Facing The Holocaust
Continued from Page 2
universally resisting the
occupying Germans, Miller
reveals that the reality was
quite different. Eight thou-
sand Jews like Frank were
turned in by Dutch in-
formers, many Dutch
citizens worked for the
Germans, and the Dutch
penchant for order dove-
tailed all too well with the
Nazis' savage efficiency.
In the Soviet Union, the
unique, historically
distinct aspects of the
Holocaust have been
obscured by the fact that
some twenty million Soviet
citizens of all ethnic
backgrounds died during
World War II, and by a
long-standing tradition of
anti-Semitism. Under Gor-
bachev, however, some pro-
gress is being made, and
permission for the first
Soviet monument to the
Holocaust was granted in
1988.
As she concludes this
important and moving
book, Judith Miller notes
that no country, including
the United States, is free of
illusion about its role
in the Holocaust, or has
adequately come to terms
with the Holocaust's
significance.
Judith Miller takes into ac-
count all the accumulated
problems and calls attention
to the disputable. She has not
ignored the controversy over
the Holocaust Center being
erected as a government pro-
ject in Washington. There
will surely be aggravation
over the selling of honors, sec-
tions of the memorial struc-
ture to wealthy donors. Such
revelations have occurred
many times in philanthropy.
With the Holocaust memorial
it becomes a challenge to
conscience.
There are the references to
the revisionists who deny the
bare facts. They are treated
by Miller deservedly
mercilessly.
Guilt in its massive ac-
cumulation is preserved by
Miller into a historical record
that makes her One By One
By One an important part of
the Holocaust archives.
The title has a very brief
but very important explana-
tion. Miller asserts:
Abstraction is memory's
most ardent enemy. It kills
because it encourages
distance, and often indif-
ference. We must remind
ourselves that the
Holocaust was not six
million. It was one, plus
one, plus one . . . Only in
understanding that civiliz-
ed people must defend the
one, by one, by one . . . can
40
FRIDAY, MAY 11, 1990
the Holocaust, the incom-
prehensible, be given
meaning.
Miller modestly writes that
her book is not history as a
personal account and "cannot
be substituted for factual ac-
count." She stirs the emotions
and leads to an understan-
ding that indeed accounts for
much. Thereby, she also leads
to an acceptance of basic cur-
rent facts including the most
recent in all this concluding
statement:
The quantity of instruc-
tion about the Holocaust
has been increasing and its
quality improving. But the
lessons of history being im-
parted vary widely and are
difficult to regulate or
monitor in Germany, the
United States, and other
countries where national
education is the respon-
sibility of states and even
smaller political entities.
Such decentralization
prompts healthy dif-
ferences and divergent ap-
proaches to remembrance.
But it also means that the
national government is
limited in terms of how it
can promote memory and
what kind of memory it
can promote through the
schools. Education, more-
over, is a protracted, un-
dramatic process that
often holds too little attrac-
tion for societies like the
United States, where quick
fixes and prompt results
are more highly valued.
Many thoughtful Jews
have argued that political
tests of strength — such as
the Waldheim election in
Austria and the Bitburg af-
fair in America — are
educational and help
spark debate, and hence
enliven memory. The
Waldheim election surely
had that effect in the
United States and in
Western Europe. But
Austrians argue, and
public opinion surveys
support their view, that the
Waldheirn election had the
opposite effect on the
Austrians. The Waldheim
affair made Austrians
more defensive about the
past, not less so. It made
them feel more, not less,
like victims. It made them
close their minds to the
unpleasant truths they
were hearing. It did not il-
luminate. The confronta-
tional nature of this vehicle
of memory made people
shun the past, rather than
explore it.
Moreover, the Germans,
the French, and even the
Dutch savored the Wald-
heim scandal in Austria to
some extent. It enabled
them to compare them-
selves and their post-
war remembrance records
favorably. There is no in-
dication that the Waldheim
affair made those coun-
tries more reflective about
their own moral failings
during the war. Ultimately,
the Waldheim controversy
may prompt a future
generation of Austrians to
debate the past more can-
didly, to become more
politically sensitive and
less anti-Semitic, especially
once their national embar-
rassment subsides. But
there is little proof that it
has had this effect to date.
The Soviet Union is the
master of another vehicle
of memory — official
rewriting of history.
Though such rewriting is
much denigrated in the
West, all governments,
even nonauthoritarian
ones, make judgments
about how much they want
their citizens to know
about the past. The open-
ing of the archives in the
Soviet Union is in some
ways the Soviet version of
American government's
Freedom of Information
Act and sunshine laws. But
while the Soviets have
taken steps to open the
vaults of an exceedingly
painful, often disgraceful
past, the inherent
weakness of this official
mechanism of memory is
that the process can and
may be stopped as abrupt-
ly as it began. If a society
takes the view that
memory should be the pur-
view of the state, the search
for facts and explanations
will remain subservient to
political objectives and
regimes.
There are more creative
efforts at prompting
memory being tried in the
United States than in any
other country. America's
diversity and its pluralism
have given birth to a
thousand different remem-
brance projects, even a
moving Holocaust "comic"
book, which is intelligent
and brutally poignant, not
funny at all. What such ef-
forts may lack in taste, they
compensate for in sinceri-
ty, originality, and
enthusiasm.
What fosters memory of
the Holocaust? Essentially,
any intellectual tool, any
mechanism, any tradition
that reduces its abstrac-
tion will do so, any way of
making individuals and
peoples and nations
remember that before the
Holocaust was a national
and international catas-
trophe, it was a family
tragedy, an individual loss.
History books and educa-
tion are important. But my
memory of a single infant's
leather shoe encased in
glass at Yad Vashem in
Jerusalem is as powerful.
Judith Miller has produced
a volume of lasting merit. All
Holocaust studies will now
forcefully include her Facing
The Holocaust. ❑
Messianism
Continued from Page 2
the messianic concept is pro-
vided in the New En-
cyclopedia of Judaism, edited
by the noted scholar Geoffrey
Wigoder. The following
scholarly interpretation leads
messianic humanism into the
very current time and we give
emphasis to its emphatic
interpretations.
In its modern post-
Enlightenment western
reinterpretation, mes-
sianism has been seculariz-
ed. According to Martin
Buber, the extensive in-
volvement of Jews in
modern revolutionary
movements can be at-
Humanism is
universal in the
treatment of and
hope for all
mankind..
tributed to the strong ele-
ment of messianism in
Jewish tradition.
Zionism can be viewed as
a secularization of the mes-
sianic idea, with the
Jewish people itself in-
itiating a fundamental
change rather than
waiting for the arrival of
the Messiah. Zionism's
assumption of the mantle
of traditional messianism
helps explain the bitter an-
tagonism of ultra-
Orthodox groups toward
Zionism and toward the
very idea of a Jewish state
established under natural
and secular auspices.
However, in the view of R.
Abraham Isaac Kook, the
first Ashkenazi Chief Rab-
bi of Palestine, the modern-
day Jewish resettlement of
the Holy Land represented
the first stage in the pro-
cess of Divine redemption
that would ultimately
usher in the messianic era.
The power of the mes-
sianic hope was most
vividly displayed during
the Holocaust when Jews
who were taken to the gas
chambers sang the words
of Maimonides' Principle
of Faith: "I believe com-
pletely that the Messiah
will come, and even though
he delays, I continue to
believe."
During the cruelest days of
Jewish persecutions, the
Holocaust and the Middle
Ages, the hope for the coming
of the Messiah was predomi-
nent in Jewish life. It attain-
ed fulfillment in our time
with the redemption of Eretz
Israel. Such messianism must
never be abused. It must
never be sullied by false mes-
sianism. The commitment to
the humanism of our ideals in
Israel will always rest on the
justice and morality inherent
in historic achievements
rooted in the Zionist ideal of
our heritage and basic tradi-
tions. Such is the uplifting of
our goals that will never
tolerate the temporary set-
backs which have saddened
the occurrences in
Jerusalem. ❑
N EWS
tImmim"
Record Number
Of Soviets Move
To Israel In April
Israeli immigration offi-
cials have announced that
10,500 Soviet newcomers
arrived in the Jewish state
in April, the largest in any
one month and a 44-percent
increase over March.
The government said 7,300
Soviet Jews moved to Israel
in March. The sharp in-
crease in immigration came
despite Arab threats to the
immigrants and continued
problems of finding coun-
tries to serve as transit
points between the Soviet
Union and Israel.
Nearly all of the most re-
cent Soviet emigres are go-
ing to Israel rather than the
United States, Israeli
government officials said.
That compares to last April
when 4,000 Soviet Jews
landed in the United States
and only 544 emigrated to
Israel.
Reports to Jewish organ-
izations from the USSR in-
dicate that many Soviet
Jews who might not have
considered immigration are
leaving because of a growing
fear of anti-Semitism from
nationalist groups now free
to express their views.
Uri Gordon, head of im-
migration and absorption for
the Jewish Agency said
Israel should expect Soviet
immigration to rise to about
20,000 a month by summer
or fall.