The Nazi Holocaust

Its History and Meaning

Ronnie S. Landau

• Publisher: I.B. Tauris
• Year: 2016
• ISBN:
  9780857728586
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Holocaust History
• Index: History

The Nazi Holocaust is one of the most momentous events in human history. Yet, it remains on many levels a baffling and unfathomable mystery. By shunning simplistic 'explanations' Ronnie Landau has set out, in a clear, thought-provoking and enlightened fashion, to mediate betweeen this vast, often unapproachable subject and the reader who wrestles with its meaning. Locating the Holocaust within a number of different contexts - Jewish history, German history, genocide in the modern age, the larger story of human bigotry and the triumph of ideology over conscience - Landau penetrates to the very heart of its moral and historical significance. Deeply concerned lest the Holocaust, as a 'unique' phenomenon, be cordoned off from the rest of human history and ghettoized within the highly charged realm of 'Jewish experience', he is at pains to show that transmitting understanding of the Holocaust is about connecting with all humanity.Intended both for the general reader and for students and academics (especially in history, psychology, literature and the humanities), this work is an important breakthrough in the struggle to perpetuate the memory of a tragedy which the world is all too ready to forget.

PART 1

Background and Context

CHAPTER 2

Survey of Jewish History: c.300 BC to c.1700

What is Jewish history?

It is important to locate the worst tragedy that ever befell the Jews – and, arguably, any other people – within a framework, however superficial, of their own history. This chapter will therefore attempt, in a very brief space, to outline the history of the Jewish people from post-biblical times down to the threshold of the modern period, a history extending over 2,000 years.

The description of a specifically Jewish history presents an immediate difficulty: for who exactly are the Jews? What precisely is ‘Jewishness’? And what on earth is Jewish history? After all, there may be a history of Buddhism but there is no such thing as Buddhist history (i.e. a history of Buddhists). There may be a history of Catholicism, but is there a history of Catholics – or, for that matter, of Southern Baptists or Welsh Methodists? The adjective Jewish seems qualitatively different from such descriptive terms as Christian or Scottish. So what does it mean to be Jewish? Is there a difference between Judaism and Jewishness? Is the ‘-ish’ suffix significant? After all, we don't call anyone Protestantish or Hinduish. When, in 1960, the British satirical comedian (as he was at the time), Jonathan Miller, said on the stage of a London theatre that he was ‘not a Jew, just Jewish!’ what did he mean and why did the audience laugh?¹

Definitions of Jewishness

There are many definitions of the terms ‘Jew’ and ‘Jewish’ and, although any attempt at a single, simple explanation that would satisfy everyone is doomed to failure, it would be useful to explore some of the most commonly held beliefs. These include the views that the Jews are a religious group, that they are a racial group, that they constitute a nation, that they are a cultural group, and that they are an historical marvel that defies any clear labelling.

The Jews as a religious group?

Many people feel that the religious factor is the single most decisive one in shaping Jewish identity. They believe that it is their ancient religion, rooted in a belief in one God (monotheism) who ‘chose’ the Jews to receive His law (Torah) and to live in the land of Israel, that has held the Jews together in so many lands of their dispersal, thus ensuring their survival. Seen from this perspective, despite the ravages of modernity and the multiplicity of new identities that have been spawned during the past two centuries, just as it has always been, so it still is, the religious dimension – to the exclusion of all other passing trends and influences – that gives form, purpose and meaning to being Jewish, even in the late twentieth century.

Without denying the centrality of religion to the overall Jewish experience, it is nevertheless quite clear that in our modern, secular societies, at least as many Jews are non-religious as are observant. This would seem, therefore, to be inadequate as a complete definition, since it does not embrace those whose lifestyle and attachment are by no means traditional or orthodox, and who feel no less ‘Jewish’ for it. The answer, therefore, is plainly more complex.

The Jews as a race?

Many people define Jewishness in racial terms, particularly since the overwhelming majority become Jewish by virtue of being born of a Jewish mother. This, in the eyes of traditional Judaism, is sufficient grounds for conferring membership of the ‘club’ without the need ever to demonstrate one's Jewishness by any other means – whether through religious observance, becoming a citizen of the State of Israel, eating traditional Jewish food or marrying another Jewish person. The Nazi Party, as we shall see, defined Jews according to strict racial criteria: the Nuremberg Laws of 1935 defined a Jew as having three or more Jewish grandparents and there were later refinements on this law for those with two or even one Jewish grandparent. (For the text of the Nuremberg Laws and the supplementary decree, see Appendix E.) One wit, who clearly has genuine insights into the social and familial values of the Jewish community, would later turn Hitler's definition on its head and defined a ‘real Jew’ as anyone who has produced three Jewish grandchildren!

In fact, there is no such phenomenon as the Jewish or Semitic race. The concept of a racially pure Jewish group is an historical and biological nonsense. According to anthropologists, there is also no group one could properly describe as belonging to the ‘Aryan race’. The terms Semitic and Aryan refer, not to racial categories of people, but to groups of languages, Hebrew and Arabic being Semitic tongues.

According to the latest theories, the Jewish group had its origins in the Mediterranean subdivision of the Caucasian race. Known originally as Hebrews, they migrated and inhabited the coastal plains of Canaan under the name of Israelites. They became known as Jews (Latin Iudaei) when the kingdom of Judah was established in 922 BC. After the Romans destroyed the Second Jewish Temple and their state in AD 70, most of the inhabitants were dispersed to various parts of the Roman Empire. They scattered in large numbers to such centres as Egypt, Babylonia, Syria, the Greek islands and Rome itself – all places where Jewish communities had been long established – and they also settled in new communities in Italy, Spain, France (Gaul), Poland, Germany and later in Britain, too. While there are unquestionably dominant physical and racial characteristics within the Jewish group – those of the southern Mediterranean Caucasians – there are many other racial ingredients, including those commonly associated with the majority of the inhabitants of Africa and Asia. This suggests not only dietary and climatic influences but also the incidence of large-scale conversion, intermarriage and sadly, on occasions, forced interbreeding. It is often simply not appreciated that, long before the rise of Christianity and Islam, Judaism itself used to be an actively proselytizing religion. This blending has resulted in a kaleidoscopic racial mix and explains why, in numerous countries throughout all five continents, the local Jews cannot be distinguished by their physical appearance alone from many other inhabitants.

The Jews as a nation?

Long before the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, Jews were regarded, and often regarded themselves, as members of a nation scattered throughout different lands since the destruction of their state in the first century. For example, in the official documents of the Dutch East India Company during the seventeenth century, Jews are frequently referred to as members of the ‘Jewish nation’. Before modern times, if someone was considered a Polish Jew, the noun ‘Jew’ probably defined him nationally, culturally, religiously and socially; the adjective ‘Polish’ merely defined his geographical location – and his bags were packed! The term ‘Polish’ would not in any sense have defined him nationally. The birth of the State of Israel has underscored the belief of many Jews that they have a strong affiliation to their national homeland, even if they choose not to live there. However, this purely national definition is also inadequate, not least because large numbers of Jews, ever since the French and American Revolutions developed the notion of citizenship – of political and cultural loyalties to the nation-states of Europe and America – do not consider themselves as Jewish nationals, but as the nationals of the countries in which they reside. (See Chapter 3 for a fuller exploration of the problem of dual national loyalties, a central feature of the modern period of Jewish history.)

The Jews as a cultural group?

Many people who regard themselves as Jewish – in some cases deeply Jewish – do not measure their Jewishness in terms of religious, racial or national definitions. Indeed, they may be entirely uninterested in spiritual or political expressions of their identity. Yet they feel a strong sense of belonging to an ethnic group and to a cultural tradition. They may display this cultural identity through their preferences in food, the way they dress, the books and newspapers they read, the plays they enjoy seeing performed.

However, because of their continuing dispersal and the collapse of their European languages, Yiddish and Ladino, Jews today no longer speak a common tongue which, until the modern period, was an obvious indicator of the cultural identity of their group (and that of most other groups). They also participate in many different cultures, including radically different ‘Jewish’ cultures. A Woody Allen film, which is considered so ‘Jewish’ in the USA would mean little to a Jew from the Yemen. Similarly, Ethiopian Jewish customs would cut little ice with a Jew from north-west London.

If there is now muddle and confusion over what exactly it means to be Jewish, then that is hardly surprising. Jewishness cannot truly be explained in terms of any one of these definitions alone; for modern Jewish identity, in all its bewildering diversity, is the product of a very complex historical process. Religious, national, racial and cultural elements are all present within the Jewish group, though not in every Jew. According to Isaiah Berlin, Jewishness is perhaps best defined as having a sense of continuity with the Jewish past – a continuity which may express itself in a great variety of ways.²

Outline of Jewish history

Jewish history can loosely be interpreted as the development – social, cultural, political and religious – of the Jewish group over the past 3,500 years. To a greater extent than is the case with the history of most other nations, it is also concerned with the relationship between Jews and other peoples (especially those in a position of power), since for over half of that time Jews lived as minorities in other peoples' lands.

The heart of Jewish ‘difference’

The biblical story of the coming out of Egypt and the ‘Divine Revelation’ on Mount Sinai had signalled the birth of the Jewish nation and the start of its civilizing mission: the Ten Commandments were destined to be the basis of every civil code in the world. Elsewhere in the Bible, the commandment mentioned more often than any other (36 times in various forms) is ‘Love the stranger; for you were strangers in the land of Egypt.’³ Judaism can be seen, therefore, to contain at its very heart a revulsion at intolerance, prejudice and the dehumanization of others; Jews, it can be inferred, should know from their own historical experience what it means to be persecuted because of cultural, national and religious difference and the powerlessness this engenders. The Exodus from Egypt (c.1250 BC) is the supreme symbol of freedom, not only for Jews but for all peoples. However, in its implicit rejection of the institution of slavery, Judaism would come to be regarded with great suspicion by the powerful empires of the ancient world, by Babylon, Persia, Greece and Rome, who depended for their ‘progress’ on a massive institutionalized slave-economy.⁴

Not only this rejection of slavery, but its radical monotheism, the belief in a single omnipotent, spiritual God (the principal legacy of biblical Judaism to Western civilization), was in strict opposition to the polytheism of the rest of the world at that time (and later). Some scholars of the Holocaust believe that the origin of antisemitism lies in the strength of this challenge Judaism posed from the start. The God of the Hebrews was not, as was theirs, made in the image of humans and subject to the same appetites for food, sex and power. On the contrary, in Jewish theology humans are made in God's image and are at their most elevated when, in veneration and fear of that Being who created them and the whole world, they display love, moderation, justice and compassion, which are sparks of the Divine.

The start of Hellenism

Fourth and third centuries BC

The latter part of the fourth century BC marks a decisive turning-point in the history of the Jewish state and people. Until then the country had been ruled, or greatly influenced, by the great Oriental powers – Egypt, Assyria, Babylonia and Persia. But from that time until the seventh century AD, the State of Judah (originally the southern territory of the biblical kingdom of Israel, increasingly referred to by scholars as Judea, and later dubbed ‘Palestine’ by the Romans) came under the sway of empires and cultures whose chief sources of inspiration were Greek (Hellenistic) and, later, Roman. After Alexander the Great's conquest of the Near East, Judea first came under the rule of the Hellenistic Ptolemies of Egypt (301–198 BC) and then passed to the Hellenistic Seleucid kingdom of Syria.⁵

Oppression and rebellion

At first the Seleucid monarchy was tolerant of Jewish culture and religious practices and permitted a fair degree of autonomy. But when Antiochus IV Epiphanes came to the throne in 175 BC, he attempted to suppress Jewish ancestral faith and to impose a pagan Greek way of life, in conformity with the rest of the kingdom (the Jewish upper classes having to some extent already adopted the Greek language and customs). Against the background of a divided Jewish response – the Hellenists in one camp and the Traditionalists in the other – Antiochus ultimately banned all practice of the Jewish religion. For example, the death penalty was imposed on any Jew who observed the Sabbath or circumcised his son. Forbidden food (especially pig's meat) was forced on the population and the Temple was ransacked, defiled and rededicated to Zeus, the father of the Olympian gods of Greece.

Much to Antiochus' indignation and surprise, many Jews, in a climate of fervent messianic expectation and in the prophetic belief of the coming of the End of Days, preferred to suffer martyrdom rather than betray their heritage and faith. This religious belief that the martyr was ‘sanctifying God's name’ when attacked for no reason other than for being Jewish would recur throughout later Jewish history, including the period of the Holocaust.⁶

This onslaught against Judaism prompted a revolt led by a priestly clan, the Hasmoneans. This rebellion, fuelled by nationalistic and religious resistance to the Greeks, ultimately succeeded. It achieved the liberation and reconsecration of their defiled Temple in 164 BC (commemorated annually by the winter festival of Hannukah – ‘the Festival of Lights’) and later, in 142 BC, led to the re-establishment of Jewish political independence.

Roman dominion

The Hasmoneans sought to eradicate the political and cultural influences of the Greek world but would prove unable to prevent their state from falling, in 63 BC, into the clutches of the new imperial power – Rome. The Hasmoneans had failed to establish themselves as universally recognized leaders among the Jewish people. Many, including the Pharisees (the party that later became the rabbis), rejected their claim to be legitimate high priests. The Romans, finding division and in-fighting among the Jewish leadership, appointed their own puppet-king, Herod, whose reign was brutal and corrupt. The legacy of Herod's murderous rule was dissension and chaos, with the Romans finally moving into the power vacuum and establishing direct rule of Judea under procurators (governors).

The year 63 BC had effectively marked the end of Jewish political independence; this would not be restored for another two thousand years – until the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948, only three years after the unspeakable horrors of Hitlerite Europe.

The sectarianism that had grown under the Hasmoneans, and developed further under Herod, now blossomed fully under direct Roman rule, and political anarchy swept the countryside and religious disorder the cities. It is against this background that the emergence of new messianic movements, which were both religiously and politically motivated – including that of Jesus of Nazareth⁷ – must be understood. So, too, must the rebellion which would culminate in the Great Jewish Revolt against the Romans during the years AD 66–70. Under the new Roman governors, even the pretence of independence had vanished, the Romans introducing severe discriminatory measures to deal with what they regarded as a stubborn people who threatened to undermine the political stability of this far-flung corner of their empire.

The Jewish revolt

The revolt started in AD 66, after the Temple authorities objected to sacrifices being offered to the Roman emperor. Jewish forces destroyed the Roman garrison in Jerusalem and defeated a Roman army sent from Syria. They set up a provisional government but the Jewish population was too divided internally to give it proper support. A huge army was sent by the Emperor Vespasian to put down the rebellion and in AD 70, under the command of Titus (later emperor), Jerusalem was sacked and the Second Temple destroyed.

In both a political and a religious sense, the destruction of the Temple marked the end of an era. Temple sacrifice would give way to prayer, the priests being removed from politics and losing their primary religious function. During the siege of Jerusalem, the rabbinical leader, Yohanan ben Zakkai, escaped from the city and sought refuge in the town of Yavneh. The Romans, in granting this request, allowed him to begin the transformation of Yavneh into a centre of Jewish religious activity. Even though Jerusalem was in ruins, Judaism had been saved.

Sixty years later, the Roman Emperor Hadrian announced the setting up of a Roman colony on the ruins of Jerusalem and another Jewish rebellion (under Bar Kokhba) was sparked off, also inspired by messianic hopes of deliverance. This revolt was put down savagely by the Romans: the Jews of Judea were exterminated, enslaved or forced to flee; only in the northern province of Galilee did a Jewish population remain in the land of Israel. However merciless and decisive these phases of Roman rep...