Debating Whether the Holocaust Could Have Been Prevented Week 9 Unit
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WEEK 9 The Feasibility of Resistance and Rescue: Debating whether the Holocaust could have been Prevented Prepared by Tony Joel and Mathew Turner Week 9 Unit Learning Outcomes ULO 1. evaluate in a reflective and critical manner the consequences of racism and prejudice ULO 4. recognise important linkages between the Second World War and the Holocaust, and question Hitler’s role in these events Introduction This week’s learning module grapples with two of the most controversial issues that continue to influence historiographical debate about the Holocaust: the separate but related themes of resistance and rescue. Section 1 examines the question of Jewish resistance. Namely, could and should have Jews stood up for themselves more effectively against Nazi persecution and genocide? Did Jews fail to resist? This section also considers how we can define “resistance,” looking at the divergent ways in which Holocaust scholars view Jewish resistance against Nazism. Should actions only be called resistance if they involved armed force, or did simply surviving in the face of such atrocious treatment constitute an act of resistance? These questions are visited through the best-known example of organised and armed Jewish resistance during the Holocaust: the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. Did this act of resistance (and others) reveal the potentialities or futility of Jews employing physical force to oppose the Nazis and their collaborators? Section 2 focuses on the question of whether the international community could have intervened to rescue Europe’s Jews. The broad theme of rescue envelops two main aspects: the alleged failure of the international community to provide safe havens for Jewish refugees prior to the outbreak of war; and the Western Allies’ and Soviet Union’s apparent failure to save Jews during the war by destroying (or at least interrupting) the Nazis’ killing facilities through direct military intervention. Section 2 focuses on the key issues involving the latter aspect that is concerned with what may have been possible during the war years. While you are encouraged to draw your own conclusions about the validity and persuasiveness of the arguments presented, it is important that you never lose sight of the fact that the primary responsibility for the murder of Jews rests with Hitler’s criminal régime and its many willing collaborators across Europe. LEARNING MODULE 9. Section 1: Resistance 2 In completing this learning module, you will continue to evaluate, in a reflective and critical manner, the consequences of racism and prejudice. You will also continue to recognise important linkages between the Second World War and the Holocaust. Section 1. Resistance We have already seen the extent to which the Holocaust became genocide on a continental scale. To this end, Jews experienced the Holocaust in a multitude of ways and in various settings. Some were confined to ghettos, where they faced disease and starvation, and, for those who survived long enough, eventual deportation to camps. Hundreds of thousands of Jews were murdered through mass shootings conducted by Einsatzgruppen and other murderous forces, often close to where they resided. Other Jews lived in western Europe, where survival depended on the zeal of local collaborators, as well as the kindness or indifference of others. Within each of these settings — and countless others — Jews were faced with a choice to resist what was happening to them, either actively or passively. Most Jews were ordinary folk — men, women, children, and the elderly — with no experience in handling firearms, conducting military operations, or surviving in harsh conditions. The very young and the elderly were in no real position to take up arms against the German army, and, likewise, those who were responsible for the survival of children or elderly parents were similarly encumbered. Still, the inconsistency of Nazi rule and devotion to Jewish persecution meant that right across Europe Jews faced rather different situations. For many Jews in Poland, for instance, they were trapped within hermetically-sealed ghetto walls, and without outside support. Jews in western Europe generally had more freedom of movement, and arguably faced less of an existential threat than their eastern European counterparts. In other words, Jews in eastern Europe were in greater peril at an earlier stage, though in less of a position to resist through force. Conversely, Jews in western Europe had more opportunities to resist but were more inclined to “hold out” and avoid German capture rather than taking the risk of taking up arms. Whatever the complexities, the points to note are that we cannot generalise about Jewish resistance to Nazi genocide, and that it is important to understand the hopeless reality that Jews faced at the time rather than applying hindsight. To further complicate matters, scholars do not even agree on what should and should not constitute “resistance” when it comes to Jews and the Holocaust. The eminent Holocaust scholars Raul Hilberg and Yehuda Bauer embody these opposing — indeed, polarized — viewpoints regarding resistance. Hilberg and his supporters, for instance, place emphasis on active resistance and are especially critical of Jewish wartime leadership for a perceived failure to recognise the dangers posed by the Nazis and consequently failing to organise counter measures to resist persecution/extermination. Hilberg argues that the “reaction pattern of the Jews is characterized by almost complete lack of resistance... the documentary evidence of Jewish resistance, overt or submerged, LEARNING MODULE 9. Section 1: Resistance 3 is very slight.”1 For Hilberg, the inability of Jews to resist the Nazi onslaught could be attributed to the much longer history of Jews in Europe. Over 2,000 years, the Jewish minority had learnt, according to Hilberg, that they could “survive destruction by placating and appeasing their enemies.”2 The consequences of applying this lesson of history to the existential threat Nazi Germany posed to European Jews — what Hilberg famously calls the “machinery of destruction” — were deadly. Hilberg concludes that Jews were “caught in the strait jacket of their history” and, subsequently, “plunged themselves physically and psychologically into catastrophe.”3 Bauer and other likeminded scholars, conversely, stress the importance of not only active but also passive resistance. Accordingly, such an interpretation argues that merely staying alive longer than the Nazis wanted could constitute a form of resistance. Life-saving acts of unarmed resistance — including smuggling food into ghettos and camps, or sacrificing one’s own life to save others from starvation or murder — constitute resistance in Bauer’s view. But the definition also extends to “cultural, educational, religious, and political activities” that may potentially boost the morale of Jews, as well as the work of Jewish doctors to preserve life.4 Clearly, then, a substantial gap exists between the definitions of Jewish resistance to Nazi genocide posited by two of the world’s most esteemed Holocaust scholars in Hilberg and Bauer. READING EXCERPT: Michael Marrus, in his piece entitled "Jewish Resistance to the Holocaust," summarises these positions and points to nuanced arguments that move beyond such polarisation. Two of Marrus’ more interesting observations relate to: • the importance of intent and motivation for defining whether resistance occurred; • and the relative insignificance of resistance overall in the Second World War in shaping the course of events. Indeed, Marrus argues that resistance often involved unacceptable risks. Importantly, from Marrus’ perspective, acts of resistance frequently were made with a view to preserving some form of record for the future. Acts of armed resistance, during which 1 Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews. (Quadrangle, Chicago, 1961). p. 662. 2 ibid. p. 666. 3 ibid. p. 667. 4 Yehuda Bauer, Rethinking the Holocaust. (Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 2001). p. 120. LEARNING MODULE 9. Section 1: Resistance 4 Jews faced insurmountable odds of survival and near-certain death, often were preceded by Jews recording their plight for future posterity, whether through secret diaries or final letters. Indeed, probably the most oft-quoted instance involves the renowned Russian-born Jewish historian Simon Dubnow. According to witnesses, when facing imminent death during a liquidation of the Riga ghetto in December 1941 Dubnow’s final words in Yiddish were a rallying call to his fellow Jews to ensure their genocide would be remembered in future: “Yidn, shreibt un ferschreibt!” (“Jews, write and record!”). 5 The eminent Jewish historian, writer, and activist Simon Dubnow, who was 81 years old when he was shot during a liquidation of the Riga ghetto in December 1941. Source: “The Jews of Latvia: Professor Simon Dubnow and His Final Journey,” The Museum of Family History. http://www.museumoffamilyhistory.com/mfh-dubnow-simon.htm [Accessed 3 May 2017] a) Resistance in the Ghettos As Marrus notes in the above reading (in which he quotes Bauer), Jews took up armed resistance against the Nazis in no fewer than 150 ghettos in Poland.6 Despite what appears to be substantial physical opposition undertaken by Jews in ghettos, the interpretation of their behaviour has been the focus of much debate surrounding the 5 See, for instance: “The Jews of Latvia: Professor Simon Dubnow and His Final Journey,” The Museum of Family History. http://www.museumoffamilyhistory.com/mfh-dubnow-simon.htm [Accessed 2 May 2017] 6 Yehuda Bauer, A History of the Holocaust. (F. Watts, New York, 1982). pp. 270-71, quoted in Michael Marrus, “Jewish Resistance to the Holocaust,” Journal of Contemporary History, vol. 30, no. 1, January 1995, pp. 83-110. Here pp. 103-04. LEARNING MODULE 9. Section 1: Resistance 5 adequacy — or otherwise — of Jewish resistance. Theoretically, Jews in ghettos had more opportunity to organise resistance than Jews concentrated in camps because the German presence within ghettos was minimal and responsibility for day-to-day administration lay with the Jewish councils, whereas in camps Jews came almost totally under direct Nazi control.