Chapter 2: Historical Comparative Analysis

To be able to discuss the uniqueness of the Holocaust it is necessary to compare it to other atrocious examples of man's inhumanity to man. In this chapter I will compare the Holocaust with those examples of man's inhumanity that were perpetrated before the Holocaust, and those that also occurred simultaneously under Nazism

American Slavery

I will begin with the coercive institution of American Slavery. Whereby blacks were subordinate to, controlled and owned by white "masters," whom they would be destined to obey and be commanded by, for their entire lives. Thomas maintains that the pernicious institution of American Slavery was cooperatively subordinate. This refers to the acceptance by the blacks of their subordinate position in society and their belief that whites would do right by them if they were "good slaves" and performed their tasks and roles well in their oppressive society. The blacks actually internalised the norms of the very society that oppressed them.1 This is not to say that most blacks did not see Slavery as an incredibly unjust, and did not dream of their emancipation. It was possible for the blacks to despise the institution of Slavery and to dream of becoming free, but at the same time to accept it and to see no end, after all, American Slavery lasted for three hundred years.

"To be a slave was after all to have a distinctive character, a place in society - more than the abstract nakedness of being human and nothing but human."2

The Holocaust, on the other hand was far from involving an element of cooperation, it was entirely coercive. The cooperation of the Jews was not necessary in the Nazis' system of things. The only thing deemed necessary for the Jews to do, was to die. Jews had absolutely no desire to be integrated into Nazi society. The Jews would never have been able to internalise the values and norms of Nazi society, neither did the Nazis ever desire this. For the Nazis, any beliefs the Jews may have held was irrelevant and inconsequential to their "extermination."3


A black slave was not thought of as being irredeemably evil, unlike the Jew. This can clearly be seen by the way these two pernicious institutions of Slavery and the Holocaust, treated the infants of the blacks and the Jews, respectively. A black child would often be allowed to play with a white child, and the distinction between the children would only be made with reference to what the black child would become, that is, a slave. Jewish infants never enjoyed such freedom under Nazism. Jewish children would be as brutally treated as their parents, and were often thrown alive into fires, to enable the economy of gas. This clearly indicates how the Nazis perceived and hated the Jews as being irredeemably evil.4

Slavery, unlike the Holocaust, was largely defined by financial considerations.5 Slaves were treated in a similar way to cattle. They were animals to be bought and sold, and to be milked of the maximum amount of labour. Slaves were valued according to the pezas of India, a measure which computed a slave's worth by his labour capacity. It was not in the interests of the slave owner to put the life of his slaves at risk, just as a farmer seeks the best health for his cattle. Many slaves died of disease, but were inoculated against small pox, when such a vaccination became available at the end of the eighteenth century.6 Arendt distinguishes between slaves and concentration-camp inmates in the following paragraph,

Throughout history slavery has been an institution within a social order; slaves were not, like concentration-camp inmates, withdrawn from the sight and hence the protection of their fellow-men; as instruments of labour they had a definite price and as property a definite value. The concentration-camp inmate has no price, because he can always be replaced; nobody knows to whom he belongs, because he is never seen. From the point of view of normal society he is absolutely superfluous, although in times of acute labour shortage, as in Russia and in Germany during the war, he is used for work.7

Clearly, the extermination of black people was not the aim of Slavery, and although many millions of slaves died in the Middle Passage, their deaths were "humanly unintended, unplanned and assuredly undesired."8 Whatever the intentions of either slavery or the Holocaust, both were incredibly pernicious institutions and have greatly affected the future generations of blacks and Jews, respectively.

The Gulag

The gulag is often likened to the concentration and death camps of the Holocaust. The gulag as an institution, perpetrated gross acts against inhumanity. It is in this instance of man's monstrous inhumanity to man that the gulag is compared to the Holocaust.


Both Hitler and Stalin embarked upon a war against an ideological enemy, a racial and a class enemy, respectively. For the Nazis the Jew was the racial enemy, the threat to the Aryan world, thus the war was Aryan versus Semite one. The rehabilitation of a Jew was simply not possible under the Nazi regime, the biological difference could never be rectified, and hence, all Jews had to be annihilated lest they destroy the Aryan existence. For Stalin the class enemy was "an enemy by virtue of the place he occupies in the deformed socio-economic arrangement."9 For Stalin, re-education, not physical extermination, was the final goal.10 According to Katz, between sixty-five and seventy per cent of Kulaks actually survived the Terror, because, essentially, Stalin wanted to "transform the power structure that corrupts the bourgeoisie and the proletariat alike."11

There was no economic or political reason for the Nazis to persecute, or to seek the annihilation of European Jewry. The Jews did not control the national economy, as was often claimed by anti-Semites. Stalin's Terror on the other hand, was due to economic and political policy, especially the need for industrialisation.12 The lack of any economic or political reason in persecuting the Jews, can be clearly seen when we examine the concentration and death camps. Unlike the death camps, where murder was often imminent on arrival, the concentration camp appeared to operate as a forced labour camp. However, it was only a labour camp in the sense that the Jews were to be worked to death. The work was often totally unproductive, such as digging a great hole, only to be told to fill it in again immediately after. "A large part of the work exacted in the concentration camps was useless, either it was superfluous or it was so miserably planned that it had to be done over two or three times."13 The concentration camp existed to kill the Jews physically and mentally. "New prisoners particularly were forced to perform nonsensical tasks... They felt debased... and preferred even harder work when it produced something useful..."14


Arendt maintains that the Nazi concentration camps were completely anti-utilitarian. This anti-utility is highlighted by the way the Nazis created huge extermination factories despite the shortage of building material and rolling stock, and their ability to transport millions of people when the railways were much needed for military use. "In the eyes of a strictly utilitarian world the obvious contradiction between these acts and military expediency gave the whole enterprise an air of mad unreality."15 Arendt goes further dividing concentration camps into three types, which correspond to western conceptions of life after death. These are Hades, Purgatory, and Hell. Hades covers "mild" camps containing "undesirable elements", such as refugees and asocials, that is, people who have become superfluous. Purgatory is represented by the Soviet Union's forced labour camps "where neglect is combined with chaotic forced labour." Whereas Hell was embodied by the camps "perfected by the Nazis, in which the whole of life was thoroughly and systematically organised with a view to the greatest possible torment."16 The dominant concern of Stalin's camps, unlike those created by the Nazis, was the realisation of labour quotas, however, the regime was indifferent to the survival of its prisoners. Jerzy Glicsksman, one of the gulag's prisoners gives the following account of the Stalinist camps,

The Soviet lagers are in fact institutions practising slave labour. They are closely tied to various industrial or other enterprises which, in turn, are part of the over-all Soviet economy. They are expected to fulfill their part in the general economic plan, and are a tremendous source of cheap labour for this plan. Openly and cynically, without any trace of concern for appearances, the camp inmate is therefore treated simply as a forced supplier of needed work."17

Both the Stalinist and Nazi regimes were perpetrators of gross inhumanity. However, despite the cruelty and the many deaths that occurred in the gulag, it is clear that Stalin did not intend a "final solution" for any single group of people in the Soviet Union. Katz estimates that eighty-eight per cent of the peasantry survived Stalin's class war against them in the 1930's, as did sixty-five to seventy per cent of the Kulaks.18 These figures would have been far lower had Stalin intended the annihilation of the peasantry or the Kulaks. While Stalin was motivated by economic concerns, Hitler was driven by a fanatical loathing of Jews, which he carried to the extreme, placing it before all military concerns. In both matters of ideology and intent the Stalinist and Nazi regimes differed, however, they both have a fundamental similarity in the fact that both regimes were the perpetrators of immense evil.

The Gypsies

Many scholars believe that the uniqueness of the Holocaust is mainly concerned with making it an exclusively Jewish issue. The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council for example, has never used the word "holocaust" in conjunction with Romany victims of Nazism.19


The Gypsies murdered in concentration camps and in mass executions in Poland, Yugoslavia and the USSR, or killed in the gas chambers in Auschwitz, remain in the shadow of the six million murdered Jews; in the face of such enormous human suffering, numbers decide.20

All too often, victims of genocide are forgotten, especially when there is no national government to speak out for them, as was the case with the Armenians. The Gypsies clearly suffered under the Nazi regime and should therefore receive war crime reparations, as have the Jews. Unfortunately this has not been the case. I feel that the suffering of the Gypsies under Nazism and after, has often been neglected. However this is not to say that the Nazis intended the total annihilation of the Gypsies as they did the Jews. Jews were clearly classified according to their race, and were regarded as inferior, or untermenschen. There was no confusion among the Nazis on this point, thus race was the only criteria needed to classify Jews. Gypsies were often classified like the Jews, that is, along racial lines, although Gypsies were further divided into pure Aryan and non-Aryan Gypsies, enabling some Gypsies, at least, to escape annihilation. Gypsies were also classified as asocials, race being not the only determining criteria in their intended annihilation, as can be seen in the 1937 law against crime.21 In the concentration camps, Gypsies often wore the black triangle indicative of an asocial, rather than the insignia of a racial criminal, and they were also not obliged to wear such badges until they arrived at the camps, unlike the Jews who had to wear the yellow star of David. According to Katz, in 1943, Himmler intervened in the deportations to save the "German" Gypsy Sinti and Lalleri tribes which constituted ten per cent of the total Gypsy population.22 Rom Gypsies and part Gypsies who were still serving in the army, or those who had been released with decorations, were exempt from deportations. As were those Gypsies who were married to a German, or had a father or son in the forces, owned land or were of foreign nationality. "The Nazis seem to have been highly ambivalent towards the Gypsies. Some Gypsy tribes were murdered but others were protected."23 It is clear that Gypsies were not regarded as inherently evil, unlike the Jews, therefore the annihilation of the Gypsies was not a necessity as far as the Nazis were concerned, unlike the necessary annihilation of the Jews.

Katz quotes from Kenrick and Puxon, regarding the treatment of Gypsies at Auschwitz.


According to Broad, a member of the SS staff, the camp authorities received a telegram from Berlin just as the camp was opening saying the Gypsies should not be treated the same as the Jews. We cannot say for certain as the basis of existing knowledge that the Gypsies were sent to Auschwitz to be killed. Those unfit for labour were not gassed on arrival and only a few Gypsies worked during the first months, so there was no policy of "annihilation through work". Also the Gypsies in other camps were not transferred to Auschwitz.24

Katz states that the Nazis annihilated twenty-three and a half per cent of the Gypsy population which he compares to eighty-five per cent of Jews. Hancock on the other hand, states that the overall percentage loss for both the Gypsies and the Jews was approximately the same. Hancock also quotes from a letter a letter written by Wiesenthal to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council, "Gypsies had been murdered in a proportion similar to the Jews, about eighty per cent of them in the area of the countries which were occupied by the Nazis."25 There is obviously a dispute over the numbers of Gypsies murdered, nevertheless, no-one is able to say that while in the camps the Gypsies actually suffered less than the Jews. Many scholars do appear preoccupied with the Holocaust being uniquely Jewish, but the Holocaust did not only take the lives of Jews. However, Nazi ideology only required the total annihilation of European Jewry. It is in this sense that the Holocaust also becomes uniquely Jewish.

We cannot deny that the Gypsies suffered greatly under Nazism, but Nazi ideology did not require their complete disappearance as with the Jews. As such, the murder of the many Gypsies is classified under the heading of Genocide rather than Holocaust, which is reserved for the six million Jews. However it is also important not to forget the Gypsies, the Poles, the homosexuals and the many other victims of Nazism, because as soon as we begin to forget one racially, socially or religiously defined group of victims, the path is cleared for such an atrocity to repeat itself. Hancock concludes his paper with post-Nazi accounts of discrimination against Gypsies.

At this time (1989) the Czechoslovakian government is implementing a programme of compulsory sterilization of Gypsy women, and taking away their children. In 1984, a city councillor for the City of Bradford in England called for the extermination of Gypsies.26

Perhaps if the genocide of the Gypsies under Nazism was given better coverage, enabling the public to be more aware of the discrimination the Gypsies have suffered in the past, they would be persecuted less in present day society. Many of the victims of Nazism do lie in the shadow of the Jews - however wrong this may be - not because the Jews suffered more but because that no other group (however identified), in the history of mankind has ever been targeted for total annihilation.


American Slavery, the Gulag and the Gypsy Genocide are all different, very disturbing examples of man's inhumanity to man. Both blacks and Gypsies continue to suffer discrimination in our modern society, as do the Jews. We forget too easily what has happened in our society, and how easily man is able to treat his fellow beings so inhumanely. How it was possible for people and world governments to stand by and do nothing to save the persecuted. Perhaps if each one of us realised that what happened to the Jews could happen to us we would not be so apathetic, content in our own comfort and safety, for the moment at least.

We live in a society with a guilty conscience about suppressed truths... and there will always be much that we don't want to hear but need to know.27

1

Laurence M Thomas, Vessels of Evil: American Slavery and the Holocaust, Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1993, pp126-127.

2 Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, p297.

3 Thomas, Vessels of Evil, p138.

4 Ibid., p140.

5

Stephen T Katz, Historicism, the Holocaust and Zionism: Critical Studies in Modern Jewish Thought and History, (New York and London: New York University Press, 1983), p120.

6 Ibid., p123.

7 Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, p444.

8 Katz, Historicism, p122.