Yehuda Bauer
Yad Vashem, Israel

The holocaust phenomenon needs to be put in context. I want to deal with contexts - educational, historical and political - because we all need to understand how what we are doing fits into the reality of the modern world. Is that which we want to achieve in the educational field, and in the public discourse generally - by dealing with the holocaust - a sensible and realistic proposition? And what exactly do we want to achieve?

Do we think that the education of young people about the holocaust will make them better human beings? And if we want to deal with problems of discrimination, persecution, racism and genocide, why choose the holocaust, rather than any of the other genocides, or genocidal attacks, or cases of discrimination and prejudice that have marked the history of the century that is now drawing to its close? Last but not least, what do possible answers to these questions mean for the situation in any particular country or culture, in this case the Czech Republic? I think that it is impossible to relate to these questions without discussing the context of the holocaust, both the historical one and the topical one. We are actually talking not about one context, but about several.

The first context is that of despair. The American sociologist Rudolph Rummel produced statistics claiming that about 169 million civilians were killed by governments or government-like political groups between 1900 and 1987. In addition, some 34 million soldiers were killed in wars during the same period. Rummel calls the killing of civilians "democide", and within that general category he deals with genocide, which he defines in accordance with the United Nations Genocide Convention of 1948 - although that definition is imprecise and problematic. Out of these 169 million victims, he says that 38 million were victims of genocide. Within that number, close to 6 million were Jews. And their case, he says, is the extreme example of genocide. Not because they suffered more - they didn't. Not because they suffered less than others - they didn't. But there are elements of the holocaust that have no precedent.

Rummel's statistics have been challenged. Some say that he exaggerated, some that he underestimated the figures. It doesn't matter. Whether the true figures are 10 per cent more or 10 per cent less, we are faced with the realization that humans are the only mammals that murder each other in huge numbers, that in the first four-fifths of this century between four and five times more civilians were murdered than soldiers, and that the murderers were governments or political bodies. Democratic governments are not innocent of such murders, but their victims account for about 1 per cent of the total number at most. All the others were killed by authoritarian, dictatorial, or what we inaccurately call totalitarian, regimes or political bodies. And why do we talk about only civilians? What are soldiers, if not people - usually young men, dressed in funny clothes we call uniforms, who are sent to kill other people for a variety of reasons determined by rulers or governing bodies or their representatives. Can the killing of them be exempted from the charge of mutual murder?

Why do people kill other people? Because there is a clear tendency in basic human instincts to do away with people who are perceived, for some reason, as being an existential threat to the individual within a society or to the herd, to which the individual belongs or is considered to belong. Of course, we are all herd animals, and anyone who bemoans all that has happened in our century should remember that previous centuries were no better. The Manchu conquest of China, the mass mutual killings in India, the Turkish incursions into Europe, the Thirty Years' War all took place in the 17th century. Then, there were the interminable wars of the 18th century in Europe and in North America. The colonial devastation of African countries, the Civil War in the United States and the destruction of the American Indians - and the Balkan massacres - all took place in the 19th century. These much more than testify to the fact that our century was not something out of the ordinary - except that we had better technical means than our forebears had, and there were more of us, so more could be killed.

Are we then programmed for mutual destruction? The holocaust can certainly serve as a proof of that proposition. There are those who call the behavior of the German Nazis and their allies "inhuman". I disagree. The horror of the holocaust is not that the Nazis were inhuman; the horror is that they were human. There are hidden tiny bits of Himmler and Eichmann in all humans, in all of us - in you and me - and they can come up when the context is right, in different degrees and for different lengths of time.

The murder of the Jews was perpetrated by the government of one of the most civilized countries on earth, using a bureaucracy that utilized routines developed for peaceful everyday life in order to organize murders, among them the murder of a million or more children. At the time, most people in German society, and many in the countries occupied by Germany, not only acted with hostile indifference to the victims, but became a natural recruiting ground for mass murderers. Millions of other people looked on. Most of them did not react - out of fear for themselves and their families, out of indifference to the other, or out of an inner satisfaction that the others, and not their own kind, were the victims. The exceptions were few.

After the end of the horror, more than 54 years ago, we - that is the human race - acted out similar behavior towards tragedies that occurred elsewhere: in Algeria, in Cambodia, in Rwanda, in the Balkans, and in other places. Few of the perpetrators were punished, whether German Nazis and their helpers, or the perpetrators of other genocides. We covered ourselves with a lot of talking. We acted little, or late, or both. The holocaust was organized by bureaucracies, civilian and military, that moved large numbers of perpetrators, but it was not caused by bureaucracies. Somebody, and something, started the process that made the bureaucrats send people to their deaths, after having isolated, dispossessed and branded the victims - because bureaucracies do not move unless someone gives the push. That push was given by ideology which, in the case of the holocaust, was based on an age-old marginalization, dislike and hatred of Jews, which became an integral part of what we call "Christian anti-Semitism".

But Christian anti-Semitism never developed a genocidal ideology. That was left to a secularized version. Modern anti-Semitism, though based on the old religious form, became qualitatively different by turning into a racist, biological, pseudoscientific world-view, a Weltanschauung. The National Socialist wanted to create an entirely new kind of society built on something completely new: a hierarchy of races. National Socialism could be seen as the only real attempt in the 20th century at a "total revolution". All the other revolutions, even the Communist one, were based on ideas that were as old as the hills - change the hierarchy of social classes, destroy old religions and found new ones, expand empires, have one national group, rule or destroy others. But here, with National Socialists, there was something different.

The concept of a race - unchangeable, scientific - and the idea that only one race was really human, namely the Nordic people of the Aryan race, the highest group among the Aryans. All the others were less than human, or were transitions between humans and animals, such as black people. In this scheme, Jews were not human at all. In fact, they were diabolical creatures that had to be removed from contact with real Aryan humans. Even the so-called Mischlinge of the first degree - people with one Jewish parent - were persecuted and, towards the end of the war, faced forced labor, and in an increasing number of cases, death. The National Socialists wanted to change not just Germany and Europe but, with the help of their allies, the whole world into a new society of this kind. They aspired to give new meaning to being "human", and their legacy is still with us. We are far from having overcome it. The scorpion may have changed its shape and color, but the poison is still there. That, my friends, is the context of despair.

The second context is the context of hope. Alexander (Sasha) Tomicek of the Czech village of Kniagninky in Volyn, 12 kilometers from Lutsk, drove to town in his horse and cart along the Lutsk ghetto fence. A fifteen-year-old boy, Hersch Goldgammer, who had fled to Lutsk from the Lithuanian border-town of Suwalki, was crouching near the fence. Mr Tomicek knew Hersch, because he had previously bribed the Ukrainian guard to permit Hersch to work at his farm. This time, however, there were rumors that the ghetto would be liquidated, and Tomicek told Hersch not to return to the ghetto.

Hersch stayed with his rescuer for more than two years - hidden in a hole in a stable, which Tomicek built for him with straw and wood, to hide him. There he brought him food. The boy could leave his hiding place only at night. Germans and Ukrainians were hunting hidden Jews and their rescuers. One day, in 1943, the Germans surprised the farmer because somebody had apparently denounced Tomicek, saying that he was hiding a Jew. Hersch was quickly hidden under the rabbit cages, and the Germans were distracted by Tomicek's daughter, Anna, who was marking the lambs just then. Tomicek quickly threw some manure on the rabbit cages, and the Germans did not look there. After the liberation, Hersch stayed with the Tomiceks until the farmer recommended to him that he go to Palestine, which he did. The Tomiceks returned to the Czech lands, and Sasha Tomicek died in this country in 1959.

He, and his wife and daughter, were involved in the rescue of Hersch for purely humanitarian reasons. The boy had no money and could not work for the farmer because during the day he was hiding. Tomicek rescued a soul and, according to Jewish tradition, he thereby rescued a whole world. There were not too many rescuers. At Yad Vashem, registered in accordance with quite strict criteria, the records indicate that there were close to 1,600 all over Europe. A few dozen of these were Czechs, from the Czech lands or outside of them like Tomicek. There were undoubtedly many more, and maybe our criteria are too strict, but mostly they were a tiny percentage of people in their countries.

There were whole nations or groups that were more friendly to Jews - and not only to Jews. The Danes rescued practically all of their small Jewish population. The mass of Norwegians were supportive, as were most Italians, many French and, proportionately, even more Belgians. Five thousand Jews hid even in Berlin, of whom some 1,500 survived. Yet the story of the holocaust is not a story of rescue, but of the failure of rescue, and one should be wary of telling the story any differently than what it was. We are in the truth business. It is the story of the attempted total murder of a group, as defined by the perpetrators. Yet in the worst situations, amidst populations that were indifferent, afraid for their own lives, there were the few who acted differently. The Nazi project was of a "total" character: everyone was to be included, defined, directed. There were thousands who acted against the all-encompassing terror, though there were millions who did not. A few acted against, and the classic reply of the rescuer to the question "why did you do it?" was: "But everyone would have acted the same way."

The answer is factually incorrect because, of course, most people did not act as the rescuers did. Yet it is psychologically revealing. People, that is all of us - you and me - are capable of rescue actions endangering ourselves. Context, character, education, society - all these are determinants in this. True, as I said, the rescuers were few, but they existed and showed that it could have been different. Just as we are capable of being Himmlers and Eichmanns, we are capable of being Tomiceks. Without that possibility, there would be no sense in studying genocide, or in education about it. Without that possibility, this conference would have no purpose at all. With that possibility, we have a direction in which we can go. The holocaust, through these exceptions in an exceptionally brutal context, can serve as a source for role models. That, my friends, is the context of hope.

The third context is that of comparison. Why has this particular genocide become the symbol for the others? Why has the holocaust increasingly become the symbol of evil as such? The Nazis conducted at least three genocidal campaigns.

Their policy towards Czechs and Serbs could be described as of genocidal intent. The Sinti and Roma in the Reich itself, that is Germany, Austria and the Czech lands, were to be either murdered or sterilized or deported. Those selected by Himmler for deportation were the small minority of Roma whom the Nazis defined as so-called pure Gypsies. As far as the Roma everywhere were concerned, all those who were still wandering were to be murdered. The settled ones were to be left alive, but the definition of settled Roma was insecure. Roma villagers and villages - in the Crimea, Poland and Latvia, for instance - became victims. Some 5,600 mainly German Roma were gassed in Auschwitz. Some 14,000 others died in the camp. Five thousand Austrian Roma from the Bergenland in Austria were gassed in Chelmno. Some 2,000 Polish Roma were gassed in Treblinka.

There was no plan to murder all Roma on April 20, 1942, Hitler's birthday. Himmler noted the result of a discussion with Hitler: "Keine Vernichtung der Zigeuner (No annihilation of the Gypsies)." In August of the same year, he issued an order for Poland that settled Gypsies should not be bothered. But a considerable proportion of European Roma, who fell under the Nazi description of wandering people, were murdered - and not only by the Germans, but in at least in as large numbers by Croat and Romanian fascists, in a clear case of the most brutal genocide.

The parallels with the fate of the Jews are obvious. The differences lie not only in the fact that the annihilation of the Jews was to be total, but mainly in the sense of the position of anti-Semitism in the Nazi world-view. Roma and Poles were sub-humans in their eyes; Jews were not human at all. Jews were their fantasized central enemies; Roma were a social issue to be solved, in large part, through murder. Poles were to be decimated in huge masses, and the remnants were to be enslaved, but there is another difference: after the war, Jews slowly began to demand recognition of their tragedy, and at least partial restitution. Anti-Semitism was, and is, pushed to the margins of most, but by no means all, democratic societies. It is definitely there, and might reawaken as a mass phenomenon, given certain conditions.

The Polish people were condemned by the Nazis to a slave-like existence, their intelligentsia were largely murdered, and millions were to be deported beyond the Ural mountains. After the war, however, the Polish nation was reconstituted - and after the liberation from Communism, its national existence was called into full bloom again. The Roma fared differently from either Jews or Poles, and their fate was worse. Anti-Zigeunism is prevalent to this day. The memories and the restitution rights of the Roma people are still largely ignored. There is discrimination and hatred towards them in many European countries, and outside Europe as well.

What, then, are the reasons prompting us to deal with the holocaust as a symbol for other genocides? I would suggest several answers.

1) The holocaust is the only case I know where every single individual of the targeted group was sentenced to death for the crime of having been born.

2) All Jews were to have been murdered everywhere where German influence was decisive. Ultimately, this was to extend, with the help of their allies, to the whole world.

3) Nazi anti-Semitism was ultimately totally unpragmatic. They even killed Jewish armament workers. For instance, Jewish workers in important plants producing for the German war-effort in Berlin were deported at the end of February 1943, although by then, after Stalingrad, the Nazis needed every pair of hands. They murdered Jewish slave-workers building a vital strategic road between Lvov and the Crimea. They were murdered while they were working.

Do you know the story of the frog and the scorpion? The scorpion wanted to cross the river and asked the frog to carry him on his back. The frog agreed, provided the scorpion promised not to sting him. The scorpion promised. As they were crossing the river, the scorpion stung the frog. As the frog was sinking, he turned to the scorpion and said: "Why did you do it? Now both of us will drown." And the scorpion answered: "Because I cannot help being a scorpion." The Nazis killed off people who could work as slaves for them because they were Nazis. In all the other genocides, the ideological motives had a relation to reality, whether they were nationalistic hopes or economic and social reasons, or military ones. But Nazi ideology regarding the Jews was based on pure ideology, pure fantasy, with no relation to reality. They talked about a Jewish world conspiracy. In fact, the disunited and quarrelsome Jewish groups could not even present a more or less united front against the Nazis. And, of course, had the Jews really had anything like the power the Nazis thought they had, the holocaust would not have happened. The Nazis robbed the victims, of course, but that was not a reason for the murder; it was its outcome.

4) The holocaust concerned a people - small as it was - that was the bearer of ancient traditions that formed, and form, an important part of the civilization the Nazis wanted to destroy. The Nazis turned against Christianity because it was the outgrowth from Judaism and had inherited from it the humanistic basis that the Nazis wanted to abolish. The murder of the Jews created a basic problem for Christianity. Because, of course, the German Nazis and their helpers had all been baptized. Nineteen hundred years after the coming of the Christian Messiah, his people were murdered by baptized heathens.

For Europe and the Americas, this is an additional background to dealing with this particular genocide, which was not only unprecedented, but also concerned the very core of the civilization in which it took place. But once we realize all this, we also realize that the impact of the holocaust is universal because it can happen again - not exactly in the same form or in the same place, but committed by the same groups. It might not be against the Jews. We must realize that it can happen to everyone, by everyone - and we must mobilize against it everyone that can be mobilized. The destruction of the Jews becomes a symbol for the dangers that all of us face. Every child must be reached; every government must be convinced of the need to deny potential genocide by denying it a primary social, educational and ideological basis.

That, my friends, is the context of comparison.

Finally, there is the context of the political society. Not every dictatorship is genocidal - and not every dictatorship kills millions of others. It kills millions for non-genocidal reasons, for instance. But all dictatorships have the potential for murder, and most of them engage in it. Not all democracies are innocent angels. Churchill once said that democracy is the worst form of government imaginable, except for all the alternatives. But, in this century, no democracies waged war against each other. And while torture and injustice happen in democracies as well, their occurrences are relatively rare and one can fight them by democratic means. One cannot do that in dictatorships.

Most countries today claim that they are democracies, and some of them are (and some are not). Yet all are threatened with developments that are based on group hatred - hatred of other ethnic groups, nationalities, of people with a different color of skin, of different religions, of different cultures. Most of these hatreds have deep historical roots. They are not uprooted easily. They can, and they do, lead to human tragedies and disasters. (After all, as I said, we can all become murderers.) So we need a counterweight.

And it is much easier to create such a counterweight if we can mobilize democratically elected governments to support educational action against the dangers of mass murder and genocide not only in their own countries but all over the world. It might even be a step in the direction of a new type of consensus, a political consensus that could be directed towards practical measures taken on an international scale to create a genocide early warning system. This might then be tied to the application of deterrence against potential genocidal murders, which in the first instance might help them to decrease, and in the second instance work toward preventing genocidal events altogether.

A first step towards this could be an agreement on education, where education becomes a measure of the political self-interest of all the governments involved, because a consensus of humanism and pluralism will be seen, it is to be hoped, as having served the interests of all. By teaching the holocaust, both for its own sake and for its universal importance as a symbol of evil, we would thereby, perhaps paradoxically, be striving to emerge from the context of despair, not yielding to despair, and possibly enter the context of hope.

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