The German Catechism
JVL Introduction
A view of the Holocaust as incomparably unique has been soldered into the Federal Republic’s self-image, in a way which gives Germany a total absolution for its past, linked indissolubly to unquestioning support for Israel.
So any attempt to contextualise the Holocaust by situating it in a broader context of white racism, colonialism and imperialism or comparative genocide studies, and any challenge to the accepted narrative about Israel, Zionism and the role of the West, is seen as a challenge to the German establishment’s self-image at least as subversive as any challenge to Israel itself.
In this article genocide scholar Prof A. Dirk Moses looks at the fierce debates which have raged in Germany in recent years as both the validity and the utilty of the German catechism is questioned.
He stresses the need to go beyond it.
This article was originally published by Geschichte der gegenwart on Sun 23 May 2021. Read the original here.
The German Catechism
For many, the memory of the Holocaust as a break with civilization is the moral foundation of the Federal Republic. To compare it with other genocides is therefore considered a heresy, an apostasy from the right faith. It is time to abandon this catechism.
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Thank you ~ Such a thoughtful, explorative essay ~ Although, I started to sigh to myself straightaway at the wordiness thinking ‘can’t a complicated issue of German Jewishness and its particular holocaust and such be written in more everyday lingo we can all understand?’ ~ One certainly was helped along with bracketed English to German terms ~ Then, one perseveres and starts to appreciate new learned terms like ‘philosemitism’ thinking has this been contrived like Victorian writer and all-round fascinating weirdo Frederick Rolfe aka Baron Corvo created in some of his extraordinary made-up-words? One had a sense reading the piece that there was a fear the Jewish holocaust will be forgotten against that holocaust being distinguished as equal to other terrible historic massacres. There’s a tragic sadness of ‘we will be forgotten’ embedded here ~ No! We will never forget ~ Though, we must remember them all with horror and lay flowers and lift prayers toward them all of whatever holocaust was suffered by countless historic innocents at the hands of tyrants and tyrannical times.
You know what? Who cares!! To constantly examine and debate this or that about what is or is not antisemitism is pointless. There is one truth.
Those who allege that the Labour Party has, or has ever had any more “antisemitism” than the rest of the British population is either a liar or a believer of lies. Those who allege that Jeremy Corbyn is remotely either “antisemitic” or racist is either a liar or a believer of lies. JVL should promote THIS reality instead of pandering to the UNREALITY so freely disseminated by the vile fantasists.
Agree with Bobbie, not many people would fight their way through all the way to the end of this article. Fewer will not have wondered whether they had got lost along the way a few times.
Two things stand out..
The fear that the Nazi Holocaust will be allowed to blend into a mozaic of other holocausts, and therefore the particular danger, that Jewish people understand could errupt again, will be given room to grow.
The problem felt by many German people that they particularly feel culpable by their association with their parents generation, and therefore are not in a position to question the migration of European Jews to Palestine or the behaviourof the majority of Jews since arriving there, as they were the ones who forced this migration. European Jews had to go somewhere.
Unfortunately there are no golden bullets, no solutions which maintain the Nazi Holocaust at the forefront of our minds and which also allow space for equal justice for other ethnic/religious groups, a few bigger, most smaller, who have also suffered from genocidal attrocities.
All need to be remembered, and guarded against recurring.
Perhaps by remembering all genocides together the memory of all of them and the principle of peaceful coexistence made lot stronger for everyone.
An absolutely brilliant article which I will be re-reading and sharing often over time. Puts so many elements in place. Thank you JVL, I would otherwise have missed this. I will report back on any valuable debates that may arise elsewhere when I share the essay.
Distinguished Professor uses the definite article to make specific reference to ‘a’ Holocaust as though there has only been one throughout history, even recent history, in a country where a ‘liberal elite’ use laws controlling ‘Freedom of Speech & Thought’. Quite a tradition. The ‘Devouring’ almost eliminated another culture that has no monuments & no written history………the Gypsies.
I agree with Amanda. This is a brilliant article and I’m sorry Jay is so dismissive.
We need to understand the way that the holocaust has not only been weaponised but how it has become part of a new ideology of exclusion of Muslims and others. How it has become part of a new narrative that imparts a moral righteousness to Western imperialism. The holocaust has been used by the German state to expiate its guilt whilst targeting the left and socialists, that is those who opposed the Nazis as the new Nazis.
The very German state that refused to prosecute Nazi war criminals when they were young and which allowed Nazi judges to continue in post whilst demonising the opposition to Hitler such as the Edelweiss Pirates.
It is not for nothing that the principal means of attacking support for the Palestinians and opposition to Zionism is called the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance.
The memory of the holocaust and the lessons to be drawn by the German state and imperialism are not ones of welcoming the refugee and opposing racism but its exact opposite.
Perhaps Richard Spencer, the neo-Nazi founder of the alt-Right understood the zeitgeist best when, after Trump had missed out the Jews altogether at a holocaust memorial day ceremony, tweeted that the holocaust needed to be ‘dejudified’. In reality this is what has happened
As author of the first standard work on the Nazi genocide against the Romani people [Desting of Europe’s Gypsies, co-authored with Dr Donald Kenrick – 1971] and general-secretary of the World Romani Congress, 1971-81, I’m amazed and shocked that no mention is made of Roma in this otherwise enthralling article. Jews and Gypsies were the two people targetted on racial grounds, based on racial research and copies legislation. I draw attention here too to the massed forced explusion of Roma from Kosovo in 1998-9 as an example of genocidal policies that should be ranked alongside the Holocaust and the continuum that this article in otherways so well expresses.
Thank you!
I’m an ignoramus encountering the work of A. Dirk Moses for the first time. (As far as I recall.) To me it appears fascinating terrain. One I’ll visit; but sadly am unlikely to have time to explore properly.
Grattan Puxon, good to “meet” you online. Apologies I haven’t read your books either. (Is there nowhere in A. Dirk Moses publications where that he does adequately include Romani people?)
I used the word “terrain”. To describe the themes and debates raised across this website, the image of a “mosaic” might be better in every respect! Including the fact that the pieces of this mosaic are countless and stretch across the world.
Herem for me, some vividly coloured mosaic pieces from A. Dirk Moses’ article.
“The vehemence of the reaction” … “denunciation, sarcasm, and indignation” … “heresy trials”. “Outrage replaces sobriety, perhaps exacerbated in social media’s capacity to channel and publicize political emotions.” … “witnessing … nothing less than a public exorcism performed by the self-appointed high priests”.
Of course, he’s not writing about Zionists and the Labour Party.
But I am.
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By the way, this is not just the JVL website is it? Isn’t it a successful attempt to build a *colloquium* in the widest richest sense of that word? It’s argumentative, many dimensional, brave, colourful, wrong/right, open-minded, noisy and lively.
No wonder Starmer and his pals want everyone in or associated with JVL expelled and expunged. As now a washed-out, fading, flickering shadow of a Left Party how could they feel otherwise about any reminders of their past and what might have been?