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

New Perspectives on the Holocaust: A Guide for Teachers and Scholars, edited by Rochelle L. Millen. 1996. New York University Press, New York and London

Ernst Nolte Censured for Potentially Undermining the Privileged Status of the Holocaust

This book has no “new perspectives”: It is the same old standard Judeocentric fare–even more egregiously stated. For example, Steven T. Katz (pp. 19-on), in dead seriousness, tells us that, unlike the Nazis relative to Jewish children, the Communist gulags did not kill children. Katz must be walking on some other planet. He should tell that to some Polish mothers whose babies and children froze to death while they were being forcibly shipped to Siberia.

I focus on some worthwhile content.

THE REAL REASON ERNST NOLTE CENSURED: QUESTIONING THE SUPREMACY OF THE HOLOCAUST OVER ALL OTHER GENOCIDES

Historian Ernst Nolte committed the unpardonable sin of equating the gulags with Nazi crimes (against Jews that is). The pretext given for delegitimizing him and scorning him was that he was trying to dilute German guilt. (This accusation is doubly ironic because the Holocaust establishment has no problem with diluting German guilt whenever it serves its purposes, as by invoking de-Germanized Nazis and by diverting blame for the Holocaust on Christianity or on Poland.)

Milchman and Rosenberg see through this smokescreen. The way Nolte was treated had nothing to do with any imagined dilution of German guilt. It was all about keeping the Holocaust on the throne. They write, “It is important to note that Nolte, in contrast to Paul Rassinier or Robert Faurisson, is no ‘denier’ who controverts the existence of the death camps, but a relativizer, or ‘trivializer’, for whom the Holocaust loses its uniqueness in the midst of the many other examples of human-made mass-death which have made the twentieth century so bloody.” (p. 16). That’s just it. How awful!

Obviously, the supremacy of the Holocaust over all other genocides is imagined to be some kind of self-evident truth that cannot even be questioned. So much for the myth that academia is all about the free exchange of ideas.

The shutting up of Ernst Nolte did its job. It chilled any scholarly dissent to Holocaust supremacy, and it strongly discouraged any attempt to dare equate Nazi and Communist crimes.

OFT-REPEATED HOLOCAUST MEMES ARE BASELESS

This book goes on and on about the fault of Christianity for the Holocaust. However, a few authors indirectly point out that this calumny has no basis in fact. Carole Fink writes, “Historians of the Holocaust have not agreed over its origins, its immediate antecedents, or even over its implementation. Was it the inevitable result of…[fill-in the blank]. (p. 39). Or was it inevitable at all?

Ironically, blame for the Holocaust cannot even unambiguously be placed on any specific Nazi German figures, let alone on pre-Nazi events! Schilling writes, “Given the absence of a written order authorizing the Final Solution, the degree to which Hitler bears primary responsibility for it has been the subject of some controversy.” (p. 211).

POLES AND NOT ONLY JEWS WERE THE OBJECTS OF GERMAN HATRED

Elisabeth J. Kalau testifies of her childhood in Nazi Germany, “And, I was to hate our enemies: the English, the French, the Americans, particularly the Poles and Russians who, like blacks, were considered subhumans.” (p. 225). Oops…You cannot blame that on Christianity.

Kalau’s testimony is full of remorse and guilt over Germany’s treatment of the Jews. But there is not a speck of guilt or remorse over the German treatment of the Poles. This is institutionalized. For example, Germany has paid big reparations to the Jews long ago but refuses to pay reparations to Poland to this day.

ALFRED DREYFUS AND THE QUESTION OF DUAL LOYALTIES: AN IRONY. JEWS LONG OTHERIZED THEMSELVES

Nowadays, the French are berated for once questioning if a French Jew like Dreyfus is a genuine Frenchman, and Poles are even more berated for questioning if a Polish Jew is really a Pole. In contrast, Lozowick and Millen re-affirm the fact that Jews identifying with their host nation is a recent development in history. They comment, “Many European Jews spent the nineteenth century and the first third of the twentieth trying to shed their ancient nationality in favor a newly adopted one, be it German, French, English, or other.” (p. 270).