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

Rethinking the Holocaust, by Yehuda Bauer. 2001. Yale University Press, New Haven and London

Holocaust Rethinking? Hardly. A Rehash of All the Standard Talking Points for Holocaust Supremacism, With Active Minimization of Non-Jewish Genocides

The author is a top-notch Holocaust scholar. I begin with his few positive statements.

NO SUCH THING AS A POLISH DEATH CAMP

Bauer plainly states that, “I am avoiding the term Polish death camps because of the totally erroneous implication it might have that the Poles had anything to do with these installations, which were established by Germans, not by Poles, on conquered Polish territory.” (p. 285. Emphasis in original). He understands that the Polish death camp lie is not just an innocent “slip of the tongue”, or some kind of “geographic shorthand”. It has erroneous implications–whether done intentionally or not.

20th CENTURY TALMUDIC RACISM: GOYIM AS VIRTUAL ANIMALS

The author gets into Jewish tradition, and how it may be reconciled with the Holocaust. We often hear that the offensive statements in the Talmud applied only to the (safely dead) pagan peoples of Talmudic times, that they do not apply to Christians, and, besides, no modern Jew takes them seriously. Not quite–on all three counts. Bauer discusses the views of the Chief Rabbi of Palestine, Avraham Hacohen Kook, who lived until 1935, He writes, “Kook, too, made the differentiation between two types of souls, arguing that the difference between the Jewish spirit (he seems to have meant only the spirit of men, in line with the antifeminist character of monotheistic religions) and the souls of non-Jews is greater than the difference between the souls of non-Jews and the souls of animals. The ‘animal soul’ (non-Jewish) is concerned with this-worldly affairs, whereas the ‘human soul’ (Jewish) directs itself toward God and his commandments.” (p. 202).

So we have the superiority of the spiritual-Jew over the animal-goy. Could a modernized and secularized version of this thinking be the ultimate driver behind Holocaust supremacism? Maybe this explains Barbara Engelking’s egregious statement about the death of a Pole being a “biological natural question ” and that of a Jew a matter of metaphysics. See:

https://www.timesofisrael.com/scholars-come-to-defense-of-polish-holocaust-researcher-under-fire-from-government/

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The author uses every trick in the book to convince us that the Shoah is exceptional. For example:

THE MYSTIFICATION OF THE HOLOCAUST TAKEN TO EXTREMES

Bauer goes on and on about how the Nazis variously thought of Jews as “non-human”, as existential enemies, and as Satan. (p. xii, 63, 117, 280-281). This is a common rhetorical device employed to elevate the Holocaust above all other genocides. Bauer openly engages in it, “It is a simple fact that the Jews were, for the Nazis, the central enemy, a metahistorical satan who had to be destroyed. Roma [Gypsies] for the Nazis, were a minor irritant, and, as with other social problems, the tendency for the Nazi regime was to solve it by murder.” (p. 63).

I just love it! The mystification of the Holocaust reigns supreme, and evidently all the non-Jewish genocidal targets of the Nazis were just a “minor irritant” to them. Such is the logical conclusion of Holocaust supremacism. Now, Bauer (pp. 62-63) dissembles by saying that it was the Nazis that called Gypsies a minor irritant, and not Bauer himself. Nice try. Who does Bauer think that he is fooling? The “minor irritant” wisecrack is purely an invention of Bauer’s Judeocentric mindset: The Nazis are never known to have ever referred to the non-Jewish targets as a “minor irritant”, and the author never provides any evidence that they did.

Everything that Bauer ascribes to the Holocaust is true of other genocides. Fact is, all genociders seek first to delegitimize their respective targeted peoples, one way or another. After all, how can one kill other human beings en masse unless they are first made to be “non-human”? Any why go to the trouble of even trying to destroy another group, as a functioning entity, unless they are perceived to be an existential enemy, or even as Satan?

In actuality, Nazis frequently did mention Jews and Poles, sometimes in the very same sentence, as racial enemies fit for extermination. For example, see:

https://www.jewsandpolesdatabase.org/2019/11/04/final-solution-did-include-poles-and-gypsies-noakes/

https://www.jewsandpolesdatabase.org/2019/11/04/nazis-saw-jews-and-poles-similarly-smith/

https://www.jewsandpolesdatabase.org/2019/11/04/nazis-saw-jews-and-poles-similarly-breitman/

This flies in the face of the premise that Jews were, to the Nazis, some kind of special, central enemies, or as a Satan. To be sure, the Nazis probably did generally see Jews as more dangerous enemies than the Poles and Gypsies, but this does not require a mystification of the Holocaust to understand. It probably stems from the fact that Jews have substantial international influence, and Poles and Gypsies do not.

THE FALLACIOUS “NAZIS SOUGHT TO KILL ALL THE WORLD’S JEWS” LINE

The cornerstone argument, for Holocaust supremacy (framed in terms of “Holocaust uniqueness” or, as Bauer now prefers, as “Holocaust unprecedentedness”) is the one about the Nazis out to kill every single accessible Jew. Bauer takes it further: He makes out of this an eventual Nazi attempt to kill ever single Jew on Earth. (p. 49).

Yehuda Bauer is clearly wrong, for the following reasons:

To begin with, it is very doubtful if the Nazis realistically hoped to conquer the whole world–and thus even be in a position to potentially kill all the world’s Jews in the first place. But what if? Hitler and Goebbels mulled over the murder of Europe’s Jews, but left the fate of the rest of the world’s Jews an open matter. There clearly was no grandiose plan to kill all the world’s Jews–not even a hypothetical one. Furthermore, Hitler never even fantasized about a world where there are no Jews. He knew very well that Jews would still be in existence centuries in the future! For proof of all the foregoing points, see (also embedded links therein):

https://www.jewsandpolesdatabase.org/2022/02/26/nazis-rule-earth-not-certain-all-jews-must-die-a-myth-nazis-rule-world-a-myth-ferguson/

HOLOCAUST RETHINKING? HARDLY. NOW POLES ARE IN THE CROSSHAIRS

Bauer wields Holocaust supremacism as an overt anti-Polish weapon by asserting that the Nazis never wanted to exterminate all Poles. (pp. 56-57). Wrong again. Fact is, the Nazis often spoke of long-range plans to exterminate the Poles. To bring up many book reviews corroborating this fact, please go to the top-right search box on this webpage, and type in the phrase: Planned extermination of Poles.