Lessons from the Holocaust – “Never Again” or genocide?
JVL Introduction
We are pleased to publish this moving mini-memoire by Stephanie Petrie, a woman born in this country soon after the Second World War with a German mother and English father.
Her memoire details her awakening to the horrors of the Nazi holocaust and her disbelief that the German side of her family had “let this happen”. They seemed “such ordinary people”. This raises uncomfortable questions about how much these “ordinary people” knew. She concludes that her family and their town wanted “a quiet life” and shut their eyes and failed to resist.
Of course there are well documented acts of heroic resistance in Nazi Germany – but these were few and fragmented, given the Nazis’ success in violently smashing the trade unions, the political parties and any other organs of resistance.
And then the punchline – the comparison between Nazi Germany and the current day Israeli State’s genocide of the Palestinians: “it seems to me that not since Hitler’s Germany has there been an entire nation complicit in mass ethnic cleansing as an organised policy”.
There are major differences of course – such as the difference of scale between the six million Jews murdered in Europe and the mass murder in Gaza amounting to several tens of thousands. But on the other hand, this genocide in Gaza is being filmed as it happens – so ‘ordinary’ Israeli Jewish people have little excuse to claim ignorance.
Of course, to equate the Nazi Holocaust with the Israeli genocide is stretching the point too far.
But to make comparisons? Of course, comparing and contrasting is part of historical investigation. Yet people are being arrested – in this country too – for merely raising the question.
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From the Holocaust to Genocide- has Hitler won?
My German heritage
My mum was a German war bride and my dad a British soldier from a poor family in Blackburn Lancashire. They married in 1947, and I was born in 1948 the eldest of three sisters by 7 and 11 years. Until the complete collapse of the German economy in the late 1920s my German family, small town hoteliers, led a reasonably prosperous life in the Niederrhein. Mum was 13 when Hitler came to power.
Throughout my childhood we visited my German family every two years and in England we lived near my mill-working aunties and window cleaner Grandad. In the 1950s both sets of relations visited each other and had warm connections. My English Grandad, gassed in WWI, said you could never blame the German soldier as all soldiers were simply cannon fodder for the international ambitions of those in power. My memories are that until the 1960s, notwithstanding post-war austerity in Britain, we were the rich relations taking clothing and other hard to get items to my German family. From the 1960s onwards, however, our economic roles were somewhat reversed
I grew up knowing there’d been a war between England and Germany. My dad talked about it as though it had been a big football match ‘we beat the Jerries.’ I knew nothing about the Holocaust. When I was about 14, and I don’t know why I was home alone or watching TV as we hadn’t had one long, I saw film of the concentration camps. I think it must have been the trial of Adolf Eichmann that was televised widely and in which concentration camp footage was shown. I was aghast and horrified. I wept and wept. I couldn’t believe my German family let this happen. They seemed ordinary people. I challenged both my parents. Neither shut me down but also neither pretended to have answers. I remember my dad telling me the British had invented concentration camps in the Boer War in South Africa, but he did not want to talk about his time as a soldier. Mum talked freely then and throughout her life about her experiences in Germany before and after Hitler.
Second hand stories
I was thirsty for knowledge and understanding and Mum shared all she knew. The first major event that affected her childhood and the German population disastrously was the economic crash of the late 1920s. My family had to sell their business to the brewery, and it was only paid off in the 1980s. Initially, in the early 1930s, the paramilitary wing of the Nazi Party in the town, the Brown Shirts, were regarded as the local riff raff and no one took them seriously. Soon, however, anyone buying at shops owned by Jews had their names posted on a bulletin board outside Nazi headquarters for being anti-German. Mum thought it was at that point people wanted to believe the rumour that the plan was to allocate a part of Germany to the Jews. That plan was for concentration camps and mass murder, but the townspeople closed their eyes to the openly proclaimed ethnic cleansing policies of the government. They wanted a quiet life, especially because the economy was beginning to do well under Hitler. The townspeople and my German family believed it was the best solution for everyone to live separately. The Kristallnacht (night of the broken glass) pogrom on the 9th and 10th of November 1938 amplified everyone’s desire to believe the lie that Jews would be given their own place to live. Mum could remember their Jewish neighbours across the street having their windows smashed and house trashed by the Brown Shirts. The mother and children, school friends of my mum and her siblings, were dragged off. The dad had already been arrested on spurious grounds and committed ‘suicide’ in the town jail. No one intervened. The only slight resistance to fascist policies my mum could remember was when the Nazis wanted to euthanise patients in a local hospital for ‘sub-normals’. A very distant relative who was a town councillor or equivalent demurred and it was forgotten about, probably because the town was of no importance.
I came to realise that I knew more about what happened in Germany before and after the War than my German cousins. Such discussions did not happen in my German family and were not welcome. I never found out the fate of the family who were dragged away. Presumably they died in a concentration camp but there is no memorial or acknowledgement of their existence in the town although surprisingly there is a Jewish cemetery. Much later a book by a local historian[1] gathered some information, including the fact that there had been a large secular Jewish community in the town in the 1880s. Certainly during my teenage years there were no Jews in the town and most horrifyingly to me was meeting a friend of my male cousins from a nearby town in 1968 who said to me ‘I am a Jew, do you mind?’
Growing awareness of Zionism in international and British politics
As I grew older, I was aware that young Germans, younger than my cousins and I, did not stay silent about the war like their parents and grandparents. Fascism became the object of study, and it was widely argued that it was the older generations who were guilty of genocide not their descendants. Indeed, the German State today is one of the biggest supporters of Zionist Israel providing diplomatic support and weapons.
From the time I was confronted with the Holocaust as a young teenager onwards I believed that the most important lesson to learn was to be vigilant to the growth of fascism at a early stage. It is too late to resist when fascism targeting minorities becomes embedded in political structures, policies and legislation. I naively and arrogantly assumed that Jews in particular, whatever nationality, whether secular or religious, understood this because of the trauma of the genocidal Jewish Holocaust. It is true I had early concerns about the direction taken by the Israeli state towards Palestinians but assumed there were many Israeli citizens who were opposed to apartheid as there had been many in South Africa too. In the political circles in which I moved Jewish comrades in the UK and USA were among the most informed activists about colonialism, neo-liberal capitalism and Human Rights violations, including in Israel.
My simplistic understanding was rocked following the election of Jeremy Corbyn as the leader of the Labour Party in 2015. Almost at once accusations of antisemitism were hurled at Corbyn in particular, and left-wing Labour Party members in general. Initially these were linked to the Labour Party’s failure to adopt the ‘International Definition of Antisemitism’[2] notwithstanding the Jewish author stating repeatedly he designed the definition as a research tool, and it was not suitable for organisational implementation. For the first time in my life, I was confronted by the conflation of Zionism with Jewishness. In other words, to be critical of Zionist Israel was to be antisemitic and any support for Palestine was also antisemitic. I remember asking a Jewish comrade how Jews, who within living memory had been murdered in millions simply for being Jews, could dehumanise another group of people. He said that Jews were not special and had the same flaws and weaknesses as the rest of us. What followed was an upside-down world in the Labour Party where white, male, non-Jews expelled left-wing Jews from the Labour Party for antisemitism[3].
I began to pay more attention to the ideology of Zionism and how the Israeli government had treated Palestinians since the establishment of Israel in 1948. Since October 2023 the flagrant dehumanisation and slaughter of Palestinians; babies, children, mothers, fathers, the old and the disabled by the Zionist government has shocked not only me but the whole world.
Holocaust to Genocide
I was struck by a statement made by the Jewish actor Miriam Margoles[4] in April 2024, ‘To me, it seems as if Hitler has won. He’s changed us Jews from being compassionate … into this vicious, genocidal, nationalist nation, pursuing and killing women and children’.
I’m not 14 anymore but feel the same distress and horror at the genocide in Gaza as I did when confronted with the reality of the Holocaust. There is a difference though. In this concentration camp victims film and share their own sufferings in real time. Several times a day I see the dead bodies of babies and children; watch living toddlers cry in agony with missing limbs and cower and shake in terror; hear the anguish of their parents; listen to doctors and aid workers tell of operations without anaesthetic and malnutrition and disease at epidemic levels. And although I’m no longer 14, I weep.
The Holocaust was over at the end of WWII and to teenage me it was obvious the whole world was appalled and would never let such a thing happen again. Of course, throughout my life there have been many instances of mass murders and indiscriminate killing of civilians in wars, but it seems to me that not since Hitler’s Germany has there been an entire nation complicit in mass ethnic cleansing as an organised policy. Most Israeli citizens, even if they don’t like Netanyahu, approve of the genocide in Gaza. In fact, less than 20% think the military action has gone too far[5] . There seems to be no consensus that rape and torture of prisoners is wrong[6]
One of the characteristics of the Holocaust was the efficiency with which the Nazis utilised the most up-to-date technology to murder as many people as possible in as short a time as possible. The Israel Defence Force (IDF) have also invested in the most up-to-date ways to kill people utilising AI, computer technology and indiscriminate heavy bombardment of civilians in crowded residential areas. Nazi propaganda was also very effective at gas lighting those outside Germany as to the fate of the Jews, Communists, Roma, Christians, Gay men and others considered less than human. The regime also gas lit those unfortunates sent to gas chambers by telling them they were just going for a shower. Similarly Israeli propaganda has been extremely successful at ensuring that politicians and main TV and paper news outlets in the West repeat the mantra that Israel is simply defending itself. Last, of course, Palestinians are harried from place to place, told by the IDF that the area to which they should go is safe only to be killed when they are there.
The similarities between the ideology of Zionist Israel and Hitler’s regime are also evident. Hitler outlined his ideology in his turgid book ‘Mein Kampf’ that formed the basis of the National Socialist German Workers Party (Nazis). The territorial expansion of Germany, (Lebensraum), that led to WWI, was adopted by Hitler as a key objective for the Nazi Party. Similarly territorial expansion has been the primary objective of right-wing Zionists in Israel almost since its inception in 1948. Their domination in government has consolidated this objective in law. The Jewish Nation State Law passed by the Knesset in 2018 ignores the presence of Palestinians and includes the following commitment to territorial expansion:
‘The state views the development of Jewish settlement as a national value and will act to encourage and promote its establishment and consolidation’[7]
Hitler linked Lebensraum as essential for the survival of the German race, the master race. Consequently, inferior races in these territories had to be subjugated or eliminated. The Israeli Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, currently facing an arrest application to the International Criminal Court for war crimes, also sees the Jewish race as superior and Palestinians as ‘human animals’ to be eliminated:
‘I have ordered a complete siege on the Gaza Strip. There will be no electricity, no food, no fuel, everything is closed. We are fighting human animals, and we are acting accordingly’[8]
What I know now that I didn’t know then
At 14 I believed we learned from our mistakes, personally and collectively but now I know we don’t. I believed we would be alert to fascism at an early stage because resistance is not possible once dehumanising ideology is embedded in policies and laws, but I was wrong. Israelis have allowed fascism to become enshrined in law, and as a society are complicit in genocide. I assumed that Jews in Israel and Zionists world-wide, traumatised by the Holocaust, would never allow such suffering to be inflicted on another people, but I was wrong.
Jews, however, are not a homogenous group. I know that Jews don’t share the same religious views or beliefs; political opinions; first languages; national identity; sexual identity and so on. Why then did I assume the Holocaust affected all Jews in the same way throughout the generations? It’s almost impossible to accept that the murder of millions of Jews in the Holocaust has become the justification for murdering tens of thousands (and counting) of Palestinians in horrific ways. This is how the Holocaust and Zionist Jews will be remembered – for creating a genocide worthy of Hitler.
Stephanie Petrie
References:
[1] Janssen, H., (1988), ‘Erinnerungen an eine schreckenszeit [Memories of a time of horror] RHEINBERG 1933-1945-1948’ pub. Stadt Reinberg
[2] Stern, K., (2019), ‘I drafted the definition of antisemitism. Rightwing Jews are weaponizing it’ ‘The ‘working definition of antisemitism’ was never intended to silence speech, but that’s what Trump’s executive order accomplished this week’ Guardian 13.12.19
[3] Jewish Voice for Labour,(JVL) (8.9.23)’ Labour faces formal complaint over treatment of Jews’
[4] https://www.standard.co.uk/showbiz/miriam-margolyes-hitler-israel-gaza-jewish-council-australia-b1150057.html
[5] https://www.pewresearch.org/global/2024/05/30/israeli-views-of-the-israel-hamas-war/#:~:text=A%20new%20Pew%20Research%20Center%20survey%20finds%20that,and%2019%25%20think%20it%20has%20gone%20too%20far
[6] https://www.democracynow.org/2024/8/1/israel_gaza_palestinian_prisoners_torture
[7] Final text of Jewish nation-state law, approved by the Knesset early on July 19 | The Times of Israel
[8] Israel-Palestine war: ‘We are fighting human animals’, Israeli defence minister says | Middle East Eye
I was born in pre-war Germany of an English father and German mother (who died when I was very young and who had been excluded from Heidelberg University for anti-nazi activities in early 1934). The nanny that came to England in 1939 spent the war years here and became my step-mother in 1945. (Incidentally, her father had been gassed in WW1, which caused his cancer).
The Germans (especially, the politicians) can be very stupid and the people over the centuries kept their heads down, because wars were frequent. There is cruelty in the character, too, as the Namibians can testify and the wooden-headed current support of Israel demonstrates.
What I can add here is some hear-say from my step-mother, whose family was of modest wealth. Many of the shops in her small town were Jewish-owned, but I detect that there was some resentment that the owners kept themselves to themselves. They were not chummy with the locals. The usual social separation related to wealth must have been aggravated by race.
It’s very sad that the respect that the different population groups had for each other in Palestine of old was lost under Hitler (whose rise came as an aftermath of the reparations demanded by the West after WW1, in contrast with what happened after WW2). Under Zionism, it is not easily going to be recovered.
I think Miriam Margoyles saying should be emblazoned on every poster
‘‘To me, it seems as if Hitler has won. He’s changed us Jews from being compassionate … into this vicious, genocidal, nationalist nation, pursuing and killing women and children’.
But it was all predictable. Israel was created on the same principles as that of Nazi Germany – Jewish racial purity instead of Aryan racial purity. That was why the Law of Return was almost identical to the Nuremberg definition.
People thought that a Jewish state would not behave in the same way as all similar settler colonial states. Why? Is racism a biological inheritance? Given the right set of conditions all people tend to behave in the same way.
Israelis cover themselves with the Holocaust even when they behave exactly the same as the Nazis, except they pretend their victims are the Nazis. It is really too sick for words and yet Starmer and Lammy give cover to all they do demonstrating that imperialism doesn’t have a shred of human morality
CREDITS
‘I know a man,’ wrote Yehuda Amichai
translated from the Hebrew by Chana Bloch
‘who photographed the view he saw
from the window of the room where he made love
and not the face of the woman he loved there.’
and from the window, I continued, he saw Gaza
# Amichai fled the Nazis in 1936