Jewish Collaboration Not All Choiceless Choices Goda

Jewish Histories of the Holocaust: New Transnational Approaches, by Norman J W Goda (Editor), Omer Bartov. 2014

Jewish Collaboration With the Nazis: Jewish Ghetto Police at Kielce: Beyond Choiceless Choices. Holocaust Supremacism, Minimized Communist Crimes, and a Cavalier Dismissal of Scholars Who Disagree

Two items in this anthology stand out, and I focus on them.

JEWISH-NAZI COLLABORATION: NO EXCULPATIONS. IT WENT FAR BEYOND SAVING ONE’S LIFE, OR BEING TRAPPED IN MAKING CHOICELESS CHOICES.

Sara Bender discusses the JUDISCHE ORDNUNGSDIENST in the Kielce ghetto as follows, “Feeling protected by the authorities, the Jewish police took advantage of their position and, since most were refugees from Austria and Germany, they treated the Jews of Kielce as OSTJUDEN—wretched Polish Jews. From survivor testimonies we further know that, relative to the prevailing hunger and poverty in the ghetto, the Jewish police lived lives of luxury and profligacy and engaged in drinking bouts at the ghetto’s restaurants and canteens. Some beat up lawbreakers, and GOING ABOVE AND BEYOND THE GERMANS’ REQUIREMENTS. Policemen were also exempt from taxes, received increased food rations, demanded and received bribes from Jews, and even extorted money. On the whole they were perceived throughout the ghetto as corrupt, and the entire Jewish public feared them and regarded them as an integral part of the German authorities in charge of the ghetto. Levy, head of the Judenrat, was unable to restrain the Jewish police, and it seems he made no effort to rid it of corruption.” (pp. 81-82; Emphasis added).

PROMOTING HOLOCAUST SUPREMACISM AND MINIMIZING COMMUNIST CRIMES

Yale historian Timothy Snyder alludes to his BLOODLANDS as he writes, “Many critics say that my book minimizes Stalinism, because I make Stalinism seem rational and because I lower the estimate of those killed by the Stalinist system.” (p. 49). Then, instead of explaining the scholarly basis for the disagreements with his critics, he dismisses them with these patronizing words, “As practically every Eastern European reviewer has noticed.” (p. 51).

What’s with the AD HOMINEM? Is Timothy Snyder implying that none of the Eastern European scholars are as smart as he is? Or is he implying that western scholars have a monopoly on objectivity?

A clue to Snyder’s thinking is provided by the use of his word “rational”, quoted above. This is an allusion to the standard Holocaust supremacist meme wherein the Jews’ Holocaust is supposed to be irrational, and all other genocides are rational. Whatever the “rationality” of the Gulags, the canned talking points for the “irrationality” of the Holocaust have been debunked. Thus, for example, it is untrue that the Germans hurt themselves economically or militarily by exterminating the Jews.

Finally, the victims of the Communists and the victims of the Nazis are all equally dead, regardless of whether they died in a “rational” or “irrational” genocide (by someone’s opinion), and that’s what counts.

Genocide Recognition Equality Now!