Howard Zinn on the Jewish Holocaust
Commy
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At the core of the memory of the Holocaust is a horror that should not be forgotten. But around that core, whose integrity needs no enhancement, there has grown up an industry of memorialists who have labored to keep that memory alive for purposes of their own. (Novick)
Some Jews have used the holocaust as a way of preserving a unique identity, which they see threatened by intermarriage and assimilation.
Zionists have used the Holocaust, since the 1967 war, to justify further Israeli expansion into Palestinian land and to build support for a beleaguered Israel (more beleaguered -as David Ben-Gurion, Israel's first prime minister, predicted, once it occupied the West Bank and Gaza).
And non-Jewish politicians have used the Holocaust to curry favor with the numerically small but influential Jewish voters-note the solemn pronouncements or presidents wearing yarmulkes to accentuate their anguished sympathy. All who have taken seriously the admonition "Never Again" must ask ourselves-as we observer the horrors of around us in the world-if we have used that phrase as a beginning or as an end to our moral concern.
I would not have become a historian if I thought that it would become my professional duty to never emerge from the past, to study long-gone events and remember them only for their uniqueness, not connecting them to events going on in our time.
If the Holocaust is to have anymeaning, we must transfer our anger to today's brutalities. We must respect the Jewish Holocaust by refusing to allow atrocities to take place now.
When Jews turn inward to concentrate on their own history and look away from the ordeal of others, they are, with terrible irony, doing exactly what the rest of the world did in allowing the genocide to happen.
There have been shameful moments, travesties of Jewish humanism, as when Jewish organizations lobbied against congressional recognition of the Armenian Holocaust of 1915 on the ground that it diluted the memory of the Jewish Holocaust. The designers of the Holocaust Museum dropped the idea of mentioning Armenian genocide as a result of the pressure from the Israeli government, among others.
Another such moment came when Elie Wiesel, chair of President Carter's Commission on the Holocaust, refused to include in a description of the Holocaust Hitler's killing of millions of non-Jews. That would, he said, falsify the reality "in the name of misguided universalism," Novick quotes Weisel as saying. "They are stealing the Holocaust from us." As a result, the Holocaust museum gave only passing mention to the 5 million or more non-Jews who were killed in Nazi camps.
To build a wall around the uniqueness of the Jewish Holocaust is to abandon the idea that humankind is all one, that we are all-of whatever color, nationality, religion-deserving of equal rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. What happened to Jews under Hitler is unique in many details, but it shares universal characteristics with many other events in human history: the Atlantic slave trade, the genocide against American Indians, and the injuries and deaths to millions of working people who were victims of the capitalist ethos that put profit before human life.
In recent years, while paying more and more homage to the Holocaust as a central symbol of people's cruelty to other people, we have, by silence and inaction, collaborated in an endless chain of cruelties.
There have been massacres of Rwanda, and the starvation in Somalia, with our government watching and doing nothing.
There were death squads in Latin America and the decimation of the population of East Timor, with our government actively collaborating. Our churchgoing Christian presidents, so pious in their references to the genocide against the Jews, kept supplying the instruments of death to the perpetrators of these atrocities.
I am reminded of the last stanza of the poem "Scottsboro, Too, Is Worth Its Song," by Countee Cullen:
Surely, I said
now will the poets sing.
But they have raised no cry.
I wonder why
Then there are horrors that are not state-sponsored but still take a biblical toll, horrors that are within our power to end. Paul Farmers describes these in detail in his remarkable book, Infections and Inequalities: The Modern Plagues. He notes the deaths of 10 million children all over the world who die every year of malnutrition and preventable diseases. The World Health Organization estimates that each year, 2 million people die of tuberculosis, which is preventable and curable, as Farmer has proved in his medical work in Haiti. With a small portion of our military budget we could wipe out that disease.
My point is not to diminish the experience of the Jewish Holocaust, but to enlarge upon it.
For Jews, it means to reclaim the traditional Jewish universal humanism against an Israel-centered nationalism. Oo, as Novick puts it, to go back to "that larger social consciousness that was the hallmark of American Jewry of my youth." That larger consciousness is displayed today by those Israelis like Tanya Reinhart who protest Israel's violence against Lebanon and who have resisted the building of the Israeli wall deep into Palestinian lands, the bulldozing of homes and olive groves as collective punishment, and massacres like the one that took place in the Jenin refugee camp.
For others, whether Armenians or American Indians or Africans or Bosnians, it means to use their own bloody history not to set themselves apart from others but to create a larger solidarity against the holders of wealth and power, the perpetrators and collaborators of the ongoing horrors of our time.
The Holocaust might serve a powerful purpose if it led us to think of the world today as wartime Germany-where millions die while the rest of the population obediently goes about its business. It is a frightening thought that the Nazis, in defeat, were victorious: today Germany, tomorrow the world. That is, until we reverse our obedience and resist.
Some Jews have used the holocaust as a way of preserving a unique identity, which they see threatened by intermarriage and assimilation.
Zionists have used the Holocaust, since the 1967 war, to justify further Israeli expansion into Palestinian land and to build support for a beleaguered Israel (more beleaguered -as David Ben-Gurion, Israel's first prime minister, predicted, once it occupied the West Bank and Gaza).
And non-Jewish politicians have used the Holocaust to curry favor with the numerically small but influential Jewish voters-note the solemn pronouncements or presidents wearing yarmulkes to accentuate their anguished sympathy. All who have taken seriously the admonition "Never Again" must ask ourselves-as we observer the horrors of around us in the world-if we have used that phrase as a beginning or as an end to our moral concern.
I would not have become a historian if I thought that it would become my professional duty to never emerge from the past, to study long-gone events and remember them only for their uniqueness, not connecting them to events going on in our time.
If the Holocaust is to have anymeaning, we must transfer our anger to today's brutalities. We must respect the Jewish Holocaust by refusing to allow atrocities to take place now.
When Jews turn inward to concentrate on their own history and look away from the ordeal of others, they are, with terrible irony, doing exactly what the rest of the world did in allowing the genocide to happen.
There have been shameful moments, travesties of Jewish humanism, as when Jewish organizations lobbied against congressional recognition of the Armenian Holocaust of 1915 on the ground that it diluted the memory of the Jewish Holocaust. The designers of the Holocaust Museum dropped the idea of mentioning Armenian genocide as a result of the pressure from the Israeli government, among others.
Another such moment came when Elie Wiesel, chair of President Carter's Commission on the Holocaust, refused to include in a description of the Holocaust Hitler's killing of millions of non-Jews. That would, he said, falsify the reality "in the name of misguided universalism," Novick quotes Weisel as saying. "They are stealing the Holocaust from us." As a result, the Holocaust museum gave only passing mention to the 5 million or more non-Jews who were killed in Nazi camps.
To build a wall around the uniqueness of the Jewish Holocaust is to abandon the idea that humankind is all one, that we are all-of whatever color, nationality, religion-deserving of equal rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. What happened to Jews under Hitler is unique in many details, but it shares universal characteristics with many other events in human history: the Atlantic slave trade, the genocide against American Indians, and the injuries and deaths to millions of working people who were victims of the capitalist ethos that put profit before human life.
In recent years, while paying more and more homage to the Holocaust as a central symbol of people's cruelty to other people, we have, by silence and inaction, collaborated in an endless chain of cruelties.
There have been massacres of Rwanda, and the starvation in Somalia, with our government watching and doing nothing.
There were death squads in Latin America and the decimation of the population of East Timor, with our government actively collaborating. Our churchgoing Christian presidents, so pious in their references to the genocide against the Jews, kept supplying the instruments of death to the perpetrators of these atrocities.
I am reminded of the last stanza of the poem "Scottsboro, Too, Is Worth Its Song," by Countee Cullen:
Surely, I said
now will the poets sing.
But they have raised no cry.
I wonder why
Then there are horrors that are not state-sponsored but still take a biblical toll, horrors that are within our power to end. Paul Farmers describes these in detail in his remarkable book, Infections and Inequalities: The Modern Plagues. He notes the deaths of 10 million children all over the world who die every year of malnutrition and preventable diseases. The World Health Organization estimates that each year, 2 million people die of tuberculosis, which is preventable and curable, as Farmer has proved in his medical work in Haiti. With a small portion of our military budget we could wipe out that disease.
My point is not to diminish the experience of the Jewish Holocaust, but to enlarge upon it.
For Jews, it means to reclaim the traditional Jewish universal humanism against an Israel-centered nationalism. Oo, as Novick puts it, to go back to "that larger social consciousness that was the hallmark of American Jewry of my youth." That larger consciousness is displayed today by those Israelis like Tanya Reinhart who protest Israel's violence against Lebanon and who have resisted the building of the Israeli wall deep into Palestinian lands, the bulldozing of homes and olive groves as collective punishment, and massacres like the one that took place in the Jenin refugee camp.
For others, whether Armenians or American Indians or Africans or Bosnians, it means to use their own bloody history not to set themselves apart from others but to create a larger solidarity against the holders of wealth and power, the perpetrators and collaborators of the ongoing horrors of our time.
The Holocaust might serve a powerful purpose if it led us to think of the world today as wartime Germany-where millions die while the rest of the population obediently goes about its business. It is a frightening thought that the Nazis, in defeat, were victorious: today Germany, tomorrow the world. That is, until we reverse our obedience and resist.
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Comments
for some reason, they don't see that calling Israel out on their brutal, cruel, illegal, inhumane occupation and oppression of the Palestinian people, is in fact granting the Jews that all desired equality they always asked for.
Howard Zinn was such a great man. he really is missed.
"...to reclaim the traditional Jewish universal humanism against an Israel-centered nationalism."
he's looking for solutions. and finding them imo.
yes Howard Zinn is missed.
"All who have taken seriously the admonition "Never Again" must ask ourselves-as we observe the horrors around us in the world-if we have used that phrase as a beginning or as an end to our moral concern."
WHAT.
Excellent post.......
Who is Howard Zinn to speak about "traditional" Jewish universal values. Some (even many) Jews have believed deeply in universal values. Many have not. Judaism, like any religion, encompasses pretty much any viewpoint. One could just as easily speak of "traditional" Jewish particularism, Zinn simply chooses not to because it doesn't suit his purpose. I don't have a problem with universal values, just with Zinn's blatant, and blatantly political essentialism regarding what are "traditional" Jewish values.
With regard to Jenin, he should go back and get his history straight. There was no "massacre" in Jenin. If memory serves some 50+ Palestinians were killed in the fighting in Jenin in 2002 (along with 23 IDF soldiers) the vast majority of them combatants, in fierce urban combat. The Palestinians immediately claimed that there had been a massacre, claiming that hundreds, if not thousands of civilians had been murdered, and pretty much the entire world bought the story hook line and sinker. Except, as corroborated by the UN's own report, that isn't at all what happened.
I'm not going to address the holocaust. I just don't think people here can really understand the meaning of the event from a Jewish perspective. You talk about it in abstract terms, and use it (in very much the same way that you often claim that supporters of Israel do) as a part of your own political arguments. As a Jew, I understand the event very differently, and I don't expect that many of you are really capable of feeling about it the way that I do.
Who is Howard Zinn to speak of 'traditional' Jewish universal values? Howard Zinn was an historian, author, anarchist, libertarian socialist, activist, playwright, intellectual and Professor of Political Science at Boston University for over 20 years, and author of over 20 books.
Who are you?
Maybe not a massacre, but the scene of war crimes including summary executions and the use of human shields.
The number of Palestinians killed by the Israeli's during their "Operation Defensive Shield" across the West Bank from March 1 to May 7 was 497.
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2002/aug20 ... -a08.shtml
“A total of 497 Palestinians were killed in the course of the IDF reoccupation of Palestinian area A from 1 March to 7 May 2002 and in the immediate aftermath”—a figure not dissimilar to the prediction made by Erekat at the time. On top of this, “Palestinian health authorities and the Palestinian Red Crescent Society reported approximately 1,447 wounded with some 538 live-ammunition injuries (for the same period)”.
If the Israeli's had nothing to hide then why did they choose to not only not co-operate with any investigation but to try to block any investigation?
Of course, because it clearly dwarfs the 30-40 million Chinese killed by Mao, and the 30-40 million killed by Stalin, not to mention the 100 million native Americans killed by the European settlers - http://www.mit.edu/~thistle/v9/9.11/1columbus.html. Only you can truly understand it, just as only you can truly understand the Israel-Palestine conflict. You are clearly on a higher footing than the rest of us mere mortals.
Except if you did you'd be an idiot. I expect Howard Zinn bases his remark on the history of Jewish thought and ideas as embodied in Jewish literature down the centuries.
Though I find it telling that you regard even the phrase 'Jewish Universal Values' as some sort of insult or attack and use it to get all defensive. But then what this all boils down to is that the only thing you're interested in defending is Israel. You couldn't give a fuck about anybody else.
As said, the holocaust is not just for jews to 'understand'. A Roma can 'feel' it the same way as a jew. You can't keep on thinking that jews are 'special' in that matter. It's an insult to all those who have been targetted by the Nazis.
I don't claim to speak for the true, authentic, "traditional" Judaism. My point was that it is ridiculous for anyone, not just Zinn, to do so, because like all religions Judaism defies such easy characterization. You expect that Zinn has done his homework? Well I've done mine as well. I've spent close to two decades studying Judaism and living an engaged Jewish life, and I can tell you from experience that there are a great many Jews who understand "authentic" Judaism in particularist terms. That is not my understanding (I prefer not to make such absurdly broad and arrogant claims). I don't consider the phrase "Jewish universal values" to be an insult at all. I consider it to be a hollow phrase, and an attempt to use Judaism to adorn a particular political stance. What I do consider an insult is to be called an idiot with regard to my own religion by someone who very obviously knows not the first thing about it.
Regarding Jenin, the facts are the facts. You can read the UN report for yourself. Attempting to enlarge the topic from Jenin in particular, to the entire West Bank, and "Defensive Shield" as a whole does not change the fact that no "massacre" occurred in Jenin.
The holocaust is not a competition, and I'd ask you not to try to make it so. What happened in China and Russia and in the Americas was terrible. Period. Playing "who's the bigger victim" is crass, and if you'd like to engage in such games please leave me out of it. In any event I never made any such comparisons.
My point was that my reaction to the event is emotional in a way that non-Jews generally can't understand. It is an emotional trauma that has to be experienced to be understood. This doesn't mean others can't understand the event, only they may not be able to understand it in the same way (and that is not to say that I understand it better, only differently).
I'm fully aware that there are lot's of Jews who believe in Jewish exceptionalism and who regard Israel as being above the law.
I'm also aware that there is a tradition within Jewish intellectual life of universal humanism. Walter Benjamin, Hannah Arendt, Chomsky, Zinn, Finkelstein - to name a few.
Some of the most vocal critics of U.S foreign policy and of Israels crimes have been Jewish.
Except Zinn wasn't talking about Jews in terms of the religion of Judaism. He was talking about a history of Jews having a sense of universal values. You're simply trying to twist the subject to suit yourself. Noam Chomsky, Norman Finkelstein, Howard Zinn are all Jews but that doesn't mean they practice the religion of Judaism. Woody Allen is a Jew but you won't see him in a synagogue either.
All of the investigations on Jenin reported war crimes. The original use of the word 'massacre' was used by Ereket to describe events occuring across the whole of the West Bank. It was the Israeli media that first used it solely in reference to Jenin. Still, a reported 56 people killed in Jenin alone - half of them civilians. No massacre? Maybe, maybe not.
Why did the Israeli's refuse to co-operate with any investigation?
Please don't twist my words. Particularism is not the same as exceptionalism, nor does it imply a belief that any one country should be above the rule of law.
Perhaps Israel very often doesn't wish to cooperate with investigations because they seldom feel that investigations of them are truly impartial. I do not necessarily agree with this stance, but the implication that failure to cooperate with an investigation is tantamount to an admission of guilt is simply not valid.
Anyone can become a Jew by dint of converting to Judaism. So does this mean that a Peruvian who converted to Judaism yesterday now has an emotional understanding of the Nazi holocaust that others fail to understand?
Also, would you tell a Roma Gypsy that they're not able to understand the holocaust because they're not Jewish?
Again, do you actually read what I write, or do you skim just enough to shoot off angry, incendiary responses.
I specifically did not say that non-Jews (including the Roma) can't understand the event. I said they can't understand it in the same way (and I explicitly noted that this is ONLY a matter of difference, not degree, meaning that I am not saying that I understand it better by dint of being Jewish). I would tell a Roma that he/she is not able to understand the event from the Jewish perspective. I'm sure that they are able to understand their community's own experience from their own unique perspective, and that I am as unable to access the emotional reality of their experience as they are unable to access my emotional reaction.
Let me put it to you this way. I have never been raped. I don't expect that I am able to understand the emotional reality of having been raped the same way that an actual rape victim does, and it would be utterly crass for me to claim otherwise.
The memory of the event? If you don't mind me asking, how old are you? 20? 25? You have no more memory of the event than me or anyone else born in the last 50 years.
Not neccesarily. You didn't experience the event first hand. There are plenty of first hand testomonies in written form or in interviews in films such as Shoah which make anyone who studies the subject seriously no less understanding of the event than yourself, emotionally or otherwise. It was not strictly a Jewish tragedy, it was a human tragedy, and no human possessed of empathy or intelligence is less capable of understanding this event than anyone else who didn't actually live through it.
I grew up with relatives who always feared the worst out of life. I grew up with a father who would panic if I came home 10 minutes late, or if the phone rang at 1am. I grew up with a father who was never mentally liberated from the camps, and who saw his parents, aunts, uncles & oldest brother systematically killed.
My dad's generation were taught that anyone's life could be uprooted and ruined without notice, so my dad always worried only about survival. I owe it to him to thrive as much as I can.
Current-generation Jews have done very well in erecting museums to commemerate the Holocuast. Though the major museums focus on the plight of the Jewish people, they also mention the other groups that were victimized in the Holocaust.
In the 1960s' civil rights marches, of the whites who marched in support of the injustices invoked upon black Americans, a majority of them were Jewish, and over 1/2 half of the attorneys who worked on civil rights cases were Jewish.
I know I have been all over the place in this post, but please realize that it is difficult to understand the Holocaust "hang-over" it if you haven't lived it.
Thanks for reading!
Good point.
I've actually forgotten what the point of this discussion is.
Time for bed. :wave:
No, but two people having been raped by the same person will have the same understanding of the emotional reality of it. The way they wish to deal with it and continue with their life will probably be different.
B, I disagree. There is such a thing as communal memory, and I would argue that the Jewish communal memory of the holocaust imparts an emotional response that isn't accessible to outsiders (or is accessed only with difficulty). I also don't view the holocaust the same way that you apparently do. Yes, the Jews were not the Nazis only victims, but we were their primary ones. The death camps were built for the purpose of killing Jews. That they were also used to kill others is a tragedy, but I think it is a matter of historical fact that the Jewish experience during the war was a horrifically unique one. As a non-Jew I understand your impulse to universalize the event so as to take some meaning from it. I don't have a problem with that per se. But please, let's not pretend that there was not a particular Jewish experience during the war. There was, and if those that survived and those of us who came after take away a different, particular meaning from the event, I think that is our right.
An example - the other day I was sitting on the subway, and across from me was a blue-blooded, blond haired, as American as apple-pie girl. I was watching her (I like to people watch) and I just had this flash, like, "this person belongs in this place, feels comfortable here, totally secure here, in a way that I never will." This was in NYC, I was born and raised there. And the reason for that is that for as long as I can remember the underlying message of family stories, of discussions around the dinner table, have been that my people are outcasts, strangers, usually hated, and ultimately almost exterminated. I don't think some Christian girl from Kansas (for example) could ever have any idea what that is like, nor do I think that the truth of that message is in any way diminished by the fact that at this particular moment in history, in this particular place, Jews are doing well.
Only because there were more of them. The Roma were actually the first to be 'rounded up' by the Nazis...
Don't patronize me. I know what the holocaust is.
Your problem. Victim mentality. Like your example of rape... it's how one deals with things.
How can you call it "victim mentality" when you haven't experienced what the victims have?
Textbook psychology doesn't always help fix things.
Is Yosi a victim? No. Was my mother a victim? Yes. Was my grand-father a victim? Yes. What about my Godfather? Yes, him also. Does that affect my 'position in society'? No. One can't use the crutch of a past event to justify all kinds of things. Learn from it and move on.
"If the Holocaust is to have any meaning, we must transfer our anger to today's brutalities. We must respect the Jewish Holocaust by refusing to allow atrocities to take place now." LEARN FROM THE PAST.