{"id":31125,"date":"2018-12-07T03:47:28","date_gmt":"2018-12-07T11:47:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/?p=31125"},"modified":"2018-12-04T16:54:35","modified_gmt":"2018-12-05T00:54:35","slug":"the-sad-road-from-auschwitz","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/2018\/12\/07\/the-sad-road-from-auschwitz\/","title":{"rendered":"The sad road from Auschwitz"},"content":{"rendered":"

The theme of Reckonings: Legacies of Nazi Persecution and the Quest for Justice<\/em> (Oxford University Press, 2018), the new book by eminent English historian Mary Fulbrook, is justice. Or, rather, injustice, as she exposes how ex-Nazi perpetrators, and bystanders to their murderous policies, have evaded (and continue to evade) due process and acknowledgment of moral responsibility for their (in)actions.<\/p>\n

Every level of strategy open to these criminals and cowards is exposed in Reckonings<\/em>. Fulbrook reveals all the political, psychological, pragmatic, legal (and illegal), scapegoating, self-serving, self-exculpatory, \u201cwe were victims too\u201d-type excuses by which the morally corrupt and unconscionable avoid due process and personal liability.<\/p>\n

Fulbrook rightly says, at the end of Reckonings<\/em>, \u201cthere can be no answer to the questions of why and how cruelty on this scale was possible.\u201d So, what, she asks, can the \u201chonest\u201d historian do? Her answer sums up the well-realized objective of this magisterial new book: \u201cHistorians can clarify patterns of involvement in and responsibility for Nazi persecution and explore the implications both for those who lived through it and those who came after.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nazi criminality is, of course, a hugely complex historical issue, but Fulbrook\u2019s strategy is simple and direct: it is to \u201creconstruct the ways in which wider social and political developments intersected with individual lives\u201d such that \u201clarge numbers of people were mobilized in service of a murderous cause.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"image<\/a>Reckonings<\/em> is rich with such exploration of \u201cindividual lives,\u201d both of persecutors and bystanders, and it rings also with the agonizing accounts of dozens of victims, among whom Fulbrook gives frequent and welcome voice to the rarely referenced persecuted sub-groups of homosexuals, and victims of Nazi euthanasia policies.<\/p>\n

Fulbrook\u2019s central focus is, however, justice: justice failed and justice delayed, delayed by silence, by endless rationalization, by foot-dragging, by the pollution of the legal system by former Nazis (described as \u201cthemselves swimming in a sea of guilt\u201d) and, no less disturbing, by the pragmatics of (primarily American) Cold War strategists, anxious not to offend a potential ally against the Soviet Union.<\/p>\n

Reckonings<\/em> is unusual history in its welcome lack of \u201cnormal\u201d arm\u2019s-length objectivity: Fulbrook is uncompromisingly fierce in her condemnation of those who were responsible for this \u201cmaelstrom of murder.\u201d Throughout the book, she remains directly and openly angry, and determined to \u201cnail down\u201d these murderous ignoramuses, just-following-orders immoralists and \u201cI knew nothing\u201d liars. One feels the heat of Fulbrook\u2019s grit and determination: each page rings out with a loud, \u201cthey will not get away with this as long as I can help it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Reckonings<\/em> is divided into three parts. Part One, the most \u201ctraditional\u201d part of the book, explores the various sites of this \u201cmaelstrom of murder,\u201d beginning with Auschwitz, but moving carefully beyond, to less and less better-known killing centres, especially in southern Poland \u2013 where there were many forgotten violent \u201cmicrocosms of violence,\u201d as she calls them.<\/p>\n

Part Two is, as Fulbrook\u2019s title suggests, the heart of the book: here, the focus shifts to the attempts to bring perpetrators (both men and women) to justice. She lays out the proceedings of the various major trials \u2013 Auschwitz, Sobibor, Belzec, Dachau, Hadamar, the Einsatzgruppen trial, etc., right up to the present \u2013 but also includes trials relating to perpetrators of euthanasia and other crimes. She outlines, in fascinating detail, the differences between the ways that East and West Germany approached bringing Nazis to justice: the former being famously more diligent than the latter, leading to a flood of ex-Nazis to the more \u201ctolerant\u201d West in the early years after the war. This flood included all the euthanasia personnel, who left their families behind in the GDR to escape justice. (The West accepted the \u201cjust following orders\u201d defence; the East did not. About 400,000 people benefited from this and similar lax standards in the West.)<\/p>\n

The third part, \u201cMemories,\u201d is about how survivors remember, and how Nazis forget. It combines a plangent exploration of the personal experiences of individuals living around the world who have survived persecution \u2013 most of whom have never received compensation or recognition \u2013 with accounts of how perpetrators and their minions managed (and still manage) to cover their tracks, and how this evasion affects their children and grandchildren.<\/p>\n

The most memorable chapter of this final part is called \u201cThe Commemoration of Shame.\u201d She notes here how the \u201cshame\u201d of the perpetrators is almost always buried in the sea of guilt-ridden commemoration throughout Germany, as is the pain of forced and slave labourers, the acknowledgement of which would still have legal (compensation) ramifications for German industry. Fulbrook also notes here that it wasn\u2019t until 2014 that the first memorial appeared for the victims of Nazi euthanasia policies.<\/p>\n

Reckonings<\/em> ends in despair. \u201cSo few perpetrators brought to account; so little justice.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ian Kershaw has written that \u201cthe road to Auschwitz was built by hate but paved by indifference.\u201d Fulbrook reveals that the road from Auschwitz is not a whit less hateful and, certainly, no less met by indifference.<\/p>\n

Graham Forst<\/strong>, PhD, taught literature and philosophy at Capilano University until his retirement and now teaches in the continuing education department at Simon Fraser University. From 1975 to 2010, he co-chaired the symposium committee of the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The theme of Reckonings: Legacies of Nazi Persecution and the Quest for Justice (Oxford University Press, 2018), the new book by eminent English historian Mary Fulbrook, is justice. Or, rather, injustice, as she exposes how ex-Nazi perpetrators, and bystanders to their murderous policies, have evaded (and continue to evade) due process and acknowledgment of moral […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":31126,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[784],"tags":[53,5371,8567,2038,7722],"class_list":["post-31125","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-books","tag-holocaust","tag-justice","tag-mary-fulbrook","tag-nazis","tag-perpetrators"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":8}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31125","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31125"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31125\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31126"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31125"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31125"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31125"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}