study, I generally adopt the most widely used Romani term, ‘Porrajmos’ (Porajmos),12 for the tragic historical event of the Roma Holocaust, as I primarily analyse the ‘internal depictions’ of the event based on possible common aspects of Roma communities.13 Compared to other names, the ‘Porrajmos’ – as an internal category of Roma historiography – could perhaps best represent the struggle of Roma communities and activists for the recognition of the Roma as one of the victim communities of the Holocaust.

8 See: Balázs Majtényi/György Majtényi, A Transnational Nation. Roma National Identity in the Making, In: Aline Shierp/Jenny Wüstenberg (ed.), Agency in Transnational Memory Politics, Oxford 2020, 284-306. 9 Eric Hobsbawm/Terrence Ranger (ed.), The Invention of Tradition, Cambridge 1983. 10 Sławomir Kapralski described the memory of the Porrajmos as such a trauma construction where the collective trauma becomes a significant marker of collective identity. Sławomir Kapralski, The Genocide of Roma and Sinti. Their Political Movement from the Perspective of Social Trauma Theory, in: S:I.M.O.N. Shoah: Intervention. Methods. Documentation, 2 (2015) 1, 39-46. 11 Gergely Romsics, The Roma Holocaust and Memory Games. The Clash of Governmentalities and Roma Ac- tivism in an Imperfectly Europeanized Arena, in: Evelin Verhás (ed.), Roma Resistance during the Holocaust and in Its Aftermath. Collection of Working Papers, Tom Lantos Institute, (8 April 2020). 12 Ian Hancock recommended the use of the term “Porrajmos”. Ian Hancock, Responses to the Porrajmos. The Romani Holocaust, in: Alan S. Rosenbaum (ed.), Is the Holocaust Unique? Perspectives on Comparative Genocide, Boulder 1995, 39-64. This is critically analysed in the following: Michael Stewart, Remembering without Commemoration. The Mnemonics and Politics of Holocaust Memories among European Roma, in: Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 10 (2004) 3, 561-582, here 564. Other names or spellings are found in Claire Auzias, Samudaripen. Le Génocide des Tsiganes, Paris 1999; János Bársony/Ágnes Daróczi, Pharrajimos. The Fate of the Roma during the Holocaust, New York 2008. 13 In Roma historical writing, the term Porrajmos exists in other forms (Porajmos, Pharrajimos, Parajmos), and there are also other names for this collective tragedy (Samudaripen or Kali Trash/Kali Traš). Anna Wylegała/ Małgorzata Głowacka-Grajper (ed.), The Burden of the Past. History, Memory, and Identity in Contemporary Ukraine, Bloomington 2020, 224.

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The Context of Forgetting and Remembering

It often seems in history as if remembering had been the defining phenomenon. Without remembering, local or national culture, different group identities, or many collective activities could not have survived. However, forgetting is in fact as natural a phenomenon in modern societies as remembering. This is because remembering generally presupposes resources, organisation, and institutions that are not available to all social groups. There were also social situations in modern societies in which forgetting was natural, and the possibility of collective memory was considered almost exceptional.14 The beginnings of the remembrance of the Porrajmos also show that in order to make it possible to remember the tragedy of the Roma people, the institutional conditions had to first be created, initially at the level of nation states and then in transnational space as well. Consequently, the efforts of activists – linked to the Roma civil rights and political movements – necessarily preceded those of historians. In fact, they had a significant role also in the creation of the historiography of the Porrajmos.15 Academic historians usually emphasise their expert status in contrast to that of activists and often question the value and objectivity of the latter’s research. It is characteristic that even Peter Novick – who published a fundamental book on the issue of objectivity in historical writing and generally emphasised the necessary subjectivity (or relativism) of the genre of historiography – was critical toward Afri- can American or women historians for ostensibly being political activists rather than scholars.16 Furthermore, it should be noted that while academic historians often criticise the usage of sources and methods by ‘activists’, they also employ similar criticisms at academic historians of other nation states in their debates with them, also questioning their expert status.17 This seems to be a common narrative pattern of academic historians, portraying their authorial act in creating their own narrative as objective history. Generally, it can be stated that activist researchers have initiated research into many important topics in history, especially with topics related to the history of minority groups. That is also true regarding research on the Porrajmos. The late exploration of the Porrajmos may have several explanations, which exist side-by-side, but which also complement each other. The first is silencing, which has accompanied discrimination against excluded minorities.18 Second, it was not only that Roma communities, because of their peripheral social status were unable to express their views in public social discourse before, during, and after the Second World War, but also, because of their perceived lack of social solidarity from the perception that they were outside of society, others were also not able to represent their interests. Third, the crimes committed against the Roma were less well documented by authorities at the time than those of the Jewish Holocaust, and there are fewer

14 Viktor Mayer-Schönberger, Delete. The Virtue of Forgetting in the Digital Age, Princeton 2009; Iván Székely, A felejtés joga [The Right to Forget], in: A személyiség burkai. Írások, tanulmányok a 60 éves Majtényi László tiszteletére [The Sheaths of Personality. Writings and Studies in Honour of László Majtényi’s Sixtieth Birth- day], Budapest 2010, 257-274. 15 Kapralski, The Genocide of Roma and Sinti, 41. 16 Peter Novick, That Noble Dream. The “Objectivity Question” and the American Historical Profession, Cam- bridge/New York 1988, 510-521. 17 See for example the sharp historic debates of Hungarian, Slovak, and Romanian historians on the issues of the shared history of East-Central Europe. 18 Karola Fings, Sinti und Roma. Geschichte einer Minderheit, München 2019, 2. Ausgabe, 92-100.

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opportunities for their reconstruction based on archival sources. This may have hin- dered the historical exploration of these events.19 Of course, as is clear from the above, ’forgetting’ did not mean that survivors, relatives of the victims, or local communities had forgotten the tragic events, but that their experience remained isolated. For a long time, they did not have the opportunity to create, narrate, and remember the collective experience of the trauma together with others.20 One of the achievements of the Roma civil rights movement was that it created this opportunity first in individual countries and then at the European and transnational level, and through this created the traumatic construction of the Porrajmos as a historical event in the collective memory. One of the primary goals of the struggle was to end the silence and create an institutional framework for remembrance.

Civil Rights and National Movements for Recognition

The collective commemoration of the Porrajmos has been linked to the Roma’s fights within specific states for recognition as a national minority, and, on the transnational level of European and world politics, for recognition as a nation. The roots of the Roma civil rights movement are linked to the memory of the Porrajmos. The birth of the current Roma civil rights movement can be dated to the 1950s, when the first relevant organisations appeared in Germany, although these had antecedents in East and Central Europe.21 They demanded justice and reparations for the Roma in relation to the genocide committed against them during the Second World War. To this end, in 1956 two Roma (Sinti) brothers and civil rights activists, Oskar and Vinzenz Rose, founded the Verband rassisch Verfolgter nicht-jüdischen Glaubens (Association of Racially Persecuted People of Non-Jewish Belief). The parents of the two Roma leaders were killed in a Nazi extermination camp, and as survivors, they decided to fight for justice for themselves and their parents. Besides historical justice, they also advocated for educational, labour, and residential integration. We can see that the discourse on the Porrajmos created a progressive narrative formulating the social goals of different Roma communities. In 1971, Vinzenz Rose founded the Zentral-Komitee der Sinti West-Deutschlands (Central Committee of Sinti in West Germany).22 In 1974, Vinzenz Rose erected a monument for the Roma and Sinti victims in Auschwitz-Birkenau from private do- nations.23 The words of the Roma civil rights leader Romani Rose (son of Oskar Rose) from a book on the Roma genocide became symbolic: “that we are one nation” (dass wir ein Volk sind).24 In 1979, Romani Rose took over the leadership of the association

19 C. R. Sridhar, Historical Amnesia. The Romani Holocaust, in: Economic and Political Weekly, 41 (August 2006) 33, 3569-3571. 20 Kapralski, The Genocide of Roma and Sinti, 45. 21 Majtényi/Majtényi, A Transnational Nation, 21. 22 Margalit Gilad, German Citizenship Policy and Sinti Identity Politics, in: Daniel Levy/Yfaat Weiss (ed.), Chal- lenging Ethnic Citizenship. German and Israeli Perspectives on Immigration, New York/Oxford 2002, 115. An important incident for the civil rights movement occurred in 1972, when Anton Lehmann, a Roma/Sinti man, was shot by the police in Heidelberg, and as a response Roma staged a demonstration evoking the Afri- can American civil rights movement. 23 Katrin Reemtsma, Sinti und Roma. Geschichte, Kultur, Gegenwart. Munich 1996, 136-138. 24 Romani Rose, Vorwort. Sinti und Roma im ehemaligen KZ Bergen-Belsen, in: Dokumentation der Gesell schaft für bedrohte Völker, Göttingen 1981, 15. This could have referred to the famous 200-year-old words of an author who wrote – under the Pseudonym of Fürchtegott Leberecht Christlieb – about the German Jews: “Wir Teutsche […] wir ein Volk sind.” Fürchtegott Leberecht Christlieb, Warum versagt ihr den Juden das Bügerrecht?, in: Nemezis 8 (1816), 50.

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founded by his father and in 1982 he became the head of the Zentralrat deutscher Sinti und Roma (Central Council of German Sinti and Roma) in Heidelberg. In 1980, a group of Roma held a hunger strike at the Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial Site to demand justice and recognition of their suffering during the Nazi era. Their spokesman was Romani Rose.25 A major political achievement for the West German Roma movement came in 1982, when the president of the Federal Republic, Karl Carstens and Chancellor Helmut Schmidt formally recognised the persecution of Roma during the Second World War as a racial genocide.26 The two German political leaders welcomed a delegation of the Central Committee, led by Romani Rose, on 17 March, when the acknowledgment took place.27 In November 1985, the next chancellor, Helmut Kohl, supported this position in the Bundestag and in a speech that became renowned.28 In 1987, the Central Council of German Sinti and Roma established a Kultur- und Dokumentationszentrum (Cultural and Documentation Centre), which was supported by the government after 1989. With this, the collection of documents that chronicled the collective culture and history of the German Roma, and the history of the Porrajmos was created.29 In 1997, German President Roman Herzog also confirmed that crimes committed against the Roma during the Second World War were considered to be an act of racially motivated genocide, similarly to the case of the Jews.30 The first historical works, publications of sources and data, exhibitions, and monographs on the Porrajmos were directly related to the civil rights movement of the German Sinti. In its fight for recognition, the Central Council wanted to represent the interests of the families and communities of all Roma victims, and not only those of the German Sinti victims.31 The transnational Roma entities also had similar aims, as did Roma organisations of other countries which made similar efforts in this direction. It should be noted that internal conflicts and controversies have burdened this process within Germany. The representatives of the Sinti identify as an ethnic German minority and often emphasised their ‘Germanness’ following from this identity. Ac- cording to critics, they have not aspired/sought to form stronger ties with the non- Sinti Roma in Germany. The Sinti have historically been institutionally and legally separated from Eastern European Roma immigrants and refugees living in Germany, who mostly had to live in Germany without minority rights and citizenship. The National Socialist authorities not only persecuted the Sinti/Roma as ‘Gypsies’ and ‘asocials’, but also the Yenish communities. Their historical experiences are very close to the Sinti/Roma’s persecution and therefore could have formed the basis for a common identity construction. However, they have recently declared themselves as a separate ethnic minority group in Germany. The text of the 2012 Memorial to the Sinti

25 Yaron Matras, The Romani Gypsies. Cambridge, MA 2015, 254. 26 Stephanie Wolfe, The Politics of Reparations and Apologies, New York 2014, 75, 90. 27 See for more: “Aufruf des Zentralrat-Komitees der Sinti” (Deutschland, 1972); “Zentralrat-Komitee der Sinti an Bundeskanzler, Willy Brandt” (Deutschland, 1972); “Memorandum einer internationalen Delegation von Ver- tretern der Romani-Union und des Verbands Deutscher Sinti” (Deutschland, 1979); “Presseerklärung des Verbands Deutscher Sinti” (Deutschland, 1980); “Presseerklärung des Verbands Deutscher Sinti” (Deutschland, 1982); “Pressemitteilung der Bundesregierung” (Deutschland, 1982). RomArchive. https://www. romarchive.eu/en/collection/i/?section=civil-rights;collection=collection-jan-selling&term= (8 April 2021). 28 Reemtsma, Sinti und Roma, 139-140. 29 Reemtsma, Sinti und Roma, 142; Julia von dem Knesebeck, The Roma Struggle for Compensation in Post-War Germany, Hatfield 2011. 30 Zoltan Barany, The East European Gypsies. Regime Change, Marginality, and Ethnopolitics, New York 2002, 266. 31 Nadine Blumer, From Victim Hierarchies to Memorial Networks. Berlin’s Holocaust Memorial to Sinti and Roma Victims of National Socialism, Toronto 2011, Dissertation, 64.

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and Roma Victims of National Socialism in Berlin also mentions the Yenish people separately as a persecuted group. Not only have the Roma in general fought for recognition as a victim group of the Holocaust, but the different communities of the Ger- man or European Roma have fought for the same status within the victim community.32 In general, the nation-building processes of the Roma could result in a shared Roma national identity at least on the transnational level, but different ethnic groups historically regarded as ‘Gypsies’ may have different relationships to this process, to each other, as well as even to the constructed shared national history. It should be mentioned that, similarly to the German example, exploring the events of the Porrajmos and doing justice were important elements in the development of the civil rights movement in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe where the Roma had to face specific forms of discrimination, marginalisation, and social exclusion in the past and the present.33 Enforcing claims for compensation in Central and Eastern Europe also required an organisational framework, and, since the 1980s, this has provided a means and opportunity to assert particular interests. In Hungary, it was János Bársony and Ágnes Daróczi who raised the public’s awareness of the tragedy of the Porrajmos. They were among the first to publish a volume in English on the events of the Porrajmos in Central and Eastern Europe, especially in Hungary. For linguistic reasons, they called the Roma Holocaust ‘Pharrajimos’.34 In Poland, Andrzej Mirga, one of the founders of the Association of the Polish Roma after the democratic transition, organised several events commemorating the Roma Holocaust on the national and the transnational level, and published essays on the Porrajmos as well.35 The events, explored through the work of activists and historians in Central and Eastern Europe, also provided a new, broader perspective on Porrajmos research in general, as they portrayed this not only as the tragedy of the Sinti but also from the perspective of other Roma communities. In general, the activity of Central and Eastern European activists provided a major impetus to the transnational Roma movement from as early as the 1970s onwards. They often dominated the first international organisations of the Roma as well. In several Central and East- ern European countries, their status as a national minority was ensured earlier than in Germany.36 The impossibility of remembering the Porrajmos, and the long period of oblivion, are also symbolised by tragic and iconic stories in Central and Eastern Europe. Al- though the local and national authorities were familiar with the crimes committed against the Roma, the stories show they did nothing to establish a framework for the remembrance of Roma victims. Instead, almost everywhere, it was the initiative of activists, NGOs and, eventually, as a result of the work of historians that remembrance occurred. In the 1970s, in Czechoslovakia, for example, a pig farm was established near the former Gypsy camp in Lety, and a hotel was built at the site of the

32 Blumer, From Victim Hierarchies to Memorial Networks, 74-76; Gilad Margalit/Matras Yaron, Gypsies in Germany – German Gypsies? Identity and Politics of Sinti and Roma in Germany, in: Roni Stauber/Raphael Vago (ed.), The Roma: A Minority in Europe. Historical, Political and Social Perspectives, Budapest 2007, 203- 216. 33 On the historical roots of the tragedy of the Porrajmos in Central and Eastern Europe, see: Gerhard Baumgart- ner, The Road towards Genocide, in: S:I.M.O.N. Shoah: Intervention. Methods. Documentation, 1 (2014) 1, 5-18. 34 János Bársony/Ágnes Daróczi (ed.), Pharrajimos. The Fate of the Roma During the Holocaust, New York 2008. 35 Andrzej Mirga, who organised commemorative events in Auschwitz-Birkenau and Cracow in 1993 and 1994, was the Roma representative at the Days of Remembrance in Washington, D.C. in 1995. Andrzej Mirga, For a Worthy Place among the Victims. The Holocaust and the Extermination of Roma During World War II, in: Jolanta Ambrosewicz-Jacobs/Leszek Hondo (ed.), Why Should We Teach About the Holocaust? Cracow 2005. 36 Majtényi/Majtényi, A Transnational Nation, 288.

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camp in Hodonin.37 Ctibor Nečas conducted research on the history of these camps and the persecution of the Roma during 1970s and 1980s.38 In 1989, the American writer Paul Polansky’s volume of documents – containing interviews with Lety survivors, entitled Black Silence– raised more public awareness on the crimes committed against the Roma in the Czech territories.39 Although the Czech government decided to liquidate the pig farm in 2005 and 2006, it was only abolished in 2015. This took place on the seventieth anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, upon request of the European Roma Travellers Forum (ERTF), the Czech Slovo 21, and other European NGOs. In Hungary, in the late 1950s, a small amusement park operated at the scene of the largest mass killing of Roma at Lake Grábler near Várpalota. After the change of regime, the area fell under private ownership and has been used as a fishing lake ever since. In 2006, only a modest headstone was erected at the scene of the mass killing. In 2015, the librarian József Harmat revealed the details of the events in his volume of published documents, but even to this day not all the names of the victims could be identified.40 It is important to emphasise that the first known publications – both in Western and East-Central Europe – consisted almost exclusively of source publications, which primarily sought to document the crimes committed against the Roma, and thus to prove their occurrence and to confront public opinion with the tragedy of the Roma.41 Porrajmos monuments erected in many countries became essential symbols of remembrance and reminders of the tragic events.42 Not only origin stories, but further discussions and working through of collective traumas play a role in the strengthening – or creation – of Roma nationality or national identity in every country. Of course, other memorial spaces (such as fine art, film, and literary works, usually the creations of Roma artists) also defined the frameworks of commemoration and the Porrajmos narrative, and the construction of the trauma in the collective memory.43 In general, remembrance of the persecution and annihilation of Roma was an important building block for the birth of the Roma civil rights movement and has since become a major element of shared Roma (national) identity, as a unifying negative historical reference point. The Porrajmos has become an important memory site, and since the 1970s also a historical symbol of the transnational (national) Roma movement. Various Roma organisations and politicians have long proclaimed their political goals of nation-building, with the hope of achieving rights, equality, and better advocacy from their recognition as a nation. These political movements fight-

37 Helena Sadílková, Holocaust of the Roma and Sinti on the Territory of Czechoslovakia, http://romafacts.uni- graz.at/view_pdf.php?t=history&s=h_5_6&l=en (8 April 2021). 38 Ctibor Nečas, The Holocaust of Czech Roma, Prague 1999. 39 Paul Polansky, Black Silence. The Lety Survivors Speak, Prague/New York 1998. 40 József Harmat, Roma holokauszt a Grábler-tónál, a székesfehérvári és várpalotai cigányok tömeges kivégzése Várpalotán 1945-ben [The Roma Holocaust at Lake Grábler. The Mass Execution of Gypsies in Székesfehérvár and Várpalota in 1945], in: A Magyar Nemzeti Levéltár Veszprém Megyei Levéltára kiadványai, Vol. 34, Vesz- prém 2015. 41 See for example: Dokumentation der Gesellschaft für bedrohte Völker; Bársony/Daróczi, Pharrajimos; Mile- na Hübschmannová (ed.), “Po židoch cigáni.” Svědectví Romů ze Slovenska 1939–1945 [“Gypsy Jews”. Testi- mony of Roma from Slovakia 1939–1945], Prague 2005. 42 See for example the cultural events titled ‘Denkmal Weiter’, held when the Memorial to the Sinti and Roma Victims of National Socialism was officially opened in Berlin on 24 October 2012, Presseinformation. Denk- mal Weiter: Kulturveranstaltungen zur Einweihung des Holocaust-Denkmals in Berlin 19.–25. Oktober 2012. https://dokuzentrum.sintiundroma.de/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/121005_PM_Denkmal_Weiter_ ZWEI.pdf (8 April 2021). 43 Anna Lujza Szász, Memory Emancipated. Exploring the Memory of the Nazi Genocide of Roma in Hungary, Budapest 2015, Dissertation.

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ing for these goals can be referred to generally as Roma nationalism.44 As emphasized above, this movement can be described as a transnational nationalist movement that has also created for itself and used the traditional symbols of modern nationalisms (a flag, and anthem, and so on). The Roma elites ‘invented’ such traditions as the Indian homeland and the shared history of Roma communities.45 Later, the transnational organisations of the Roma functioning in the transnational space seemed to diverge from symbols of traditional nationalisms, and from the Roma nationalism of the 1970s.46 The first powerful step towards establishing the Roma transnational movement was the foundation of the Communauté Mondiale Gitane (Global Gypsy Com munity, CMG) in France in 1960,47 known after 1967 as the Comité International Tsigane (International Gypsy Committee, CIT), which aimed to unite Roma communities worldwide. In April 1971, the CIT, in collaboration with the British Gypsy Council, organised the first World Romani Congress in Orpington in London, funded by the World Council of Churches and the government of India. Since that 1971 Congress, Roma organisations from various countries and the Roma elites have established the transnational institutions of nation-building, namely sites of memory of Roma nationalism, and the political language of this nationalism, linked to transnational memory sites and symbols, by which they could speak to all Roma. From then on, the Porrajmos also appeared as a relatable transnational reference point of shared Roma history. Based on the decision of the World Romani Con- gress, starting in 1972, the more than 3,000 Roma victims who were exterminated by the SS in the Auschwitz death camp on 2 August or the early morning of 3 Au- gust 1944 were to be commemorated. This day became the memorial day for all Roma victims of the genocide during the Second World War. A new permanent body, the Romano Ekhipe, better known as the International Romani Union (IRU), was established during the second congress, whose goal was to represent the interests of Roma in various international organisations, such as the UN, UNESCO, and OSCE. The IRU, which was formed in 1979, received a consultative status within the UN Economic and Social Council and often dealt with the issue of the Porrajmos. In 1981, the third World Romani Congress was held in Göttingen, Ger- many.48 It was supported by the Gesellschaft für Bedrohte Völker, a German NGO that campaigned against “all forms of genocide and ethnocide”. The focus was once again on the Porrajmos and restitution, and included Simon Wiesenthal, one of the most authoritative fighters for Holocaust justice, among the speakers. Wiesenthal showed solidarity with the Roma victims and maintained contacts with Roma organisations.49

44 László Fosztó, Van-e cigány nemzettudat? [Is There A Gypsy National Consciousness], in: Fedinec Csilla (ed.), Társadalmi önismeret és nemzeti önazonosság Közép-Európában [Social Self-Knowledge and National Iden- tity in Central Europe], Budapest 2002, 207-224, here 208. 45 Majtényi/Majtényi, A Transnational Nation, 294-295. 46 Kapralski, Memory, Identity, and Roma Transnational Nationalism, 212. 47 Initially, one of the main figures was Ionel Rotaru, who after escaping from Romania to France crowned himself in France in 1959 and used the title Vaida Voevod III, wanting to be a Roma leader. Traditionally, he considered himself the ruler of the Ursari tribe in Romania. In 1960, he founded the CMG. Its basic idea was to set up an independent state, Romanistan (Romanestan). The French government banned his organisation in 1965. Jean-Pierre Ligeois, Roma, Gypsies, Travellers, Strasbourg 1994, 250. 48 Thomas Acton/Ilona Klimová, The International Romani Union. An East European Answer to West Euro- pean questions? Shifts in the focus of World Romani Congresses 1971–2000, in: Will Guy (ed.), Between Past and Future. The Roma of Central and Eastern Europe, Hatfield 2001, 158-160. 49 ‘Zentralrat Deutscher Sinti und Roma an den Bundesminister der Finanzen‘ (Germany, 1982), Simon Wiesenthal Archive (SWA), U-Post 7/9/82; World Banjara-Roma (Gypsies) Brotherhood Fostering and Cul tural Research Foundation`s letter to Simon Wiesenthal (India, 1981), SWA, U-Post 3/9/81.

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The discourse, later developed at the European level – in a dialogue with international organisations and institutions – directs attention to the experience of social exclusion, constructs a shared identity, and puts forward several unresolved public policy issues, such as the socially disadvantaged situation of Roma or minority laws in general.50 The Porrajmos also occurs as a symbol of historic marginalisation and exclusion of the Roma in this human rights discourse.

The Path of Institutionalisation

After the fall of communism, when Europe became more united and the presence of Roma communities became even more visible at the European level, there were more opportunities for the goals and memories of different Roma communities to be connected in transnational space. In 1989/1990, a new era had started, which Huub van Baar described as the “Europeanization of Roma representation”, and which meant that the transnational Roma network could connect more strongly to the local and national phenomena around Europe and vice versa.51 The reunification of West- ern and Eastern Europe and the divided European memory culture,52 symbolically reunited at this time, also impacted the ‘Western’ and ‘Eastern’ European Roma. There were also common frameworks for the remembrance of the Holocaust. The Roma exhibition, which opened in Auschwitz in 2001, became one of the most important common sites of memory presenting the tragedy of the Roma. The date of the liquidation of the Auschwitz Gypsy Camp, 2 August 1944 , as mentioned above, became a common day of remembrance in European states, also following a decision of the World Roma Congress.53 It was on that day in 2001 that a permanent exhibition on the Porrajmos was opened at the site of the Auschwitz camp, in the Polish State Muse- um Auschwitz Birkenau.54 The Cultural and Documentation Centre of German Sinti and Roma initiated the creation of this memory site, but other Roma organisations also collaborated in this work.55 Thus, the Roma became the second victim group to receive a permanent exhibition in the central memory site of the Holocaust. The opening was a symbolic event in the Roma’s transnational fight for recognition, as van Baar noted: “[…] it could be claimed that the Roma are not in the periphery of holocaust memory anymore.”56 However, this is true primarily in the transnational sphere, but does not mean, for example, that all of the East-Central European countries educational curricula or textbooks deal in detail with the tragedy of the Porrajmos.57

50 Majtényi/Majtényi, A Transnational Nation, 298. 51 Huub van Baar, From ‘Time-Banditry’ to the Challenge of Established Historiographies. Romani Contribu- tions to Old and New Images of the Holocaust, in: Michael Stewart/Márton Rövid (ed.), Multidisciplinary Approaches to Romani Studies, Budapest 2010, 158. 52 Aleida Assmann, Europe’s Divided Memory, in: Alexander Etkind/Julie Fedor/Uilleam Blacker (ed.), Memo- ry and Theory in Eastern Europe, Basingstoke 2013, 25-42 53 European Parliament resolution of 15 April 2015 on the occasion of International Roma Day – anti-Gypsyism in Europe and EU recognition of the memorial day of the Roma genocide during World War II, European Parliament document P8_TA (2015) 0095, https://www.europarl.europa.eu/doceo/document/TA-8-2015- 0095_EN.html (8 April 2021). 54 Romani Rose (ed.), The National Socialist Genocide of the Sinti and Roma. Catalogue of the Permanent Exhi- bition in the State Museum of Auschwitz, Heidelberg 2003. 55 Van Baar, From ‘Time-Banditry’ to the Challenge of Established Historiographies, 160-161. 56 Huub van Baar, Romani Identity Formation and the Globalization of Holocaust Discourse, in: Anette Hoff- mann/Esther Peeren (ed.), Representation Matters. (Re)Articulating Collective Identities in a Postcolonial World, Amsterdam/New York 2010, 116. 57 Mátyás Binder/Pálos Dóra, Romák a kerettantervekben és a kísérleti tankönyvekben [The Representation of Roma in Curricula and Schoolbooks] 2016. http://cfcf.hu/sites/default/files/Binder%20P%C3%A1los%20-%20 ROMA.TK.KUT.%202016.pdf (8 April 2021).

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The tragedy of the Roma and the remembrance of these events also became part of a common European culture of remembrance and historical perspective, which was, for example, laid down in the various documents of transnational European organisations on the rights of European Roma minorities, on education, or on the Porrajmos itself. Transnational textbooks, websites, and monographs with a Euro- pean perspective, published and funded by European organisations, also processed the Porrajmos as a collective European tragedy.58 With the interpretation of the Porrajmos partly becoming independent of the goals of the Roma civil rights movements, the ‘tragic narrative’ of the event was grad- ually created as well. There are a number of facts that show that by the 2000s, the Porrajmos, like the Shoah, had become a universal – though not so widely known – historical event, and its interpretation seemed to be independent not only of the specific goals of the Roma movements, but many times also of the nation state contexts of the events. One iconic example of this is the “Forgotten Genocide” project, launched by an NGO called the Finnish Drom Association in 2010. The project was sponsored by the Finnish president and the Goethe Institute, while the embassies of the Czech Republic, Austria, and Sweden were also involved in its implementation. The final scholarly meeting was held in Helsinki.59 It can be considered an important moment that the event was organised by a ‘neutral country’, to whose history the Porrajmos was not directly linked, and which could thus provide a suitable scene for both the ‘tragic’ and transnational depictions of the Porrajmos. At the same time, the tragic narrative of the Porrajmos did not recede into the background, but further reinforced the progressive narrative, which could also refer to the Porrajmos as an exceptional event in global history. The Roma national movement, as mentioned above, had both a nationalist and, due to the lack of a nation state, a transnational perspective. The fact that the Porrajmos became a global historical event, largely as a result of the struggles of the Roma civil rights movement, created an opportunity for the transnational Roma national movement to refer to it as a collective historical trauma that connects all Roma communities and individuals all over the world, and which also symbolises the history and presence of the Roma community in the world. Consequently, the international recognition of the Porrajmos as a national tragedy, as a collective trauma, is also evidence of the recognition of the Roma as a nation for the Roma political elites. As emphasized above, the Porrajmos thus became a national site of memory of the Roma movement organised in transnational space, and at the same time the Porrajmos is also a universal symbol of the persecution of the Roma and the crimes committed against them. The remembrance of the Porrajmos developed its own (national) characteristics that were related to the Roma’s own traditions, experiences, and current struggles. On the one hand, they distinguished it from the memory of the Shoah while on the other, linking remembrance to the Roma communities living in different nation

58 On the European legal recognition of the Roma Holocaust, see: European Parliament resolution on the situation of the Roma in the European Union (EU, 28 April 2005); European Parliament resolution of 25 October 2017 on fundamental rights aspects in Roma integration in the EU: fighting anti-Gypsyism (2017/2038 INI). On the ‘promotion of the teaching of Roma and Traveller history and the Roma Holocaust and inclusion in school curricula and textbooks’ see: the Council of Europe Strategic Action Plan for Roma and Traveller In- clusion (2020–2025), approved by the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe on 22 January 2020 at the 1365th meeting of the Ministers’ Deputies. 59 Tiina Kinnunen/Markku Jokisipilä, “Shifting Images of our Wars”. Finnish Memory Culture of World War II, in: Tiina Kinnunen/Ville Kivimäki (ed.), Finland in World War II. History, Memory, Interpretations. Leiden/ Boston 2012, 435-482, here 474-475.

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states. An example of this is that in Poland, during the commemorations, a caravan (the Caravan of Memory/Tabór Pamięci) visited the various sites of memory relating to the Porrajmos since 1996.60 In Hungary, the victims of a racially motivated series of killings against the Roma in 2008–2009 are also commemorated on Holocaust Remembrance Day in August. Another iconic story, showing the importance of the Porrajmos memorials, was the occupation of the Holocaust Memorial in Berlin in May 2016 by Roma protesters, demanding rights for non-citizen Roma immigrants in Germany.61 It is also characteristic that memory practices in general, which are essentially current constructions, are often bound by their goals to the present rather than the past. This is especially true of the Porrajmos, which, as a site of memory, also represents the unity of Roma history and Roma communities and that of the Roma nation in general. As Slawomir Kapralski noted, it has a “history making function”, as the discourse on the Porrajmos is “oriented towards the future and has a pragmatic, political significance”. All in all, the Porrajmos discourse created by the Roma can be described as a fundamentally progressive narrative within the framework of the Roma political movements, that at the same time occurs as a tragic narrative in the transnational space.62

Historiography on the Porrajmos

The institutionalisation of ‘Roma studies’ and later that of ‘Critical Romani studies’ took place in the background, not independently from the results of the civil rights movement. The establishment of Roma archival, museal, and art institutions also strengthened the shared collective identity and cultural memory of Roma communities.63 This process can be understood as part of the fight for recognition, and the representations of the Porrajmos as a traumatic historical event of shared (national) Roma history also played a central role.64 In addition to the civil rights movements, the academic sphere, such as the Uni- versity of Hertfordshire Centre for Gypsy/Roma Studies, the Heidelberg Centre, and related journal and publications had a particularly important role in this institutionalisation. These published significant treatises on the Porrajmos.65 There have also been historians whose works have become of almost institutional significance in themselves, such as Ian Hancock, who produced the first high-impact summaries of

60 The first Caravan of Memory setting out from Szczurowa, RomArchive / Roma civil rights movement / collection of Anna Mirga / poland https://www.romarchive.eu/en/collection/the-first-caravan-of-memory-setting- out-from-szczurowa-poland/ (8. April 2021). Martin Kraft, Caravan of Memory Celebrates Poland‘s Roma Community. The Krakow Post. July 2, 2009. http://www.krakowpost.com/1406/2009/07 (8. April 2021). 61 At that time, the German government wanted to force the refugee Roma to go back to Kosovo and Macedonia, which were considered safe. Gergely Romsics, The Meaning of Occupation. The Ambiguous Productivity of the Memorial to the Sinti and Roma Victims of National Socialism in Berlin, in: Intersections. East European Journal of Society and Politics, 6 (2020) 1, 84-114. 62 Kapralski, Identity building and the Holocaust, 281; Sławomir Kapralski, The Aftermath of the Roma Geno- cide. From Implicit Memories to Commemoration, in: Anton Weiss-Wendt (ed.), The Nazi Genocide of the Gypsies. Reevaluation and Commemoration, New York 2013, 229-252. 63 Huub van Baar/Angéla Kóczé, Introduction: The Roma in Contemporary Europe. Struggling for Identity at a Time of Proliferating Identity Politics, in: Huub van Baar/Angéla Kóczé (ed.), The Roma in Contemporary Europe. Struggling for Identity at a Time of Proliferating Identity Politics, Oxford 2020, 7. 64 Wolfgang Wippermann, ‘Auserwählte Opfer?‘, Shoah und Porrajmos im Vergleich. Eine Kontroverse. Berlin 2005, 75. 65 Herbert Heuss/Frank Sparing/Karola Fings (ed.), The Gypsies during the Second World War. Vol. 1: From “Race Science” to the Camps, Hatfield 1997; Donald Kenrick (ed.), The Gypsies during the Second World War. Vol. 2.: In the Shadow of the Swastika, Hatfield 1999; Donald Kenrick (ed.), The Gypsies during the Second World War. Vol. 3: The Final Chapter, Hatfield 2006.

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both transnational and national Roma history, presenting the history of different Roma communities in unity all over the world.66 More recently, the Romani Studies Program at the Central European University and the related journal Critical Roma- ni Studies have also played a similarly important role. A new generation of researchers wants to put more emphasis than before on the so-called internal perspective, the aspects of the Roma while processing Roma history. Researchers with a Roma identity also have made an attempt to create a shared (national) history of the Roma, similarly to other national histories. In general, the tragedy of the Porrajmos seems to have become a crucial, iconic event in Roma historiography, which is in itself capable of representing the history of the persecution of communities torn apart in different countries. The memory and historiography of the Porrajmos, as emphasized above, is largely related to the memory and historiography of the Jewish Holocaust, the Shoah. When the exploration of the Porrajmos began in the 1960s,67 the fundamental question that arose for various authors was whether, similarly to the Shoah, the crimes committed against the Roma could be considered a genocide. This first era of the remembrance of the Porrajmos can thus be described as a struggle for recognition. Initially, its actors were almost without exception Roma and Non-Roma activists. Then they were historians, who on the one hand wanted to explore and reconstruct the events, while on the other hand wanting to enforce their own truth against the majority. The only way to do this was to compare the Porrajmos to the Shoah, which was generally recognised as an unquestionable historical event at that time. The first scholarly studies on the Porrajmos were conducted in the 1970s.68 The basic aim of the first source publications, studies, and monographs – in connection with the civil rights movement of the era – was to document the crimes committed against the Roma by the authorities of certain nation states. Then institutionalised academic historiography had to reflect on the works of authors who often had a Roma identity and those of activists and the events presented by them in ‘scientific’ publications on the issue. Ini- tially, it was characteristic, as mentioned above, that several historians emphasising the primacy of their own position as representatives of academic historiography, confronted the activist authors who reconstructed the history of the Roma Holocaust/ Porrajmos. It also must be noted that the events of the Roma Holocaust did not fit in with the Holocaust discourse of the 1960s and 1970s. Some historians questioned the applicability of the concept of a Roma Holocaust, emphasising the differences of historical events considered to be cognisable and reconstructable, according to the positivist view, and proclaiming the hegemony of written sources in many cases.69 According to descriptions, mostly based on written archival sources often not reflecting the victims’ viewpoints and experiences, public explanations of the perse cution of citizens considered to be Jews created by the Nazis were based on ‘race’. By contrast, according to this approach, the Roma were mostly considered criminals and shirkers. Furthermore, their various communities seem to have appeared in different ways and not uniformly as ‘Gypsies’ in the eyes of the Nazi authorities. As a result, although most of the measures leading to the Roma Holocaust were imple-

66 Ian Hancock, We Are the Romani People. Ame Sam E Rromane Džene, Hatfield 2002. 67 Hans-Joachim Döring, Die Zigeuner im nationalsozialistischen Staat, Hamburg 1964. 68 Donald Kenrick/Grattan Puxon, The Destiny of Europe’s Gypsies, New York 1972. 69 János Bársony and Ágnes Daróczi – who had an initiating role in the research of the Roma Holocaust in Hun- gary – analyses also the Hungarian historiography of the ‘Pharrajimos’ in the following study, János Bársony/ Ágnes Daróczi, A Forbidden People Has No History, in: Anna-Mária Bíró (ed.), Populism, Memory and Minority Rights. Central Eastern European Issues in Global Perspective, Leiden 2018, 1-19.

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mented by the will of the Nazi state and its allies, they were mostly linked to the local authorities representing it rather that to the Nazi state directly. Most Roma victims are believed to have lost their lives in raids and executions, and not in concentration camps. By contrast, it was appropriate to claim that the fact that the Nazi system was based on race theory and that the Roma were regarded as ‘criminals’ or ‘shirkers’ was racism in itself, and that it was, in fact, the commission of crimes and not their ‘modality’ that determined the applicability of the concepts of genocide and the Holocaust.70 In this respect, five distinct positions amongst researchers can be identified. First, there were authors who claimed that the crimes committed against the Roma cannot be considered genocide because they were, in their view, essentially non-racially motivated.71 Second, others argued that although there was a genocide, it could not be called a Holocaust, thus emphasising the uniqueness of the Shoah.72 Third, in the beginning, several authors, primarily those of Roma origin, fighting for the recognition of the Roma’s tragedy, stated that both the term genocide and Holocaust could be applied to this tragic historical event.73 Fourth, there were some who, accepting this, stressed that in addition to Jews, the Roma were the only group who were persecuted by the Nazis on a racist basis.74 Finally, there is the perspective that incorpo- rates the former position and, emphasizing the universality of the Holocaust, discusses the history of the Holocaust in a unified framework, uniting the aspects of all persecuted minorities.75 The first period of the works dealing with the Roma Holocaust can be described as part of a struggle for recognition from the viewpoint of Roma communities, whose discursive frameworks were essentially shaped by examining whether parallels between crimes committed against people considered to be Jewish or Roma could be justified. In connection with this, a ‘numbers war’ broke out between the activist authors and other researchers, which was essentially about the number of victims and, related to this, the intensity of the two genocides. In many cases, this has resulted in formulations and relativising statements that hurt the sensitivities of the victims’ relatives and those belonging to the Roma community in general. From the mid-1980s, published works put this tragic historical event in the context of Roma history, depicting it as a collective tragedy within the common history of the Roma, at that time mainly at the level of the nation states. Later the remembrance of the Porrajmos created by civil rights movements seemed suitable to become the basis of a common historical consciousness and an important element of narrating the Roma national history of a unified structure. In the 1990s, Roma authors declared that the Roma Holocaust was part of the common past of the Roma nation living in the diaspora and, as such, it deserved international recognition. That was followed by the appearance of the first historical analyses from an internal perspective presenting the Roma Holocaust as a national tragedy. Roma representations

70 See for more: Wippermann, ‘Auserwählte Opfer?’. 71 Jehuda Bauer, Jews, Gypsies, Slavs. Policies of the Third Reich, in: UNESCO Yearbook on Peace and Conflict Studies 1985, Paris 1987, 73-100; Yehuda Bauer, Whose Holocaust?, in: Midstream 26 (1980) 9, 42-46. See also: Yehuda Bauer’s letter to the editors of The History Teacher: Yehuda Bauer/Sybil Milton, Correspondence. “Gypsies and the Holocaust”, in: The History Teacher, 25 (1992) 4, 513-521, here 513-515. 72 Guenter Lewy, The Nazi Persecution of the Gypsies, Oxford/New York 2000. 73 Mirga, For a Worthy Place among the Victims. 74 Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews, New Haven 2003; Norman G. Finkelstein, The Holo- caust Industry. Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering, London 2000, 74-77. 75 Henry Friedlander, The Origins of Nazi Genocide. From Euthanasia to the Final Solution, Chapel Hill/Lon- don 1995.

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of the Porrajmos are significant in a variety of ways. First, for Roma minorities living in nation states, exploring and portraying the Porrajmos plays an important role in identity- and community-building. Second, from the point of view of the Roma nation imagined to be unified, as the collective trauma of the Roma communities, the Porrajmos is an important element of the Roma national identity as well. As a result of the above described efforts, while the Roma Holocaust features in works depicting Roma national history as a collective tragedy for Roma communities it may have also come to be seen in works summarising European or global history, as well as works summarising other national histories.76 This study focuses mainly on the ‘inner’ representations of Roma history, however the Porrajmos can be analysed in other historical contexts as well. Within other national histories it can be presented as a collective tragedy of the society of a given nation state, such as for example crimes committed by Germans against Germans or Hungarians against Hungarians, since Roma communities and individuals traditionally/mostly have identified themselves with the majority national community. Consequently, the Porrajmos can be interpreted as a national tragedy of the given nation state as well. From a European perspective, it can be described as a crime committed by European citizens against European citizens, i.e. as a collective European tragedy. Finally, it can be depicted from a transnational perspective in light of the fact that it is such a universal tragedy, an important part of the history of all mankind. As mentioned above, historians and activists tried from the outset to create a specific memory of the Roma Holocaust that emphasised the parallels between the Jewish and the Roma Holocaust. However, according to memory studies, Jewish and Roma memories of the Nazi genocide originally had an “asymmetrical” relationship. The archives of the Shoah preserved mainly the memories of Jewish survivors, and historians analysed Roma life and family stories in the context of the experiences of Jewish survivors.77 Later, as the event of the Roma Holocaust was treated as a fact at both the nation state and transnational level, researchers started to present and depict the unique features of the Porrajmos, but also from a comparative Roma/Jewish perspective.78 Today, related to this, the most effective analyses are those which are concerned with the ‘Roma resistance’, with how Roma individuals and communities fought against the fate that befell them during the Holocaust. These depictions show Roma victims in active roles, and interpret the Roma uprising in the ‘Gypsy family camp’ of Auschwitz II-Birkenau on 16 May as the symbolic event of the Roma resistance during the Porrajmos.79 This reconstructed historical event seems to have become one of the transnational symbols of the potential for Roma autonomy and solidarity with each other and resistance against racist suppression.80

76 Riem Spielhaus/Simona Szakács-Behling/Aurora Ailincai/Victoria Hopson/Marko Pecak, The Representa- tion of Roma in European Curricula and Textbooks. Analytical Report. A joint report commissioned by the Council of Europe to the Georg Eckert Institute for International Textbook Research in partnership with the Roma Education Fund. Council of Europe 2020, https://repository.gei.de/bitstream/handle/11428/306/ COE%20-%20The%20Representation%20of%20Roma%20-%20web%20version.pdf?sequence =10&isAllowed=y (8 April 2021). 77 Ari Joskowicz, Separate Suffering, Shared Archives. Jewish and Romani Histories of Nazi Persecution, in: His- tory and Memory, 28 (2016) 1, 110-140. 78 Anna Lujza Szász, Is Survival Resistance? Experiences of Roma Women under the Holocaust, Saarbrücken 2012; Szász, Memory Emancipated. 79 Van Baar, From ‘Time-Banditry’ to the Challenge of Established Historiographies, 153-171; Ethel Brooks, Re- membering the Dead, Documenting Resistance, Honouring the Heroes. The Sinti and Roma. The Holocaust and the United Nations Outreach Programme, in: Discussion Papers Journal, 3 (2015), 47-60. 80 See for example: Pierre Chopinaud’s speech on 16 May 2015 at the Romani Resistance Day celebration in Paris: Pierre Chopinaud, A Romani Resistance Manifesto, in: Anna Mirga-Kruszelnicka/Esteban Acuña C./Piotr Trojański (ed.), Education for Remembrance of the Roma Genocide, 195-200.

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Research on the Porrajmos linked the tragedies of different Roma communities to each other and made them understandable as part of a collective ‘cultural trauma’ by proving that Roma were murdered on racist grounds not only in Germany, but in all the Nazi-allied countries and in the states occupied by the Nazis They created a shared common knowledge of the reconstructed events, facts, and experiences and constructed a shared framework of the interpretation of the Porrajmos. When researching the Roma Holocaust/Porrajmos, historians investigated numerous tragic historical events like the deportations to Nazi death camps in Germany and in other countries, the deportation of Roma from Romania to Transnistria from 1942 to 1944,81 and mass killings committed by local authorities in East-Central European countries. The persecution of Roma groups living in other states, for example in Italy, also showed parallels to the commonly reconstructed history of the Porrajmos.82 Focusing more on the micro level of historical experiences and the current method- ology of historiography, recent research has adopted new methodologies from memory studies,83 narratology, and ethnology,84 resulting in more reflective analyses of archival sources and oral histories. It should be noted that there have been numerous actors and agencies that have played a role in the research of the Porrajmos, not only activists and researchers, but also NGOs and national or international governmental organisations. The editors of a 2015 volume attempted to represent the characteristics of various actors of memory and historiography of the Porrajmos among the authors of the book as follows: “We invited to contribute to this book Roma and non-Roma scholars of various disci- plines, senior and youth Roma activists, organisations and institutions, and, most importantly, Roma Holocaust survivors. The chapters included in this book have diverse formats – scholarly articles, manifests, personal testimonies, speeches and an interview. Our aim is to provide an inclusive space which uplifts non-academic knowledge to ranks of equal importance with academic discourse.”85 It can perhaps be stated generally, that one of the endeavours of Roma actors and organisations is now to preserve their own ‘voices’ and their emphatic participation in the discourses and historiography of the Porrajmos, for instance by presenting the Porrajmos as the tragedy of a shared Roma national history as well. In sum, the activists and researchers who explored the history of certain local events played an important role in making the Porrajmos a universally accepted historical fact, linking these with each other by asserting first the aspects of the Roma minority communities and then those of the Roma nation. From the 1990s, also as a result of this research, several works were published that showed the Roma Holocaust as a national and universal human tragedy in a transnational historical perspective. The Porrajmos as a collective tragedy of the Roma, and as a European and universal tragedy, respectively, became a historical event also recognised in works on the history of science presenting European and global history. The recognition of the Porrajmos in the historiography is not independent of the goals of

81 Michelle Kelso, Gypsy Deportations from Romania to Transnistria, 1942–44, in: Kenrick (ed.), In the Shadow of the Swastika, 95-130. 82 Paola Trevisan, The Persecution of Roma and Sinti in Fascist Italy, in: Trauma and Memory, 6 (2018) 3, 48-55. 83 Andrej Kotljarchuk, World War II Memory Politics. Jewish, Polish and Roma Minorities of Belarus, in: The Journal of Belarusian Studies, 7 (2013) 1, 7-37. 84 Paola Trevisan, ‘Gypsies’ in Fascist Italy. from Expelled Foreigners to Dangerous Italians, in: Social History, 42 (2017) 3, 342-364. 85 Anna Mirga-Kruszelnicka/Esteban Acuña C./Piotr Trojański, Introduction, in: Anna Mirga-Kruszelnicka/ Esteban Acuña C./Piotr Trojański (ed.), Education for Remembrance of the Roma Genocide. Scholarship, Commemoration and the Role of Youth, Cracow 2015, 15.

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Roma civil rights and national movements either and can generally be considered part of the process during which the institutional conditions for remembrance were created.

Conclusions

In this study, I analysed the memory and historiography of the Porrajmos in terms of the Roma civil rights movement and nation building. The analyses that contextu- alise the Porrajmos as a historical event offer multiple perspectives for comparison. On the one hand, this tragic event is analysed in the context of Roma history, or from a minority/nationality or national perspective, as an event which can be compared with other earlier periods and events of the persecution of the Roma. On the other hand, it is discussed from a transnational perspective, in the context of the history of genocides and, more specifically, in that of the history of Second World War genocide (comparing the event mainly with the Shoah). However, the combination of these two perspectives seems the most decisive. Today one of the main characteristics of memory and historiography of the Porrajmos is that the ‘cultural construction of collective trauma’ connects and units the national and transnational perspective. The representations of the Porrajmos is also defined by the fact that the collective identity of the Roma is more and more strongly and closely connected to a trans national space. The Roma (national) movement, organised in a transnational space, which has become less and less connected to the symbols of traditional nationalisms, allows for the tragedy of the Porrajmos, now portrayed as universal, to be presented in accordance with its own progressive nation-building/national goals, within Roma national history. Discourses about the Porrajmos can therefore be tragic and progressive, universal and national at the same time. In the era of globalisation, certain sites of memory may become independent of specific geographic areas, becoming transnational sites of memory and part of a global discourse, overstepping localities and the borders of nation states. Sites of memory are generally intended to interpret the past in the present and can often place local experiences in a transnational context. In the case of the Roma Holocaust, this was largely the result of the Roma civil rights movements and, related to this, of the work of activists and researchers. It was largely Roma and non-Roma activists and civil movements which carried out the memory work by which the experiences and memories of individuals and the local community were preserved and reformu- lated again and again, so that they could be combined first at the level of nation states and then at the transnational level. Meanwhile, the memory of the Roma Holocaust/ Porrajmos, as a result of these actors’ struggles of identity politics, has also become a cornerstone of the process of building a Roma national identity. This is why we can regard the Porrajmos as a transnational national site of memory, as suggested in the title of my study. The Porrajmos as a site of memory is an emblematic example of the fact that such forms of nation building and nationalism also exist that do not connect to the traditional frameworks or ideologies of modern nation states, but primarily to the phenomena beyond and above those.

I am grateful to Éva Kovács, to Balázs Majtényi, to Michelle Metro-Roland and to the anonymous reviewers for their useful and thoughtful comments on my manuscript.

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György Majtényi is a social historian and professor at Károly Eszterházy University. His recent research interests include Roma social history, the cultural and social history of East-Central Europe in the twentieth century, intellectual history, and historio graphy. He has written six monographs and numerous articles on the Cold War history of Hungary. E-Mail: [email protected]

Quotation: György Majtényi, The Memory and Historiography of the Porrajmos: Making a Transnational National Site of Memory, in: S:I.M.O.N. – Shoah: Intervention. Methods. Documentation. 8 (2021) 1, 86-103. DOI: https://doi.org/10.23777/SN.0121/ART_GMAJ01 S:I.M.O.N.– Shoah: Intervention. Methods. DocumentatiON. is the semi-annual open access e-journal of the Vienna Wiesenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies (VWI) in English and German. ISSN 2408-9192 | 8 (2021) 1 | https://doi.org/10.23777/SN.0121 This article is licensed under the following Creative Commons License: CC-BY-NC-ND (Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives) In appreciation to the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany (Claims Conference) for supporting this publication.

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Paul Hanebrink A Spectre Haunting Europe The Myth of Judeo-Bolshevism

Abstract Today, fantasies of Jewish conspiracy cast Jews as cosmopolitan agents of globalisation and as enemies of national values. But conspiratorial antisemitism has taken many different forms. In the twentieth century, none was more potent or more destructive than the myth of Judeo-Bolshevism – the paranoid fear that Jews incited and directed Communist revolutions in order to advance their own interests. This text will discuss the history of the Judeo- Bolshevik myth, analyse its shifting functions from the Russian Revolution to the end of Communism in 1989, and explore the legacy that this myth has for today.

In the summer of 1920, two French writers, Jérôme and Jean Tharaud, went to Hungary in search of a story about Jews. Hungary at the time had just experienced a wave of revolutions, culminating in a short-lived Bolshevik regime. By the time the Tharauds arrived in Budapest, counterrevolutionaries had clawed their way back to power and were busy persecuting anyone associated with the hated revolution. The Tharauds sympathised with Hungary’s vengeful conservative elite and spent several weeks talking with various people about why the revolutions had happened and who was responsible. Then they returned to France to write it all up. Their book about Hungary’s Bolshevik revolution appeared the following year. It bore the title Quand Israël est roi (When Israel Is King).1 The argument of the book was in the title. According to the Tharauds, Bolshevism in Hungary was essentially Jewish. The brothers described Hungary’s Bolshevik revolutionaries as monsters in the vilest terms. Their leader, Béla Kun, was for example described as “a small-time Jewish clerk, round like a ball, with huge bulging lips and a lizard head”. His chief security officer was “a small, hunchbacked, scrofulous Jew – from what sewer had he come to light?” More importantly, the authors also made an argument about how Jews had come to dominate Hungary. They said that Jewish | www.vwi.ac.at radicals had risen from obscurity to the heights of power as the catastrophic result of Jewish immigration. Migrant Jews from the East, they argued, had invaded the country. They took advantage of the country’s liberal political system in order to secure a foothold. Soon – so the story went – they controlled the media and a large part of the country’s economy. Newly empowered, Jews in Hungary then conspired to replace Hungarians and Hungary’s national culture with their own perverted system of antinational and anti-Christian values. Their work culminated in revolution in which a fanatical Jewish sect nearly delivered a death blow. “A few weeks in Buda- pest”, the Tharauds wrote, “sufficed to overthrow a society built up over centuries. A

https://doi.org/10.23777/SN.0121 new Jerusalem arose on the banks of the Danube, sprung from the mind of Karl Marx and built by Jewish hands on ancient messianic thoughts.” The Tharauds

1 Jérôme Tharaud/Jean Tharaud, Quand Israël est roi, Paris 1921.

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meant their book to be a warning. The nations of Europe had to defend themselves, or else Hungary’s fate would be theirs as well.2 Reading When Israel is King is a disorientating experience these days. In their book, the Tharauds constructed a nightmare scenario of Jewish communists in power that is utterly alien to us today – the product of a historical moment one hundred years ago. We cannot feel the shock of war and revolution in the same way that Europeans did in 1918. Communism has vanished from political life nearly everywhere around the world. And fears about migrants and migration on both sides of the Atlantic focus now on newcomers from Latin America, or Africa, or the Middle East – not on poor Eastern European Jews from the Pale of Settlement. Yet so much of the Tharauds’ book seems strangely familiar, stirring a flicker of recognition as we scan the headlines of today’s newspapers. Consider some examples: The white power terrorists who murdered Jewish Americans in Pittsburgh and in Poway, California left a trail of racist messages on their social media accounts in which they claimed that Jews had conspired to bring Muslims and other unwanted immigrants into the United States in order to destroy white America. Jews, they insisted, played a leading role in a war to “replace” the white race – in the United States and elsewhere.3 This same toxic brew of anti-immigrant racism and antisemitism was on display in Charlottesville, Virginia in August 2017, when neo-Nazi marchers chanted a phrase they had borrowed from the far right in France – “You will not replace us” – along with an antisemitic variation of their own devising: “Jews will not replace us.”4 In Europe, so-called identitarians from Scandinavia and the United Kingdom to Poland and Greece blame the “Jewish media” for creating a pro-migrant climate and “cosmopolitan” liberals for exploiting it in order to help migrants from the Global South replace native Europeans.5 Meanwhile, propaganda campaigns in Hungary and elsewhere blow a loud dog whistle of encouragement by casting the philanthropist George Soros and his Open Society Foundation as a nefarious enemy whose reach extends around the world. These racist visions reflect contemporary anxieties about migration and globalisation. In all of them, Jews are at the forefront of a plot to overturn cultures, under- mine ethnic identities, and create a radical dystopian state. How different is this really from the “Jerusalem on the Danube” that the Tharauds had believed was real? This uncanny resonance across the span of a century reminds us of the enduring power of conspiratorial antisemitism. Today, one widespread version of the “Jewish plot” casts Jews as “cultural Marxists” who promote immigration and oppose the timeless cultural values of nation and family on which Western civilisation supposedly rests.6 Fears of a global Jewish conspiracy have taken different forms, however. In the twentieth century, none was more potent or more destructive than the myth of Judeo-

2 The citations in this paragraph are taken from the German-language translation: Jérôme Tharaud/Jean -Tha raud, Die Herrschaft Israels, Zurich 1927, 167, 194-195, 211-212. 3 On the white power movement, see the essential work of Kathleen Belew, Pittsburgh Shooting Was Straight Out Of White Power Movement, https://www.thedailybeast.com/pittsburgh-shooting-was-straight-out-of- white-power-movement (7 March 2021). 4 Thomas Chatterton Williams, The French Origins of “You Will Not Replace Us”, https://www.newyorker. com/magazine/2017/12/04/the-french-origins-of-you-will-not-replace-us (7 March 2021); Emma Green, Why the Charlottesville Marchers Were Obsessed with Jews, https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/ 08/nazis-racism-charlottesville/536928/ (7 March 2021). 5 See among many works: Rafal Pankowski, The Populist Radical Right in Poland. The Patriots, London/New York 2010; Jean-Yves Camus/Nicolas Lebourg, Far-Right Politics in Europe, translated by Jane Marie Todd, Cambridge, MA 2017. 6 Samuel Moyn, The Alt-Right’s Favorite Meme Is 100 Years Old, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/11/13/opinion/cultural-marxism-anti-semitism.html (7 March 2021).

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Bolshevism. This paper addresses the history of the Judeo-Bolshevik myth and sug- gests some of the ways it continues to cast a pernicious shadow today, thirty years after the collapse of communism.

***

The myth of Judeo-Bolshevism held that communism was a Jewish invention. Jews, so the story went, dominated the leadership of Communist Parties in order to further their own power. For this reason, Jews were responsible for communist crimes and also for the antisemitic backlash that inevitably followed. After 1917, the myth of Judeo-Bolshevism exploded in a fury of anti-Jewish violence amid the mael- strom of war, revolution, and the collapse of empires in Central and Eastern Europe. During the Russian Civil War, a wave of pogroms caused the deaths of as many as 180,000 Jews and left another half a million homeless and destitute. The perpetrators – mainly counterrevolutionary Whites, who wanted to restore the Russian Empire, and armed groups loyal to the Ukrainian national government – accused local Jews of helping the Bolsheviks to power. In Hungary, counterrevolutionaries made the same argument after a short-lived Bolshevik regime collapsed there. Some 3,000 people were killed in the ensuing White Terror, about half of them Jews. Meanwhile, fears spread in Western Europe and across the Atlantic that Jewish migrants from Central and Eastern Europe carried revolutionary infection with them. Calls to close borders to newcomers quickly multiplied. In the years that followed, the violent power of the myth of Judeo-Bolshevism did not fade. Most fatally, the idea was central to Nazism. According to Adolf Hitler, the Soviet Union was a Judeo-Bolshevik colossus fundamentally opposed to a “Europe of cultural nations” led by Nazi Germany.7 When Germany invaded the Soviet Union in 1941, his propagandists justified the invasion by conjuring nightmares of what defeat would mean. Hordes of Asiatic barbarians, led by ruthless Jewish commissars, would ravage the continent, they said. Germany must win or all Europe would die. This idea fuelled mass shootings of whole Jewish communities in the occupied Soviet Union – the beginning of the Holocaust of European Jews. It also inspired Nazi collaborators from France to Ukraine to help in the genocide in order to curry favour with Hitler. In every case, the perpetrators reasoned that the myth was true. After all, had not Leon Trotsky been born Lev Davidovich Bronstein? Antisemites in Hungary were quick to point out that Hungary’s Bolshevik leader had changed his name from Béla Kohn to Béla Kun in order to make it sound more Hungarian. Other prominent revolutionaries also had undeniably Jewish forebears, from Grigory Zinoviev, the long-term head of the Communist International, to the revolutionary theorist and Spartacist Rosa Luxemburg, to the great philosopher himself, Karl Marx. Moreover, pundits and analysts across interwar Europe quickly determined that Jews were overrepresented in the leadership positions of many Communist Parties. By some counts, thirty of forty-eight commissars in the 1919 Hungarian Soviet were Jewish.8 After 1945, Jews, such as the Polish Jakub Berman, the Roma- nian Ana Pauker, and the top four leaders in Stalinist Hungary, once again appeared visible at the head of Central and Eastern Europe’s new communist regimes.

7 Der Parteitag der Arbeit vom 6. bis 13. September 1937. Offizieller Bericht über den Verlauf des Reichspartei tages mit sämtlichen Kongressreden, Munich 1938, 377-378. 8 William O. McCagg, Jews in Revolution. The Hungarian Experience, in: Journal of Social History 6 (Fall 1972) 1, 78-105.

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Considering these facts, could it not be said that there was indeed a kernel of truth to the myth? As ever, a shift in perspective changes the meaning of statistics. Some communists were Jews. But many Jews wanted nothing to do with communism. For example, twenty to forty per cent of the members of the Polish Communist Party in the 1920s were Jews. Yet only about seven percent of Polish Jews voted for the Communist Party in these years; the bulk of the Party’s electoral support came from other ethnic groups.9 Put more generally, some Jews embraced communism, inspired by the promise of a new world, the opportunity to wield power, a desire to protect themselves from the antisemitism around them, or some combination of all these things. Making this choice, they broke with the religion of their grandfathers – some with enthusiasm, others with regret. However, many more Jews across Europe imagined different political futures as Zionists, or Bundists, or socialists of a very different kind. Still others gave themselves wholeheartedly to the national communities in which they lived. And some avoided politics altogether, whether because of religious devotion or because of personal inclination. The modern world afforded Jews (like non-Jews) a wide variety of paths to take. Focussing only on those who became communists mistakes a part for the whole. Of course, rational considerations of Jewish political history have never interested conspiracy theorists, who dismiss every nuanced analysis of the relationship between Jews and communism as nothing more than fake news. One example can stand in for many. After Romania invaded the Soviet Union alongside the Wehrmacht in the summer of 1941, they reoccupied territories that the Red Army had occupied one year earlier. Eager to identify saboteurs who had betrayed Romania, Romanian officials conducted studies to determine how many Jews had served the Soviets. They found the numbers to be surprisingly low. In one county, only three of 128 local rulers had been Jews. The inspector who had commissioned the study was enraged and rejected the report as unacceptable and false. Regardless of the numbers, he knew that all Jews were communists. “The data”, he declared, “contradict the facts.”10 Given this dismal history, it is pointless to treat the myth of Judeo-Bolshevism as a proposition to be verified or falsified. Asking how true the myth was inevitably means meeting conspiracy theorists on turf that they have already staked out. Con- spiracy theories, whether they involve Jewish Bolsheviks or more recent spectres like the ‘deep state’ or ‘globalists’, are seductive because they offer believers a world of distortions and alternative facts that invites endless study and rewards them with a powerful feeling that they alone have seen the truth behind the lies. An effective response must do more than simply prove yet again that the theory is wrong. We also need to understand what empowers a particular conspiracy theory and what it means to those who believe it. What can the history of the myth of Judeo-Bolshevism teach us about this?

***

The myth of Judeo-Bolshevism was born amid the crisis of war, revolution, and state collapse in the waning months of the First World War and the turbulent years that immediately followed it. Across Europe, the myth grew from wartime fears

9 Jeffrey S. Kopstein/Jason Wittenberg, Who Voted Communist? Reconsidering the Social Bases of Radicalism in Interwar Poland, in: Slavic Review 62 (Spring 2003) 1, 87-109, here 104-105. 10 Vladimir Solonari, Patterns of Violence. The Local Population and the Mass Murder of Jews in Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina, July–August 1941, Kritika 8 (Fall 2007) 4, 778.

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about divided Jewish loyalties and Jewish treason. In Germany, the army conducted a ‘Jew count’ in 1916 to determine whether or not Jews were serving the country in sufficient numbers. In Russia, the army removed Jews from western border areas in order to prevent them from sabotaging the war effort. From London to Warsaw to Bucharest, security officials worried that Jewish ties to their brethren in the Russian Empire warped their priorities and set them at odds with the countries in which they lived. When revolution came, it was easy to transpose these fears onto the new political reality and to see Bolshevism as another, bigger act of Jewish sabotage. After 1917, conspiracy theories about Jewish Bolshevik flourished. The Judeo- Bolshevik panic created a new audience for The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, the forged ‘proof’ of a Jewish conspiracy first published in 1903 and still invoked by antisemites today. In the United States, Henry Ford reprinted the text in his news paper; in France and Italy, conservative Catholic media incorporated the hoax into their analyses of the dangers of secular republican culture; and in Germany, the newly formed Nazi Party took the Protocols as proof that the ‘Jewish question’ needed to be solved. Of course, the myth of Judeo-Bolshevism could never be separated in practice from other versions of the Jewish plot, however illogical the connections might seem. The Jewish communist and the Jewish banker were always partnered in the antisemitic imagination. Yet the idea of Judeo-Bolshevism created a cabal com- prised of new faces to set alongside more familiar antisemitic fables about wealthy Jews like the Rothschilds. More profoundly, it updated old stereotypes present in European culture since the Middle Ages that associated Jews with disorder, misrule, and evil. Anti-communists of all stripes used horror stories about Jewish terror in the Soviet Union as cautionary tales. They also made them politically productive, developing ideas about racial or ethnic purity, social order, and the nature of Europe- an civilisation against the backdrop of a Jewish Bolshevik dystopia. Then as now, the phantasmagorical world of the far right was a transnational construction. Today, we marvel at the rapid circulation from one country to another of racist memes across platforms like Facebook, 4Chan, or Gab. It was no different in 1917. Texts like the Protocols were translated and reprinted across Europe. Journalists and writers travelled abroad looking for lurid stories to send home about fanatical Jewish commissars. Pundits drew connections between cataclysms far away and perceived threats at home. Émigrés fled war-torn lands and shared paranoid stories about their Jewish Bolshevik persecutors with anyone who would listen. The circulation of these ideas across Europe’s borders and their constant repetition in many different countries in many different languages made the spectre of Judeo-Bolshevism seem real. In this way, fears of a Judeo-Bolshevik plot inspired real world polices to stop it: to secure borders, check the flow of Jewish migrants, and eradicate the threat of revolutionary Jewish terrorism. In France, antisemites called for new restrictions on Jewish immigration. So did nativists in the United States, who worried that Jews in areas like New York’s Lower East Side planned to bring the evils of revolution across the Atlantic. In Bavaria, officials expelled Jewish refugees from the Russian Civil War amid demands from the newly formed Nazi Party to stem the tide of Ostjuden (East- ern Jews) flooding into the country. Romanian officials did the same thing, also in a climate shaped by a new fascist movement led by a disturbed university student named Corneliu Codreanu. In Hungary, the government politicised religion in order to set the ideological power of a Christian nation against the Jewish Bolshevik enemy. It also set quotas on the number of Jews who could attend university, the better – they argued – to ensure that leading sectors of the economy and society

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would remain out of Jewish radical hands. Everywhere, security forces trained wary eyes on Jews active in left-wing politics. In this way, the myth of Judeo-Bolshevism captured anxieties about the fragile sovereignty of European nations at a time of political and social upheaval in especially potent ways. Nowhere was this fear of fragile national sovereignty linked more effectively to apocalyptic fantasies about the life and death of European or Western civilisation than in Nazi Germany. Communism may not have made Hitler an antisemite. Yet Judeo-Bolshevism certainly did make Hitler – fuelling the rise of the party that he led and remaining a core obsession of his until the end of the Nazi Reich in 1945. Whenever Hitler looked east and contemplated Germany’s destiny, he in- variably connected the Jewish threat to the reservoir of other subhuman races that – in his mind – made up the peoples of the Soviet Union. The racial alliance between Jews and the Asiatic masses presented a mortal danger to Germany and to the rest of Europe. Nazi Soviet experts built on this so-called insight and tried to analyse life in the Soviet Union according to what they called the “National Socialist racialist perception of reality.”11 They concluded that Jews had played a leading role in every aspect of Stalinist terror, creating the gulags and causing famine through forced collecti visation. They warned that Soviet commissars were ready to lead an army of sub human races into the heart of Europe. The far right across Europe was thrilled at this language: In France, antisemitic writers published screeds about Judaism and Marx- ism which suggested that supporting Nazi Germany was the best way to preserve France’s true national character. Zoltán Bosnyák, an antisemite who would get to run his own Nazi-style Institute for the Study of the Jewish Question in 1944, made similar arguments in Hungary, praising Hitler for the political genius that had finally destroyed the Judeo-Bolshevik threat in Germany. When German soldiers poured across the Soviet border in the summer of 1941, Nazi propagandists remade this language for a Europe at war. They declared that Germany’s fight in the East was a crusade to defend Germans and all Europeans from a barbaric racial and ideological enemy. They used evidence of atrocities committed by NKVD agents to promote their racist vision of the ‘Judeo-Bolshevik’ Soviet enemy. They also turned a ruthless campaign against imaginary ‘Jewish partisans’ into a central feature of their plans to pacify the Soviet Union. When SS and Wehrmacht officers discussed the partisan threat in the summer and autumn of 1941, the substance of their discussions typically boiled down to: Jew equals Bol shevik equals partisan. On this basis, mass shootings of entire Jewish communities across the occupied Soviet Union escalated in these months – a crucial stage in the origins of the Holocaust. After the infamous Babi Yar Massacre, Wehrmacht Gener- al Walter von Reichenau declared that the purpose of the war was to destroy the “Jewish Bolshevik system” and to eradicate the “Asiatic influence in the European sphere of culture”. For this reason, it was necessary to mete out “hard but just punishment” to “Jewish sub-humans”.12 Military defeats did not change this ideological line in Berlin. When Joseph Goebbels called on Germans to fight a total war against the Soviet enemy in the aftermath of the Battle of Stalingrad, he warned them that a horde of subhuman savages was coming, led by “Jewish liquidation commandos.”

11 Hermann Greife, Sowjetforschung, Berlin/Leipzig 1936, 31-36, 70. See also: Andre Gerrits, The Myth of Jew- ish Communism, New York 2008, 64. 12 The so-called “Reichenau Order” is reprinted in Gerd R. Ueberschär/Wolfram Wette (ed.), “Unternehmen Barbarossa”. Der deutsche Überfall auf der Sowjetunion, 1941 – Berichte, Analysen, Dokumente, Paderborn 1984, 339-340.

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Behind them loomed “terror, the spectre of mass starvation, and complete anar- chy”.13 A Soviet victory, he warned, would result in a racial apocalypse and the destruction of Europe as a civilisation. The legacy left by this toxic fusion of racism and anti-communism is complex. After 1945, overt expressions of Nazi ideology became taboo, especially in West Ger- many. Yet the myth of Judeo-Bolshevism lived on in the cultural memory of the war in the East. Traces could be found in many different places. Wehrmacht generals wrote memoirs to recast themselves as good anti-communists who defended Europe against a grave threat to civilisation. Mid-level Nazi ideologists (like Eberhard Tau- bert) had jobs as anti-communist propagandists for much longer into the 1950s than is commonly recognised. Most importantly, however, postwar neofascist theorists – the best known probably being the Italian Julius Evola – understood and wrote about the war in terms that recall the Nazi anti-Bolshevik crusade: as Europe’s struggle to defend its identity and culture against alien and destructive forces. In the works of these theorists, the locus of the contemporary postwar threat to European identity tended to circulate, sometimes fixing on migrants from former European empires, sometimes on leftist student radicals besotted with dangerous ideologies. Yet the discursive similarities with the older language of Judeo-Bolshevism was clear, as was the iconic status that the war against the Soviet Union (as a good and necessary war, rather than a racist and catastrophic war) played in the cultural memory of the post- Second World War far right. These neofascist writings have enjoyed a strange and frightening renaissance in recent years in far right, alt-right, and ethnic populist circles. Once it seemed possible to dismiss them as the marginal products of cranks and has-beens. Recent events warn us that we should not. The myth of Judeo-Bolshevism cast a long shadow on the left as well. Amid the delirium of revolutionary upheaval after 1917, leading Communist Party ideo- logues generally reminded their followers that antisemitism was a remnant of feu- dalism that had no place in the communist utopia to come. However, local Party activists often forgot this fine distinction and easily associated their dreams of economic justice with older stereotypes about wealthy Jewish oppressors. Sometimes they also complained about the visibility of Jews in leadership positions in terms that mirrored those of their counterrevolutionary enemies. In rural Hungary in 1919, Party activists bitterly observed that the prominence of Jews like Béla Kun among the Bolshevik leadership was making it difficult to win peasants over to the revolution. Especially in Central and Eastern Europe, leftist hopes for a cadre of organic intellectuals leading the people from within became most coherent when set against critiques of ‘cosmopolitan’ (i.e. Jewish) intellectuals with no ties to native workers. After 1945, newly formed communist regimes struggled mightily to convince their subjects that they were not agents of Jewish power. When a mob massacred 42 Jews in Kielce, Poland in 1946, eyewitnesses remembered hearing people shouting slogans that targeted Jews as agents of communist terror. In response, communist labour leaders tried to mobilise workers to condemn the violence as a ‘reactionary’ provocation. Yet they found that the workers were more eager to take part in strikes and to use anti-Jewish slogans as a way to express their own social and economic dissatisfaction. To establish their nationalist bona fides in this political environment, Party leaders across the newly establish Soviet bloc in Central and Eastern Europe

13 Joseph Goebbels, Nun, Volk steh auf, und Sturm brich los! Rede im Berliner Sportpalast, http://research.cal- vin.edu/german-propaganda-archive/goeb36.htm (7 March 2021).

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turned a blind eye to expressions of antisemitism within their own ranks and in the wider public, for example by accepting at face value calls to defend “honest labour” from the exploitation of “parasitical” and “unproductive” middlemen. They also welcomed onto the party rolls so-called “little fascists” – low-level antisemites and pro-Nazi collaborators who were willing to rewrite their personal histories in order to fit into the new order. The Jewish communist Ana Pauker commented on the amnesty that the Romanian Communist Party extended to former legionaries of the fascist Iron Guard: “There were more of them”, she admitted, “and especially workers, than I’d imagined.”14 Soon, Jewish Communist Party members fell victim to the anti-Zionist hysteria of Stalin’s last years. State prosecutors in the 1952 show trial of Rudolf Slansky and thirteen other leading figures in the Czechoslovak Communist Party consistently identified eleven of the defendants, including Slansky, as Jewish and charged them with being Zionist agents. Slansky and his thirteen co-defendants confessed to their supposed crimes. Eleven of them were executed. Careful analysis of police reports compiled during this time show that many ordinary people found the charges of Jewish treason plausible in part because they resonated with older stereotypes of Jewish communists as antinational cosmopolitans who were greedy for power. Even after Stalin’s death, so-called national communists continued to wield the charge of Zionism as a political bludgeon against their enemies, most notoriously in Poland in 1968, when the Party demonised student dissidents (some of whom were Jewish) as Zionist agents. Wladyslaw Gomulka, head of the Polish Communist Party, was at the centre of this campaign. Already in the late 1940s, Gomulka had worried that Poles did not see the Communist Party as Polish because it had Jewish members. He had even written to Stalin to explain that the “Jewish comrades did not feel tied by any bonds” to the Polish nation or the Polish working class.15 Then, at the height of the anti-Zionist campaign in 1968, Gomulka declared that the Party was ready to give “emigration passports to those who considered Israel their Father- land”.16 The wave of anti-Jewish hysteria unleashed by this tactic decimated the rem- nants of Poland’s Jewish community. Some 20,000 left the country. By 1970, no more than 10,000 remained. Communist Party attitudes towards Jews and antisemitism have left a strange legacy in post-communist Central and Eastern Europe. Despite the best efforts of national communists like Wladyslaw Gomulka to legitimise their rule by associating it with nationalism, Central and East Europeans across the former Soviet bloc welcomed the fall of communism as a chance to revive long-dormant national traditions. Many of them also dismissed their former communist rulers as anti-national enemies. Yet the strategy of labelling Jewish Communist Party members as less authentically national, or less rooted, or less in touch with the true feelings of the working people, left a mark nonetheless. Almost as soon as the communist regimes collapsed, new right-wing nationalists built on this history and turned it to their own ends. They declared that the nations of Central and Eastern Europe had simply ex- changed the old Communist Party bosses for new international liberal masters, dominated – as before – by cosmopolitan and internationalist Jews. In Romania, some former communists even remade themselves as nationalists by claiming that it had been the Stalinist Jews who had ruined everything good about the old system

14 Robert Levy, Ana Pauker. The Rise and Fall of a Jewish Communist, Berkeley, CA 2001, 76. 15 Lech W. Głukowski (ed.), Gomułka Writes to Stalin in 1948, in: Polin 17 (2004), 365-384, here 379. 16 Dariusz Stola, The Hate Campaign of March 1968. How Did It Become Anti-Jewish?, in: Polin 21 (2009), 16-36.

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and who were now using liberal democracy and global market capitalism to perpet- uate their rule. Judeo-Bolshevism may have vanished, but right-wing nationalists insisted that Jewish liberalism had re-emerged to take its place.

***

In conclusion: The history of the myth of Judeo-Bolshevism seems in many ways distant today. Communism has vanished from the political scene nearly everywhere. The question of Jews and Bolshevism now features most prominently in debates about how to remember the century past. Especially in Central and Eastern Europe, calls to study crimes committed by ‘Jewish communists’ typically function as a way to deflect attention away from the difficult business of understanding the legacy of the Holocaust in the region. This also serves as a kind of dog whistle that signals opposition to the moral project that Holocaust commemoration represents – respect for cultural pluralism, liberal political values, and human rights – as nothing more than Western political correctness. Meanwhile, the ideological coordinates that once shaped the myth of Judeo-Bolshevism have been scrambled into a new pattern. George Soros and nameless cultural Marxists have replaced Leon Trotsky as the face of the Jewish conspiracy. In France, attacks on Jews have been committed by Islamic extremists who use the language of anti-Zionism for their own ends. In the United Kingdom, debates about antisemitism within the Labour Party have also been dominated by the issue of anti-Zionism. At the same time, the far right on both sides of the Atlantic have transformed long-established staples of antisemitic politics into a potent new Islamophobia. In the 1930s, right-wing extremists dreamed of Christian nations and Christian Europe as a bulwark against the Judeo-Bolshevik menace. Now, they imagine Christian Europe as an antidote to the rising spectre of Eurabia or the Islamisation of the West. White power fanatics have made this turn as well, finding new inspiration for a race war against Muslims in old texts like the toxic 1978 Turner Diaries that fantasised about conspiracies between Jews, blacks, and com munists to destroy white people everywhere. What is old is new again. The myth of Judeo-Bolshevism, so powerful in the twentieth century, has begun to fade. Yet the paranoid fears of Jewish conspiracy that sustained it remain with us.

This talk is a revised and expanded version of a much shorter piece that was published in Le Monde Diplomatique in January 2020. See: The Myth of Judeo-Bolshevism, https://mondediplo.com/2020/ 01/11antisemitism (17 March 2021).

Paul Hanebrink is Professor of History and Jewish Studies at Rutgers University. His books include In Defense of Christian Hungary. Religion, Nationalism, and Antisemitism, 1890–1944 (2006) and A Specter Haunting Europe. The Myth of Judeo-Bolshevism (2018). E-Mail: [email protected]

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Quotation: Paul Hanebrink, A Spectre Haunting Europe. The Myth of Judeo-Bolshevism, in: S:I.M.O.N. – Shoah: Intervention. Methods. Documentation. 8 (2021) 1, 104-113. DOI: https://doi.org/10.23777/SN.0121/SWL_PHAN01 S:I.M.O.N.– Shoah: Intervention. Methods. DocumentatiON. is the semi-annual open access e-journal of the Vienna Wiesenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies (VWI) in English and German. ISSN 2408-9192 | 8 (2021) 1 | https://doi.org/10.23777/SN.0121 This article is licensed under the following Creative Commons License: CC-BY-NC-ND (Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives) In appreciation to the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany (Claims Conference) for supporting this publication.

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Sabeth Buchmann und Dani Gal Ein Gespräch

Abstract Dem vorliegenden Gespräch liegt eine Reihe von Konversationen zugrunde, welche die Kunsthistorikerin Sabeth Buchmann mit dem Künstler Dani Gal über dessen Filmtrilogie An Elaborate Gesture of Pastness zwischen August und Dezember 2020 geführt hat. Gegen- stand ist die kinematische Verhandlung politisch-historischer, ethisch-moralischer und künstlerisch-ästhetischer Dilemmata im Rahmen aktueller Debatten um die kolonialis- musreflexive Einordnung des Holocaust und der hiermit korrespondierenden Genozide. Auf Basis künstlerisch-wissenschaftlicher Forschung und angeregt von Konzepten der „multidirectional memory“, der „unsettling empathy“ und der integrativen Trauma- forschung sind es Gals programmatisch spekulative (Re-)Enactments historischer Opfer- TäterInnen-Beziehungen, welche in Bezug auf historische und gegenwärtige Formen des Antisemitismus, der Islamophobie und des Rassismus erörtert werden. Insofern diese von den multiplen und widersprüchlichen Verwebungen deutscher, jüdischer und palästinensis- cher Geschichte(n) zeugen, geht es dabei um den spezifischen Beitrag der Kunst zu einem multiperspektivischen Neuentwurf kulturellen Gedenkens.

Buchmann: Um gleich auf die komplexe Thematik deiner Filme zu sprechen zu kommen, habe ich mich gefragt, wie die extremen Perspektiven deiner Filme auf- zufassen sind. Zum Beispiel: Wieso eröffnet Nacht und Nebel mit dieser etwas er- schreckenden oder überzeichnenden Weitwinkel-Perspektive, die der gesamten Szene eine theatralische Atmosphäre verleiht? Gal: Nacht und Nebel öffnet mit einer Totalaufnahme aus der Perspektive des Ge- fängniswärters, also die Täterperspektive. Den kinematographischen Konventionen folgend, wollte ich gleich zu Beginn eine Art kinematographische Bildsprache der Shoah etablieren. Ich wollte, dass das Publikum einen Moment der sofortigen Er- | www.vwi.ac.at doi.org/10.23777/SN.0120

Filmstill aus Dani Gal, Nacht und Nebel, 2011, Kamera: Itay Marom

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kennung erfährt, um wiederum nach einigen Sekunden zu realisieren, dass es sich hier nicht um die Shoah handelt, da die Uniformen nicht passen. Dies sind israelische Polizisten, die in einem Gefängnishof in Israel den Ofen bewachen, in dem Eichmanns Körper eingeäschert wird. Das Publikum betrachtet die eine Realität und assoziiert sie zugleich mit einer anderen. Buchmann: Um mich auf unser Gespräch vorzubereiten, habe ich auf Bilder trotz allem von Georges Didi-Huberman zurückgegriffen. Es ist äußerst interessant, wie er hierin auf den Konflikt mit seinen KritikerInnen und mit Claude Lanz- mann eingeht. Die Frage, ob es möglich ist, die in den Konzentrationslagern ent- standenen Fotografien als „Bildakte“ zu deuten, sie also tatsächlich als Handlung zu deuten, bleibt unbeantwortet. Als ich Bilder trotz allem wiederlas, sowie einen Text zur Rezeption des Buches, bin ich auf eine Äußerung von Jean-Luc Godard gestoßen, derzufolge es „ein fehlendes Glied in der Repräsentation“ des Holo- caust gibt: Die Täterperspektive. Dann machte es klick in meinem Kopf und ich dachte an die Perspektive in deinem Film. Laut Didi-Huberman repräsentieren die Fotografien die Perspektive der Sonderkommandos, also jener jüdischen Häftlinge, die in die Maschinerie des Massenmords in den Konzentrationslagern involviert wurden und die eine Kamera ins Konzentrationslager Auschwitz-Bir- kenau hinein- und wieder herausgeschmuggelt haben. Gal: Das erinnert mich an einen französischen Dokumentarfilm, Sous le Manteau [Clandestinely] aus dem Jahre 1948. Dieser enthält Filmmaterial, das während des Zweiten Weltkriegs von französischen Kriegsgefangenen in einem Lager in Öster- reich gedreht wurde. Die Häftlinge haben eine Kamera innerhalb eines Larousse- Wörterbuchs eingenistet und haben auf einem Filmstreifen gedreht, der mit der Le- bensmittelversorgung eingeschmuggelt wurde. Buchmann: Didi-Huberman machte sich über zwei Fotos Gedanken, die mit einer Kamera gemacht wurden, die in einem Eimer versteckt war. Er sprach von einer „furchtbaren Parodie“ dieser „dunklen Kammer“. Ich paraphrasiere: Um diese Kamera verwenden zu können, musste sich ein griechisch-jüdischer Mann namens Alex in der Gaskammer verstecken – mit anderen Worten musste er sich im Dunklen zwischen den Aufnahmen verstecken. Der Kunsthistoriker merkt an, dass diese Fotos die alltägliche Arbeit der Sonderkommandos und der SS doku- mentieren. Er konnte nur spekulieren, wie viele weitere Aufnahmen mit dieser Kamera gemacht wurden. Alex hat tatsächlich weitere Fotos gemacht: Vor dem Birkenwald, wo sich eine Gruppe nackter Frauen auf dem Weg zur Gaskammer befand, begegnete er einigen SS-Offizieren. Da die Fotos verwackelt und unpositi- oniert sind, vermutete Didi-Huberman, dass Alex die Aufnahmen ohne hinzu- schauen gemacht hat, vielleicht sogar ohne stehenzubleiben. So aber hielt er aber die Täterperspektive fest. Vermutlich wurde die Kamera an ein anderes Mitglied des Sonderkommandos weitergegeben, an David Szmulewski, der die SS-Männer von einem Dach aus beobachtete. Didi-Huberman zufolge soll die gesamte Aktion zwischen fünfzehn und zwanzig Minuten gedauert haben. Szmulewski versteckte die Kamera wieder im Eimer und reichte sie an Helena Datón weiter, eine Ange- stellte in der SS-Kantine, die den Filmstreifen in einer Zahnpastatube aus Ausch- witz-Birkenau heraustransportierte. Von dort gelangte er in die Hände des polnischen Widerstands in Krakau. Eine der Kernthesen Didi-Hubermans ist demzufolge, dass die Normalität des Alltagslebens in den Lagern die Täterperspektive reflektiert, deren Aufgabe es war, die Körper ihrer Opfer zu entmaterialisieren. Gal: Lanzmann nahm mit folgender Aussage eine extreme Position gegenüber Be- weismaterial aus den Lagern ein: „Angenommen, ich hätte einen Stummfilm ent-

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deckt, der von einem SS-Offizier gedreht wurde und den Tod von 3.000 Menschen in einer Gaskammer zeigte, so hätte ich diesen nicht nur aus meinem Film rausgelas- sen, ich hätte ihn auch vernichtet.“1 Buchmann: Ja, genau, für ihn hatten die Fotos offensichtlich keinen legitimen Status. Gal: Godard sucht als Filmemacher das fehlende Bild. Laut Lanzmann kann dieses Bild nur in den Köpfen des Publikums beim Zuhören einer Zeugenaussage existieren; es ist Filmemacher und Publikum zugleich. Die Kinogeschichte ist vollgepackt mit gescheiterten Versuchen, historische Ereignisse darzustellen. Buchmann: Godard spricht dies auch als Fantasie an. Die Täterperspektive auf die routinemäßige Vernichtung misshandelter Körper durfte nicht existieren, somit gibt es keine gültige Darstellung davon. Die (Re-)Produktion und (Re-)Prä- sentation strukturell unmöglicher Bilder, die von Opfern gemacht wurden und Opfer darstellen, wird ein weiteres Mal verunmöglicht. Gal: Dies erinnert an Dori Laubs Behauptung, die Shoah sei aufgrund des Versuchs, die Möglichkeit des Zeugens von Innen und Außen zu zerstören, ein Ereignis ohne Zeugnis. Als ich während meinen Recherchen für Nacht und Nebel mit Michael Goldman-Gilad ein Interview führte, erzählte er mir, er wäre als sehr junger Mann in Auschwitz beauftragt gewesen, die Fußwege mit menschlichen Ascheresten zu streuen, damit man im Winter nicht auf dem Eis ausrutschte. Als er den Aschenberg betrachtete, so erzählte er mir, versuchte er nachzuvollziehen, aus wie vielen Men- schen er sich zusammensetzte. Später sagte er, der Milchkrug, in dem Eichmanns Asche aufbewahrt wurde, wäre weniger als halbvoll gewesen. Ein menschlicher Kör- per erzeugt etwa vierhundert Gramm Asche. Das ist nicht viel. Es war Goldman- Gilad selbst, der Eichmanns Asche in das Mittelmeer schüttete, um jede Spur des Körpers zu beseitigen. Jene Nacht kann in Bezug auf das technische Verfahren als symbolische Handlung der Shoah betrachtet werden, die am Körper einer einzigen Person verübt wurde. Zuerst änderte der Staat das Gesetz, um die Todesstrafe einzu- führen, dann wurde nach dem Prozess die Technologie zur Leichenverbrennung angewandt Denn im Judentum wird die Leichenverbrennung nicht praktiziert. Zu- letzt wurden die Überreste des Körpers vernichtet. Es gibt verschiedene Versionen der Ursprungsgeschichte des Ofens, der für die Einäscherung von Eichmanns Körper verwendet wurde. Laut einer Version wurde der Ofen von der israelischen Betonfirma Nesher bereitgestellt; der Name bedeutet Adler. Eine andere Version besagt sogar, der Ofen käme aus Deutschland. Für den Film wählte ich die Version über den Dreizehnjährigen, der in einer Ofenfabrik in Israel arbeitete. Er wurde beauftragt, den Ofen zu bauen, wobei ihm erzählt wurde, er sei für die Verbrennung von Fischknochen vorgesehen. Eigentümer dieser Fabrik war Amichai Paglin, ein ehemaliges Mitglied der zionistischen Paramilitärorganisa- tion Irgun, der für seine Beteiligung an etlichen terroristischen Angriffen gegen das britische Mandat bekannt war. Paglin war 1972 auch am illegalen Waffenschmuggel mit einer rechtsradikalen jüdischen Organisation beteiligt, die darauf abzielte, einen Terroranschlag in Libyen als Vergeltung für das Massaker bei den Olympischen Sommerspielen in München in jenem Jahr auszuüben. Es gibt ein kleines Irgun museum, das nach Paglin benannt wurde. Das Museum wurde auf dem Areal von Manshiya erbaut, eine palästinensische Nachbarschaft von Jaffa, die 1948 zerstört wurde.

1 Claude Lanzmann, The Patagonian Hare. A Memoir, aus dem Französischen ins Englische von Frank Wynne, London 2012, 898.

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Buchmann: Deine Bemerkungen enthüllen bereits den Kern deines Projekts beziehungsweise deiner Arbeitsmethode, nämlich die Zusammenführung unterschiedlicher Perspektiven, die unter anderem dazu dient, das Täter-Opfer- Verhältnis zu verschieben. Dieser Ansatz entspricht auch Michael Rothbergs Konzept der „multidirektionalen Erinnerung“, das sich gegen die Konkurrenz unterschiedlicher Erinnerungen richtet, die für die Konstitution nationaler Identitäten und sozialer Gruppen entscheidend sind. Dies wirft mehrere Fragen auf: Wie kann man/ frau die Perspektiven der Anderen in die eigene Selbstwahr- nehmung, in das eigene Selbstbewusstsein integrieren? Wie kann man/frau die Erinnerungen Anderer nachvollziehen? Und inwiefern kann man die Shoah in die Kolonialgeschichte einbetten? Ich teile die Einschätzung, dass es keine Rela- tivierung der Spezifizität der Shoah bedeutet, wenn sie auf das längerfristige historische Erbe von Unterdrückung bezogen wird; eine dekoloniale Leseart kann vielmehr bei der Kontextualisierung der Shoah behilflich sein. Gal: Das Argument gegen die Relativierung der Shoah birgt eben dieses Element der Konkurrenz. Im Wesentlichen ist das ein Anspruch auf die schlimmste und größte Katastrophe und bedeutet demzufolge, dass alle anderen Formen der staatlichen Ge- walt tolerierbar seien. Dieser Status hat dem Staat Israel die Berechtigung zur Aus- übung andauernder Gewalt und Entrechtung gegen die PalästinenserInnen verlie- hen. Also gibt es eine brutale und zyklische Instrumentalisierung der Shoah und der diesbezüglichen Erinnerung. Es hat immer unter der Menschheit Heterogenität gegeben, doch wenn der Nationalstaat eine homogene Identität verhängt, werden manche Narrative zugunsten anderer unterdrückt. Deswegen ist multidirektionale Erinnerung als politisches Konzept sehr wichtig. Dadurch wird das historische Nar- rativ abgekoppelt von Macht, vom Nationalstaat und von jenen Formen der Darstel- lung, die einer nationalen Agenda dienen. Buchmann: Für mich ist es aus einer linken deutschen Perspektive schwierig, die Shoah zu relativieren. Obwohl ich den Deutschen nicht das Privileg erteilen möchte, in ihren genozidalen Handlungen einzigartige Pioniere zu sein, spielt dennoch die Anerkennung des industriellen, von staatlicher Seite organisierten Massenmords eine wichtige Rolle in meinem Denken über Deutschlands historische Verantwortung gegenüber den Opfern des NS-Terrors. Gal: Jedes historische Trauma ist einzigartig und muss gegenüber jenen, die darunter gelitten haben oder immer noch darunter leiden, als solches anerkannt werden. Es geht hier nicht um Vergleiche, sondern um Anerkennung. Die TäterInnen sind auch nicht von Traumata befreit und das sollte meines Erachtens auch anerkannt werden. Es gibt bei Traumata keine moralische Dimension. Wenn deutsche Soldaten als Folge des Zweiten Weltkriegs Traumata erlitten, dann ist das ein echtes Trauma – es ist ein Trauma, das in der deutschen Gesellschaft existiert. Es ist eben ein anderes Trauma als das, was in der israelischen Gesellschaft existiert, und anders als das, was in der palästinensischen Gesellschaft existiert. Während wie hier sprechen, leiden die PalästinenserInnen übrigens immer noch aufgrund von andauernder staatlicher Gewalt und Entrechtung. Buchmann: Ich verstehe deinen Appell für einen multiperspektivischen Zugang im Kontext jüngster historischer Forschungen sowie Reflektionen über die nationalisti- sche Instrumentalisierung der Shoah für rassistische Zwecke. Um zu Godards Fan- tasie zurückzukehren: Ermöglichen es deine filmischen Mittel uns, dem Publikum, aus der bisherigen Wahrnehmung herausfallende Perspektiven einzunehmen? Gal: Ich versuche, den Binarismus zwischen Opfer und TäterInnen zu destabilisie- ren, um dadurch eine Diskussion über zuvor unbemerkte Perspektiven zu ermögli-

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chen. So sind beispielsweise sowohl das echte Gefängnis, wo Eichmann inhaftiert war und hingerichtet wurde, und der Drehort für die Gefängnisszenen in Nacht und Nebel sogenannte Tegart-Forts. Diese Anstalten wurden nach Charles Tegart benannt, einem britischen Kolonialpolizisten in Indien und Experten in Aufstands bekämpfung gegen indigene Völker. Tegart wurde nach dem arabischen Aufstand gegen die britische Kolonialherrschaft in Palästina 1936 infolge der Liberalisierung der Einwanderungspolitik für Jüdinnen und Juden nach Palästina geschickt, um den Aufstand zu unterdrücken. Er empfahl die Konstruktion militarisierter Festun- gen um die Aufstandsbekämpfer zu schützen. Nach der Gründung des israelischen Staats im Jahre 1948 wurden diese Festungen in Polizeistationen und Gefängnisse umgewandelt, von denen manche heute noch in Betrieb sind.

Tegart Fort Abu Ghosh, Drehort von Night and Fog, 2011, Fotograf: Michal Baror

Buchmann: Mit anderen Worten verknüpfst du also deine Fallstudie – die spur- lose Vernichtung von Eichmanns Aschereste – mit dem historischen Kontext des Kolonialismus und seine Folgen für die PalästinenserInnen? Impliziert dies auch eine Rehistorisierung der Erinnerung an die Shoah? Gal: Indem ich auf den architektonischen Kontext des ursprünglichen Gefängnisses und des Drehorts hinwies, konnte ich die Eichmann-Affäre in den Kontext des Ko- lonialismus verorten um dadurch aufzeigen, dass diese zwei Geschichten, die Nach- wirkungen der Shoah und ihre Konsequenzen für die PalästinenserInnen, miteinander so verstrickt sind, dass sie nicht mehr aufgetrennt werden können. Dies wird auch gegen Ende des Films deutlich, als das Polizeiboot auf der Rückkehr nach der Streuung von Eichmanns Aschereste auf zwei palästinensische Fischer aus Jaffa stoßt, die aufs Meer rausfahren. Die Fischer beobachten die Polizisten und fragen sich misstrauisch, was sie auf dem Meer treiben. In diesem Moment starren sich beide Geschichten direkt in die Augen, wie es der israelische Dichter Avot Yeshurun sprachmächtig formulierte. Buchmann: Die Architektur ist auch für den Eichmann-Prozess von wesentli- cher Bedeutung, wie aus dem Einleitungstext zu Deinem Film hervorgeht. In ihrem Buch Eichmann in Jerusalem. Ein Bericht von der Banalität des Bösen beschreibt Hannah Arendt den Gerichtsaal als Theater – ein Umstand, der im Büh-

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nenbild von Nacht und Nebel Resonanz findet. Dort evoziert es einen Verfrem- dungseffekt, der an Bertolt Brechts Auffassung erinnert, dass die Darstellung immer Fiktion voraussetze. Arendt zufolge repräsentieren die historischen Zeu- gInnen, jene Opfer, die vor Gericht ausgesagt haben, zugleich das Publikum in einem Prozess, den David Ben-Gurion, der damalige israelische Ministerpräsi- dent, als mediales Ereignis gestaltet sehen wollte. Du hast dich konzeptionell für multidirektionale Erinnerung und Empathie seitens des Publikums entschieden: Könnte das von dir gewählte Setting möglicherweise aber auch zu einer größeren Distanzierung gegenüber der historischen Aufarbeitung der NS-Verbrechen füh- ren? Gal: Der Gerichtsaal, der für den Eichmann-Prozess Verwendung fand, war tatsäch- lich ein Theater und wird bis heute als solches benützt. Die Theatralität war also von Anfang an gegeben. Dies erinnert an Arendts Konzept von SchauspielerInnen/ ZuschauerInnen, an den Konflikt zwischen dem reflexiven Urteil der Schauspie lerInnen und dem philosophischen Urteil der ZuschauerInnen. In der Trilogie habe ich mich dauernd zwischen umfassenden kinematographischen Methoden und einer eher theatralischen Kulisse hin und her bewegt, und mich manchmal sogar dokumentarischer Mittel bedient, so dass das Publikum zuerst in den Film reinge- zogen und schließlich zu einer kritischen Position rausgeschoben wird. Somit bewegt sich das Publikum zwischen den Positionen der SchauspielerInnen und der ZuschauerInnen. Wenn Du fragst, ob meine Methodologie eine größere Distanz zur historischen Aufarbeitung der NS-Verbrechen erzeugen könnte, meinst Du die Möglichkeit der Erlösung? Buchmann: Nein, ich will hier nicht von Erlösung im Sinne einer Relativierung von Schuld und Verantwortung sprechen. Was bedeutet es aber, eine Art Empa- thie für die TäterInnen zu entwickeln? Gal: Dieses Spiel des Perspektivenwechsels zielt darauf ab, das Publikum von Dicho- tomien zu befreien und das menschliche Verhalten unter extremen Bedingungen zu untersuchen, oder wenigstens solche extremen Perspektiven anzudeuten. Meines Erachtens ist das Verzeihen ebenfalls eine wichtige Perspektive. Buchmann: Das ist in der Tat der radikale Kern deiner Arbeit, so auch deines zweiten Films, Wie aus der Ferne, in dem du eine Begegnung zwischen Albert Speer und Simon Wiesenthal konstruierst, einen Dialog zwischen Täter und Opfer, oder zwischen unterschiedlichen Opfergruppen. Dies ist eine Form, in der jede spezifische Erinnerung in ein gegenseitig wirksames Wechselspiel gebracht werden kann. Gal: Der Fall Wiesenthal ist interessant mit Bezug auf die Frage der Möglichkeit des Verzeihens. Indem er sein Leben der Aufgabe gewidmet hat, die NS-TäterInnen zur Rechenschaft zu ziehen, ist er ihnen sehr nahegekommen, bis er schließlich durch seine enge Beziehung zu Speer eine vermeintliche ethische Grenze zwischen Opfern und TäterInnen übertreten hat. Buchmann: Basiert deine Inszenierung dieser Begegnung einmal mehr auf einer Interpretation von Rothbergs Konzept? Gal: Ich habe Rothbergs Multidirektionale Erinnerung erst nach diesen Filmarbeiten gelesen, aber es ist – wie ich bereits erwähnt habe – tatsächlich ein äußerst nützliches Konzept, um die Beziehung zwischen Speer und Wiesenthal zu thematisieren. Bei Wie aus der Ferne und Nacht und Nebel ging es mir um den Versuch, die Nachwir- kung der Shoah und die Erinnerung an dieses Ereignis auf eine komplexere Weise zu repräsentieren, als es die filmischen Darstellungen taten, die ich zuvor in meinem Umfeld wahrnahm. Eines der Konzepte, die ich dabei im Hinterkopf hatte, war

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Primo Levis Begriff der „grauen Zone“, der den Zusammenbruch einer klaren Di- chotomie zwischen dem Guten und dem Bösen in der Realität der Konzentrations- lager beschreibt. Insbesondere in Wie aus der Ferne ging es mir um die Hinterfra- gung solcher Repräsentationen und der Kräfte, die dahinterstanden, ob national oder ökonomisch. Buchmann: Ist dies auch der Grund dafür, dass du in Wie aus der Ferne aus Lud- wig Wittgensteins The Brown Book zitiert hast? Ich frage deshalb, weil dieser Text sowohl für das Prozedere wie auch den Inhalt des Films zentral erscheint, ver- kompliziert er doch die Erinnerung als Moment der Gewissheit. Gal: Ich habe Teile des Textes als Begleitkommentar verwendet, wodurch er im Film als Erzähler fungiert. Die Stimme verleiht dem Text zudem eine philosophische Metaebene. Wittgensteins Fragestellungen bringen den Kern dieser Trilogie zum Ausdruck. Diese untersucht, wie die Vergangenheit dargestellt werden kann und wie diese Darstellung von anderen wahrgenommen wird. Stammen diese Bilder aus einer Erinnerung oder aus einem Traum? Diese Frage ist eng verwandt mit einem Essay von Noit Banai über halluzinatorisches Kino und die Arten von Bilder, die das Publikum während des Zuschauens im Verhältnis zu ihren Erwartungen rezipiert. Wittgenstein hat folgende Übung vorgeschlagen: „Consider this example: What is the difference between a memory image, an image that comes with expectation, and say, an image of a daydream. You may be inclined to answer, ‚There is an intrinsic difference between the images.‘ – Did you notice that difference, or did you only say there was one because you thought there must be one? […] I will examine one particular case, that of a feeling which I shall roughly describe by saying it is the feeling of ‚long, long ago.‘ These words and the tone in which they are said are a gesture of pastness. But I will specify the experience which I mean still further by saying that it is that corresponding to a certain tune (Davids bündlertänze – ‚Wie aus weiter Ferne‘). I’m imagining this tune played with the right expression and thus recorded, say, for a gramophone. Then this is the most elaborate and exact expression of a feeling of pastness which I can imagine.“2 Die hier angesprochene „Geste der Gewesenheit“ bezieht sich nicht nur auf die Wortwahl, sondern auch auf deren Aussprache, beziehungsweise im filmischen Zu- sammenhang auf die Weise, in welcher die Materie dargestellt wird, inklusive alle formellen Entscheidungen, die ich als Regisseur treffe. Als wir die Tonspur aufgenommen haben, bat ich den Pianisten, das Stück von Robert Schumann viermal zu spielen, jedes Mal anders. Bei jedem Mal sollte er probieren, dieses Gefühl der Gewe- senheit zu übertragen. Buchmann: Wittgensteins Konzept der Wiederholung setzt voraus, dass man/ frau dieses Gewesene durcharbeitet; somit erinnert es uns an ein zentrales Kon- zept der Psychoanalyse; bezeichnenderweise differenziert Wittgenstein zwischen einem Gefühl des Gewesenen und dem Ausdruck eines Gefühls des Gewesenen. Was genau bedeutet dieser Unterschied für dich? Gal: Für mich bezieht sich dieser Ausschnitt des Wittgenstein-Textes im Kontext des Films auf die Zusammenarbeit mit den SchauspielerInnen. Letztere bewegen sich zwischen Gefühlen und Gefühlsausdrücken. Manche SchauspielerInnen versuchen ernsthaft, sich so zu fühlen als sei die Situation echt, um sich auszudrücken, während

2 Ludwig Wittgenstein, The Blue and Brown Books. Preliminary Studies for the „Philosophical Investigations“, New York 1965, 182-184.

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andere sich durch eine rationale Analyse der Situation der jeweiligen Figuren in einer Szene ausdrücken. Buchmann: Es fiel mir auf, dass es eine konzeptionelle Kluft gibt zwischen der Weise, wie die SchauspielerInnen ihre Rollen spielen und dem Gesagten – eine Kluft, die sich niemals schließt. Mit Blick auf Wittgensteins Differenzierung zwischen dem Gefühl des Gewesenen und dem Ausdruck dieses Gefühls betrachtet, stellt sich die Frage, ob sich diese Kluft auch auf die Wahrnehmung der Figuren bezieht, also sowohl auf die der konkreten SchauspielerInnen und als auch auf die durch sie allegorisierten historischen Kontexte. Was heißt das zum Beispiel für den Bühnenbildner, Herr Kuck, der zu Anfang von Wie aus der Ferne mit Wie- senthal und Speer kommuniziert? Gal: Herr Kuck sieht das gesamte Ereignis von oben, er ist der Erzähler. Dies bezieht sich auf die Idee der Abwechslung zwischen der Innenperspektive eines Modells und den Blick auf einem Modell von oben oder aus der Ferne. Der Film endet, als er gerade das Modell vom Haus Wittgenstein fertiggestellt hat und unmittelbar nachdem Speer und Wiesenthal im echten Haus in Wien rumgeirrt sind. Zuvor sehen wir auch die zwei Protagonisten auf Herr Kucks Monitor der Überwachungskameras. Seine Präsenz ist ominös.

Filmstill aus Dani Gals As from Afar, 2013, Kamera: Emre Erkmen

Buchmann: Ist der Erzähler derjenige, der sich die dargestellte Geschichte vor- stellt? Mit anderen Worten, ist er der derjenige, der die Geschichte beziehungsweise die Darstellung der Geschichte in eine mehr oder weniger subjektive Erzäh- lung umwandelt? Gal: Vielleicht ergibt sich die Antwort zu dieser Frage in der ersten Szene, als Herr Kuck Speer erzählt, dass er das Modell vom Konzentrationslager Mauthausen nicht anhand von Bauplänen, sondern aufgrund seiner eigenen Erinnerung baute. Jedoch erfahren wir nie, wann und weswegen er dort war; womöglich war er das als Häftling. Buchmann: Später gehen Wiesenthal und Speer durch ein Filmstudio, also könn- te der Film auch als Wiedergabe von Kucks Perspektive gelesen werden. Gal: Die Eröffnungsszene in Wie aus der Ferne nimmt die Perspektive eines Zugs ein, der in einer Winternacht in ein Konzentrationslager einfährt. Diese Szene wurde durch eine ikonische Aufnahme in Lanzmanns Film Shoah inspiriert; es handelt sich dabei um die Perspektive eines Zugs, der in Auschwitz-Birkenau einfährt.

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Mir ist gedämmert, dass diese Szene schließlich fälschlicherweise als Opferperspek- tive aufgefasst wurde. Tatsächlich konnte keines der Opfer diese Perspektive einge- nommen haben, weil sie alle in Viehwaggons mit eingeschränktem oder gar keinem Blick nach draußen eingesperrt waren. Buchmann: Handelt es sich somit um die Perspektive der TäterInnen? Du zitierst hier auf visueller Ebene eine sogenannte Ikone des Horrors, die sich längst dem Kollektivgedächtnis eingeprägt hat. Gal: Es könnte die Perspektive der TäterInnen sein, doch wird auch diese Auffas- sung in Shoah in Frage gestellt, als Lanzmann mit einem Lokführer der Bahnlinie nach Treblinka ein Interview führt, der behauptet, er hätte die Waggons nicht von vorne gezogen, sondern von hinten geschoben, also war dies nicht mal die Perspek- tive des Lokführers. Es ist eine Erfindung, die als Darstellung des Eintritts in den Schrecken ikonisch geworden ist. Man findet im Internet viele vergleichbare Bilder in Bezug auf die Geschichte der Konzentrationslager. Diese filmische Konstruktion der Erinnerung brachte mich dann auf die Idee, das Mauthausen-Modell als Requi- sit für meinen Film zu verwenden. Die Skulptur erinnert an ein Miniaturmodell der Tore von Mauthausen, doch bei näherer Betrachtung erkennt man, dass es lediglich eine Filmkulisse in Miniatur für eine Nachtszene darstellt, inklusive einer Mini kamera auf den Gleisen, wie in der Produktionsaufnahme von Alain Resnais Nuit et brouillard. Wieder einmal bat ich das Publikum, sich zwischen den Perspektiven von oben und von innendrin zu bewegen. Als ich den Film zusammen mit der Skulptur zeigte, habe ich immer darauf geachtet, dass die BesucherInnen das Modell sofort vor Augen hatten, als sie aus dem Vorführraum austraten. So bewegten sie sich von der Position mit Blick auf die Protagonisten, die das Modell von oben und aus der Ferne betrachteten, zur Perspektive der Protagonisten selber.

Modell für das Filmset des Konzentrationslagers Mauthausen (rekonstruiert aus Herrn Kucks Erinnerung), aus As from Afar, 2013, Dani Gal, Mixed Media, 180 × 500 × 145 cm, 2013

Buchmann: Dies ist ein sehr interessanter Punkt. Die Trilogie ist in den Prozede- ren und Mechanismen der kinematographischen Erinnerung verwurzelt, welche die historische Erzählung als etwas verorten, die von Vorstellung und Projektion nicht entkoppelt werden kann; als solche fungieren sie zugleich als objektivierte Rahmungen. Gal: Mich interessiert, wie das Kino unsere Erinnerung an historische Ereignisse formt – Ereignisse, an die wir uns hauptsächlich durch filmische Konstruktionen erinnern. Die meisten Menschen, die eine filmische Darstellung eines historischen Ereignisses betrachten, haben dieses Ereignis nicht selbst erlebt, doch selbst die, die es erlebt haben, haben es gut möglich nicht so erlebt, wie es dargestellt wird. Hier geht es wieder mal um diese Bewegung zwischen oben und innen. Wenn man kri- tisch über einen Film spricht, der ein historisches Ereignis wie die Shoah darstellt,

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Filmstills aus Dani Gals As from Afar, 2013, Kamera: Emre Erkmen

kommt immer wieder die Frage der Authentizität auf: Wie wahrheitsgetreu ist die filmische Darstellung des historischen Ereignisses? Ich würde die Frage gerne auch umgekehrt stellen: Wie wahr erscheint uns das Ereignis? Ich habe das Ereignis stets bloß durch Repräsentationen erlebt, und diese sind immer subjektiv und werden daher durch kulturellen Ballast und kulturelle Filter beeinflusst. Das Prozedere, einen auf historische Ereignisse basierenden Film zu drehen, ist an und für sich immer ein Prozedere der Verzerrung. Buchmann: Findet dies eine Resonanz in der Dialektik zwischen den Innen- und Außenperspektiven in deinem Film, da wir die Szene von oben, von außen und von innen betrachten? Die Wahrnehmung wird zugleich einer labyrinthischen Dissoziation unterworfen, die in dem Moment beginnt, als die zwei Männer das Haus Wittgenstein betreten. Ihre Bewegungen erscheinen mir als Allegorie auf die Desorientierung von Zeit und Raum. Gal: Sie sind gefangen und wissen nicht, wo der Ausweg liegt. Buchmann: Ich fand die Art, in welcher die Fenster gefilmt wurden, unheimlich. Denn sie verschärft das Gefühl der Desorientierung und evoziert den Eindruck des Eingesperrtseins, als wäre das Außen ein Phantasma und als wären die zwei Protagonisten hierin gefangen.

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Gal: Ich habe sie in das Haus versetzt und dann gefilmt, wie sie sich darin verirrten, als wären sie in einem Sprachlabyrinth gefangen. Dies reflektiert direkt die Komple- xität ihres Dialogs. Es ist ebenso eine weiterführende Anspielung auf Wittgensteins architektonische Metaphern der Sprache. Wittgenstein kann aber selbst sehr herme- tisch und manchmal unverständlich sein. Buchmann: Diese Anmerkung ist interessant. Wittgenstein wird ja als einer der Protagonisten des logischen Positivismus betrachtet, dessen analytische Sprach- philosophie ein wesentliches Fundament für den Versuch der frühen linguisti- schen konzeptionellen Kunst darstellte, eine neue, transparente Ontologie der Kunst jenseits von formalistischen Konzeptionen der Malerei und Skulptur zu etablieren. Gal: Der letzte Teil des Begleitkommentars stammt ebenfalls von Wittgensteins Text: „I am inclined to suggest to you to put the expression of our experience in place of the experience.“3 Dies fungiert als Kommentar zur Inszenierung, da die Schau- spielerInnen nicht über die Erfahrung selbst verfügen, jedoch schon über die Fähig- keit, diese zum Ausdruck zu bringen. Buchmann: Die Aufführung selbst verändert die Weise, in welcher die Erinne- rung erlebt wird … Gal: Wittgenstein sagt weiter: „‚But these two aren’t the same‘. This is certainly true, at least in the sense in which it is true to say that a railway and a railway accident aren’t the same thing.“4 Natürlich sind sie nicht gleich, wieso stellt er also diese Frage? Im Kontext des Films wird das Publikum zurück zum Anfang katapultiert, zur Per- spektive des Zugs und zur Diskussion der ersten Szene über die Bahngleise, die bei- gefügt wurden, weil das Modell für einen Hollywoodfilm in Auftrag gegeben wurde, und daher braucht es Bahngleise, um als Darstellung eines Konzentrationslagers Geltung zu erlangen. Mauthausen hatte keine Bahngleise. Buchmann: Das ist ein interessanter Punkt. Ich sehe eine merkwürdige Analogie zwischen den Bahngleisen und der Fenstergestaltung im Haus Wittgenstein, die den fiktiven Besuch Speers und Wiesenthals mit ihrem Spaziergang entlang der Straßenbahngleise verbindet.

Filmstill aus Dani Gals As from Afar, 2013, Kamera: Emre Erkmen

3 Wittgenstein, The Blue and Brown Books, 184. 4 Wittgenstein, The Blue and Brown Books, 184.

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Gal: Diese Straßenspaziergänge wurden auf der Tonbühne der Bavaria Filmstudios gedreht. Das ist eine künstliche deutsche Stadt, die nur aus Fassaden besteht. Ich wollte diese Stadt als künstliche darstellen. Es ist fast, als ob die Protagonisten durch eine tote europäische Stadt spazieren. Ich wollte das Gefühl der entleerten Häuser vermitteln – die Kluft, die nach einem Genozid übrigbleibt. Selbstverständlich wollte ich auch, dass sie innerhalb eines Modells spazieren. Während der ersten Szene, im Atelier des Modellherstellers, erzählt Speer die historisch akkurate Anekdote, dass er einmal für [Hermann Wilhelm] Görings künftigen Palast in Berlin eine 1:1-Fassa- de errichtete – ein Gebäude, das schließlich nicht gebaut wurde. Während er diese Geschichte erzählt, sieht ihn das Publikum durch die Rückseite des Mauthausen modells, die sich somit als reine Fassade entpuppt. Buchmann: Es gibt auch ein visuelles Zitat auf Liliana Cavanis Der Nachtportier, einen Film, der von der sadomasochistischen Beziehung zwischen einer ehemaligen Konzentrationslagerinsassin und einem ehemaligen Nazitäter handelt. Kann man diesen Verweis als Kommentar über die Beziehung oder die Interaktion zwischen Wiesenthal und Speer verstehen? Gal: Ich dachte aus verschiedenen Gründen an den Film Nachtportier. Die sadoma- sochistische Liebesaffäre zwischen dem SS-Offizier und der jüdischen Frau begann in Mauthausen, und die zwei Figuren begegneten sich Jahre später wieder in Wien. Wiesenthal war Häftling in Mauthausen und Speer hat angeblich die Konstruktion dieses Lagers initiiert; später trafen sich die beiden in Wien. Die Dynamik zwischen meinen Protagonisten hat eine psychologische Dimension mit gewissen sadomasochistischen Zügen. Das Opfer und der Täter sind gegenseitig voneinander angezo- gen, weil sich beide durch den Kontakt Erlösung erhoffen. Gleichzeitig nützen sie sich gegenseitig für ihre eigenen Zwecke aus und verhalten sich misstrauisch zuein- ander. Als ich den Briefwechsel zwischen Wiesenthal und Speer las, habe ich ver- standen, dass die beiden aus unterschiedlichen Gründen enge Freunde geworden sind, aber es ist mir immer noch nicht klar, wie authentisch diese Freundschaft war. Buchmann: Die zwei sprechen sogar über Hitlers höllischen Hass gegenüber jü- dischen Menschen, die sie mit seiner Begegnung mit einer jüdischen Sexarbeiterin in Verbindung bringen, von der er sich mit Syphilis angesteckt haben soll. Gal: Das ist eine der Fragen, die Wiesenthal in seinem ersten Brief an Speer stellt. Einerseits ist das richtig bizarr, wiederum aber typisch für eine exzentrische, raue und äußerst direkte Figur wie Wiesenthal. Es ist eine seltsame Frage, weil es klingt,

Filmstill aus Dani Gals As from Afar, 2013, Kamera: Emre Erkmen

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als ob er das Ausmaß des Verbrechens der Shoah sowie die gesellschaftliche Akzep- tanz des Genozids mindert, als hätte Hitler jüdische Leute nur aus irgendeinem per- sönlichen, kindischen Grund gehasst. Buchmann: Deine Entscheidung, die Begegnung in Wien zu verorten, erscheint also ausschlaggebend. Nach dem Krieg wurde Wiesenthal in Österreich nicht re- spektiert, da das Land seine Verantwortung für seine Verstrickung in die NS-Ver- brechen leugnete. Das thematisierst du auch in deinem Film, so etwa, wenn wir die Zeitungsausgabe in den Händen der Wiesenthal-Figur sehen, in der wir lesen können, Mauthausen sei Speers Idee gewesen. Tatsächlich wurde diese Tatsache erst Jahrzehnte nach dem Krieg aufgedeckt, da Speer lange – mithilfe der deutschen Geschichtsschreibung – die Lüge aufrechthielt, er hätte nichts von den Konzentrationslagern gewusst. In Deinem fiktionalisierten Narrativ will Speer explizit als Nazi wahrgenommen werden, der seine Verbrechen gestehen will, doch wird er genau als jener professionelle Lügner dargestellt, als welchen ihn Wiesenthal verdächtigt. Schließlich offenbart er nicht das, was er weiß. Dies schafft eine starke Spannung zwischen dem Ungesagten und dem Sagbaren, eine Spannung, die in der latenten sadomasochistischen Beziehung zwischen den zwei Figuren zum Ausdruck kommt. Gal: Der Briefverkehr vermittelt den Eindruck, dass Wiesenthal an die Aufrichtig- keit von Speers Buße glauben wollte, und dass letzterer tatsächlich um Verzeihung bat. Es ist eine äußerst interessante Aufgabe, dem Täter zu verzeihen. Buchmann: Zugleich hat man den Eindruck, als würden die zwei Männer einer gemeinsamen Wahrheit aus dem Weg gehen; entsprechend offenbart sich die Ver- arbeitung und Rehabilitierung in einem hoffnungslosen Labyrinth aus Anspie- lungen und Verschiebungen. Wie ist Verzeihen unter diesen Umständen mög- lich? Welche Perspektive entwickelst du auf die Umsetzbarkeit des Verzeihens? Gal: Wir werden nie ihre wahren Motivationen kennen, aber ich glaube tatsächlich, dass sich diese zum Teil um eine aufrichtige Suche nach Möglichkeiten des Verzei- hens drehten. Auch, wenn es hoffnungslos erscheinen mag, ist es für mich interessanter, diese Fallstudie als Möglichkeit anzugehen, sich über den Umweg der Ver- gangenheit Gedanken über Gegenwart und Zukunft zu machen. Es geht hier nicht bloß darum, den anderen zu verzeihen, sondern auch, sich selbst zu verzeihen, ob jetzt die Rede von Speer ist, der Verbrechen gegen die Menschheit begangen hat, oder Wiesenthal, der mit der Schuld des Überlebenden rang. Natürlich spielte Eigeninteresse hier auch eine große Rolle, also versuchten beide Protagonisten, sich gegenseitig zugunsten ihres eigenen Vermächtnisses auszunutzen. Dies wird in der Szene im Kaffeehaus thematisiert. Beide Figuren sind alt und machen sich Gedan- ken, wie sie zukünftig erinnert werden. Wiesenthal bietet Speer an, ihm bei den schwierigen Teilen seines Buchmanuskripts zu helfen. Seinerseits will Speer bei seinem Verlag ein gutes Wort über Wiesenthal einlegen. Also helfen sie einander auf eine Art und Weise, die die normativen Grenzen des Täter-Opfer-Verhältnisses durchquert. Buchmann: Ich habe diese Szene als Ausdruck gegenseitiger Abhängigkeit inter- pretiert. Speer wäscht sprichwörtlich seine Hände in der Unschuld eines Men- schen, der seine Schuld gestanden hat, während das Publikum bei Wiesenthal die Schwierigkeit erkennt, mit seinen eigenen Erinnerungen zu überleben. Für mich ist das zwangsläufige Versagen ihres Gesprächs die provokanteste Herausforde- rung dieser Vorstellung des Verzeihens. Gal: Ein Gespräch zu führen, insbesondere dabei zuzuhören, ist meiner Meinung nach ein integraler Bestandteil des Versöhnungsprozesses.

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Buchmann: Missbrauchen sie sich aber nicht auch gegenseitig? Aber noch wich- tiger: Die Wahrheit, genauso wie die Lügen und Verdrängungen, liegt zwischen ihnen und in der Art, wie sie miteinander reden. Rekurriert diese Ethik der ge- genseitigen, konfliktbeladenen Zugewandtheit, die deinem kinematographischen Konzept unterliegt, ebenfalls auf die Beziehung zwischen dem Film und das Pub- likum? Gal: Es hat mit dieser Idee der „verstörenden Empathie“ zu tun, die der Historiker Dominick LaCapra prägte.5 Er lehnte die volle Identifikation mit den Opfern ab und warnte auch davor: Wenn HistorikerInnen sich völlig mit den Opfern identifizieren, gibt es einen Verlust der kritischen Distanz, was wiederum zu Herablassung führen kann. Ebenso warnte LaCapra vor der vollen Objektivität durch die Aufrechterhal- tung einer objektiven, kritischen Distanz, die Position der ZuschauerInnen. Statt- dessen schlug er einen Mittelweg zwischen diesen zwei Zugängen vor, wodurch man ein „sehr empfindliches, manchmal auch angespanntes Verhältnis zwischen Empa- thie und kritischer Distanz herausarbeiten“ könnte.6 Wenn ich mit SchauspielerIn- nen arbeite und bei einer Szene Regie führe, geht es mir darum, dieses empfindliche Verhältnis zu erzeugen, auch in Bezug auf das Verhältnis zum Publikum. Es ist mir ein Anliegen, dass sich das Publikum zwischen Empathie und kritischer Distanz hin- und herbewegt. Buchmann: Wieso erscheinen nur Männer in deinen vielseitigen Reflexionen auf potenzielle Verschiebungen in Täter-Opfer-Beziehungen? Gal: In allen drei Filmen sind die Protagonisten männlich, aber ich schenke ihnen keine Bewunderung. Sie sind nicht klassische Protagonisten im Sinne von ‚Helden‘ und das Publikum identifiziert sich somit nicht auf klassische Weise mit ihnen. Diese Distanz ermöglicht einen kritischen Blick auf die Machtstrukturen der männlichen Protagonisten, die die Geschichte schreiben, und wie sie filmisch dargestellt werden. Es gibt auch ein Element des Zusammenbruchs in der Welt dieser Protagonisten. In Nacht und Nebel sagt Michael Goldman-Gilad, er habe sich bei den Ermittlungen im Falle Eichmann gefühlt, als erlebe er den Schrecken der Lager von neuem. Später, als er den Milchkrug trägt, der als Ascheurne fungiert, verrät das Schweigen der Polizis- ten ihre Unfähigkeit, ihre eigenen Emotionen zu verarbeiten. In Wie aus der Ferne sind die Figuren zuerst im Haus Wittgenstein gefangen, dann schließlich in einem Miniaturmodell des Gebäudes. Und in Weiße Stadt, als Arthur Ruppin durch eine Stadt geht, die sich plötzlich als arabisches Dorf entpuppt, ist es nicht klar, ob sich diese Szene nur in seinem Kopf abspielt. Dies geschieht, nachdem er einen ‚arischen‘ Rassenforscher trifft und erfährt, dass sich ihre Ansichten auf vielen Ebenen decken. Buchmann: Das Haus Wittgenstein, das im Dezember 1928 fertiggestellt wurde, ist insofern modern, als es aus Stein, Glas und Metall gebaut wurde. Wir haben bereits darüber gesprochen, wie deine Kamera ihr industrielles Design in ein Ge- fängnis verwandelt, was auch mit der Architektur der Konzentrationslager assoziiert werden könnte. Das Weiße des Haus Wittgenstein erinnert auf unheimliche Weise auch an die Weißenhofsiedlung in Stuttgart, die schließlich zum Schau- platz deiner Reflexionen zur historischen Rassenkunde wird. Das Weiße fungiert als offensichtlicher Referenz auf Tel Aviv – entsprechend des Titels des dritten Films deiner Trilogie. Die Farbe Weiß hat viele miteinander verwobene Bedeu- tungen und Assoziationen. Ich habe diese auch als Resonanz auf ‚Critical White- ness‘ im Feld der postkolonialen Theorie gelesen.

5 Vgl.: Dominick LaCapra, Writing History, Writing Trauma, Baltimore 2014. 6 LaCapra, Writing History, Writing Trauma, 147.

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Filmstill aus Dani Gals White City, 2018, Kamera: Itay Marom

Gal: Ja, ich habe das Wort „weiß“ aus dem Bereich der Architektur auf den Rassen- diskurs angewandt. Für die Nazis gehörte die „weiße Stadt“ nicht zu etwas in einem rassischen Sinne Weißes, sondern zur Architektur in der Levante, die sie als primitiv erachteten. Die Weißenhofsiedlung wurde um etwa die gleiche Zeit als das Haus Wittgenstein erbaut, im Jahre 1927, und es wurde eine Postkarte veröffentlicht, um dafür zu werben. Später nahmen die Nazis eben diese Postkarte und montierten Kamele, Beduinen und arabische Händler rein, um die Architektur als levantinisch und nicht deutsch zu verspotten. Die Unterschrift lautet: „1940 Stuttgart. Weissen- hofsiedlung, Araberdorf.“ Die früheste Briefmarke, die ich finden konnte, stammt aus dem Jahr 1932. Dies war eine Projektion auf die Zukunft, als ob damit gesagt werden sollte, Deutschland würde innerhalb von acht Jahren von Arabern über- nommen werden. Dies erinnert an den Diskurs der AfD und PEGIDA infolge der sogenannten Flüchtlingskrise 2015. Buchmann: Dies erinnert auch an Thilo Sarrazin. Vor seinem Ausschluss 2020 war er Mitglied der SPD. Sein Buch Deutschland schafft sich ab wurde 2010, also drei Jahre vor der Gründung der AfD, veröffentlicht. Sarrazins diskriminierende Pamphlete argumentierten auf islamophobe Weise gegen türkische und arabische BürgerInnen, indem ihnen vorgeworfen wird, sie würden sich viel schneller als die deutsche Bevölkerung fortpflanzen und jetzt schon die deutsche Gesell- schaft dominieren. Sein rassistischer rechter Diskurs ist zweifelsohne Ausdruck weißen Dominanzdenkens. Natürlich muss man sich hier vor linearen Logiken in Acht nehmen, doch dein Film erinnert das Publikum an mehr oder weniger deutliche Komplizenschaften zwischen den führenden Bauhausarchitekten wie [Ludwig] Mies van der Rohe und Walter Gropius mit dem Naziregime. Auch Le Corbusier war in dieser Hinsicht nicht unschuldig. Bevor wir auf das spezifische Verhältnis zwischen Arthur Ruppin und Hans F. K. Günther zu sprechen kommen, würde ich dich gerne noch nach deiner Perspektive auf die Rolle der modernen Architektur in und für die moderne Eugenik fragen. Gal: Die Architekturhistorikerin Fabiola López-Durán verweist auf die Verbindung zwischen Eugenik und Architektur in der Moderne, vor allem in Südamerika. Sie beschreibt, wie das eugenische Gedankengut die Architektur im frühen 20. Jahr- hundert beeinflusste, spezifisch die Vorstellung, man könne einen neuen Menschen schaffen, die Gesellschaft durch den Körper formen und sowohl den Körper wie die Gesellschaft in der Architektur beheimaten. Die Häuser in der Weißenhofsiedlung

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sind im Inneren sehr klein im Vergleich zu den Häusern, die heute gebaut werden, aber auch im Vergleich zu alten deutschen Häusern. Dies erzeugt den starken Ein- druck, dass das Innere auf die minimale Größe mit maximaler Funktionalität reduziert wird. Buchmann: Im eugenisch imaginierten Raum werden alle vermeintlich über- flüssigen Verzierungen, nichtfunktionale Aspekte des Alltags und soziale Kom munikationsformen reduziert oder beseitigt. Bemerkenswerter Weise liegt der Begegnung der Protagonisten in White City, die ja beide Eugeniker sind, auch eine andere Logik zugrunde. Gal: Bevor Ruppin in der Schlüsselszene Günthers Büro verlässt, sprechen die beiden kurz über zwei wichtige und miteinander verbundene Ereignisse, die um diese Zeit in Bezug auf Deutschland, die jüdische Welt und Palästina stattfanden. Das erste ist der antinazistische Boykott, der im Mai 1933 von der neu gegründeten Ame- rican League for the Defence of Jewish Rights ins Leben gerufen wurde. Das zweite ist das Ha’avara- oder Transferabkommen. Im August 1933 – im gleichen Monat, als Ruppin Günther besuchte – hat die NS-Regierung mit der Jewish Agency ein Ab- kommen unterschrieben, wodurch es etwa 60.000 deutsche Jüdinnen und Juden er- möglicht wurde, der NS-Verfolgung durch Emigration nach Palästina zu entkom- men und einen Teil ihres Vermögens in Form von deutschen Industriegütern zu exportieren. Dieses Abkommen diente sowohl den zionistischen Anführern in Deutschland wie der neuen NS-Regierung, die zuerst versuchte, die jüdische Bevöl- kerung zur Auswanderung zu zwingen, bevor sie die ‚Endlösung‘ initiierte. Dieses Abkommen kompensierte auch für den antinazistischen Boykott, der ein Monat nach dem antijüdischen Boykott begann. Buchmann: Wieso war Ruppin wichtig und was war seine Beziehung zur Archi- tektur? Gal: Ruppin war ein deutsch-jüdischer Soziologe und eine der Gründerväter des Zionismus. Er gründete Anfang des 20. Jahrhunderts das Palästinaamt in Jaffa und begann mit dem Kauf von Grundbesitz, der Planung der ersten Siedlungen und der Organisation der ersten Pioniergruppen. Ruppin war es auch, der Richard Kauff- mann nach Palästina brachte. Kauffmann war ein deutsch-jüdischer Architekt, der die modernistische Architektur in Palästina einführte. Er steht wohl an der Spitze jener ArchitektInnen, die den Stil populär machten, der heute mit der Vorstellung der israelischen Architektur verknüpft wird. Eine weitere Simulierung der Verbin- dung zwischen Ideologie und Architektur findet man im Film im Bühnenbild bei zwei Begegnungen – als Ruppin zuerst einen jungen jüdischen Mann vermisst und dann Günther besucht. Beide Szenen finden im selben Raum statt. Wir haben die Bühnenbilder so konstruiert, dass sie einander spiegeln, jedoch mit unterschiedlicher Beleuchtung und unterschiedlichen Requisiten. Dies soll als Déjà-vu funktio- nieren, da der gleiche Raum zehn Minuten später im Filmschnitt erscheint. Buchmann: Dieser Spiegelungseffekt erinnert an die Beziehung zwischen Wie- senthal und Speer in As From Afar. Kannst du mir sagen, ob und wie du multidirektionale Erinnerung, Empathie und Verzeihung in Bezug auf das Verhältnis zwischen Günther und Ruppin konzipiert hast? Was für eine Bedeutung hat die Realisierung der eugenischen Implikationen des Zionismus für die Opfer der Na- tionalsozialistInnen? Ich erinnere mich an dieser Stelle an Deinen Hinweis auf Primo Levis Überlegung, die NS-Ideologie hätte das gesamte geistige Klima der damaligen Zeit infiltriert. Gal: Willst du damit sagen, die NS-Ideologie hätte auch die Opfer korrumpiert? Ruppin entwickelte diese Gedanken, bevor das jüdische Volk den Nationalsozia

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Setfotos aus Dani Gals White City, 2018, Kamera: Klaus Oppermann

listInnen zum Opfer fiel. Meiner Ansicht nach hatte das mehr mit dem Nationalis- mus zu tun – mit der Tatsache, dass der Nationalstaat das Fremde, die Fremden nicht tolerieren kann, obwohl das Fremde zugleich für die Definition der Grenzen benö- tigt wird – damit meine ich alle Grenzen, nicht nur die geographischen. Die Nazis haben diese Idee bis zum Äußersten geführt. Die Vorstellungen der Eugenik und des Bionationalismus waren eben zu dieser Zeit populär. Buchmann: Darüber hege ich keinen Zweifel. Die Nazis haben Günther aufgrund seiner Vorstellung eines biologischen Nationalismus geliebt. Was deinen Film so aufschlussreich macht, ist die Vergegenwärtigung dessen, dass die Nazis die Ideen eines Zionisten übernommen haben und somit keinen Anspruch auf Originalität erheben können. Trotzdem lässt die Analogie schaudern. Gal: Alles, was Ruppin im Film sagt, ist seinen Schriften entnommen. Seine Ideen über die Herstellung von rassischen Hierarchien innerhalb des jüdischen Volkes –

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Setfoto aus Dani Gals As from Afar, 2013, Fotograf: Dani Gal

Hierarchien, die bei der Schaffung der israelischen Gesellschaft eine direkte Anwen- dung fanden – spiegelten die kolonialistischen Ausbeutungen des 19. Jahrhunderts, die ebenfalls auf Kategorien der rassischen Überlegenheit gründeten. Ruppin zufolge standen die europäischen Jüdinnen und Juden an der Spitze der Hierarchie. Hin- gegen waren beispielsweise jemenitische Jüdinnen und Juden schwarz, weshalb er ihre Immigration als LandarbeiterInnen förderte, obwohl sie in Jemen als Juweliere gearbeitet hatten. Die äthiopischen Jüdinnen und Juden betrachtete er nicht mal als jüdisch. Diese Hierarchien wirken bis heute in der israelischen Gesellschaft fort. Buchmann: Die Vorstellung einer biologisch kohärenten Bevölkerung als Basis eines Nationalstaates wäre nach Benedict Anderson eine „vorgestellte politische Gemeinschaft“, die auf lokalen Sprachgemeinschaften genauso basiert wie auf universalistischen Konzepten des Staates und rassistischer Hierarchien, das heißt auf allen diskriminatorischen Mechanismen der Ein- und Ausgrenzung. White City versetzt diese Mechanismen in eine explizit kolonialistische Perspektive – in Anbetracht der Verfassung Israels. Gal: Denken wir mal über das Ausmaß der Zerstörung nach, die während der Nakba verübt wurde, als über 400 Dörfer und Städte eliminiert und über 700.000 Palästi- nenserInnen vertrieben wurden. Denken wir an die Massaker, die Raubzüge. Das war die komplette Vernichtung einer Kultur im Namen des Fortschritts und eines modernistischen Projekts. Buchmann: Dies ist selbstverständlich ein zentrales historisches Ereignis. Der Modernismus wurde jedoch zugleich von den Nazis als Ausdruck der Entartung abgelehnt. Wie du vorhin angemerkt hast, wollten sie die Weißenhofsiedlung ab- reißen, weil diese einem ‚arabischen‘ Dorf glich. Gal: Die Nazis bauten als Antwort sogar einige Häuser im germanischen Stil. Wenn du diese Gegend besuchst: Einige Häuser in der Umgebung schauen fast lächerlich germanisch aus. Buchmann: Dieser Eklektizismus wirft auch ein bezeichnendes Licht auf die Be- ziehung zwischen Ruppin und Günther. Es scheint, als würden die Figuren ihre Ideen über die eigene Überlegenheit und die Unterlegenheit des „Fremden“ kom- binieren – ein Aspekt, der ihre Begegnung und Interaktion prägt. Ist das eine In- terpretation, die du mit deinem Film andeuten willst? Gal: Günther war damals eine der federführenden Figuren im Feld der Rassenfor- schung. Für Ruppin war dies hingegen fast eine Nebenbeschäftigung. Ich wollte diese Dynamik zwischen den beiden in dem Moment zum Ausdruck bringen, als

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Ruppin zu einem jüngeren Wissenschaftler hochschaut und ihm um seine Zustim- mung bittet. Das Spiegelkonzept wird im Film sowohl formal wie konzeptionell auf- geführt. In der ersten Szene führt Ruppin gerade eine eugenische Untersuchung bei einem jungen jüdischen Mann durch … Buchmann: Der von einem palästinensischen Schauspieler dargestellt wird … Gal: Genau, Yousef Sweid, ein palästinensischer Israeli. Im Mainstreamkino und -fernsehen spielen Israelis oft AraberInnen, meist TerroristInnen. Nur selten kommt das Umgekehrte vor. Ich kannte Yousef bereits zuvor und habe ihn darauf angespro- chen. Als indigener Mensch war ihm das Gefühl, ein Fremder im eigenen Land zu sein, sehr vertraut. Dies hat gut mit dem kurzen Satz zusammengepasst, der von seiner Figur und von Ruppin wiederholt wird: „Alles ist fremd.“7 Ich wollte auch mit dem autoreferentiellen Gedanken spielen, dass der Fremde, Ruppin, den indigenen Mann zu überzeugen versucht, in sein eigenes Land zu emigrieren. Letzterer zeigt daran aber kein Interesse. Buchmann: Diese Figur hinterfragt auch Ruppins idealistischen Pioniergeist als er erwähnt, dass viele Menschen dort den Freitod wählen. Gal: In israelischen Schulen wird uns beigebracht, dass die ersten Wellen der emi grierenden PionierInnen in einer positiven Zeit der Nationsbildung teilgenommen hätten. In Wirklichkeit war diese Zeit sehr schwierig und manche haben im rauen Klima und der rauen Landschaft nicht überlebt. Es war auch sehr schwierig, in diese Gruppen aufgenommen zu werden. Buchmann: Du benutzt eine Spiegelreflexkamera, die den Spiegeleffekt, der sich durch den gesamten Film zieht, als strukturelles Medium und als Prozedere zur Anwendung bringt. Gal: Zusätzlich zur Kamera sehen wir zum Schluss dieser Szene durch den Spiegel, wie der junge jüdische Mann den Raum verlässt. Als Günther den Raum betritt, sehen wir ihn auch durch den Spiegel. Dann gibt es die Bildsprache der Augäpfel und die Reduktion der Menschen auf das Biologische, was diese visuelle Thematik noch einmal verstärkt. Buchmann: Die Augensammlung erinnert mich an Der Sandmann, eine roman- tische Erzählung von E. T. A. Hoffmann aus dem Jahr 1816, die Bezug auf die Spannung zwischen der vormodernen Alchemie und der modernen optischen Technologie nimmt. Der narrative Stil ist von einem fortgeschrittenen und un- heimlichen Perspektivismus gekennzeichnet. Meiner Meinung nach erkennen wir diesen Moment auch in deinem Film. Ich verspüre hier eine Parallele zwischen den extremen Perspektiven, die an die Bauhaus-Fotografie erinnern und die in das kulturelle Gedächtnis eingebrannt sind, inklusive die Weise, wie das sogenannte ‚arabische‘ Dorf in deinem Film gezeigt wird. Gal: Um daran kurz anzuknüpfen: Im Film habe ich auch die erste Daimler-Wer- bung nachgestellt. Dort sehen wir ein Model, das gerade vor Le Corbusiers Haus aus einem Auto steigt. Die Daimler-Benz AG wurde 1926 in Stuttgart gegründet, ein Jahr vor dem Bau der Weißenhofsiedlung. Diese neue Architektur bot der Werbe- kampagne der Daimler-Benz AG die Möglichkeit, ihre Autos mit dem Fortschritt in Verbindung zu bringen. Buchmann: Die moderne junge Frau, die charakteristische Merkmale der (Groß-) Bourgeoisie repräsentiert, ist ein klassisches Symbol der Weimarer Republik. Die-

7 Siehe hierzu die Abbildungen in Noit Banai, Hallucinatory Cinema, Multidirectional Memory, and the Dia- logical Politics of Framing, in: Dani Gal/Mika Hayashi Ebbesen (Hg.). Elaborate Gestures of Pastness. Three Films by Dani Gal, Berlin 2021.

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Filmstills aus Dani Gals White City, 2018, Kamera: Itay Marom

ser Prototyp erscheint in deinem Film sowohl als emanzipiertes, mobiles Subjekt und als Werbeobjekt für gehobenen Lebensstil. Der Mythos vom Bauhaus als de- mokratische Ästhetik der Massen war zu diesem Zeitpunkt bereits Geschichte. Dein Film ist gekennzeichnet von einem starken Kontrast zwischen dem Bild einer luminösen, kommerziellen, feminisierten Moderne einerseits und anderer- seits dieser obskuren Kammer à la Doktor Frankenstein, in der sich die zwei Männer treffen. Gal: Genau, gotische Horrorfilme, die Hirnpräparate, die Augen … im Gegensatz zum hellen, sonnigen Tag. Buchmann: Die Basis der Moderne – Erfindung, Fortschritt und Aufklärung – erscheint bereits kontaminiert zu sein und verknüpft sich mit dunkler, protofa- schistischer Haltung. Entspricht diese Vorahnung dem Anliegen von White City, und vielleicht auch jenem der ersten zwei Filme in deiner Trilogie? Gal: Ich habe in der Trilogie durchgehend Bildsprachen aus Horrorfilmen verwendet. In As From Afar habe ich verschiedene Objekte im Studio des Modellbauers positioniert: einen Raben, ein Schädelstück, einen Gipskiefer, kleine Naziskulpturen

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Filmstill aus Dani Gals White City, 2018, Kamera: Itay Marom

und eine Pistole. Wir haben schon über die Hirnpräparate, die künstlichen Augen und andere Bilder des Todes in Weiße Stadt gesprochen. Als Günther sein Schädel- diagramm erklärt, streift er sie aus Versehen mit seiner Zigarette. In Nacht und Nebel gibt es den ominösen Milchkrug voller menschlicher Aschereste. Buchmann: Ich denke da an Sylvie Lindepergs 2011 erschienenes Buch „Nacht und Nebel“. Ein Film in der Geschichte über Alain Resnais Film aus dem Jahre 1956, insbesondere jene Kapitel, die sich mit der Rolle von Olga Wormser befassen, jener Historikerin, deren Forschung für den französischen Regisseur so wichtig war. Da die Nazis so erfolgreich die Spuren des von ihnen verursachten Massenmordes verwischten und zerstörten, wurde jedem Beweisstück und jedem Dokument, das nach dem Krieg gefunden wurde, eine profunde Bedeutung in der Rekonstruktion des Geschehenen beigemessen. Ich denke daran, weil dies eine bedeutungsvolle Ebene sein könnte, über die wir uns Gedanken machen sollten: Welche Objekte stehen uns zur Verfügung, die in der Lage sind, Aussagen über die gigantische Todesmaschinerie zu machen? Gal: Deine Frage bringt uns zurück zum Anfang des Interviews, als ich in Bezug auf meinen Film Nacht und Nebel Alain Resnais Film erwähnte. Wir haben uns über Godards Aussage unterhalten, es gäbe ein fehlendes Glied in der Darstellung, und Lanzmanns Aussage, er wolle alle möglichen Beweisstücke vernichten. Das erinnert mich an die Entscheidung der israelischen Regierung, jede Spur von Adolf Eich- mann zu vernichten, damit es für ihn nirgendwo ein Denkmal oder eine Gedächt- nisstätte geben könne. Eichmann ist jedoch alles andere als vergessen. Die Erinne- rung bedarf keiner physischen Spuren oder Denkmäler. Da ich in Jerusalem auf- wuchs, war ich von den physischen Spuren palästinensischer Häuser und Dörfer umgeben, jedoch habe ich den historischen Hintergrund dieser Bauten nie hinterfragt, bis ich älter war. Es war nicht Teil meines kulturellen Gedächtnisses, weil das der Staat nicht wollte. Buchmann: Dieser Gedanke könnte auch auf Georges Batailles Kritik der modernen Kultur bezogen werden, die seiner Darstellung zufolge eine dunkle Seite beinhaltet, eine Negativität, die den Gegenpol zum Ausschluss des Todes aus modernen Vorstellungen des Lebens darstellt, wie sie im Vitalismus der Lebensre- formbewegung verkörpert waren, nicht zuletzt auch im Kontext des Bauhaus. Michel Foucault folgend wäre dies als Erscheinung der modernen Bio-Macht zu bedenken, die sich natürlich auch mit der modernen Eugenik verknüpft. Diese

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Kontexte konfrontieren uns mit dem gewalttätigen Ausschluss des Todes im Namen des Lebens, aufgrund von Vorstellungen des gesunden, starken und hygi- enischen Körpers, aus dem ‚Krankheit‘ und ‚Schmutz‘ eliminiert werden muss- ten. Macht es für dich Sinn, die Bilder und Narrative deiner Filme mit solchen Themen zu verknüpfen? Gal: Diese Filme wollen eine Diskussion über Verzeihung in Gang bringen und es ist notwendig, über den Weg der multidirektionalen Erinnerung zu einem Verständnis von Verzeihung zu gelangen. Menschen sind unter bestimmten politischen Bedin- gungen zu extremer Gewalt fähig. Das zu verstehen ist ein Schritt in Richtung Ver- antwortung und weg von Schuld. Buchmann: Jedes Verbrechen, das im Namen eines Nationalstaates oder einer Ideologie begangen wird, muss in seinen spezifischen Bedingungen betrachtet werden, was aber nicht heißt, dass dies nicht in übergreifenden Entwicklungen und Strukturen wurzelt. Eine letzte Frage betrifft die spezifische Rolle der filmischen Erinnerung für deinen Zugang zum Verzeihen in der ‚realen‘ Welt. Gal: Filmische Erinnerung ist immer eine Darstellung eines Ereignisses. Die Grenzen zwischen unserem Verständnis des Ereignisses und seiner Darstellung durch ein anderes Medium – künstlerisch oder dokumentarisch – ist komplett verschwommen. Buchmann: Es gibt in all deinen Filmen ein pädagogisches Moment, eine be- stimmte Weise, in der uns Geschichte beigebracht wird. An Resnais Nuit et Brouillard denkend möchte ich dich fragen, ob du als Künstler Filme als ein privi- legiertes Medium der Bildung, des Umlernens im Sinne der Reeducation ver- stehst? Gal: Was meinst du mit Umlernen? Oder meinst du etwa verlernen? Buchmann: So hieß das Programm, das die Alliierten nach dem Zweiten Welt- krieg den Deutschen und ÖsterreicherInnen auferlegten, um sie in Sachen de- mokratischer Bildungsarbeit zu erziehen. In diesem Programm spielte Kultur – Literatur, Film, bildende Kunst und Musik – eine wichtige Rolle. Ich will damit nicht andeuten, dass deine Trilogie direkt auf dieses historische Projekt verweist. Dennoch erinnern mich der Stil und die Atmosphäre deiner Filme an eine ge- wisse westdeutsche Ästhetik, die vom Gedanken der Massenbildung geprägt war. Gal: Ich habe die klassische Bildsprache des Kinos und des Fernsehens in meinem Zugang zu den Dreharbeiten, der Dramatisierung und der Schaffung von Atmo- sphäre angewandt. Deshalb kommen die Szenen dem Publikum so ähnlich vor, wie du das beschreibst. Die Syntax ist aber eine andere, eine durch die das Familiäre unheimlich wird. Indem ich die Postkarten zu Beginn von White City zeigte und dann nochmal am Ende filmisch rekonstruierte, habe ich versucht, die gesamte palästi- nensisch-/israelisch-/deutsche historische Komplexität in einem Bild zusammenzu- fassen. Die ‚weiße Stadt‘ mutiert von einer unberührten Postkarte der modernen Architektur zu einer orientalistischen Verhöhnung der Nazis, die ironischerweise der Realität von Palästina vor 1948 ähnelt, diese Verbindung schlägt eine Brücke zur gegenwärtigen deutschen Islamophobie, und posiert schließlich als naive Konstruk- tion der ‚weißen Stadt‘ in Israel, die aufgrund der Vertreibung der PalästinenserIn- nen und der Zerstörung ihrer Städte und Dörfer entstanden ist. Buchmann: Dieses Bild ist offensichtlich sehr aktuell, wenn wir an die gegenwär- tigen Formen der Islamophobie denken. Es erinnert mich auch an Beatriz Colo- minas Buch Privacy and Publicity. Modern Architecture as Mass Media, in dem die Architekturtheoretikerin die Dialektik von Architektur, Postkarten und Film- streifen untersucht. Walter Benjamin folgend erscheint diese Szene zudem als

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Filmstill aus Dani Gals White City, 2018, Kamera: Itay Marom

komplexes Denkbild – eine Montage von fragmentierten oder asynchronen Erin- nerungen, das sich mit der Gegenwart überschneidet. Gal: Einer dieser Momente geschieht in Nacht und Nebel, als Goldman-Gilad beschreibt, wie er nach Hause ging, in sein Auto stieg und ins Gefängnis fuhr. Als er dort entlang der Gefängnismauern ging, erinnerte es ihn an Auschwitz, dieses Mal aber, sagte Goldman-Gilad, war es „Eichmanns Auschwitz“. Diese gesprochene Wiedererzählung überlagert jene Szene, in der das Boot mit Eichmanns Ascheresten aufs Meer aufbricht. Buchmann: Während meiner Recherchen zu deiner Trilogie bin ich auf Texte ge- stoßen, die sich mit der Delegitimierung von ZeugInnenaussagen von Überle- benden der Shoah befassten. Die Richter behaupteten, die Überlebenden seien aufgrund des Erlebten zu sehr von ihren Emotionen beeinflusst. So sehr sich deine Filme mit der ethischen Motivation des Verzeihens befassen, so sehr konfrontieren sie uns auch mit persönlichen Erinnerungen, welche die Schwierigkei- ten und Hürden dieser Motivation veranschaulichen. Deine Ästhetik und dein narrativer Umgang mit Täter-Opfer-Beziehungen bieten uns keine Lösung dieses Problems, ermöglichen uns aber eine Auseinandersetzung damit.

Filmstill aus Dani Gals White City, 2018, Kamera: Itay Marom

Sabeth Buchmann und Dani Gal: Ein Gespräch EVENT 136 S: I. M. O. N. SHOAH: INTERVENTION. METHODS. DOCUMENTATION.

Sabeth Buchmann (Berlin/Wien) ist Kunsthistorikerin und Kunstkritikerin. Sie ist Pro- fessorin für Moderne und Postmoderne Kunst an der Akademie für Bildende Künste Wien. Buchmann forscht zu konzeptuellen Werkformaten in den bildenden Künsten, in Performances, Film und neuen Medien. Publikationen (Auswahl): Denken gegen das Denken: Produktion Technologie Subjektivität bei Sol LeWitt, Yvonne Rainer and Hélio Oiticica (2007) und Hélio Oiticica and Neville D’Almeida: Block- Experiments in Cosmo coca—program in progress (2013, Koautorin), als Mitherausgeberin: Putting Rehearsals to the Test: Practices of Rehearsal in Fine Arts, Film, Theater, Theory, and Politics (2016), Film, Avantgarde, Biopolitik (2009) and Art After Conceptual Art (2006) und PoLYpeN, eine Buchreihe zu Kunstkritik und politischer Theorie (b_books, Berlin). E-Mail: [email protected]

Dani Gal, geboren in Jerusalem, lebt und arbeitet in Berlin. Seine Filme und künstleri- schen Arbeiten wurden u. a. in folgenden Museen und bei diesen Festivals präsentiert: 54. Biennale in Venedig (2011), Biennale in Istanbul (2011), New Museum New York (2012), Kunsthalle St. Gallen (2013), The Jewish Museum New York (2014), Berlinale Forum Expanded (2014), Kunsthaus Zürich (2015) Kunsthalle Wien (2015), Documenta 14 (2017), Centre Pompidou (2018), Club TransMediale Festival Berlin (2020), Steiri- scher Herbst Festival, Graz (2020), EMAF Festival (2021). Im Jahr 2019 war er artist-in- residence der Blood Mountain Projects und forschte und arbeitete am VWI. dani-gal.com E-Mail: [email protected]

Der englische Originaltext dieses Interviews wurde in der Publikation An Elaborate Gesture of Past- ness: Three Films by Dani Gal (2021) publiziert, hier wird er in deutscher Übersetzung abgedruckt [Übersetzer: Tim Corbett]. 2019 war Dani Gal artist-in-residence der Blood Mountain Projects und artist-research fellow am VWI. Die Trilogie An Elaborate Gesture of Pastness wurde in Wien gezeigt.

Verleger: Blood Mountain Projects (Wien) and Motto Books (Berlin) Herausgeber: Mika Hayashi Ebbesen und Dani Gal Weitere Informationen: http://bloodmountain.org/programmes/current/

Quotation: Sabeth Buchmann und Dani Gal, Ein Gespräch, in: S:I.M.O.N. – Shoah: Intervention. Methods. Documentation. 8 (2021) 1, 114-137. DOI: https://doi.org/10.23777/SN.0121/EVE_DGAL011 S:I.M.O.N.– Shoah: Intervention. Methods. DocumentatiON. is the semi-annual open access e-journal of the Vienna Wiesenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies (VWI) in English and German. ISSN 2408-9192 | 8 (2021) 1 | https://doi.org/10.23777/SN.0121 This article is licensed under the following Creative Commons License: CC-BY-NC-ND (Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives) In appreciation to the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany (Claims Conference) for supporting this publication.

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