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

A Century of Horrors: Communism, Nazism, and the Uniqueness of the Shoah, by Alain Besancon. 2007. ISI Books, Wilmington, Delaware

Focus: Commjunist Jacobins. Also: Reciprocity of Jewish-Christian Prejudices

I focus on a few issue of lasting interest. This includes the Communist Jacobins.

THE NAZIS IMITATED THE COMMUNISTS

Besancon writes, “Deportation to labor camps was invented and systematized by the Soviet regime. Nazism only imitated it–the word Lager (camp) is common to the Russian and German languages. The first camps were opened in Russia in June 1918, almost six months after Lenin and his party seized power.” (p. 5).

NO AUSCHWITZ OR TREBLINKA UNDER COMMUNISM. BUT SO WHAT?

Besancon (p. 1) repeats the argument about the Nazi death factories having no parallel under Communism. In doing so, he is confusing the geographic distribution and speed of the killing with the significance of the killing.

As it turns out, some gulags were effectively death camps. It just took a little more time. He comments, “In the vast archipelago of camps located in northeast Siberia, the horror of the cold, the desolate landscape, and the infinite distance that separated the camps from the inhabited world added to the despair. In certain camps, the death rate was as high as 30 to 40 percent per year. Considering the duration of the sentences and the longevity of the Soviet regime, this approached extermination–although an immediate extermination that left nothing to ‘chance’ was not witnessed as it was in Treblinka.” (p. 7). But, since death is certain, why does Besancon quibble about how long it took, and about leaving “nothing to chance”?

THE HOLODOMOR WAS AIMED AT THE UKRAINIAN NATION ITSELF

In supporting the position that the Holodomor was genocide, Besancon writes, “However, there were also cases for which famine was deliberately planned with the specific goal of extermination. This was the case in Ukraine in 1932 and 1933. The goal was not to put an end to any peasant resistance–collectivization had already crushed it–but to put an end to the existence of the Ukrainian nation. The killing in Ukraine has been referred to as genocide–and rightly so. (p. 9).

WHY NOT ALL UKRAINIANS WERE EXTERMINATED IN THE HOLODOMOR

Besancon writes, “In the first case [Holodomor], the point was to extend and perfect Communist control by annihilating resistance based on national feeling–or simple the Ukrainian nation itself. Once this goal had been achieved, ‘liquidation’ of the rest of the population was no longer necessary or even desirable in view of the larger project.” (pp. 78-79).

[Note that the Nazis did not literally kill all possible Jews either. In any case, an inferred total genocide is not one iota more significant than “only” a partial genocide.]

COMMUNIST JACOBINS? COMMUNISTS WERE LIKE JACOBINS

Besancon remarks, “In France, historians such as Mathiez (who admired the Great Revolution) quite naturally drew a parallel between October 1917 and 1792 and between the Bolshevik and the Jacobin terrors.” (p. 98).

RECIPROCITY OF JEWISH-CHRISTIAN ANTAGONISMS

Unlike the standard fare that blames everything on Christianity, Besancon does not. He thoughtfully comments, “In the two systems of salvation, Communist and Nazi, it is hard to sort out whether the Christians detested the Jews for being their root or the Jews hated the Christians for being their offspring.” (p. 69).