This week I wanted to share two more posts that I placed on our class discussion board back in the day. These also highlight how the poison of centuries of antisemitism throughout Europe eventually culminated in the horrors of the Holocaust and were a major contributing factor towards igniting World War Two. Here is what I wrote then:
The Anti-Defamation League website contained a piece which should be a sobering reminder of when the Holocaust specifically began. Most people are not aware of this date, but it was pivotal point which sealed the terrible fate of European Jewry. As the article from January 18th related, January 20, 2012 is the 70th anniversary of the Wannsee Conference which convened in the affluent Berlin suburb of the same name in 1942. This secret gathering of numerous high-ranking Nazi officials was the diabolical start of detailed plans to begin the physical extermination of Europeās Jewish population. The conference would develop the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration/death camp complex as the main liquidation center to rid Europe of Jews and other hated minorities deemed inferior by the Nazis.
In 2001 the BBC and HBO collaborated to produce Conspiracy, an absorbing, yet chilling made-for-tv account of Hitlerās leading cohorts and how they became the leading architects of the Holocaust. Prestigious British film and stage actor Kenneth Branagh portrayed Reinhard Heydrich (who I mentioned in a previous lesson) ā as a fairly recent biography has been published detailing his leading responsibility for World War Two period atrocities. American actor Stanley Tucci (of The Devil Wears Prada fame) played Adolf Eichmann who was eventually captured by the the Israelis and was executed for war crimes in 1962.
The Anti-Defamation League article stresses one of the major points that have been repeated in our lecture series ā of how centuries of antisemitism throughout Europe eventually built to such an extreme outcome. The Holocaust was a concerted attempt at complete ethnic cleansing which came close to completely wiping out the Jewish population of the continent. For anyone who is interested Conspiracy is available through Netflix.
Source Material: http://adl.org/
My next post for our discussion board pointed to the fact that virulent antisemitism was hardly limited to far right-wing Nazi Germany and itās allies during the Holocaust and World War Two. My own studies pointed to the same extremes within the far left-wing Communist regime of Soviet Russia, but which existed much earlier in Russian history, just as it had in Germany.
Here is what I wrote then:
Wistrich makes some striking points that I was not aware of regarding the intense antisemitism which existed in Tsarist Russia prior to the Bolshevik (Communist) Revolution which toppled the Romanov dynasty in 1918. I was aware that this prejudice and persecution existed throughout the Russian Empire (particularly in regions like Lithuania and Ukraine). I had also read about the anti-Jewish pogroms (violent riots usually directed against Jews) and often led by the Cossacks. However, I did not realize that many intellectuals in Russia considered the Jews to be sworn enemies of the state as Wistrich points out. (Pg. 155)
Where the Russian Orthodox clergy is concerned it would hardly come as a surprise that they harbored this ill-will as well. This was much like the attitude of the Catholic hierarchies towards Jews in other parts of Europe. I remarked in a previous lesson at being surprised at how the Soviets of the post-World War Two era instigated antisemitic hatred and resentments all over again. This was being regurgitated despite the fact that most of Europeās Jews had already been eliminated between 1941-1945. Naturally, the storyline of Sunshine (1999) brought the fear and loathing of Jews in Soviet-dominated Hungary vividly to life, and could make the viewer really feel the paranoia and near hysteria of the postwar period.
In any case, it was intriguing how Wistrich mentions in one of his earlier books Antisemitism – The Longest Hatred (1992) where he compares the hatred and discrimination of the Jews from the āpaganā era as opposed to Christian domination of Europe. He said: pagan anti-Semitismā¦remained essentially cultural rather than theological or racist, never developing the dynamic of institutionalized discrimination, stigmatization, and humiliation of the Jews which would be the historic legacy of Christianity. (Pg. 12) Without a doubt, as history continued to the point where Christianity had its stranglehold over Europe, (especially after the fall of the Western Roman Empire) the relative position of the Jews became tenuous at best. Relentless persecution prior to that time was not a given.
