hat tip Murat
~~~~~~~~~~~~
World leaders gathered in Poland to mark the 60th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi death camp Auschwitz today. Here’s what a few of them said:
"These commemorations are intended to promote knowledge of Auschwitz as widely as possible and bring the truth about the camps to the younger generation." —Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski
"Even in our country, in Russia, which did more than any to combat fascism, for the victory of fascism, which did most to save the Jewish people, even in our country we sometimes unfortunately see manifestations of [anti-Semitism] and I, too, am ashamed of that." —Russian President Vladimir Putin
"Auschwitz must be placed in the central place of collective memory of the reunited Europe," —Israeli President Moshe Katsav
"The story of the camps shows that evil is real and must be called by its name and must be confronted…"We are reminded that anti-Semitism may begin with words but rarely stops with words and the message of intolerance and hatred must be opposed before it turns into acts of horror." —US Vice President Dick Cheney
"This is a sacred place for me and my family…. This is a place where Andrei Yushchenko, my father, suffered. There will never be a Jewish question in my country, I vow that." —Ukraine President Viktor Yushchenko (whose father, a wounded Soviet prisoner of war, survived Auschwitz).
The most evil aspect of Auschwitz for me is the organized way it was run. The calm with which they carried out the murders. The calm with which they pillaged the belongings of the prisoners. It was so dehumanizing by design.
I still can’t believe this happened in Europe in recent memory. Evil like this comes to power systematically, step by step. It must be stopped systematically as well. Each step toward demonizing or dehumanizing any group of people must be met with a powerful push back.
Unfortunately, our current world has multiple conflicts in which both sides see themselves as the ones being dehumanized and therefore needing to push back. By stopping to reflect on what can happen if the rest of the world doesn’t take it seriously enough fast enough when one side is pushing too hard, however, hopefully we’ll reach a good marker for a middle ground that, if breached, the rest of the world steps in as one to stop. The acknowledgment by Putin that more needs to be done to fight anti-Semitism in Russia is one good outcome for today’s ceremony. Let’s hope there’s more.
“Unfortunately, our current world has multiple conflicts in which both sides see themselves as the ones being dehumanized and therefore needing to push back.”
Maybe, you could be more specific about what conflicts you are talking about here?
“one side is pushing too hard, however, hopefully we’ll reach a good marker for a middle ground”
Who’s out there pushing to hard? What parties do you think need to find middle ground with each other?
Just wondering…
I found this at Max Blumenthal’s The Christian Right and the Fascist Aesthetic
I still can’t believe this happened in Europe in recent memory.
Why not? It’s still happening. Look at the ambivalence of Europe toward Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Fatah, etc… All those groups kill Jews, brag about killing Jews and in fact their charters use direct language which mentions genocide towards Jews.
It’s pretty ridiculous… Prince Harry wears a swastika arm band to a costume party and it grabs front pages of newspapers world wide. Give me a break! It’s a stupid costume party! It’s one thing to be insensitive, it’s another to be an anti-Semite. Meanwhile, Palestinian terror groups are blowing up civilians and glorifying the killers and the world yawns.
Condemn Prince Harry for a stupid costume? Sure. Hold ceremonies for the anniversary of the liberation of Aushwitz? Sure! Give nice speeches? Hell, yea! Do anything about the real murderers? Neh.
Internationally, smlook, I was thinking about disputes like the Pakistan/India conflict or the Irsraeli/Arab conflict or Judeo-Christian/Muslim confict. Domestically, I was thinking about the Christian Right/Gay conflict and also the Judeo-Christian/Muslim conficts. In all these instances, we hear the language of vicitimization on both sides. I’d rather not debate in this context who’s right and who’s wrong, if it’s all the same to you, but I’d say that focussing on middle ground would help each of these not get any more heated than they already have.
Not saying you are, but if anyone is looking to pick a fight about any of that, they should look elsewhere. I won’t let a thread about commemorating the liberation of prisoners at Auschwitz become the same old food fight.
Stan,
I’ll repeat: I won’t let a thread about commemorating the liberation of prisoners at Auschwitz become the same old food fight.
Let this one aim higher please.
What always got me about Auschwitz was that while this efficient factory was churning away, life went on pretty much as normal in the pretty little towns nearby, for both the citizens and even the soldiers not assigned to the camp. While surely some knew what was happening, it seemed that many simply erected unassailable walls of denial, literally sweeping the thin layer of ash from their doorsteps each morning as they greeted the neighbors. Shudder.
Here I dreamt I was a soldier
As I marched the streets of Birkenau
and I recall in Spring
the perfume that the air would bring
To the indolent town;
And the barkers called the moon down
The carnival was ringing loudly now
just to lay with you
there’s nothing that I wouldn’t do
Save lay my rifle down.
– The Decemberists, “Here I Dreamt I Was An Architect”
Edward,
You said:
I still can’t believe this happened in Europe in recent memory.
My point is that it’s the same old Europe. Look at the european media… Who’s behind the war in Iraq? Who controls Bush? Which state is being labeled a Nazi state? Etc, etc, etc.
Oh, yea, you can add the boycott of Israeli scientists and professors (and in some case students) to that.
Yes, Stan, and that’s a fine argument to be make in another context. Here though it’s guranteed to polarize folks and blur the meaning of the commemoration.
Time and place for everything, you know.
Odd that Putin thinks that his country was the good guys. I supposed that compared with Nazi Germany, they were, but Soviet Russia was not exactly a paragon of religious tolerance.
I supposed that compared with Nazi Germany, they were, but Soviet Russia was not exactly a paragon of religious tolerance.
That’s exactly the crux of my “Stalin” post the other day. “Good” and “Bad” are nowhere near as binary as they often get portrayed. If you have Communist Russia, Nazi Germany, and Democratic America, you don’t have a binary situation. You have a much more complicated situation. You can argue that Russia and Germany were both bad, but not equally bad. So you do need degrees (eek…nuance).
Slarti,
A very unfair comparison. Nazi’s goal was a pure Aryan state, Soviet Union’s goal was to make everyone good communists.
Both ideaologies (Commie and Nazi) were willing to kill no matter what, demonize any who questioned their motives, because the ends justify the means and the ends were honorable, virtuous, glorious…I’ve come to believe nihilist are more than willing to use virtue and honor to kill and maim and destroy.
Can we just give the Soviet troops credit for liberating Auschwitz. Just today.
Richard Wilbur’s translation of a poem by Valeri Petrov:
Photos from the Archives
Those manly brows, those eyes so steady,
Those mouths unwilling to betray,
And under them those thin necks, ready
To wear a gallows-rope next day:
Old Nazi archives saved for us
These pictures of our friends who died.
Mug-shots, we know, look always thus,
Full face and profile, side by side,
Yet sometimes guilty thoughts arise
Which make us fancy that these men
Have looked once deep into our eyes
And turned their faces from us then.
James Casey,
You got me there.
stunning poem rilkefan…thanks.
e
James Casey,
I am by your side. That is the important for today.
I picked up a book by Sybille Steinbacher called _Auschwitz: A history_ In it, amidst all of the painful details (and I subscribe to the thesis (of Rubenstein and Adorno) that the Holocaust is the hyper-logical outcome of trends in Western rationality, so these details are, to me, indictments of Western civilization rather than the work of an aberrant few, making them all the more painful) there was actually an optimistic note.
Can we just give the Soviet troops credit for liberating Auschwitz. Just today.
I would amend that to give them most of the credit for defeating Nazi Germany, actually. No matter whether Stalin was a bigger butcher than Hitler (and in sheer numbers he was), or whether Communism was a bankrupt and evil system (and it was), the fact remains that the Red Army saved Europe from Fascism. They just did. Or, to put it another way, The Russians would have beaten Hitler eventually without Italy and D-Day, but we could never have taken back Europe without Russian help. Over 75% of Hitler’s army was engaged in the East. Imagine if we had had to fight through France against that. If you don’t accept that, you haven’t read enough history.
Why do I care? Because I don’t think that there can be much debate that the USSR and its soldiers were the “good guys” when they broke the Nazi legions over their knee in the iron cold of the steppes. The Red Army stopped the work of the Einsatzgruppen. The Red Army freed millions of jews and other captives from concentration and forced labor camps, and most of those manumitted stayed free.
These are historical facts, that do not need to be erased in order for us to be truly horrified by Stalin’s own mass starvations, his brutal purges, and the hopeless twilight world of his gulags. In our own history, the same heroic troops that freed the slaves turned smartly Westward and started killing indians, but we still allow ourselves the luxury of taking credit for a victory over the horror of slavery.
Slarti – “Good guys?” I for one am happy there was a Red Army in 1944. Aren’t you?
lj — this thread is not the place for an extended discussion of this, but I think the idea that the Holocaust is just the logical end-point of Western ideas of rationality is deeply wrong. The Holocaust is one of the things that can happen when you deploy rationality to answer the question, how can some goal be achieved most effectively?, but completely fail to use it on the question, is this goal a good one? Or even (in the case of the Holocaust) anything other than abhorrent? Had the authors of the Holocaust really tried, rationally, to figure out the answers to both questions, it would not have happened. (Unless they made some monumental mistake about the end, and then it would not be rationality per se that was at fault, but them — just as when someone makes a monumental calculating error that leads to a bridge collapsing, it’s not mathematics per se that’s at fault, but that person’s calculations.)
I don’t believe Hitler could have formed a long-lasting empire, so I think Western Europe would have survived.
But without Russia, we might have used nukes against Berlin, and the post-war world would have been differently awful.
Hilzoy, I can understand your viewpoint, but I disagree. I think Adorno makes the case best from in the realm of philosophy (though this pdf interview with LaCapra makes the distinction between ‘technical rationality’ and ‘substantive rationality’, but I find Rubenstein’s presentation the clearest, (though some have characterized his argument that the Holocaust represents the coming together of 20th century technology and bureaucracy). At any rate, I don’t think it is possible to have a technical definition of rationality that incorporates pre-existing goals. Those sorts of axioms lie outside rationality.
After all, how do we explain that the country that was the epitome of Western ideas of rationality (think of Goethe, Beethoven, and a whole raft of others) could find itself carrying this out? Also, how do we explain why the Reich took steps to carry this out in an ‘legal’ manner, by first declaring that Jews were non-citizens, which then put them outside the protections of any country? We can see the careful bookkeeping, the exceedingly precise predictions of the minimum amount of food that would produce the maximum amount of labor, the rational working out of how to not only kill, but how to dispose the corpses for maximum benefit, and we see the processes were patented. We could call it a monumental miscalculation, but how do we explain the length that it went? I’ll forgo another long quote from the Steinbacher book, but she discusses how the SS guards lived at Auschwitz with their families and says ‘Mass murder and respectability were not opposites, but were closely interwoven.” and she goes on the cite Himmler’s declaration that the SS men had remained ‘morally decent’.
Sorry if I am steering this off topic, but I would like to explore this in the morning.
An irrational ideology (German Hubris as metaphysical reality) employing the tools of the enlightenment and modernity to achieve its end.
White Man’s Burden, as an example, aLL Western colonizers were pretty scientific when it came to brutalizing the Third World in the name of Christianity and civilization.
Soviet Imperialism?
At lunchtime today, I picked up a copy of The Independent, and suffered the jarring shock of sitting in a comfortable pub, eating good soup, reading about the horrors of humanity:
I’d like to say I lost my appetite. But in fact I was dislocated: I’m in a pub, there’s music in the background, the food is good: I’m reading about the people who suffered this, the people who did this, this unbelievable act of barbarity.
Towards the end of my lunch hour, some member of staff accidentally (and briefly) turned the music up as far as the sound system would go – and for an instant, the noise was literally painful, it was so loud. And yes, I thought – when I could think – that keep that up for long enough, or vary the sound level so that your ears never shut off, and it would be torture.
On the bus home, I read The Firm. (I tend to assume that it’s one of those novels everyone’s, read, but just in case: it’s a John Grisham novel, his first, where a bright young lawyer just out of school discovers that the firm that hired him is owned by the Mafia, that all the partners and most of the associates know this, and if you try to leave the firm, you die.)
What struck me, reading it today of all days, wasn’t that McDeere leaves: it was all the other associates and partners who stayed. By the time they found out they were working for the Mafia, leaving the firm would have meant financial disaster (even if they had survived, and presumably, the first two or three who tried to leave wouldn’t have been sure they would die for it). They stayed and they went along with it, because the Mafia was making them wealthy, because the horrors were at a safe distance, because going along with it means a safe, comfortable life. There’s a very telling scene where an associate – one senior enough to know – is sitting frozen with horror after word comes back that two other associates have been killed. Naturally McDeere assumes the frozen horror is grief for friends: but re-reading it, I thought it was just as likely to be a crack in the smooth shell that lawyer had been able to wind round himself. He could pretend he didn’t know what working for the Mafia meant: he could pretend he had nothing to do with their crimes: but when two friends were killed, their children left fatherless, that shattered him. Momentarily or permanently? We don’t know: I don’t think Grisham ever follows through on that scene.
People want to believe that they’re good people. I think if anything ought to be the lesson of the Holocaust, it’s this: that people are capable of believing that they are doing the right thing, that there is nothing really wrong, that no vile crime is being committed – no matter what their eyes (or their noses, or any of their senses) tell them: the mind controls, and the mind wants to believe that all is well.
Excellent comment Jes!
I beleieve Judah Rosenthal demonstrates how easy it is for the self-righteous (anyone for that matter) can easily accept evil.
I guess I knew this was really my issue with your post:
You said:
“I’ll repeat: I won’t let a thread about commemorating the liberation of prisoners at Auschwitz become the same old food fight.”
But in your post you were really implying:
“Judeo-Christian/Muslim confict. Domestically, I was thinking about the Christian Right/Gay conflict and also the Judeo-Christian/Muslim conficts. In all these instances, we hear the language of vicitimization on both sides.”
I just think it is a cheap shot. Because you get your punch in and then say… let’s don’t talk about that though.
Stan saw it, I saw it. Even you saw it.
“I’d rather not debate in this context who’s right and who’s wrong, if it’s all the same to you, but I’d say that focussing on middle ground would help each of these not get any more heated than they already have.”
So if that’s really true then why just not talk about Aushwitz? You get your punches in and then say don’t hit me.
I’m sorry it’s just typical. Feel free to ban me for thread jacking… or maybe try to look for the middle ground.
smlook,
I don’t understand what in that quote of Edward’s is a “cheap-shot?” How? To whom?
James Casey,
Not only did the Soviets liberate Auschwitz after defeating the Wehrmacht, they also rescued large numbers of Jews. When the Nazis invaded Poland there was confusion as to how far they were supposed to go. The agreement with the Soviets called for them to stop at the Vistula, the river that runs through Warsaw, but they pushed further east to the Bug River. When Stalin protested the Germans actually withdrew, and the territory between the rivers was occupied by Soviet troops. There were further negotiations, and eventually the Soviets allowed Germany to re-occupy this territory. Before leaving, the Red Army offered to permit residents to accompany them back to Russia, and many did.
After living in Soviet territory for some time these refugees were asked to become Soviet citizens, abandoning their Polish citizenship. Some accepted and others, believing the war would end fairly soon, refused. Those who accepted were allowed to stay where they were, in territory that was later overrun by the Nazis, and most perished in the camps.
Those who refused were sent to Siberia. After the German invasion of Russia they were freed, since they were citizens of Poland, suddenly an ally. Many survived, making their way to Central Asia and other places, and many of these survivors finally found a home in Israel.
Slarti,
Soviet Russia was not exactly a paragon of religious tolerance.
True, but also true if you leave the word “Soviet” out. Czarist Russia was probably more anti-Semitic than the Soviet regime.
LJ,
the Holocaust is the hyper-logical outcome of trends in Western rationality, so these details are, to me, indictments of Western civilization
I’m not familiar with the works you mention, but offhand this strikes me as wrong. I do agree that it is an indictment of Western Civilization, but for altogether different reasons.
Perhaps I’m missing part of the point.
smlook,
everything about your comment suggests you really just want to be able to suggest that there is a right or wrong side in those conflicts. I’m not disputing that. I’m just saying that in this thread, it’s not the right time to hash that out. I didn’t say one or the other was right in my opinion though, so you’re “cheap shot” call confuses me. What exactly is meant by “you get your punch in”? What punch?
I agree. It’s worth pointing out that I didn’t compare them, though.
Of course. Did I say anything that might have you think otherwise? No Red Army in the East would have made life much more difficult for us.
slarti –
I was just reacting* to yours of 11:28 – I think the Soviets were good guys in WWII, and not just in comparison to the Nazis. They bled, suffered, and fought evil bravely. They were also criminally misserved by their own government, but the Russian people (and their current leader) have much to be proud of in their conduct and achievements during WWII. And as for religious tolerance, there’s no denying that the USSR was a huge improvement over Czarist Russia. I’m just sayin’.
– ST
*Well, overreacting, maybe.
As much as it pains me to say it (especially because Neo-Nazis and other wingers exploit this fact for their propaganda purposes), one should not forget that the Red Army was also involved in large scale rape, not only of German women either, but also of women of other nationalities, some of them even right after they had been liberated from camps.
Obviously one cannot condemn the Red Army in general for this, but the scale of the rapes was so huge, that the “bad apples” excuse won’t hold either. While rape was not officially employed as a tactic by the Red Army leadership, it was consistently condoned.
So I’m not so sure about labeling them “the good guys” per se.
Jesus, that link is horrific. I had never heard about that before. Makes me feel a bit stupid for my “don’t read enough history” crack way upthread. I guess a better way to put my point in rebuttal to Slarti is that I don’t think it’s practical or fair to expect Putin to be or act ashamed of the historical net of his country’s WWII experience, especially during the commemoration of a specific evil that Russian soldiers ended. To hear the stories from the survivors describing the Russians who broke open the camp, its hard not to see them as banishers of evil.
the most appropriate link I can come up with. via the incomparable Moe Lane, many moons ago.
I actually flipped past some of the ceremony on TV today, on a Polish-language (I think) channel. It was a very silent, somber ceremony, entirely appropriate. Odd to see so many world leaders there not drawing attention to themselves at all (this was after the speeches I guess). It took me a sec to recognize them under their giant fur hats (it looked freezing cold there.) I couldn’t understand what anyone was saying, naturally, except when the Kaddish was recited–I got the impression that they were having different religious leaders read translations of it first, but it might have been other prayers. I don’t know.
One interesting detail that I hadn’t known (picked up from news stories, not the Polish language station obviously): Viktor Yuschenko’s father was held at Auschwitz as a Soviet prisoner of war. (He survived; he became a teacher.) His wife’s father was held in a forced labor camp in Nazi Germany.
I don’t think Europe is the same at all. (I don’t say that because I approve of their attitudes to Israel and the Palestinians, either, but I don’t want to get into that discussion now.)
novakant: the moral is that there are no good guys, just a lot of scared people trying to get by. Prejudging away people as ‘good’ or ‘bad’ based on their nationality or their race is just a lazy way of getting around having to evaluate people based on their actions, and so you can make sweeping comments about this or that million people on blogs.
novakant: the moral is that there are no good guys, just a lot of scared people trying to get by.
If you’re referring to the mass rapes of the Red Army circa 1944-45, I’d say “scared” isn’t exactly the right adjective to use.
I’m not familiar with the works you mention, but offhand this strikes me as wrong. I do agree that it is an indictment of Western Civilization, but for altogether different reasons.
The Rubenstein book is a slim volume so it’s not a long read. I think the last chapter is weak, but while short, a 1-2 sentence summary of the thesis of the book doesn’t do it justice. I’m guessing your indictment of Western civilization is that we stood by while it happened, and I can see that viewpoint, but rather than argue over questions of responsibility in the West, I think what is important about R’s thesis is the notion that the mechanisms of the state were what enabled the Holocaust to take place. This is why a mere weighing of numbers doesn’t get to the crux of the issue. This is also why (imo) the Holocaust is worse than Stalin’s purges because those were generated by his paranoia and desire for power. The Holocaust was about the state determining a category of people that were to be rationally used and then disposed of, and the state made every effort to make that happen.
As far as the mass rapes, I don’t want to be an apologist, but I don’t think it is possible to imagine the ferocity of the fighting that went on in the Eastern front. It is possible (if John Dower’s _A war without mercy_ is accurate) that the fighting on the Pacific front was of a similar nature, but the geography, the command structures of the two armies, and the nature of the surrender led to different outcomes. This is why you don’t see very many get-togethers of German and Russian veterans swapping stories.
well, as Jean Renot says at the end of Léon:
No women, no children.
Edward,
” didn’t say one or the other was right in my opinion though, so you’re “cheap shot” call confuses me.”
Should I isolate this post from all your others? Do we not know how you feel about the Bush administration? We all already know where you stand on these issues, by posts you have already written.
Please elaborate on how Judeo-Christians have invaded any peaceful moslem country. Tell me how many times Christians have used suicide bombers to intentionally kill moslems. It is true that Muslims are in conflict with the Western world, but it is not true that the Western world was in conflict with the Moslem world until after 9/11.
So tell me:
“it seriously enough fast enough when one side is pushing too hard, however, hopefully we’ll reach a good marker for a middle ground…”
Who is pushing too hard?
I mean I think we can all agree that the typical Moslem isn’t pushing too hard, right?
I think we can agree that the terrorists are pushing to hard, right?
So, is the U.S. pushing too hard and if so who are we pushing to hard on?
The typical Moslem? The typical Moslem country? Or the terrorist?
Should the U.S. not push hard on the terrorist?
Should the U.S. be trying to find common ground with the terrorist?
Frankly, you really do have an opinion on these issues and we really do know it. Which is why I think it’s odd you point out your issue, but then say let’s don’t talk about it.
LJ,
I’m guessing your indictment of Western civilization is that we stood by while it happened,
Only partly correct. Much has to do with the attitudes and influence of the Roman Catholic Church. I’m talking about not just Pius XII, but the entire history of the church’s behavior and teaching with respect to Jews. This may not be the appropriate thread to discuss this often inflammatory subject, but the point stands in opposition to any notion that excess rationality was a cause of the Holocaust.
Bernard
Apologies if it seemed like I was putting words in your mouth. I agree that the role of the Church is a strong counter-argument, but I would suggest that there are some points that weaken that argument. The first is that this suggests that it was the earlier irrationality of Europe that was able to surface despite the Enlightenment. If this is true, we need to work harder to eliminate irrational impulses. Yet of the Jewish populations of European countries, we note that Italy, which would presumably have the strongest influence of the Church had the smallest number of major European countries, despite being an ally.
The second point is that the Final Solution included homosexuals, Gypsys and the mentally handicapped. While the first category might be attributed to Church attitudes, the second two really can’t be.
(as a sad note about the first group, this link via a long ago post on Crooked Timber, has the following)
1945 – Upon the liberation of concentration camps by Allied forces, those interned for homosexuality are not freed, but required to serve out the full term of their sentences under Paragraph 175
We could argue that rationality didn’t do the job it was supposed to, but again, if it didn’t work in Germany, which could be considered to be the epitome of the Enlightenment, this would suggest that rationality would be insufficient anywhere. But if we suggest that rationality enabled the Holocaust, they we have a duty to look more critically at it as a tool. As they say, if all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.
Smlook: Should I isolate this post from all your others? Do we not know how you feel about the Bush administration? We all already know where you stand on these issues, by posts you have already written.
Indeed. But what’s the problem with keeping this thread exclusively for posts responding to the 60th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi death camp Auschwitz? Why do you need to turn this into a thread arguing about the Bush administration?
Sorry, bad html, let me try again
Apologies if it seemed like I was putting words in your mouth. I agree that the role of the Church is a strong counter-argument, but I would suggest that there are some points that weaken that argument. The first is that this suggests that it was the earlier irrationality of Europe that was able to surface despite the Enlightenment. If this is true, we need to work harder to eliminate irrational impulses. Yet of the Jewish populations of European countries, we note that Italy, which would presumably have the strongest influence of the Church had the smallest number of major European countries, despite being an ally.
The second point is that the Final Solution included homosexuals, Gypsys and the mentally handicapped. While the first category might be attributed to Church attitudes, the second two really can’t be.
(as a sad note about the first group, this link via a long ago post on Crooked Timber, has the following)
1945 – Upon the liberation of concentration camps by Allied forces, those interned for homosexuality are not freed, but required to serve out the full term of their sentences under Paragraph 175
We could argue that rationality didn’t do the job it was supposed to, but again, if it didn’t work in Germany, which could be considered to be the epitome of the Enlightenment, this would suggest that rationality would be insufficient anywhere. But if we suggest that rationality enabled the Holocaust, they we have a duty to look more critically at it as a tool. As they say, if all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.
Atrios notes Cheney’s garb at the ceremony. I don’t actually care, but it’s odd.
Atrios notes Cheney’s garb at the ceremony
he does look a bit tacky…doesn’t he have people telling him about these things?
Yeah, I noticed that. But I think this is a “Dick Cheney can’t dress” problem or a “Dick Cheney is a bad packer” rather than a “Dick Cheney doesn’t respect the dead” problem.
It looked absolutely freezing there. It is not usually cold enough in D.C. that one would need formal clothes for that sort of weather, and American cold weather clothes are, in general, quite informal, while American formal clothes are generally really bad at keeping you warm (I have a lovely wool coat, but it’s too thin to wear much in November or March or wear at all in December, January or February, ). He should’ve thought ahead that Poland can be really freaking cold in the winter, and bought long underwear/an overcoat/a decent looking hat instead of a ski outfit. But I really don’t care very much. It seems at least as perverse to write a style section piece on Dick Cheney’s clothes at the Auschwitz liberation memorial as for Dick Cheney to show up in a ski jacket. And hey, it could’ve been worse–no man-fur, at least.
sorry.
did that work?
repeated closed tags.
It seems at least as perverse to write a style section piece on Dick Cheney’s clothes at the Auschwitz liberation memorial
True enough.
It’s the photo of him surrounded by folks in black that makes it so jolting. In the photo of him by himself, I didn’t think anything of it.
Edward: It’s the photo of him surrounded by folks in black that makes it so jolting. In the photo of him by himself, I didn’t think anything of it.
And I don’t suppose any of the people who were actually there thought anything of it either. IME, when you’re actually at memorial ceremonies, individuals don’t stand out the way they do in group photographs of the event.
Katherine: Yeah, I noticed that. But I think this is a “Dick Cheney can’t dress” problem or a “Dick Cheney is a bad packer” rather than a “Dick Cheney doesn’t respect the dead” problem.
I just saw (though on a blog of someone saying “my wife says”*) that in Poland Cheney’s casual dress was seen as disrespectful. Haven’t been able to find any direct (ie, Polish) commentary on this, though, at least not in English.
*That is, a possible indicator of feeling, but nothing I would consider reliable, not even though the blogger says his wife is Polish…
LJ,
You didn’t put words in my mouth. Your surmise was not incorrect, just not the full story. As for the church, you seem to assume that Catholic anti-Semitism largely died down with the Enlghtenment. I do not think this is true. After all, the deicide charge was not eliminated until Vatican II. David Kertzer’s “The Popes Against the Jews” provides an excellent history of nineteenth century papal anti-Semitism.
The situation in Italy was somewhat special, since under Mussolini few if any Jews were deported. Only after his fall, and German occupation of part of the country, were any significant number of Italian Jews sent to concentration camps. Look at intensely Catholic, intensely anti-Semitic, Poland for a different case.
The church may well bear no responibility for the treatment of gays and the Roma, though I wonder, but that does not mean that this treatment was a consequence of rationality.
Hey now. He’s from Wyoming. I’m from Idaho. Boots with no mud on them were church clothes. I’d look to the sentiment more than the fashion.
Bernard
Thanks for your reply. I’ve read a lot about Polish behavior in relation to the Holocaust, which is another reason why I quoted Steinbacher in my 12:12 post as a ‘bright spot’. Also, as a counterbalance to Poland, we should consider the case of the Netherlands, which (I would suggest) as a protestant country, we should have seen less eager compliance with German authorities. You could argue that the Protestant church inherited those attitudes, but it doesn’t really explain how the Dutch civil service made the job of the Nazis so much easier. Also, it fails to acknowledge the instances where refusal to cooperate (such as Denmark) led to far different outcomes. These instances depend not on rational thinking (I’d argue that God gives us ‘certain inalienable rights’ is a non-rational thought), but on a refusal to c
I’ve been googling, as my readings in most of this were 20 years ago, and I was surprised to find that the name of the argument of what I thought was being made seems to have shifted in meaning. As I understood it, I am taking the functionalism side of the functionalism vs. intentionalist. Yet this entry from the wikipedia has the following:
I don’t understand or agree with that description, as a functionalist description (as I understand it) underlines the way various parts of the system contribute to the whole, and doesn’t fix the origin of something within a specific time or place.
In googling, I found this interview with Dominick LaCapra that I found quite interesting. In suggesting that it is necessary to integrate the two schools and he brings up a number of points that both mitigate and support the two approaches. One can take away any number of points from the interview, but the one that I did was:
At any rate, thanks to you and hilzoy for getting me to think about this again. It’s been in the back of mind quite a bit, with the questions of torture and what rights citizenship grants.
Sorry, I left a sentence unfinished.
These instances depend not on rational thinking (I’d argue that God gives us ‘certain inalienable rights’ is a non-rational thought), but on a refusal to call for rational limits on basic and fundamental human rights.
Via Sullywatch:
a moving poem.
You could argue that the Protestant church inherited those attitudes, but it doesn’t really explain how the Dutch civil service made the job of the Nazis so much easier. Also, it fails to acknowledge the instances where refusal to cooperate (such as Denmark) led to far different outcomes.
It is slightly more complicated than that. Last year I read the publicized letters of the secretary of the Jewish Council (a publication of our center for holocaust and genocide studies, which sheds more light about a very complex situation.
Part of the reason is the ‘law abiding’ character of the Netherlands I think (which is why we like to have laws covering things that most countries don’t like to formalize), and our ‘faith in government’. Part of the reason is the geographical trap the Netherlands were: If we could have walked 95% of our Jewish population to a neighbouring countrie the percentage of killed Jews would be a lot lower. Another part is the tendency in Dutch society to live in relatively separete groups, each to his own so to speak. That has advantages in sofar as it stops harrasment and persecution, but the disadvantage is that less really deep friendships between groups develop. People are more indifferent, especially in situation where it is hard enough to care for you and yours (war, occupation, unemployment, hunger). Protests that *were* held were met with brutality. We still, every year, have a remembrence of the Februaristaking. Bad as it is, I can understand how it could happen.
What shocked me much more was the actions of government *after* the liberation of the camps. People from the camps had to find their way home, there was no help, no victim aid… they would come home in a country were everybody was concerned with building up what was destroyed, no one was particulary interested in their stories since everybody had suffered (the hungerwinter was gruesome. My parents lived true it). They had no money, no possesions, and in a number of cases were served with a tax bill for the previous years… unimaginable, that cold and harsh attitude.
dutchmarbel
I was a bit worried that my mentioning the Netherlands would be taken as a ‘look how bad they were’ rather than evidence of the ‘modern’ nature of the Holocaust. I don’t think that it is a coincidence that of Western European nations, it is the Netherlands that was so efficient, but I hasten to add that my point is that it was the ‘rationality’ that was at the root, not some moral deficit of the Dutch people. The fact that some don’t see how rationality can serve towards such a terrible goal points IMO to how little we reflect on what rationality is. In fact, we have another thread discussing the use of religious taboos in interrogation, and there seems to be an undercurrent that if someone is irrational enough to believe that stuff, why not use it. That Dutch society has been built on a foundation of rationality can be seen in things like ‘drowning cells’ of the mid 17th century where idle youth were locked into cells that had a pump and a tap and if they stopped pumping, they would drown. We see the noyades of Nantes as prefiguring Auschwitz.
You note the separation of Dutch society (where Gentiles and Jews generally kept to their own social circles) also contributed to the fact that cases like Anne Frank were the exception rather than the rule. This relates, I think, to our discussion of multiculturalism, in that one of the dangers of simply granting cultures their space and not trying to bridge gaps creates a dangerous situation.
I realize that attacking rationality as a cause of the Holocaust could feel like a personal attack on people who consider themselves completely rational, or as an attack on the whole of Western civilization. I don’t think of it in this way, I just view rationality as a potentially powerful drug whose application needs to be carefully calculated and understood.
That Dutch society has been built on a foundation of rationality can be seen in things like ‘drowning cells’ of the mid 17th century where idle youth were locked into cells that had a pump and a tap and if they stopped pumping, they would drown. We see the noyades of Nantes as prefiguring Auschwitz.
Did we do that?? I never came across it, but whenever I read about history I am suprised at what horrors people inflicted on each other. I thought the South African concentration camps were more ‘prefiguring Auschwitz’ than the actions of a zealot who got executed for it.
I don’t know about rationality. Look at the Hutu’s and the Tutsi’s, look at what happened in the Balkan. Those were not seperated groups, and still neighbour turned on neighbour and friend turned on friend. Sometimes it is religion, often it is economy or politics disguised as religion (Dafur, north-Ireland, etc.).
I think our history showes that humans are just capable of excelling at both evil and good. I am interested in the triggers too. There are a few mechanisms that scare me, because I think they ease the happening of bad things. Though it is natural to think in “them” and “us” (people in general like being part of a group) you have to wacht out when ‘the other’ is not seen as an individual anymore, is dehumanized. Wether it is ‘the Jew’, or ‘the communist’ or ‘the gay’: one should always remember that they are a group of individuals; some likeble, some evil, some kind, some boring… just like all of “us”.
And people tend to see the capacity for evil as something that is less strong in themselves, or in their group. Experiments like the Stanford prisoners experiment or Milgrams studies show the shocking (and often damaging) fact that it is in all of us.
The information about drowning cells is from Simon Schama’s The Embarrassment of Riches : An Interpretation of Dutch Culture in the Golden Age. Also explains the names of Rasphuis and Spinhuis. Be very interested to hear your take on the book.
As for good and evil, I don’t disagree, but our ability to blame ‘evil’, (like the recent refrain of a few bad apples) rather than look to the systemic causes is a blind spot. For example, the example of the Hutus and the Tutsis is not simply of neighbors turning on one another, the problem, though it had its roots in economic differences 400 years ago, only took on its violent nature when the Belgian authorities promoted ethnic conflict as a way to divide and conquer. As for the Balkans, people often think that the conflict is a long-standing one, but I believe that the true conflict began in the run up to WWI. From this link
At any rate, this is a bit outside of the question of rationality and the Holocaust, so unless you want to discuss this more, I don’t have much to add.
LJ,
Yes, the Protestant churches no doubt inherited some of the Roman Catholic attitudes towards Jews. See Martin Luther’s writings, for example.
As to why some countries cooperated with the Nazis and others did not, that is of course a very difficult question involving history, political structures, and lots else.
Incidentally, while Denmark certainly deserves its accolades let’s not overlook Bulgaria, where the king and parliament simply refused to deport Jews. This refusal had the support of the papal nuncio, Angelo Roncalli, later Pope John XXIII. It was he who convened Vatican II, of course, which can lead to all sorts of arguments and claims.
My understanding of the functionalist school is that it believes the Holocaust was created more or less by inertia. That is, once the machine started moving there was nothing to stop it, even though the destination had not been foreseen. I am dubious of this interpretation, for some of the reasons you quote, and also because of the apparent willingness of the Nazi regime to divert resources from the war effort to the Holocaust. That does not suggest that the Holocaust was a sideline.
Again, as I noted, I appreciate LaCapra’s calls to get beyond the debate between functionalism and intentionalism. In fact, when you say
As to why some countries cooperated with the Nazis and others did not, that is of course a very difficult question involving history, political structures, and lots else.
That partakes of a functional argument. I would also note that there is a difference, I think, in a German making a functional argument and a westerner making a functional argument. For the first, it can give the appearance of trying to deflect blame, but for the latter, it is a willingness to expand the circle of responsibility.
This review of Friedländer, which, while identifying the weaknesses of functionalism, nonetheless points out the important points of functionalism. These points are why I believe that the idea behind the term has some importance to us while at the same time accepting that functionalism could create a false narrative in which “”The image it offers of Nazism is more ‘normal,’ easier to explain: any group can stumble haphazardly, step by step, into the most extreme criminal behavior” I certainly don’t want to do that, but if we don’t understand not only that we are all Jews, but that we are all Germans, have we really confronted what the Holocaust means?
But I don’t want to press my point too hard as this may be an area where we will have to agree to disagree.
but if we don’t understand not only that we are all Jews, but that we are all Germans, have we really confronted what the Holocaust means?
I think our POV’s do not differ much. I must confess that the Friedman piece was too technical to read for me, to many references to a background in history.
I agree about the Hutsi’s and Tutsi’s (economical background), they fell in my ‘often it is economics’ category. When I say evil, I also mean the evil caused by indifference, or by focussing on the procedures and not what those led to; not just the evil in the perpetrators, not evil as a motivator.
I ordered the book (a.o. – there should be a posting rule forbidding people to send me to bookshops…), tnxs for the tip. It may take it’s time in arriving though, the stack of unread books is looming allready 😉
If I understand your point it is that the Nazis could of course have overridden Bulgaria’s wishes, for example, by force, but did not.
No, not exactly. What I’m saying is that if you invoke “history, political structures, and lots else”, you can’t take rationality off the table. One possible way around it is that hyper-bureaucratization diverged sufficiently from rationality. Another way is to use a different term because blaming rationality makes rational people a little, well, irrational (^~^)
The question is not how much effort was required or not for the various countries, the question is what prevented it from happening in some countries, but not in others. When you say ‘let’s not overlook Bulgaria, where the king and parliament simply refused to deport Jews’, that ‘simply’ suggests that there was no rational explanation, no trying to present alternative arguments. The hard core of this is that there what prevented the Holocaust was not getting wrapped up in trying to argue, just the simple refusal to accept it.
‘Modernity’ is another term that I remember being used, and in googling, I found Baumann’s _Modernity and the Holocaust_ I found some notes on chapters 4-6, but something crashed my browser, and I can’t find it again. Nonetheless, the class notes, if they were correct, suggested that Baumann has a similar POV to mine.
This is a RTF word doc giving a breakdown of various interpretive stances towards the Holocaust. I find myself in agreement with Moderate functionalism. This essay is also quite good.