Raul Hilberg Read online

  18. Ibid., p. eii.

  19. Emperor Frederick II, excluding Jews from public office, stated in 1237: “Faithful to the duties of a Catholic prince, we exclude Jews from public office so they will not abuse official power for the oppression of Christians." Kisch, Jews in Medieval Germany, p. 149.

  20. The following is a passage from a fifteenth-century German lawbook, the municipal code of Salzwedel, par. 83.2: "Should a Jew assault a Christian or kill him, the Jew may not make any reply, he must suffer in silence what the law appoints, for he has

  no claim on Christendom and is God’s persecutor and a murderer of Christendom."

  Kisch, Jews in Medieval Germany, p. 268. Kisch points out that earlier German lawbooks contained no such discrimination.

  The poisoned wells legend (fourteenth century) and the ritual murders legend (thirteenth century) were both condemned by the Popes. Scherer, Die Rechtsverháltnisse der Juden, pp. 36-38. On the other hand, the thirteenth-century Castilian code “Las siete

  partidas.” partida séptima, titulo XXIV (de los judíos), ley 11, makes reference to the

  capital crime of crucifying Christian children or wax figures on Holy Friday. Antonio G.

  Solalinde, ed., Antología de Alfonso X el Sabio (Buenos Aires, 1946), p. 181. As for the

  legal view of usury, see Kisch, Jews in Medieval Germany, pp. 191-97.

  21. The Fourth Lateran Council expressly called upon the secular powers to "exterminate f exterminare) all heretics. Kisch, Jews in Medieval Germany, p. 203. This provision was the basis for a wave of stake burnings during the inquisitions.

  The story of the tenth plague, the slaying of the first-born, has given rise to the ritual

  murder legend, in accordance with which Jews kill Christian children at Passover time to

  use their blood in matzos. See also the provision in the partida séptima, in which the

  tenth plague is combined with the Gospels to produce the crucifixion of children.

  22. Reichstag, Stenographische Berichte, 53. Sitzung, March 6,1895, p. 1296ff. lb

  17

  PRECEDENTS

  Germanic peoples, and that every Jew who at this moment has not done

  anything bad may nevertheless under the proper conditions do precisely

  that, because his racial qualities drive him to do it.

  Gentlemen, in India there was a certain sect, the Thugs, who elevated

  the act of assassination to an act of policy. In this sect, no doubt, there

  were quite a few people who personally never committed a murder, but the

  English in my opinion have done the right thing when they exterminated

  [. ausrotteten] this whole sect, without regard to the question whether any

  particular member of the sect already had committed a murder or not, for

  in the proper moment every member of the sect would do such a thing.

  Ahlwardt pointed out that the anti-Semites were fighting the Jews not

  because of their religion but because of their race. He then continued:

  The Jews accomplished what no other enemy has accomplished: they

  have driven the people from Frankfurt into the suburbs. And that's the

  way it is wherever Jews congregate in large numbers. Gentlemen, the Jews

  are indeed beasts of prey. . . .

  Mr. Rickert [another deputy who had opposed the exclusion of the

  Jews] started by saying that we already had too many laws, and that's why

  we should not concern ourselves with a new anti-Jewish code. That is

  really the most interesting reason that has ever been advanced against

  anti-Semitism. We should leave the Jews alone because we have too many

  laws?! Well, I think, if we would do away with the Jews [die Juden

  abschaffen], we could do away with half the laws that we have now on the

  books.

  Then, Deputy Rickert said that it is really a shame—whether he actually said that I don't know because I could not take notes—but the sense of it was that it was a shame that a nation of 50 million people should be

  afraid of a few Jews. [Rickert had cited statistics to prove that the number

  of Jews in the country was not excessive.] Yes, gentlemen, Deputy Rickert would be right, if it were a matter of fighting with honest weapons against an honest enemy; then it would be a matter of course that the

  Germans would not fear a handful of such people. But the Jews, who

  operate like parasites, are a different kind of problem. Mr. Rickert, who is

  not as tall as 1 am, is afraid of a single cholera germ—and, gentlemen, the

  Jews are cholera germs.

  (Laughter)

  Gentlemen, it is the infectiousness and exploitative power of Jewry

  that is involved.

  Ahlwardt then called upon the deputies to wipe out “these beasts of

  prey [Rotten Sie diese Raubtiere at«]", and continued:

  If it is now pointed out—and that was undoubtedly the main point of

  the two previous speakers—that the Jew is human too, then I must reject

  Paul Massing belongs the credit for discovering this speech and including it in his book

  Rehearsal for Destruction (New York, 1949).

  18

  PRECEDENTS

  Chat totally. The Jew is no German. If you say that the Jew is bom in

  Germany, is raised by German nurses, has obeyed the German laws, has

  had to become a soldier—and what kind of soldier, we don't want to talk

  about chat—

  (Laughter in the right section)

  has fulfilled all his duties, has had to pay taxes, too, then all of that is not

  decisive for nationality, but only the race out of which he was bom [aus

  der er herausgeboren isi) is decisive. Permit me to use a banal analogy,

  which I have already brought out in previous speeches: a horse that is bom

  in a cowbarn is still no cow, (Stormy laughter) A Jew who is bom in

  Germany, is still no German; he is still a Jew.

  Ahlwardt then remarked that this was no laughing matter but deadly

  serious business.

  It is necessary to look at the matter from this angle. We do not even

  think of going so far as, for instance, the Austrian anti-Semites in the

  Reichsrath, that we demand an appropriation to reward everybody who

  shoots a Jew [dass tvir ein Schussgeld fur die Juden beantragen wollten],

  or that we should decide that whoever kills a Jew, inherits his property.

  (Laughter, uneasiness) That kind of thing we do not intend here; that far

  we do not want to go. But we do want a quiet and common-sense separation of the Jews from the Germans. And to do that, it is first of all necessary that we close that hatch, so that more of them cannot come in.

  It is remarkable that two men, separated by a span of 350 years,

  can still speak the same language. Ahlwardt's picture of the Jews is in

  its basic features a replica of the Lutheran portrait. The Jew is still

  (1) an enemy who has accomplished what no external enemy has accomplished: he has driven the people of Frankfurt into the suburbs; (2) a criminal, a thug, a beast of prey, who commits so many crimes

  that his elimination would enable the Reichstag to cut the criminal code

  in half; and (3) a plague or, more precisely, a cholera germ. Under the

  Nazi regime, these conceptions of the Jew were expounded and repeated in an almost endless flow of speeches, posters, letters, and memoranda. Hitler himself preferred to look upon the Jew as an

  enemy, a menace, a dangerous cunning foe. This is what he said in a

  speech delivered in 1940, as he reviewed his “struggle for power”:

  It was a battle against a satanical power, which had taken possession of

  our entire people
, which had grasped in its hands all key positions of

  scientific, intellectual, as well as political and economic life, and which

  kept watch over the entire nation from the vantage of these key positions.

  It was a battle against a power which, at the same time, had (he influence

  to combat with the law every man who attempted to take up battle against

  them and every man who was ready to offer resistance to the spread of this

  power. At that time, all-powerful Jewry declared war on us.” 23

  23. Speech by Hitler, German press, November 10-11, 1940.

  19

  PRECEDENTS

  Gauleiter Julius Streicher emphasized the contention that the Jews

  were criminal. The following is an excerpt from a typical Streicher

  speech to the Hitler Youth. It was made in 1935.

  Boys and girls, look back to a little more than ten years ago. A war—

  the World War—had whirled over the peoples of the earth and had left in

  the end a heap of ruins. Only one people remained victorious in this

  dreadful war, a people of whom Christ said its father is the devil, That

  people had ruined the German nation in body and soul.

  But then Hitler arose and the world took courage in the thought that

  now

  the human race might be free again from this people which has wandered

  about the world for centuries and millennia, marked with the sign of Cain.

  Boys and girls, even if they say that the Jews were once the chosen

  people, do not believe it, but believe us when we say that the Jews are not

  a chosen people. Because it cannot be that a chosen people should act

  among the peoples as the Jews do today.

  A chosen people does not go into the world to make others work for

  them, to suck blood. It does not go among the peoples to chase the peasants from the land. It does not go among the peoples to make your fathers poor and drive them to despair. A chosen people does not slay and torture

  animals to death. A chosen people does not live by the sweat of others. A

  chosen people joins the ranks of those who live because they work. Don't

  you ever forget that.

  Boys and girls, for you we went to prison. For you we have always

  suffered. For you we had to accept mockery and insult, and became

  fighters against the Jewish people, against that organized body of world

  criminals, against whom already Christ had fought, the greatest anti-

  Semite of all times.“

  A number of Nazis, including the chief of the German SS and

  Police

  Himmler,

  the

  jurist

  and

  Generalgouvemeur

  of

  Poland

  Hans

  Frank, and Justice Minister Thierack, inclined to the view that the

  Jews were a lower species of life, a kind of vermin, which upon contact

  infected

  the

  German

  people

  with

  deadly

  diseases.

  Himmler

  once

  cautioned his SS generals not to tolerate the stealing of property that

  had belonged to dead Jews. “Just because we exterminated a bacterium,” he said, “we do not want, in the end, to be infected by that bacterium and die of it.”53 Frank frequently referred to the Jews as

  “lice.” When the Jews in his Polish domain were killed, he announced

  that now a sick Europe would become healthy again.56 Justice Minister

  Thierack once wrote the following letter to a worried Hitler:

  24. Speech by Streicher. June 22, 1935, M-l.

  25. Speech by Himmler, October 4, 1943, PS-1919.

  26. Generalgouvemement Health Conference, July 9, 1943, Frank Diary, PS-2233.

  Remarks by Frank recorded verbatim.

  2 0

  PRECEDENTS

  A full Jewess, after the birth of her child, sold her mother’s milk to a

  woman doctor, and concealed the fact that she was a Jewess. With this

  milk, infants of German blood were fed in a children’s clinic. The accused

  is charged with fraud. The purchasers of the milk have suffered damage,

  because the mother's milk of a Jewess cannot be considered food for

  German children. The impudent conduct of the accused is also an insult.

  However, there has been no formal indictment in order to spare the parents—who do not know the facts—unnecessary worry. I will discuss the race-hygienic aspects of the case with the Reich Health Chief.1’

  The

  twentieth-century

  Nazis,

  like

  the

  nineteenth-century

  anti-

  Semites and the sixteenth-century clerics, regarded the Jews as hostile,

  criminal, and parasitic. Ultimately the very word Jew (Jude) was infused with all these meanings.3 But there is also a difference between the recent writings and the older scripts that requires explanation. In

  the Nazi and anti-Semitic speeches we discover references to race.

  This formulation does not appear in the sixteenth-century books. Conversely, in Luther’s work there is repeated mention of God’s scorn, thunder and lightning worse than Sodom and Gomorrah, frenzy, blindness, and raging heart. Such language disappeared in the nineteenth century.

  There

  is,

  however,

  a

  close

  functional

  relationship

  between

  Luther’s references to divine blows and Ahlwardt’s reliance upon race

  characteristics, for both Luther and Ahlwardt tried to show that the

  Jew could not be changed, that a Jew remained a Jew. “What God does

  not improve with such terrible blows, that we shall not change with

  words and deeds.”3 There was some evil in the Jew that even the fires

  of God, burning high and hot, could not extinguish. In Ahlwardt's time

  these evil qualities, fixed and unchangeable, are traced to a definite

  cause. The Jew “cannot help himself” because his racial qualities drive

  him to commit antisocial acts. We can see, therefore, that even the race

  idea fits into a trend of thought.

  Anti-Jewish racism had its beginning in the second half of the

  seventeenth

  century,

  when

  the

  “Jewish

  caricature”

  first

  appeared

  in

  cartoons.“ These caricatures were the first attempt to discover racial

  characteristics in the Jew. However, racism acquired a “theoretical” 27 28 29 30

  27. Thierack to Hitler, April 1943, NG-1656. The expert in charge of the case was

  Ministerialrat Dr. Malzan.

  28. See entry under Jude in Deutsche Akademie, Trübners Deutsches Wörterbuch.

  Alfred Götze, ed. (Berlin, 1943), Voi. 4, pp. 55-57. Stereotypes are often unoriginal and

  they are easily attributed to a variety of nations. Note, for example, the rumor during the

  First World War that the Germans crucified a Canadian soldier. Paul Fussell, The Great

  War and Modern Memory (New York, 1975), p. 117.

  29. Luther, Von den Jueden. p. Aiii.

  30. Eduard Fuchs, Die Juden in der Karikatur (Munich, 1921), pp. 160-61.

  21

  PRECEDENTS

  basis only in the 1800s. The racists of the nineteenth century stated

  explicitly that cultural characteristics, good or bad, were the product of

  physical characteristics. Physical attributes did
not change; hence social behavior patterns also had to be immutable. In the eyes of the anti-Semite, the Jews therefore became a “race.”’1

  The destruction of European Jewry was fundamentally the work of

  German perpetrators, and hence it is to them that we must devote our

  primary attention. What happened to the Jews cannot be understood

  without insight into decisions made by German officials in Berlin and in

  the field. Yet, every day German exertions and costs were being affected by the behavior of the victims. To the extent that an agency could marshal only limited resources for a particular task, the very

  progress of the operation and its ultimate success depended on the

  mode of the Jewish response.

  The Jewish posture in the face of destruction was not shaped on

  the spur of the moment. The Jews of Europe had been confronted by

  force many times in their history, and during these encounters they had

  evolved a set of reactions that were to remain remarkably constant

  over the centuries. This pattern may be portrayed by the following

  diagram:

  Resistance Alleviation Evasion Paralysis Compliance

  ■1 ii ii iiii 31 32 33 *

  Preventive

  attack,

  armed

  resistance,

  and

  revenge

  were

  almost

  completely absent in Jewish exilic history. The last, and only, major

  revolt took place in the Roman Empire at the beginning of the second

  century, when the Jews were still living in compact settlements in the

  eastern Mediterranean region and when they were still envisaging an

  independent Judea.” During the Middle Ages the Jewish communities

  no longer contemplated battle. The medieval Hebrew poets did not

  celebrate the martial arts.55 The Jews of Europe were placing themselves under the protection of constituted authority. This reliance was legal, physical, and psychological.

  31. For a Nazi discussion of race, including such formulations as "racial substance”

  (Rassekern), “superior race" (Hochrasse), and “racial decline” (Rasseverfall), see Konrad Dürre, “Werden und Bedeutung der Rassen,” Die Neue Propyläen-Weitgeschichte (Berlin, 1940), pp. 89-118.

  32. The rebellion, in a.d. 115-17 under Tb^jan (following the Roman destruction of

  the Temple in a.d. 70 and preceding the rising of Bar Kochba in a.d. 132-135), had

  broken out in Cyrenaica, Egypt, and Cyprus, and its ferment was spreading to