Hidden Nook

Auschwitz may be viewed as the symbol for the Holocaust, and the liberation of Auschwitz, which we are commemorating today, may be viewed as the symbol of defeating evil at its worst. In remembering Auschwitz, we should try to learn the lessons it teaches us concerning current trends and events, and to do so we should focus on the basic questions: How could it have happened and can it happen again?

A thorough analysis of “how could it have happened?” is given in Goldhagen’s book, “Hitler’s Willing Executioners” (see reference at article’s end). The essential point underscored by the author is that as a result of consistent, unrelenting anti-Jewish propaganda, the elimination of the Jews from German society was accepted as axiomatic, leaving open only two questions: when and how:

The German discourse in some sense had as its foundation the extremely widespread, virtually axiomatic notion that a 'Judenfrage,' a "Jewish Problem," existed. The term 'Judenfrage' presupposed and inhered within it a set of interrelated notions... Because of the Jews' presence, a serious problem existed in Germany. Responsibility for the problem lay with the Jews, not the Germans. As a consequence of these "facts," some fundamental change in the nature of Jews or in their position in Germany was necessary and urgent. Everyone who accepted the existence of a "Jewish Problem" - even those who were not passionately hostile to the Jews - subscribed to these notions…

This axiomatic belief in the existence of the "Jewish Problem," more or less promised an axiomatic belief in the need to "eliminate" Jewishness from Germany as the "problem's" only "solution…"

The toll of these decades of verbal, literary, institutionally organized, and political anti-Semitism was wearing down even those who, true to Enlightenment principles, had resisted the demonization of the Jews. The eliminationist mind-set was so prevalent that the inveterate anti-Semite and founder of the Pan-German League, Friedrich Lange, could with verity declaim the universal belief in the "Jewish Problem," rightly pointing out that the means to the "solution," and not the existence of the "problem" itself, was the only remaining subject of doubt and disagreement. [Goldhagen, pp.80-81; for a longer quotation, see Israpundit.