A child sits on a stone monument at the Berlin Memorial for the murdered Jews of Europe.
A child sits on a stone monument at the Berlin Memorial for the murdered Jews of Europe. Credit: Moritz Schumacher Credit: Moritz Schumacher

There has been virulent and negative reaction to this writer’s story, published last week, on the Holocaust.

That was perhaps predictable, but it is still more than a little depressing.

The article dealt with the virtual suppression, for many decades following World War II, of most public discourse on the Nazis’ systematic mass murder of millions of innocent women, children and men.

This author suggested that the onset of the Cold War immediately after World War II pushed consideration of the crimes of Hitler’s regime out of sight and out of mind. 

In the West, a new arch-enemy, the Communist menace, required our full attention, leaving no room to publicly honour and remember the victims of yesterday’s enemy.

Some wrote to this writer to say there might have been additional reasons for the decades of near silence, among them the persistence of antisemitism.

It is also plausible, they said, that Holocaust survivors did not want to relive the horrors they had experienced and that Jewish institutions in countries such as Canada and the U.S. were wracked with guilt because they did not do more to save those who were the targets of Nazi terror.

As well, those same Jewish organizations had other and more immediate priorities in the wake of the war, most importantly settling the refugees and survivors.

De-coupling current Israeli policies from consideration of the Holocaust

Another ancillary point of last week’s article was that it would be unwise and unfair to dismiss the genuine suffering of Holocaust victims because the current extreme-right government of Israel pursues unjust and undemocratic policies.

It is possible, this writer said, to champion rights for the Palestinian people and to honour the memory of Holocaust victims. 

This latter view elicited strong reactions on opposite sides of the argument.

Here is part of one example, which came in the form of a comment to the article, posted by a person who called themselves Gaslit: 

“Poor Jews. How about stfu and speak out about the terrorist, fascist Jew nation? The holocaust was many decades ago, but Jews never stop talking about it … You would think the Israeli Jews weren’t currently committing their own genocide and occupation of the Palestinians with how much whining Israel and Israelis do. I’m sick to death of the lies and gas-lighting.”

Those are strong, discourteous and impetuous words, but at least have some connection to fact and argument. Then, however, the commenter went further and wrote:

“If you want to know why people seem to hate Jews, open your goddamn eyes.”

rabble deemed this comment, in its entirety, to be contrary to its standards and unpublished it. 

I quote it here to show that the danger at which I hinted in the article – conflating the bad behaviour of the Israel government with “the Jews” – is real and present.

Coming from a totally opposite and avowedly Zionist point of view another reader posted this on Facebook:

“The author doesn’t mention Israel’s capture and trial of Eichmann as a turning point. He mentions Israel only to indict its current right-wing government. He repeats the meaningless meme ‘Palestinian rights’ and says one can support them without contradicting Holocaust awareness. He never mentions Israel’s right to exist or Israel as the major haven for victims of antisemitism.” 

In 1960, Israeli agents captured the senior Nazi, war criminal, and one of the principal architects of the Holocaust, Adolf Eichmann, at his hiding place in Argentina. 

The government of Israel then publicly tried Eichmann, found him guilty and executed him, by hanging.

At the time of the Nazi fugitive’s abduction, Argentina objected vehemently to the notional breach of its sovereignty. The Argentines brought the matter up to the United Nations, but eventually pulled in their horns and made peace with Israel.

The Eichmann affair also provoked, or provided the pretext for, an upsurge of far-right antisemitism in Argentina, which was a frightening moment for the large and well-established Jewish community in that country. 

Such a reaction might serve to underscore the argument that, in the years immediately following World War II, many Jews believed a strategy of letting sleeping dogs lie was preferable to dwelling on and seeking redress for the Holocaust.

The capture of Eichmann, in retrospect, also serves to support the thesis that the West turned away from a fulsome consideration of the Holocaust in large measure because of the need to vigorously conduct the Cold War.

Years after the Eichmann trial, in 2006, declassified U.S. Central Intelligence Agency documents showed that both U.S. and West German intelligence knew where Eichmann was hiding, but did nothing, because they feared what Eichmann might reveal about former Nazi colleagues who had found work with Western spy agencies.

It is true that the Eichmann trial did focus international attention on the Holocaust, but that interest did not last.

Of more lasting influence was a U.S. television min-series, broadcast in the late 1970s, and called simply Holocaust. 

That product of the U.S. entertainment industry helped put the word Holocaust into wide circulation. Governments and non-governmental organizations subsequently adopted the word, and it acquired something resembling an official status, always written with an uppercase “H”. 

Many critics and survivors, including writer Elie Wiesel, panned the TV series, saying it trivialized the murder of six million people. They also did not appreciate the fact that the broadcaster profited from the Holocaust by selling advertising time during the well-watched episodes. 

Indeed, one of the broadcaster’s motives for commissioning Holocaust was to emulate the popular success of the earlier mini-series which depicted the African slave trade, Roots. 

Whatever the merits of those criticisms, Holocaust the mini-series was broadcast throughout the world and did have a significant impact, most notably in West Germany. 

Disingenuous to use the phrase Palestinian rights?

The same Facebook commenter who brought up the Eichmann case also argued that the very phrase “Palestinian rights” is, in his words, “disingenuous”.

He put it this way:

“Behind the veil of this disingenuous formula, if one lifts the veil, one immediately finds the long-standing demands for Free Palestine from the River to the Sea, and for the Right of Return of the children and grandchildren of the Arab refugees of 1948, which presupposes the delegitimization and abolition of the Jewish state.”

This writer is not sure everyone who cares about the rights of the five million people living in the occupied Palestinian territories (the West Bank and Gaza) would advocate there should be a wholesale return of three generations of the Palestinian diaspora. 

And it is important to recognize that there are currently no talks aimed at anything resembling a state for the Palestinians, let alone the return of the descendants of the refugees of 1948. 

The recently formed far-right coalition government in Israel has no interest in such talks. It intends to expand illegal settlements on the West Bank and make it easier for Israeli settlers to own firearms.

In that context, it is fanciful to argue affirming Palestinian rights has anything to do with the shape of a hypothetical, future peace settlement. 

Proposing it is disingenuous and illegitimate to even to utter the phrase Palestinian rights is, of course, far more subtle and nuanced than ordering “the Jews” to “shut the fuck up”.

But, to this writer, both interventions serve a similar purpose: to shut the door on reasoned and respectful conversation. 

Readers are free to make up their own minds. No doubt we will hear from at least some of them.

Karl Nerenberg

Karl Nerenberg joined rabble in 2011 to cover Canadian politics. He has worked as a journalist and filmmaker for many decades, including two and a half decades at CBC/Radio-Canada. Among his career highlights...