If understanding is impossible, knowing is imperative, because what happened could happen again. Consciences can be seduced and obscured again - Primo Levi.[1]
The annihilation of approximately six million Jews by the Nazi dictatorship is one of the most terrible events of the twentieth century, if not of the entire history of mankind. The Holocaust has demonstrated the potentiality of evil, and remains the extreme example of human brutality and inhumanity. It is for this reason that the Holocaust must be studied, in an attempt to prevent such a horror ever recurring in the future. The Nazis proved it was possible a first time, and only through knowledge and acceptance of this fact, can we attempt to avoid it in the future. "That which has happened is a warning. To forget it is guilt. It must be continually remembered. It was possible for this to happen, and it remains possible for it to happen again at any minute. Only in knowledge can it be prevented."[2]
The uniqueness of the Holocaust is a very sensitive moral question. By terming the Holocaust unique, one risks belittling the suffering of other victims, but also, one can argue, that to deny the uniqueness of the Holocaust is unconscious anti-Semitism. "For many writers, uniqueness is the central issue. Affirm it and you force people to take the Holocaust seriously. Deny it and you relegate the Holocaust to the back burners of the modern intellectual's agenda."[3] However, one consideration to remember throughout the study of the Holocaust and other genocides, is that in the eyes of the victims, every genocide is totally unique. Addressing the question of uniqueness is an attempt to understand how the Holocaust was possible and why it ever took place in our society. But as Rubenstein maintains, no explanation of why the Holocaust took place will ever be adequate.[4] Bauer defines the uniqueness of the Holocaust as "the planned, total annihilation of an entire community and a quasi-apocalyptic, religious component whereby the death of the victim becomes an integral ingredient in the drama of salvation."[5]
The Holocaust is one instance of genocide, but by definition it appears unique, almost worse for being given a separate name to genocide. Genocide is defined as being the mass extermination of human beings, especially of a particular race or nation. The Sunday Times published the following statement on 21 October 1945, "The UN indictment of the twenty-four Nazi leaders has brought a new word into the language - genocide. It occurs in Covenant three where it is stated that all the defendants conducted deliberate and systematic genocide - namely the extermination of racial and ethnic groups." However, it was Raphael Lemkin who first coined the term Genocide, which he defined as "a coordinated plan of different actions aiming at the destruction of essential foundations of the life of the national groups, with he aim of annihilating the groups themselves."[6] Furthermore, Michael Ignatieff maintains that "genocide is a worn and debased term, casually hurled at every outrage, every violence, even applied to events where no death, only shame or abuse occurs. But it is a word which does mean something, the project to exterminate a people for no other reason than because they are people. "[7]
Although the Holocaust is one instance of genocide - different by definition - I do not believe that it is possible for anyone to suggest that it is by any means worse than other genocides, as no-one is in a position to judge the suffering endured by another person, or people. Throughout the study of uniqueness, many writers re-affirm that by calling the Holocaust unique is by no means asserting that it is of greater importance than other genocides, but often, it does seem as if they do in fact regard it as worse. Seeskin maintains that the uniqueness and importance of the Holocaust are not related because "moral reason is infinitely extendible. It reaches a threshold at which comparisons of this sort either make no sense or are reprehensible in their own right."[8] Fackenheim re-asserts the uniqueness of the Holocaust as essentially anti-Jewish, calling it a novum in the history of evil.[9]
All genocidal actions can be regarded as unique in the sense that they are "radically Alien". However, when one speaks of the Holocaust, one is referring to specific qualities beyond the trivial meanings of uniqueness. Firstly, the Holocaust may be regarded as unique in its dreadful intentionality. The Nazis deliberately intended the final solution to erase Jews from the face of the earth and to obliterate their identity. For the Nazis, the war appears to have been a means to an end, the end being the final solution. The war acted as a cover for the Nazis' key project, the annihilation of the Jews, murdered for no other reason than being who they were - people, with three Jewish grandparents. But the Nazis never viewed the Jews as a people, they were vermin to be exterminated. Their crime lay in their existence in an "Aryan" world.
Secondly, one has to take into account the questions of modernity surrounding the uniqueness of the Holocaust. The Holocaust took place in our society, the frightening reality being, that nothing was able to prevent it, and there is nothing to say that it can be prevented from occurring again in the future. The Holocaust is a rare example of the hidden possibilities of the modern "civilised" society in which we live. Modern civilisation made the Holocaust possible, which differentiates it from earlier genocides.[10] All the resources of the Nazi state were mobilised to make the Holocaust a reality, the many bureaucratic institutions simply aided the annihilation project. The Nazis appear to have had support from the population at large, because there was little outspoken opposition, "The Germans initiated the extermination machine, but not without the active support and sympathy of the people whom they had overwhelmed."[11]
Another aspect to take into consideration, is the extent to which the Jews were not only physically, but morally annihilated. They were stripped of every dignity, humiliated and tormented. Gita Sereny uses the term "spiritual murder" to aptly describe the fate of the Jews.[12] The Holocaust had two purposes according to Fackenheim, "extermination and also maximum prior humiliation and torture,.......to 'punish' the 'Jewish devil' through humiliation and torture, was part of 'Aryan' salvation, perhaps it was all of it." The Nazis clearly saw the existence of the Jews as a crime in itself, punishable by humiliation, torture, and finally, death.[13]
Finally there is the question of non-utility. There appears to have been no arguably utilitarian purpose whatsoever in the annihilation of European Jewry. It is even plausible to say that the Nazis regarded the "extermination" of the Jews as of far greater importance, than the need to win the war.[14]
All these different factors, when taken together, enable the study of the uniqueness of the Holocaust, and do in fact make it unique. However, these are aspects of evil particular to the Holocaust, and needless to say, other examples of human inhumanity or evil, contain different aspects of evil. Thus, returning to the question of importance, it is not plausible to place examples of evil on a scale of importance, "simply on account of a difference between (them) regarding some aspect of evil."[15]
[1]Primo Levi Shema.
[2] Jaspers 1953, 149
Kenneth Seeskin "What Philosophy Can and Cannot Say About Evil", in Echoes from the Holocaust, (ed) A. Rosenberg and G.E. Myers, Ch.3 pp91-105, Temple University Press 1988
Richard Rubenstein, Religion and the origins of the death camps: A psychoanalytic interpretation, in After Auschwitz, radical theology and contemporary Judaism, Ch 1 pp 1-47. Macmillam Publishing Company, New York.
[5] Yehuda Bauer, The Holocaust in Historical Perspective, Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1980.
[6] Raphael Lemkin, Axis Rule in Occupied Europe, New York: Howard Fertig, 1973, p79.
Michael Ignatieff, Blood and Belonging: Journeys into the New Nationalism, p 151. Vintage 1994, Great Britain.
Kenneth Seeskin, "Chapter 3: What Philosophy Can and Cannot Say About the Holocaust," in A Rosenberg and G E Myers, eds., Echoes from the Holocaust, Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1988, pp91-105.
Emile L. Fackenheim, "The Holocaust and Philosophy," The Journal of Philosophy, (October 1985), 82: 505.
[10] Zygmunt Bauman, Modernity and the Holocaust, Cambridge: Polity, 1989, pp12-13.
Richard Rubenstein, Religion and the Origins of the Death Camps: A Psychoanalytic Interpretation, in After Auschwitz, Radical Theology and Contemporary Judaism, p1.
[12] Gita Sereny, Into That Darkness: From Mercy Killing to Mass Murder, p 101, London: Deutsch 1974.
Emile L. Fackenheim, "The Holocaust and Philosophy ," p 508.
Hannah Arendt, Social Science Techniques and the Study of Concentration Camps, Ch 18 in Echoes from the Holocaust, p 366
Laurence Mordekhai Thomas, Vessels of Evil: American Slavery and the Holocaust, p 8. Philadelphia: Temple University Press 1993.
©Drefdry 2000