PART III

THE FINAL SOLUTION IN CONTEXT

            “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God.” So starts the gospel of St. John and this is also the most apt introduction to our topic. The Holocaust was the outcome of a gigantic struggle between two opposing views that was initiated by words and cartoons. It is the latter, which makes it so relevant for the 21^st century because 20^th century terminology and ideation dominate again.

Let me paraphrase St. John, “In the beginning was the word and the word became god . . . and became [burning] flesh.” There were two gods in the first half of the past century, both were jealous gods and did not tolerate other gods besides them. That was the tragedy. Hitler’s strident, vituperative language in Mein Kampf especially, but not exclusively, against Jews became the hallmark of his campaign for absolute power in Germany. It thoroughly frightened the world wide Jewish community and it responded in kind. The war of words and pictures which preceded WWII is largely forgotten today but the atrocities of WWII could never have happened had the soil not been plowed and the seeds diligently sown. This installment will bring these memories back which only few of us have.

Historians have debated as to when the Holocaust began to take shape. Some date it to the Kristallnacht, while others bring it in relation to the invasion of the Soviet Union. Still others put the date at January 30, 1933 when Hitler was appointed chancellor of Germany. I believe they are correct because on that day an internal German event became the concern of the Jewish community throughout the world.

In order to understand the second quarter of the 20^th century, the consequences of which will continue to haunt us for decades to come, we have to look at Mein Kampf because this was the book that initiated the disasters which followed. The final version as distributed first to the faithful, and then the German people at large consisted of two parts. The first one was written by Hitler during the summer and fall of 1924, while he was imprisoned at Landsberg am Lech for the failed November 1923 Putsch and had the subtitle, “Eine Abrechnung,”  while the second part bears the date of 1927 and has the subtitle, “Die Nationalsozialistische Bewegung.” While the first part was mainly a historical review how he in person and Germany in general got into the situation they found themselves in, the second part was a programmatic statement what the NS movement stood for and what it intended to accomplish in its domestic and foreign policy. The two parts differ somewhat in their tone. The first one is filled with venomous rage, while the second part is slightly less so. Hitler’s inflammatory rhetoric does not lend itself to proper English translation but some of it is necessary for comparison with the language used by his American Jewish adversaries who did write in English.

Why did Hitler express himself the way he did in 1924? It was the rage of a person who would be called in German a “verkrachte Existenz.” Imagine a 35 year old male who had intended to become a great painter, would have settled for an architect but couldn’t achieve that because out of personal willfulness had neglected his studies and failed to finish High School; hated the country he was born in because of its “multiculturalism;” admired Germanic greatness but was penniless as well as profoundly enraged when Germany not only lost the war but was saddled with exclusive guilt for its start. Add to this situation that everything the common people had stood and fought for was now vilified by the new ruling class; hyperinflation ruined ordinary citizens while others profiteered; the French who had not been satisfied with regaining Alsace-Lorraine and massive reparation demands which could not be met occupied the Ruhr, Germany’s industrial heart, in 1923. The uprising in Munich in which Hitler was supposed to have been supported by the Bavarian government and which was meant to be the beginning of a march on Berlin (similar to Mussolini’s a year earlier) in order to “throw the rascals out,” had in fact been thwarted by the very people who had pledged support; units of the Reichswehr and the police shot and killed 16 of his compatriots who only wanted to restore German freedom and German honor. Now he was sentenced to five years in prison; the party he had built was forbidden and dissolved; he was a nobody who had failed miserably!

Those were the circumstances under which Hitler wrote Part I. Somebody must have been at fault and since he completely lacked insight the fault lay with others and especially those who had contributed internally to the German collapse of 1918 and who now ruled Germany: Marxists-Bolsheviks and Capitalists. These in turn were controlled, in his opinion, by Jews whose only aim was the destruction of the Aryan race so that they could rule the world according to Old Testament promise. This was Hitler’s Weltanschauung, his personal fervent belief, which he poured out in the book. He was what one may call the “Great Simplifier” because everything could be brought on a common denominator: purity of the race will ensure strength, and strength is needed to combat your enemies because it is a law of nature that the strong eat the weak. Everything he did flowed from there. He even abstained from talking about the Jews, in the plural, because one might make differences among them; no it had to be “The Jew” in the singular, and to encompass not only German Jews but those of the rest of the world there was “das internationale Judentum,” international Jewry, who really controlled the lives of all the nations. This power needed to be broken and he would spare no effort to do so.

One other aspect needs to be remembered in regard to Mein Kampf. The first part was written to define himself for himself and for his party’s faithful. It was not expected that ordinary Germans, let alone the rest of the world, would pay much attention to it. This is why he constantly used words which don’t lend themselves very well to English translation. For instance Schmarotzer is only inadequately represented by “sponger,” because it does not carry the same definitive derogatory message as the German word. For this reason I won’t translate all the flowery terms Hitler used to insult his enemies, especially “the Jew,” and only a few samples will suffice: “vermin that needs to be exterminated (ausgerottet), tyrannical bloodsuckers, the great hater who demands total destruction of the German people, noxious bacillus, needs the lie just as people living in northern climes need warm clothing.” Nobody in his right mind took this sort of prattle seriously except the Jews whom he had insulted in this manner.

I believe that the Jewish leadership in Germany and elsewhere committed a mistake in the early 1920’s which had its terrible revenge in the 1940’s. Instead of letting him bark and concentrate on getting the economy into decent shape so that people could have jobs and income again they responded in the same manner thereby giving Hitler more attention than he and his meager following of convinced fanatics really deserved. Another mistake was made by the Bavarian government when they released Hitler after only eight months instead of letting him serve the five years he had been sentenced to. This allowed him to reorganize the party, and the continued attacks in the Press in word and picture helped to attract the attention he required.

In a previous installment I have mentioned that I have a book “Hitler in der Karrikatur der Welt” in my library. It was published by the NSDAP in 1938 and carries Hitler’s nihil obstat, approved by the Führer, on the cover. The book contains cartoons about Hitler and the Nazi party from April 1, 1924 to June 1933 and allows one to gauge how he was presented in the Press during the years before he became Germany’s dictator. The first one, on April fool’s day, shows him riding a white horse with the Brandenburg gate of Berlin in back, a cupid holding a victor’s wreath over his head, a Valkyrian banner carrying knight on his left, a Roman soldier type with blade in the right hand holding with his left a pinstriped suit wearing man who had been thrown to the ground and was about to be beheaded, while another grim looking pinstriped capitalist is chained to the horse’s bridle. Well, when it was published in the Munich of 1924 with Hitler sitting in jail it was a joke, or was it?

After this cartoon came a four year’s gap and the pictures continued in January of 1928. The first cartoon predicted that the Nazi party would split itself so often that only Hitler remained and than he would ax his own head in the middle from top to chin. Subsequently between 1928 and December 1932 they show variants of Hitler as: a buffoon; a tool of bankers and aristocrats; afraid of governing; mongering for war and sitting on the tombstone of the German people. With one exception from The Daily Advertiser of Tiffin Ohio U.S.A., which shows Hitler in WWI uniform, a sword on his side imitating Napoleon and Mussolini, they are exclusively from German sources especially, “Der Wahre Jacob” of Berlin. This was the political climate in Germany before Hitler became chancellor and judging from the cartoons, they spread both fear of him as well as the hope of his being incompetent and, therefore, inconsequential.

The situation changed in February of 1933. Now the vast majority came from abroad especially: France, England, the U.S., and the Soviet Union, there are also some other countries represented such as: the Netherlands, Denmark, Turkey, Egypt, Spain, as well as a rather mild one from Austria. While a few still stressed incompetence, the rest predicted disasters brought on by war for which Hitler would be the cause. The last date of the cartoons was June 19, 1933 and came from the London Daily Express, It showed a captive Germany bowed down by a huge swastika tied to her back and the caption reads ”Whither?”

One may now say that the cartoons which predicted war and death were prophetic but one should also consider another possibility. Could the disaster have been averted had fear of it not constantly been drummed into people before Hitler had even come to power? This is an unpopular thought but the vigorous Jewish reaction in the West to Hitler becoming chancellor, before he had even issued his first decree, was not helpful to the potential cause of peace. The role the American Press and especially The New York Times played in the creation of a climate of fear tends to be underreported and hardly anyone knows that the infamous April 1, 1933 German boycott of Jewish stores and offices was precipitated by a call from Jewish circles in New York for boycotting German goods. The New York Times of March 21, 1933 carried on its front page the news that the German Reichstag will meet “to give Hitler full control as dictator” and somewhat further down on that page is a long article headlined, “Jews demand Washington action.” Inside the same issue is another article with the headline, “Boycott Advocated to Curb Hitlerism. W.W. Cohen says any Jew who buys goods made in Germany is a traitor.” The article quoted Mr. Cohen as saying,

“’Any Jew buying one penny’s worth of merchandise made in Germany is a traitor to his people. . . . I doubt that the American Government can officially take any notice of what the German Government is doing to its own citizens. Our only line of resistance is to touch the German pocketbooks.’

Referring to the difference of opinion between Rabbi Stephen S. Wise and Joseph M. Proskauer at the overflow indignation meeting at the Astor Sunday night, the speaker said both were right. He agreed with Dr. Wise that, ‘we must make ourselves heard all over the world’ and with Mr. Proskauer’s argument that mass demonstrations would add to the difficulty of German Jews. The added burden must be borne temporarily, he concluded, while the mechanism for the final curbing of the oppression was made to function.”

The article continued with an announcement for a parade on Thursday and the adoption of several resolutions. For Hitler this was obviously the “Weltjudentum” which he had been talking about all along and something had to be done. On March 26 he called a meeting at the Berghof where the plans for the Saturday April 1, boycott of Jewish stores and offices were worked out. It was to be limited to one day, then there was to be a pause until Wednesday and resumed thereafter unless the Jews abroad got the message that he had a fair amount of hostages at his hands and wouldn’t mind dealing with them in any way he saw fit. Orders were given to the party that their functionaries who enforced the boycott were not to manhandle German Jews and especially foreigners.

There is no doubt that in the immediate aftermath of Hitler’s January 30 triumph some members of the SA went on a rampage and brutalized Jews as well as others with whom they had a score to settle. But these were personal acts of violence and not state ordered pogroms. After a revolution, which Hitler’s ascension to power certainly was, “stuff happens,” as our Secretary of Defense has so eloquently put it in another context.

For what really went on in the German Jewish community in those days we have to turn to the diary of Victor Klemperer, which he kept from 1933-1945 and subsequently continued under the East German communist regime. He was Professor of Romance languages at the Technische Hochschule in Dresden and since his wife, Eva, was Aryan he could survive the war in Germany including the air raids on Dresden by the Allies. What is apparent is the profound fear for what the future was expected to bring rather than brutalization of himself or his Jewish friends. The friends who were in exposed positions, especially journalism and the film industry or the legal profession immediately lost their jobs. In essence the Nazis embarked on what one may call a “de-Judaization” of what they regarded as important positions in the State and as such were fore-runners of de-Nazification and de-Baathification. They set the precedent which has been followed ever since.

Klemperer could carry on with his teaching assignments and saw his audience dwindle. But in spite of meager finances they were able to continue with building their little house in nearby Dőlzschen. They also retained the use of their car. Friends who wanted to emigrate did, including to Palestine, but Klemperer thought himself as too old for that. On July 9, 1933 he wrote, “Whoever goes there [Palestine] exchanges Nationalism and Confinement [Enge] for Nationalism and Confinement. In addition it is an immigration land for capitalists. It is supposed to be of the size of the Province of East Prussia. Residents: 200.000 Jews and 800.000 Arabs.” On November 2, 1933 he commented, “I can’t help myself, I sympathize with the Arabs whose land is being ‘purchased’”

With this as the background on the German Jewish reality of 1933 we can now look at how it was portrayed in America. On August 7, 1933 The New York Times reported on the return of Mr. Samuel Untermeyer from a trip to Europe. While there he had “presided over the International Jewish boycott conference, held in Amsterdam last month, and was elected president of the World Jewish Economic Federation, formed to combat the Hitlerite oppression of Jews.” The paper not only gave excerpts of Mr. Untermeyer’s speech in that article but the full text, which covered three columns of nearly the entire page, was also printed. Here are some salient excerpts,

“The nightmares of horrors through which I have passed in those two weeks in Europe, listening to the heartbreaking tales of refugee victims, beggar description.

I deeply appreciate your enthusiastic greeting on my arrival today, which I quite understand is addressed not to me personally but to the holy war in the cause of humanity in which we are embarked. Jews and non-Jews alike, for we are equally concerned that the work of centuries shall not be undone and that civilization shall not be allowed to die. . . .

Now or never must all the nations of the earth make common cause against the monstrous claim that the slaughter, starvation and annihilation, by a country that has reverted to barbarism, of its own innocent and defenseless citizens without rhyme, reason or excuse is an internal affair against which the rest of the world must stand idly by and not lift a hand in defense. . . .

 But why dwell longer upon this revolting picture of the ravages brought by those ingrates and beasts of prey, animated by the loathsome motives of race hatred, bigotry and envy. For the Jews are the aristocrats of the world. From time immemorial they have been persecuted and have seen their persecutors come and go. They alone have survived and so will history repeat itself. . . . “

I believe this is sufficient to give the flavor. Jews and Nazis were at war long before the first shots were fired on September 1, 1939. On September 6, 1939 The Times of London published a letter by Dr. Weitzman to Mr. Chamberlain under the headline, “Jews to Fight for Democracy.” It was written on August 29, before Hitler’s invasion of Poland, and in it Dr. Weitzman, as president of The Jewish Agency for Palestine promised that “the Jews stand by Great Britain and will fight on the side of the democracies.” This was occasioned by the bitter division over the immigration quota to Palestine the British had imposed and these differences were now to be laid aside until the anticipated war was over.

Although Dr. Weitzman had no jurisdiction over German Jews the Nazis immediately regarded them now as potential members of a “fifth column” against which measures had to be taken. Obviously it didn’t need Weitzman’s letter because anybody who did not share the Nazis' philosophy fervently hoped for a rapid Allied victory. This is not the point, but the Nazis could, thereby again refer to the Weltjudentum which desired Germany’s defeat and made their “defensive” struggle absolutely essential. Anyone who did not see it this way was a traitor who had to be either sent to a KZ or otherwise disposed of.

Up to March of 1938 German Jews, although subjected to the Nuremberg laws, were not incarcerated for being Jewish but only if they engaged in what was regarded as anti-state activities, which included membership in the Communist party or if they were Socialist activist. This changed with the invasion of Austria because as mentioned on other occasions Austrians, and especially the Viennese, had considerably greater anti-Jewish feelings than Germans. I have discussed the reasons in War&Mayhem and it needs only to be mentioned here that the proportionally greater representation of Jews in the media, the arts and major professions had aroused envy. An additional area of resentment was the attempt to introduce to a Catholic conservative people what is now called “modernity,” which included the change in sexual mores.

March 15, 1938 was a watershed for Jews in what was now the Greater German Reich. Immediately after the Nazi took over trains went from Vienna to Dachau which held not only functionaries of the previous regime but also so called “Prominente,” namely those Jews who had been in the cultural limelight. To the best of my knowledge, the inscription “for Aryans only” on park benches, and other chicaneries, appeared first in Austria rather than Germany and Austrian Jews who traveled to the “Altreich,” were surprised at the relatively more lenient situation German Jews lived in as compared to what they experienced at home. The situation changed, of course, first after the Kristallnacht (which was precipitated by a young Jew assassinating a member of the German legation in Paris) and especially during the war for the reasons stated above. But for the sake of historical accuracy I would like to emphasize that hate for hate’s sake was not the motivating force in the general public. In essence it was a get rich quick mentality because now a previously wealthy upper class had overnight become a lower class and could be exploited. As such it was more of a universal human phenomenon rather than a specific characterologic defect of Austrians and Germans.

Another misconception is that once you were in a concentration camp you were kept for life. The reason for it is that the picture the word concentration camp evokes is that of 1941-1945. Prior to that time Jews who had committed no other offenses against the state could be discharged especially if they intended to emigrate. Before the war the official anti-Jewish policy was emigration, rather than extermination. This needs to be emphasized because Hitler’s Mein Kampf ranting of “ausrotten,” which tends to be used to indicate that this had always been the goal, did not become government policy until the invasion of the Soviet Union.

Let us now try to do the impossible again and consider what Hitler’s thoughts might have been in the spring and summer of 1941. He was saddled with a war against England that he had never wanted but could not end because Churchill wouldn’t let him. This attitude, according to his Table talks, was incomprehensible to him because it would result in the demise of the British Empire for which he had strong positive feelings. The Brits were Aryans and knew how to keep the inferior races in their place. That the British would act against their best interests, as he saw them, could only be the work of Jews who with the help of their American relatives would drag that country into the war against him also.

What to do? He had tried to come to an arrangement with Molotov in the fall of 1940 by getting the Soviet Union on his side with the promise that they could have free hand in Asia, especially India and Persia if they just let him do what he wanted in Europe. Molotov didn’t bite and it was known in Germany that conversations between the British and the USSR were under way to have Stalin join their side. Under those circumstances Hitler’s war would be lost. He felt that he had to attack first, before Stalin attacked him and once the wobbly Soviet Union was finished he would have his fortress Europe that would have been unassailable by the Brits and would have given Roosevelt second thoughts about entering the war on their side.

It is my personal opinion that the absolute hate and ferocity the campaign against the Soviet Union engendered was the ultimate watershed for the Jewish people towards the Final Solution. In Hitler’s mind “the Jew” had frustrated him again in all his efforts and now was the time to keep the promise he had made in his speech of January 30, 1939. After he had discussed and dismissed the international “Hetze [vehement agitation]” against Nazi Germany he had said as a warning, “If international finance Jewry within Europe and abroad were to succeed to throw nations once more into a world war, the result will not be a Bolshevization of the world and thereby the triumph of Jewry, but the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe.”

It is obvious that he had wanted his war with Poland and the Soviet Union in January of 1939 but he had hoped to limit it to the East rather than be confronted with all the rest of the world. At some time in 1941 when he had millions of Jews under his control, who couldn’t all be machine gunned, he may well have remembered another one of his ideas from Part II of Mein Kampf. At that time he had written, in connection with the inner decay of Germany’s will to win during the first world war, “If one had at the beginning of the war or during it, held twelve or fifteen thousand of these Hebraic corrupters of nations [Vőlkerverderber] under poison gas, as hundreds of thousands of our very best workers of all segments of society and professions had to suffer in the field, the sacrifices of the millions on the front would not have been in vain.” Thus, it became obvious that gassing would indeed be the fastest, most economic, and least emotionally traumatic way, for the perpetrators to deal with the huge numbers that were now involved. Moral considerations no longer came into play and the distinction between soldiers and civilians had been obliterated by the systematic destruction of cities where women and children also perished in fire storms. After December 1941 Hitler must have known in his heart that the war was lost because the Japanese pursued their private war in the Pacific, rather than helping him against the Soviet Union as he had hoped when he declared war on America. Since he could no longer enter history as “the Greatest German” he might as well be remembered as “the Greatest Criminal.” If he were to win, against all odds as the “Grosse Fritz [Frederick II, his model]” did, nobody would ask the victor any questions and if he lost there would be the bullet in the brain of which he spoke repeatedly.

That millions of people perished in the Final Solution cannot be doubted, neither can be that murder by gassing had been carried out. The dispute over the Holocaust, by reasonable people, is only about numbers, methods, motives, and uniqueness in human history. The Nuremberg trials produced the most salient documents but unfortunately they were flawed on two accounts. One was inherent in the problem when the victor judges the vanquished and especially when the prosecutor for crimes against humanity was a citizen of the Soviet Union, which did not have a reputation for strict adherence to the truth. In addition the trial was carried out in haste and its purpose was to punish the guilty.

Article 18 stated that “The Tribunal shall confine the Trial strictly to an expeditious hearing of the cases raised by the charges.” Article 19 reads, “The Tribunal shall not be bound by technical rules of evidence. It shall adopt and apply to the greatest possible extent expeditious and nontechnical procedure, and shall admit any evidence which it deems to be of probative value.”

Thus, some documents may have been given a different interpretation than might have been warranted had they been studied with less haste. I am saying this because I came across on Wikipedia the so called “Hőfle telegram,” which was sent “from SS-Sturmbannführer Hermann Höfle on January 11, 1943 to SS-Obersturmbannführer Adolf Eichmann,” and “gave death tolls” for the Aktion Reinhard camps through December 31, 1942. The camps in question were: Lublin-Majdanek, Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka, the total number was given as 1,274,166. Impressive as this number is there is some doubt as to the translation. A facsimile of the original telegram is available and “Zugang [entry]” was used instead of “Abgang” or some similar word that might have been used if one wanted to camouflage the word death. Further details in the telegram which give the previous 14 day Zugang for the individual camps simply don’t make sense if the word was used to indicate how many murders had been accomplished during that time. Thus, the telegram stated, in all probabilty, how many prisoners were admitted to these camps in the specified periods rather than killed. Let me emphasize that I do not doubt for a moment that people were deliberately killed but some of the evidence for the numbers of murders can be legitimately questioned.

While this may be of interest to Holocaust specialists it is not a very important aspect in the current context. Considerably more important for our time are the questions why the German people tolerated this crime and to what extent hate existed as the motive, in the minds of the average citizens. These go to the heart of the collective guilt aspect that is supposed to exist. Let me now pose this question to the average non-Jewish American citizen: Assume that in the post 9/11 environment further decrees are issued against a group of people who are regarded as holding an inveterate hate against us and want to destroy our way of life. Assume furthermore that if one is discovered of “aiding and abetting” any member of that group not only the person who does so will be sent right away to Guantanamo, or a similar facitlty, but so will be members of the immediate family (Sippenhaftung). How many parents would willingly risk their lives and those of their children for that group of people with whom they have had only marginal contact previously?

That was the situation during the war in the Nazi Germany I lived in. What kept us in line was the fear of instant massive retaliation and that is a common denominator for all human beings. Did I see hate against the Jews? Not really; you heard off and on comments that could be interpreted in that way but they were just that rather than an enduring passion. As a Mischling (Jewish grandfather) I was potentially on the “endangered species” list and as mentioned in War&Mayhem I was expelled from my High School in December of 1941 by the Superintendant of Vienna’s schools as “an abscess on the body of the German people [Eiterbeule am deutschen Volkskőrper].” This was Nazidom in action and they must surely have hated me, I thought at the time. But this was rhetoric, as I found out later when I read the note on my report card by the director of our school. I still have the document and it did not accuse me of loathsome, nefarious activities. It simply stated that I was expelled “for educational reasons” and against admission to another school “ist nichts einzuwenden [there are no objections].” After proper repentance for youthful stupidity, that had pushed against the limits of what Nazi Germany would tolerate, I was readmitted within three weeks to another school and could graduate a year later. The “educational” measure surely worked. I had been bone lazy previously but that experience taught me how to study. Higher education was not a given for a Mischling under the Nazis but when I applied for admission to Medical School the application was granted. Had I applied for Law school or Journalism I might well have been turned down.  I am mentioning these personal aspects only because had the average Nazi been indeed as ruthless, at the time the Final solution was in progress as he is portrayed, my fate would have been considerably different. This is not to be taken as an excuse for that system in any form or fashion, and I am very glad that Hitler lost the war, but I do not believe that emphasizing past or current hate will solve any of our problems.

This brings me to the present where fear and hate are again used to motivate people for political purposes. Rhetoric is revved up and the War on Terror is supposed to be against abysmal haters who want to destroy our way of life. Phrases I heard in my youth are commonplace again, except that it is now America that is in imminent danger of being taken over by Muslim extremists who want to destroy Western civilization. Our ally, Israel, is of course, in even greater danger because the Arabs are planning to kill all the Jews in that country. Although the time is not yet quite ripe the identification of “Arab” with “terrorist,” is well on its way. The offensive cartoon about the Prophet Muhammad, in the Jylland-Posten was not just happenstance by some free lancer who wanted to have some fun and make a few bucks. There is more to that story and it brings me to the lesson we should learn from the Holocaust.

The cartoon was initiated by the culture editor, Flemming Rose, of the Jylland-Posten who, as he said, had sent letters to 25 Danish cartoonists to “draw Muhammad as you see him.” This was supposedly an attempt to attract attention to the self-censorship of Danish newspapers in regard to Islam. He received 12 replies and these were published. Some were innocuous but others inflammatory. We can speculate about Mr. Rose’s motives but in the current climate of animosity against Muslims Mr. Rose’s project was certainly ill considered unless it was a deliberate attempt to aggravate an already existing difficult situation. If that had been the case it would have been reprehensible.

Cartoons can be a powerful propaganda weapon, as has been discussed earlier, and in the previously mentioned book there were two that were most striking in the context of the Holocaust. Both were published soon after Hitler’s appointment as Chancellor. The one reproduced below appeared on March 17, 1933 in the Leningradskaya Prawda.The Russian caption, when translated from German, reads, “The meatgrinder has become operational.”

One might ignore this as just another example of  typical Soviet propaganda but when one sees the second one published soon thereafter on April 5 in New York, as well as others of a similar nature, it is obvious that one is not dealing with isolated incidents but a deliberate attempt to arouse disgust and hatred against the Nazi regime.

Regardless of how much one may dislike the newly elected leader of a country, this depiction is uncalled for. Again one can say in retrospect that these cartoons were prophetic but in the context of early 1933 they were totally inappropriate and clearly suggested to the Nazi hierachy that this must have been the work of the Weltjudentum. Hitler, when cornered as he was by the end of 1941, may well have said: If that’s who they say I am; ok; I’ll show them! 

Thus, the only lesson, I believe, that can be drawn from the Holocaust should be: avoid inflammatory rhetoric and inflammatory cartoons; they do more harm than good and in the end may backfire! Using the same methods as your adversary will draw you down to his level and from hateful words and pictures to bullets and bombs is just a small step.

I sincerely doubt that keeping the flames of the Holocaust in the forefront of awareness will make the Jewish people in Israel and elsewhere safer. Collective memory, as explained in the previous installment, is just too different between Jews and non-Jews even for my generation. When an attempt is made to force Jewish collective memory on others it may have an initial positive result but when the effort becomes persistent it will be resented and is likely to have the opposite effect. If we really want to avoid the next looming catastrophe we will have to cool passions, and if our adversaries commit atrocities which demand a response we must not stoop to their level. Christians in our government and the media, should remember Jesus’ admonition of not repaying evil with evil; Jews could remember, “Venegeance is Mine, saith the Lord;” while atheists and agnostics should keep Marcus Aurelius’ dictum in mind, “The best revenge is not becoming like your enemy.” Our age is much too dangerous to fan fear and hate. If we want to survive the next decades without a WWIII we will have to work diligently and patiently with moderates on the side of our opponents, deal with their viewpoints as well as grievances, and not be swayed by radicals especially those in our own midst.