Ideology and the holocaust extra notes

Question 1

What does The Privatization of the Holocaust: Memory, Historiography, and Politics say:

Answer 1

• Boaz Evron argues that, “The struggle to derive the appropriate lessons from Nazism and the Holocaust is necessary not only for a proper understanding of the history but also for the internal political and cultural struggle in Israel,”
• The demand to privatize Holocaust memory was introduced in 1988 by Yehuda Elkana, a survivor of Auschwitz, in his article to Forget”.” His article was published at the outbreak of the first when reports on “anomalous incidents” carried out by IDF soldiers heated public debate in Israel. The crux of Elkana’s article is the ship between “victimhood consciousness” nurtured by Holocaust and the reduction of its lesson to the belief that the “whole world us”, that dominated Israel’s attitude to the Palestinians and m “anomalous incidents” inevitable.
• He admits that Holocaust memory need not be oppressive; positive use can also be made of it in the service of a “resolute universalistic demand that is no longer oppression.”
• Zuckerman maintains that it is not nationalized Holocaust memory that generates Israel’s policy of oppression and occupation, rather, Holocaust memory itself has been constructed in order to justify this policy. Therefore, only a change in policy can bring about a transformation in the content of Holocaust memory

Question 2

Who wrote The Privatization of the Holocaust: Memory, Historiography, and Politics:

Answer 2

Gutwein

Question 3

What does American Slavery and the Holocaust: Their Ideologies Compared say:

Answer 3

• The Holocaust, where at least 6 million Jews were killed, and American slavery, as a result of which approximately 200 million blacks lost lives, take on the air of a contest in which evil is matched for evil - especially in light of the heightened tension between Jews and blacks nowadays
• By contrast, one aspect of the evil of the Holocaust is that it embodied so undesirable a conception of Jews - namely, the Jew as irredeemably evil, so I shall argue presently- as to preclude the very possibility of there being roles to which the self-esteem of Jews could be tied. This gives us a sharp conceptual difference between the Holocaust and American slavery: During the Holocaust, the only good Jew was a dead Jew; whereas during American slavery, it is simply false that the only good black was a dead black. Blacks, while not considered intrinsically useful, were certainly considered useful, whereas Jews were considered intrinsically detrimental
• The psychological make-up of human beings is such that people cannot adopt an internal point of view towards a practice if it is impossible for their self-esteem to be in any way enhanced by acting in accordance with the practice. And, of course, the sheer physical brutality of the Holocaust made it irrational for any Jew to see the Holocaust as in any way affirming
• Jewish women had fewer and fewer children because as a result of social indoctrination their sense of worth became ever more tied to caring for the children of others rather
  than bearing children, and if children born of Jewish women were separated from their families at birth and raised as non- Jews: if all these things happened over seven generations, it is not clear if anyone could say with any confidence that the Jews as an ethnic group still exist- at least not if the criteria stated above were used. By then it would be well nigh impossible for anyone to know who had been born of a Jewish women, although this would perhaps be true of some individuals
• Slavery’s “official of blacks is that they were by natural constitution moral simpletons, will- creatures not capable of excelling at the high moral and intellectual virtues on account of having diminished moral and intellectual capabilities
• As one might imagine, norms of benevolence during the Holocaust the part of Nazis towards Jews were virtually non-existent, which is what one expects given the view of the Jew as irredeemable evil. There was no Nazis who thought it incumbent upon them, in virtue of their role as a Nazi, to treat Jews with kindness. And it was with rare exception that Jews could count upon any Nazi to treat them with leniency. With slavery, there can be no denying that some slaveowners were touched by the humanity of slaves. With the Holocaust, what is astounding is that so few Nazis were touched by the humanity of Jews
• Of course, black women were raped during American slavery, and Jewish women were raped during the Holocaust. But the raping of Jewish women and, more generally sexual relations between Jews and non- Jews, were forbidden, the official reason was Jews were too low a form of human life, in terms of evilness of character for there to be such interaction between a Jew and a non - Jew even just for mere sexual pleasure. The having of sexual relations with a Jew by a Nazi citizen was viewed as a form of grave moral contamination of the citizen. Recall Klein’s remark that “The Jew is the gangrenous appendix in a body of mankind.” This is exactly what one would expect given the conception of the Jew as irredeemably evil. By contrast, between white slaveowners and blacks slaves were not officially sanctioned by marriage, such relations were certainly common. Indeed some were long-lasting and exceedingly rich in character. Miscegenation was common enough that schools were set up for children of mixed blood to attend. The conception of the black under slavery was that of a moral simpleton; given this conception of the black one would not expect the kind of hostility on the part of whites towards sexual relations with blacks that Nazi Germany exhibit

Question 4

Who wrote American Slavery and the Holocaust: Their Ideologies Compared:

Answer 4

Thomas

Question 5

What did the Holocaust museum write:

Answer 5

• They aimed both to pay for the state’s massive re-armament program and to incite the exodus of Jews—the “enemy within.”
• On June 22, 1941, Germany invaded the Soviet Union in a planned “war of extermination” against communism and the linked “Judeo-Bolshevik” threat. Some four million Jews lived in territories under Soviet control. SS and police units behind the front lines began rounding up and shooting supposed “security” threats. At first the targets were mostly Jewish men of military age. Within weeks, however, the killing turned genocidal and included the murder of Jewish women and children and the destruction of whole Jewish communities. This escalation unfolded at different rates in different regions, depending on decisions of individual officers in the field as they responded to ideologically driven pressures and rewards from the Nazi leadership in Berlin. The Nazi units conducting the shooting operations received assistance from locals and militias composed of eastern Europeans

Question 6

What did the Auswich museum say:

Answer 6

It came soon enough, with the onset of the worldwide Great Depression in 1929. The economic crisis left millions unemployed and placed many Germans in a truly precarious situation. Since the traditional political partiers were patently incapable of coping with the crisis, voters proved ready to support anyone who could offer a convincing explanation of the causes of the crash, and who could propose a solution. The most desperate among them saw it as a straight choice between the communists and the Nazis. The former placed the blame for the depression on big business, and pointed to the contradictions inherent in the capitalist system; although these explanations convinced some, they were too complicated and abstract to win over the majority of the public. The Nazis, on the other hand, had a simpler answer: it was all the fault of the Jews, who were capitalists and communists at the same time; depriving the Jews of their influence over the economy and the state administration would automatically lead, the Nazis claimed, to increased prosperity and a recovered sense of social safety.