Im-Politic: Shameful Holocaust-Related Revisionism from The Times

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1619 Project, anti-semitism, concentration camps, Holocaust, Holocaust Survivor Syndrome, Holocaust survivors, Im-Politic, Jennifer Orth-Veillon, revisionism, The New York Times, The New York Times Magazine, U.S. military, World War II

If you’ve been reading RealityChek for any meaningful length of time, you know that I’m not big on using terms like “disgusting,” and “vile.” But those were the first words that came to mind last night after finishing an April 28 New York Times Magazine article titled “For Some Holocaust Survivors, Even Liberation Was Dehumanizing.” And they were still my reaction after having slept on it.

If you’re not experiencing the same repugnance upon seeing this headline or reading the entire piece, just ask yourself what its point could possibly be? It can’t be to tar every member of the U.S. and Russian forces who first entered Nazi concentration camps in late 1944 through the official end of World War II in Europe (whose 75^th anniversary came yesterday). The author, France-based “freelance writer and university lecturer” Jennifer Orth-Veillon, explicitly describes acts of (what she, at least, sees as) exceptional compassion and what may be called “re-humanization” of the prisoners by the liberators (who, just to be as accurate as possible, didn’t shoot their way into the camps but found facilities from which most of the Nazis and their non-German underlings had fled).

But readers are also told that:

>”According to accounts, not all soldiers acted equally when confronted with that responsibility [of helping the prisoners regain “their lost humanity”] and some further mistreated them, extending the trauma they had endured while imprisoned. It’s hard to imagine that survivors could have suffered further….”

>”[T]he portrayal of liberation in some of their memoirs reveals that the end of the Holocaust opened new wounds.”

>One survivor wrote in his memoirs that (in Orth-Veillon’s words), “At the beginning of their internment, prisoners who weren’t selected for the gas chamber learned quickly from Nazi guards that they weren’t viewed as humans but as animals. Orders were barked, compassion was nonexistent. Semprún [the memoirist] hadn’t expected that his liberators would view him in the same way.”

>”Semprún’s brush with his liberators echoed Primo Levi’s description of his interactions with the Soviets at Auschwitz in January 1945.”

>”Some of these [liberators’] reactions suggest soldiers were experiencing a kind of shock, while others point to anti-Semitism, even within the most senior echelons of the military. After inspecting displaced persons camps in Germany in summer of 1945, Earl G. Harrison, a lawyer and American representative to the Intergovernmental Committee on Refugees, expressed harsh criticism of the ways Jews were treated by the Americans, claiming evidence of conditions similar to the Nazi-run concentration camps from which they had been freed. He summarized his observations by stating, ‘We appear to be treating the Jews as the Nazis treated them except that we do not exterminate them.’ When President Harry Truman read the report, he ordered Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower to inspect displaced persons camps. During a visit to a camp in Bavaria, Gen. George S. Patton told Eisenhower that he blamed the refugees for the squalor. He complained they were ‘pissing and crapping all over the place,’ and wanted to open his own concentration camp ‘for some of these goddamn Jews.’ Maj. Irving Heymont, who was stationed at the Landsberg displacement camp, said in his letters that some Americans proclaimed that they preferred German civilians, who seemed normal, to the Jewish survivors, whom they characterized as animals undeserving of special treatment.”

Again, Orth-Veillon described much nobler liberator reactions, too. But there’s no need to engage in an exercise comparing article space devoted to one set of reactions versus the others to wonder about the value of presenting instances ranging from insensitivity to outright anti-Semitism at all. The author not only doesn’t go so far as to allege that these contemptible liberator words and deeds typified their reactions. Her piece contains no data or other material indicating that such responses represented the majority of liberator reactions. Nor do readers see anything indicating that these reactions even remotely approached levels that could legitimately described as significant – by any standard.

Instead, while writing of the record of what Orth-Veillon describes as the activity of “more than 30 American military units,” including entire divisions (which during World War II generally contained 15,000 troops), she repeatedly uses the describer “some.”

To which it needs to be asked, in the snidest and most indignant way, “So what?” As the author makes clear, most of troops were either in their late teens or barely out of them. They were confronted with sights and sounds and smells that the literature’s greatest authors had never even imagined outside renditions of the underworld. They had spent varying amounts of time during the preceding months experiencing their own horrors fighting their way across western Europe.

And “some” were bigots to begin with? And “some” looked away in shame or embarrassment or simple bewilderment (or covered their ears after hearing the latest of many survivor tales, as Orth-Veillon quotes another memoirist as contending)? And “some” in general didn’t act with all the skills of psychologists or other career care-givers? What is to the slightest extent even notable about these episodes, either individually or collectively?

Don’t expect any useful guidance here from the author. The “end of the Holocaust opened new wounds”? Could anything else be expected by anyone who’s thinking is minimally adult? Ditto for the passage reporting that once the prisoners “attained long-awaited freedom…the way some [that word again!] liberators treated them reinforced the idea that they had become less than human.” Because no one before her had ever recognized that the end of months and even years of the most bestial treatment, however ardently desired, wasn’t going to be a day at the beach even in the most ideal circumstances?

News flash: These difficulties are so widely known that the mental health profession has not only long identified a group of issues known as “Holocaust Survivor Syndrome,” they’ve discovered that it can be passed on in even physiological form to survivors’ children. And don’t think that the liberators themselves have been immune to struggle (to a much less extent of course). My own late father, who worked for a time in the camps as a Yiddish language translator, stopped believing in God as a result. I hate using anecdotes to make points, but is it imaginable that his experience was unique? Or so decidedly exceptional?

Don’t expect any useful guidance on supposed lessons learned from The New York Times itself, either. The article is introduced with the observation that it’s part of “a series…that documents lesser-known stories from the war….” And the editors valued this offering because it “explores the complex and sometimes dehumanizing interactions between the concentration camp prisoners and the Allied soldiers who liberated them.” In other words, they considered illuminating enough to justify literally thousands of words the insight that human behavior among participants of various kinds in the immediate aftermath of arguably the most monstrous atrocity in human history can be “complex.” P.S. – note another use of a conveniently cover-your-butt modifier – “sometimes.”

So should the episodes described in this article be swept under the rug by scholars like Orth-Veillon, and by news organizations like The Times? Actually, the operative verb is “ignore.” Because on top of being so morally obtuse as to qualify as repugnant (unless the author, and her editors, are incapable of distinguishing right from wrong?), this article is much more troubling than the kind of shamefully slanted and thoroughly inaccurate historical revisionism represented by another New York Times endeavor – the 1619 Project. After all, for all its fatal factual and interpretive flaws, this (completely inappropriate) Times venture into scholarship – which seeks to reduce the entirety of American history to a tale of slavery and racism – at least has the intellectual honesty to claim that its findings justify major rethinking of long-held ideas.

Orth-Veillon (and her editors) display none of that forthrightness. Instead, they’ve served up a product that’s difficult to explain other than as a gratuitous, sensationalistic (“clickbait-y,” in more contemporary terms) effort to pollute the reputation of servicemen and women who accomplished nothing less than ridding the world of an historic and dangerous evil. So yes – completely ignore these findings, at least until some evidence emerges of noteworthy scale. Recognize that they’re as deserving of attention as a typographical error. And if you don’t agree, send a letter to The Times asking for an article relating how some of the concentration camp guards really weren’t so bad. After all, no doubt there were “some.”

Death and Senselessness

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death, ethics, evil, God, Holocaust, Las Vegas shooting, religion, Stephen Paddock, Sylvia Hall

No doubt there’s nothing cosmic, or even important (except to me), about it, but I can’t help but be struck by the fact that within the last two weeks, and especially the last two days, I’ve needed to reckon with questions of God, evil, and death (on an individual and mass scale) – all closely related of course.

One of the mass-scale deaths obviously is last night’s Las Vegas shooting, about which so little is known for sure that any analysis is wildly premature – and frankly irresponsible. Not that that’s stopped the hateful partisans on all sides.

To be sure, there are details that seem significant, but they add up to nothing coherent yet. For example, shooter Stephen Paddock clearly planned this atrocity in great detail, but no reliable information has emerged yet about any political or other cause-related agenda he might have had. Similarly, no evidence of affiliation with any non-state actors has been found. For those reasons, it looks like the term “terrorism” doesn’t apply.

So are we dealing with a case of derangement? Nothing known yet warrants that conclusion, either – including the statements from his brother. And as has become so depressingly typical, he was taken utterly by surprise by this act of mass murder.

Moreover, I’ve balked at viewing these kinds of mass shootings as reasons to tighten greatly gun control laws, for reasons explained here and here. Today I’m not inclined to revisit this issue, but it does seem worth noting that audio of the violence seems to reveal that an automatic weapon of some kind was used, and that its capacities added greatly to the fatalities. So is it too much to hope that Las Vegas will lead to some meaningful improvements in gun control that fully respect legitimate gun-ownership rights?

But of all the reactions I’ve heard and read till now, the most moving for me came from a Twitter contact, producer Sylvia Hall of Fox Business News: “Worlds changed for families of 50 people without warning or reason.” For me, nothing has better described the shock – and the maddening senselessness – from the standpoint of the victims and their loved ones.

I strongly suspect her words affected me so deeply because just yesterday I learned that a good friend had passed away over the weekend. He had experienced some major health problems in recent years, but his death was jolting, and seems senseless, for at least two reasons. He seemed to be recovering from his syndrome. And before falling ill he was young for his age physically and in some ways in personality (in the best sense).

And I’ll be grieving actively for longer than usual, I’m convinced, both because it’s the first such loss I’ve experienced of a peer, and more important, because I have no doubt we could have been even better and closer friends. We’d been separated by geography for most of the time we’d known each other, but practically from the first it was clear we were on nearly all of the same wave-lengths. So I’m mourning a genuinely good soul and a relationship that ended long, and senselessly, before their time – along with a marriage that inspired and delighted everyone who knew him and his now devastated wife (also a good friend).

The other mass-scale death I unexpectedly encountered recently is the Holocaust – in the form of a lengthy conversation I (unexpectedly) had with a Christian clergyman during a train ride from New York City back to DC. He was Middle Eastern in origin, and therefore well acquainted with violence of all kinds, especially by dint of work with refugees, as well as very compassionate and learned both in theology (including of my own Judaism) and history.

Normally, I don’t broach metaphysical subjects right away with strangers, even if their business is metaphysics. But the ride would be a few hours long, I was curious about him and his beliefs, he seemed curious about me and mine, and it was only a matter of time before the subject of arguably the ultimate example of senseless (by any standards I at least regard as remotely ethical) mass violence came up.

My position is full of uncertainty. My late father, as mentioned here, witnessed the Holocaust’s effects first-hand, as part of a team of Yiddish translators sent to Dachau shortly after that death camp’s liberation. He told me that he was never able fully to square a belief in God with witnessing that sight. I have great sympathy for that view, though my faith remains more intact.

My interlocutor was much more certain – of the opposite. His position seemed an attempt to imbue this slaughter of innocents with sense. As I understood it, he argued that during the run-up, God became so dissatisfied with His creation, and apparently so despairing that faith was wanting, that He “absented” Himself from His role in and influence over human affairs.

I didn’t for a moment take him as claiming that the Holocaust’s victims in any sense deserved their fate, but my questions tumbled out anyway. Did the victims themselves displease God? What sins, on anyone’s part, could possibly justify such retribution? Why was the loss of faith (apparently the decisive sin) so important? Isn’t God’s top priority to foster loving hearts and behavior? Shouldn’t “results” like this count for more than theological allegiances? What of proportionality? Why so utterly indiscriminate? And since there’s so much evidence of a continued shortage of faith ever since, didn’t this divine decision fail to achieve its objective? Unless He’s still absent?

I can’t do the answers justice in this space. They were coherent and sophisticated and reasoned. They were also deeply humane. Yet I found them completely incapable of making sense of this abomination – a term I use in both the secular and Biblical sense – let alone strengthening the case for faith.

Still, a critical mass of my faith has continued through a sad weekend and a tragic day. I hope the reasons aren’t becoming increasingly senseless.

Im-Politic: Ensnared in the History Wars

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Confederacy, Confederate monuments, Holocaust, Im-Politic, racism, Staunton, Stonewall Jackson, Stonewall Jackson Hotel, Stonewall Jackson Memorial Highway, Virginia, Woodrow Wilson, Woodrow Wilson Presidential Library and Museum

I finally had my own personal brushes with the History Wars this past week, receiving a first-hand reminder of the complications entailed in presenting the American past with accuracy and therefore with true integrity. Nothing I experienced has shaken me of the conviction that most of the nation’s Confederate monuments shamefully honor traitors (I discussed some of the exceptions here), and should be removed (lawfully) from public places. Ditto for displays of Confederate symbols on private property – although such displays should remain Constitutionally protected by the First Amendment. But what about dealing with these affronts on a personal level? That, it became clear to me, is another matter altogether.

My encounter with the History Wars resulted from a two-day trip my wife and I took to Staunton, Virginia, a picturesque town of about 25,000 located between the Blue Ridge Mountains and recent History Wars battlefield Charlottesville. We went to the area to check out a big regional book sale, and to take in two plays staged by the town’s renowned Shakespearean theater.

And we scored a deal: a package from a local hotel that included not only two nights’ stay, but two performances and a sumptuous breakfast. What could have been better? Here’s what. The hotel was the “Stonewall Jackson” – named of course after the famous Confederate general.

By the time we put one and one together, it was too late to cancel without a charge (yes, how convenient), so we held our noses and took the trip. The hotel was in all other respects exemplary – including a very friendly, helpful staff. It employed some African-American workers as well, and we saw no signs of dissatisfaction on their part. Moreover, the town lying beneath the (big) “Stonewall Jackson Hotel” sign seemed perfectly pleasant as well. True, we saw very few African-American pedestrians or working at local businesses. On the other hand, Staunton features tony restaurants with fashionable farm-to-table menus, as well as a (quintessentially progressive) fair trade products shop.  In other words, a hotbed of racism and reaction it isn’t. 

I thought of sharing (politely) my opinion of the hotel’s name with the staff, but wound up keeping my thoughts to myself. After all, it’s the owners’ views that really count. I probably will communicate my feelings on Facebook in hopes of persuading them to change – and will let them know (regretfully) that unless they do, I can’t in good conscience stay there again.

History Wars encounter Number Two was much easier to deal with – my visit to the town’s Woodrow Wilson Presidential Library and Museum, located in Staunton because the 28th president was born in the town (and lived there briefly during his infancy before his family moved to Georgia).

Although Wilson held deplorable racial views even for his time, and although he is among my least favorite presidents (overwhelmingly because of his disastrously naive foreign policies), the decision was a no-brainer for me on moral grounds. For as I’ve explained previously – and as with similar figures like the Founding Fathers – Wilson’s role in American history far transcended his record on race. And he didn’t take up arms against his own country.

Moreover, the facility handled these issues very appropriately. In addition to the exhibits describing Wilson’s re-segregation of the Federal government and paternalistic – at best – views of his fellow black citizens, the guide who conducted the tour of the actual Wilson family home forthrightly told our little group that the former president’s parents employed three house slaves – rented from a local farmer for Wilson’s father, a minister, by his congregation. And she made plain as day how low the living standards of these slaves were.

Encounter Number Three came on our drive back, when we decided to take local roads (including one dubbed the “Stonewall Jackson Memorial Highway”) part of the way and came upon the kind of big antiques store that my wife can’t resist. I find these places eminently resistible, but as usual, gave it a quick once over. I wasn’t offended by the Nazi memorabilia I saw. (They can be genuine collector’s items – as with the Japanese sword a childhood friend’s father took back from his World War II service in the Pacific. That didn’t make him an Axis supporter.) Ditto for the “George Wallace for President, 1964” sign displayed in a side room. (The arch-segregationist then-Alabama governor made his first run for the White House that year.) For the record, my wife was much more creeped out by these items.   

What did offend me was the conversation I heard between the young man at the cash register (who was unfailingly polite toward both of us), and two other customers. On top of dredging up the usual canard about Confederate memorial opponents wanting to “erase history” (What? You never heard of history books or museums?), they made the kind of remarks about the Holocaust so ignorant that they were surely in part willful (though they obviously were not Deniers).

As I was in earshot, I was sorely tempted to interject. But I decided that no useful purpose educational purpose would be served. Indeed, far likelier that I would have reinforced any prejudices they had about rude, self-righteous Yankees. Or Jews. Or both.

Since I have no reason to believe that the employee owned the store, or that the owners condoned his views (or even knew about them), I don’t at this point have any issue with patronizing that store again. And getting the cashier in trouble seems way over the top – especially since he didn’t initiate that exchange and could well have been agreeing with his customers largely to be polite, and make sure he completed the sale.

My wife wound up getting some truly beautiful items there. In fact, she considers it one of the best antique stores she’s ever seen – both in selection and price terms. We also still love central Virginia – its countryside is mostly stunning. But as we continued back north on the Stonewall Jackson Memorial Highway, heading toward I-81 and home, we both realized more than ever, how long America’s History Wars, and the collective and individual challenges they pose, are bound to last.

#Auschwitz70

Tags

Auschwitz anniversary, Holocaust

This 70^th anniversary of Auschwitz’ liberation inspires three sets of memories.

The first involves my father, who as a Yiddish-speaking GI was sent to the Dachau concentration camp in 1945 to serve as a translator for the American authorities working with the survivors. He didn’t speak about the experience much, but he did tell me, more than once, that he was never able fully to believe in God again.

Somehow, after this, and after his prior combat experience, he was able to lead what is called a normal life.  However, he did refuse to return to Germany for the rest of that life, even though he and my mother became big-time globe-trotters once they could afford foreign travel, especially in their retirements, and even though he was an avid student of European history.

I decided to leave Germany off my list of destinations, too, but wound up making a visit in 1992 anyway. I was asked by the State Department to give some speeches there and in England, and I convinced myself that this kind of business trip was a permissable exception to my rule. (My father, who never urged me to avoid the country, readily agreed.)

The memories that were created there were much happier. It was creepy to think that practically any German I saw over a certain age would have at best been a passive supporter of Nazism. But of course human biology had already dealt with much of that issue in the nearly five decades that had passed since VE Day.

Wholly unexpected was the reaction I got from Germans (overwhelmingly much younger, including college and university students) I met if my heritage happened to come out. The compassion was highly moving, along with what seemed practically an eagerness to learn about my own feelings about those long ago crimes and horrors, and to share theirs. Although the German State Department staff who hosted and worked with me didn’t have enough advance notice to arrange a side trip to a concentration camp or other Holocaust site, one was able to arrange a private tour of an exhibit titled “The Jews of Hamburg” that was about to open at that city’s local history museum. The facility was closed the only day my schedule permitted a visit, but the curator of the museum agreed to conduct it all the same.

I hope that this trip’s memories – along with those of other German friends I have made since – aren’t too sanguine. The same goes for this one – despite the notable uptick seen lately in anti-Semitism in Europe. It involves the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., which I visited for the first time with my parents a few months after it opened. One room commemorates the innumerable European artists and scientists and scholars who fled Nazism before the war’s outbreak – along, I think, with the many who perished. (Although I can no longer bring myself to watch most Holocaust documentaries, I suppose it’s high time I went back.) Thinking that day at the treasure trove of genius they represented, and the knowledge and beauty that they have given us, it could not have been clearer that they defined every decent and noble impulse ever displayed by humanity.

My first reaction: Their oppressors meant to destroy all of this. My second reaction: They failed.