ZACHOR: NEVER FORGET, NEVER AGAIN! SINGLED OUT AFTER AUSCHWITZ, JEWS–RELIGIOUS & SECULAR–MUST PROUDLY AFFIRM ISRAEL & JEWISHNESS

Zachor!; International Holocaust Remembrance Day: Baruch Cohen, Jan. 27, 2013— Today, January 27, International Holocaust Remembrance Day, proclaimed by the UN, is a daily remembrance for me.

God’s Presence in History: Jewish Affirmations and Philosophical Reflections: Emil Fackenheim, 1970 — …For twelve long years Jews had been singled out by a hate which was as groundless as it was implacable.

‘Never Again’ Imperatives: Jerusalem Post, Jan. 26, 2014 — On International Holocaust Day, which is being commemorated today, we are asked not just to remember.

French Society Views Jews through the Prism of Shoah: Manfred Gerstenfeld, Arutz Sheva, Jan. 23, 2014 — Dr. Gerstenfeld interviews Prof. Shmuel Trigano on the Jewish question in France for International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

On Topic Links

Universal Lessons of the Holocaust: Irwin Cotler, Jerusalem Post, Jan. 23, 2014   

This Holocaust Remembrance Day, We Pay Homage to Angelo Chalikias: Joël Lion & Thanos Kafopoulos,  Montreal Gazette, Jan. 26, 2014

Himmler letters: 'I am travelling to Auschwitz. Kisses. Your Heini': Damien McElroy & Inna Lazareva

, Telegraph, Jan. 26, 2014 

Yesterday’s Ashes, Today’s Crime: Paula Stern, Jewish Press, Jan. 27, 2014

Exposing the Myth of the Arab Bystander to the Holocaust: Shimon Ohayon, Jerusalem Post, Jan. 26, 2014

ZACHOR!; INTERNATIONAL HOLOCAUST

REMEMBRANCE DAY                                                        

Baruch Cohen

Jan. 27, 2014

Today, January 27, 2014, International Holocaust Remembrance Day, proclaimed by the UN, is a daily remembrance for me. For the last 35 years I have shared my story with students in Montreal schools and universities. Despite my age (94) I continue to present  whenever I am called to share my story, talking about the event that marked my life forever. 

In Dec., 1933, when Hitler and the Nazi Party rose to power in Germany, my mother (we lived in Bucharest) called me to her side and said, “My dear son (I was the only boy in our family of four children), Hitler’s rise to power will mean the destruction of the Jewish People.” 

Today’s rising anti-Semitism, which focuses on Israel and takes the form of “anti-Zionism”, is directed against the Jewish People, a call to hatred against the State of Israel, and hence against all Jews, the Jewish People.

International Holocaust Remembrance Day is a universal statement against hate and prejudice, a call to unite the world, to affirm life! This day must also be a day to make alive the memory of the Righteous Gentiles, of great human beings, like the unique lover of humanity, the Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg, who – in a world which allowed both the rise of Hitler and the Holocaust – shouldered his human responsibility, and in 1944, in Hungary, personally saved thousands of Jewish lives! May his name and memory be a blessing to us all. 

Zachor! Remember! Never forget! Never Again!

(Baruch Cohen, Research Chairman of the Canadian Institute for Jewish Research, is also a docent at the Montreal Holocaust Memorial Center .)

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GOD’S PRESENCE IN HISTORY: JEWISH AFFIRMATIONS AND PHILOSOPHICAL REFLECTIONS                                             

Emil Fackenheim                                    

1970

…For twelve long years Jews had been singled out by a hate which was as groundless as it was implacable. For twelve long years a power had held sway in the heart of Europe to which the death of every Jewish man, woman, and child was the one and only unshakable principle. For twelve long years the world had failed to oppose this principle with an equally unshakable principle of its own. Any Jew, then or now, making normalcy his supreme goal should have been, and still should be, in flight from this singled-out condition in total disarray. In fact, however, secularist no less than religious Jews have responded with a reaffirmation of their Jewish existence such as no social scientist would have predicted even if the holocaust had never occurred. Jewish theology still does not know how to respond to Auschwitz. Jews themselves –rich and poor, learned and ignorant, believer and secularist – have responded in some measure all along.

            No doubt social scientists have their ready explanations. Persecution stiffens resistance. Humiliation causes pride in half-remembered loyalties. The ancient rabbis themselves suggest that Israel thrives on persecution. Such are the normal explanations and in normal times they may well be right.

The times, however, are not normal times. A Jew at Auschwitz was not a specimen of the class “victim of prejudice” or even “victim of genocide.” He was singled out by a demonic power which sought his death absolutely, i.e., as an end in itself. For a Jew today merely to affirm his Jewish existence is to accept his singled-out condition. It is to oppose the demons of Auschwitz: and it is to oppose them in the only way in which they can be opposed – with an absolute opposition. Moreover, it is to stake on that absolute opposition nothing less than his life and the lives of his children and the lives of hid children’s children…

Thus a radical contradiction has appeared in Jewish secularist existence in our time. As secularist, the Jewish secularist seeks Jewish normalcy; as Jewish secularist he opposes absolutely the demons of death with his own Jewish life. Throughout the ages the religious Jew was a witness to God. After Auschwitz even the most secularist of Jews bears witness, by the mere affirmation of his Jewishness, against the devil.

The Jewish secularist cannot escape this contradiction; or rather, he could escape it only if he either pretended that the Nazi holocaust had never occurred or else fled from his Jewishness.

After Auschwitz… Jewish opposition to the demons of Auschwitz cannot be understood in terms of humanly created ideals. Those of reason fail, for Reason is too innocent of demonic evil to fathom the scandal of the particularity of Auschwitz, and too abstractly universal to do justice to the singled out Jewish condition. The ideals of Progress fail, for Progress makes of Auschwitz at best a throwback into tribalism and at worst a dialectically justified necessity. Least adequate are any ideals which might be furnished by a specifically Jewish genius, for Jewish survival after Auschwitz is not one relative ideal among others but rather an imperative which brooks no compromise. In short, within the context of Jewish existence the secularism which we have termed subjectivist reductionism is breached by absolute Jewish opposition to the demons of Auschwitz: and the secularism which we have seen exemplified in Nietzscheanism and left-wing Hegelianism is breached because internalized absolutes either cannot single out or else cannot remain absolute. Jewish opposition to Auschwitz cannot be grasped in terms of humanly created ideals but only as an imposed commandment. And the Jewish secularist, no less than the believer, is absolutely singled out by a Voice as truly other than man-made ideals – an imperative as truly given – as was the Voice of Sinai.

According to the Midrash, God wished to give the Torah immediately upon the Exodus from Egypt, but has to postpone the gift until Israel was united. Today, the distinction between religious and secularist Jews is superseded by that between unauthentic Jews who flee from their Jewishness and authentic Jews who affirm it. This latter group includes religious and secularist Jews. These are united by a commanding Voice which speaks from Auschwitz.

The Commanding Voice of Auschwitz

What does the voice of Auschwitz command?

Jews are forbidden to hand Hitler posthumous victories. They are commanded to survive as Jews, lest the Jewish people perish. They are commanded to remember the victims of Auschwitz lest their memory perish. They are forbidden to despair of man and his world, and to escape into either cynicism or otherworldliness, lest they cooperate in delivering the world over to the forces of Auschwitz. Finally, they are forbidden to despair of the God of Israel, lest Judaism perish. A secularist Jew cannot make himself believe by a mere act of will, nor can he be commanded to do so…. And a religious Jews who has stayed with his God may be forced into new, possibly revolutionary relationships with Him. One possibility however, is wholly unthinkable. A Jew may not respond to Hitler’s attempt to destroy Judaism by himself cooperating in its destruction. In ancient times, the unthinkable Jewish sin was idolatry. Today it is to respond to Hitler by doing his work.

–God’s Presence in History (1970, New York)

(Emil L. Fackenheim [1916-2003], was one of the greatest Jewish thinkers of the post-Holocaust period. Long a member of the Philosophy Department at the University of Toronto, he made Aliyah to Israel, where he passed away.  He was the author of many works in addition to the text cited here, including The Religious Dimension in Hegel [1967], The Jewish Return to History [1978], Encounters Between Judaism and Modern Philosophy [1973], To Mend the World: Foundations for a Future Jewish Thought [1982], and his posthumously edited autobiography, An Epitaph for German Judaism: From Halle to Jerusalem [2007].  An International Conference on "The Jewish Thought of Emil L. Fackenheim" is being organized by CIJR to celebrate the recent tenth Jahrzeit of his passing.)

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‘NEVER AGAIN’ IMPERATIVES                                                 

Jerusalem Post, Jan. 26, 2014

On International Holocaust Day, which is being commemorated today, we are asked not just to remember. We are also asked to learn lessons from that dark period in history. One lesson which tends to be emphasized in Israel and among world Jewry is that anti-Semitism is essentially a terminal moral disease of humanity and that Jews must never again rely solely on the kindness of others. They must instead take responsibility for their own destiny.

Much of Zionism’s moral force is derived from this “never again” imperative. Never again must the Jewish people allow itself to be in a state of powerlessness. This awareness of our potential vulnerability drives our perception of the Iranian threat and our apprehensions regarding a territorial compromise with the Palestinians. There are ample examples to buttress this reading of history. Just this week in Italy, a country not known to be particularly anti-Semitic, there was a disturbing hate crime. Two boxes containing pigs’ heads were sent to conspicuously Jewish and Israeli venues. One was sent to the Israeli Embassy in Rome and another was sent to city’s synagogue.

The Rome incident is hardly isolated. Jews are feeling increasingly uncomfortable in Europe. A recently published survey conducted during 2012 by the EU Fundamental Rights Agency among 5,847 Jews living in Belgium, Britain, Germany, France, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, and Sweden found that large percentages (76%) thought anti-Semitism had increased either a lot or a little over the past five years; that 27% had witnessed other Jews being verbally insulted or harassed or physically attacked in the past 12 months; and a quarter were afraid to wear a kippa or attend a Jewish event or site which would publicly identify them as Jews.

Anti-Jewish sentiment is strong in the Middle East as well, including among Palestinians. Even high-ranking figures in the Palestinian Authority, with whom Israel is conducting peace negotiations, have made declarations that reveal either a total lack of understanding of the Holocaust or an intentional desire to distort its memory. As Palestinian Media Watch has shown, school history books and media sources regularly omit the fact that Jews were systematically murdered during World War II. Some Palestinian leaders have compared Israeli control over Palestinian populations on the West Bank to Nazi treatment of Jews during the Holocaust. Purposely ignoring the atrocities committed against the Jews during the Holocaust or belittling them are often calculated attempts to undermine the moral legitimacy of the Jewish state.

In addition to the “never again” imperative that relates specifically to Jews as victims, however, there is another “never again” lesson to be learned from the Holocaust. All of humanity is obligated to recognize that mankind is capable of inconceivable acts of horror. We therefore all have a solemn duty to do everything in our power to prevent such acts of extreme violence from happening again. Jews, who know firsthand what it means to be on the receiving end of irrational and violent hatred, have a unique responsibility to prevent it from happening again.

Part of that moral legacy means joining forces with other minorities in Europe, such as Muslims and Roma, to fight prejudice there. Prof. Dina Porat, head of the Kantor Center for the Study of Contemporary European Jewry, noted that the Roma are particularly vulnerable, because they are unorganized and many are illiterate. Another aspect of that legacy is to continue to take steps to bring about an equitable end to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict via a two-state solution. Doing so would ensure a strong Jewish majority, peace, and security for Israel. For Palestinians, a two-state solution would mean an end to Israeli control over their lives and the beginning of national self-determination.

On International Holocaust Day, we must keep in mind both “never again” imperatives – balancing one with the other without ever abandoning either. These are not mutually exclusive views. One recognizes the dangers to the Jewish people presented by the lethal obsession that is anti-Semitism. The other obligates us to temper this recognition with the moral obligation to fight injustice wherever it might manifest itself.                                                                                                    

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   FRENCH SOCIETY VIEWS JEWS THROUGH THE PRISM OF SHOAH  Manfred Gerstenfeld                                                       

Arutz Sheva, Jan. 23, 2014

Dr. Gerstenfeld interviews Prof. Shmuel Trigano on the Jewish question in France for International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

 “The position of the Jews in a country is largely determined by how its general population views them. This is often far more important than the Jews’ own conduct. French society and the Jewish community frequently have different mindsets…in recent years, to be involved in Jewish life has become synonymous with communautarisme (i.e., withdrawal into one’s own community, which is considered a lack of loyalty to the French Republic) – a term with a negative connotation. This was not the case previously. French public opinion now sees the Jewish community as ambivalent regarding national citizenship…the Jews in France play a symbolic role – a result of their lengthy past in European civilization. This role was greatly influenced in the previous century by the Shoah and more recently by the mass immigration of Muslims.”

Shmuel Trigano is Professor of Sociology at Paris University, President of the Observatoire du Monde Juif and author of numerous books focusing on Jewish philosophy and Jewish political thought.

“In France in the 1980s, the Holocaust rather suddenly replaced almost all of the Second World War history in collective memory. Thereafter, the image of the Jew as victim, the person with whom one should commiserate as a matter of principle, became dominant. Today however, this role is almost non-existent.”

“During the years after the war, an obscuring of the Shoah took place. Initially Gaullism ruled, which promoted the myth of ‘resistant France,’ as if the majority of Frenchmen had actively opposed Vichy. The country’s authorities and elites had to conceal the fact that the collaborating Vichy government had come to power democratically as a result of a vote by the French Parliament…the radically changed situation made the ‘Jewish question’ an extremely sensitive one. It began with a scandal over statements made by Louis Darquier de Pellepoix. He was Commissioner for Jewish Affairs under the Vichy regime. By fleeing to Spain, Darquier escaped French post-war justice, which condemned him to death…In 1978, he told the weekly L’Express that only lice had been gassed in Auschwitz and that the Jews were lying about what went on there. Thanks to that interview and the reaction it sparked, the Jews suddenly became the subject of both media and public debates.”

“When Darquier gave his interview, the new perception of the ‘Jew as a victim’ had not yet crystallized. However, that happened later on. This image has been instituted by state bodies – rather than by the Jewish community – such as the Museum of the Shoah Memorial and the Foundation for the Remembrance of the Shoah…what is remembered nowadays in this ‘victim image’ is the human condition as it expresses itself in Jewish suffering. This is an ambivalent role. To be accepted by French society at large, the suffering must be greatly de-Judaized. Many public personalities and educators say that transmitting the Shoah to the current generation requires stressing and valorizing its universal aspect. It means exposing barbarianism, inhumanity and suffering, in general terms.”

“During the 1968 student riots in Paris, the slogan ‘We are all German Jews’ was used to defend one of the student leaders, Daniel Cohn Bendit, a German Jew. Indirectly, it meant that one identified with the victims of a Nazi state. Twenty years later, this saying obtained a new connotation: ‘We identify with universalist, assimilated German Jews, but not with Zionists and Jewish communautarians.’”

“Already in the previous century, the role of the ‘absolute victim’ in France slowly mutated from the Jews to the mainly Muslim immigrants, whose situation is often compared publicly with that of Jewish victims in the past. In the 1980s, one occasionally heard that when fighting against the extreme-Right racism of Jean Marie Le Pen’s Front National party and general anti-Arab racism, one was combating anti-Semitism…the so-called Debré laws of 1997 – named after Interior Minister Jean Louis Debré – regulated the immigration and status of foreigners. In demonstrations against these laws, some participants dressed up as camp prisoners. They wore striped pajamas and carried bags on their backs as if traveling toward the trains that would deport them to concentration camps. Those demonstrating and their supporters associated the fate of these immigrants suffering from French racism, with that of the Jews as victims of the Shoah.”

Trigano concludes: “There are many more roles which Jews fill in French society. They include that Jews are upheld as a positive role model for Muslim immigrants. They are also an instrument for the authorities to maintain social peace, a witness to the supposed tolerance of Muslims, or, as whitewashers for French problems such as anti-Semitism. Above all, French Jews are placed in the role of ‘representatives of Israel,’ which is portrayed negatively in the French media.”                 

[Dr. Manfred Gerstenfeld, CIJR Academic Fellow, is a board member and former chairman of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs and recipient of the Lifetime Achievement Award (2012) of the Journal for the Study of Anti-Semitism.]         

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Universal Lessons of the Holocaust: Irwin Cotler, Jerusalem Post, Jan. 23, 2014 — On Monday, the largest-ever parliamentary delegation to Auschwitz will mark International Holocaust Remembrance Day.   

This Holocaust Remembrance Day, We Pay Homage to Angelo Chalikias: Joël Lion & Thanos Kafopoulos,  Montreal Gazette, Jan. 26, 2014 — Luckily, for many survivors of history’s deadliest massacre, some righteous souls did step out of the shadows, risking their own lives to save friends — and in some cases, complete strangers.

Himmler letters: 'I am travelling to Auschwitz. Kisses. Your Heini': Damien McElroy & Inna Lazareva

, Telegraph, Jan. 26, 2014  — A collection of letters, notes and photographs from Heinrich Himmler are to be published in full on Sunday, shedding light on the private life of the man who orchestrated the Holocaust.

Yesterday’s Ashes, Today’s Crime: Paula Stern, Jewish Press, Jan. 27, 2014  — Sometimes when you read a news article, it has the power to stab you right in the heart.
Exposing the Myth of the Arab Bystander to the Holocaust: Shimon Ohayon, Jerusalem Post, Jan. 26, 2014 — In recent years many writers have attempted to grapple with the history of the Israeli-Arab conflict by trying to create a metaphor to demonstrate a shared injustice perpetrated both against Jews and Arabs.