JUDENRAT Collaboration Exculpations Rejected Arendt

The Jewish Writings, by Hannah Arendt, Jerome Kohn (Editor), Ron H. Feldman (Editor). 2007

”We’re All Eichmanns” German Guilt Dilution Repudiated. German Contrition Insincere. Judenrat Nazi Collaboration Exculpations Rejected

Hannah Arendt’s Shoah-related statements are unwelcome to many, and, for this reason, she has been delegitimized by being called “only a philosopher”. Other critics had been even more desperate, accusing her of being an anti-Semitic Jew and even of being on the verge of conversion to Catholicism! (p. 472). I couldn’t make this up.

Perusal of this volume of her writings show that she is a far deeper and more informed thinker than most of her critics.

“WE’RE ALL EICHMANNS” NONSENSICAL GERMAN GUILT DIFFUSION

Although Hannah Arendt does not mention the then-new experiments of Stanley Milgram, she decisively rejects the German-exculpatory meme that has developed around them. In a conversation with Thilo Koch on the Eichmann case and the Germans, she trenchantly comments, “As I see it, that same category of intolerability includes the recent palaver about the ‘Eichmann within us’—as if everyone, simply because he is human, inevitably has an Eichmann inside of him”. (p. 489)

GERMAN REPENTANCE OVER NAZISM WAS MORE WORDS AND PROFESSED FEELINGS THAN ACTION

A Jewish World Symposium on the destruction of the six million, published in the JEWISH WORLD (September 1964), included statements by Hannah Arendt. In one set of them, she exposes the hollowness of Germany’s “coming to terms with the past”. She writes, “Or take Germany, where people continue to assure us of how guilty they ‘feel’ and where surprisingly lenient sentences are handed down in almost all cases of convicted Nazi murderers, while prominent former Nazis are being kept in high public positions. Recent public opinion polls show that about 40 percent of the German population are against all these trials and another 40 percent prefer to know nothing about them.” (p. 492).

THE JUDENRAT: NEITHER TOTALLY POWERLESS NOR LIMITED TO CHOICELESS CHOICES

In a September 1963 interview with Samuel Grafton, for a then-prospective article in LOOK Magazine, Hannah Arendt expanded on some of the themes in her EICHMANN IN JERUSALEM. She was not saying that the Jews should have launched a suicidal uprising. However, she rejected the common exculpatory notion that the Judenraete had “no choice” in the face of Nazi German demands. Thus, Arendt commented, “But the question of cooperation is indeed bothersome. There certainly was a moment when the Jewish leaders could have said: We shall no longer cooperate, we shall try to disappear. This moment may have come when they, already fully informed of what deportation meant, were asked by the Nazis go prepare the lists for deportation.” (p. 481).

PICKING AND CHOOSING SOME JEWS TO TURN OVER TO THE NAZIS IN HOPE THAT THE REMAINING JEWS ARE SPARED—CONDEMNED BY ARENDT [CONFIRMING POLISH HISTORIAN EWA KUREK]

Arendt continues her incisive criticisms of the Judenraete and their policies of deciding which Jews to ship to the death camps, “It was common enough to think: (a) If some of us have to die, it is better that we decide than the Nazis. I disagree. It would have been infinitely better to let the Nazis do their own murderous business.” (p. 481)

MAKING A BAD SITUATION LESS BAD—THE SAME EXCULPATION INVOKED BY “ORDINARY” GERMANS—REJECTED BY ARENDT

Hannah Arendt goes on, “(b). With a hundred victims we shall save a thousand. This sounds to me like the last version of human sacrifice: pick seven virgins, sacrifice them to placate the wrath of the gods…Finally, the theory of lesser evil: Leg us serve in order to prevent worse men from taking these positions: let us do bad things in order to prevent the worst. (There are analogies with ‘good people’ serving the Nazis in Germany.)” (p. 481). [The “lesser evil” exculpation was also invoked by Vidkun Quisling, whose very name has become synonymous with Nazi collaboration.]

THE JUDENRAT CONDEMNED FOR HABITUALLY WITHHOLDING VITAL INFORMATION FROM THE JEWISH MASSES

This question was emphasized in conjunction with the Kasztner affair. However, this issue was much broader, as expounded by Arendt, “The question of what was known and what was not known is often difficult to decide, but in quite a number of instances it is clear that the Jewish LEADERS knew what the Jewish people at large did not know…The decision in Theresienstadt, for instance, not to tell people what transports meant, resulted in people volunteering for deportation!” (pp. 481-482. Emphasis is Arendt’s).