Raul Hilberg Read online

Mesopotamia and Judea itself. The direction and convergence of Jewish forces indicate

  that the goal was Jerusalem. See Shimon Applebaum, Jews and Greeks in Ancient

  Cyrene (Leiden, 1979), pp. 201-334 and particularly pp. 336-37.

  33. See David Segal, “Observations on Three War Poems of Shmuel Ha-Nagid,"

  AJSreview 4 (1979): 165-203. Ha-Nagid was the only medieval Hebrew war poet.

  22

  PRECEDENTS

  The psychological dependence of European Jews is illustrated by

  the following incident. In 10%, when the Jewish communities of Germany were warned by letters and emissaries from France that the crusaders were coming to kill them, the Jewish leadership of Mainz

  replied: “We are greatly concerned with your well-being. As for ourselves, there is no great cause for fear. We have not heard a word of such matters, nor has it been hinted that our lives are threatened by the

  sword.”

  Soon

  the

  crusaders

  came,

  “battalion

  after

  battalion,”

  and

  struck at the Jews of Speyer, Worms, Mainz, and other German cities.M

  More than eight hundred years later, a president of the Jewish council

  in Holland was to say: "The fact that the Germans had perpetrated

  atrocities against Polish Jews was no reason for thinking that they

  behave Isic] in the same way toward Dutch Jews, firstly because the

  Germans had always held Polish Jews in disrepute, and secondly because in the Netherlands, unlike Poland, they had to sit up and take notice of public opinion.”35 In the Netherlands, as in Poland to the east,

  Jewry was subjected to annihilation.

  For the Diaspora Jews, acts of armed opposition had become

  isolated and episodic. Force was not to be a Jewish strategy again until

  Jewish life was reconstituted in a Jewish state. During the catastrophe

  of 1933-45 the instances of opposition were small and few. Above all,

  they

  were,

  whenever

  and

  wherever

  they

  occurred,

  actions

  of

  last

  (never first) resort.34

  On the other hand, alleviation attempts were typical and instantaneous responses by the Jewish community. Under the heading of alleviation

  are

  included

  petitions,

  protection

  payments,

  ransom

  arrangements,

  anticipatory

  compliance,

  relief,

  rescue,

  salvage,

  reconstruction—in short, all those activities designed to avert danger or, in

  the event that force has already been used, to diminish its effects. Let

  us give a few illustrations.

  34. Mainz Anonymous Hebrew Chronicle (text of a contemporary account), in

  Shlomo Eidelberg, ed. and trans., The Jews and the Crusaders (Madison, Wis. 1977),

  pp. 99-100.

  35. Testimony of D. Cohen, November 12, 1947, cited by Louis de Jong, ‘The

  Netherlands and Auschwitz," Yad Vashem Studies 7 (1968): 44.

  36. From 1789 Jews had gained military experience in the armies of continental

  Europe. In 1794 and 1831 they had fought in their own detachments on the side of Polish

  forces in Warsaw. During 1903-4 Jewish self-defense units, armed with clubs, confronted

  drunken mobs invading the Jewish quarters of several Russian cities. Yet these experiences, often cited in literature, were limited precedents. The Jewish soldiers of the German or Austrian armies did not wear a Jewish uniform. The Jewish detachments in

  Warsaw fought as residents of Poland for a Polish cause. The self-defense units in Russia

  did not challenge the Russian state. Even so, it is noteworthy that the death camp revolts

  in Ibeblinka and SobibOr were planned by Jewish inmates who had been officers, that the

  principal ghetto rising took place in Warsaw, and that Jewish partisan activity was concentrated in parts of the occupied USSR.

  23

  PRECEDENTS

  The ancient city of Alexandria, Egypt, was divided into five districts: o, p, y, 8, and e. The Jews were heavily concentrated in the Delta (waterfront section), but they had residences also in other parts

  of town. In a.d. 38, Emperor Caligula wanted to be worshipped as a

  half-god. The Jews refused to pay him the desired respect. Thereupon,

  riots broke out in Alexandria. The Jews were driven into the Delta, and

  the mob took over abandoned apartments. Equality of rights was temporarily abolished, the food supply to the Delta was cut off, and all exits were sealed. From time to time, a centurion of Roman cavalry

  would enter Jewish homes on the pretext of searching for arms. Under

  these conditions, which have a peculiarly modem flavor, the Jews sent

  a delegation to Rome to petition Emperor Caligula for relief. The delegation included the famous philosopher Philo, who disputed about the matter in Rome with the anti-Jewish public figure Apion.” This is one

  of the earliest examples of Jewish petition diplomacy. More than nineteen hundred years later, in 1942, a delegation of Bulgarian Jews petitioned for a similar purpose: the Jews were attempting to ward off ejection from their homes.“

  Sometimes the Jews attempted to buy protection with money. In

  1384, when much Jewish blood was flowing in Franken, the Jews

  sought to ransom themselves. Arrangements for payment were made

  with speed. The city of Nuremberg collected the enormous sum of

  80,000 guilders. King Wenzel got his share of 15,000 guilders from that

  amount. The representatives of the king, who participated in negotiations with other cities, received 4,000 guilders. Net profit to the city: over 60,000 guilders, or 190,000 thaler.* The Jews in Nazi-occupied

  Europe, from the Netherlands to the Caucasus, made identical attempts to buy safety from death with money and valuables.

  One of the most sagacious alleviation reactions in the Jewish arsenal

  was anticipatory

  compliance.

  The victim,

  sensing

  danger, combatted it by initiating a conciliatory response before being confronted

  by open threats. He therefore gave in to a demand on his own terms.

  An example of such a maneuver was the effort of European Jewish

  communities before 1933 to bring about a significant shift in the Jewish

  occupational structure from commerce and law to engineering, skilled 37 38 39

  37. Heinrich Graetz, Volkstümliche Geschichte der Juden, (Berlin and Vienna,

  1923), vol. 3. pp. 600-69. Victor Tcherikover, Hellenistic Civilization and the Jew (JPS

  and Hebrew University, 1959), pp. 313-16. Excerpts from Philo's description from a

  letter of Emperor Claudius (a.d. 41) in Naphtali Lewis, The Roman Principaie—27 B.C.-

  285 a.d. (Toronto, 1974), pp. 111-13. Claudius refers to the separate Jewish mission as

  “something never done before.-’

  38. Frederick Chary, The Bulgarian Jews and the Final Solution, 1940-1944

  (Pittsburgh, 1972) pp. 73-74, 92-96, 144-52.

  39. Stobbe, Die Juden in Deutschland, pp. 57-58.

  24

  PRECEDENTS

  labor, and agricultural work. This movement, which in Germany was

  known

  as

  Berufsumschichiung

  (occupational

  redistribution),

  was

  prompted by a hope that in their new economic role the Jews were

  going to be less conspicuous, less vu
lnerable, and less subject to the

  criticism of unproductiveness.40 41 42 43 44 Another illustration of anticipation is

  the self-restraint by Jewish firms of pre-1933 Germany in the hiring of

  Jewish

  personnel.

  Jewish

  enterprises

  had

  already

  become

  the

  employers of most Jewish wage earners, but now some companies instituted

  quotas

  to

  avoid

  an

  even

  greater

  manifestation

  of

  such

  Jewishness.*'

  Several

  years

  later,

  in

  Nazi-dominated

  Europe,

  Jewish

  councils spent many hours trying to anticipate German requirements

  and

  orders.

  The

  Germans,

  they reasoned,

  would

  not

  be concerned

  about the impact of a particular economic measure on those Jews who

  were least capable of shouldering another burden, whereas the councils might at least try to protect the weakest and neediest Jews from harmful effects. In this vein, the Jewish Council of Warsaw considered

  confiscating Jewish belongings wanted by the Germans,*2 and for the

  same reason the council devised a system for drafting Jewish labor,

  with provisions exempting well-to-do Jews for a fee in order that the

  money might be used to make payments to families of poorer Jews who

  were working without wages for German agencies.'5

  The alleviations that followed disaster were developed to a very

  high degree in the Jewish community. Relief, rescue, and salvage were

  old

  Jewish

  institutions.

  The

  relief

  committees

  and

  subcommittees

  formed by "prominent" Jews (the Prominente), which are so typical of

  the United Jewish Appeal machinery today, were commonplace in the

  nineteenth century. Already during the 1860s, collections for Russian

  Jews were conducted in Germany on a fairly large scale.** Reconstruction—that is to say, the rebuilding of Jewish life, whether in new sur40. In two letters addressed to Adolf Hitler on April 4 and May 6. 1933, a conservative organization of Jewish war veterans (Reichsbund jüdischer Frontsoldaten) pointed out that it had long espoused a Berufsumschichiung from ''intellectual" pursuits to agriculture and the artisan trades. Texts in Klaus Herrmann, Das Dritte Reich und die deutsch-jüdischen Organisationen, 1933-1934 (Cologne, 1969). pp. 66-67. 94-98.

  41. Esra Bennathan. “Die demographische und wirtschaftliche Struktur der Juden," in Werner Mosse, ed., Entscheidungsjahr 1932 (Tübingen, 1966), pp. 88-131, at pp. 110, 114.

  42. Raul Hilberg, Stanislaw Staron. and Josef Kermisz, eds.. The Warsaw Diary of

  Adam Cierniakow (New York, 1979), p. 99.

  43. See Czemiaköw’s diary, entries for October 13-24, 1939; November 2 and 13,

  1939; December 9. 1939; and January 21 and 23, 1940, ibid., pp. 81-110, passim; Czer-

  niaköw to Plenipotentiary of the District Chief for the City of Warsaw, May 21, 1940,

  ibid., pp. 386-87.

  44. See, for example, list of contributions in Allgemeine Zeitung des Judenthums

  (Leipzig), November 2, 1869, p. 897 ff.

  PRECEDENTS

  roundings or, after abatement of persecution, in the old home—has

  been a matter of automatic adjustment for hundreds of years. Reconstruction is identical with the continuity of Jewish life. The bulk of any general Jewish-history book is devoted to the story of the constant

  shifts, the recurring readjustments, the endless rebuilding of the Jewish

  community. The years after 1945 were marked by one of the largest of

  these reconstructive efforts.

  Next in our scale is the reaction of evasion, of flight. In the diagram

  the evasive reaction is not marked as strongly as the alleviation attempts. By this we do not mean the absence of flight, concealment, and hiding in the Jewish response pattern. We mean, rather, that the Jews

  have placed less hope, less expectation, and less reliance on these

  devices. It is true that the Jews have always wandered from country to

  country, but they have rarely done so because the restrictions of a

  regime became too burdensome. Jews have migrated chiefly for two

  reasons:

  expulsion

  and

  economic

  depression.

  Jews

  have

  rarely

  run

  from a pogrom. They have lived through it. The Jewish tendency has

  been not to run from but to survive with anti-Jewish regimes. It is a

  fact, now confirmed by many documents, that the Jews made an attempt to live with Hitler. In many cases they failed to escape while there was still time and more often still, they failed to step out of the

  way when the killers were already upon them.

  There are moments of impending disaster when almost any conceivable action will only make suffering worse or bring final agonies closer. In such situations the victims may lapse into paralysis. The

  reaction is barely overt, but in 1941 a German observer noted the

  symptomatic fidgeting of the Jewish community in Galicia as it awaited

  death,

  between

  shocks

  of

  killing

  operations,

  in

  “nervous

  despair”

  (verzweifelte

  Nervositat).0

  Among

  Jews

  outside

  the

  destruction

  arena,

  a passive stance manifested itself as well. In 1941 and 1942, just when

  mass killings began, Jews all over the world looked on helplessly as

  Jewish populations of cities and entire countries vanished.

  The last reaction on the scale is compliance. To the Jews compliance with anti-Jewish laws or orders has always been equivalent to survival.

  The

  restrictions

  were

  petitioned

  against

  and

  sometimes

  evaded, but when these attempts were unsuccessful, automatic compliance was the normal course of action. Compliance was carried to the greatest lengths and to the most drastic situations. In Frankfurt, on

  September 1, 1614, a mob under the leadership of a certain Vincenz

  Fettmilch attacked the Jewish quarter in order to kill and plunder. 43 *

  43. Oberfeldkommandantiir 36$ to Militirbefehlshaber im Generalgouvemement,

  December 18. 1941, T $01, roll 214.

  26

  PRECEDENTS

  Many Jews fled to the cemetery. There they huddled together and

  prayed, dressed in the ritual shrouds of the dead and waiting for the

  killers.* This example is particularly pertinent, because the voluntary

  assembly at graves was repeated many times during the Nazi killing

  operations of 1941.

  The Jewish reactions to force have always been alleviation and

  compliance. We shall note the reemergence of this pattern time and

  again. However, before we pass on, it should be emphasized again that

  the term “Jewish reactions” refers only to ghetto Jews. This reaction

  pattern was bom in the ghetto and it will die there. It is part and parcel

  of ghetto life. It applies to all gh
etto Jews—assimilationists and Zion·

  ists, the capitalists and the socialists, the unorthodox and the religious.

  One other point has to be understood. The alleviation-compliance

  response dates, as we have seen, to pre-Christian times. It has its

  beginnings with the Jewish philosophers and historians Philo and Josephus, who bargained on behalf of Jewry with the Romans and who cautioned the Jews not to attack, in word or deed, any other people.

  The Jewish reaction pattem assured the survival of Jewry during the

  Church’s massive conversion drive. The Jewish policy once more assured to the embattled community a foothold and a chance for survival during the periods of expulsion and exclusion.

  If, therefore, the Jews have always played along with an attacker,

  they have done so with deliberation and calculation, in the knowledge

  that their policy would result in least damage and least injury. The Jews

  knew

  that

  measures

  of

  destruction

  were

  self-financing

  or

  even

  profitable up to a certain point but that beyond that limit they could be

  costly. As one historian put it: "One does not kill the cow one wants to

  milk.”4’ In the Middle Ages the Jews carried out vital economic functions. Precisely in the usury so much complained of by Luther and his contemporaries, there was an important catalyst for the development

  of a more complex economic system. In modem times, too, Jews have

  pioneered in trade, in the professions, and in the arts. Among some

  Jews the conviction grew that Jewry was "indispensable.” 46 47

  46. Graetz, Volkstümliche Geschichte der Juden, vol. 3, pp. 388-89. The mob permitted them to flee. The Jews returned to their homes two months later, under imperial protection. Fettmilch was tom to pieces by four horses upon orders of the authorities—

  the Emperor did not like pogroms. In Erfurt, during the fourteenth century, a mob was

  permitted by the city council to kill one hundred Jews. When the crowds began to

  threaten the remaining three thousand Jews, the victims fled to their apartments, blocked

  the entrances, and then set fire to their own homes, burning themselves to death in the

  holocaust. Ludwig Count Ütterodt, Gunther Graf von Schwarzenburg—Erwählter

  Deutscher König (Leipzig, 1862), p. 33n.

  47. Stowasser, "Zur Geschichte der Wiener Geserah," Vierteljahrschrift für Sozial-

  und Wirtschaftsgeschichte 16 (1922): 106.

  27

  PRECEDENTS

  In the early 1920s Hugo Bettauer wrote a fantasy novel entitled Die

  Stadt ohne Juden (The City without Jews).* This highly significant