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Friday, June 6, 1986

THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS

PURELY COMMENTARY

PHILIP SLOMOVITZ

The Evil Roots 0 Holocaust Traced To Nazi Theorist Rosenberg

Within the Nazi ranks there often
was as much confusion as there was
domination by the chief character,
Fuehrer Adolf Hitler. In the study of the
immensity of the power that had arisen
to create so much evil over a period of
more than a quarter of a century, it is
necessary to take into account the man
who was described as the Nazi ideologue.
Yet that term was questioned often
when dealing with Alfred Rosenberg.
He was hanged Oct. 16, 1946, hav-
ing been convicted at the Nuremberg
war crimes trials.
In Alfred Rosenberg: Nazi Theorist
of the Holocaust (Hippocrine Books),
Fritz Nova provides important data con-
trasting the Nazi leaders.
The author describes Rosenberg as
often critical of Hitler, yet always loyal
to him, and Hitler as being less disposed
to him than to many of the little
fuehrers in Nazism.
Therefore, the friendships were
limited in their ranks, and during the
trial at Nuremberg Rosenberg is de-
scribed as having been treated by his
associates as a clown.
Nova's analysis draws extensively
on Rosenberg's memoirs, on the final
notes he made in his diaries. Rosenberg
is pointed to in Nova's biography as hav-
ing denied being an anti-Semite. He
merely wanted to isolate the Jews from
his sphere.
Rosenberg had begun as an editor of
Vielkischer Beobachter, the vilest anti-
Semitic publication on record anywhere.
Then commenced a long career of official
tasks in the Hitler-ruled government.
But he claimed only advocating isolation
of Jews and he even saw a good role in
Zionism. As Nova defines an aspect in
Rosenberg's theories:
When his testimony on the
"final solution" of the Jewish

In 1964 the United States sub
committee on the judiciary issued
a report which referred to the Pro-
tocols as a "fabricated 'historic'
document" (Protocols of the Eldei-s
of Zion: A Fabricated "Historic"
Document. U.S. Government Print-
ing Office, Washington, 1964. The
most comprehensive and updated
analysis of the Protocois cf. Nor-
man Cqhn's Warrant for Genocide:
The Myth of the Jewish World Con-
spiracy and the Protocols of the El-
ders of Zion, 1966, specifically Ch.
III ["The Protocols and the
Dialogue aux" Enfers,"], Ch. VI
f"The Protocols Reach Germany"),
and the bibliographical notes 289-
296. Cohn's references to Rosen-
berg are on pp. 195-197.)
Senators Thomas J. Dodd and
Kenneth B. Keating pOinted out in
their introduction that among all
maliciously invented documents,
the Protocols were among the most
notorious and durable, and had
been "repeatedly and
authoritatively" exposed as a vici-
ous hoax. The purpose of their re-
port, the Senators slated, was to
lay to rest the matter of the Pro-
tocols once and for all. Among the
Senators' sources of reference
were Father Pierre Charles of the
Jesuit College in Louvain; Richard
Helms, then the Assistant Director
of the U.S. Central Intelligence

problem was taken at Nuremberg
on October 4, 1945, and when he
was asked whether the ideas ex-
pressed in a six-page document
on this subject were in accord-
ance with the ideas he had ex-
pressed at other times, Rosen-
berg reportedly shrugged his
shoulders:
"The entire handling of the
Jewish problem was very defi-
nitely in the sphere of the Chief
of the German Police ... I myself
was in strict accord with the idea
of curbing the individual activi-
ties of the population, to limit the
Jews to certain districts, to put
them to work."
Certain outrages against the
Jews were, he said, the result of
the advance of the German Army
and must be largely identified
with the Soviet government.
Segregation of Jews came about
"gradually," in order to remove
them from the Ukrainian popula-
tion. He admitted that he had not
tried to find out for himself what
happened to the Jews, but as-
sumed that "these people" were
more or less on their own; he had
no reports on the internal condi-
tions in these" segregated areas.
At that stage, Rosenberg con-
tended, he did not take part in
any discussions on the Jewish
problem. He had his own view
about the solution: It would
gradually be possible to increase
the influence of Zionism and re-
duce the number of Jews in
Germany by creating a place
where they would be all by them-
selves in their Jewish homeland."

The bitterness of Rosenberg's anti-
Semitism and its legacy as an ideology is

Agency; F.B.I. Director J. Edgar
Hoover; and Dr. Hugo Valentin of
the University of Uppsala, Sweden,
The subcommittee's report
mentioned that the Protocols had
been offered for sale under differ-
ent names, and were in style
"rambling, incoherent, and tur-
gid." Father Charles was quoted
as having stated that the more one
examined them the more they
were found to be "absurd, con-
tra.dictory, and childish"; nor did
they amount even to a "merest
shadow of a sketch of a program."
J. Edgar Hoover, in his Masters of
Deceit, pointed out that the Pro-
tocois have been used in the United
States for the malicious purpose of
persuading Americans that
Judaism and Communism were
linked.
Richard Helms, in his tes-
timony before the subcommittee,
stated that the Protocols ,were con-
cocted more than sixty years ago
by czarist intelligence services and
were subsequently taken up by
anti-Semitic psychological warfare
organizations. They had been "ex-
_ ported" and borrowed in the 1930s
and 1940s by Hitler's propagandist
counterfeiters.
Hugo Valentin, in his An-
tiSemitism Historically and Critically
Examined (1936), characterized the
Protocols as the "greatest forgery

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nevertheless' apparent throughout his
career. For example, his treatment of
Heinrich Heine and his Lorelei is in evi-
dence, as Nova indicates in the follow-
ing:

No one of Jewish origin was
accepted as an artist by Rosen-
berg. He wrote pages to "prove"
Heinrich Heine's total incapacity,
his mental powers being totally
different from those of a Euro-
pean, his way of expressing him-
self revealing the spirit of Old
Testament law. As to Heine's
popular Lorelei,
Rosenberg
claimed that it was plagiarized
almost verbatim from a German
Count Loeban.
Jewish life was exhausted,
Rosenberg wrote on January 7,
1919, by the harsh struggle of life.
The only immortality which Jews

of the century," gross fabrications
which were taken seriously in
wide circles "in spite of their ab
surdities." "One need not be a
sPecialist in historical research or
have any extensive knowledge of
matters Jewish to see through the
fraudulent nature of the Protocols
after a cursory glance." The actual
germ of the Protocols, Valentin
wrote, was "undoubtedly., con-
tained in a trashy adventure
story." It was significant and dis-
turbing that in spite of the spuri-
ousness and lack of authenticity of
the Protocols, they continued to
play such an extraordinary part in
the propagation of anti-Semitism.
They were, of course, most wel
come to Rosenberg and Hitler, as
well as such "vulgar" anti-Semitic
writers as Hans Gunther and
Theodor Fritsch. Herbert L.
Willett, professor emeritus of the
Department of Semitic Languages
and Literatures at the University
of Chicago, called the Protocois
"one of the stupidest forgeries of
all literary history." The Senate
report concluded its analysis of
the Protocols by warning the
American people not to be misled
by such "crude and vicious non-
sense" which would tend to im
pede and prejudice the nation's
fight against the Communist
menace•

recognized was the continued
existence of the Jewish people.
Materialism was the Jewish basis
for religion:
"In Jewish materialism re-
sted the .entire strength and
weakness of the Jew, his strength
in the life of nations, his influ-
ence in all areas which were dri-
ven by egoism: trading, the
economy, and social life."
As a matter of fact, the anti-Jewish
Rosenberg polemics created an ideology
for Nazism. As Nova asserts: "There is
no record in history of any more pro-
nounced or more uncompromising anti-
Jewish polemicist than Alfred Rosen-
berg."
Anyone who seeks a definition for
hatred, and sources for hating the Jews,
will find it in the summations of Rosen-
berg's writings by Fritz Nova. The
Rosenberg ideology is amazing and so
shocking that it affirms his having
planted the roots that spell the evils of
Nazism.
It is no wonder, therefore, that
Rosenberg based most of his views on
the notorious and always widely re-
pudiated Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
It is on this score that Nova renders
specific service to truth by providing a
summary of the Protocols, the matter in
which they were utilized by Rosenberg.
The specific service rendered in the
Nova biography of Rosenberg is the ap-
pendix to the biography devoted to Pro-
tocols. It needs the exposure, especially
at .a time like the present, when they are
circulated by Jew-baiting Arabs and
Russian anti-Semites. Therefore, it will
also serve as an appendix to this com-
mentary.
. Nova is emphatic in referring to the
Rosenberg hatemongering ideas as
"exaggerations of Jewish positions in
economics, politics and culture that were
scientifically irresponsible."
Some of the Rosenberg views are
truly amusing. Nova exposes all the fal-
lacies. This one is especially ludicrous,
quoting Nova: "Jews claimed they had
produced great men in science, Rosen-
berg said, particularly in the realm of
medicine. But they engaged in medicine
not out of a love for science per se or to
advance it for mankind, but in order to
exercise strong influence over the sick."
"Ideological exasperation running
through all his beliefs" is the manner in
which Nova describes Rosenberg.
Rosenberg's treatment of Zionism
was with sarcasm, about Jews creating a
criminal ingathering, and he advocated
Guiana and Madagascar for 15 million,

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