Contemporary Views on the Holocaust

Randolph L. Braham, Editor

.,~ KluweroNijhoff Publishing a member of the Kluwer Academic Publishers Group Boston The Hague Dordrecht Lancaster Distributors for North America: Kluwer Boston, Inc. 190 Old Derby Street Hingham, MA 02043, U.S.A

Distributors outside North America: Kluwer Academic Publishers Group Distribution Centre P.O. Box 322 3300AH Dordrecht, The Netherlands

Ubrary of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Main entry under title:

Contemporary views on the Holocaust.

(Holocaust studies series) 1. Holocaust, Jewish (1939~ 1945) - Addresses, essays, lectures. 2. Holocaust, Jewish (1939~1945) - Historiography - Addresses, essays, lectures. Braham, Randolph L. II. Senes. D810.J4C67 1983 940.53'15'03924 83-177 IS8N·13: 978·94-009·6683-3 e·IS8N·13 978-94-009-6681·9 001: 10.1007/978·94·009-6681·9 Copyright © 1983 by Kluwer·Nijhoff Publishing No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by print, photoprint, microfilm, or any other means without written permission of the publisher. Holocaust Studies Series

Randolph L. Braham, Series Editor

The Graduate School and University Center, The City University of New York

Previously published: Perspectives on the Holocaust, 1983

The Holocaust Studies Series is published in cooperation with the Jack P. Eisner Institute for Holocaust Studies. These books are outgrowths of lectures, conferences, and research projects sponsored by the Institute. It is the purpose of the series to subject the events and circumstances of the Holocaust to scrutiny by a variety of academics who bring different scholarly disciplines to the study. Contemporary Views on the Holocaust Contents

Preface by Randolph L. Braham vii

Ethics and the Holocaust

1 The Value of Life: Jewish Ethics and the Holocaust Francine Klagsbrun 3

II The Allies and the Holocaust 21

2 The Horthy Otter. A Missed Opportunity for Rescuing Jews in 1944 Bela Vago 23

3 The Struggle for an Allied Jewish Fighting Force During World War II Monty N. Penkower 47

III The Holocaust: Selected Areas 77

4 The Japanese Ideology of Anti-Semitism and the Holocaust David Kranzler 79

v VI CONTENTS

5 The Holocaust in Norway Samuel Abrahamsen 109

IV Reactions to the Holocaust 143

6 In History's "Memory Hole": The Soviet Treatment of the Holocaust William Korey 145

7 Confronting Genocide: The Depiction of the Persecution of the Jews and the Holocaust in West German History Textbooks Walter F. Renn 157

V Crime and Punishment 181

8 Ernst Kaltenbrunner and the Final Solution Peter R. Black 183

9 Attitudes Toward the Prosecution of Nazi War Criminals in the United States Allan A. Ryan. Jr. 201

Index 227

Contributing Authors 235 Preface

This book is the second in a series of studies published under the auspices of the Institute for Holocaust Studies of the Graduate School and U niver• sity Center of The City University of New York. Like the first book, it is an outgrowth of the lectures and special studies sponsored by the institute during the 1981-82 and 1982-83 academic years. This volume is divided into five parts. Part I, Ethics and the Holocaust, contains a pioneering investigation of one of the most neglected areas in Holocaust studies. Francine Klagsbrun, a well-known writer and popular lecturer, provides an erudite overview of the value of life in Jewish thought and tradition. With full understanding of the talmudic scholars' position on Jewish ethics and using concrete examples of the life-and• death dilemmas that confronted many Jews in their concentration camp experiences, Klagsbrun provides dramatic evidence of the triumph of moral and ethical principles over the forces of evil during the Holocaust, this darkest period in Jewish history. The next two chapters, grouped under the heading The Allies and the Holocaust, deal with the failure of the Western Allies to respond to the desperate needs of the persecuted Jews of Europe during the Second World War. The first is by Professor Bela Vago, an authority on the Holocaust and East Central European history at the University of Haifa. It is a thoroughly documented account, demonstrating the reluctance of the Allies, and especially the British, to engage in rescue activities on behalf of the beleaguered Jews in Nazi-dominated Europe. In Vago's chapter, the offer made by Admiral Miklos Horthy, the Regent of Hun• gary, during the summer of 1944 to allow the emigration of thousands of Jews is used as a case study to prove that the Allies were not really ready

Vll viii PREFACE

to provide any meaningful assistance to the Jews. Professor Monty Pen• kower of Touro College in New York goes even further, showing that the Allies, and above all once again the British, were opposed even to the establishment of a Jewish fighting force envisioned to participate in the common war effort against the Axis. As Penkower skillfully demon• strates, the British, guided by narrowly interpreted considerations of na• tional interests, were fearful of the potential danger that the nucleus of a Palestinian Jewish army might represent to their long range interests in the Middle East. Part III, The Holocaust: Selected Areas, includes two contrasting stud• ies. The chapter by Professor David Kranzler of Queensborough Com• munity College is a scholarly account of how theJapanese, their peculiar brand of wartime anti-Semitism notwithstanding, saved some 18,000 Jews during the Holocaust. It is a study full of fascinating insights into the mentality and peculiarities of the Japanese "experts" dealing with the Jewish question during the war. The chapter by Professor Samuel Abra• hamsen of Brooklyn College, on the other hand, is devoted to a very tragic chapter of the Holocaust - the destruction of the Jews of Norway. Abrahamsen demonstrates in a fully documented fashion that no other Scandinavian Jewish community suffered such staggering losses as the Jews of Norway. Part IV, Reactions to the Holocaust, details the postwar attitudes to• ward the Holocaust in the Soviet Union and the Federal Republic of Germany. Dr. William Korey, an expert on the Soviet bloc, analyzes the treatment of the Holocaust in Soviet historiography, demonstrating how Soviet officials and historians distorted the historical record to suit the changing political interests of the regime. Korey's paper makes clear that the official Soviet attempt to denigrate, if not totally erase, the Jewish component of the Holocaust is a culmination of the drive launched in the late 1940s against cosmopolitanism and Zionism. Professor Walter Renn of Wheeling College reviews the treatment of the Holocaust in selected textbooks used in various educational institutions in the Federal Republic of Germany. While he finds that most of the textbooks analyzed continue to basically repress the Nazi past, he concludes with an expression of hope that the current generation of textbook authors will make head• way toward coming to grips with both the Holocaust and the National Socialist legacy. The last part of this book, Crime and Punishment, contains two over• views relating to war criminals and retribution. Peter R. Black provides a portrait of Ernst Kaltenbrunner, the former head of the Reich Security Main Office and one of the leading architects of the Final Solution pro- PREFACE ix gram. Black identifies not only the factors that shaped the man, but also the role he played in the destruction of European Jewry. Allan A. Ryan, Jr., the head of the Office of Special Investigations, U.S. Department of Justice, offers an authoritative review of the American position on the prosecution of war criminals who entered the United States, presumably illegally, after the war. His study focuses on the activities and accom• plishments of the Office of Special Investigations since its establishment by the Attorney General in 1979. It is complemented by a valuable appen• dix that contains a digest of the cases in litigation as of December 1, 1982.

Acknowledgments

Thanks are due to the many people without whose support and coopera• tion this book could not have been published. First and foremost, I want to express my appreciation to the contributors who agreed to revise and update the lectures they gave under the auspices of the Institute for Holocaust Studies. Further, this is an appropriate occasion to acknowl• edge with gratitude the consistent and unqualified support for the Institute provided by the administration of the Graduate School and University Center, and above all President Harold M. Proshansky, Provost Stanley Waren, and Dean Solomon Goldstein. I also want to express my thanks to the Holocaust Survivors Memorial Foundation for its consistent financial support. Finally, I want to acknowledge the valuable advice and whole• hearted cooperation I received from Philip D. Jones and Bernadine Richey of Kluwer-Nijhoff Publishing.