German Court Convicts Demjanjuk

The best thing about the Demjanjuk conviction (read the L.A. Times Article) is that the case works from the bottom up. The low level functionary - Demjanjuk was only a guard at Sobibor -- is brought to justice.

The worst thing is that for every Himmler or Eichman, there were many multiple Demjanjuks. Thus this conviction is too little, too late. There should have been hundreds, if not thousands, of such trials running continuously for the last 65 years.

Demjanjuk's defense has been mistaken identity. It should have been selective prosecution.

Demjanuk also claims he himself was a victim of the war. I don't doubt that. Just recently, Father Desbois, who has made a career out of detailing the mass murders of Jews throughout the Ukraine, met with the staff at the Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust. In his discussion with us, he talked about the unctuous moral relativism that existed under the Nazi occupation. It is this relativism that allowed neighbors to not only betray neighbors, but to kill them. (And it is our deeper understanding of this relativism that has kept some of us up at night lately.)

Yet not all citizens rose to the level of direct perpetrator within the atmosphere of moral pollution and victimization imposed first by the Soviets, then by the Nazis. Demjanjuk, however, as was shown in Germany, elected to join the SS. He was not tried and convicted for his suffering during the Soviet-imposed famine that effectuated mass murder amongst the Ukrainians, or for his participation in the Soviet Army or for the inhumanities he experienced as a Soviet POW. He was tried and convicted for what he did after those experiences.

The L.A. Times article discusses the critical role the Trawnicki identity card played in convicting Demjanjuk. The year I lived in Jerusalem, I worked on the Demjanjuk trial conducted there. I became familiar with some of the testimony establishing the veracity of that document. I am therefore not troubled by the FBI's questioning of that document, an internal FBI discussion that has recently been revealed. Law enforcement's job is to question evidence and evaluate its potential effectiveness in a courtroom.

The questioning by itself does not suggest the document is fake. The German court's admission of the document, and the document's ability to withstand challenges to its authenticity so that it could help support a conviction, is what matters.

I am also not concerned that Israeli jurisprudence ultimately overthrew Demjanjuk's death sentence conviction. In fact, I am thrilled by it. Just as I am thrilled by Germany's commitment to trying Demjanjuk for different crimes. It shows the rule of law survives and flourishes. And the rule of law is one of the most important protections we have against the moral pollution that lead to the Holocaust.

The Perils of "Holocaust Hegemony...and its Perils"

There is little I like about "Holocaust Hegemony...and its Perils", Sam Schulman’s article in the January 3/January 10, 2011 issue of The Weekly Standard.

The very least thing I don’t like about the article is that it used a photograph from the Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust without permission and, when it first did so, did not credit the photographer.

I don’t like that Mr. Schulman writes his own rules of argument by failing to define explicitly what he considers to be “Holocaust hegemony.” He derives this term from the title of a University of Toronto school of education Master’s Thesis, which is the prick that spurs Schulman’s extensive discontent. Mr. Schulman’s failure to define Holocaust hegemony leaves the reader struggling, throughout the essay, to understand his true target. The convenience of a slippery definition of terms is it affords Mr. Schulman the leeway to be prosecutor, judge and jury of whatever indictment he cares to bring.

Mr. Schulman makes broad assertions and presents them as facts, a rhetorical technique I never like. What is his basis for stating that anti-Semites and anti-Zionists are well-informed about the Holocaust, that they authentically regret its murders of Jews, and that they “openly regret that those European Jews who escaped the Nazis by fleeing to Palestine were not murdered as well?” Did he take a poll? And if the last assertion is true, its repugnancy deserves direct condemnation, not a passing feint.

And I don’t like him challenging the understanding that the Holocaust is, to use his term, “nonpareil.” Historical facts make it very clear the mass murder of European Jews was unlike any other genocide before or since. These facts include but are by no means limited to: Hitler’s publication of a manifesto expressing his murderous contempt of Jews; his public targeting of Jews in a systematic campaign occurring over many years; and, the systematic evolution of killing technology.

But what I really don’t like about Mr. Schulman’s article is the aggregate effect of these offenses. He relies on shifting rules of engagement, unproven assertions, and an incorrect statement of facts to blame Holocaust education for genocide and virulent anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism. Do we blame fire departments for the continuing existence of fires and for arson?

Mr. Schulman includes amongst the evils empowered by Holocaust education “Communists and fellow travelers.” Communism, as a force exported against democracy, ceased to be a threat no later than the collapse of the Soviet Union, if not earlier; ‘fellow travelers’ is a McCarthy-era phrase, rendered meaningless by its maniacal over-use and best left in the last century. And he concludes his piece with a rant charging the left in general, with “apologizing for terrorism.” This slippery slope, sky-is-falling diatribe is simply ridiculous.

I do like Mr. Schulman’s statement that “Holocaust education…will never pry…people from their defects of character and judgment.” Education cannot enter a closed mind. Those harboring the closed-minded defects of character and judgment that include Jew- and Israel-hatred, as well as racism, intolerance, and a lack of any compassion for the “other,” will never participate in Holocaust education. They will not read any of the great books that Mr. Schulman admits have been written about the Holocaust. Nor will they darken the doorstep of any “beautiful museums that have been built.” But we book writers and beautiful museum builders are there for those whose minds are already open to the idea that we might make the 21^st century a little better than the 20^th. And we stand ready to shine at least a candle of light into whatever crack might miraculously split in the minds of the others. To do otherwise would be merely to curse the darkness.

Read our NY Times Review!

• Holocaust Museum in Los Angeles Makes Hard Choices - Review ...

  Holocaust museums like the new one in Los Angeles struggle to keep the history alive even as it grows distant.

It Can Happen Here

When I was a child and I thought about the Holocaust, I was struck most by the suffocation of living in a world gone crazy. I could transport myself to that feeling of living in a nightmare, in which events I couldn't believe were happening were, in fact, happening every day. For brief moments I could imagine living in a world that chased me, and I had no where to run.

Until recently, I took great solace in believing the all-consuming, upside-down world of Nazi Germany could not happen in the United States. I saw all around me ours was a nation of reason, in which people throughout the country embraced the sanity of First Amendment rights. I recognized different people might differ about the borders of these rights. Yet even our ability to confront these disagreements demonstrated the mutual embrace of the rights themselves.

Certain events in American history challenged my view. Slavery in general and the Founding Fathers' hypocrisy in perpetuating it presented one such challenge. Lynchings presented another; here, as with the Holocaust, I empathized with the victims in the photographs I saw, imagining that among the horrible feelings they experienced as they were murdered included that drowning powerlessness of being caught, animal-like, in an upside down world. But the civil rights movement provided an antidote to lynching; an understanding that the Continental Congress could not have taken on England and slavery at the same time eased other concerns.

The unrelenting attacks on American Muslims engendered by the forthcoming lower Manhattan Islamic center, however, suggest that America may be built more on xenophobic sand than on First Amendment bedrock. A series of New York Times articles document only some of the reasons if I were Muslim I would awaken each day with a sense of dread.

One may think the Battery's Islamic Center is not a Holocaust issue. But it is. We as Jews have been very successful at pushing the borders of prejudice and intolerance away from us in America. But our success is only as strong as America's ability to provide religious freedom to all its citizens. "When they came for the trade unionists," Pastor Martin Niemoller told us, "I did not complain because I was not a trade unionist." If we are not concerned about the treatment of others, especially those less powerful or numerous, we can not be sure there will be anyone who will concern themselves with our fate when we find ourselves powerless or outnumbered. The chain of freedom girding us is only as strong as its weakest link.

As long as we do not speak out against the anti-Muslim voices, as long as we do not stand with those victimized in their mosques, as long as we entertain the slightest belief that mainstream Islam as practiced by our fellow Americans has anything in common with terrorism, we have to admit one devastating truth. The Holocaust can happen here. Its seeds are sprouting all around us.

Staying Fresh

Jim Schram, the principal in our contracting company, Winter-Schram Associates, found himself staring at a man in a picture in the camp room of the new Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust. “He looks so much like my great grandfather,” Jim told me. It was one of those rare conversations we’ve had when the press of construction details didn’t squeeze out any other conversation topics.

The graphics displays had only recently been fitted into their glass frames, and it was the first time any of us involved in the project had a chance to appreciate their impact.

Jim’s ancestor had not, in fact, been touched by the Holocaust. “You must be accustomed to this because you see it every day,” Jim said to me, “But it’s really powerful to me.”

In fact, I was having my own experience, regardless of my every day contact with the images. I had been studying the face of a boy, just a bit younger than my own son, in a blow-up of a picture whose original was preserved in the Auschwitz Album. These photographs had been taken over two days in 1944. Nazi photographers captured a Hungarian transport as it arrived and as its human contents lined up and sorted for work or death.

For a fleeting instant the boy appeared in 3-D and seemed to bob his head. I saw him as he was at the moment the Nazi shutter snapped.

I told Jim what I had just seen, and then: “When it does become routine, that’s when it will be time to quit.”

As for the boy in the picture, we can’t measure the tragedy of his murder. Not only was he denied life; the Nazis deprived him a grave and even a name that could be remembered. But they gave him a photograph. For me and the hundreds of thousands who will see his picture, if we really see his picture, he’ll remind us we can’t quit working for a world of actors, not bystanders. A world of caring, not apathy. A world where humans can maintain their humanity.

Visiting Ft. Huachuca with Albert Rosa

This evening I was asked to say a prayer over dinner at the table of Fort Huachuca's commanding officer, Major General John Custer and his wife, Audrey. I learned later my place at the table had only very recently been occupied by Senator John McCain. Imagine my relief that something had guided me to open my prayer with gratitude to the Major General and his wife, the other officers and guests at the table, and most of all my friend and the true guest of honor, Holocaust survivor Albert Rosa and his daughter, Regina.

Fort Huachuca, an electronics intelligence base only 8 miles north of the Mexican border, once served as the home to the Buffalo Soldiers, including the 10th Calvary, and had been the base from which General John J. Pershing set off to capture Pancho Villa during the Mexican war. Today, the base's leaders recognize their soldiers come into the Army with virtually no cross-cultural experience, no sense of other worlds or other cultures outside of their own. Each month they host an event focusing on other cultures and differing world experiences. Tomorrow, Albert Rosa, Regina, and I will help lead a Day of Remembrance ceremony devoted to the Holocaust.

Other participants tomorrow will include Mr. Lou Broitman, Fort Huachuca's Jewish lay leader.

I am, at best, hand maiden to our visit and the event tomorrow. Lieutenant Colonel Francesca "Ox" Ziemba contacted me and asked if I could provide a speaker, and my first thought was Albert, who has already spoken to military groups in Southern California and Canada. That Regina could join him made it possible for Albert to travel. That I could be a third wheel is truly a gift, for which I am and will remain grateful.

Ultimate Revenge

Here is my letter to the editor of The Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles in response to the article, Ultimate Revenge, about Inglorious Basterds.

You can also read what I wrote about it previously on this blog.

Dear Editor,

While Danielle Berrin’s article covered many perspectives on Inglorious Basterds, she did not discuss what I believe to be the fundamental problem with the revenge fantasy film. As I blogged at www.educationandcommemoration.blogspot.com, though the acts depicted in the film may be profoundly fulfilling, they reduce Jews to the level of the Nazis. And they contradict one of Judaism’s most basic principles.

Look, I’d like to think given the weapons and the opportunity I would ravage my way up the hierarchy of Nazis until I got to Hitler himself. And when I got to him, I’d make him suffer 6 million deaths. There’s this great skin-peeling torture I read about from Manchuria that seems to have been invented for him alone. And I get that Inglorious Basterds is just a movie, something that can exist as a mental detour from what we really believe.

But taking that detour slows me on my journey to where I really want to be. Judaism doesn’t teach me that being a yid is to indulge my id-ish impulses. It challenges me to overcome them. Judaism tells me I can only draw closer to God by directing my attention away from my impulses and fantasies, and towards right action. That’s part of what it means to be a member of a nation of priests.

We should of course fight threats today as forcefully as possible and with force when necessary. Judaism didn’t survive the Holocaust to be debased or stripped of its core beliefs. L’havdil, living after the Holocaust obligates me to strive towards Judaism’s highest values, simply because that, for me, is -- ultimately -- the sweetest revenge.