Was the Yishuv Indifferent to the Holocaust?

BY AMOS

The notion that the Zionist leadership in the Land of Israel and yishuv society as a whole reacted with indifference to news of the extermination of European Jewry during the Second World War has become almost a commonplace among non-specialists in the subject. In the past two decades, critics of contemporary Israel and the enterprise of Zionism in history, have led the charge in alleging that the yishuv took little interest in the victims of the Holocaust because of its ingrained negative view of Diaspora Jews (shlilat ha-golah) and single-minded devotion to the enterprise of state-building. Tom Segev's The Seventh Million: The Israelis and the Holocaust (1991, English translation published in 1993) unfortunately strengthened this sentiment. Although his book is still a classic - composed in beautiful prose like all his works and revealing a wealth of insights about Israeli society, its third chapter, "Rommel, Rommel, where are you?" paints an exaggerated picture of Zionist callousness toward the plight of European Jewry.

A new work by the Israeli historian Yosef Gorny significantly challenges the revisionist accounts that emerged in the 1990s about the yishuv and the Holocaust. The book, entitled קריאה באין אונים:העיתונות היהודית בארץ ישראל, בבריטניה, בארצות הברית ובברית המועצות לנוכח השואה, בשנים 1939-1945 ("Helpless Cry: The Jewish Press in the Land of Israel, Britain, the U.S., and the Soviet Union during the Shoah, 1939-1945," was published in 2009 and has now been reviewed in Ha'aretz by Dina Porat. The reviewers herself is the author of a pioneering related work, The Blue and the Yellow Stars of David: The Zionist Leadership in Palestine and the Holocaust, 1939-1945 (Hebrew version in 1986; English translation published by Harvard University Press in 1990).

Gorny's book lays to rest the myth that the Jewish press in the Land of Israel ignored the victims of the Holocaust or that the yishuv's inhabitants and its leading personalities were indifferent to the fate of European Jewry. According to Porat,

Reading and comparing the various newspapers show that the Jewish press, both within and outside the Land of Israel, covered the Holocaust extensively, with the newspapers here writing about it more. A comparison between Hebrew newspapers Davar, Haaretz and Hamashkif shows that Davar, the Labor movement daily, which has been criticized from all sides (especially by the first to research the issue, S.B. Beit Zvi, in his book "Post Ugandan Zionism on Trial" ), actually published a lot more about the Holocaust than either of the other two papers. At the time, Hamashkif, the Revisionist paper, was incessantly attacking Davar, for explicitly political reasons, to the point that it became an uncontested axiom that Davar was ignoring the Holocaust.

The comparison between the newspapers also shows that they published pretty much whatever information they received about what was happening to the Jews in Europe, including some hair raising stories that were inconceivable at the time in terms of the number of victims and especially the cruelty of the killing methods. Indeed, readers and journalists alike argued during the first half of the war that the many articles describing atrocities were an exaggeration, akin to "spilling blood into the lines of the newspapers," and called on editors to exhibit greater responsibility in the kinds of pieces they published and stop demoralizing the public and creating panic.

The book's title, Kri'ah be-ein onim is a triple entendre, as the word "kri'ah" means both "call" or "shout" as well as "reading" (i.e., the act of reading). It can therefore be translated as either. The phrase "be-ein onim" literally means "without potency," i.e., "powerless" or "helpless." One could therefore translate the title either as "Helpless Cry" (more elegantly, "Cry in the Wilderness") or "Impotent Reading." To add to these possibilities, the plural noun "'onim" (אונים) has a homophone (at least for those Hebrew speakers who do not pronounce 'alef and 'ayin differently), עונים, which means "respondents," - in other words, "Reading/Cry without Response."

I see the charge that "Zionists didn't care about the Holocaust during the war" as related to those works of scholarship and political polemic which talk about Holocaust memory having been manufactured after World War II by Zionists or Jewish elites. Alongside the myth that the yishuv was indifferent to the Holocaust, a myth arose several decades ago that American Jews did not really talk about the Holocaust until 1967, and that it only became a major focus of their attention due to Zionist manipulation. That is the heart of the accusations contained in works like Peter Novick's The Holocaust in American Life and the (far worse) piece of propaganda by Norman Finkelstein, The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering. These accounts have also been significantly undermined by recent, heavily empirical scholarship, most notably in Hasia Diner's We Remember with Reverence and Love: American Jews and the Myth of Silence after the Holocaust, 1945-1962.

Scattered Thoughts on Ahmadinejad

1. The clip of Ahmadinejad denying that there are homosexuals in Iran and the audience's reaction is still making me crack up every time I see it.

2. It wasn't nice or pretty, but Lee Bollinger did the right thing in basically humiliating Ahmadinejad with his introduction and questions.

3. Having said that, I still think Columbia erred in having the man speak at the university. My reasoning: people will believe the most ridiculous things when they are repeated often enough on television. That may sound cynical, but I think the billions of dollars spent on advertising back me up on this. Everyone knew that Ahmadinejad's appearance would draw international coverage, and that his performance would later be watched by millions on television. In effect, Columbia University's decision gave the man yet another opportunity to repeat his lies and idiocy in front of a prime-time audience.

4. Ahmadinejad is probably not all that interested in what Columbia University students think of him. His real intended audience: Arab masses and disgruntled elites (not the Iranian people). His message: Iran is the true protector of Arab and Muslim interests - whether it be in the Palestinian territories, Lebanon, or Iraq. His implicit target: the autocratic, US-supported regimes in the Middle East.

Columbia University to Host Ahmadinejad

It looks like Columbia University will indeed play host to Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad on the occasion of his visit to the UN General Assembly. From what I have heard, competition for tickets to the event is fierce. Everyone seems to want to hear this man speak. I think those responsible for this event are making a mistake.

Columbia University President Lee Bollinger believes that he will be able to use the occasion to put "pointed and challenging questions" to Ahmadinejad. In particular, Bollinger seemed to have in mind the Iranian president's record of Holocaust denial. While I applaud the intentions of Bollinger and others, who want to use Ahmadinejad's lecture as a forum to critique the Iranian president's past remarks and the regime's policies, I fear that they are miscalculating.

All of us in the academy are interested in the free exchange of ideas and the pursuit of truth in which it is supposed to result. But we also accept restrictions on the search for knowledge. For example, ethical scholars will not use data acquired from medical experiments that were conducted on human subjects without their permission. The ethical test with respect to having Ahadinejad speak at Columbia University should not be based on his stance toward U.S. policy in the Middle East. Russian President Vladimir Putin or China's Hu Jintao oppose many key aspects of American foreign policy. They also head regimes with less than stellar democratic credentials. But this is not the issue.

What matters most, in the context of an invitation extended by a university, is Ahmadinejad's public denial of the Holocaust in the past. This is not because the Holocaust is inherently "sacred." The same would apply if Ahmadinejad denied that the French Revolution never happened. Rather, his pseudo-academic initiatives to question a supposed "taboo" on free inquiry into the genocide of European Jewry (read: his effort to engage in willful distortion and negation of a subject whose historicity has been confirmed by thousands of scholarly publications) challenge the core of the university's guiding principles. The public sphere that the university presents is not a free-for-all open to every crackpot and conspiracy theorist with a fondness for spinning yarns. Such a model of the university would drive the pursuit of truth into intellectual bankruptcy. Professors and students would be occupied permanently with fending off unlimited attacks from those unbound by the chains of logic, procedure, respect, and the standards of academic disciplines. Unfortunately, the very admission of such individuals into the world of scholarship bestows credibility on them.

While I would not equate Wolf Blitzer of "The Situation Room" with the academy, I think it is worth watching his interview (see YouTube box above) with Holocaust denier David Duke to see how damaging it can be to give people like these even a modicum of respectability. They do not deserve to enter our classrooms and lecture halls.

Unfortunately, Proverbs gives conflicting advice. In 26:4 we read, "Don't answer a fool according to his foolishness, lest you too will be like him," while 26:5 tell us "Answer a fool according to his foolishness, lest he will appear clever in his own eyes."

משלי כו:ד-ה
אַל-תַּעַן כְּסִיל, כְּאִוַּלְתּוֹ: פֶּן-תִּשְׁוֶה-לּוֹ גַם-אָתָּה.
עֲנֵה כְסִיל, כְּאִוַּלְתּוֹ: פֶּן-יִהְיֶה חָכָם בְּעֵינָיו

Yom ha-Shoah

Emmanuel Ringelblum ז"ל

Today, Jews in Israel and in the diaspora commemorate the millions who were murdered by the Nazis and their allies in the Second World War. In the United States, many synagogues and Jewish community centers will hold remembrance ceremonies and lectures tonight. In Israel, an official commemoration ceremony is held at Yad Vashem, the Holocaust memorial. At 10 am on Monday, a siren sounded for two minutes, and people stood silently to mark the day.

Yom ha-Shoah is usually observed on the 27th day of the Hebrew month of Nisan. Because that day fell on a Sunday this year, which means that the day of mourning would have begun Saturday night just before the conclusion of the Sabbath (in Jewish tradition, a day begins on the evening before), the observance was pushed to Nisan 28, 5767 (April 16, 2007).

If you want to take this opportunity to learn something about the Shoah, Yad Vashem has a new online exhibit on Emmanuel Ringelblum's "Oneg Shabbat" or, in Ashkenazi pronunciation, "Oyneg Shabbos" [lit., "pleasure of the Sabbath"] archive in the Warsaw Ghetto. Ringelblum (1900-1944) was a young Polish-Jewish historian, who devoted his time in the ghetto to systematically recording the trials, tribulations, and occasional triumphs of everyday life under the most cruel circumstances. He directed a large team of contributors, who secretly gathered material for the archive, and successfully hid most of its contents in milk canisters and metal crates, which were recovered after the war, in 1946.

A page from Ringelblum's diary. The first 1942 entry, from January 8-26, begins:

January 1942. The conditions for the refugees are simply unbearable. Because of the shortage of coals, they are freezing to death.

The title of the exhibit is "Let the world read and know," an excerpt from a longer statement by an Oneg Shabbat activist that appears in the archives:

It must all be committed with not a single word omitted. And when the time comes - as it surely will - let the world read and know what the murderers have done

The photographs are from Emmanuel Ringelblum, Ktavim fun Geto, Volume 1: Togbukh fun Varshever Geto, 1942-1939 (Warsaw, 1961). Thank you, Judy, for this gift.

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I recently received a link to a very moving recording obtained by NPR from the Smithsonian. Taped by a British reporter in April 1945 at Bergen-Belsen, shortly after its liberation, it preserves for posterity the voices of Jewish camp survivors singing "Hatikvah," which later became the anthem of the State of Israel. Note that they are singing an earlier version, which has slightly different lyrics in the second stanza. Thank you, Ms Dessen.

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In the English Wikipedia entry on Yom ha-Shoah, you can read the following gem:

Most of the Jewish community consider the day a Jewish religious holiday. Non-Zionist Orthodox Jews do not, instead remembering the victims on days that were already days of mourning before the Holocaust, such as Tisha b'Av in the summer, and the Tenth of Tevet, in the winter. It deliberately ignores other victims of the Holocaust such as Gay people, Gypsies, the Mentally Ill, the Disabled or Easter Europeans sent to the Gas Chambers.

It's amazing to me how even the commemoration of the Shoah can be turned into an attack on the Jewish people, along the old canard that the Jews are misanthropes who care only about their own suffering. I'm not going to get into how misleading and tendentious the second sentence is.

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Yad Vashem Council Chair Tommy Lapid, a former Israeli parliamentarian and minister, said that

even after the Holocaust we witnessed genocide in Biafra, Cambodia, Rwanda, and we must cry out against the genocide currently being committed in Darfur in Sudan.

MK Ahmed Tibi (Ra'am-Ta'al) called the Holocaust "the greatest crime in the history of humanity," and condemned those who deny the Shoah (Ha'aretz).

Cross-posted from Genats-Lehayim.

German Police Cadets are Sick of the Holocaust

Berlin Police Commissioner Dieter Glietsch
(Photo: Berlin.de)

German politicians, activists, and Jewish community representatives have expressed outrage over comments allegedly made by "an entire class of police cadets" to a Holocaust survivor who was delivering a lecture on the Nazi period, antisemitism, and xenophobia at the Berlin Police Academy.

The incident took place nearly a month ago, on February 27, when the 83-year-old Isaak Behar visited the class, as part of a session about the Nazi regime mandated by the curriculum. Police cadets apparently told Behar that they resented "constantly being reminded about the Holocaust." Others made remarks to the effect that "Jews are rich" (Tagesspiegel).

The story, first reported by the Berliner Zeitung, has received widespread coverage in German newspapers since it broke on March 19. A report of what transpired during the discussion only reached Berlin's Police Commissioner, Dieter Glietsch, last week, "almost by accident" and through sources outside of the department. It is possible that Behar himself brought it to Glietsch's attention. The commissioner expressed his consternation about the report and about the fact that it had only reached him now (Berliner Zeitung). An inquiry has already begun, and condemnation has been virtually unanimous.

Reports about a resurgence of antisemitism in Germany invariably make big headlines - in Germany and abroad. There are certainly reasons to be concerned, but I hope that the blame does not fall on the German police or state, for the problem clearly lies elsewhere. This has not always been the case. Just twenty years ago, German politicians and civil servants were far slower in responding to reports of antisemitism. But the current German elite is sui generis in its awareness of the dark sides of the German past and its dedication to combating antisemitism and Holocaust denial - with a few exceptions. I would even go so far as to say that no country's political elite in the world today can claim to be as sincere as Germany's in confronting its past.

While the current German elite, which came to political maturity in the 1960s, shares a fundamental consensus about the importance of Holocaust education, a younger generation of Germans is slowly undermining the values and institutions for which some of its parents (the ones born in West Germany) struggled for several decades. This younger generation, composed of men and women who while born in pre-1989 West or East Germany have spent most of their lives in the unified Federal Republic, today declares that it is "sick of the Holocaust." In the words of one German headline "Deutsche Polizisten: Kein Bock auf Holocaust Vortrag" (if anyone knows how to translate this into equally compelling idiomatic English, please let me know).

Of course, German fatigue about the Holocaust, which once prompted Henryk Broder to quip that "the Germans will never forgive the Jews for Auschwitz," is not an entirely new phenomenon. Perhaps there has always been a profound disconnect between the discourse of the elite described earlier and that of German society at large. Things have only become more complicated since Germany's unification, especially as neo-Nazi or "national" groups in East Germany emerged as protest movements against the communist regime before 1989, and against immigrants and leftists today. I think the reaction of the police cadets reflects the views of large segments of the German people from similar class backgrounds. They have increasingly come to the conclusion that the Holocaust is being rammed down their throats.

Contrary to the claims of right-wing demagogues, I don't believe that there is a surfeit of Holocaust education in the country. But an effective strategy to counter these dangerous tendencies cannot consist in hysteria about the return of Nazism to Germany. Perhaps, it might be a better idea to dwell on the positive. Organizations such as the American Jewish Committee have long realized this. The point is that Germans have a great deal to be proud of when it comes to dealing with their history - just consider, for the sake of comparison, the situation in Japan or Turkey. The German elite should be confident of this record and its role in in these achievements; it should speak of German accomplishments in this sphere as much as it speaks of duties and responsibilities today. At the same time, of course Germans must continue to monitor and engage critically, in clear terms and without glossing over the issues involved, the kind of self-serving (and often antisemitic) ressentiment that came to the surface in the affair of the Berlin police cadets.

ON A DIFFERENT NOTE:
I encountered some bizarre transcriptions of German words in a Ha'aretz article about the incident described above. The article referred to chants of "Zig [sic] Heil" (i.e. Sieg Heil), and to the police academy's tours of the "Ziekenhuizen [sic] concentration camp" (probably the Sachsenhausen KZ just outside Berlin). I'm not sure how to explain these transcriptions - both of these spellings look vaguely Dutch to me, so maybe they hired some translators from the Netherlands or Belgium.

Answering Ahmadinejad

The homepage of Yad Vashem's Farsi site

Yad Vashem recently launched a Farsi-language site with information about the Shoah. Since it went online about two weeks ago, more than 20,000 people have accessed the site, including 6,000 from Iran. This is equivalent to the number of people who access the English-language site every year, Ha'aretz reports.

For more details, see my post on Genats-Lehayim.

Nazis had Einsatzgruppe Ready in 1942 to Exterminate Jews in Eretz Yisrael

A new study by two German historians, Klaus-Michael Mallman and Martin Cüppers reveals that the Nazis had a unit waiting in Athens to carry out the extermination of the Jews in Palestine with the help of local Arab collaborators (the latter is not necessarily a major part of the research - it was simply emphasized in the Ynet article). Ha'aretz has since reported on this study as well. I have also found the reference:

Klaus-Michael Mallmann und Martin Cüppers, "Beseitigung der jüdisch-nationalen Heimstätte in Palästina -Das Einsatzkommando der Panzerarmee Afrika 1942," in Deutsche, Juden, Völkermord. Der Holocaust als Geschichte und Gegenwartvon Jürgen Matthäus/Klaus-Michael Mallmann, Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt 2006.

One of the SS personalities involved in this unit was Walter Rauff, who died unmolested in Chile. The link is to a Wikipedia article which alleges that Rauff was protected by Allende!