Polish-Jewish Relations: 1,300 Keyword-Phrase-Indexed Book Reviews (by Jan Peczkis)

Hannah Arendt in Jerusalem, by Steven E. Aschheim. 2001

Double Genocide (Red=Brown) and (Communism=Nazism) Inadvertently Substantiated. Jewish Nazi Collaboration Avoided by Jews Today

This book raises a number of controversial issues. I focus on those that remain relevant to this day.

COMMUNISM WAS WORSE THAN NAZISM: STALIN WAS WORSE THAN HITLER

Michael Halberstam compares totalitarian systems: “Historians agree that the average ethnic German was not terrorized by the constant threat of deportation and death, as was even the most powerful Russian party member during Stalin’s rule in the mid 1930’s. Such doubts about the actual levels of threat experienced by the ethnic German population under National Socialism raise suspicions that the terror thesis–and with it, the comparative concept of totalitarianism–constitutes an apologetic for crimes committed under the Nazi regime. The terror thesis, it is argued, falsely presents the German population as passive sufferers, rather than willing participants in the murderous political cult of German nationalist supremacy.” (p. 106).

All this has other implications other than Germans making excuses for their conduct by pretending that they had no choice for their actions. Many academics today would have us believe that “Communism was not bad”, or even that Communism was almost a bad cold. We commonly see the Orwellian minimization of the evils of Communism with the very word Communism spelled with a lower-case “c. Some influential Jews are almost hysterical about the very concept of double genocide (Communist=Nazi), because the full recognition of Communist democides and genocides is a threat to Holocaust supremacism.

“COMING TO TERMS WITH THE PAST”: GOOD FOR NON-JEWS BUT EVIDENTLY NOT FOR JEWS

Without doubt, the most volatile content of Arendt’s classic was her candid discussion of Jewish Nazi collaboration during the German-made Holocaust. Lilian Weissberg comments: “EICHMANN IN JERUSALEM was criticized by many Jewish organizations as an indictment of Jews because Arendt did not understand them as innocent victims only.” (p. 154). See:

https://www.jewsandpolesdatabase.org/2019/11/04/judenrat-big-help-to-germans-arendt/

Susan Neiman (p. 65) notes that some saw this as a confusion of who was on trial: Eichmann or the Judenraete. We keep hearing the cliché that “Victims can also be victimizers” with reference to Poles. This also very much applies to Jews, but nowadays we seldom hear about that.

A SELF-RIGHTEOUS CULT OF VICTIMIZATION: THE ROOTS OF HOLOCAUST SUPREMACISM (NOT TO MENTION JEWISH POLONOPHOBIA)

The editor, Steven E. Aschheim, takes Arend’t perceptive criticisms further: “Indeed, in her treatment of the Judenrate, her apparent blurring of the almost sacrosanct distinction between perpetrators and victims seemed to violate fundamental sensibilities…Moreover, very early on, Arendt warned that the uniqueness of the atrocities could create a self-righteous cult of victimization, one that indeed has occurred.” (p. 14). In the decades since Hannah Arendt, Holocaust self-importance has blossomed. No wonder we have victimhood competition and victimhood Olympics!

NO POLOKAUST NEGATIONISM HERE: POLES TO BE EXTERMINATED

Hans Mommsen puts Arendt’s work in a broader context. Arendt recognized the fact that the Nazi extermination of the Jews was also expanding into the extermination of Sinti and Roma (Gypsies) and Slavs. (p. 230).