22 Friday, April 16, 1982

THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS

Hebrew U. Prof. Bauer Supports
New Tack in Teaching Holocaust

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CHICAGO — Prof.
Yehuda Bauer, director of
Hebrew University's Insti-
tute of Contemporary
Jewry, greatly admires
Simon Wiesenthal's famed
efforts to apprehend Nazi
murderers, but he flatly re-
jects his view that, as Jews,
we should remind the world
that 11 million people were
murdered by the Nazis, in-
cluding five million non-
Jewish Christians.
On the contrary, Bauer
said in a wide-ranging pre-
sentation at a Northeastern
Illionis University sym-
posium on teaching the
Holocaust, the number of
non-Jews who were killed in
the concentration camps
was a maximum of 750,000.
However, Bauer added,
the Nazis actually annihi-

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lated 26 million to 28 mil-
lion non-Jewish Europeans
through mass murder, slave
labor, starvation and
starvation-related disease.
This, he said, included
practically all Polish in-
tellectuals among the
three million Polish
non-Jews killed, Czechs,
Byelo - Russians, and
other Eastern Euro-
peans. Byelo - Russians
suspected as partisans
were burned alive by the
thousands in Russian Or-
thodox churches.
All such groups were re-
garded by Hitler as sub-
humans, and their extermi-
nation or persecution, ac-
cording to Bauer, was truly
genocide. The Jews were not
victims of such genocide,
but were the first group in
history — so far — to ex-
perience a Holocaust.
Hitler's racial policy
placed Jews not in the cate-
gory of sub-humans (like
Slays), but as the non-
human embodiment of corn-
plete evil, who are trying to
take over the entire world
through their satanic
machinations.
To exterminate this evil
was the "holy" million of the
German .people, as leaders
of the pure and exalted
Aryan race. Thus it was
possible for members of the
SS to murder hundreds of
Jews and come home at
night as "Christian" hus-
bands and fathers.
Bauer revealed infor-
mation from a previously
unknown 1942 survey of
the G _ erman people on the
still debated question:
"Did the German people
know what happened to
the Jews?" A German
anti-Nazi managed to ask
this question of hundreds
of his fellow-citizens.
While he travelled exten-
sively throughout the coun-
try, he deliberately made
acquaintances, and then
casually asked what they
had heard about the fate of
Jews from their cities,
towns or villages.
Eighty percent responded
that they had heard that
Jews had been killed. Bauer
asked: If 80 percent admit-
ted they knew, didn't the
other 20 percent have the
same guilty knowledge?
Bauer addressed directly
the agonizing issue of why
and how Jews submitted to
the Nazis. He rejected un-
equivocally the extreme
positions that Jews went
like sheep to the slaughter,
or that they were all heroes
and heroines.

A British royal commis-
sion, the Peel Commission,
in 1937 recommended the
partition of Palestine into a
Jewish state, an Arab state
and British enclaves. The
20th Zionist Congress,
while rejecting the commis-
sion's scheme as unwork-
able, empowered its Execu-
tive to negotiate to ascer-
tain "the precise terms of
His Majesty's Government
for the proposed establish-
ment of a Jewish state."

In 44 other ghettoes,
there were armed
groups. In 91 of the 110
Byelo - Russian towns
and villages where Jews
lived, they did resist.
There were 25,000 Jewish
partisans, most of whom
perished. There were 6,000
Jews in Tito's army. In fact,
the very first group Tito or-
ganized included 13 fighters
from Macedonia Zionist
groups.
Bauer. did not spare his
audience the other bitte
tragic side — the Jewi
traitors: the ghetto police;
capos in the death camps;
even Jewish hangmen.
Among them were young
and old; men and women;
religious and non-religious;
intellectuals and workers.
Bauer stressed that de-
spite all too frequent non-
Jewish assistance to the
Nazis in the occupied coun-
tries, there were many
examples of true bravery. In
Poland and in Germany it-
self, Jews were hidden by
Christians throughout the
war.
The Archbishop of
France asked every
priest to save Jews. The
Ursuline Sisters and Be-
nedictine monks played a
key role in rescuing
Jews, as did priests and
bishops in Italy.
The same could not be
said of Pope Pius XII who
never lifted his voice. Bauer
stated that the Pope's fail-
ure to act was clearly due to
his desire to preserve the
Catholic Church at all costs
from attacks by the Nazis.
Bauer praised the accom-
plishments of the American
Jewish Joint Distribution
Committee in saving Jews
during the Holocaust . . . a
fact deeply appreciated by
Jews who had been under
the Nazi yoke. Ironically,
Bauer believes this is not
known by most American
Jews who still mistakenly
assume that little or noth-
ing was done by any Ameri-
can Jewish organization.
Bauer's latest book,
"American Jewry and
the Holocaust — the
American Jewish Joint
Distribution Committee
1939-1945," is a detailed
presentation of JDC's
global efforts.
It was the JDC that fi-
nanced the revolt in the
Warsaw ghetto and Raoul
Wallenberg's rescue of
Hungarian. Jews. Few
people are aware that t'
JDC constantly sent aid
Jews in all the occupied
lands.

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