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23 STUDYING THE HOLOCAUST'S IMPACT TODAY: Some Dilemmas of Language and Method Alice L. and A. Roy Eckardt While studying certain aspects of the aftermath of the Holocaust in Germany and other parts of Europe, as well as in Israel, during the latter half of the 1970s-especially that event's continuing interpretations and reputed lessons in our time-we became aware that some basic conceptual and procedural problems face all those engaged in such study. The present discussion represents our tentative consideration of these issues. "DIE ENDLOSUNG" Although we are not dealing with the event of the Holocaust as such, we can hardly escape or ignore divergent views of the nature and meaning of that reality. The German Nazis determined upon die EndlOsung der Judenfrage in Europa ("the final solution of the Jewish question in Europe"). This formulation was officially put forth on January 20, 1942, at a conference at Gross-Wannsee, although the actual decision had probably been made earlier.! The Wannsee agreement was simply the logical consummation , or merely gave expression to, a resolve whose roots are traceable to 1919, when Adolf Hitler declared that his ultimate objective was "the removal of the Jews altogether." According to the minutes of the Wannsee Conference, the eleven million Jews of all Europe were marked for death.2 Yet it is misleading to comprehend the Holocaust solely within the Aktion of killing. The Endlosung means that everything is permitted, that any and every method is to be used in the struggle-indeed, in the enjoying of the struggle3 -to obliterate the single pestilence that is destroying the This article is reprinted from Judaism 27, no. 2 (Spring 1978): 222-32, with permission. 432 Copyrighted Material Studying the Holocaust's Impact Today I 433 entire world: the Jew. The German Nazis taught that the Jew is the Untermensch, the contaminator from below. Accordingly, his "name" is taken away; he does not deserve one; he is only the number tattooed into his flesh. The Endlosung is the competitive "race of the dead" at the killing center of Treblinka and elsewhere, a physiological competition that makes one man's survival absolutely dependent upon the next man's extinction. For the "race of the dead" decreed which prisoners would be murdered and which ones "spared." At the heart of the Endlosung is the use of Jews as officially determined agents to revile and torture their fellow Jews. The Jew is turned into the accomplice of his executioners. The EndlOsung is ultimate degradation. It is the attempted dehumanization of the Jew and the torture process that makes it possible. The EndlOsung is total mental, physical, and spiritual breakdown. It is the ontic separation of children and parents, wives and husbands. Child, parent, wife, husband-all are enforced witnesses to the suffering and annihilation of their loved ones. The chronology of das perfide System (Jan Bastiaans) was: Declare the Jew to be the Untermensch; then make certain he is this, thereby vindicating your major premise; and only then, kill him. In this respect, the Endlosung had nothing to do with the specific advent of death, for the ultimate shamefulness lay in staying alive. Objectively speaking, death was transfigured into a form of mercy. Death became salvation -although, of course, the manner of death incarnated the dehumanization and was the mirror image of the terror. It is often said that the nightmares of the captives were perhaps more frightening than their encounter with death. Speaking of life in the Vilna ghetto, Abba Kovner (who helped to lead the uprising there) attests that the most appalling thing was not death but being defiled to the depths of one's soul every hour of the day.4 Perhaps the ultimate in attempted dehumanization was the Nazi effort to obliterate the Jews and Jewishness from all human memory. At the same time, we are not allowed to forget the complicity of those people and nations other than the persecutors themselves. There is much truth in Elie Wiesel's judgment that the victims suffered more "from the indifference of the onlookers than from the brutality of the executioner."s Cynthia Haft writes that the futility of the agony is contained in the words et ils savaient que vous ne pleureriez pas ("and they knew that you would not weep").6 Again, the EndlOsung reached out even to those who gave the appearance of surviving it. Many could not endure the shock of "liberation ." They died. For vast numbers of those...

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