GRAY ZONES Studies on War and Genocide General Editor: Omer Bartov, Brown University
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GRAY ZONES Studies on War and Genocide General Editor: Omer Bartov, Brown University Volume 1 The Massacre in History Edited by Mark Levene and Penny Roberts Volume 2 National Socialist Extermination Policies: Contemporary German Perspectives and Controversies Edited by Ulrich Herbert Volume 3 War of Extermination: The German Military in World War II, 1941/44 Edited by Hannes Heer and Klaus Naumann Volume 4 In God’s Name: Genocide and Religion in the Twentieth Century Edited by Omer Bartov and Phyllis Mack Volume 5 Hitler’s War in the East, 1941–1945 Edited by R.D. Müller and G.R. Ueberschär Volume 6 Genocide and Settler Society: Frontier Violence and Stolen Indigenous Children in Australian History Edited by A. Dirk Moses Volume 7 Networks of Nazi Persecution: Business, Bureaucracy, and the Organization of the Holocaust Edited by G. Feldman and W. Seibel Volume 8 Gray Zones: Ambiguity and Compromise in the Holocaust and Its Aftermath Edited by Jonathan Petropoulos and John K. Roth Volume 9 Robbery and Restitution: The Conflict over Jewish Property in Europe Edited by M. Dean, C. Goschler, and P. Ther GRAY ZONES Ambiguity and Compromise in the Holocaust and Its Aftermath Edited and Introduced by Jonathan Petropoulos and John K. Roth Berghahn Books New York • Oxford Petropolous CR pg_00 front 7/24/12 1:27 PM Page iv First published in 2005 by Berghahn Books www.berghahnbooks.com ©2005, 2006, 2012 Jonathan Petropoulos and John K. Roth First paperback edition published in 2006 Paperback reprinted in 2012 All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without written permission of the publisher. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Gray zones: ambiguity and compromise in the Holocaust and its aftermath / edited and introduced by Jonathan Petropoulos and John K Roth. p. cm. — (Studies on war and genocide; v. 8) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-84545-071-7 (hbk) -- ISBN 978-1-84545-302-2 (pbk) 1. Holocaust, Jewish (1939–1945)—Congresses. 2. Holocaust, Jewish (1939–1945)—Historiography—Congresses. 3. Holocaust, Jewish (1939–1945)—Influence—Congresses. 4. Holocaust, Jewish (1939–1945)—Moral and ethical aspects—Congresses. I. Petropoulos, Jonathan. II. Roth, John K. III. War and genocide ; v. 8. D804.18.G73 2005 940.53'18'01—dc22 2005041086 British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Printed in the United States on acid-free paper ISBN 978-1-84545-071-7 hardback ISBN 978-1-84545-302-2 paperback To Leigh Crawford and AnneMerie Donoghue . we are in this world to do good . —Primo Levi, “Lorenzo’s Return,” in Moments of Reprieve The greater part of historical and natural phenomena are not simple, or not simple in the way that we would like. —Primo Levi, “The Gray Zone,” in The Drowned and the Saved CONTENTS List of Figures xi List of Abbreviations xiii Prologue: The Gray Zones of the Holocaust xv Jonathan Petropoulos and John K. Roth Part One: Ambiguity and Compromise in Writing and Depicting Holocaust History Introduction 1 Chapter 1 The Ambiguities of Evil and Justice: Degussa, Robert Pross, and the Jewish Slave Laborers at Gleiwitz 7 Peter Hayes Chapter 2 “Alleviation” and “Compliance”: The Survival Strategies of the Jewish Leadership in the Wierzbnik Ghetto and the Starachowice Factory Slave Labor Camps 26 Christopher R. Browning Chapter 3 Between Sanity and Insanity: Spheres of Everyday Life in the Auschwitz-Birkenau Sonderkommando 37 Gideon Greif Chapter 4 Sonderkommando: Testimony from Evidence 61 Michael Berenbaum Chapter 5 A Commentary on “Gray Zones” in Raul Hilberg’s Work 70 Gerhard L. Weinberg Chapter 6 Incompleteness in Holocaust Historiography 81 Raul Hilberg viii Contents Part Two: Identity, Gender, and Sexuality During and After the Third Reich Introduction 93 Chapter 7 Choiceless Choices: Surviving on False Papers on the “Aryan” Side 97 Robert Melson Chapter 8 “Who Am I?” The Struggle for Religious Identity of Jewish Children Hidden by Christians During the Shoah 107 Eva Fleischner Chapter 9 Hitler’s Jewish Soldiers 118 Bryan Mark Rigg Chapter 10 A Gray Zone Among the Field Gray Men: Confusion in the Discrimination Against Homosexuals in the Wehrmacht 127 Geoffrey J. Giles Chapter 11 Pleasure and Evil: Christianity and the Sexualization of Holocaust Memory 147 Dagmar Herzog Chapter 12 The Gender of Good and Evil: Women and Holocaust Memory 165 Sara R. Horowitz Part Three: Gray Spaces: Geographical and Imaginative Landscapes Introduction 179 Chapter 13 Hitler’s “Garden of Eden” in Ukraine: Nazi Colonialism, Volksdeutsche, and the Holocaust, 1941–1944 185 Wendy Lower Chapter 14 Life and Death in the “Gray Zone” of Jewish Ghettos in Nazi-Occupied Europe: The Unknown, the Ambiguous, and the Disappeared 205 Martin Dean Chapter 15 “Almost-Camps” in Paris: The Difficult Description of Three Annexes of Drancy—Austerlitz, Lévitan, and Bassano, July 1943 to August 1944 222 Jean-Marc Dreyfus Contents ix Chapter 16 Alternate Holocausts and the Mistrust of Memory 240 Gavriel D. Rosenfeld Chapter 17 Laughter and Heartache: The Functions of Humor in Holocaust Tragedy 252 Lynn Rapaport Chapter 18 The Holocaust in Popular Culture: Master-Narrative and Counter-Narratives in the Gray Zone 270 Ronald Smelser Chapter 19 The Grey Zone: The Cinema of Choiceless Choices 286 Lawrence Baron Part Four: Justice, Religion, and Ethics During and After the Holocaust Introduction 293 Chapter 20 Gray into Black: The Case of Mordecai Chaim Rumkowski 299 Richard L. Rubenstein Chapter 21 Catalyzing Fascism: Academic Science in National Socialist Germany and Afterward 311 Jeffrey Lewis Chapter 22 Postwar Justice and the Treatment of Nazi Assets 325 Jonathan Petropoulos Chapter 23 The Gray Zones of Holocaust Restitution: American Justice and Holocaust Morality 339 Michael J. Bazyler Chapter 24 The Creation of Ethical “Gray Zones” in the German Protestant Church: Reflections on the Historical Quest for Ethical Clarity 360 Victoria J. Barnett Chapter 25 Gray-Zoned Ethics: Morality’s Double Binds During and After the Holocaust 372 John K. Roth Epilogue: An Intense Wish to Understand 390 Jonathan Petropoulos and John K. Roth x Contents Select Bibliography 395 About the Editors and Contributors 399 Index 407 LIST OF FIGURES Images accompanying Hans Haustein, “Contra Nostalgie,” Konkret (January 1975) 148 Wartime Film footage of the Voksdeutsche Colony Halbstadt, Nazi occupied Ukraine (date unknown) 186 Reich Führer of the SS and Police Map of the Reich Commissariat Ukraine (May 1942) 193 German officer inspects a crate packed for transport to Germany 234 Jewish women inmates at Lévitan mend clothes, seized from Jews in France, before the goods are shipped to the Reich 235 LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS BA Bundesarchiv Berlin-Lichterfelde BAMA Bundesarchiv-Militärarchiv Freiburg BDL Bund Deutscher Mädel BdO Befehlshaber der Ordnungspolizei BHSA Bayerisches Hauptstaatsarchiv BRSA Brest Regional State Archive CAHS Center of Advanced Holocaust Studies CCP Central Collecting Point DAF Deutsche Arbeitsfront DGW Deutsche Gasrusswerke DM Deutschmarks DUA Degussa Unternehmens-Archiv ERR Einsatzstab Reichsleiter Rosenberg FSU former Soviet Union GARF State Archives of the Russian Federation HHSAW Hessisches Hauptstaatsarchiv Wiesbaden HSF-USA Holocaust Survivors’ Foundation—USA JCS Joint Chiefs of Staff JDC Joint Distribution Committee JTA Jewish Telegraphic Agency KdO Kommandeur der Ordnungspolizei MG Military Government MPG Max-Planck-Gesellschaft NARA U.S. National Archives and Records Administration NSV Nazi Party Welfare Society OSS Office of Strategic Services RKU Reichskommissariat Ukraine RMEL Reichsministerium für Ernährung und Landwirtschaft RM Reichmarks SHAEF Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force SPD Social Democratic Party UGIF Union générale des Israélites de France VoMi Volksdeutsche Mittelstelle xiv List of Abbreviations VSS Vorstandssitzung WJC World Jewish Congress ZSA Zhytomyr State Archives ZSL Zentralle Stelle der Landesjustizverwaltungen PROLOGUE The Gray Zones of the Holocaust Jonathan Petropoulos and John K. Roth I know what it means not to return. —Primo Levi, “Sunset at Fossoli,” in Collected Poems orn in Turin on 31 July 1919, Primo Levi, an Italian-Jewish chemist, Bjoined a partisan resistance group after the Germans occupied northern Italy in the autumn of 1943. He was arrested as a suspect person by Fas- cists on 13 December 1943. Fearing that confirmation of his partisan iden- tity would lead to torture and death, he admitted his status as an “Italian citizen of Jewish race,” unaware of what that identification held in store for him. Levi was sent to a concentration camp at Fossoli, near the city of Mod- ena, which had been intended for British and American prisoners of war. By mid-February 1944, more than six hundred Jews were imprisoned there. The arrival of German SS men meant that Levi and the other Jews at Fos- soli would be deported. On the evening of 22 February 1944 Levi’s transport left the train sta- tion at Carpi. By then, Levi knew that its destination was Auschwitz. That name, he said, was “without significance for us at that time,” but soon enough he realized that going there was “a journey towards nothingness.”1 After reaching Auschwitz on the night of Saturday, 26 February, Levi was spared for labor, received the tattooed number 174517 on his left arm, and endured Auschwitz for eleven months. For most of that time, he worked at Monowitz, a subcamp in the vast Auschwitz complex. Monowitz—also called Auschwitz III or Buna—provided slave labor for the construction of Notes for this section begin on page xxi..