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An integrated history of the Holocaust, by Saul Friedländer

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Questions, answerable and unanswerable

An integrated history leads in and of itself to comparative queries and, more generally, to connections otherwise but dimly perceived. A prime example could be the issue of Jewish solidarity in the face of catastrophe. The German Jewish leadership attempted to bar endangered Polish Jews from emigrating from the Reich to Palestine, in late 1939 and early 1940, in order to keep all emigration openings for German Jews only; native French Jewish leadership (the Consistoire) ceaselessly demanded from the Vichy government a clear-cut distinction between the status and treatment of native Jews and that of foreign ones. The Councils in Poland – particularly in Warsaw – were allowing a whole array of privileges to members of the local middle class who could afford bribes, while the poor, the refugees from the provinces and the mass of those devoid of any influence were increasingly compelled to do slave labor, or driven to starvation and death. Once the deportations started, local Jews, in Lodz, for example, turned against the deportees from the West.

In Westerbork, German Jews, the elite of the camp, closely working with the German commandants, protected their own and put Dutch Jews on the departure lists, while, previously, the Dutch Jewish elite had felt secure and was convinced that only refugees (mainly German Jews) would be sent to the local camps, then deported. The hatred of Christian Jews against their Jewish brethren in the Warsaw ghetto is notorious.
It should be mentioned, however, that notwithstanding all tensions, widespread welfare efforts, education and cultural activities, were open to all in many Jewish communities. Moreover, a strengthening of bonds appeared within small groups sharing a specific political or religious background. Such was typically the case in political youth groups in the ghettos, among Jewish scouts in France, and, of course, among this or that group of orthodox Jews. In looking at the big picture, we may reach the conclusion that in a majority of cases, specific ethnic-cultural, political or religious bonds shared by any number of sub-groups took precedence over any obligations stemming from a shared "Jewishness.”

While the comparisons that belong to the very essence of an integrated history help our perception of some basic issues, they, at times, also raise questions that do not allow for any clear answer. Thus, on June 27, 1945, the world renowned Jewish-Austrian chemist, Lise Meitner, who in 1939 had emigrated from Germany to Sweden, wrote to her former colleague and friend, Otto Hahn, who had continued to work in the Reich. After mentioning that he and the scientific community in Germany knew much about the worsening persecution of the Jews, Meitner went on: "All of you have worked for Nazi Germany and never tried even passive resistance. Certainly, to assuage your conscience, here and there you helped some person in need of assistance but you allowed the murder of millions of innocent people, and no protest was ever heard." Meitner's cri de coeur addressed through Hahn to Germany's most prominent scientists, none of them active party members, none of them involved in criminal activities, could have applied as well to the entire intellectual and spiritual elite of the Reich (with some exceptions, of course) and to wide segments of the elites in occupied or satellite Europe.

An even more unsettling aspect of the same question arises in regard to the attitude of the Christian churches. In Germany - again with the exception of a few individuals, none of whom belonged to the higher reaches of the Evangelical or Catholic Church - no Protestant bishop or Catholic prelate protested publicly against the extermination of the Jews. When men of good will, such as Bishop Preysing of Berlin or the voice of the Confessing Church, the Württemberg Bishop, Theophil Wurm, were ordered to stop their attempts at confidential protests, they submitted.

And, if we take into account that, generally speaking, the German situation was replicated in most occupied European countries, except for limited protests in Holland and among a few French bishops, some of whom then recanted, the question gets its full significance. That an important number of personalities belonging to Europe's intellectual or spiritual elites did not take a public stand against the murder of the Jews is easily understood. That even a few such voices were not heard on the overall European scene is puzzling; that not a single personality of any stature was ready to speak out in Germany remains, as many other aspects of this history, a continuous source of disbelief.

This is the original unedited english version of the text.

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