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Legacy of the Holocaust: Prevention, Not Revenge
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10860 |
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CURRENT ISSUES
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7 / 1986 |
3,018 Words |
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Amos Perlmutter
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A declaration that the Holocaust was the systematic extermination and murder of six million European Jews, amounting to the greatest human massacre of modern times, perhaps of all time, is neither new nor bold.
The Holocaust, however, is more than a massive historical statistic. It is an awesome historical fact that sits like an immovable obelisk in our memory and in our consciousness, still raw and hot to the touch. It raises questions not only about the past, but also about the future, questions about the importance of remembering, questions about the prevention of future Holocausts.
Each year, we commemorate the Holocaust, and each year, it seems, something happens to resurrect the deed and the dead. Last year, it was the Bitburg fiasco; this year, it is revelations about the past of Kurt Waldheim.
Each year, we ask ourselves: Isn't it time to forget the past, bury it without becoming possessed and obsessed by it? If we can answer the question of how the Holocaust happened in the first place, then how can we go about preventing another one? What are the conditions that led to the Holocaust?
Historically, the Holocaust, or the "Final Solution of the Jewish Problem," was at the core of Hitler's war. It held precedence over every other war aim, whether that aim was to conquer territory, gain hegemony over Europe, garner spoils of war, or consider strategic matters. At its core, Hitler's war was a racial war: a war to annihilate Jews, Slavs, and Bolsheviks, all of which were synonymous to Hitler. This racial war was conceived and executed by Hitler, Himmler, the SS, the Wehrmacht, the power elite, and all the organizational and technical tools available to the Nazi state, and it was fought with a tenacious ferocity to the bitter end, long after there was ever any hope of winning the larger war.
Part of the peculiarity of the Third Reich was that it amounted to being a popular totalitarian state, a fact that raises the question of the enthusiasm, complicity, and attitude of the German people in regard to Hitler's Final Solution. The German people did not openly declare a racial war of annihilation against the Jews, but it must be said, nevertheless, that they enthusiastically supported the regime that carried out the deed. There was certainly no public outcry over the openly anti-Semitic laws promulgated by the Nazi regime, laws that barred Jews from public life and expropriated their property. The Kristallnacht may have been a Nazi-staged act of general violence, but it was decidedly public and was supported by the public nation-wide.
It can be honestly said that Hitler was probably the most popular political leader the German people have ever had, more popular than Bismarck or any of the Kaisers. He came to power through an electoral-parliamentary victory and, if there had been no war, probably could have stayed in power for a long time. Most studies and research on polls and elections of the period indicate that Hitler and the Nazis received tremendous support from all quarters of German society, including the working classes, the middle class, the burghers, the farmers, the military, the university intelligentsia, both students and professors, the poor and the wealthy, men and women.
The popularity of the regime
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