Nazi – Jewish Independent

A new foundational resource

The book The More I Know, the Less I Understand (Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, 2017) summarizes the findings of University of British Columbia students in various fields of Holocaust research and the implications of Nazi German crimes committed in Central and Eastern Europe.

It is often claimed that, since the events of the Holocaust took place more than 70 years ago, most of the available information has already been collected and there is little chance of gaining new knowledge about what happened. This claim, often made without substantial questioning, has been debunked by, among others, a group of UBC students who traveled to Poland on the Witnessing Auschwitz Program from 2014 to 2016.

The young scholars conducted extensive fieldwork and consulted with world-class experts in Holocaust studies at the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, the Emanuel Ringelblum Jewish Historical Institute and other organizations; they also used primary-source archival documents. Each of the student essays in The More I Know, the Less I Understand is accompanied by footnotes prepared by experts in the field. The essays show that many complexities of human life and politics, and historic processes associated with the Holocaust and the Second World War, remain understudied. Over the course of the Witnessing Auschwitz Program, the students found more questions to ask with every answer they were able to uncover.

The uniqueness of this volume and its substantial contribution to the market of knowledge rests on the comprehensiveness of the analysis – largely resulting from the diverse areas of expertise of the individual scholars. Furthermore, the authors in the book write on various subjects that have largely remained untouched in Canadian academia: the profitability of the work camps for the German economy; the artistic expression of prisoners; moral dilemmas, such as betrayal of others for the sake of survival; and complex emotions such as love.

Importantly, various authors in this volume critique the methods by which the contemporary public is educated about events that took place before and during the Holocaust. For example, a common misconception exists, often reinforced through the education system and media, that the rationale for the crimes committed by the Nazi German regime was primarily rooted in ideological conviction. The essays in The More I Know, the Less I Understand collectively show that the motivations behind Nazi German actions prior to and during the Second World War were far more complex.

In early chapters, a number of the scholars correctly point out that the state of the economy was a major motivator for the leadership of the Third Reich. For example, Maria Dawson, in her chapter, “The Role of Food in the Development and Implementation of Nazi German Policies,” writes that the ethnic cleansing of Poles, commonly tied to the ideological motives of Nazi Germany, was substantially rooted in the perceived need of the Nazi regime for agricultural land to support their war effort. Joe Liu, in his chapter, “Deciphering Business Relationships in Nazi German-occupied Europe,” notes that the collection of data on prisoners entailed the development and modernization of mass data collection technology, particularly aided by IBM. The More I Know, the Less I Understand is full of such details, which are often surprising. The book not only breaks common misconceptions about the Holocaust, but provides a comprehensive picture of some of the real reasons behind Nazi crimes.

Because educating Canadian scholars and the public at large about the Holocaust will continue to be important for future generations, the methods of education on the subject must evolve. Helena Bryn-McLeod writes that, because of its importance in our daily environment, the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum recently joined various dominant social media networks. Since more people are using the internet than are reading books, social media is, as Bryn-McLeod identifies, “a new mode of remembering.”

Social media can also be an effective tool for the storage and capture of memories in an environment where there are fewer and fewer remaining survivors and other primary carriers of Holocaust memories. Moreover, Bryn-McLeod notes that social media conveys information to readers in similar ways as traditional forms of representation, such as journals and books – through photographs and other visuals – so little content will be lost with the transition to this new mode of memory. However, she acknowledges that, with the internet, new concerns have emerged, such as visitors taking offensive photographs in front of memorial sites and posting them. So, while the rise of fast-access media enables educators to reach a broader audience, Bryn-McLeod warns that ethical issues will continue to arise.

The More I Know, the Less I Understand holds valuable lessons. Notably, it highlights the dangers of adopting radical ethno-nationalistic positions, which, historically, have yielded catastrophic results. In his writing, Mark Twain brilliantly noted that “history does not repeat itself, but it does rhyme.” With the rebirth of populist political discourses in the West and elsewhere, the collection of works in The More I Know, the Less I Understand stresses that it is our responsibility, as a society, through education and awareness, to prevent certain chapters from history to rhyme with future chapters. Ultimately, this unique publication should be a foundational resource in Canadian scholarly environments – and elsewhere – where the subjects of the Holocaust and the Second World War are covered.

Dani Belo is a PhD student at the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs (NPSIA) at Carleton University in Ottawa, specializing in international conflict analysis and resolution. He is the editor-in-chief of the Paterson Review of International Affairs, associate editor at iAffairs Canada and contributing author in various publications for the NATO Association of Canada and the Canadian Global Affairs Institute. His area of research is international security, evolution of Russia-NATO relations, and inter-ethnic relations in the post-Soviet region.

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The More I Know, the Less I Understand can be purchased at the UBC Bookstore or from the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum.

Museum tries to instil hope

Canadian Museum for Human Rights researcher and curator Dr. Jeremy Maron discussed some of the issues the museum faced in deciding what to exhibit. (photo by Rebeca Kuropatwa)

The Canadian Museum for Human Rights (CMHR) in Winnipeg is one of the newest museums on the block. Dr. Jeremy Maron, a CMHR researcher and curator, discussed some of the issues the museum faced in deciding what to exhibit. The March 4 brown-bag lunch meeting at the University of Manitoba was open to students and the general community.

Maron’s main work at the museum is on the fourth floor, an area dedicated to the Holocaust. Displays on three perimeter walls take a case study approach, emphasizing themes closely related to the Holocaust as well as universal human rights.

“The first theme we look at is the abuse of state power,” he said. “This wall explores how Nazis used and deployed instruments of state power, such as the police, judiciary, laws and regulations, and even education to undermine human rights … and acquiring total dictatorial control of German society, promoting their racist and antisemitic ideology, targeting Jews and other specific groups for social exclusion and persecution, ultimately culminating in genocide.”

photo - Dr. Jeremy Maron makes a point at a March 4 meeting in Winnipeg — Dr. Jeremy Maron makes a point at a March 4 meeting in Winnipeg. *(photo by Rebeca Kuropatwa)*

Maron said the modern nation state, in its ideal sense, is supposed to be the guarantor of human rights. But, in reality, the centralized power of the modern state very often sets the stage for it to be the worst violator of human rights.

“The case of Nazi Germany is a good example of the centralized power and the capacity for it to be mobilized toward the violation of human rights, rather than protection,” he said. “There are many other stories in the museum in which state power is also being utilized in such a manner.

“The second thematic wall in this gallery … moves on to look at persecution and targeting of specific groups in Nazi Germany. This wall explores the increasing intensity of systematic oppression under the Nazis.”

According to Maron, the Allies did not fight the Second World War specifically because they were trying to save the Jews in Europe. However, their winning of the war ended the Nazi massacre of Jews, which continued nearly up until the day of the Germans’ surrender.

“Another exhibit, from which we try to draw human rights connections, is a large digital study table in our Breaking the Silence gallery, also on level four,” said Maron. “This gallery looks at breaking the silence specifically as a human rights act.”

Human rights violations are always accompanied by silence, distortion, justification, minimization and denial, he said. Perpetrators want to hide their crimes; victims who survive may feel scared for themselves or their families, or feel ashamed; witnesses and bystanders often look the other way, so the cycle continues.

The goal of the CMHR is to encourage people to speak out about these violations, to drag the violations out into the light of day and pursue justice, recovery and reconciliation, he said.

“This particular exhibit, Breaking the Silence … looks at a wide scale of human rights violations, putting an emphasis on how people have responded to them in order to break silence,” said Maron. “We tried to place the emphasis of the human rights response in this particular case. It’s a question of focus that tries to adopt a forward-looking perspective, rather than one that is trying to wholly examine the past in and of itself.”

While some visitors feel that the message and exhibit is too watered down, Maron said this was necessary to a certain degree, as the museum’s main focus is to educate and not to horrify or shock.

“It’s not just a sense of sensitivity we think about, it’s also a question of a fact,” said Maron. “Sometimes, when confronted with material that is explicitly horrific, even for someone like myself who has worked on this material extensively, it almost can shock you into silence as it overwhelms you. I think back to when I was doing my master’s in 2005. I went on a Holocaust commemoration tour [and] we toured Auschwitz. After you go through the gas chambers and you see the walls and the showerheads, you get back on that bus and you are just beaten down. You are sitting there and the guides are trying to debrief and talk, but no one wants to talk because they are beaten down.”

While the CMHR does not back away from the truth or gloss over troubling aspects, they choose to visualize these histories differently, he said. One of the concepts the museum is designed to highlight is that everyone’s actions are the result of choices, and that the consequences of these choices are not inevitable.

“That’s not to say that there are not constraints on choices,” said Maron. “If you’re in the midst of a particular human rights catastrophe and you do something like hide a potential victim in your attic, it’s very possible that you might be targeted as well. So, there are constraints on choices in certain historical circumstances. But, it’s still important to consider that these are choices and actions, and what happens isn’t inevitable. Some objects in the museum speak to some of the less obviously consequential choices that individuals might have made that allowed the Holocaust to be perpetrated on that scale.”

While Maron understands that it’s impossible to know for sure what a single individual could have done, with his display, he hopes to create a deep and meaningful reflection for CMHR visitors and, especially, students.

How to convey a history of conflicts accurately without reigniting tensions is another challenge the museum has taken into consideration, by using careful word choices and avoiding blanket statements. But, maybe the most important aspect and aspiration for the CMHR is ensuring that visitors leave with a sense of hope.

“This hope is not a naive hope that everything is going to be OK, but that … hope is possible as long as we promote the human rights of everyone, and the idea that hope is possible if people are willing to make hard choices and take action,” said Maron. “So, again, we hope our visitors leave with the idea that change is possible if people are willing to do something, while silence and acquiescence is the ally of rights violations.

“Until atrocities are recognized and acknowledged, until people believe action is possible, cycles of violations will continue. Such cycles, we hope, our museum, in some small part, can help improve by inspiring a lot of hard work and devotion by our visitors, who may become dedicated human rights advocates and defenders.”

Rebeca Kuropatwa is a Winnipeg freelance writer.

Mispoken history

Exploiting the memory of the Holocaust and its victims is a far too commonplace event. Israel’s detractors accuse it of perpetrating a holocaust on Palestinians. Politicians and others frequently make inappropriate comparisons to the Holocaust. But when the prime minister of Israel – the man who refers to himself as the leader of the Jewish people – exploits the Holocaust, it is especially egregious.

Last week, at the meeting of the World Zionist Congress, Binyamin Netanyahu told a story that historians contend was cut largely from whole cloth. This much is true: in November 1941, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Haj Amin al-Husseini, met with Adolf Hitler in Berlin. Al-Husseini opposed Jewish migration to the Holy Land and rejected the idea of a Jewish state there. Increased Jewish migration to Palestine strengthened Zionism and the grand mufti had been a vocal opponent of it – to the extent that Arab rioting he incited helped form British policy on the matter, closing the doors to Jews escaping Nazi Europe. The mufti and Hitler had mutual interests, but al-Husseini was concerned that Nazi antisemitism could drive more Jews to Palestine (although, by late 1941, this was largely a moot point).

In Netanyahu’s curriculum, though, it was the mufti who put the seed in Hitler’s brain to enact the “Final Solution.” (Perhaps the prime minister had recently read the book Nazis, Islamists and the Making of the Modern Middle East by Barry Rubin and Wolfgang G. Schwanitz, which is reviewed in this issue, but not any of its critiques.)

“Hitler didn’t want to exterminate the Jews at the time,” Netanyahu told the congress. “He wanted to expel the Jews. And Haj Amin al-Husseini went to Hitler and said: ‘If you expel them, they’ll all come here [to Palestine],’ … ’So what should I do with them?’ [Hitler] asked. [Al-Husseini] said, ‘Burn them.’”

There is no evidence that any such discussion took place. In fact, the Nazis’ exterminationist intent was already well formed before al-Husseini came to Berlin. The Wannsee Conference, which set out the plan for the “Final Solution,” was mere weeks away and its agenda was set before the mufti had tea with Hitler.

History suggests that al-Husseini was supportive of the Nazis’ plans, but he certainly was not their architect, as Netanyahu implied.

The prime minister’s speech raised outrage globally. Academics and experts in the Holocaust decried his rewriting of history. Critics claimed his remarks were meant to incite hatred against Palestinians at a time when Israel is condemning Palestinian incitement against Jews. Netanyahu was diminishing Hitler’s guilt for the fate of European Jewry, said others. Even Germany’s leader Angela Merkel reiterated her country’s responsibility for the Holocaust.

It is clear what Netanyahu was trying to do. He wanted to demonstrate that Palestinian antisemitism and incitement against Jews and Israelis go back a long way, and he is correct. But to do so, he apparently made stuff up and, far, far worse, exploited the history of the Holocaust and the memory of its victims to score political points. It was shameful, unbecoming his office, and certainly undermines any claim he has to call himself the leader of the Jewish people.

Elaborating on real history

The Middle East is awash in virulent antisemitism, from the battlefield to the classroom. An Anti-Defamation League global survey of anti-Jewish sentiment last year pinpointed the West Bank, Gaza and Iraq as the world’s most antisemitic lands in the world. More than 90% of those who took the survey in those areas expressed anti-Jewish views.

Some Middle East observers link the blind hatred of Jews in the Middle East to the work of Islamic preachers and Arab leaders who perpetuate the ideology of Nazi Germany. They say that antisemitism is the driving force behind the endless cycle of wars and that nothing that Israel does matters. They maintain that Israel’s enemies will fight until the Jewish state is wiped out and all Jews in the Middle East have been killed.

Barry Rubin and Wolfgang G. Schwanitz, in Nazis, Islamists and the Making of the Modern Middle East (Yale University Press), provide ammunition for those who argue that peace is impossible with antisemitic Palestinian and Arab leaders. Rubin, who died before the book was published, was a prolific writer and leading Middle East scholar at the Global Research in International Affairs Centre in Israel. Schwanitz, an accomplished German-American Middle East historian, was a visiting professor at GRIAC at the time of the book’s publication.

In their richly researched book, Rubin and Schwanitz document the ancestry of antisemitism in the Middle East over the past century, connecting some of the contemporary Arab and Palestinian leaders to the vitriolic antisemitism of the Nazi collaborator, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem Amin al-Husseini.

Backed up by new archival material and previously published research, Rubin and Schwanitz maintain that profound doctrinal hatred for Jews remains the core reason for the Arab-Israel conflict’s enduring and irresolvable nature.

Take a look at Israel’s partners for peace. Heads of state who were once Nazi sympathizers ran regimes that lasted 40 years in Iraq, 50 years in Syria and 60 years in Egypt. An echo of the antisemitism of the 1930s reverberated through speeches of Egypt’s Gamal Abdel Nasser, Iraqi’s Saddam Hussein, Iran’s Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, Libya’s Muammar al-Qaddafi and Saudi Arabia’s Osama bin Laden. A Nazi sympathizer educated Yasser Arafat.

However, Rubin and Schwanitz in this book undermine their own credibility by mixing well-documented historical accounts with sweeping pronouncements that seem to be driven by a narrow ideological bias. At times, they sound more like polemicists than historians. They focus on an extreme interpretation of Islam, painting 1.2 billion Muslims with one brush. They ignore history that does not fit easily into their portrait. And their perspective does little to shed light on the contemporary Middle East, where Muslims fight Muslims.

The most provocative assertion in the book is that the grand mufti was responsible for the Nazi gas chambers and crematoria.

Rubin and Schwanitz portray al-Husseini as the most powerful leader of the Arabs and Muslims around the world in mid-century. At the height of his power, he promised Adolf Hitler that the entire Arab people would rally around the Nazi flag and wage a war of terror against Britain and France if Germany would stop all Jewish immigration to Palestine and guarantee independence to countries in the Middle East.

Rubin and Schwanitz maintain that Hitler decided to kill all the Jews only after al-Husseini insisted that they not be deported to Palestine. None of the European countries would accept Jewish refugees. If Palestine would not accept them, the reasoning goes, Hitler had no choice but to build gas chambers.

But their theory has a few holes in it. Historians have never discovered any Nazi plans to transport all the Jews of Eastern Europe and Russia to Palestine. Britain was already restricting immigration. Hitler’s support for al-Husseini’s demand to stop deportations to Palestine was an empty gesture.

Most historians regard al-Husseini as a minor historical figure. Al-Husseini was part of the Nazi war effort and played a role in the death of thousands of Jews. But he was not as powerful or influential in the

Middle East as he is portrayed here. As Rubin and Schwanitz point out, al-Husseini had no plan for actually staging insurrections in support of Nazi Germany. He recruited only 1,000 soldiers outside of Iraq, although he promised 100,000 for the Nazi cause. It is hard to imagine that the Holocaust would not have happened without al-Husseini’s intervention.

Regardless, Rubin and Schwanitz do a good job of placing al-Husseini in the context of the Middle East’s historic ties to Germany. They begin the tale with Max von Oppenheim, an advisor to Kaiser Wilhelm II in the early 1890s, who urged the German ruler to use Islam to inspire a Muslim revolt in the colonies of Germany’s enemies. At that time, Britain, France and Russia controlled the Middle East, India and North Africa. Zionism was not relevant.

The kaiser made a formal pact in 1898 with the Ottoman Empire’s sultan, Abdul Hamid II. Germany anticipated the alliance would lead to an Islamic jihad throughout Muslim lands, but the righteous call to jihad had little impact. Muslims, Turks and Arabs saw themselves as divided by religion, ethnicity, regional interest and self-interest. They paid little attention in their daily lives to the sultan’s belligerent proclamations.

During the First World War, von Oppenheim ran Germany’s covert war in the Middle East, reinvigorating the policy of Islamic jihad. Germany pushed Sultan Mehmed V to trigger a pan-Islamic revolt, as well as attack Russia’s Black Sea ports, and established activist groups in Arab communities dedicated to spread jihad in Russia-ruled Caucasus and in Arab-populated lands. However, once again, the pan-Islamic revolts never materialized. Tribal leaders took the money from Germany and did nothing.

By the late 1930s, the dynamics had reversed. Al-Husseini sought out the support of Nazi Germany. Hitler was initially cool to an alliance, believing the dark-skinned people of the Middle East were inferior to his blond-haired, blue-eyed Aryan nation, but he soon realized the Nazis and Muslims confronted common enemies – Britain, France and the Jews.

A strident antisemite who had been fighting Zionism since 1914, al-Husseini claimed the mantle of leader of transnational Islamism after Turkey, in 1924, abolished the Islamic Caliphate. He solidified his position within the Arab and Muslim communities through violence and murder.

Under his leadership, militancy became mainstream and moderation was regarded as treason. He turned Palestine into the defining issue of the Middle East. Anyone who did not support him or his views was a Zionist and imperial stooge. In the 1930s, he attracted attention for making passionate nationalist speeches in Jerusalem while crowds chanted “Death to Zionism,” rioted and killed Jews. His work clearly set the stage for Arab and Muslim leaders who followed his lead.

Meanwhile, in Germany between the wars, militant Islamists, backed by the disciples of von Oppenheim, solidified their control over mosques in Berlin and elsewhere, espousing an ideology that Rubin and Schwanitz say can be heard today from the pulpits. They cultivated relations with the leadership of Egypt’s Muslim Brotherhood, Iraq’s Ba’ath Party and radical factions in Syria and Palestine. By the time the Nazis looked to the Middle East, they found a ready-made network of radical antisemitic Islamists from Morocco to India, led by al-Husseini, with similar ideology, worldviews and interests. But the Islamic jihad failed once again to materialize.

Nazi ideology collapsed in 1945. However, a radical Arab nationalism, accompanied by a form of al-Husseini Islamism steeped in hatred of the Jews, flourished after the war. Little has changed despite the passage of decades, events and generations. Rubin and Schwanitz say al-Husseini’s legacy can been seen in the words and actions of Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran, Muslim Brotherhood and al-Qaeda. For them, as for the Nazis and al-Husseini, Jews are the villains of all history, the eternal enemy without whose extinction a proper world would be impossible.

Rubin and Schwanitz say the Arabic-speaking world’s historical connection with Nazi Germany was not solely responsible for the terrorism, conflict with Israel and anti-Jewish hatreds. However, they say, the historical relationships, along with the ideas and motives prompting it, help explain what has happened over the past 70 years. The forces that forged the partnership between al-Husseini and Hitler returned to help shape the course of Middle East history ever since. And it was not just the Nazi doctrine. In many cases, the individuals responsible for the Middle East’s post-1945 course had direct links to the Nazi era, they say.

“Comprehending this fact is the starting point for understanding modern Middle East history, its turbulence, tragedies and its many differences from other parts of the world,” Rubin and Schwanitz say.

Yes, they make a fascinating case for a starting point in trying to make sense of relations between Germany and the Middle East. But in this book they do not examine the record of contemporary Arab and Muslim leaders in much detail. They leave out other influences and other leading players that contributed to the making of the Middle East. Also, Rubin and Schwanitz seem to ignore that the antisemitism of the radical Islamists preceded their embrace of Nazism.

Rubin and Schwanitz have illuminated one diabolical aspect of a complex state of affairs – but much more remains to be said for a full understanding of the modern Middle East.

Robert Matas, a Vancouver-based writer, is a former journalist with the Globe and Mail. This review was originally published on the Isaac Waldman Jewish Public Library website and is reprinted here with permission. To reserve this book or any other, call 604-257-5181 or email [email protected]. To view the catalogue, visit jccgv.com and click on Isaac Waldman library.

The power of social media to terrorize

Others have observed that our generation is the first to carry a device in our pockets capable of accessing the entire depth and breadth of human knowledge, but mostly we use it to watch videos of kittens. This is not always the case, of course. Some of us use it to enrich our character, others less so.

During last week’s World Cup game between the United States and Germany, sports fans invoked Nazi imagery on Twitter 30,209 times. From referring to the players or referees as Nazis to otherwise throwing the term around, the word was tweeted an average of 3.4 times per second throughout the game. At one point, according to a blog that follows these statistics, references to Nazis came 20 times a second.

People say and do things on social media that they would never do without the anonymity it provides. It is not surprising that people looking for an obvious source of ridicule or debasement would focus on the darkest chapter in a country’s history, and one that is well known. Tweeting vicious names is not the worst that soccer fans have done. However, the phenomenal explosion of the use of “Nazi” during a sporting event is troubling in a few ways. From our perspective, accusations of Nazism should be limited to people who behave like Nazis – and that is a very, very small proportion of people in the world today, thankfully. To use this word with flippant nonchalance diminishes its meaning and the history that surrounds it. A worse thought is that people are using it without knowing its meaning and history.

More to the point, there is a certain amount of hypocrisy involved in non-Germans throwing this word at Germans. As a society, Germany has done a great deal to confront the meaning of its Nazi era, to an extent far greater than other countries that collaborated with the Third Reich, for example. The German government has over the decades been exemplary in trying to learn from that history and make a better society, as well as making restitution financially and, as much as such a thing is conceivable, morally to the Jewish people.

More bizarre is the apparent social media wizardry of the murderers that are killing Iraqis in the quest for a Sunni Muslim caliphate. The New York Times reported on Sunday that ISIS, the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, “has hijacked World Cup hashtags, flooding unsuspecting soccer fans with its propaganda screeds. It has used Facebook as a death threat generator; the text sharing app JustPaste to upload book-length tirades; the app SoundCloud for jihadi music; and YouTube and Twitter for videos to terrify its enemies.” A particularly grisly example was a video of a policeman being beheaded accompanied by the message “This is our ball. It’s made of skin #WorldCup.”

The Times reported that, weeks before ISIS overran the city of Mosul, it had issued on Facebook death threats to every Iraqi journalist who worked there. Understandably, most of the journalists singled out for death fled the city, which the newspaper suggests may have accounted for why the successful launch of ISIS’s brutal campaign took time to filter out to wide global attention.

While most people on Twitter and Facebook are posting pictures of summer barbecues, kids and pets, ISIS is broadcasting a steady stream of decapitations and other executions of Iraqi soldiers, police and disobedient civilians. These extremists hope to impose a Stone Age social order in the Middle East and, presumably, beyond, but they have no qualms about using the most modern technologies to advance their cause.

Site owners like Google and YouTube are trying to confront their responsibilities, but it is technically difficult – as soon as one post/tweet/video is removed, for example, the content pops up elsewhere. As well, there is debate about the merits of blocking all access to the propaganda, and not just from free-speech advocates, but from intelligence agencies, who would prefer the content be left online because it aids them in tracking the extremists.

This is the power of social media. Death threats that have a tangible impact on war zones and which also carry the potential for intelligence gathering. It’s not just for cat videos anymore.