Jewish Lessons In Kosovo

Necessary Response

Scholar Michael

Berenbaum wrestles

with the perceptions

and misperceptions

about Kosovo through

Jewish eyes.

4/2
1999

22 Detroit Jewish News

MICHAEL BERENBAUM

Special to The Jewish News

C

onsciousness of the
Holocaust is at an all-time
high, and yet the greater the
consciousness the greater the
confusion.
Over the past few weeks we have
heard many comparisons between
Kosovo and the Holocaust. Serb leader
Slobodan Milosevic is compared to
Adolf Hitler, ethnic cleansing to the
Holocaust and the bombing of Kosovo
to the bombing of the death camps.
Perhaps some clarification is in
order, and some reflection as well.
Is what is happening in Kosovo
another Holocaust?
Horrific as it is, Kosovo is some-
thing else.
Is Milosevic Hitler?

rable to the Holocaust? It's not so sim-
Evil as he is, Milosevic is someone else.
ple. Ethnic cleansing was an early stage
So why the persistent comparisons
of the Holocaust, not the final stage.
to the Holocaust?
The great historian of the
Simply put, in a world of moral
Holocaust,
Raul Hilberg, lists six
relativism the Holocaust has become
stages
of
the
Holocaust: definition,
the symbol of absolute evil and
expropriation
(apartheid, segregation,
hence the cornerstone of all values.
legal discrimination, dise-
The destruction of the
mancipation), concentra-
Above:
European Jews is invoked as
tion, deportation, mobile
Ethnic A lbanian
a justification for action. To
killing units and death
refugees flee the
remain neutral while the
camps.
of
Kosovo.
horror
atrocities of Kosovo are
Let us recall that in
being perpetrated is to re-
defined by the
were
1935
Jews
enact the indifference of the Allies to
Nuremberg
laws,
based on the reli-
the fate of the Jews. An early
gion of their grandparents. They
response is required, otherwise, once
were defined not by the identity
again Allied leaders will be guilty of
they affirmed or the religion they
appeasement, and the price for inac-
practiced, the values they embraced
tion will be paid by innocent civil-
or the traditions they observed, but
ians who will be slaughtered.
biologically, based on the identity of
But we must further ask, is ethnic
their grandparents. Conversion did
cleansing — evil as it is — truly compa-

