Yehuda Bauer believes that going beyond the standard exploration of why the Nazis sought to annihilate world Jewry may help avert future mass murder.
“The study of the Holocaust in the United States has focused on who was murdered and why,” said Bauer, director of the International Research Institute at Yad Vashem and a professor at the Institute of Contemporary Jewry at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. “But that is only half the story. We need to ask why did the victims become victims. What was life like for them before the Holocaust? What were their lives like during the period of mass murder? And how did they cope?”
“Rethinking the Holocaust,” the title of his new book, was also the topic of Bauer’s discussion May 6 as part of Sonoma State University’s 20th annual Holocaust lecture series. He challenged the audience of nearly 125 “to find out the specific details, because without them you can’t get a basis for future answers. If you don’t do this kind of research you are going against preventing future genocides.”
According to the pre-eminent Holocaust historian, one way to learn from the mistakes of the past is to understand the uniqueness of the Holocaust and also the common threads between all genocides. These lessons must serve as a wake-up call for humanity to choose goodness over evil, he believes.
Bauer’s own research has led him to conclude “that the 20th century does not appear much different from any other century. A study by an American sociologist revealed that from 1900 to 1987 governments killed 169 million civilians and 34 million soldiers, and it concluded that humans are the only species that murders its own.
“Even if the Holocaust is the central turning point in modern civilization,” Bauer said, “it can be repeated again in other societies. Mass murder is mass murder no matter how it’s done. History is littered with examples of genocides.” To illustrate his point, Bauer mentioned how the power of the bureaucracy, radio and the social structure in Rwanda led to genocide in 1994.
The Nazis’ plan to murder every Jew in Europe for illogical and ideologically inconsistent reasons, Bauer emphasized, distinguished the Holocaust from other genocides. Bauer cited how even after German officials increased rations in the Warsaw Ghetto in 1942 to keep their new labor source relatively sated, leaders in Berlin overruled them and ordered all Jews deported to the death camps.
“Have you ever heard of a genocide done against the basic interest of cost-effectiveness?” he asked, pointing out that the Holocaust really comprised three genocides: against the Poles, the Roma (commonly known as Gypsies) and the Jews.
The concentration camps constituted another unique feature of the Nazi genocide and were, Bauer said, “quite unprecedented — especially their element of humiliation. But just because there was nothing like that before doesn’t guarantee there will be nothing after it against another people.”
Ultimately, he said, humanity’s job is to prepare future generations to thwart genocide, but go beyond the clichés. “Clichés are useful. For example, ‘Never Again!’ means we’re frightened it will happen again. We will never forget because we want desperately to forget. But we won’t. So we must delve deeper and go into context.”
One area Bauer will not delve deeper into is the theology of the Holocaust. “Theology is a dead end. The question of God being there or not is totally irrelevant. Humans were there and the result was the same whether or not God tried to intervene. How can we imagine that a good and merciful God allowed the murders of 1.5 million children? Any reason for that is a satanic thought.”
Bauer’s forthrightness appealed to several students in attendance. “This was one of my favorite talks this far,” said Rebecca Packard, a sociology junior. “He kept the audience alive with humor and a different perspective.”
Added Julie Leishman, also a sociology junior: “I thought Professor Bauer tried to get us to look deeper and stop dwelling on death. He wanted us to see what we can do now.”
What we can do now, Bauer said at the end of his talk, “is to teach and study about the Holocaust and everything that transpired during the Second World War and thereafter involving racism, anti-Semitism and xenophobia.
“And maybe we should add to the Ten Commandments: ‘You and future generations shall never become perpetrators, victims, or passive onlookers to mass murder, genocide, or, may it never be repeated, a Holocaust-like tragedy.'”