Guest Blog: The next holocaust?

A recent survey of Israeli high schoolers found that 82% believed another holocaust was possible. In light of the fact that Israeli education is justly criticized for not promoting Jewish and Zionist identity among our youth, the number is astounding. How is it that, if our young can clearly see the danger, that our leaders in Israel and in the Diaspora do not? Are we too timid, too concerned with offending non-Jews, to recognize and admit the danger, a danger which, if not appreciated may well exceed the price we paid in the previous effort at solving the Jewish Problem?
 
I
 
History does not repeat itself. But it does serve as precedent.

Early in the Enlightenment, the revolution which transformed Europe from theocratic to secular, Jews were viewed as different from Europeans, and that difference was assumed based on their geographic-linguistic origins. Jews, having arrived from the Middle East, were "Semites," while European stock traced its origins to a mythic people migrating from Eurasia, the "Aryans". Eventually the scientific search for difference turned to biology, and the notion of the Jewish race was born. Antisemitism as a political movement arrived with the 19th Century.

But why the Jews, how did so small, impoverished and defenseless a minority become so prominent, deserve so much thought and animus from some of the greatest minds of modern European science, arts and politics?
 
Antisemitism was not an invention of modern society, but the secular adaptation of a long established precedent, Christian anti-Judaism.With the gospel charge of deicide, the murder of Christ, the Jews became the pariah people, enemies of Christ, Christians and Christianity. Crusaders on their way to liberate the Holy Land from the Moslems attacked first the Jewish enemy living in their midst. Later the Inquisition, intent on ridding Christendom of heretics, Jews were tortured until they agreed to accept Jesus, murdered those who would not. One respected population study estimates that, had Jews been free of persecution since the fall of Jerusalem their numbers today would equal that of the entire British Isles. 

II
 
This is the backdrop against which we are compelled to understand Europe's Holocaust, Christendom's most recent and nearly successful attempt to solve its Jewish Problem. With all the talent and intelligence dedicated to planning and executing the Final Solution there was little that was new or innovative. Armbands, ghettoes, all medieval in origin. What made the effort so successful was the introduction of 20th Century technology. IBM provided primitive but effective computers to trace third generation Christians back to their single Jewish grandparent. And Hitler's idol, Henry Ford, provided the Holocaust the assembly line needed to efficiently transport Jews, turn them into corpses, and dispose of their remains. But for all intents and purposes the Holocaust was only the next, not the last, logical step in a process begun 2000 years earlier. Technology today is far more advanced.
 
III
 
For those among us who prefer to believe the Holocaust a unique event in history foisted by a half-crazed if charismatic leader upon his hapless countrymen, were the residents of the Polish village of Jewabne Nazis or under the spell of Hitler when they rounded up their 1600 Jewish friends and neighbors, herded them into a barn and then burned it to the ground? What about the Ukrainians captured on film beating their long-time Jewish friends and neighbors to death using clubs; the French police who rounded up the Jews of Paris for deportation to death in Auschwitz, were all these Nazis also? Was all of Europe under the evil influence of the madman from Germany?
 
And what of the non-continental countries, particularly the United States and Britain who, in full knowledge of the unfolding horror, shut their eyes and borders to our refugees and passively stood by for two years allowing the machinery of murder to run its course unhindered? How can Roosevelt justify allowing the SS St. Louis to steam up and back the American shoreline, the captain pleading for permission to offload his cargo of 900 Jews fleeing Germany, forcing them back to their fate. How can we justify Roosevelt's excuse not to bomb Auschwitz (it would kill innocent Jewish inmates; it would distract from winning the war) when allied bombers regularly over flew the camps and rail lines carrying Europe's Jews to their known and certain end? Is not passive and silent acquiescence also complicity?
 
IV
 
For centuries, past Jews had few options but to suffer the uncertain wrath of our neighbors. Since the Shoah we have another option, to join our destiny with that of the Jewish state. That we choose to disregard the clear warning of recent history, that we know but interpret it otherwise all the time subjecting our children and theirs to a risk bordering on certainty; such rationalizing and self-deception is, by definition, denial.
 
Of course Israel-as-refuge presumes that the Jewish state acknowledges and accepts its Zionist responsibility towards the Diaspora. This commitment is not always obvious. Despite Prime Minister Olmert's recent assurances to a class of third graders that the Law of Return, Israel's commitment of refuge to the Diaspora, is the most important in Israel's legal code, it is difficult to put aside the suggestion of the chairman of the Knesset Constitution and Law committee who recommended amending the Law of Return by removing the Grandparent Clause, the heart of that commitment. Nor should we disregard Interior Minister Sheetrit's orders to the Jewish Agency Executive to desist from encouraging aliya by communities not defined so by Halacha! Pandering to a minority party promoting a narrow definition of 'Who is a Jew' does not promote confidence that the Law of Return will be there when the need again arises.