The Holocaust Carrier Pigeon
January 1995
This article was written specifically for German readers and was published in the German newspaper, Die Zeit, in commemoration of the fiftieth anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz by the Soviet Army, on January 27, 1945.
I
It has been reported here that Germany is hoping that the ceremonies marking the fiftieth anniversary of the liberation of the death camps will also symbolize a historic reconciliation between the German and Jewish peoples. Holocaust survivors in Israel were outraged and protested. The approach of this significant date has again raised, with great intensity, questions about the relations between the two peoples, and about the need for, and the possibility of, reconciliation.
It’s not easy for me to address the German reader about the Holocaust. I almost always feel as if I am not saying exactly what I intend to say. There’s always some slight distortion, either of excess caution or of the opposite, overstatement.
Sometimes, instead of expressing my own private pain, I find myself speaking as a representative. Or, I address the person facing me as a spokesman. The relationships are complex, so both sides are often tempted — consciously or not — to become manipulative. For myself, I am aware to what extent insult is the dominant sentiment within me when I think about the Holocaust. Not wrath and not hatred or a desire for revenge; I am rather bitterly insulted by the fact that human beings were treated this way. I know that there is nothing like insult to trap me in puerile, helpless resentment, humiliating in itself.
On the other hand, I sometimes meet Germans who are so strangely and enthusiastically addicted to overwhelming, total feelings of guilt that any practical dialogue with them is impossible. This guilt may also make dialogue among themselves impossible. I’m similarly disgusted, incidentally, by the manner in which certain Israelis behave in their encounters with Germans. It’s as if they are declaring: “We will never withdraw from the territory we have conquered in the German conscience.” Both these approaches are unacceptable. But is there another way? Is it already possible, fifty years later, to find the right voice, a clean voice, for discussion?
II
I have frequently been invited to meetings between Israeli and German intellectuals. Twice I accepted the invitations. I used to believe that both sides have to bear the burden of what happened in the Holocaust. In a twisted way, I regarded both, the Germans and the Jews, as “partners” in a terrifying historic event, and in order to loosen the ties suffocating the souls of both nations, we now needed each other.
I no longer believe this. True, we must talk. Talking is useful even to remind ourselves of what is sometimes in doubt — that it is still possible to believe in humankind. But I feel that, to be prepared for real dialogue, each of the two parties must first learn to speak with himself. To utterly cleanse the “story he tells himself” of any idealization and demonization, and to be very much on guard against manipulation. Perhaps, to reach such clarity, both nations need to heal completely — not only from the consequences of the Holocaust, but also from the abnormality of each of their cultures and histories, which allowed the Holocaust to take place in the way that it did.
It seems to me that Israelis are now, more than in the past, able to conduct this dialogue among themselves, even if we are still at the beginning of the road. Israelis have, in recent years, done much to address painful questions. These include the arrogant insensitivity that caused Israelis to blame the Holocaust’s victims for having gone to their deaths “like lambs to the slaughter,” without defending themselves. There’s also the cruelty with which native Israelis treated the survivors in the first years of the new state of Israel — demanding in so many ways that they remain silent, that they hide themselves from public attention, that they feel shame for what they endured and for having survived.
But there are other, more challenging questions that still haven’t been touched. How did the Jewish people — as a nation and as a society — find itself trapped in a situation that allowed the extermination of a third of its population? This happened despite the fact that between 1917 and 1933 the Jews had before them the alternative of building themselves a national life and a political entity in Palestine. Why did the nation not have the power to save itself from the warped circumstances of the Diaspora before antisemitism reached its most extreme form in the Holocaust? And how can we free ourselves today from the tragic deformation that the Holocaust still dictates in so many areas of life and of consciousness? This is evident in our absolute, almost eerie insecurity about whether our children and we have a future, and in our feeling that death still shadows us, so that we are doomed to experience a life of living death.
There are other questions as well. How can we purge ourselves of our self-victimization, yet also adopt the right attitude toward the great power we have today, and toward our aggressive and cruel urges? How can we cope with our problematic perception of ourselves as a “chosen people,” when chosenness always contains an element of exclusion or even of a curse? How can a nation that perceives itself as unique and special learn to live with the trivialities of daily life, a life devoid of miracles and catastrophes? How can it finally find the right place for itself in the family of nations?
We won’t get the answers to these most piercing questions from the Germans. They aren’t equipped to respond to them. But can we, Israeli Jews, respond to the fundamental questions that the Holocaust and World War II raised among the Germans?
III
Sometimes I wonder why the Germans so desperately need the presence of an Israeli at their discussions of World War II and the Holocaust. Is it that those who want to have such discussions, yet are anxious about them, need such a presence to jump-start the process? Perhaps some unconsciously seek absolution from the Jewish representatives, an absolution that no person is permitted to ask for and no person empowered to grant? Just as in modern Jewish discourse about the Holocaust, the Germans must do the major part of the work within themselves. The fundamental questions that World War II and the Holocaust raise have no necessary connection to Jews or Israelis. The German discourse on the Holocaust is, first and foremost, an internal German one. It touches on questions of identity and memory and education, and of the still complicated attitude toward the concept of homeland (Heimat). There is also the question of antisemitic concepts in German culture and thought, of attitudes to force and militarism. These latter are especially pressing as Germany becomes the strongest power in Europe with no one to brake it except its own self-restraint. And, of course, there is also the question of Germany’s willingness and readiness to adopt democracy in its most profound way, granting legitimacy to other entities and desires.
*
A small linguistic matter catches my attention whenever I visit Europe, especially German-speaking countries. People often talk to me about “what happened then.” “Then”—that is, once, in the past, things happened, but they no longer do, it’s all over. But in Hebrew, or in Yiddish (actually, in any language that Jews use to talk about the Holocaust), people never speak of “then.” They speak of “there.” “There” indicates that in that “there”—not only in Germany, but in the range of human behavior — the thing still exists. Or happens. And in any case, it’s not over. Certainly not for us.
Because we Israelis, have almost no choice. It’s becoming clearer to us: as time passes and it is possible to approach the facts, ever more powerful tidal waves of memories and emotions flood Israeli consciousness. Only two months ago, a television program about the attempt made during the war to ransom Jews from the Nazis captivated the entire country. Dozens of broadcast hours and numerous newspaper articles were devoted to the effort. With a single touch on the button of memory, the entire Holocaust broke forth from within us with a force that caught even us by surprise. We again realized that the new generation, the so-called new Israelis — supposedly fearless, devoid of their parents’ anxieties — find themselves constantly confronting the memory of the Holocaust. They are doomed to revisit it on all levels of life, in their mental associations, in their moral choices, in their behavioral codes. Time and again, we discover that even if we reject the role, almost each one of us is a carrier pigeon for the Holocaust.