Today is the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. I often wonder how our history would change if little things had been different in those dark days. If the war had been won a little sooner. If the Allies had seen fit to bomb the railroads that supplied the death camps. If it had been a priority of some nation, somewhere, to rescue Jews. But in fact, not only was it NOT top priority to the US and the Allies to rescue Jews - their policies were determined, in part, by the effort NOT to appear to be fighting for the Jews. The argument that going to war against Nazi Germany would benefit the Jews was an argument AGAINST it.
Perhaps I am biased by feeling that there is something unique about the Holocaust. It is a horror that touched members of my family whom I knew, and others whom I would have known, had they lived. Of course, the Jews have no monopoly on suffering, and it could be argued that other peoples have suffered more - others have been exterminated entirely. Still, the scale of the Holocaust sets it apart - once you set aside the auto-genocides of various communist regimes, an altogether different kind of horror. But there are some other things too, I think. For one: the killing machine. The genocides that have taken place since World War II, like the ones before it, were committed with the standard weapons of the day - in fact the Rwanda massacres were committed largely with machetes. Only the Germans developed technology for the sole purpose of mass murder. Only the Germans made a science of genocide. It was the Holocaust of the future.
I was raised with the observation that Germany was the "most civilized" country in Europe before it embarked on the Holocaust - indeed the Jews of Eastern Europe looked to Germany as beacon of light illuminating the darkness of their lands. The message being: Don't think anyone is too civilized to kill Jews. The rhetorical question was always: Could it happen again? And the answer was always: Not in America. Not in Europe. We're democracies, we're... civilized.
But now we are engaged in a new World War. And now, once again, the US and its allies are doing everything possible to deny that winning it is good for the Jews. Once again, the notion that going to war will benefit the Jews is one of the strongest rhetorical points against it. Once again it is respectable to tell lies about Jews, which no right-thinker cares to rebut. But this time it's different: the Jews can fight for themselves. We may be small and weak, but compared to no power at all, it's a world of difference. Remember what Dick Cheney said, just a few days ago:
Well, one of the concerns people have is that Israel might do it without being asked, that if, in fact, the Israelis became convinced the Iranians had significant nuclear capability, given the fact that Iran has a stated policy that their objective is the destruction of Israel, the Israelis might well decide to act first, and let the rest of the world worry about cleaning up the diplomatic mess afterwards. We don't want a war in the Middle East, if we can avoid it. And certainly in the case of the Iranian situation, I think everybody would be best suited by or best treated and dealt with if we could deal with it diplomatically.
Those Jews, all they can think of is saving themselves from genocide. It's just like them to go and prevent a nuclear holocaust, "and let rest of the world worry about cleaning up the diplomatic mess afterwards".
Imagine if Israel had been one of the allies in World War II.
Posted by David Boxenhorn at January 27, 2005 11:37 PMYeah,
I caught that remark as well. I kept thinking, so what is the US doing in Iraq? Wasn't that the point? Wasn't that the argument of Europe?
But then I have always felt the thinking goes like this; Jews are only acceptable to much of the world if we are villians or victims, but not as victors. It destroys too many peoples percetions of us and our role in the world.
Posted by: Rachel Ann at January 28, 2005 09:28 AM PermalinkRachel Ann.
Maybe the US learned something from the Jewish Holocaust. And that's why Iraq. We can only hope. The Iraqis had their own holocaust under Saddam. 1.3 million dead.
The world has looked the other way during holocausts since the Aztecs. Bosnia and Iraq are the first initiations of interference before the end-game, ever.
David, everyone must be able to fight for themselves. Why did the founding fathers put the right to bear arms into the US constitution? For the protection of the individual. Preventing holocaust is an individual responsibilty. The founding fathers were terrified of demi-gogues, and understood full that states can turn rogue. Our guns are insurance policies. :)
Posted by: jinnderella at January 30, 2005 01:19 AM PermalinkCould you explain further "imagine if Israel had been one of the allies in WWII" - then what?
Posted by: interested but really dumb at January 30, 2005 10:14 AM PermalinkDoesn't it bother you that so much money is spent on dead Jews and not live ones? With the same breath, the UN, after all these years made one ceremony that hardly anyone attended, outside of Jews and Israelis and a few non-arab diplomats. Jordan was the only Arab country represented. And that doesn't stop the UN from condeming Israel for defending her citizens.
Posted by: muse at January 30, 2005 08:43 PM PermalinkInterested: If Israel had been around in WWII, there would have been one country in the world for whom saving the Jews was a priority in the war.
Posted by: David Boxenhorn at January 30, 2005 09:29 PM Permalink10 million Congolese killed by the Belgians, who turned the Congo into a massive work camp. No holocaust museums for the Congolese. No Hollywood blockbusters telling their story. No billions in reparations.
Posted by: reardon at January 30, 2005 11:18 PM Permalinkthe scale of the Holocaust sets it apart - once you set aside the auto-genocides of various communist regimes, an altogether different kind of horror
Mmm? The "auto-genocides" you say? Do you have any idea what group of people composed the bulk of the Communist party's leadership in the Soviet Union. Here's a clue: It wasn't Russians.
The reason we hear about the "Holocaust" is because the Jews are an extremely literary group of people. They talk (and talk) about themselves, thus they talk about their sufferings. Unlike the Ukrainians, unlike the Arabs, unlike, unlike...
Posted by: onetwothree at January 31, 2005 05:26 AM PermalinkOnetwothree:
1. The Jews were purged pretty quickly from the Communist party.
2. Soviet Russia was very anti-Semitic.
3. Neither Lenin nor Stalin were Jewish.
4. Do you also want to blame the murderousness of the Chinese and Cambodian regimes on the Jews?
jinnderella,
That was my point. Israel, if she decides to go after Iran would have every right to, just as the US had the right to go into Iraq, because the president conclude, despite the antagonism of many foriegn governments, that it was in the best interest of the US.
Frankly, I don't give two shakes of a rats tail about "diplomatic mess" that's just another way of saying the Arab countries will start shrieking at the US again because of its ties to Israel. So? Let them shriek.
Posted by: Rachel Ann at January 31, 2005 09:36 PM PermalinkNeither Lenin nor Stalin were Jewish.
Neither were Russian either. Communism is internationalist in flavor, and that is undeniable. And Jews, particularily, have always been overrepresented (read: Vastly overrepresented) among the Communist party.
The Georgian had to get rid of the Jews, that's true. That's just the revolution eating its children--happens every time.
Posted by: onetwothree at February 1, 2005 05:55 PM PermalinkTo those who might not get "onetwothree"'s reference, the "Georgian" is Stalin: Lenin's 2nd-in-command, and heir. A fairly early and important figure, don't you think?
What "onetwothree" is trying to do is called guilt-by-association.
Notice his modus operandi: First the fallacious claim that "the bulk" of communist leadership in Russia were Jews (later toned down to "Jews have always been vastly overrepresented" - not the same thing), therefore the Jews were committing genocide against the Russians, therefore it was not an autogenocide, therefore the Jews are responsible for communist autogenocide, therefore Jews are responsible for the autogenocides in China and Cambodia (which were wholly lacking in Jews). And all because the Jews talk and talk and talk, which must be a crime or something because it makes people pay attention to them instead of the virtuous Ukrainians, Arabs, etc.
Posted by: David Boxenhorn at February 1, 2005 06:21 PM PermalinkMy point is: The millions dead in the Soviet Union did not commit suicide. You know full well you are attempting to trivialize the affair by saying that. (As in, this suffering is important, while this is not.)
Look at the bottom chart:
http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v14/v14n1p-4_Weber.html
Yes, Jews are overrepresented. But that's only half the story--because the Communist party was internationalist in spirit, you had a perfect mongrel and a Georgian immigrant leading Russia, a Russian (Khrushev) running the Ukraine, and (yes, indeed) a vast overproportion of Jews filling out the party's leadership. I wouldn't have brought any of this up, but for the "AutoGenocide" remark.
I am not referring to other Communist regimes, either, such as that of China.
Posted by: onetwothree at February 8, 2005 05:20 AM PermalinkOr, if you're keeping up with the literature:
http://home.ddc.net/ygg/rj/rj-32.htm
Posted by: onetwothree at February 8, 2005 05:49 AM PermalinkOnetwothree: You know very well that it is you who are trying to minimize the Holocaust by saying that other people suffered too. I specifically said that the autogenocides are a horror. And what's all this "internationalist" and "mongrel" garbage? The fact is that in one case you have a country (or several) that enthusiastically committed genocide against a minority, and in the other you have genocide committed by government against its own people. Two different kinds of sociopathology.
Worse than trying to minimize the Holocaust, you are trying to blame the Jews for mass murder. Why are you insisting on the Jews' involvement with the communist party in Russia if your point is merely to equate the genocide of one people against another, with the genocide of one people by its leaders? Why didn't you bring up Cambodia or China as counter examples of genocide? Why didn't you simply say, "other peoples have suffered too", or something like that? I really don't want to equate the suffering of one people to another, but to talk about the unique aspects of the Holocaust - and I tried to make that clear. The fact is that it is a repeated theme of history that minorities are over represented in revolutions because they have no stake in the existing regime. Nevertheless, they have to have wide backing among the majority to achieve their aims - the only alternative is when a small minority has vast technological edge, or when the "revolution" is more akin to a palace coup. (A combination of the two occurred in the Spanish conquest of the Incas and Aztecs.) By your line of reasoning, the French people had nothing to do with the Napoleonic wars - it was really a Corsican war.