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

Teaching and Studying the Holocaust, by Samuel Totten (Editor), Stephen Feinberg (Editor). 2000

Fallacies of Current Holocaust Education: Inculcation of Holocaust Supremacism, of a Whitewashed Jewish Nazi Collaboration, of German-Guilt Diffusion, of anti-Polonism, and of Blaming Christianity

Probably without intending to, this book shows what is wrong with today’s Holocaust education in the USA. It soon becomes obvious that it is less about teaching history and fostering “tolerance” (the standard bromide) than it is about promoting the standard Judeocentric narrative–of the perpetual-victim Jew on one hand and the stock villains (Poles, Christians, and rarely explicitly Germans) on the other.

DISTORTION 1: JEWISH SUFFERING IS ABOVE THAT OF ALL OTHER PEOPLES (HOLOCAUST SUPREMACY)

This book does mention the sufferings of non-Jews–but only insofar as they are subordinate to the Jews’ Holocaust. Author David M. Crowe worries about whether certain acts “should be placed in the same category” as the Jews’ Holocaust. (p. 35). The categorization of human suffering is just the problem! The dead are divided, and an arbitrary victimhood hierarchy is created that puts Jews on the top.

Crowe, while stopping short of endorsing Holocaust uniqueness, nevertheless promotes a softer version of it. He says the following about the Jews, “…few groups suffered from the determined, fanatical genocidal policies in the same way as the Jews.” (p. 34). Really? What is “same way” and why is it so important? How does Crowe know that the genocides of Poles, Cambodians, Armenians, etc. were driven by any lesser “determined, fanatical genocidal policies”? Or maybe the perpetrators were just playing a prank on the victims.

DISTORTION 2: DOUBLE STANDARD ON COLLABORATION WITH THE NAZIS (JEWS CANNOT COLLABORATE: ONLY GOYS CAN)

Samuel Totten (p. 172) outlines a series of proposed classroom lessons that revolve around the choiceless choices faced by the Jews. In doing so, he is reinforcing a double standard, wherein choiceless choices are only applied for the exoneration of Jewish collaborators, but never non-Jewish collaborators [for instance, Poles who were forced to expel, denounce, or kill Jews they had been hiding].

Even then, Samuel Totten provides a grossly oversimplified and overgeneralized educational message on choiceless choices. Thus, for example, the Jew who informed on Jews or Poles, to the Germans, as a condition for sparing his life, was acting on a choiceless choice. The Jew who informed on Jews or Poles, to the Germans, in order to profit personally, or out of spite, was NOT acting on a choiceless choice. Totten makes no distinction between the two.

DISTORTION 3: GERMAN GUILT DIFFUSION, AS IN CINEMA

Author Judith Doneson squarely faces the fact that many Holocaust productions have tried to lessen German guilt by such things as the de-Germanization of the Nazis, or by introducing a false dichotomy between “Nazis” and “other Germans”.

Doneson thus assesses DANIEL’S STORY, “Germans perform no function in the persecution of the Jews…Always the Nazis. The film speaks consistently of the Nazis as if they stood outside the German polity, rather than shaping the ideology carried out by the German nation during World War II.” (p. 198).

Quoting an earlier work of hers, Doneson speaks out about the 1984 German film series, HEIMAT, wherein it features “‘…a few brutes called Nazis, a tiny majority who seized power and distorted the peaceful life of ordinary German people'” (p. 199).

DISTORTION 4: OVERT POLONOPHOBIA IN THE CLASSROOM

Author David M. Crowe repeats a hoary Polonophobic meme, this time from Jewish Communist Shmuel Krakowski, as follows, “..although a minority of Poles tried to help Jews during the Holocaust, most were either indifferent or actively antagonistic towards the Germans’ Jewish victims.” (p. 35). What makes Crowe think that he has the mind-reading skills to feel free to repeat and endorse such an onerous accusation? And to think that this passes for education in the American classroom! I thought that Holocaust education was supposed to eliminate prejudices, not reinforce them (against Poles this time).

DISTORTION 5: BLAMING CENTURIES OF CHRISTIAN TEACHINGS, INSTEAD OF CENTURIES OF GERMAN SUPREMACISM AND BARBARITY, FOR THE HOLOCAUST

Authors John Michalczyk and Steve Cohen take the gloves off and go all out trying to pin the ultimate blame for the Shoah on Christianity. (p. 205). They have special praise for the left-wing PBS and its special, THE LONGEST HATRED (1993). [Itself presumptuous, because who knows if some other peoples had not experienced hatred longer than the Jews?]

Again, the facts be darned. What does it matter that anti-Semitism had predated Christianity (e. g, in Ancient Rome)? What does it matter that the racist aspects of Jewish religion had generated centuries-old hatred against Jews? What does it matter that Jews had worn out their welcome and been expelled from many nations, over the last 2000 years, for reasons that had nothing to do with religion? Finally, what does it matter that the genocidal program of Nazism had nothing whatsoever to do with Christianity?

DISTORTION 6: FAKE FACTS

Author Judith Doneson (p. 198) is candid about the fact that Elie Wiesel may have fabricated his famous NIGHT. She also discusses the ahistorical character of EUROPA, EUROPA; DANIEL’S STORY; and THE PAINTED BIRD.

Unfortunately, Doneson does not go far enough. Even though THE PAINTED BIRD has been proven a fraud, it continues to be widely used in the classroom just as if nothing had happened. Evidently facts don’t matter: The only thing that matters is the pro-Jewish message, and who cares about the prejudices incited against Poles in young, impressionable minds?

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Such are the problems with Holocaust education and Holocaust museums:

https://www.dhhrm.org/