{"id":53147,"date":"2020-01-28T11:00:42","date_gmt":"2020-01-28T00:00:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/?p=53147"},"modified":"2020-02-21T10:46:14","modified_gmt":"2020-02-20T23:46:14","slug":"auschwitz-and-the-politicisation-of-history","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/auschwitz-and-the-politicisation-of-history\/","title":{"rendered":"Auschwitz and the politicisation of history"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/figure>\n

Looming over this year\u2019s commemoration of the liberation of Auschwitz at Yad Vashem, the Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem, were two contradictory impulses that lay behind the creation of the Jewish state: cosmopolitanism and nationalism. A painful dialogue between these perspectives marked the event, reflected in the utterances of the officials who attended and the objections of those who stayed away.<\/p>\n

In opening the ceremony, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu set the tone<\/a> for what was to come. He described Auschwitz as \u2018an abyss\u2019 and Jerusalem as \u2018a peak\u2019, with the former representing \u2018enslavement\u2019 and \u2018death\u2019 and the latter epitomising \u2018freedom\u2019 and \u2018life\u2019. To give meaning to the lives of those murdered in the Holocaust, he sought to link their deaths to Israel\u2019s founding just a few years later. But in doing this, he risked presenting the massacre of the Jews as a necessary staging post on the \u2018marvelous journey of the revival of our people\u2019. Rather than presenting the fate of Europe\u2019s Jews as a reason to renew the struggle against hatred and genocide everywhere, he focused more narrowly on the interests of the state of Israel and concluded his remarks with a battle cry against Iran.<\/p>\n

The choice between cosmopolitanism and nationalism has always been an especially difficult one for Jews. Historically, the exclusion of \u2018wandering Jews\u2019 from official life meant that they were de facto \u2018citizens of nowhere\u2019, and thus cosmopolitan by default. Yet precisely for that reason, many Jews went on to become ultra-nationalists in the countries into which they were eventually assimilated. A quintessential example was the Austrian writer Stefan Zweig, who as a young man initially welcomed World War I as an opportunity to fight for his country. The same contradictory sentiments are now bound up in Israel\u2019s national identity, animating an abiding tension between democracy and the desire to provide a Jewish homeland.<\/p>\n

The foreign speakers at Yad Vashem this year also embodied this conflict between nationalism and cosmopolitanism. Russian President Vladimir Putin decried<\/a> the weaponisation of history, before doing exactly that, claiming (not inaccurately) that the Holocaust was carried out not just by Germans but also by European collaborators who \u2018were often crueler than their masters\u2019. Not surprisingly, he directed this charge specifically at Ukraine, Lithuania and Latvia\u2014all countries with which Russia has a troubled relationship.<\/p>\n

But it was the Polish government that objected most strenuously to this interpretation. After not being invited to speak, Polish President Andrzej Duda boycotted<\/a> the ceremony. And in anticipation of Putin\u2019s speech, Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki wrote a commentary for Politico<\/em> arguing<\/a> that, \u2018Russia is trying to rewrite history. Far from being a \u201cliberator,\u201d the Soviet Union was a facilitator of Nazi Germany and a perpetrator of crimes of its own\u2014before and after the liberation of Auschwitz\u2019. The official Polish response comes as no surprise, given that this is the same government that, in 2018, passed a law criminalising<\/a> any mention of Polish complicity in the Holocaust.<\/p>\n

The contrast with the remarks delivered by the French and German presidents couldn\u2019t be greater. Each reflected on his own country\u2019s guilt before making a case for universal human values. \u2018Those who murdered\u2019, noted<\/a> German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier, \u2018those who planned and helped in the murdering, the many who silently toed the line: They were Germans.\u2019<\/p>\n

Like Netanyahu, Steinmeier also focused on the theme of renewal following the Shoah, which gave way to a new \u2018order of peace, founded upon human rights and international law\u2019. But, unlike Netanyahu, Steinmeier wasn\u2019t triumphalist. In fact, he underscored an issue that, in spite of decades of vergangenheitsbew\u00e4ltigung <\/em>(\u2018working through the past\u2019), is now afflicting Germany: the return of anti-Semitism.<\/p>\n

French President Emmanuel Macron was equally brutal in his self-criticism. \u2018France has looked at its history head-on and faced up to the irreparable responsibility of the French state in the deportation of the Jews\u2019, he declaimed<\/a>. The lessons he takes from Auschwitz are universal and forward-looking. \u2018No one has the right to use the memory of the dead\u2019, he argued<\/a>, \u2018to justify some kind of contemporary hatred.\u2019<\/p>\n

One wonders how Zweig would have responded to all of these speakers. Although he was a prot\u00e9g\u00e9 of Zionism\u2019s founding intellectual, Theodor Herzl, a recent biography<\/a> by George Prochnik shows that Zweig became increasingly uncomfortable with the idea of nationalism over the course of his life. Following the rise of the Nazis, he argued that Jews had a \u2018sacred mission\u2019 not to create yet another state with \u2018cannons, flags, [and] medals.\u2019 Rather, he wanted Jews to serve as \u2018the gadfly which plagues the mangy beast of nationalism\u2019, and to work for the \u2018dissolution of nationalist tendencies\u2019.<\/p>\n

In other words, were Zweig alive today, he doubtless would sympathise more with the cosmopolitan humanism of Steinmeier and Macron than with Netanyahu\u2019s ethno-nationalism. But it\u2019s worth remembering that even as they established a Jewish nation-state, David Ben-Gurion and most of Israel\u2019s founders were similarly committed to a cosmopolitan and universalist vision<\/a> based on \u2018complete equality of social and political rights \u2026 irrespective of religion, race or sex\u2019.<\/p>\n

For my part, as a descendent of German Jews\u2014some of whom were exterminated\u2014I strongly support Israel\u2019s right to exist. But I also believe that Netanyahu\u2019s instrumentalisation of the Holocaust\u2019s victims\u2014many of whom didn\u2019t share his Zionist nationalism\u2014directly undermines the ideals of the country\u2019s founders.<\/p>\n

As Auschwitz passes from memory into history, it is ironic that the lessons people draw from it would become more particular, rather than more universal. Clearly, the global fight against anti-Semitism needs a new narrative for the 21st-century world of hyper-fragmented and multicultural societies, where no one knows Holocaust survivors personally. Otherwise, history will continue to be politicised and pressed into the service of nationalist agendas, rather than showing the way to a more peaceful future for all.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Looming over this year\u2019s commemoration of the liberation of Auschwitz at Yad Vashem, the Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem, were two contradictory impulses that lay behind the creation of the Jewish state: cosmopolitanism and nationalism. A …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":529,"featured_media":53148,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2657,66,240,804],"class_list":["post-53147","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general","tag-auschwitz","tag-history","tag-israel","tag-nationalism"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nAuschwitz and the politicisation of history | The Strategist<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.aspistrategist.ru\/auschwitz-and-the-politicisation-of-history\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Auschwitz and the politicisation of history | The Strategist\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Looming over this year\u2019s commemoration of the liberation of Auschwitz at Yad Vashem, the Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem, were two contradictory impulses that lay behind the creation of the Jewish state: cosmopolitanism and nationalism. 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