THE GERMANS AND THE JEWS
How can Jews speak rationally about the Germans? Six million defense-less people were starved and brutally murdered by Nazi fiends. Their death is a memory of horror unequalled in Jewish history. Twenty-four years have passed since the death of Hitler. But who can forgive?
The German question is an obsession of the middle-aged Jewish community. To thousands of Jews Germany is still just another name for antisemitism and pogrom. There is nothing that Germans can do that will atone for their sins. Neither reparations nor aid to Israel are real compensation. Neither war-hating youth nor Willy Brandt are signs of repentance. Only the return of the victims would clear the slate. But that is impossible – and so is forgiveness.
A friend of mine travels the world. But he refuses to set foot in Germany. Another buys the products of every exotic country. But German goods – never! The rabbi who was advised by his congre-gation to get rid of his Volkswagen was the victim of no hysteria. He was up against an old cold hatred too strong to die.
In a recent conversation, I was told that the Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia was good. A liberal regime in Prague would have undermined the East German government of communist Walter Ulbricht, and threatened the division of Germany. A united German-people, my adviser advised, would be a disaster. First of all, they would rearm. And secondly, they deserve to be divided.
It is commonplace to say that a man should not live in a past he cannot change. But how else can we handle our guilt? After all, we survived the holocaust and they died. Our hatred of Germany is our only weapon against a gnawing conscience. Did the Jews of America do everything possible to save their brothers in Europe? Did we forego every pleasure to save their lives? Of course not.
AND THE JEWS
by Sherwin Wine
The hatred of the Germans is ironic. There was no culture in all of Europe more intimate to the Jews than German culture, The Rhine valley was the homeland of European Jewry. From its cities Jewish merchants trekked eastward to found the communities of Bohemia and Poland. From its banks Hebrew traders carried the language of Frankish tribes to the distant reaches of the Volga and the Caucasus. Yiddish may be written in Hebrew letters. and peppered with Slavic words. It may be spoken with shrugs of the shoulder and dreams of Palestine. But it is a German language.
Protest is of no avail. The only country in Europe where many middle-aged American Jews can feel any language connection to their childhood is the Nazi homeland. The children of Russian Jews may grit their teeth when they hear German spoken. But they can understand it. Although their ancestors may have lived deep in the Ukrainian steppe hundreds of miles from the German border, the spoken words of Hamburg have a more familiar ring than the conversation of Kiev.
The Jews and the German penetration of Eastern Europe cannot be separated. Thousands of Jews whose ancestors had never seen the Rhine or the Elbe were caught up in the advance. Since the cities of Bohemia, Poland, and Lithuania were founded by German merchants and soldiers, the language of the cities was German. The Jew who came to live and trade in these urban centers, even if he had been born among the Tartars or the Greeks, did not learn the peasant tongue of the countryside. He used the German of the cities and turned it into Yiddish. And even after the language of the Poles and the Russians had become respectable and even after the German conquerors had been assimilated to their Slavic setting, the Jew never gave up his German speech. It became the sign of his uniqueness and the heart of his folk culture. If the Anglosaxons were the western penetration of the Teutonic empire, the Jews were their unwary eastern counterpart.
The irony goes farther. The Jewish genius of modern times is the product of Germany. Marx, Freud, and Einstein may have been Jews. They may have been mavericks because they were Jews. But they wrote and thought in German; and: they were the products of German schools. Jews who lived in other nations were rarely so creative. The Jews of England and France were duller. Their geniuses were less brilliant.
The Jewish hatred of Germany may derive from more than the holocaust. It may be. the fury of the rejected lover. To be loyal to German culture for centuries, and to be massacred by the leaders of this culture, is to experience unspeakable self-hate. Jewish passivity in the face of Nazi cruelty may-have been due to the unconscious admiration which so many Jews still extended to all things German. They could not bear to resist what they secretly loved.
But the past is the past. It cannot be changed. It cannot be redeemed. It can only be explained. Even vengeance is tasteless when the victims cannot return. Hunting down old Nazi: war criminals may make us-feel as though we are not betraying the dead. But it keeps us from facing the teal issue. The real issue is the future. The future of the Jew is tied up with the future of the Western world. And the evolution of the Western world will depend on what the largest and most prosperous nation in Europe – the resurrected people of Germany – will do.
If we as Jews prefer to deal with the children of the Nazis with the same unyielding hatred we extend to their parents, we shall be harming ourselves more than those we hate. If we as humanists prefer to deal with the Germans with the irrational notion of collective guilt, we shall be cutting off our future to spite our past. Our relationship to Germany can only be intelligent if we dismiss certain misconceptions about the contemporary Germans. Here they are.
(1) Germany is a ‘has-been.’ country. Despite two major military defeats, total devastation of urban centers, and a division into three parts (West Germany, East Germany, and Austria), Germany is the richest and most populous nation in Europe. West Germany’s currency is the envy of every other country; and its work discipline the marvel of the world. The industrial center of NATO is neither England nor France. It is the Ruhr. Like Japan, the defeated enemy has out-distanced the victors. And like Japan, it cannot be held down in grateful subservience. Germans will demand a place appropriate to their power. They will be freer Of America and more willing to negotiate with the Russians. They will assert their own independence and invite the East Germans to share it. In the long run, a neutral united Germany is preferable to the dangerous confrontation of Russian and American troops along the Elbe. The emergence of any strong nation whether Germany, Japan, or China which can challenge the monopoly of power by America and Russia, may bring an end to the cold war and open new possibilities for peace.
(2) Germany is experiencing a Nazi revival. The Jewish press has been filled for four years with horrible predictions of Nazi success. The new National Democratic Party was seen as a tool of unrepentant Hitlerites. If they achieved representation in the Federal parliament (which seemed likely) they would-reflect the unchanged bigotry of the Geriaa people. But they lost. In the last election the pessimists were embarrassed, The Socialists and their allies won. By their victory they displaced from
office the Democrats who had challenged for twenty years. The rising level of conscientious objection to military service, and the widespread youth protests against the authoritarian structure of German schools and factories are indicative of an important change. Hitler found his idealistic supporters among middle-class youth. Today they openly repudiate his memory.
(3) Germans are militaristic. If attitudes are expressed in behavior, then Americans today are more Witaristic than the Germans. And so are the Russians. Both Germany and Japan have found more useful ways to express their power. In matters of trade they have become the Jews of the world, while Israel is now producing the finest soldiers.
The German military tradition seems to be floundering. The recruiting of volunteer career soldiers is at an all-time low. The lack of discipline in the army is the constant complaint of commanding officers. And the level of desertion has risen. If there is one profession it is no longer fashionable to assume, it is the military career. In fact, it may now be necessary to import Israeli advisers to shape up the army and restore its morale.
Many forget that Germany has several traditions. One is the military tradition of the Prussian Frederick the Great, which has dominated German politics for over two centuries (and which, in World War II, became the Hollywood caricature of the German). The other is the cosmopolitan tradition of Lessing, Goethe, and Weimar, which we choose to forget, and which is equally German. Young Germans do not have to repudiate either their culture or their tradition to become a peaceful people. There is no single German ideology to accept. There are many historic German options.
(4) Germans are still antisemitic. The antisemitism of Germans is difficult to assess – for an obvious reason. There are no Jews left to be antisemitic to. Since overt public Jew-hatred is forbidden by law, it is highly likely that much bigotry is never spoken. The new scapegoats are the Italian, Greek, and Spanish labor imports who find a Teutonic setting for the effort.
After the war, the liberated nations-of Eastern Europe-pleaded their innocence and thrust the full blame of the holocaust on to the Germans. But Hitler was more than a German hero. His antisemitic fascism was widely popular throughout Slavic Europe. Hitler certainly did not drip more venom or malice than the average Ukrainian antisemite. He certainly did not sound more hateful than the average Latvian bigot. His uniqueness lay in operations. He combined Polish paranoia with German efficiency. Had he been more tolerant of Slays, he would easily have defeated Stalin and recruited better Nazis east of the Vistula than west of the Oder.
Why don’t we demand rituals of atonement from these other nations? Why is our accusation so narrow and so unhistorical?
We Jews do not wish to dismiss our cherished beliefs – even if they are false. It is still comfortable to be anti-German even if twenty-four years later it is no longer appropriate.
If we can dismiss the misconceptions, then it will be possible for Jews to do something emotionally difficult but humanistically necessary. It will be possible for Jews to view the unification and independence of Germany as a positive step toward-peace.
Are we condemned to repeating the cliches of the past? Are we unable to transcend destructive self-pity? The question is not only: Can the Germans change? but also: Can we change?