The ‘new’ anti-Semitism is more a continuation and development than a departure. Few people realize the extent to which anti-Semitism was rampant in post-Holocaust Europe, and how the legacy of that period laid the basis for today’s resurgence of European anti-Semitism. Even fewer have studied this crucial topic in detail. This essay serves as an overview and an introduction to a series of 15 interviews with experts who have made major contributions to the understanding of various aspects of this ominous process as well as related issues. All interviews not cited in the footnotes will be found later in this volume, and are referred to only by the interviewee’s name (e.g., “Durst’s interview”). It is our hope that  this book will help  inspire others to continue the work of uncovering how  our past has become our present,  to help prevent it from also becoming our future.

1. THE RECENT OUTBURST OF ANTI-SEMITISM

 Introduction: Active and Virulent

Over the past two years, Israel and the Jewish people have faced an onslaught of physical and verbal aggression: Palestinian violence, with a heavy component of suicide attacks; assaults on Jewish institutions and individuals  in many countries; and worldwide verbal anti-Semitism in classic and new forms.

The Palestinian and Arab political leadership, Islamic fundamentalists, polit­ical opportunists, neo-Nazis and neo-fascists, extreme leftists, parts of the media, Arab-influenced international institutions, as well as self-hating Jews, motivate and catalyze such attacks. Even limited analysis shows that many anti-Israel expressions are recycled versions of classic anti-Semitic motifs.

Many Jews and non-Jews considered anti-Semitism to be mainly a matter of the past, especially in Europe. Present perceptions and  anxieties, however,  are well expressed by U.K. Chief Rabbi Jonathan Sacks:

Let me state the point as simply as I can: anti-Semitism is alive, active and virulent in the year 2002, after more than half a century of Holocaust educa­tion, interfaith dialogue, United Nations  declarations,  dozens  of museums and memorials, hundreds of films, thousands of courses, and tens of thousands of  books  dedicated  to  exposing  its evils; after  the  Stockholm  Conference, after the creation of a National Holocaust Memorial Day, after 2,000 religious leaders came together in the United Nations in August 2000 to commit themselves to fight hatred and engender mutual respect… What more could have been done? What more could and can we do to fight anti-Semitism?1

Surveys in 2002 by the Anti-Defamation League indicate that European anti- Semitism is substantial.2 An opinion poll in five countries, Austria, Switzerland, Spain, Italy and The Netherlands, showed that one out of five respondents – twenty-one percent – can be characterized as “most anti-Semitic.” Twenty-nine percent believe that Jews do not care what happens to anyone but themselves. Forty percent of respondents feel Jews have too much power in the business world and international financial markets. The majority considers that Jews are probably more loyal to Israel than their own country.3 An earlier survey dealt with France, Denmark, Germany, Belgium and the United Kingdom and yielded broadly similar conclusions.4 The attitudes between the ten countries researched however, varied substantially.

Cycles of Anti-Semitism

Simon Epstein of the Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Anti­ Semitism, says that since the war:

anti-Jewish incidents, as recorded by various institutes and monitoring agencies in Western countries, appear to follow cyclical and universal patterns on the axis of time.5

Epstein considers that the first major post-war wave:

which came to be dubbed the ‘swastika epidemic’ was observed in Western Europe, the United States, and Latin America. It started with the desecration of a synagogue in Cologne on December 25, 1959, by two young Germans who were promptly apprehended and severely punished. Some 685 incidents were recorded in Germany, and over 600 in the United States. All told, nearly 2,500 incidents were recorded in 400 localities throughout the world.6

Epstein defined the second wave of the late 1970s and early 1980s by saying:

Though it definitely did not reach apocalyptic proportions, nor disrupt the regular life of Jewish communities, the number of anti-Jewish incidents in the West as a whole reached an unprecedented level.7

A third wave took place in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Today’s one is thus the fourth and strongest cycle since the Holocaust. Simultaneously, the Jewish people have many other challenges to confront with limited human and financial resources. It is thus good policy to start by analyzing the macro-issues on the Jewish  agenda  to  obtain  a strategic understanding  of their main elements and origins. Only then can one effectively focus one’s defense and muster one’s allies. Due to its magnitude and worldwide character, current anti-Semitism has become a very urgent strategic macro-issue indeed.

Religious, Ethnic and State-oriented Anti-Semitism

The Jews – more than others – have suffered from hateful myths. These are grouped together under the heading ‘anti-Semitism.’ On the basis of a Roman trial 2,000 years ago, many Christians held all Jews responsible for the death verdict, against a Jew they considered God. Over the centuries a large number of Christians were actively indoctrinated with hatred for the Jews.

In its religious anti-Semitism, Christianity developed the myth of the intrinsic­ ally evil Jew. The Nazis exploited this, with genocidal consequences, in their ethnic anti-Semitism. The newest anti-Semitic variant appears superficially  different, since its animus is purportedly directed against a political entity,  the State of Israel. Its strongest proponents can be found mainly – but not exclusively – in the Arab and Islamic worlds. This new variant must be  analyzed vis-a-vis its predecessors.

From Dehumanization to Genocide

Israel is now being dehumanized and demonized, in the same way the Jews have been treated for centuries. The media are the prime channel through which this is done. Psychologist Israel W. Charny describes dehumanization as: “a general devaluing of the worthwhileness, and even the validity, of the existence of an­ other…”8 The other is then made out to be less deserving of life than oneself. The next psychological step is to justify why these people should be damaged or killed. “By any test of the simple logic of man’s still natural wish to be decent, what needs to be added to justify taking away people’s lives is proof that the others are also a terrible threat to our lives, and that it is their intent to take our lives away from us, unless we stop them first.”9

Charny then explains how one moves from ordinary killing to  genocide. People find an external compelling force such as religion or secular ideology to justify the criminality of other groups. “Incredible as it may seem, virtually every genocide is defined by its doers as being on behalf of the larger purpose of bettering human life! In one case, it is to rid the world  of infidels who prevent us from receiving the blessings of God; in another case, it is to improve racial purity.” 10

Destroying Jewish and Israeli Symbols

Symbols related to the Jewish people are destroyed or hijacked and used against the Jews, as a way of promoting hatred (one example is the distortion of facts about the Holocaust). While the anti-Semites’ classic desecration of cemeteries and tombstone destruction continues, it has found a contemporary symbolic companion in the burning of Israeli flags in public places, in the Third World as well as in Western countries.

In April 2002, at a demonstration of the Swiss-Palestinian Society in Bern, Franco Cavalli spoke. He was then the parliamentary leader of the Social Democratic Party (SP), which is part of the Swiss government coalition. He claimed there that Israel “very purposefully massacres an entire people” and undertakes “the systematic extermination of the Palestinians.” At the meeting Israeli flags were torched. 11

How ignorant Jews can be of the long term danger of strong continuous anti­semitic attacks was summarized by Hannah Arendt’s statement that 19th and 20th century Jews were the last to realize that “circumstances had forced them into the center of the conflict.” 12 Arendt adds that “they never knew how to evaluate anti-Semitism … For more than a hundred years, anti-Semitism had slowly and gradually made its way into almost all social strata in almost all European countries until it emerged suddenly as the one issue upon which an almost unified opinion could be achieved.” 13

Post-modern society is characterized both by its fragmentation and the speed with which events develop. Multiple components which led to the Holocaust exist in the attacks against Israel today, and merit detailed research. They come from many forces in European society. The historian Bernard Wasserstein considers anti-Semitism to be both an ideological doctrine as well as a set of prejudicial attitudes. Several individual incongruent – indeed contradictory – sources contribute to it: “traditional Christian teaching and Nazi neo-paganism, integral nationalism and populist demagogy (‘the socialism of fools’), hostility to Jews as capitalists and to Jews as communists… The anti-Semite, consequently, may be a sophisticated intellectual or a boor, a militant atheist or a Christian crusader, a communist or a reactionary.” 14 Today anti-Semitic positions are even taken by those who were supposedly relatively free of it before the war, the so­ called ‘moderate progressives.’

Lawrence Summers,  President of Harvard University, mentioned such atti­tudes in his much-publicized “Address at  Morning  Prayers.”  There he notes that:

Where anti-Semitism and views that are profoundly anti-Israeli have tradi­tionally been the primary preserve of poorly educated right-wing populists, profoundly anti-Israel views are increasingly finding support in progressive intellectual communities. Serious and thoughtful people are advocating and taking actions that are anti-Semitic  in their effect if not their intent. 15

Not only most non-Jews, but many Jews as well, ignore how today’s dispersed anti-Semitic developments can – under the wrong circumstances – lead to an overall structured attack, which may prove difficult to resist.

The Perversion of Human Rights

Irwin Cotler, a Canadian member of parliament who served as a lawyer for Nelson Mandela and Andre Sakharov, observes how the human rights ideas he has fought for are increasingly perverted into a tool against Israel. He says:

Anti-Semitism now uses the rhetoric of international law and human rights as a protective cover to discriminate against  Jews through unfair and one­ sided criticism of Israel… We are witnessing a new anti-Jewishness, one that is a dramatic transformation, grounded in classical anti-Semitism … It is a global phenomenon and that is the singling out of Israel and  the Jewish people for differential and discriminatory treatment in the international arena…16

Cotler sees discrimination as a commonality between the old and new versions of anti-Semitism. “Traditional anti-Semitism denied Jews the right to live as equal members of society, but the new anti-Jewishness denies the right of the Jewish people to live as an equal member of the family of nations.” 17 These ideas are developed in more detail in an interview with Cotler.

A similar view is adopted by scholars from other perspectives. Ruth Kluger, former chair of the German department  at Princeton  says:

While the specter of fascism has passed, a latent anti-Semitism – with Israel being used as an illegitimate pretext – seems to be creeping back … an ever­ present global ‘obsession’ with the Jewish state seems to betray an outlook that still sees the Jew as ‘foreigner’ or ‘antagonist’ personified. 18

Sacks holds a similar view:

What we are witnessing today is… a mutation so ingenious, demonic and evil that it paralyzes the immune systems the West built up over the past half­ century… The mutation is this: that the worst crimes of anti-Semites in the past – racism, ethnic cleansing, attempted genocide, crimes against humanity – are now attributed to Jews and the State of Israel, so that if you are against Nazism, you must ipsofacto be utterly opposed to Jews… I am shocked that so few non-Jews in Europe have recognized it and denounced it.19

While such concerns have been mainly expressed by Jewish proponents, one of the few non-Jews who articulated a similar view was former Swedish Deputy Prime Minister Per Ahlmark. At Yad Vashem’s International Conference on the Legacy of Holocaust Survivors in April 2002, he said:

Criticism of Israel has become very similar to anti-Semitism. There exists in it a rejection of the Jewish people’s right to express its identity in its state; and Israel isn’t judged according to the same criteria that are applied to other countries. If anti-Semites once aspired to live in a world rid of Jews, today anti-Semitism’s goal is apparently a world cleansed of the Jewish state.20

Pulitzer prizewinner Thomas L. Friedman criticized the hypocrisy of professors and students who do not judge Israel according to the same criteria they apply to other countries. Referring to their efforts to convince universities  to divest Israeli securities, he asks:

How is it that Egypt imprisons the leading democracy advocate in the Arab world, after a phony trial, and not a single student group in America calls for divestiture from Egypt? (I’m not calling for it, but the silence is telling.) How is it that Syria occupies Lebanon for 25 years, chokes the life out of its democracy, and not a single student group calls for divestiture from Syria? How is it that Saudi Arabia denies its women the most basic human rights, and bans any other religion from being practiced publicly on its soil, and not a single student group calls for divestiture from Saudi Arabia?21

Shortly afterwards, a similar argument was made by Harvard Law professor Alan M. Dershowitz. He said that  if  a visitor  from  a faraway  galaxy  would land at an American or Canadian  University,  he  would  conclude  that  the earth is “a peaceful and fair planet  with only one villainous nation  determined to destroy the peace and to violate  human  rights.  That  nation  would  not  be Iraq, Libya, Serbia, Russia or Iran. It would be Israel… There  are  no  comp­ arable petitions  seeking any action against other countries that enslave minorities, imprison dissidents, murder political opponents and torture suspected terror­ists. Nor are there any comparable efforts to silence speakers from other countries.”22

Holocaust Denial and its Arab Followers

Several arguments and methodologies used by the Arab defamers are similar to those of Holocaust deniers. Holocaust denial in the Western world has been expressed mainly in the margins of society. In the Arab world, the perpetrators of these lies include several of its central figures and institutions.

In August 2002, the Zayed Center for Coordination and Follow-Up in Abu Dhabi organized a conference on ‘Semitism.’ This think-tank – whose chairman Sultan Bin Zayed al Nahyan is Deputy Prime Minister of the United Arab Emirates

– claimed the Holocaust was a false fable.23 The institute appears respectable, as in the past it has hosted lectures by Western heads of state and diplomats, including former President Jimmy Carter, former Vice President Al Gore, and former Secret­ary of State James Baker.24

At the conference, its executive director Mohammed Khalifa Al-Murar said: “any discourse about the Jews’ history will remain incomplete if it doesn’t shed light on that aspect of Jews that they always try to hide, i.e., their non-Semite origin.” The Arab League’s head of Israeli affairs, Ahmad Saleed Jarad, who represented it at the meeting, made comments that seemed to endorse Murar’s view.25  Only after major criticism  from American  Jewish organizations,  did the Arab League distance itself somewhat from the anti-Jewish statements made at the conference.26

Frequently recurring Palestinian claims deny other historical facts by asserting that there was never a Jewish  temple in Jerusalem, or that the Palestinians are descendants of the Canaanites who were driven out by the Israelites in Biblical times. One textbook used in Palestinian schools teaches that: “the Canaanite Palestinians invented the alphabet.”27 Another textbook says “the Arab Jebusites built it [Jerusalem] five thousand years ago in that distinguished place; and it has remained,  since that time, the capital of Palestine throughout  the ages.”28

In this context, one may recall that a mere twenty-five years ago Zahir Muhs­ein, head of military operations of the Palestinian Liberation Organization, said in an interview that there was no distinct Palestinian people: “There are no differences between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. We are part of one people, the Arab nation. It is only for political reasons that we carefully emphasize our Palestinian identity… the existence of a Palestinian  identity is there exclusively for tactical reasons… Because Golda Meir says that there is no Palestinian people, I say that there is a Palestinian people which is different from Jordan. “29

Denying the Arab Role in the September 11 Attacks

Those groups who start to assault Jews usually later attack others. This is true for denial as well. Despite all the evidence, many in the Islamic world still deny that those who carried out the murderous attacks in the United States on September 11, 2001, were Arabs. At the August 2002 Abu Dhabi conference, mentioned above, Mohammed Khalifa Hassan, director of the Center of Oriental Studies at Cairo University, said that “the events of September 11 were concocted, because we still do not possess concrete evidence of the real perpetrators and their objec­tives.”30

According to a Gallup Poll, such denial characterizes most of the Muslim world, who still “do not believe the attacks of September 11 were orchestrated by Osama bin Laden, or by Arabs, or by Muslims.” 31 These findings lead one to ponder how deeply-seated denial of shameful facts is ingrained into contemporary Muslim culture, even if limited value should be attributed to opinion polls  in totalitarian   or  authoritarian  states.

Dr. Shibley Telhami who analyzed the findings of the survey, on behalf of the Gallup organization, said: “I was surprised that very few, even among the elites, believe that Bin Laden did it… it’s clear that there is almost a unanimous view that Bin Laden was not responsible for September 11.”32

New Jersey poet laureate, Amiri Baraka, in his poem about September 11, entitled “Somebody Blew Up America,” repeated the slander about  Jews  and Israel having foreknowledge of the assaults, as well as the canard that 4,000 Israelis did not  show up for work  at the World  Trade Center  that  fateful day.

In the same poem he also made insinuations about those who elected Bush as President.33 A century ago, historian Lord Acton described this phenomenon of distortion as typical of the Middle Ages. “They became content to be deceived, to live in a twilight of fiction, under clouds of false witness, inventing according to conveni­ence, and glad to welcome the forger and the cheat. As time went on, the atmosphere of accredited mendacity thickened, until,  in the Renaissance, the art of exposing falsehood dawned upon keen Italian minds.”34 The problem is increas­ingly with us today.

Denial on Trial

To fight denial one needs to develop a profound understanding of its motivating forces. Thereafter, effective methodological tools have to be created to unmask it. In this context, the lawsuit which British historian David Irving initiated against American  historian  Deborah Lipstadt  assumes major  relevance.  The trial took place  in London  in the beginning  of 2000.  Lipstadt  had  claimed  in print  that Irving knew the evidence about the Holocaust period; but that he had deliberately distorted it until it coincided with his ideological leanings and political agenda.35 Irving had frequently denied the Nazis had systematically planned to exterminate the Jews. He also claimed that the Nazis had not used the gas chambers in Auschwitz for this extermination. Seldom were disputes on historical events fought out in such detail as in this trial. In the end, history won. Justice Charles Gray ruled that Lipstadt and her publishers had justified their claims. He also concluded that Irving “repeatedly makes assertions about the Holocaust which are offensive to Jews and unsupported  by or contrary to the historical record.”36  One does not have to spend the time or expense of a London trial to prove the same about the Palestinian and Arab deniers of facts mentioned  above.

Both Western Holocaust deniers and Arab history distorters tell us much about our society. Commenting on the denial phenomenon, Lipstadt noted:

It is important to understand that the deniers do not work in a vacuum. Part of their success can  be traced to  an intellectual climate that has made its mark in the scholarly world during the past two decades. The deniers are plying their trade at a time when much of history seems to be up for grabs, and attacks on the Western rationalist tradition have become commonplace. 37

An overview of the methodologies  of Holocaust denial and its development over the past few decades is presented in Deborah Lipstadt’s interview.

Alliances: The Extreme Right and Arab Anti-Semites

Links between extreme Western rightists and Arab and Islamic fanatics could develop in many worrisome ways. In November 2001, Michel Friedman, then president-elect of the European Jewish Congress,  told  the  German  daily  Die Welt that  top on the list of issues confronting his organization, in the coming years, is combating anti-Semitism. He said that this could no longer be limited to the national level, and expressed the fear that collaboration might develop between Islamic  extremists and  right-wing radicals. In Germany,  for example, many right-wing extremists viewed the September 11 attack on the U.S. favor­ ably.38

In October 2001, members of the German neo-Nazi National Democratic Party celebrated the September 11 attacks against the United States, during a demonstration in Berlin marking the 11th anniversary of German reunification. In banners and speeches, they defined these as a justified response to American policy and protested  against Germany’s support of ‘American terrorism.’ 39

One of the attendants was Holocaust denier Ahmed Huber, who admits to having met with Bin Laden followers in Beirut several times. Huber was one of the organizers of a Holocaust denial conference there earlier in 2001. It was only canceled due to international pressure. He was a board member of Al Taqwa, a financial company in Lugano, whose bank accounts were frozen after President Bush published the names of individuals and firms suspected of having links with Al Qaida, a list on which both Huber and Al Taqwa appear.40

July 14, 2002, France’s national holiday, saw a right-wing assassination attempt against President Chirac. The perpetrator, Maxime Brunerie, belonged to Unite Radicale, an extreme right-wing group which intended to make common course with Arabs against the Jews.

Alliances: The Extreme Left and the Palestinians

The European extreme left has a history of decades of violent support of Arab terrorism. Some 25 years ago, a former German student leader wrote that the extreme left’s “infatuation with violence, and the language of hatred it engenders, tends to blur the dividing line between the New Left’s anti-Zionism and plain anti-Semitism.” A case in point is that of Internationale Solidaritat, an ad hoc group established to prevent the Vice-Chancellor of the Hebrew University from addressing a meeting at Kiel University. A leaflet distributed by Internationale Solidaritat culminated in the slogan, “Schlagt die Zionisten tot, macht den Nahen Osten rot (Beat Zionists dead, make the Near East red).”41

In October 1982, Palestinian terrorists carried out a murderous attack on Rome’s great synagogue.  Two weeks  later a group of leftists belonging to the Democrazia Proletaria movement put a banner on the gate of the small synagogue in the Via Garfagnana. It read, “Let’s burn the lairs of the Zionists.” Italian journalist Maurizio Molinari wrote, “The walls of the  main  Italian  cities  had been subject to anti-Semitic slogans, from ‘Death to the Jews’ to ‘Return to the crematoria!’ for years. No longer were these signed by the neo-fascist extreme right, but by diverse movements of the pro-Palestinian  left.”42

Ideologies of Murder

In September 2002, Ted Honderich, a Canadian-born philosophy professor at University College, London, delivered a lecture at the University of Toronto. He said that the Palestinians have a moral right to blow up the Jews. He even encouraged them to do so saying, “To claim a moral right on behalf of the Palestinians to their terrorism is to say that they are right to engage in it, that it is permissible if not obligatory.”43 This incitement to violence drew sympathetic bystanders. Following his lecture “audience members lined  up  to  respectfully parse the fine points of his philosophical  theories.”44

If one takes Honderich’s argument only a little further, anybody who has a claim against his society, which he and a few others think justified, has the moral right to kill its leaders. If he wants to blow up as many members of that society as possible or wound them as painfully as possible by putting nails in his suicide bomb, he is morally entitled to do so, according to Honderich.

The horrifying absurdity of Honderich’s argument can be readily exposed by simply asking how Honderich himself would have responded to an Israeli who had lost family members in the Holocaust and who stood up after his lecture and said:

Our family has already suffered terrible immoral losses due to people who preached violence against them, views which led to gruesome murders. I recognize in your words the same preachings. Can you explain to me why, according to your own argument, it isn’t my moral obligation to douse you in gasoline and incinerate you?

Much unites the three  fanatic ideologies of the twentieth century: Nazism and its extreme rightist derivatives; communism and its extreme leftist derivatives; and radical Islam and its extreme adherents. Says historian Robert Wistrich:

There is the same insistence on the Jew as a revolutionary, subversive and corrosive force; on his hidden, occult, manipulative activities; on his thirst for power and his unscrupulous love of intrigue; on his lust for gold; and on his deliberate undermining of communal cohesion and the sacred values of family, nation and state. The world conspiracy theory appears in fundamental­ist Islam (and Arab nationalism) in the same apocalyptic colors as in the Nazi and Stalinist paradigms. There is the same Manichaean struggle between the forces of light, goodness and truth and those of darkness, Satanic evil and falsehood – identified, of course, with the Jew.45

This common denominator between Nazism, communism and fundamentalist Islam is further analyzed in an interview with Israeli Holocaust historian Yehuda Bauer.

Turning Human Rights into a Forum for Racism

The anti-Semitic propaganda war reached its most recent high-point at the United Nations Anti-racism Conference in Durban,  South Africa,  in September  2001. The main defamers were Arab governments, supported by many Muslim countries and a considerable number of non-governmental organizations (NGOs), including Western ones. Terms such as ‘genocide,’ ‘Holocaust,’ ‘ethnic cleansing,’ and even ‘anti-Semitism’ were hijacked by the defamers and used against the Jews, who have been the primary victims of all these phenomena.

Canadian political scientist Anne Bayefsky summarized the events:

The World Conference Against Racism became a forum for racism. Human rights was used not as a facilitator for communication, but as a weapon of political interests antithetical to human rights protection. A large group of states sought to minimize or exclude references to the Holocaust, redefine or ignore anti-Semitism, and to isolate the state of Israel from the global community as a racist practitioner of apartheid and crimes against humanity. The vestiges of Jewish victimhood were to be systematically removed by deleting the references to anti-Semitism and the Holocaust, to be displaced by the Palestinian victim living under racist, Nazi-like oppression.

The hate literature distributed during the NGO conference included caricatures of Jews with hooked noses and Palestinian blood on their hands, surrounded by money, and Israelis wearing Nazi emblems. At the Government Conference, there was daily distribution by NGO participants of literature reading ‘Nazi­ Israeli apartheid,’ while inside the drafting committees, states such as Syria and Iran objected to the inclusion of anti-Semitism or the Holocaust on the grounds that anti-Semitism was a ‘complicated,’ ‘curious,’ and ‘bizarre’ con­cept, and reference to the Holocaust would be imbalanced or ‘favoritism.’46

The Durban conference witnessed several currents of the  Western  human rights movement making common cause with countries which turn beheadings and amputations into a public spectacle. Some of the leading human rights organizations remained silent, or supported the ‘Zionism is racism’ resolution. At the November 2001 plenary assembly of the World Jewish Congress in Jerusalem, Cotler denounced a number of Western organizations for hijacking the human rights movement.

Durban and the NGOs: The Misinformers

Reflecting on the aftermath of Durban, Bayefsky criticized leading Western human rights groups, declaring that:

The post-Durban cheerleading and misinformation campaign has also been led by international human rights NGOs. 47 Mindful of its many Jewish funders, Human Rights Watch went so far as to claim they ‘played an important role

in criticizing some of the inappropriate criticisms of lsrael at the NGO Forum,’ neglecting to mention they watched in silence as Jewish NGO voices were stilled and ‘Zionism is racism’ becoming the order of the day.

Amnesty International was less cagey. Its Report for 2002 speaks of the conference’s success “in highlighting the extent of racism around the world [such as]… the plight of… the Palestinians.”48

Amnesty International and other NGOs pledged that they would continue to campaign to ensure that governments do not forget their obligations to combat racism. In fact, to be specific, in the words of the NGO Declaration, Amnesty International and other NGOs pledged to “call for the reinstitution of UN resolution 3379 determining the practices of Zionism as racism prac­tices” and to “call upon the international community to impose a policy of complete and total isolation of Israel as an apartheid state.”49

Only much later did both organizations devote more substantial analysis to the character of the Palestinian attacks. In November 2002 Human Rights Watch published a 170-page report on this subject and said: “Palestinians who launch suicide attacks against Israeli civilians are guilty of ‘crimes against humanity.’ ” They added, “Yasser Arafat has not done enough to deter them.”50

From Johannesburg to Durban

At the UN World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg in the summer of 2002, Palestinians tried to disrupt the Israeli events. This time the South African government restrained the demonstrators.

Shimon Samuels, European Director for International Liaison at the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Paris attended the summit. He concluded that:

What began in Durban has not ended here… The undercurrents, despite all the important themes of the conference, the thrusts of foreign policy, are the same… What happened in Durban made the United Nations central to the new human rights theology, in which Israel is the anti-Christ… Israel then becomes the villain in every story, whether the issue at hand is sustainable development, health or human rights… You are the enemy  of  mankind … What is happening here on the level of non-governmental organizations is exactly that continuation. 51

The UN ‘Nazifies’ Israel

Cotler mentions the United  Nations  Commission  on Human  Rights (UNCHR) as another example of unfair attacks levied against Israel. While the UNCHR has never accused China, which has one of the world’s poorest performances on human rights, thirty percent of its indictments are  against  Israel.52  Similarly, Israel became the only country indicted in more than fifty years of the Geneva Convention, “not Cambodia, not [any country in the Balkans] with its ethnic cleansing, not Rwanda with its genocide, not the Sudan with its killing fields.”53 Cotler’s interview details the way the United Nations  singles out Israel and the Jewish people  for discriminatory  treatment  in the international  arena.

In September 2002, anti-Israel activity of another United Nations agency was exposed. The Anti Defamation League (ADL) reported that Palestinian children were being taught how to become terrorists in summer camps organized by the Palestinian Authority, Hamas and Islamic Jihad. The ADL’s national director, Abraham Foxman, noted how a number of these camps were funded by UNICEF, “an organization that has traditionally sought to improve the welfare of children.”

The ADL stated: “At the summer camps, children were encouraged to learn how to play a role in terrorist attacks, to learn how to shoot guns, and they were given instruction in how to blow up Israeli buses and settlements. Suicide bombers were also glorified with a number of camp groups being named for them.”54

In October 2002, former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Jane Kirkpa­ trick reminisced about her four year tenure there from 1981-1985. She said in her keynote speech at the Zionist Organization of America 2002 Justice Louis

1. Brandeis Award Dinner: “The United Nations hasn’t  really improved  much in the years since I was there, and it hasn’t really improved much at all with respect to Israel… I was very deeply shocked by the simple anti-Semitism that pervaded the place… We need to speak out about the calumny spoken at the UN.”55

Europe’s Anti-Israel Bias

When discussing the current defamation of Israel and the Jewish people, it is often remarked that the main defamers are undemocratic Arab countries which did not enjoy much moral standing in the world even before September 11, 2001. The defamers’ defenders claim that one cannot compare this with the Nazis, whose ideas found resonance in many European countries infested with anti­-Semitism.

This response ignores many other factors which strengthen the defamation discourse. These include the influence in Western society of bodies with business interests in the Arab world, the dependence of Europe on oil from Arab and other Islamic countries, and the large number of Muslims who now live in the West, many of whom have voting rights. In recent years evidence has shown how Islamist fundamentalists blend into the moderate Muslim majority and influence it.

The European Union  has often chosen  to take extreme pro-Arab  positions in the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. The Arab world’s undemocratic, totalitarian character is intentionally ignored, as  is the support for terror among  sizable sectors of Palestinian society and the abundance of anti-Semitic fascist and neo-Nazi literature in the Arab world. European leaders also look the other way when Palestinians execute or lynch other Palestinians.

At the same time, moral condemnation of Israel has often been stressed beyond all reason by European politicians and media. Although the Europeans are followers rather than leaders in defaming Israel, they have nonetheless been playing a most significant role. Their attitudes are particularly hypocritical given Europe’s past, not  only during the Holocaust, but  also before  and after it.

European Governments Concealing Anti-Semitism

Physically violent anti-Semitic attacks in Europe are carried out by marginal figures in society, often Arabs. Several observers now believe that Europe’s political positions toward Israel have helped lay the emotional infrastructure for this aggression.

European governments often conceal local anti-Semitism. For example, ac- cording to French  sociologist Shmuel Trigano:

This situation is best exemplified by the anti-Semitic attacks on the Jewish communities of France provoked by North African groups in reaction to Middle East  events. There  were around 450 anti-Semitic assaults between autumn 2000 and spring 2002. Yet for over a year the media and the authorities implemented an incredible news blackout on discussion of these attacks. This blackout, coupled with the pro-Palestinian bias of the media and public opinion, created a feeling of helplessness and abandonment within the Jewish community. 56

This same issue is discussed extensively in a report published in August 2002 by the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights, entitled Fire and Broken Glass: The Rise of Anti-Semitism in Europe. Michael Posner, executive director of this independent, New York-based group, said on the occasion of its publication:

European governments are inadequately reporting anti-Semitic violence, with some providing little public information on even the most serious hate crimes… Yet timely, accurate, and public information on crimes of racist violence are essential for effective action to suppress such violence. 57

The organization  also sent out a press release stating:

In Europe, anti-Jewish animus has included physical assaults on individuals, and fire-bombings, gunfire, window smashing and vandalism of Jewish homes, schools, synagogues and other community institutions. Vandals have desecrated scores of Jewish cemeteries across the region, daubing anti-Jewish slogans, threats, and Nazi symbols on walls and monuments, while toppling and shattering tombstones… Jews and people presumed to be Jewish have been assaulted in and around centers of the Jewish community, in attacks on Jewish homes, and in more random street violence. Attackers shouting racist slogans have thrown stones at children leaving Hebrew-language schools and worshippers leaving religious services. In street violence, attackers shouting racist slogans have severely injured people solely because they were thought to have a Jewish appearance… The resulting environment, particularly where anti-Jewish attacks occur  with relative impunity, is a climate of fear and encouragement for further hatred and violence. 58

1. ANALYZING EUROPEAN ATTITUDES

Over the past decades, considerable attention has been given to European attitudes toward the Jews during the Holocaust. Knowledge about this topic has continu­ously increased in recent years, partly as a result of major international discussions on material restitution  issues.

This debate has also given some impetus to the study on how European societies related to the Jews in the aftermath of the Holocaust. Yet this subject remains largely opaque and neglected. Even a few years ago, an integrated study of Europe’s moral attitudes toward the Jews in the post-war period would have ranked low on the large diversified Jewish agenda. Its relevance, if considered a significant subject at all, would have been couched in such vague terms as, “the historical truth has to be told” or “it is part of the general study of human rights.” Today, assessing moral attitudes toward the Jews in post-war Europe has become important, if not crucial, for understanding Jewish public affairs. When exposing the persistent anti-Semitic character of many current European attacks on Israel, examples taken from Europe’s recent history must play a major role.

In this section, we consider several aspects of the main thesis of this book: that developments in post-Holocaust Europe already prefigured the adversities Israel and the Jews are facing there today. It also explores how some events contributed to laying parts of the foundation for Europe’s current discriminatory attitudes.

National Myths and Responsibility

National myths about the behavior of European countries during the Second World War have played an important role in their societies’ distorted post-war attitudes to the Jews. In an interview with Shmuel Trigano, he analyzes French society’s unwillingness to discuss the Shoah. He relates this suppression to the myth created by General Charles de Gaulle that the ‘true France’ was akin to the Free French abroad and to the underground opponents of the Nazis, rather than an accomplice of the Vichy regime.

Based on their national myths, many other European governments still claim that they should assume no -or only limited -responsibility for misdeeds commit­ ted against the Jews during their country’s occupation. For example, in Spring 2000, in an interview for Israeli radio, Dutch Prime Minister Wim Kok repeated what he had said the previous day to Dutch community representatives in Israel. “The Dutch have never been responsible for the misbehavior of the Germans in the Netherlands during the war.”59 He completely neglected to mention the demonstrable co-responsibility of the Dutch authorities, institutions and many individuals. In their preparations for the extermination of the Jews in the Netherlands, the Germans received considerable assistance from the Dutch administrative infrastructure. The occupiers used only a few of their own forces. Most of the job of putting the Dutch Jews on their first steps on the road to extermination was carried out by the Dutch.60

A Straight Line of Responsibility

Regarding discrimination against the Jews after the war, when Western Euro­ pean countries were once again democratically  ruled,  present  governments  of­ ten prefer to remain silent. A straight line of responsibility runs from the post­ war authorities toward those in power today. Admitting the Jews’ post-war discrimination means accusing one’s own  democratically  elected  predecessors and  countrymen.

An interview with Dutch political scientist Isaac Lipschits, elaborates on the Dutch government’s many post-war methods of discriminating against the Jews. Despite all facts to the contrary, the Dutch government still denies this was intentional. On March 21, 2000, the Dutch government sent a document to the Dutch Parliament acknowledging that “looking  backwards with today’s know­ ledge and eyes” there was “too much formalism, bureaucracy and, above all, chill in the postwar restitution process.” In view of this,  “the government  expresses sincere regrets and apologizes to those who suffered then, without however pre­suming wrong intentions by those responsible.” 61

The Nazis Started with Words

The current hate campaign against Israel and the Jewish people recalls many elements of the prewar decades. None of the waves of anti-Semitic outbursts since the war have reached today’s intensity. In the post-modern  period,  the number of possible scenarios for the future is so high that this cannot be a practical tool for analysis. One must rather search for other gauges to assess what the future may bring. Intensifying intermittent signals over a long period is one of those. The increase in anti-Semitism is thus most perturbing.

During the Weimar Republic, the Nazis tried to ‘kill the Jews with words.’ Such propaganda instilled a virulent anti-Semitism in much wider circles of Euro­pean society than was previously the case. After the Nazis’ rise to power in 1933, verbal attacks were followed by economic discrimination, financial despoilment and later by the physical destruction of the Jews. Even if this had not been fully planned, its dynamics had largely been ingrained.

It is not widely known that, even during the war, several prominent Nazi opponents expressed discriminatory attitudes toward the Jews. This phenomenon has been studied in some detail by Israeli historian David Bankier (see his interview in this volume). Bankier explains how, both in Germany and in the Czech, Polish and French underground, many prominent figures held the position that Jews – if not all, then most of them – should be discriminated against and/or deprived of full citizenship after the war.

Some Dutch officials of London’s government-in-exile had different worries when preparing  for post-war Holland. They were concerned about the possible impact of Dutch Jews receiving  significant donations from abroad:

It is possible… that large donations may be made available from the United States for Dutch Jews. Should such a drive grow too large, it might accentuate the gap between the non-Jewish and Jewish sector of our people. The Government should manage to convince the donors [of this danger], however well­-intentioned they may be.62

Analyzing Moral Attitudes

When investigating European post-war attitudes toward the Jews, one realizes how complicated – and poorly studied – this subject is. The period to be assessed spans well over fifty years. Furthermore, Europe cannot be analyzed as a single entity. There is a radical difference in developments between democratic Western Europe and Eastern European countries. The latter were under communist regimes until the late 1980s. Many Jews who had survived the Nazi persecutions were victimized again by non-democratic rulers.

There are major differences in attitudes toward the Jews in different Western European countries, although common patterns frequently recur with different intensities. The studies undertaken to date thus mainly deal with specific topics in individual countries, rather than taking a broader pan-European perspective. Indeed, the aggregation of the limited material available, would not enable  a general overview of the subject. Finally, many issues must be viewed from a multidisciplinary perspective which studies attitudes within an integrated frame­ work, including historical and political, cultural, educational, psychological and communications  aspects.

Following an analysis of the broader picture, the main way to initiate such a search is to assemble the fragments on individual topics for each country. Many topics merit monographs yet to be written. Through analyzing the attitudes of individual countries toward Jews, according to the key elements discussed below, an overall picture can be developed over time. This will, however, not only be a lengthy but also a costly – if important – project.

Meanwhile, any understanding of the issue will be, at best, impressionistic. To reach partial conclusions within a shorter time frame, a different methodological approach is required. Our strategic assessment, proposed below, involves assem­bling broad indications by  interviewing leading experts from various fields on key issues. This approach has been pursued in the 15 interviews which follow this essay. The picture is also enlarged by studying some major events and issues in individual countries in detail below.

THE AFTERMATH OF THE HOLOCAUST

After the Holocaust, Jewish survivors wanted to be socially reintegrated. Many had lost their entire families. They wished to return home or to emigrate to better societies. They wanted to gain a sense of belonging. These tortured and persecuted individuals expected that democratic justice would also punish the perpetrators for the crimes they had committed. In many instances, democratic European societies failed to do so.

Those who had been robbed or looted wished to retrieve their property  or to be sufficiently compensated for it. Some expected their native countries to show solidarity by sharing their losses. These restitution issues were only partly dealt with and the process was often drawn out for a prolonged period, sometimes to the point of virtual irrelevance to the original victim. Residues of these subjects today – nearly 60 years after the war – are still on many countries’ agenda. A few elderly war criminals are still being investigated or face trials. Several financial restitution issues, even today, have not yet been brought to a satisfactory conclusion.

Pieter Lagrou studied various aspects of the return of the Jews to European society after the Holocaust. 63 He concluded that:

Post-war Europe was not a promising setting for the emergence of a multicultu­ral, tolerant and cosmopolitan society, very much to the contrary. The emigration of hundreds of thousands of Jews from Europe during these years, including the miserable conditions of a protracted period of transit in displaced persons camps (where the emigrants were hostage to the political arm-twisting between Britain and the United States about the emigration quotas to Palestine and America respectively), are a powerful illustration of this.64

The Main Elements of Analysis

The main elements to be systematically analyzed in order to determine Europe’s moral attitude toward the Jews in the post-war period  are:

1. What was the nature of the Jews’ social re-integration in the various European countries after the war? That is: How were they received into society when they returned from concentration camps or hiding? How promptly, and to what extent, were their rights restored? What general efforts were made to rehabilitate the persecuted?
2. How did European countries deal with the moral aspects of economic restitution? Did the governments require the general population to show financial solidarity with those who were the hardest-hit by making payments from state budgets? Did the Jews retrieve what had been stolen? Did the law favor those who had been robbed or those who now held stolen assets? Did the Jews receive compensation for unrecoverable property? How bureaucratic, difficult or drawn­ out was the restitution process? How humane were its procedures? Did Jews receive payments for non-material damages?
3. Was justice done? How much of an effort was made to arrest and bring war criminals to trial? How were the Jews’ persecutors punished? Were crimes committed against Jews actually  an important  factor in trials?  (It is a mistake to consider these issues as exclusively legal, since significant moral implications )
4. How is the Holocaust remembered? Is its history recounted at all and, if so, how truthfully? (This will become increasingly important as most Holocaust survivors have now passed away; the remaining witnesses are mainly child sur­ ) What will be the future of memory after all the survivors have died? (Large parts of the battle on this issue are still ahead.)
5. What do European countries recount about their own post-war history? How much do politicians embellish the oft-problematic role of the government authorities in reintegrating the Jews after the war?
6. How is the present generation being educated about the Holocaust  and its aftermath? How will Holocaust education be structured in the future? (This could indicate what moral lessons countries have learned  from the Holocaust )

The above list is incomplete. One can suggest additional indicators of moral attitudes, such as the national authorities’ positions toward the custody of Jewish war orphans or how they preserve Holocaust-related sites. One could also compare how Jewish survivors were financially dealt with after the war, compared to Nazi­ collaborators.

How were Rescuers Treated?

Another – more limited – indicator could, perhaps, be how the rescuers of the Jews were treated in post-war society, particularly those who had broken their country’s laws while performing such acts.

One such example is St. Gallen Police Chief Paul Gruninger. After the Austrian Anschluss, he started assisting in the illegal entrance of refugees into Switzerland. He was almost the only speaker, at a meeting of police chiefs on August 17, 1938, who supported a more generous asylum policy for Switzerland. According to the protocol he said: “Refugees cannot be returned [to Nazi Austria] out of human considerations. We should let many in.” He even ‘legalized’ the entrance of refugees after the border  closure by predating  the date they  had  crossed  the border  in official documents. He also sent entrance permits to prisoners in Dachau, enabling them to leave the camp.

In spring 1939, Gruninger was deposed from his position. Rumors accusing him of taking bribes, while never confirmed, damaged his reputation. At the end of 1940, he was found guilty by the St. Gallen court of having abused his duty and having falsified documents. Not until 1970 did the St. Gallen government recognize the humanitarian, life-saving aspects of his efforts. He was rehabilitated only many years after his death, in 1995. By that time Switzerland had already come under international criticism for its treatment of dormant Jewish bank accounts.65

After his deposition, the Jewish Sternbuch family, who had been deeply involved in rescue efforts, helped Gruninger earn a livelihood. In 1971 he was honored by Yad Vashem as one of the ‘Righteous among the Nations.’ 66

Social and Sociological Aspects

When studying the social and sociological aspects of post-war European attitudes toward the Jews, it would be erroneous to put the sole emphasis on how specific Jews progressed professionally or on how they were accepted when mingling with non-Jews. Many Jews indeed held high positions in the European academic, judiciary and business world. Several also achieved very senior political positions. Austrian socialist Bruno Kreisky was Austria’s Chancellor from 1970-1983. Many Jews have mixed memories of him because of his negative attitude toward Israel. The election of a Jewish prime minister did help ‘clean up’ the image of this perpetrator country parading as a victim. As American historian Bruce Pauley noted:

A cynic could, of course, retort that Kreisky’s popularity was based in part on his coolness toward Zionism and sympathetic treatment of the Palestine Liberation Organization. The fact remains, however, that no Jew of any political persuasion (with the possible exception of Otto Bauer) could have become a chancellor during the First Republic, let alone remained the popular leader of the country for thirteen years.67

Some Jewish politicians identified with Jewish communities. In France, Prime Minister Rene Mayer was a member of the central Consistoire of French Jews and Vice President of the Executive of the Alliance Israelite Universelle. Leon Blum became France’s first Jewish prime minister in 1936 and briefly returned as prime minister in one of the post-war cabinets. Before the war he had been a member of the International Socialist Pro-Palestine committee and the Jewish Agency. Pierre Mendes-France was a consistent supporter of Zionism and openly championed the cause of Israel. On the other hand, though perceived as a Jew by part of the French public, Prime Minister Laurent  Fabius was  born,  after 1945, to Jewish parents who had converted during the war.68

The Belgian Deputy Prime Minister Jean Gol had held leading functions in Jewish youth and student movements. In 1993 lgnatz Bubis, president of the Central Council of the Jews in Germany, was widely mentioned as a possible candidate for the German presidency; but he declined, saying that he didn’t believe that Germany was ripe for deciding that a Jew could become president. 69

The same trend of greater prominence of Jews in politics expressed itself at lower levels. Before the war there had never been a Jewish mayor in Amsterdam, where the Jews comprised about 10% of the population. After the war there were four Jewish mayors, in a city where the Jews represented only about 2% of its inhabitants.

The many mixed marriages of European Jews may be considered both a sign of their assimilation and of their acceptance by non-Jewish European society.

Interest in the Jewish Cultural Heritage

Although the Jews are much less numerous in Europe than before the war, their cultural heritage has become of more general interest. Since 2000, on the annual European Day of Jewish Culture, activities open to the general public are held all over Europe. In 2001, 23 countries participated in this event, which “aimed at recognizing the Jewish heritage as an integral part of the cultural heritage of Europe, promoting tourism to Jewish heritage sites, and fostering both Jewish pride and a sense of European Jewish identity.”70

Many movies meant  for a general  audience feature Jewish characters.  The curiosity aroused by klezmer music is another example.71  So is Jewish food. After the fall of communism, this trend began penetrating Eastern Europe. Yet all this, on which there has been much media focus, forms only one part of the picture. 72 On the other hand, the intensity  and the breadth  of the recent  outburst of European anti-Semitism  suggests that negative  feelings,  while repressed,  must have  been  latent  in  Europe  for  many  years.  Its  nature  and  violent  eruption further suggest that many negative aspects of post-war European attitudes toward the Jews have  often  been  understated.  It is with  these  aspects  that  this essay mainly deals.

The ‘Moral Restitution’ Debate

The discourse concerning Europe’s post-war moral attitudes toward the Jews is not only recent. However, the highly publicized debate on supplementary financial restitution to be paid to the Jews spawned the misleading phrase ‘moral restitution.’ This concept has remained  a vague, junior  partner  of material restitution. It implies that the European side has had an immoral attitude toward the Jewish one. ‘Moral restitution’ has often been mentioned in the media, by both sides, without ever being defined in detail. Neither has its overall importance in the Jews’ relationship with general society been properly assessed.

The term ‘material restitution’  is easy to understand.  It concerns the return of money, securities, buildings, works of art and other possessions stolen during World War II from Jewish individuals or communities. Some have been given back, others still need to be returned. (In particular, many Jews originating in Eastern Europe will never retrieve most of their possessions.) While financial assets can be returned, morality cannot be ‘restituted.’ Indeed, the term itself  has become a dividing, rather than a uniting, force and, critics argue, it would be preferable to find an alternative expression. Although the guilty could and should have been punished, this is primarily a matter of legal justice, even if it also has moral aspects. It is not an act of ‘restitution,’ since the survivor can never return to what he was before the injustice, the family members he lost cannot be resuscitated, and his suffering cannot be undone. The resulting traumas will remain forever.

In this confused and dispersed discussion, others claim that ‘moral restitution’ is achieved when rights to financial payments for non-material damages are recognized. Conversely, some Holocaust survivors have refused to ask for the financial restitution due them, arguing that this ‘blood money’ would morally absolve their persecutors. Holocaust psychologist Shai Schellekes says that this is especially true “if they perceive the money to be another attempt to make good the unforgiv­able.”73

Yet others claim that, even if some Jews forego fighting hard for those pay­ments (inter alia out of a fear that it may increase anti-Semitism), the fact that it is granted  still amounts to moral restitution.

Another view holds that the very fact that the Holocaust has become a landmark of inextinguishable  guilt in European  history  itself constitutes a sign of moral restitution.  Yet others consider Europe’s support for the establishment of the state of Israel the greatest moral rehabilitation of the Jews possible. For example, Holocaust historian Yehuda Bauer expressed this position at the JCPA’s first Herbert Berman Memorial  Symposium in 2001.74

This debate reveals two alternative approaches to analyzing Europe’s moral attitudes toward Holocaust issues in an integrated manner. One is to include various positive aspects of Europe’s moral attitudes toward the Jews under the inadequate,  if oft-used, heading of ‘moral restitution.’  Another involves coining a more defensible new term, for instance ‘moral rehabilitation.’ Both approaches are unsatisfactory,  and in the following analysis neither are used.

Are Apologies Desirable?

Another important aspect of this unfocused and frequently chaotic discourse concerns the various apologies by governments and other bodies for what was done to the Jews during and after the war. These have either been made separately or have accompanied restitution settlements. Some observers claim that  many such apologies are not morally motivated, but rather represent political pressure or a fear of economic boycotts in the United  States.

These arguments are often made vis-a-vis the Swiss government’s apologies in the previous decade. For years Switzerland consistently supported continuing injustice, especially with regard to dormant accounts in Swiss banks. Many view the apologies of Eastern European states keen to join Western  institutions such as NATO in the same light. Similarly, many claim that Germany could not have re-entered the family of civilized nations without apologies and restitution for material and immaterial damages. The German government, by the way, coined a semantic misrepresentation, to describe this reparation process, Wiedergut­ machung (‘making good again’). This term wrongly pretends that such payments go far beyond  simple justice  to ‘make good’ what, can never be repaired.

Matters of Conscience: A Declaration of Guilt

Some observers say that the Jews should not request apologies, because deciding whether to apologize or not is a matter of conscience. Furthermore, what value is there to apologies not being made by either the criminals themselves, or even representatives of their generation, but by the latter’s children or grandchildren? Others hold that this makes apologies less meaningful, but not necessarily meaningless.

The opposing argument holds that apologies, much more than the mere recognition of injustice done, constitute a clear declaration of irrevocable national guilt toward their Jewish counterparts. They will remain well-documented for future generations, after all survivors will have passed away. In this view, it is hardly relevant whether the apology has been forced or, in extremis, is even false in the eyes of the cynical government representative who makes it.

In practical terms, there is much to be said for the latter position. Once countries have not only recognized their guilt but have also apologized for it, a common basis of what is normative has been established. Such apologies cannot only be quoted in future discussions and conflicts with the apologizing governments, but also in discussions with others with whom the Jews or Israel continue to run into regular conflict, for example, the Vatican and the Red Cross.

Apologies have even been expressed by some companies. The German Bertelsmann publishing house, had misrepresented for decades, its activities during World War II. When this was exposed in 1998, it appointed an independent historical commission. In view of its findings, company chairman Gunter Thielen expressed “our sincere regret for the inaccuracies the Commission has uncovered in our previous corporate history of the World War II era, as well as for the wartime activities that have been brought to light.”75

PSYCHOLOGICAL AND COMMUNICATION FACTORS

Some general remarks are required about psychological rehabilitation. The position  that  it  should  be  an  important  factor  in  assessing  the  post-war  moral rehabilitation of the Jews in Europe is difficult to defend, although those who suffered during the Holocaust  did  need  and didn’t receive  psychological  help.

As  one Swedish  expert  put  it:

Mental rehabilitation was conspicuous by its absence. No one took an interest in the traumatic experiences of the survivors, nor in their earlier history. As human beings with psychological problems, they were often greeted with utter silence. People were afraid, and probably also ashamed, to be inquisitive and to become  acquainted  with  them.76

When discussing this, however, one has to realize that problems of psychological traumas were hardly understood by professionals – both Jewish and non­ Jewish – after the war. Many of the drugs used in treatment today did not yet exist. Few professionals comprehended that the suppression of strong emotions by the survivors might later cause major psychic disturbances.

Dutch psychiatrist Jan Bastiaans,  an international  pioneer  in  dealing  with the  psychological  problems  of Holocaust  survivors,  wrote  as late as the  mid­ l 980s:

The outside world continues to regard much psychic suffering and mental illness with little tolerance. Where today is  there sufficient tolerance and understanding for mentally disturbed beings, especially for those who are victims of man-made disasters? How many get proper psychotherapeutic help after having been in isolation, in wartime or in some other traumatizing situation?77

A Matter of Intuition

The recent arrival in Western Europe of refugees and survivors of war and persecu­tion has renewed interest in how Holocaust survivors were re-integrated into society. Swedish psychiatrist Lilian  Levin points out that, even in modern-day Sweden, “there is no inalienable right or compelling judicial  law guaranteeing the rehabilitation of children traumatized and depressed by war and per­secution.”78 Psychological assistance to survivors after the war was often a matter of chance and intuition. She cites the case of a traumatized boy, put up at a hotel, who was unable to sleep for fear of terrifying nightmares. Each night he would speak in Polish to the Swedish night receptionist, who did not understand a word. The survivor later stated that  the stranger’s empathy and simple willingness to listen had saved him from insanity.79

There were other major categories of people who had to be psychologically rehabilitated after the war, such as shell-shocked soldiers. Neither governments nor the medical profession knew how to treat them. Thus ‘psychological rehabilitation’ does not seem a valid criterion for the analysis of post-war moral attitudes toward the Jews in Europe.

Continued Psychological Torture

The survivors’ ongoing psychological torture in the post-war period did not only result from war traumas. Even measures meant to alleviate their material suffering, were executed in a way which opened up new psychological wounds. Israeli Holocaust psychologist  Nathan  Durst elaborates on this in his interview.

Nor should one underestimate the psychological problems involved in the claiming of restitution, problems that are still evident today. In September 2002, Hannah M. Lessing, Secretary-General of the National Fund of the Republic of Austria for Victims of National Socialism and of the General Settlement Fund said that:

Many people who should be filing claims are not doing so, because they don’t want to relive their wartime experiences yet again. They have already filled in the forms for Swiss Banks, for Generali Insurance, and for other avenues of restitution    often with much pain and little or no results. They don’t want to go through that  again.80

In 1999 the AFA, an international arbitration institute based in Switzerland, devoted a day-long seminar to the issue of the dormant accounts in Swiss banks. Israeli judge Hadassa Ben-Itto, one of the arbitrators of the Claims Resolution Tribunal (CRT) dealing with investigating claims against these accounts, described the difficulties, practical and psychological, that thousands of people around the world faced in filling out the complicated forms:

These claimants are asked to rummage through old cabinets, seeking ancient documents. They go through emotional upheaval, rekindling painful, some­ times unbearable memories, examining old letters and photographs, writing to authorities in other countries whose language they no longer speak, asking for old certificates from archives which sometimes no longer exist. We arbitrators at the CRT…are striving to discover the people behind these documents, the families behind the family tree. I saw one family tree, with scores of names, where the claimant, a woman,  wrote  in  matter-of-fact  language  that  she had marked in red the names of all family members who had perished in the Holocaust. There were only three names not marked in red on that family tree.81

National Psychology

The mental suffering of the survivors constitutes one, but not the only, major psychological aspect to be evaluated in assessing European attitudes toward the Jews. Durst connects current European anti-Semitic outbursts with repressed guilt vis-a-vis the Holocaust. An Austrian psychologist, Irvin Rongel, claimed that the Austrians’  reaction  to  the  attacks  on  President  Kurt  Waldheim’s  wartime  past was extremely clinical. The entire country was forced to psychologically deal with the history it had spent so long trying to repress.82

Ruth Kluger, who is not a psychologist, observes that even in Germany, which is “more sympathetic than most European countries… there is a rise in anti-Israeli sentiment as part of a growing attempt to extirpate feelings of guilt for the Holocaust. “83

Kluger’s suppositions  about  rising German  anti-Semitism  are supported  by a poll conducted by researchers of the University of Leipzig and released in September 2002. Twenty-eight percent of respondents felt that Jews have “too much influence.” The increase was particularly high in West Germany where 31% now agreed, compared to 14% four years ago. (Previous polls had contradicted each other on trends in German anti-Semitism.)84

Sometimes, however, particularly in the more distant post-war past, feelings of national guilt furthered Jewish or Israeli interests. Avi Beker refers to this in his interview.

When the moral attitudes of Europe toward the Jews in the post-war period are more widely studied, psychologists will have a major role to play. The irrational character of anti-Semitism provides an additional impetus for a psychological perspective. Psychiatrists will also surely be asked how anti-Semitism is transmitted and whether it can be cured. A recent advertisement of the American Jewish Committee indirectly addressed this issue. Itwas entitled “No one is born hating … But too many are taught how!” Itdiscusses how Arabs inculcate hatred of Christi­ ans, Jews and Americans in young children, and concludes that, “Teaching children to hate is the foundation for future terrorism, and yet the international community remains eerily silent.”85

Israel, a Test Case for European Failures

In 1993, political scientist Dan Segre interpreted European attitudes toward Jews and Israel in both political and psychological terms. He found that: “the central thread running through these attitudes consisted oflong-held historical prejudices, complexes and frustrations.”86 In his view, Marxist anti-Semitism had a profound impact on the European left because:

It accepted  the principle that Third-World people were by definition prolet­ arian, while Israel  was an imperialist stooge. Communism,  which  claimed that it had immunized itself against anti-Semitism, did not raise its voice against the delegitimization of Israel as a state by the Palestinian National Charter.87

To make matters continuously worse in the eyes of the Europeans, Israel is a modern victorious state, whereas they would have been defeated in World War II by an ideology of darkness had it not been for the military efforts of two nations that the Europeans regard  as rather uncivilized:  the Americans and the Russians. Modern European historians  have begun  to realize  that the two world wars were, in fact, European wars which Europeans spread to the rest of the world. 88

According to a certain type of European historical determinism, a state like Israel, created by Zionism, the only national movement ever branded by the United Nations as racist, should lose wars  against  the Third-World  Arabs the same way the Europeans lost their colonies.89

In 2002, former Israeli Ambassador to the European Community Harry Kney-Tal expressed his concern about:

a new generation of Western European leaders who grew up on the Palestinian­ Arab narrative. That narrative, which is reinforced by Israeli or former Israeli researchers, has nearly totally taken over the academic, political and media discussion of the issues… It is appropriate to the popular worldview in Europe nowadays, which is pacifist and post-modernist, full of guilt toward the former colonies and full of sympathy for oppressed nations demanding self-deter­ mination. It also serves electoral interests as well as the traditional interests of Realpolitik, which makes up a large part of E.U. policy.90

Communications

Communications is another disciplinary perspective to be considered in much greater detail. One aspect concerns an analysis of the landmark events which enhanced the Shoah’s perception in the Western conscience. For example, the Nuremberg trials and their surrounding publicity  played  an  important  early role. There is also a broad consensus that  the Eichmann  trial in  1961 created an unprecedented degree of worldwide Holocaust awareness. Hannah  Arendt, who wrote a controversial book on the trial, describes one aspect of its influence:

Eichmann’s capture would trigger the first serious effort made by Germany to bring to trial at least those who were directly implicated in murder. The Central Agency for the Investigation of Nazi Crimes, belatedly founded by the West German state in 1958, and headed by Prosecutor  Erwin  Schille, had run  into  all  kinds  of  difficulties,  caused  partly  by  the  unwillingness of German witnesses to cooperate and partly by the unwillingness of the local courts to prosecute on the basis of the material sent them from the Central Agency. 91

Arendt says that the trial in  Jerusalem  did  not  produce  any  significant new evidence which could be used to find and convict Eichmann’s associates. Yet the news of Eichmann’s capture and his trial was enough to  convince German  courts  to  use  Mr.  Schiile’s  evidence. 92   Trials  of  Nazi  war  criminals have also affected public op1mon and awareness in several other countries. Therefore many experts believe that, even today, the prosecution of Nazi per­ petrators is meaningful despite their advanced  age. This argument is developed in more detail in an interview with Efraim Zuroff, director of the Israel Office of the  Simon  Wiesenthal  Center.

More recent landmarks which increased Western society’s awareness of what had happened to European Jewry include movies such as the NBC television series on the Holocaust (1978), Claude Lanzmann’s French documentary film Shoah and Steven Spielberg’s Schindler’s List.

Another landmark in worldwide communication on the Holocaust was the restitution discussion  of the late 1990s. Due to the media attention it inspired, the economic aspects of the Holocaust became a central item on the Western agenda. This argument is developed in Avi Beker’s interview.

Jews and Non-Jews: A Communications Failure

Other important aspects of Holocaust issues with a potential impact on European moral attitudes toward the Jews have hardly been given any public attention. For instance, few people are aware that the Jews, through defending their own interests, have helped many non-Jews who were previously discriminated against.

One example concerns the CRT tribunal which, in recent years, has investi­ gated claims for monies in the dormant accounts of Swiss banks. Itwas established largely thanks to the efforts of international Jewish organizations. Initially all concerned were convinced that these dormant accounts belonged predominantly to Jewish Holocaust victims. Subsequent investigations showed, however, that most such accounts belonged to non-Jews. 93  It became gradually clear that the Jewish organizations’ efforts had spearheaded a major initiative to bring justice to many gentiles. These facts, however, are known only within very limited circles. The restitution agreements reached by Jewish organizations with the Swiss banks have also served as important precedents for gentile victims, who can now more easily present claims on non-Holocaust-related issues. The Jews did, however, get all the negative publicity for the initial struggle.

Jewish action mainly on behalf of non-Jews extends to still larger issues. The German payments to non-Jewish slave laborers and forced laborers only became possible thanks to the Jewish-initiated restitution processes. Similarly, in the Netherlands, it was only thanks to the government’s need to deal with Jewish claims that the Sinti and Roma received restitution.

Israel and the Media

Many other aspects of communication issues remain to be analyzed. Communication-related topics will become increasingly important as multiple Western media and journalists continue to foster anti-Semitism by their one-sided reporting about Israel. One aspect of this complex phenomenon concerns the respective press rights of an impartial reporter versus a journalist who has, to all extent and purposes, become a party in the conflict rather than a witness to it. Such commun­ ication-related issues have only been superficially explored.

Italian journalist Fiamma Nirenstein provides some insight into the objectivity problem. She notes that most international journalists who come to Israel on temporary assignments stay in  the  American Colony Hotel in  East Jerusalem where the waiters and staff are Palestinians, as are the regular guests. “The support crews are largely Arab, the stringers are Palestinian, and often the cameramen are too… An acquaintance amusedly tells me of overhearing a correspondent thanking his Palestinian source for supplying him with the precise hours of the next  day’s ‘spontaneous’  clashes.”94

Nirenstein  herself describes these co-opted journalists  as:

slightly vain. Many… still bask in memories of  themselves at age twenty, Arab kajjias around their necks, on the campuses of American or European universities: young rebels, young heroes, young upsetters of the hegemonic powers-that-be …These are people who feel the weakness of democratic values, their own values; who enjoy the frisson of sidling up to a threatening civilization that coddles them even while holding in disdain the system they repre­ sent.95

Post-war Elements of Conflict

The return of Jews from deportation or hiding often engendered conflict with parts of their surrounding society. Many non-Jews had benefited from the Jews’ disappearance. Some had helped steal, or stolen the Jews’ property. Others had moved into their homes. Still others had taken their jobs. Jews often gave tempor­ ary custody of their most precious belongings, until their expected return, to non­ Jewish neighbors or colleagues.

A number of non-Jews were unpleasantly surprised at the Jews’ survival and said so. For example, the son of a Belgian survivor relates that, when his father returned to Antwerp after the war, his neighbor (with whom he had good relations before the war) greeted him by saying: “I thought we had got rid of you.”96

Though no statistics exist, the number of non-Jews who refused to return Jewish possessions was far from insignificant.

European Governments took advantage of the Jews’ heirless property, stolen or not. They also benefited by discriminating against the Jews in a multitude of other ways. Isaac Lipschits describes how this took place in the Netherlands in his interview.

The fate of war orphans was another major issue. Many non-Jews who had saved Jewish children, whose parents were later exterminated, fought to keep them, rather than transfer their custody to family members or Jewish institutions.

History and Memory

There were also profound non-material reasons for conflict between the returning Jews and their surrounding society. Few people had been heroes under the German occupation, although many pretended or wished they had been. In several coun­ tries, Nazi collaborators by far exceeded the active members of the resistance. Wishful national myths emerged about the resistance of entire populations to the occupiers. What the few had done, often with little broader influence or support, now became a predominant  part of the national memory.

The Jews were an unwanted ‘witness unto the nations.’ They remembered the true role of most of these indifferent bystanders rather differently. The Jews thus had not only to reconstruct their private lives and reestablish their communities, but they also had to battle for a truthful national memory. This struggle against national myths was often very difficult. The long tortuous road of this battle in France is described in the interview with Shmuel Trigano.

There were other distorting elements. Those who had been deported with the help of their own government authorities, or had been betrayed by their fellow citizens, had mostly not survived. The majority of the survivors had good reasons to be thankful to the non-Jews who had helped them. Many negative Jewish memories about European wartime attitudes had been extinguished in the gas chambers. Thus, the praise rightly due to the small number of ‘righteous gentiles’ was tendered by both Jewish and non-Jewish co-nationals. However,  by justly honoring them, for instance at Yad Vashem, the Jews unwittingly contributed to false national perceptions, as no equivalent attention was focused on the devious acts of so many others.

In light of all these handicaps, it is amazing that the Holocaust has become an integral part of European history. Many museums and memorials are devoted to it; universities have established chairs for it; and there is an ongoing stream of books. The overall process required a major effort over many years. Yet the current outburst of European anti-Semitism shows that satisfaction about the Holocaust’s historical centrality should be very limited. The glass is half full at best. More and more one hears remarks suggesting that the Shoah may return.

Anne Frank –A Paradigm of What?

Despite the manifold documentation of Holocaust history, much of it gives only a very partial picture. The story of Anne Frank has become a paradigm of such distortion. It stresses the role of the ‘good Dutch.’ The house in Amsterdam, where she was hidden, has become one of the Netherlands’ most frequented museums. (The main cultivator of Anne’s memory was her father, Otto.) Yet very little attention has been given to those ‘bad Dutch’ who probably betrayed Anne, and the many Dutch officials who dealt with her on her way to deportation and death.

The experience of Dutch film director Willy Lindwer suggests that the manage­ ment of the Anne Frank House intentionally presents a partial picture. When he approached the foundation’s director in the mid-’80s for help on his movie on the last seven months of Anne’s life in a concentration camp, he was flatly refused. He was not even allowed to film inside the house. The director made comments along the lines of: “Anne Frank is a symbol. Symbols should not be shown to die in a concentration camp.” Undeterred, Lindwer went on to make his movie, “The Last Seven Months of Anne Frank,” for which he received the 1988 International EMMY award for Best Documentary. 97

This was but one of  many indications of the foundation’s efforts to strip Anne Frank of her Jewishness, as a symbol of the Holocaust and to turn her into a symbol of universal anti-racism.  Later  when  the  foundation needed  a new logo, the Jewish designer Otto Treuman submitted  a  design  based  on Anne Frank’s head. It was rejected by the  foundation’s management,  presumably because she looked too Jewish. Treuman had to replace her head with a more  abstract  logo.98

The Delayed Historical Truth of Eastern Europe

In Eastern Europe all debate on the war truth was delayed. Only one ideologically distorted version of history existed, that was imposed by local communist regimes. Even those who might have introduced some external truth didn’t do so. In 1979, when Poland was still ruled by communists, Pope John Paul II celebrated a mass at Birkenau. WJC research director Laurence Weinbaum notes that: “the irony of this, of a Catholic mass being celebrated on the grounds of the largest Jewish cemetery in the world, was not lost on anyone – even if the Jews were impotent to  stop it.”99

Former Israeli ambassador Sergio Minerbi accuses the Pope of deliberately Christianizing Jewish themes on his visit there. On that occasion the Pope “stood before the inscription in Polish  and spoke about remembering ‘the six million Poles’ who perished. The number ‘six million’ rings a bell. It is another Jewish symbol expropriated.” 100 Indeed, “During his entire visit, John Paul II did not mention the word ‘Jew’ once… Even when he stood before the Hebrew inscription there, he referred only to ‘the sons of Abraham.”‘101 In short, the Pope’s message of reconciliation was lost by blurring the Jewishness of the tragedy.

Despite the delay, the process of facing bitter Holocaust truths, which gradually took  place in the West, has recently begun in Eastern Europe.  How this proceeded in Poland is described in Laurence Weinbaum’s interview.

Falsifying Memory, Worse than No Memory

Israeli historian Dov Levin became involved in the struggle for Holocaust truth in Lithuania only after the country’s independence and the fall of its communist regime. He also fights the currently popular myth which idealizes the solidarity between Lithuanians and Jews before the war.

Levin became concerned when he discovered that a number of Lithuanian officers, with whom the Jews had fought for an  independent Lithuania, later participated in the mass murder of the Jews. He summarizes his growing in­ dignation:

Falsified memory is worse than no memory. The more I studied it, the angrier I got. The Germans could never have succeeded in the mass murder without the help of the Lithuanians and without the lack of [Lithuanian] help for the Jews.102

Preferring to Forget the Past

In 1990 French Nazi-hunter Serge Klarsfeld put up his own memorial plaque in the Hotel du Pare in Vichy, home to Petain’s wartime government. He didn’t request permission, as he knew it would not have been granted. The residents of the apartments to which the hotel had been converted were outraged; and the plaque was defaced. In July 2001, Klarsfeld  “organized a solid stone memorial facing the former hotel. This time he informed the municipality, which dared not refuse. Klarsfeld’s memorial bears witness to the 75,000 Jews deported from France.  This  cenotaph,  too,  is  regularly  attacked.  The  desecrators  are  never pursued.” 103

The city of Vichy’s Deputy Mayor for Tourism, Jean-Louis Bourdier, was interviewed in 2002 by an English journalist who suggested it might be psycholo­ gically healthy for the town to admit its past. His description of the Deputy Mayor’s response is instructive:

Dr. Bourdier is circumspect. “A museum here is risky,” he says. “Itis something the Jews want, but it would be a monument to shame. We’d end up like the Pope, who apologized for the Crusades and the Inquisition. The Vichyssois are humiliated by this past; they don’t want to talk about it. This question of a museum, well, even the National Front wants one, but that’s only so they can rehabilitate Petain. No, I think it is a bit too soon.”104

In many Eastern European cities where the Jews were either a substantial minority, or even a majority, before the war, their memory is expunged from local history. In 2001, Jerusalem Post journalist Haim Shapiro visited Tarnopol in the Ukraine, where a third of the population before the war had been Jewish:

We went to the local museum, which has a series of exhibits on the history of the city. Itis well-planned and laid out, with a combination of dioramas with scenes of daily life, objects from the past, photographs, and other illustrative material… There is just one problem … there is no mention of the Jews. It is as if they had never existed. 105

The Myths’ Decline

Wartime myths thrive in many countries, even in Germany where major efforts have been made to research and disclose the criminal acts of the past. While wanting to construct a solid democratic future, Germany simultaneously cultivated a number of wartime legends. One was that the German army (the Wehrmacht) did not participate in the cruelties against the Jews. Former German Chancellor, Helmut Schmidt was among those who strongly backed this false image of non-culpability.

Another myth turned all the participants in the 1944 anti-Hitler conspiracy into heroes. This scheme resulted in Count Stauffenberg’s failed attempt to kill Hitler on July 20 of that year. By that time, however, it had long been clear that Germany had already lost the war; and war criminals figure among those honored as participants  in the attempted  coup.

From 1997 an exhibition traveled through Germany to expose the Wehrmacht’s war crimes. A member of a well-known Hamburg family, Jan Philipp Reemtsma, sponsored it. Though there were mistakes in the initial exhibition, and it had to be withdrawn and researched anew, much of the historical information regarding war crimes committed by the Wehrmacht was irrefutable. 106

When interviewed about the exhibition in 1999, Helmut Schmidt still refused to confront the facts:

I haven’t seen the Reemtsma exhibition. I lived through all that. I was an officer [in the Wehrmacht]. I don’t think one should accuse the 18 million soldiers of the Wehrmacht of crimes against humanity… There was equality in the trenches; camaraderie in the battles; and then there were the conspirators of July 20, the creme-de-la-creme, the honor of Germany. 107

The original 1997 exhibition led to extreme-right protests in Munich. When the revised exhibition opened in October 2002, there was a similar demonstration under the motto “The German Wehrmacht fought courageously and decently! Stop this untruthful exhibition!” However, the counter-demonstrators were much more numerous. 108 Furthermore, the city’s municipal council unanimously adopted a resolution which said that “the responsibility of parts of the Wehrmacht and, in particular, its leadership for crimes of National Socialism cannot and should not be denied.” 109

Inviting Israelis to Honor German Soldiers

How necessary Reemtsma’s efforts are was again clarified in October 2002 when the German Embassy in Israel was planning a memorial ceremony for Germans killed while serving in the German army. The German military attache in Israel, Colonel Ernst Elbers, sent invitations also to various Israelis to participate in the event to honor the memory of “the fallen and missing servicemen in both world wars” who served in the German army.

Israeli daily Ha’aretz commented: “Elbers, who is posted in Tel Aviv for only about a year, defended his government’s commemoration policy with an obstinacy not devoid of the familiar tone of an officer fulfilling orders. He took pains to note that he himself was born after the war, and two of his uncles, whom he did not know, fell on the front.” According to the paper, Elbers had said “The memorial ceremony is intended to symbolize ‘reconciliation.” ‘ Haaretz added “One of his innovative contributions to this reconciliation, in speaking to an Israeli audience, is the comment that in his opinion ‘there is no point in dividing the dead into good dead and bad dead.”‘110

In view of the many complaints, the German Embassy postponed the event. Its spokesman said, “We still intend to hold the ceremony itself. We understood that the text on the invitation about commemorating soldiers killed or missing in both world wars aroused anger in Israel. Perhaps it will be dedicated, as it was a few times in the past, to the memory of World War I soldiers, but we still have to discuss the framework and nature of the ceremony.” 111

Education

It took a long time to understand that memory of the Holocaust had to be accompanied both by research on its origins and education, in order to try to avoid its repetition. The Yad Vashem Institute in Jerusalem played a central role in promoting this realization. Nowadays, the role of survivors in this educative process has become very important. Their testimonies have been key in providing audiences with a better understanding of history.

James Smith, a practicing Christian, who together with his brother Stephen founded the Beth Shalom Holocaust memorial and education center in Not­ tingham, England, notes that:

Visitors, especially younger ones, find it much easier to relate to real people. They see a survivor in front of them and think: ‘This could be my grandmother. It could happen to anyone.’ 112

The strengthening of radical right-wing parties in Europe, as well as other manifestations of extremism, have proved an additional  impetus  for the study and teaching of the Holocaust. Some Western political leaders have realized that the return of the same ideological motifs which led to the mass murder of the Jews could, in the future, threaten their society as well.

Over the years, the importance of educating Europe’s younger generation about the Holocaust has also become better understood. The reasons for this differ somewhat from country to country. Many Germans, having witnessed what their nation was capable of, live in some fear of the future. ‘Angst,’ the German word for anxiety, has become a recurrent motif  in the analysis of the German psyche. Germany’s democratic leaders also gradually comprehended  that  an important  part  of their  rehabilitation  as a nation  depended on stamping out anti-Semitism. Teaching about the Holocaust plays an impor­tant role in that attempt.

In France, another country where Holocaust education has existed for some time, one frequently hears that there is great difficulty in teaching the subject in schools with many Arab children.

In several  European countries, interest in Holocaust education is suddenly accelerating, more than fifty years after the war. Swedish Prime Minister Goran Persson took a major step by convening an international conference on Holocaust education, in January 2000, entitled ‘The Stockholm International Forum on the Holocaust.’ Persson was motivated by the influence of Holocaust deniers in his country and the presence of neo-Nazism among young Swedes. Many senior foreign politicians attended the conference and signed its concluding document.

The Growing Interest in the Holocaust

This conference was the prime manifestation  of an international desire for Holocaust education. At its opening, Yehuda Bauer said:

An amazing thing has happened in the last decade – in fact, during the last few years. A tragedy that befell a certain people, at a certain  time and in certain places, has become the symbol of radical evil, as such, the world over. With a museum on Auschwitz near Hiroshima,  and a department  to teach the Holocaust at Shanghai University, it has become a matter of universal concern. Major politicians, wrongly but characteristically, compare Saddam Hussein to Hitler or the tragedy in Kosovo  to the Holocaust. 113

Bauer asked how one could explain this growing interest in the Shoah, despite the subsequent occurrence of other genocides – particularly since, given the com­ paratively small number of Jews in the world, there were more non-Jewish than Jewish victims of World War II. (He added that he considered it immoral to “compare sufferings.”) Bauer then answered his own question:

There is something unprecedented, frightening, about the Holocaust of the Jewish people that should be taught. For the first time in the bloodstained history of the human race, a decision developed in a modern state, in the midst of a civilized continent, to track down, register,  mark,  isolate  from their surroundings, dispossess, humiliate,  concentrate,  transport  and  mur­der every single  person  of  an  ethnic  group,  as defined  not  by  them  but by the perpetrators. Not just in the country where  the monster  arose, not just on the continent the monster first wished to control, but ultimately everywhere on earth, and for purely ideological reasons. There is no pre­ cedent  for  that. 114

Bauer concluded that because the Holocaust happened once, it could happen again, but not necessarily “in the same form, not necessarily to the same people, not by the same people, but to anyone by anyone.” That did not, however, detract from the importance of Holocaust education, as:

We don’t live in abstractions. All historical events are concrete, specific, par­ticular. It is precisely the fact that it happened to a particular group of people that makes it  of universal importance, because all group hatred is always directed against specific groups, for specific reasons, in specific circum­stances…Evil is always concrete, specific. If you want to teach about it, teach specifics, with actual cases of real people. 115

In his interview, Bauer remains cautious as to what extent the successors of the leaders who attended the Stockholm Conference will be interested in Holocaust education. His guarded attitude is shared by Stephen Smith of Beth Shalom in Nottingham:

There is a very big leap between knowing about the Holocaust and being changed by it. There is a presumption that, if you teach the Holocaust, it makes for a better world; but I don’t buy it. We need to know what happened; but there’s a big leap between knowing what happened  and acting on it. I am less worried about what the grandparents of our young generation did sixty years ago; I am more concerned about what this generation’s grandchil­dren will do. Will they have learned anything? 116

Simon Epstein shares this view:

It is a great illusion of Diaspora Jewry that if one wins the battle of memory of the Shoah this will eliminate anti-Semitism. That struggle has to be under­ taken for its own merits. It is naivety to think that when you educate about the Shoah you will prevent attacks on Jews. 117

Self-help

Since little research has been conducted on post-war moral attitudes toward Jews, it is difficult to analyze specific elements on  a Europe-wide basis. Still, some motifs recur so frequently that even preliminary analysis brings them to the surface. A few such examples are given below.

One common theme is that the fight for Jewish rights has to be led by the Jews themselves. There are many examples of this. In his interview, Isaac Lipschits notes that Jewish survivors in the Netherlands often had to make their own efforts to obtain post-war justice. The main Dutch historians dealing with the fate of the Jews during the war were also Jewish.

Similarly, in the second half of the nineties, Jewish Under-secretary of Com­ merce for International Trade, Stuart E. Eizenstat, author of The Eizenstat Report, played a key role in American efforts to investigate the behavior of neutral coun­ tries during the war. Inhis introduction he wrote that the most compelling reason for renewed interest in the restitution issue was due to:

the extraordinary leadership and vision of a few people who have put this issue on the world’s agenda: the leadership of the World Jewish Congress, Edgar Bronfman, Israel Singer and Elan Steinberg; a bipartisan group in the

U.S. Congress, in particular, the early, tenacious and important role of Senator Alfonse D’Amato of New York; and President Bill Clinton, who has insisted on our establishing and publishing  the facts.118

Likewise, the belated Norwegian restitution investigation also would not have reached a satisfactory conclusion without the efforts of Norway’s small but persist­ent Jewish community. This is expanded upon in an interview with Michael Melchior.

Self-hate

Another recurrent motif, with both psychological and public affairs implications, is Jewish self-hate. When Jews are called upon to defend their interests, there are some Jews in almost every field who help their enemies by putting major blame on the Jewish side. While scholars have taken an interest in the problem of Jewish self-hate, the issue merits much more consideration by psychologists.

One such case involves historian Norman  Finkelstein who published a book entitled The Holocaust Industry. 119 Israeli historian Ronald W Zweig, who reviewed it, wrote:

Finkelstein argues that the contemporary use of the Holocaust  has created an entire ‘industry’ which, in the best manner of exploitative  capitalism,  is not only politically useful but also financially rewarding. Himself Jewish and the son of Holocaust survivors, Finkelstein could allow himself to articulate what many people believe but do not dare say in public. This is especially true in Britain, where socialist circles are anti-Zionist and pro-Palestinian de rigeur but struggle to avoid being tarred with the brush of anti-Semitism.

The core of Finkelstein’s argument is that a cabal of Jewish leaders conspired to extort money from European governments, under the pretext of claiming material compensation for the losses of the Holocaust and for the benefit of the survivors. Once their claims were successful, these organizations then kept the money to themselves and paid the survivors only a pittance. Summarized in this form, the accusation is so unbelievably and totally without foundation that I looked  once again at the third chapter of The Holocaust Industry to ensure that I had not parodied Finkelstein’s argument.  But  the  summary fairly represents what he wrote.120

Revenge: Conspicuous by its Absence

Another post-Holocaust theme, ‘revenge,’ has gained increased impetus due to current media debates regarding the Palestinian  uprising. A number  of Western authors have justified the Arab murder of U.S. civilians – for instance in the September 11, 2001 U.S. bombings. Their argument is that, because Arab societies have remained backward, frustration causes some of its citizens to orchestrate attacks like that on the World Trade Center. They add that the Palestinians similarly use suicide bombings against random innocent civilians as a last resort to draw attention to their plight. In short, desperation legitimizes violence, as a sort of revenge for maltreatment.

This is an immoral  argument;  and  it contrasts  strongly with  the  historical reality of the Jewish response. After the Second World War, the plight of European Jewry, six million  of whom had been  systematically victimized  and murdered, was far more desperate than that of the Palestinians today. Indeed, no Palestinians would  have been killed in recent  times if their society and leadership had not cynically  condoned  and  actively encouraged  terrorism  against  Israeli civilians. Holocaust Jewish survivors, on the other hand, killed few Nazis after the War, and did not engage in massive violent retaliation against collaborators and civilians. The major contrast between Palestinian and Jewish behavior remains poorly understood. In 1995, long before the second Palestinian uprising, Cardinal Carlos Maria Martini of Milan said in reference to the Shoah:

Now the moment has come to repeat, with greater force, that the  task of treating this sore falls first of all upon us in Europe, because here the hideous extermination was carried out…This people, which has been terribly hurt has not requested revenge, it has not run through Europe in processions of mi­ grants; it has not sown bloody terrorism\ it has only been  seeking, for the last fifty years, security for its land and Diaspora. 121

Unable to Kill Barbie

Indeed, Jewish survivors and their families were, by and large, literally morally incapable of revenge. The following story presents one of the most dramatic of many such sublimations of the natural urge for revenge. The French government had made only very limited efforts to extradite Klaus Barbie, former Gestapo chief of Lyon, from Bolivia. This led Michel Cojot Goldberg to go to Bolivia in 1975 with the intention of killing Barbie, who deported his father and many other Jews to certain death. At the time, Goldberg, a French Jew, was the head of the Caracas office of the world’s largest management consultancy, McKinsey.

Goldberg posed as a journalist and met Barbie in a coffee shop in La Paz. When Barbie went to Santa Cruz, in the east of the country, for the weekend, Goldberg decided to go there and kill him. There, Barbie passed only a few meters from the revolver-clad  Goldberg, who, however, decided not to shoot.

A few years later Goldberg recounted this story in an autobiographic book, Namesake, in which he analyzed his inability to execute the criminal who sent his father to his death:

Obviously justice will now never be done. The man responsible for the death of some ten thousand men, women, and children, usually in hideous circum­stances, cannot be [truly] punished for his crimes. What is cutting off the few years remaining to him compared to the deportation to Auschwitz and the death of the forty-one orphans of Izieu, the oldest of whom was only thirteen? How can five smooth bullets, which numb the senses in a fraction of a second, compare to the torture of Jean Moulin and of hundreds of others, day after night? What does a quick death mean to a purveyor of slow death? What is death to a man who has worn the uniform with skull and crossbones? No, justice will never be done… From where I stand I can sometimes see the back of his head … I even go up the stairs to the restaurant and watch Barbie through the little glass swinging-door while he is eating. I can still go in and fire.122

The Jew, Michel Cojot Goldberg, however, could not, and did not. The likely reaction of a Taliban, Hizbullah or Palestinian terrorist under such circumstances, therefore, would tell us more about their personal ethics and culture than about the ethics of revenge and frustration per se. 

1. COUNTRY REVIEWS

Another important avenue to  enlarging our perspective on Europe’s post-war attitudes toward the Jews, and to improving our analytical methodologies,  is to study relevant events in different countries. It will take a long time before full­ fledged national overviews become available; and, in any case, no country is typical of Europe as a whole. Still, the analysis of important or typical issues in specific countries can provide shortcuts to new insights and hypotheses, and can indicate directions for further research. This is attempted in the following series of short vignettes. Due to the  preliminary nature of this investigation, many European countries have not been included, although this subject is relevant to them as well.

The mosaic obtained provides an impressionistic picture and, at the same time, an infrastructure for further study. The cases chosen could be replaced or complemented by many others for the same country, and the concepts developed can be often applied to several other nations as well. It remains for other scholars to develop a more complete picture.

Germany

Seldom has a poet caught the impressions of an entire generation about a country with such precision as Holocaust survivor Paul Celan, when he wrote in his Todesfuge (Fugue of Death),  “Death is a Master from Germany.”

Germany’s post-war views on many issues radically differed from those of other  European  countries,  due  to  its  wartime  history.  Its  perception  of  the Holocaust gradually became clearer; but the involvement of many of post-war Germany’s ruling elite in the Nazi-past, usually garnered scant attention. A detailed study of Germany’s post-war attitudes toward the Jews is particularly important, atypical or  not, because many profound discussions of various  as­ pects of our inquiry were openly held. Equally informative, physically and verbally violent incidents have punctuated this process, which continues until today.

German soul-searching has led to a more intense questioning of the nation’s past than in many other countries. Investigating Germany can thus provide methodological  tools which can later be applied to other countries.

Some queries expressed in German fora are rarely heard elsewhere. For ex­ ample, in 2000, Munich University arranged a series of lectures on “How Past is the Past Century?” In one lecture, Reemtsma hypothetically asked what one should respond to somebody who admitted that he wasn’t sure whether he would have volunteered as a commando to kill women and children, or to a person, who said that he might have denounced his neighbor to the Gestapo, because he can’t stand him. Reemtsma concluded that, today, one would not consider this proof of extraordinary honesty, but rather a painful revelation of deeply immoral and evil attitudes. He suggested such positions should remain private, to be discussed between the person  and his psychoanalyst. They did not belong in a public discussion, because there are certain norms or values one should  not directly or indirectly challenge. 123

Searching for Normalcy

A special German term was coined for the efforts to grapple with one’s past, Vergangenheitsbewaltigung. One of its aspects is a national desire to live without a collective guilt complex. Another is an individual’s desire to mentally digest the crimes of one’s direct forbears. Nathan Durst notes in his interview that this is almost impossible.

There is a desperate search for ‘normalcy’ in Germany. Germans want to be like other nations. This is an absurd quest, ab initio, because there is no standard ‘normal’ nation for any people to try and emulate. The Germans’ real quest, however, is to live in an environment which does not regularly raise the issue of the Holocaust vis-a-vis their contemporary  behavior,  a quandary  illustrated  in the following anecdote. A few years ago, an Israeli student  was sitting in an Amsterdam coffeehouse when some young Germans asked for directions to the Anne Frank house. Someone in the vicinity replied: “During the Holocaust your people had less problems finding her.”

In 1998, German author Peter Schneider asserted in an interview that “it is important to create an awareness that there have been types of resistance and of totally normal willingness to help those persecuted by National Socialism.” The interviewer responded that this attitude was not heroic enough for the Germans.

Schneider replied, “We do not need giant heroes for our history’s picture. We should find more ‘half-high’ heroes, for normalcy. We should not raise our children with pictures of mass murderers only.” Schneider added that the Germans had, by now, become a normal people even if “I agree that we don’t have a normal history. But where are we headed when the first thing we tell our children is ‘You are not normal; you do not belong to a normal nation’? We would be breeding monsters.” 124

Yet many current German events and attitudes keep the controversy alive. One such issue was the lengthy discussion whether a major Holocaust memorial should be erected in central Berlin. Another topic – culminating in major discussions before the 2002 parliamentary elections – was whether extreme anti-Israel positions were acceptable within the FDP Liberal Party.

Walser: A Spiritual Arsonist

Shortly before these elections, German author Martin Walser published Tod eines Kritikers (Death of a Critic). The book’s main character was largely modeled on the prominent German Jewish literature critic Marcel Reich-Ranicki. The leading German daily, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung had originally planned to serialize the book, but its publishers told Walser they would not proceed because they considered the book  anti-Semitic.

Reich-Ranicki explained on television why Walser’s book was anti-Semitic. He quoted an article by another German critic, Uwe Wittstock, in the daily Die Welt. Wittstock had said that German literature could have a place for clearly negative Jewish figures, but that “the literary critic in the center of the new novel, Andre Ehrl-Konig, is not a human being, but a monster of corruption, vulgarity, vanity and lasciviousness.” 125

Two authors, Doron Rabinovici and Robert Schindel, in a discussion on this topic said that the late Ignatz Bubis’ characterization of Walser as a “spiritual arsonist,” was now shared by more people. 126

Looking Away from Auschwitz

Walser had already caused a scandal in his 1998 acceptance speech upon receiving the Peace Prize from German book  publishers  in Frankfurt. He said:

Everybody knows our historical burden. The shame cannot be eliminated. There is not one single day in which it isn’t presented to us. Can it be that the intellectuals who reproach us, to our shame, have for even one second the illusion – just because they work in service of this horrible memory and have apologized a little – that they are for one moment closer to the victims than the perpetrators? … During the worst film scenes from concen­ tration camps, I have looked away at least 20 times. No serious person refutes Auschwitz. No mentally sound person denies its horror.  But, when the media presents me this past every day, I find something in me resists the  ongoing  presentation  of  our  shame.  Instead  of  being  grateful  for  this eternal presentation of our shame, I look away. 127

Walser’s statements yielded many reactions, including  Bubis’  characterization above. (That Walser was a prominent intellectual aggravated  the situation in Bubis’ view.) On the 60th anniversary of Kristallnacht, Bubis said  that Walser promoted a culture of ‘looking away,’ which was common in National Socialism, and which  Germany  should not allow itself to become  accustomed to  again.

In an interview Bubis also stated that “the way Walser talks about the Holo­caust is denigrating for its victims.” Walser wants Holocaust-related talk to stop; but “you cannot expect that from the victims. If Walser’s ancestors had ensured that the Jews had remained alive, there would be no such discussions about them today.”128

What would the Jews have Done?

Klaus von Dohnanyi, former mayor of Hamburg, whose father was executed by the Nazis as a resistance fighter, published an article in which he tried to calm the waters. He wrote: “Germans gave the orders. Germans were the commanders. Germans were the organizers (even if often with European help). And Germans were also the spectators. This shame affects us until today as Germans – at least for anybody  with an active conscience.” Still, he said, it was unfair to try to judge Walser from the outside. Bubis as a Jew had another conscience; for him responsibility as a German began only after the  Holocaust.  He was liberated from having to say, “We are responsible for the Holocaust.”

Von Dohnanyi then added a statement of ‘potential equivalence’ that caused renewed controversy:

Germany’s Jewish citizens must also ask themselves whether they would have been more courageous than most other Germans if, after 1933, only the handicapped, the homosexuals or the Roma would have been brought to the extermination camps. Everyone must try to answer this question truthfully. 129

In analyzing the Walser-Bubis debate, the historian Hans Mommsen suggested that, “the fundamental question is which position the memory of the Holocaust occupies in the German consciousness. Is the memory of the Shoah, and the crimes this term embodies, an unbearable burden, which asks to be suppressed? Or is it a point  of reference  for a new  German national  awareness, willing to accept its National Socialist heritage as a political and moral challenge?” 130 In the same lecture, Mommsen mentioned that historical research showed that the German elites had collaborated in developing the infrastructure for the criminal policies of the Nazis – or had even participated in directly and indirectly implementing them – far more than previously supposed.

Had He been Gassed, I could Sleep More Peacefully

Both Walser’s 2002 book and his 1998 lecture were landmarks in Germany’s continuing debate regarding what is permissible toward Jews today and what is not. An earlier milestone was German author and film director Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s 1985 play Der Miill, die Stadt und der Tod (Garbage, the Town and Death). Its main  character, perhaps modeled on  Bubis,  was a Jewish property speculator about whom one character said, “Had he been gassed, I could sleep more peacefully tonight.” Members of Frankfurt’s Jewish community, including Bubis, occupied the theater’s stage to prevent the performance. Eventually the play was banned  in Frankfurt. 131

During the 2002 debate on Walser’s book, the debate about Fassbinder’s play was reopened. Die Welt wrote that the influence of literature on the development and justification of anti-Semitism was often underestimated. Ernst Cramer pointed out that the still-popular 19th century stories of the Grimm brothers  include several tales containing anti-Jewish prejudices and lies. Similarly, everyone still recalled, almost two decades later, the Fassbinder play and its character ‘the rich Jew.’ At the time people asked whether there was a problem with exposing despicable figures on the  stage. According to Cramer,  “That is the wrong  question. Of course representing an unappetizing character is  part  of  literature.  Often even its salt. But when such a figure is depicted as the representative of an entire group, it becomes scandalous and wicked, because it strengthens anti-Semitic prejudices.” 132 The subtitle of that article might have stood for Western Europe in general: “Germany is not an anti-Semitic country, but anti-Semitism is constantly reemerging there.”

Israel and Anti-Semitism: Issues in the 2002 German Elections

Attitudes toward anti-Semitism and Israel became a central factor – according to some a determining one – in the 2002 German parliamentary elections. This despite the fact that Germany’s 100,000 Jews represent barely one-tenth of one percent of the population and even less of the voters. Nonetheless, several politi­cians attributed the defeat of the right-wing Christian-Democrat/Liberal opposi­tion to the anti-Semitic and anti-Israel positions of JUrgen Mollemann, the FDP deputy chairman. 133

In May 2002 the FDP’s faction in the state parliament of North-Rhine Westph­ alia had accepted a dissident green parliamentarian, Jamal Karsli, into  its ranks. Karsli had declared the Israeli army was using Nazi methods and stressed the  power  of  the  Zionist  lobby  in  Germany.  The  enthusiasm  with  which Mollemann, the state party leader, had received Karsli, inspired major discussion in the German media.

Both Karsli and Mollemann were criticized by many German politicians, including key FDP figures and German Jewish leaders. Ultimately Karsli resigned from the party and later had to leave its state parliamentary faction. During the discussions, Mollemann said that German Jewish leaders, in particular Michel Friedman, then Vice President of the Central Council of German Jewry, were causing anti-Semitism by their reactions to the affair. 134

The daily Suddeutsche Zeitung claimed Mollemann used classic anti-Semitic motifs which so far had only been applied by extreme rightists in Germany. It commented:

The Jew is guilty. This sentence belongs to the obscene brown classics Mollemann takes it from. In interviews he blames Michel Friedman with his intolerant and malicious behavior for the increasing ability  of anti­ Semites to attract adherents in Germany. In other words, the Jew should keep his mouth shut, should not act so prominently, and should not dare to constantly complain about anti-Semitism. Only an unnoticeable Jew is a good Jew. 135

A few days before the September election, Mollemann paid hundreds of thousands of Euros, from unknown sources, for a  campaign  publication  in which he attacked both Ariel Sharon and Friedman, neither of whom was running for office in Germany. Friedman had  said a few days before that “the murder of people starts with words like those of Martin Walser or Jurgen Mollemann.” Friedman admitted that there were also anti-Semites in  the Christian Democrats (CDU), his own party, or  the  Socialists  (SPD),  but  no other major party behaved like the FDP. Friedman  added  that  one  should refute these things from the very beginning, and added that Mollemann  was already  “beyond  the  beginning.” 136

The FDP’s electoral performance fell substantially below that predicted by opinion polls before Mollemann’s last-minute attacks were published. The day after the elections, he was asked to resign by the party’s leadership. 137

In fact, over the following weeks, Mollemann had to give up all his party positions, due to illegalities in the financing of his infamous campaign publication. The FDP’s treasurer publicly declared that the supposed donors either denied having given money for the publication or had such common names as to be non-identifiable.

Germany’s Nazi past played another role in the same election on a subject unrelated to the Jews. A few days before the election, Socialist German Justice Minister Herta Datibler  Gmelin compared  Bush’s methods with respect  to Iraq to those of Hitler. Subsequent reactions made it clear that she would be excluded from the new German cabinet.  Before that could happen,  she announced  that she was no longer interested in such a position.

Begin Dressed as a Nazi

Italy’s courting of Arab countries is only one of the major factors in its sometimes vulgar and extreme anti-Israel positions, adopted early on among both extreme leftists and mainstream politicians. Several senior Italian politicians emphasize a ‘Mediterranean’ policy, to compensate for their lack of influence in Europe. Al­ though there is hardly an intellectual willing to admit that latent anti-Semitism exists within Italy’s anti-Israeli feelings, Gianni Baget Bozzo, a Catholic theolo­ gian, recently asserted, in the left-wing paper Manifesto, that “Jewish morals were dictated by a violent  God instead  of the Christian one.”149

In 1982, after the Lebanese War, Sandro Viola a well-known Italian journalist who writes in the widely read daily, La Repubblica, defined Israel as a “people sick of violence.” Nuova Societa, a publication put out by Turin’s communist party, portrayed Prime Minister Menachem Begin dressed as a Nazi on its front cover, with a Star of David distorted into a swastika. 150

Italy’s trade unions marched in front of Rome’s main synagogue, shouting anti-Israeli and anti-Semitic slogans. Its leader Luciano Lama delivered a speech asking the Jews to dissociate themselves from Israel. A few days later Rome’s main synagogue was attacked by Palestinian terrorists. A child was killed and 30 people wounded. Initially the Jewish community did not want the Italian President Sandro Pertini, who had been very critical of Israel, to attend the funeral. After some deliberations it decided otherwise, but specifically requested the representatives of the trade unions not to attend.

What was then acceptable only for the left became, twenty years later, so for part of the mainstream. In 2002 the Italian daily, La Stampa, published  the epitome of an anti-Semitic cartoon during the siege of the Church of the Nativity, in which Arab terrorists had taken refuge. It depicted Jesus looking up from the manger  at a tank saying, “Don’t tell me they want to kill me again.”

Supporting Iraq Against Israel

No mainstream European politician in the 1980s ever went as far as the Christian Democrat Giulio Andreotti, who has headed several Italian cabinets, in his anti-Israel stance. At an inter-parliamentary conference in Geneva (April 7, 1984), he voted, as Italy’s foreign minister, in favor of a motion presented by Saddam Hussein’s Iraq. The motion equated Zionism with racism, sup­ ported the boycotting of Israel, and defended the right of “the armed struggle for the liberation of Palestine” [i.e. terrorism]. Italy was the only western Euro­ pean country to vote with the Soviet bloc for this motion. 151 Later that year, Andreotti and Italian socialist leader Bettino Craxi flew to Tunisia to officially meet with Yasser Arafat. This despite an outstanding Italian justice ministry mandate to capture and try Arafat for supplying weapons to Italian left-wing Red Brigades terrorists. 152

In 1985 Israel attacked the PLO headquarters in Tunisia, after the murder of three Israeli tourists in Cyprus. Shortly before, there had been several Arab terrorist attacks in Rome. On October 3, the Italian Parliament met to discuss the situation in the Middle East. The session “totally ignored Arab terrorism in Rome and elsewhere and formally attacked Israel. According to both Andreotti, then Minister of Foreign Affairs and the socialist deputy Baget Bozzo, Israel had done worse on this occasion “than what the Nazis had done at the Fosse Ardeat­ ine,” the quarry on the outside of Rome where the Nazis had executed Jewish and non-Jewish hostages during the war. 153

In the 1990s, Craxi eluded Italian justice by fleeing to Tunisia, after being accused of misappropriating major monies. He did not deny this, but claimed he had used the funds for the Italian socialist party in an illegal, but common, form of party financing. Craxi, now a symbol of Italian political corruption, died in Tunisia in 2000.

Italians do not take such matters too seriously. Even some politicians admit that, in Italy, there is often little difference between theater and politics. 154 As Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi said several years ago:

In Italy it is not enough to win elections in order to govern. Italian politics is mainly words, chatter, a kind of play whereby the politicians consider their performance in the media. I don’t know how Italy is viewed in the eyes of Israel, but, looking from the inside, it is a backward country with an irrespons­ ible public administration, and efficiency and laws from the Middle Ages. 155

Sergio Romano: The Ideological Base of a Murky Discourse

Against the background of the endless flow of anti-Israel publications and state­ ments, from many parts of the Italian political scene, an intellectual emerged who tried to give an ideological foundation to this large and murky discourse. Sergio Romano, a prominent Italian historian, was formerly Italy’s ambassador to NATO and Moscow. In 1997 he published Lettera A Un Amico Ebreo (A Letter to a Jewish Friend). The book did not contain footnotes and was a slick combination of constructs which contained remarks which were borderline anti-Semitic, or beyond. In his conclusions Romano claimed that old anti-Semitism was dead in Italy, but that a new anti-Semitism had emerged. Both of his reasons for this exonerated Italy and blamed the Jews themselves. The first was Israel’s privileged position thanks to the support of the Jewish communities abroad.  The second was the prominence of the Holocaust in twentieth century European history. This was due, he implied, to the collective guilt of some nations and religious cultures. 156 According to Romano:

The strategy of memory fulfills for many a natural need for security. After a long history of oppression and persecution, the memory of genocide is an insurance policy, the best defense against the risk of a repetition. For Israel it has also, in the past, been an extraordinary diplomatic weapon, a precious source of international  legitimization. 157

He characterized Judaism, as having “a fossil catechism … of one of the oldest, most introverted and backward religions ever practiced in the West.”158

The most detailed Jewish reaction came from Sergio Minerbi  who  pub­ lished a book in response. He pointed out that the United  Nations’  negative public attitude toward Israel amply refuted Romano’s remark about Israel’s privileged position. 159 He stressed that Romano  was  merely  saying  “Dear Jewish ‘friends,’ stop memorializing the Shoah, because it  bothers  anti­ Semites.”160 He also  ridiculed  Romano’s  remark  on  the  “catechism.”  Since there was no such thing in Judaism, how could it be a fossil? He furthermore rhetorically asked Romano, “Whom  does  it  harm  if  a  religious  Jew  respects the commandments? Is Judaism perhaps ‘archaic and sullen’ only because Romano hasn’t made a minimal effort to study it?”161  Minerbi  concluded  that many of Romano’s arguments had long ago been raised by revisionist and anti-Semitic  historians. 162

From Neo-Fascists to Acceptable Right-Wing?

In Italy – which has considerably ‘massaged’ the truth of its wartime past – attitudes toward the Holocaust and the Jews remain a recurring public issue. Until the early 1990s, the neo-fascist MSI Party (Italian Social Movement) was outside the Italian mainstream, with a rather stable voter potential of about 5%. In 1992, on the 70th anniversary of Mussolini’s march on Rome, 50,000 people gathered in commemoration, demonstrating in the city’s streets.

In 1995, following years of major political crisis, in which many of Italy’s senior politicians and several judges were accused of corruption, MSI leader Gianfranco Fini created a new right-wing party, the National Alliance. The MSI’s extremists remained outside of it. At its founding convention, the Alliance broke with its neo-fascist past, condemning totalitarianism, racism, intolerance and anti-Semitism. Over the years, Fini, who in his MSI days had proclaimed Mussolini to be “the greatest statesman of the century,” has indeed moved away from such neo-fascist positions. 163 His  party now returns a fairly stable vote in national elections of around 15%, and has become a pillar ofltaly’s right-of-center govern­ ments.

Fini took a number of steps to reposition himself and his party closer to the democratic center. In 1999 he visited Auschwitz. In 2000 he voted in favor of legislation to establish  a Holocaust Remembrance Day and, later, he even sup­ ported the idea of Israel joining the European Union. Fini also managed to improve his relationship with the Italian Jewish community. In 2002, Luzzatto said that he was convinced that Fini is a genuine democrat. “He’s saying things today that, in the past, were inconceivable. If I were the prime minister of Israel,

I’d probably invite him for a visit.”164 From an interview with the Israeli daily Ha’aretz, in September 2002, it became clear that Fini was waiting for just such an invitation, which would constitute a personal and political ‘moral clearance’ from the Jewish people.

Fini’s apology to the Jews drew attention to some of Italy’s many inner contradictions. When he said in his Ha’aretz interview that Italy bears responsibil­ ity for what happened after the 1938 racial laws and that it should apologize, he irritated both the extreme right and the extreme left. The former think that Italy should rehabilitate Mussolini. The latter, who include many partisans who fought against Mussolini, asked how such an apology could be made by a pupil of Giorgio Almirante, the founder of Italy’s post-war neo-fascist party. The soul­ searching will continue and perhaps grow even stronger. 165

After Fini’s interview, Victor Emmanuel of Savoy, the son of Italy’s last king asked for “forgiveness for his family’s ties to fascism and it’s anti-Semitic laws,” a reversal of his 1997 remark that “I do not have to apologize for these laws, which anyway weren’t so terrible.” 166 In response, Luzzatto noted that Victor Emmanuel had been evasive about the racial laws “which were not signed by the devil, but by a king of the House of Savoy, his grandfather.” While Luzzatto accepted Fini’s apologies he considered the ambiguous language of Victor Em­ manuel unacceptable. 167

A revision of how fascism is presented is now underway in Italy, due to the need to integrate former fascists and neo-fascists into the Italian political system. One Italian minister, Mirko Tremaglia, was even a volunteer in the Republic of Salo, Mussolini’s fascist government, which continued to fight alongside Nazi Germany after the official Italian government switched sides.168

France

As early as 1944, philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre was writing about the reintegration of Jews in French society:

Today those Jews whom the Germans did not deport or murder are coming back to their homes. Many were among the first members of the Resistance; others had sons or cousins in Leclerc’s army. Now all France rejoices and fraternizes in the streets; social conflict seems temporarily forgotten. The newspapers devote whole columns to stories of prisoners of war and deportees. But do we say anything about the Jews? Do we give a thought to those who died in the gas chambers at Lublin? Not a word. Not a line in the newspapers. That is because we must not irritate the anti-Semites; more than ever, we need unity. Well-meaning journalists will tell you: “In the interest of the Jews themselves, it would not do to talk too much about them just  now. For four years French society has lived without them; it is just as well not to emphasize too vigorously  the fact that they have returned.” 169

Sartre added that the Jews:

have made a clandestine return. Their joy at being  liberated is not part of the nation’s joy… In my Lettres Franr;aises, without thinking about it particu­ larly, and simply for the sake of completeness, I wrote something or other about the sufferings of the prisoners of war, the deportees, the political prisoners, and the Jews. Several Jews thanked me in a most touching manner. How completely must they have felt themselves abandoned, to think of thank­ ing an author for merely having written  the word  ‘Jew’ in an article!170

Over the past decades, France has attempted both to hide and to come to terms with its Vichy past. The French post-war attitude toward the Jews is extremely complicated. 171 French authorities only finally acknowledged the Vichy regime’s racist actions because a few Jews continued to struggle for a public admission of the truth. President Chirac obliged, unlike his predecessor Mitterrand, who had been busy hiding the truth about himself. This issue is discussed in more detail in the interview with Shmuel Trigano.

The Papon Case: A Symbol

French Jewry has been hit by more recent violent anti-Semitism outbursts than any other Western European community. That also enhances the importance of the many unfinished French Holocaust issues, including the punishment of war criminals. Over the past several decades, very few of the many unpunished French perpetrators have been tried, although each trial has acquired significant symbolic meanmg.

One among many indications that the aftermath of the Holocaust still has significant ramifications for this century occurred when a French court freed Maurice Papon in September 2002 for health reasons.  This 92-year-old former French minister was the last person to be jailed for war crimes. When he was released from jail, bystanders shouted “Papon to jail!” and “Murderer!” 172 Several hundred people protested in Marseilles. Zvi Ammar, chairman of the local Jewish community said, “to let such a criminal go free is an attack against the foundations of the republic; and that concerns all democrats.” 173

Papon’s story reflects many facets of French official behavior during and after the war. From 1942 until 1944 he was a deputy prefect under the Vichy regime. As such he signed off on the deportation of more than 1,500 Jews who were sent first to Paris and then to Auschwitz. After the war he became the police chief of Paris (1958) and France’s budget minister (1978). In 1981 his wartime role was revealed by a French newspaper. 174

In 1982 Holocaust victims filed a suit against him, and prosecutors in Bor­ deaux opened an investigation. In 1983 he was formally charged with crimes against humanity. In 1987 the appeals’ court dismissed his case for procedural irregularities. The following year he was again charged with crimes against humanity. In 1995 the Bordeaux prosecutors reduced the charges to “complicity” in crimes against humanity. In 1997 his final appeal was rejected and the trial commenced, 15 years after initiating proceedings. In 1998 Papon was found guilty of complicity in crimes against humanity. In 1999 he fled to Switzerland. He was caught and extradited to France, where he began his ten-year prison sentence. 175 A scant three years later, upon his release, his lawyers announced that Papon, who had never admitted guilt or showed remorse, intended to seek a retrial. 176

Public reaction to Papon’s liberation included severejudgments on how French

justice had functioned or failed to function. The head of the French League for Human Rights, Michel Tubiana, noted that “Maurice Papon is being liberated today because of his health, while justice took 17 years to judge him.” 177 Serge Klarsfeld commented, on behalf of the Association of Sons and Daughters of the Jewish Deported in France, “now all sick criminals should be released; otherwise it will be shown that there are two measures.”178 The socialist parliamentarian Julien Dray was more blunt: “For the children who were in the sealed wagons and the families who went up in smoke, there were no reasons of health.” 179

Belgium

Belgium, one of the European countries most hostile to Israel, has recently seen several very violent anti-Semitic incidents. In them, Muslim aggression, European incitement against Israel and references to the Holocaust all come together. A foreign journalist  described one such violent incident in Spring 2002:

Dressed in the striking black mantles and shtreimel fur hats of the Hassidic Jews, Eli Fallick and his son stood out as targets for a gang of 20 Arab youths laying in wait. The two were smashed to the ground on their way to the Belz synagogue in Antwerp, near the dividing line between the fast-growing Moroccan quarter and the ‘Jootse wijk,’ where the city’s  12,000 orthodox Jews live. They were kicked ferociously about the body and head as a chorus of teenage attackers spat at them, chanted ‘Dirty Jew’ and praise to Hitler, the now-routine lexicon of abuse in Muslim street attacks. 180

A few days later, Mr. Fallick’s ten-year-old daughter was assaulted on Antwerp’s streets.

Few, if any, Jewish leaders after the Second World War made as strong a statement to a prime minister of a European democratic country as did Isi Leibler, senior vice president of the World Jewish Congress at the organization’s meeting in Brussels, April, 2002. Part of it read:

My grandparents and most members of my family were deported and gassed in Auschwitz. Sadly, Belgian collaborators assisted the Nazis in apprehending them. Until recently,  I shared the pride of my Belgian origins, which had been imbued in me by my parents. Now that is no longer the case. In fact, I opposed holding this conference in Brussels, because it shames me to say that, in recent times, this city has effectively established itself as the European capital of biased  anti-Israel  agitation.

I make this accusation knowingly, sensitive to the fact that one must take great care to avoid viewing bona fide criticisms of Israeli policies as being motivated by anti-Semitism. However your government, and particularly For­ eign Minister Louis Michel, have been so one-sided and employed such outra­ geous double standards against Israel, that these positions can only be described as anti-Semitic. How else can one explain policies, which fail to distinguish between killers of innocent civilians and killers of the killers? Indeed, in recent days, some of the accusations of alleged atrocities by Israeli soldiers have been so outlandish, that they smack of medieval libel. 181

Belgian Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt responded in a letter to Leibler saying, with less than complete honesty, that the Belgian government had:

always tried to take a balanced and neutral position with regard to the situation in the Middle East and the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians… I strongly regret your allegations of anti-Semitism directed at my government and at Foreign Minister Louis Michel. Both Minister Michel and I have vigorously condemned the anti-Jewish attacks that we have seen in Belgium and in Europe over the past few weeks. Belgium has a tradition of philosoph­ ical, political and religious tolerance. I am very much attached to this tradition of openness toward all communities living in Belgium. I reject all forms of racism and know for a fact that Louis Michel shares this conviction. 182

The quotations from his letter stand here to be used the next time Belgium takes a one-sided anti-Israel position, as it has so often done, in United Nations bodies.

Greece

Greece has often been one of the most problematic European Union countries. There is substantial anti-Semitism, although few violent acts are committed against Jews. The country’s Jews were among the hardest hit during the Holocaust. Before the war there were 77,000 Jews in Greece, about two-thirds in Salonika; only 10,000 survived the German occupation. Today the  community,  with  no more than 5,000 members, is almost invisible. 183 After the war, the restitution of assets was handled, however, relatively appropriately, compared to many other Western  European  countries.

Yet extreme anti-Semitic remarks both against the Jews and Israel have been made at the highest levels. In a public statement in 1982, socialist Prime Minister Andreas Papandreou openly compared the Israelis to the Nazis.184  In 1988 Greek Justice Minister V. Rotis overruled a court decision to extradite a Palestinian terrorist to Italy, where he was charged with bombing the synagogue in Rome. His attack killed a three-year-old child and wounded many others. Rotis said that the attack concerned the “Palestinian people’s struggle for the liberation of their homeland, and therefore  cannot be considered  as an act of terrorism.” 185

In 2001, Greek Orthodox Archbishop of Athens Christodoulos, perhaps the most popular personality in Greece, accused the Jews of being responsible for Greece’s cancellation of the use of ‘religion’ in the population register and indi­ vidual identity cards, in line with European Union decisions. 186 This Church leader is a cultured man, who speaks several foreign languages (not common in Greece). The socialist government spokesman, Dimitris Reppas, declared, “I believe that such an allegation, beyond that it is an absolute lie, creates problems for the country’s international image.”187

A number of Jewish sites have been vandalized over the past few years. 188 This includes cemeteries and Holocaust memorials.  In  Salonika, which  before the war had a large Jewish population, a Holocaust monument was finally erected a few years ago. It was located far from the city center (where the Jews had mainly lived). This monument was also recently desecrated. 189

A report filed by the Embassy in Athens to Israel’s Foreign Ministry, in Spring 2002, told that a former Greek Foreign Minister had denied Israel’s right to exist. Greece’s best known composer, Mikos Theodorakis, has “published an article in which he compared the IDF actions to those of the Nazis.” 190

In July 2002 the Anti-Defamation League called on the Greek government to condemn the rise in anti-Semitic depictions and articles in the Greek press. The press release contained a cartoon which appeared in the pro-Government, center-left publication Eleftherotypia. It showed a fat Israeli soldier with a star of David on his helmet threatening a meager veiled Arab woman with a gun. The headline read “Holocaust II.” To gain some perspective on these accusations of casualty levels in Israel and the territories, one might recall that about 1-3% of the population died in Greece’s civil war, after the end of World War II.191

Denmark

Denmark has a more checkered Holocaust history than many realize. For example, a few years ago, historian Vilhjalmur Orn Vilhjamsson revealed that Denmark had deported 21 German Jews to Nazi Germany, where most presumably perished. As Efraim Zuroff wrote in the Danish daily Berlingske  Tidende:

The articles published recently in this paper reveal that Denmark implemented a restrictive anti-Jewish refugee policy in the 30s and 40s and, on its own initiative, sent German Jewish refugees back into the Nazi inferno. We also know now that at least one Danish company exploited slave labor in Estonia and that the negative attitude toward stateless Jews persisted even after World War II. If we add up the decades-long cover-up of these issues, the refusal of some agencies to allow research into these questions,  and the failure of the Danish authorities to prosecute Danes who committed Nazi war crimes, the picture is far bleaker than we ever imagined. 192

The issue of Denmark’s collaboration with the Nazis during the Second World War may be much more substantial than has been acknowledged until now. Unopened archives may contain the names of about 300,000 Nazis or Nazi sympathizers collected by a Nazi opponent. Claus Bryld, a professor of modern history at Roskilde University, claims that much of Denmark’s industry and agriculture collaborated with the Nazis, and that 12,000 Danes actually fought with the Germans against the Russians.

Bryld also stated that once these archives are opened:

Big business figures may be compromised by its release and there may be revealing information in the files on the royal family. There were very intimate relations between leading German officials and leading Danish ones. They made no political considerations. They traded with the Germans as if they were normal people. A moral perspective was totally absent. 193

Norway

Some of Europe’s most anti-Israeli politicians, trade unionists, journalists and other prominent figures can be found  in  Norway  today.  On  many  occasions their criticisms reflect anti-Semitic sentiment. This provides extra impetus to reinvestigate the Norwegian wartime myth, which tries to project the picture of a courageous people with few Nazi collaborators, and to analyze how the Norwegian democratic authorities behaved  toward  the Jews after its liberation.

Norwegian journalist Bjorn Westlie notes that the German occupation of Norway during 1940-1945 is the topic most studied by Norwegian historians, a subject on which hundreds of books have been published. Yet the financial aspects of the persecution of Norway’s Jews have been largely ignored. “It represents one of the most dramatic and brutal episodes in Norwegian history.” 194 Before the Jews were sent to their deaths, all their possessions were confiscated by the Norwegian police and government officials. In his interview, Avi Beker discusses both Norwegian restitution to the Jews, a few years ago, and the country’s problem­ atic war past.

Discriminating against the Jews after the War

After the war, Norway’s democratic government established a reparations office for confiscated properties. Restitution was paid, although how much is not known. For example, the wartime Liquidation Board for Confiscated Jewish Assets, which  dealt with  stolen Jewish properties,  used  32% of their value for their own administration. These were deducted from the restitution payments to the Jews! Westlie writes that many applicants retrieved only small parts of their possessions – one particular family, to his knowledge, received less than one percent. 195

The reparations office also transferred some private Jewish property to the War Indemnity Fund, a state-run welfare scheme. Only Norwegian citizens could apply for this. Of the thousand surviving Norwegian Jews, several hundred were not citizens and thus not eligible for any indemnity. The Norwegian government had promised the World Jewish Congress, during the war, that it would take measures to help the Norwegian Jews, but it did not do so.

Westlie concludes:

Although [during the war] the Jews in Norway were treated differently in every respect from all other Norwegian groups, this was not taken into consideration during the post-war  settlement… A directorate was estab­ lished to help Norwegian seamen as a group with particular problems after the war. The inhabitants of the northern region of Finnmark, too,  were viewed and treated as a  special  group  after  their  homes  and  workplaces had been burned and plundered by the Germans. Special measures for the Jews, on the other hand, were not taken into consideration. This was an historic injustice. 196

1995: Visiting a Prominent Nazi

The restitution issue only reemerged in the mid 1990s. “On 27 May 1995 the newspaper Dagens Naeringsliv reported that the Norwegian authorities had made little effort to help Norwegian Jews recover their property, although considerable funds were discovered in bank accounts after the war.” 197 When this issue drew attention in the international press, following World Jewish Congress publications in March 1996, Norway’s government belatedly reacted by establishing a Commit­ tee of Inquiry into the Confiscation of Jewish Property in Norway during World War II.

Berit Reisel represented the Jewish community on this committee. She de­ scribed her 1995 visit to Rolf Svindal to American journalist Richard Z. Chesnoff. Svindal had been the head of Oslo’s Liquidation Board for Confiscated Jewish Assets, established by the Quisling government to loot Jewish property; and Reisel needed books and files still in his possession. Svindal, then 96 years old, introduced himself by saying, “My name is Rolf Svindal and I am a Nazi.” He unrepentantly told Reise! that his large apartment contained furniture and paintings taken from Jews. There was only one matter Svindal was sorry about. Reisel reported that, “He was angry that, after the war, the Norwegian authorities had mixed up the property files for the Jews and non-Jews. That’s what bothered him the most. He was a very good clerk, and he had done everything right with a system down to the last centimeter. And then someone had made a mess of his beautiful orderly system. It was awful to hear.” 198

Despite bureaucratic efforts to stall the issue, the Norwegian government and parliament approved a rather generous payment to survivors. Norway has been highly praised, since it was the first European government to settle with the Jewish people in the current round of restitution. Yet, given that few people were involved, the costs to Norway of this belated justice were relatively minor, while it prevented major damage to its image abroad.

Due to worldwide publicity, some of the extreme efforts of Norwegian organi­ zations to boycott Israel have received above average attention. Probably the more some of the Norwegian elite defame Israel, the more attention will be given to the best-known Norwegian in the Western world, the Nazi-collaborator Quisling, whose name has become a generic term for traitor.

Sweden

Sweden has an extremely poor record of prosecuting war criminals. It has not investigated any Swedish perpetrators, although hundreds of Swedes were SS volunteers. Baltic war criminals found ready refuge in Sweden from 1944 onward, with the knowledge of the Swedish government. However, Swedish archives on these matters remain closed.199

In recent years the Swedish Foreign Minister has expressed severe criticism oflsrael’s policies and supported extremely discriminatory anti-Israel resolutions of UN bodies. This behavior should be compared with the conclusions of the Commission on Jewish Assets in Sweden at the Time of the Second World War:

One finds that Sweden’s policy towards the belligerent parties for most of the war was based on power politics. Moral issues were excessively disregarded and actions were taken with the overriding purpose of keeping Sweden out of the war and maintaining essential supplies. Today of course, such  an attitude can seem deplorable.200

The commission advised further study. One of the major issues concerns:

the importance of Sweden’s trade with Nazi Germany, as regards the ability of the latter to continue its persecution of Jews and others, until as late as 1945. This research field is made relevant not least by the latter-day debate on whether Sweden’s trade with Germany prolonged the war and with it the sufferings of the Jewish people. 201

The Commission also deplored that the moral questions involved in the business relations with Nazi Germany were never raised in parliamentary or governmental discussions.202 Ifthe Swedish government’s current anti-Israel state­ ments ever become subject to similar public inquiry, their future judgment may duplicate the past: “Moral issues were excessively disregarded.”

Even Iceland has its Holocaust controversies. Zuroff points out how its na­ tional soccer coach Atli Edvaldsson is “using his prominence as a sports hero to rewrite the history of his Estonian Nazi war-criminal  father.”203

Switzerland

Switzerland’s Holocaust and post-Holocaust relationship with the Jews has many facets, some positive and some negative. Toward the war’s end – when it was already clear that Germany was losing – there were important demonstrations and press campaigns in Switzerland against German atrocities in Hungary and Hungarian complicity in them. The press reported on these, despite the Swiss Interior Ministry’s request, a few days earlier, that all Swiss newspaper editors refrain from this.204 After the war, Switzerland skillfully escaped the wrath of the United States and its allies for the support it gave, under the guise of neutrality, to Nazi Germany. The Swiss were accused at the time of having prolonged the war through their economic activities with Germany.

However, one element of Swiss attitudes toward the Jews has recently domin­ ated the media. Swiss bankers  and politicians  created major negative publicity for their country regarding restitution in the late 1990s, while showing a total lack of understanding of Western public opinion.

After the war,  heirs of Holocaust victims began to complain about the ac­counts that their relatives had in various Swiss banks. The latter used many subterfuges to avoid dealing with such claims. Once the accounts were opened, it became clear that these had often been depleted through decades of charges.

The eventual costs to the banks for their resistance to justice was heavy, in terms of both money and image. The procedure established for dealing with the investigation of the dormant accounts was costly and the expenses had to be borne by the banks. Their image, and that of Switzerland, was tarnished by the massive publicity the issue received. During the process, then Swiss President Pascal Dela­ muraz made matters worse by making blatantly anti-Semitic remarks. Comments Beker: “Not since the Second World War had such an  anti-Jewish expression (‘Jewish blackmailers’)  been made by the leader of a democratic country.”205

A Bureaucratic Restitution Process

Another aspect of the restitution, one which has hardly been analyzed, is the attempt to turn belated justice into an antiseptic, excessively bureaucratic process. To deal with the claims, the Swiss banks and the Jewish organizations agreed on the creation of an independent entity, the CRT, for which  complex procedures were established.

At a 1999 conference in Switzerland, a debate took place between the banks’ representative and Israeli arbitrator, Judge Hadassa Ben-ltto, a member of the CRT. She said that:

The banks’ representative tells us very frankly why the banks were interested in creating the CRT. They wanted an independent body to deal with the individual claims, because they did not want to deal with the individual claimants. Negative decisions  had to be made  by someone else, or as Dr. Romerio described in his own language, they wanted ‘to pass the buck’ to somebody else. We were selected for this job. The buck was passed to us, but it should be made very clear that we are not here to do the banks’ business. We are acting as independent arbitrators who must do justice to both sides. Our task is not facilitated by  complicated Rules of  Procedure and by the lack, in many cases, of relevant bank documents. We must abide by the rules; thus we must sometimes give individual attention to twenty files on an account with a balance of only 5 Swiss Francs. Not only are we compelled to follow the rules handed to us but, in this unusual procedure, we must do so carefully, with much sensitivity.

This is our mandate and also our duty. And, if for some unforeseen reason, the banks were mistaken in thinking that it can be done in these circumstances in a more accelerated manner, setting an unrealistic deadline and expecting lower costs, it should now be admitted that this was a grossly over-optimistic view.206

The restitution process has also forced a major reassessment of Swiss war history by a government-appointed  commission: the Swiss Independent Commis­sion of  Experts,  more  generally  known  as  the  Bergier  Commission,  after  its chairman Jean Frarnois Bergier.207 This belated research is gradually providing a more truthful description of Swiss Holocaust  history.

Poland

Poland’s post-war attitude toward the Jews requires major study, even if few findings are applicable to Western European countries. Its post-war history boasts several landmark events regarding attitudes toward the Jews. The murder of more than 1,000 Jews in post-war Poland – until the middle of 1946 – is revealing in understanding how the returning Jews were received.

Another important issue was the battle, during the second half  of  the 1980s, to move the Catholic (Carmelite) convent, built in 1984 within the Auschwitz concentration camp site. An agreement was reached in 1987, signed by four European Cardinals, to move the convent by early 1989. This promise was not  kept.  Several Jewish  delegations  subsequently  traveled  to  Auschwitz to protest.  One delegation  of the European  Union  of Jewish  students blew the shofar  (the ritual ram’s horn) in front of the camp.208 The convent was eventu­ally moved.

Another landmark was the recent debate about the Poles’ massacre of Polish Jews in Jedwabne during the war. This episode became public knowledge in 2001, and caused intense media debate in the country.209 A report edited by Pawel Machcewicz of a Polish-government body – the Institute of National Remem­ brance – published in November 2002, found that Poles committed war-time crimes against Jews in at least 24 locations.210 These facts are difficult to accept for a nation, which sees itself as a war victim, without yet realizing that at the same time it was an oppressor. Polish post-war attitudes toward the Jews are the subject of the interview with Laurence Weinbaum.

Hungary

In October 2002, the Hungarian Jewish novelist Imre Kertesz was rather unexpec­ tedly awarded the Nobel  Prize for Literature. Kertesz had survived Auschwitz and lived thereafter under Hungary’s communist  regime,  which  often censored his writings. Quotations from some articles published on the occasion of the prize-giving, create a vignette which brings together many subjects related to our enquiry. When Kertesz was awarded the prize, a Dutch critic wrote:

The Western literature of the past half-century would have been radically different without Auschwitz. It is unclear whether tens of prominent authors would have become writers without Auschwitz … His [Kertesz’] is the style of somebody who has no expectations yet is curious… He is not a born cynic, but his illusions have been taken away.211

To many, Kertesz symbolized the fate of the Jewish ‘double victim.’ The New York Times wrote,  “For 25 years he was a solitary figure in Budapest,  devoted to reflection on the two repressive political systems that came to dominate his life.”212 In March 2001 Kertesz, in an interview with the Spanish daily El Pais, linked his Judaism to current anti-Semitism  in Hungary:

My Judaism is very problematic. I say this, as I am not a believing Jew. However, as a Jew, I was taken to Auschwitz and was in the death camps. Today, I live as a Jew in a very anti-Semitic [Hungarian] society that does not like Jews. I always felt that they forced me to be Jewish. I accept this but, to a large extent, the fact is that it was imposed.213

In April, 2002 Kertesz came to Israel and lectured at a survivors’ conference at Yad Vashem. According to The New York Times:

When he visited Jerusalem earlier this year, amid Palestinian suicide bombs and Israeli military incursions into the West Bank, the experience reinforced his Jewish identity. “I am not impartial and, moreover, cannot be.” he wrote in an essay. “I have never assumed the role of impartial executioner. I leave that to European and non-European intellectuals who embrace this role for better and often for worse.” He added, “They have never bought a ticket for a bus ride from Jerusalem to Haifa.”214

The price caused joy to some in Hungary, according to Ha’aretz:

“On the day the prize was awarded to Kertesz, it was good to be Hungarian again,” said Hungarian president Ferenc Madi. But other observers remarked that the work that was generating all these good feelings was only written because of a past attempt to deny its author the right to be Hungarian, and even to live.215

One extreme rightist weekly, Magyar Forum (published by author Istvan Csurka):

Criticized the fact that the prize was awarded to a Jewish author “who is beholden to a different, un-Hungarian culture – the culture of Auschwitz.” The magazine writes that Kertesz gave expression only to the Jewish fate, and that he “hints that it was Christianity that created Auschwitz, and demon­ strates a passionate hatred for Hungarians.” 216

Lithuania

The Baltic States regained their independence after the fall of communism. Due to their small size, little international attention is given to what happens in them. Lithuania, however, has one of the darkest Holocaust histories among all German­ occupied countries. The Lithuanians murdered tens of thousands of Jews even before the Germans arrived. According to Efraim Zuroff:

The Germans found numerous collaborators among the Lithuanian people who implemented the ‘Final Solution’ of  Lithuanian  Jewry  with  perverse zeal and thoroughness. The assistance provided by these collaborators was especially important in Lithuania, where the murders were carried out locally, primarily by the native population. 217

The Germans even used Lithuanian murder units to kill Jews (and others) in other countries. A German commander in Belarus considered the Lithuanians such brutal slaughterers that he asked his superiors in Minsk to keep their police battalion away from his district.218

In view of the massive crimes committed by Lithuanians before and after the Germans came to power, one would have expected that some unpunished war criminals might have been tried in the 1990s, after Lithuanian independence. Until today, however, not a single perpetrator has been brought to trial. The newly independent Lithuania also cheats knowingly about its Holocaust history. In the early 1990s, Dutch moviemaker and author Philo Bregstein revisited the Paneriai forest outside Vilna, where 100,000 people were murdered, mostly Jews:

Again we stand near the old gray stone monument in which, since our previous visit, a piece of black marble has been inserted. [It says] “Here 100,000 people were killed – of whom 70,000 were Jewish men, women and children – by the Nazis and their Lithuanian local helpers.” But our guides draw our attention to it. The text “Lithuanian local helpers” appears in Yiddish, English and Hebrew, but not in the Lithuanian translation. 219

The Jewish people’s relations to Lithuania must therefore remain ambivalent for a long time to come. Vilna is now home to plaques on many former Jewish sites. (During the Soviet rule, even this was forbidden.) The Lithuanian government has made several goodwill gestures toward the local Jewish community and Israel, such as its support for the commemoration of the 200th Yahrzeit of the Vilna Gaon and by sending (mainly damaged) Torah scrolls to Israel.

For many Jews, these gestures do not compensate for the immunity of surviving war criminals and the inability of Lithuanian Jews living abroad to reclaim stolen family property. Also for these reasons, some Israeli leaders, who were invited, refused to participate in  the commemorations of the 200th anniversary of the death of the Vilna Gaon, the greatest Jewish scholar in the country’s history.

The problems concerning Lithuanian restitution  of Jewish property are dis­ cussed in the interview with Naphtali Lavie, executive vice-chairman of the World Jewish Restitution  Organization.

Latvia and Estonia

Another case of major historical falsification concerns Latvia. The Lets played an important role in many of the anti-Jewish atrocities carried out there during the war. At the 2000 Stockholm International Forum on the Holocaust, President Vaira Vike-Freiberga disingenuously rejected Latvia’s responsibility for the fate of its Jewish citizens: “Latvia as a country having ceased to exist at the time, the Nazi German occupying powers bear the ultimate responsibility for the crimes they committed  or instigated  on Latvian  soil.” This further demonstrates  how, if Jews give up the battle for memory, countries will be able to get away with open lies.

In May 2002, the American ambassador to Estonia, Joseph De Thomas, published an Op-Ed piece in the Estonian newspaper Eesti Paevaleht. He outlined the three post-Holocaust failures of Estonia: the lack of prosecution of Nazi war criminals, the lack of understanding that the Holocaust is part of their history, and the lack of attention given to the Holocaust in their textbooks. A few months later the Estonian government designated January 27 as National Holocaust Day.220

In 1998 Estonian President Lennart Meri established the International Histor­ ians’ Commission to investigate the crimes committed during the Nazi and Com­ munist occupations. It found that the 36th Estonian police battalion participated in the murder of the Jews of Nowogrudok (Belarus) on August 7, 1942. When the Simon Wiesenthal Center demanded that the Estonian security police investi­ gate 16 members of this battalion, the latter responded within two weeks that the Estonian unit had not committed war crimes, despite the Historians’ Commission’s published findings to the contrary.221

In the summer of 2002, the Simon Wiesenthal Center offered a $10,000 reward for information leading to the conviction of Nazi war criminals in the Baltic countries, which seemed to lack the political will to bring Nazi criminals to trial. This announcement led two months later, to the submission of 51 names of perpetrators. It also inspired many anti-Semitic reactions, specifically aimed at Zuroff, who had initiated the reward. In an on-line interview, he was asked questions such as: “Have you ever thought about the taste of revenge? Do you really thirst for that?” “Why do you have such an evil look in your eyes?” “How do you feel about being the most hated foreigner in Estonia?”222

Croatia

The Croatian example illustrates how, by not giving up, the truth may be admitted, even a half-century after atrocities were committed. Croatia was the only country where a local government – that of the Ustasha – operated a concentration camp independent of German assistance. Jasenovac has been called “one of the lesser­ known but most brutal concentration camps of World War Il.”223 Almost 100,000 Serbs, Jews and Gypsies are estimated to have been murdered there.224

In late 2001, 56 years after the end of the war, President Stipe Mesic told President  Katzav and the Knesset:

I profoundly and sincerely deplore the crimes committed against the Jews in the area controlled during Second World War by the collaborationist regime which, unfortunately, carried the Croatian name… I take every opportunity to ask forgiveness from those who were hurt by Croatians at any time and any place, but first of all from the Jews.225

Croatia has also helped to open the archives, which provide information on its criminal past.

Also in late 2001, the United States Holocaust Museum announced its discov­ ery and preservation of decaying documents and artifacts from Jasenovac. Peter Black, the museum’s chief historian, stated there were neither gas chambers nor crematoria in the camp; rather the inmates were “murdered one by one with axes, guns, knives or prolonged torture. Bodies were buried or thrown into the adjacent Sava River.”226 Mate Maras, a Croatian diplomat, objected to some of the asser­ tions made by the museum staff, but agreed that it was “a good time for Croatia to open up these sad pages of our history.”227

The Vatican

The wartime and post-war history of the Vatican’s attitude toward the Jews will remain the subject of debate for a long time to come. It must be viewed within the  framework  of  the  long period  during which  the  Catholic  Church  laid  the infrastructure  for religious  anti-Semitism.

The Vatican’s behavior during the war is subject to ongoing scrutiny. Catholic British historian John Cornwell began researching Pius XII’s pontificate with the conviction that the late Pope would be vindicated. He experienced deep moral shock when he found the material he had uncovered should lead to a wider indictment, rather than an exoneration.228 Ironically, over the past few decades, the Vatican has made preparations to possibly beatify Pope Pius XII. The exceptional sensitivity of this issue is discussed by former Israeli ambassador to the Vatican, Aharon Lopez in an interview.

The Commiion of Historians

The controversy surrounding Pius XII finally resulted in the Catholic Church’s agreement to investigate his behavior by a panel of independent scholars. In October 1999, the Catholic-Jewish Commission of Historians was established jointly by the Pontifical Commission on Religious Relations with the Jews and the International Jewish Committee for Inter-religious Consultations. Itcomprised three Jewish members appointed by the Jewish side, and three Catholic members selected by the Catholic one. However, in July 2001, the Commission suspended its activities, when the Vatican refused to answer 47 preliminary questions put to it by all six members of the interfaith commission. The questions were framed after reviewing the incomplete published material made available to it by the Vatican. The Vatican also refused to give the scholars access to its unpublished archival material on the subject.

In October 2001, two Jewish scholars resigned in protest from the Commission: Robert Wistrich of the Hebrew University  in Jerusalem and Professor Bernard Suchecky of the Free University of Brussels. On that occasion, Wistrich declared in an interview, that the published material alone was already “a damning indict­ ment of insensitivity  and moral failure, of indifference to the humiliations and suffering of the Jews under anti-Semitic laws, and of a refusal to even consider any rupture with Nazi Germany.”229

Wistrich summarized his judgment on the Vatican’s attitude toward the Commission’s work  in a subsequent article:

The stark truth is that in two years we received no material assistance, no real encouragement and, above all, not one single new document from the Vatican. On the other hand, we did receive our fair measure of denigration, insinuation and false rumors from persons attached to, or even speaking in the name of, that powerful and august institution … It is… a particular bitter irony to observe that the Commission has fallen apart in the wake of, and despite, the present pope’s praiseworthy actions to atone for Catholic sins toward the Jewish people in the preceding two millennia. Pope John Paul II called on his Church in the millennial era to cast a critical eye on past omissions, sins and failings in order to step forward with a clear conscience into the 21st century. In all honesty, I must say that there is still a considerable way to go before that  call becomes a reality and we can speak of a true ‘purification of memory. mo

The Vatican’s current attitude toward revealing all the facts about Pius XII’s wartime behavior will probably remain an important controversial issue for many years to come. Public attention to it was again attracted by the 2002 movie Amen by film director Constantin Costa Gavras. It was based on the German 1963 play Der Stellvertreter (The Deputy) by Rolf Hochhuth. Its accusation of Pius XII’s refusal to publicly condemn the Holocaust caused much debate at the time. The movie’s poster was also highly controversial. It showed the cross imposed on the swastika.231

Helping War Criminals Escape

Arieh Doobov of the World Jewish Congress, Jerusalem, summarized several issues which historical research on the Vatican must elucidate: Vatican awareness of the Shoah, and intervention (or lack thereof) to protect Jews, financial transactions between Nazi Germany and its allies and the Vatican, Vatican involvement in the escape of Croatian war criminals, and the Vatican’s relationship with the wartime Croatian clergy, which often supported war crimes in name of the Catholic church.232

According to Stuart E. Eizenstat:

After the war, leaders of this [Croatian] fascist regime found refuge in the Pontifical College of San Girolamo in Rome, which, with the aid of looted gold, helped finance the escape of Croatian fascists to South America. This pontifical college also cooperated with the ‘ratline’ created by the U.S. Army Counterintelligence Corps which got such infamous war criminals – but anti­ communists -as Klaus Barbie to South America. It will be critical for Croatia, Serbia and the Vatican to open their archives to obtain the full picture of this sordid story.233

Furthermore, from time to time, new problems emerge. For example, when Pope John Paul II visited Syria, he remained silent when Bashir Assad, the country’s president described in his presence the Jewish people as “killers of God and now as killers of the Palestinian people.” On behalf of Italian Jewry, Amos Luzzatto, protested in an official letter to the Vatican against this silence.234

The Netherlands

The Netherlands is a very appropriate case to study,  because Dutch wartime history is particularly well documented and because of the persistent, but untrue, myth that the Dutch generally courageously assisted Jews during the war. This myth largely springs from Anne Frank’s diary, which ended before she could mention that – while she and her family were hidden by good Dutchmen – they were probably betrayed by bad ones. This Dutch wartime myth, however, seems indestructible. For instance, in early 1986, Claude Lanzmann came to the Netherlands for the television screening of his film Shoah. Although he was not visiting other countries for this purpose, he came, he said, because of “the impec­ cable wartime record of the Dutch toward the Jews.”235

In the Netherlands, before the war, public anti-Semitism was limited and non­ violent. Yet, under  occupation,  although  the  Germans  ordered  the deportation of the Jewish population, it was the Dutch authorities which mainly implemented it. The percentage of Jews from the Netherlands murdered during the war was higher than for any other Western European country. Out of approximately 140,000, only 35,000 (25%) survived.

Even as recently as 2001, the Jewish  Travel Guide wrote in its introduction to the Netherlands: “The Germans transported  100,000 to various  death camps in Poland, but the local Dutch population tended to behave  sympathetically toward their Jewish neighbors, hiding many.”236 The discrepancy between the wartime image and reality is probably still greater for the Netherlands than for any other country.

Negative Attitude toward Returning Jews

Dutch historians cannot be blamed if wartime myths persist. The Netherlands State Institute for War Documentation (NIOD) has done important work in researching and publishing the country’s wartime history. Hans Blom, its present director, describes the Dutch wartime attitude toward the Jews as fol­ lows:

The population and the bureaucracy were equally cooperative and defer­ ential [toward the Nazis], especially in the first years of the occupation. The immediate and strictly enforced segregation policies of the Germans were not only accepted but even willingly and efficiently assisted. With few exceptions, opposition to the occupation and sabotage of German measures came relatively late and had little to do with the persecution of the Jews. By the time there was a large-scale underground, it was too late for the Jews.237

Dutch governments skillfully embellish post-war history vis-a-vis Dutch atti­ tudes toward the Jews. According to Jewish historian Jacques Presser: “There is little doubt that, certainly in the first years after the liberation in the Netherlands (and not only in the Netherlands), there was a significant – let’s put it neutrally – negative attitude toward the returning Jews.”238 Among other examples, Presser cites the caustic remark of a Dutch school principal who said, “The good Jews are all dead. The bad Jews have returned.” According to Presser, “that is what a colleague of mine, a teacher, had to listen to from his boss in front of a full hall, when he returned from his horrible [Holocaust] experiences.” The ‘boss’ in question was a generally respected Dutch personality. 239  Later analyses of anti­ Semitism in the liberated Netherlands have been carried out by historians Dienke Hondius240   and  Michal  Citroen.241

One of the most painful elements in the immediate post-war period was the Dutch authorities’ attitude toward Jewish orphans. A struggle for the custody of these children ensued between the remnants of the Jewish community and the Christian members of the government committee dealing with this issue. Israeli historian Joel Fishman  states:

Upon examining the administrative development and ideological basis of the Commission for War Foster Children, one may observe that, from its inception, its spirit and structure were inherently offensive to the Jewish minority, and, of necessity, predicated an adversary relationship. 242

The most poignant definition of the Jews’ position in post-war Holland was given by political scientist Isaac Lipschits, who called his book The Little Shoah. He explains its title by saying:

In the liberated Netherlands, the Jews were not physically threatened. However, we do find other symptoms of the Shoah. Verbal anti-Semitism became sharper; the despoilment of the Jews continued … Deportation and exterm­ ination had come to an end, but the … isolation of Jews continued … The reception [given Jewish survivors] was so cold, bureaucratic, hostile, humili­ ating and so disappointing that I call the post-war period ‘the time of the Little  Shoah’.243

Lipschits further describes  Dutch post-war discrimination  against  the Jews in his interview.

The government-appointed van Kemenade Commission published its find­ ings on supplementary financial restitution in a report issued immediately after the Stockholm Forum of January 2000. In anticipation of this document, Prime Minister Kok’s speech at that gathering was subject to more than usual scrutiny. One of his claims was that “the restoration of legal rights in the impoverished post-war Netherlands was basically correct from a legal and formal point of view.”244 Kok should have known that the van Kemenade Report would hardly support this conclusion. In fact, the  commission wrote that: “In retrospect, a special arrangement for the Jewish victims of persecution would have been justified. “245

Post-war Dutch governments do not want their democratic predecessors to be judged according to their deeds. The distortion of history is a moral, not a financial, matter; but today’s Dutch Jewish community is too weak, too indifferent, too ignorant or too frightened  to fight against it.

Moral Aspects of Financial Restitution

The debate on financial restitution has other important moral implications. Should a society share in widespread burdens, which hit some of its members particularly hard? In some cases, not involving the Jews, the Dutch appar­ ently hold ‘yes.’ In 2001, the Dutch government paid compensation to farmers whose animals had to be burned because they were – or might be – infected with foot-and-mouth disease. Similarly, during serious flood episodes after the war, such burdens were not usually shouldered just by those who had irretrievably lost their possessions. By 1953, two billion dollars (current value) had been paid by the government to the victims of these natural disasters. Showing such solidarity with disaster victims is a moral choice, of which laws are only an expression.

The democratic Dutch government made a different moral choice, however, after the Second World War. The Jews had been unfairly segregated by the Nazis, so, from now on, the Jews would receive the same treatment as all others, despite their radically different situation. Similarly, the restitution legislation did not mention national solidarity or disaster relief at all. It dealt solely with assets that could be located.

Another major moral aspect of a restitution process concerns its execution. Did the process seek to return those assets that had been stolen from innocent civilians, or did it protect those who unrightfully were holding them? Little doubt remains today that the Dutch democratic authorities often discriminated against

the Jews in this process. When the latter went to court however, Holland’s more impartial judicial system supported them in several important cases.246

Recently, much attention has been given to the Dutch authorities’ attitude vis-a-vis art restitution. The Stichting Nederlands Kunstbezit (SNK) was estab­ lished after the war to recover Dutch-owned art sold involuntarily or under German-induced pressure. When facing claims from the original owners, however, it ruled too often that a sale was ‘voluntary’ and thus the art recovered belonged to the state. “This fitted its aim to enrich the Netherlands with a significant collection of art.”247 Obviously, such an attitude has moral implications, beyond its legal and material aspects. Only recently has there been some improvement, as the Dutch daily NRC Handelsblad  reported:

Until a short while ago, The Netherlands had a bad reputation  con­ cerning art restitution abroad, particularly in America. The World Jewish Congress in New York reproached the Dutch government for its ‘ex­ tremely harsh’ position  on  claims made  by  private  individuals  regarding art works which, during the Second World  War,  came into the hands  of the Germans and, after the war, the Dutch state. The Netherlands  earned the reputation of a heartless nation. The government even found it neces­ sary to hire a public relations firm in the United States to improve its image.248

Other moral features remain to be analyzed: How did the authorities behave toward those who had been despoiled? How humane was their attitude? In his book, Lipschits relates how one Dutch restitution official asked a Jewish survivor, whose wife had been murdered in the gas chambers of a concentration camp, to describe in detail the composition,  quantity and quality of her underwear. 249

Weak Justice

After the war, the Dutch legal system failed to severely punish the German war criminals  it  had  caught,  or  the  many  Dutch  who  had  collaborated  with  the Germans. The historian Ido de Haan writes: “Many were condemned, but almost all were freed within a short time. Of the 152 [criminals] condemned to death: in 100 cases the punishment was converted to a life sentence, eleven people were judged in absentia, and one committed suicide. Only 40 were actually executed.”250 This forgiving approach toward those who had harmed the Jews was true at many levels. For example, notarial services were frequently needed to liquidate Jewish possessions. After the war, active collaboration was considered punishable with either dismissal or a rebuke. The Justice Ministry found that the behavior of several hundreds of notaries required detailed investigation. By November 1946, however, only 13 had been dismissed and 7 had received a private rebuke.251

Holocaust Education and the Battle for Memory

The Ashkenazi orthodox NIK, the largest Dutch Jewish community organization, dealt with Holocaust education in its 2000 Annual Report. It expressed concern that:

In non-Jewish society, understanding of the Holocaust is notably declining. In the younger generations, there is less and less knowledge of the fact that six million Jews were murdered in the Second World War… This fact raises the question whether this is the natural result of the passage of time, which leads to distance from the Holocaust, or whether this is the result of govern­ ment policy. 252

Dutch policy with respect to teaching about the Holocaust can be described as insufficient… The Netherlands does not provide Holocaust  education; rather its curriculum puts emphasis on the occupation of the Netherlands. Although it is good to place the Holocaust in the context of the Dutch occupation, through this it loses visibility. Such attention is particularly neces­ sary in the Netherlands, where a relatively large number of Jews were deported; where Jews have made and are making major, identifiable contributions to society; but where the Jewish community, after 1945, has barely been visible. 253

The report also mentions that the Committee of the Jewish Resistance during the Second World War had to cancel a public memorial meeting in Amsterdam in  2000  because  they  were  afraid  of  possible  disturbances  from Arab  youth.

The Amsterdam municipality reacted by supporting an important Kristallnacht memorial meeting. However, against the wishes of the Jewish organizers, it invited an Arab speaker who used the occasion to publicly attack Israel.

The NIK concludes that, due to poor Holocaust education, the unique aspects of that tragedy are not part of the awareness oflarge parts of the Dutch population. For many of them, the Cold War, the Gulf War and the Second World War are more or less the same.254

Current Defamation

For a long time Dutch extremist defamation of the Jews and Israel was mainly confined to specific Islamist circles. In 2000, however, the Bilal Muslim elementary school in Amersfoort, showed its pupils a violent video, depicting the maltreatment and murder of Palestinians by Israeli soldiers.255 This school is considered one of the most ‘liberal’ Muslim schools in the Netherlands.

When the Palestinian uprising started in autumn 2000, Islamic extremists shouted “Death to the Jews” at a demonstration; the police disbanded the gather­ing. Such calls were unheard of in post-war Holland, with the exception of one place: football stadiums. This has been particularly noted with regard to one of the country’s leading soccer clubs, Feyenoord of Rotterdam. They identify their main competitor, Ajax, as a ‘Jewish’ club. Thousands of Feyenoord’s fans regularly sing from their stands: “Gas the Jews.”256

A former Jewish Ajax board member is quoted as saying: “I have seen things that, if they were filmed, could be compared to Hitler’s Germany at the beginning of the 1930s… When you arrive by bus at Feyenoord or at The Hague, hundreds of people with hatred in their eyes call out ‘Jews’, hiss [to imitate the gas chambers at Auschwitz] and give the [Nazi] salute.”257

In its 1999-2000 Annual Report, the Tel Aviv University’s Stephen Roth Institute of Anti-Semitism  and Racism reported:

Anti-Semitic slurs have long  become the norm at football matches in the Netherlands. Hissing, slogans and chants such as “Hamas, Hamas, Jews to the gas” are often heard during games. The spokesperson of the CIV (Center for Information on Football Vandalism) warned that “in football  arenas things are accepted which would not be tolerated elsewhere.” Even though the authorities, the judiciary and the politicians agree that hissing and anti­ Semitic chanting are unacceptable behavior, the law is not being enforced and games are not stopped.258

1. CONCLUDING REMARKS

The recent reemergence in Western Europe of anti-Semitism in its crude and brutal forms is largely Arab-driven.  It is also accompanied,  however,  by many more sophisticated Western variants. Anti-Semitism in Europe, as well as its strong anti-Israeli metamorphosis, will continue to keep both the Holocaust and various post-Holocaust  issues on the European  agenda.

A serious psychological connection exists between Europe’s guilt-feelings, which have come to the fore over the past decades, and its exploding bias against Israel. The above overview also shows many other, less obvious, links between the post-war period and Europe’s present attitudes toward the Jews and Israel. Thus, an analysis of Europe’s moral attitudes toward the Jews in recent decades is important, not only for understanding the past, but also for preparing for the future. It raises many key issues, which will require a much more detailed and profound assessment over the coming years.

Recurring  Themes

The above vignettes and the following interviews raise many themes, motifs and questions about Europe’s Holocaust aftermath; yet they comprise only a limited subset of the many topics that require further investigation. Still, as even this introductory volume makes clear, there are many recurring issues which appear in several countries in different guises. One obvious example is the persistence of self-serving but false national myths. Some, such as those of Germany, France, Norway, the Netherlands, Switzerland and Poland have been exposed above and later in this book. Similar, although culturally different, myths exist in many other nations.

In many European countries, attitudes toward the Holocaust and the Jews (and sometimes also Israel) serve as a moral litmus test for European societies. For example, although the Jews represent less than a tenth of one percent of the German electorate, German political parties showed a disproportionately large interest in obtaining their vote in the 2002 parliamentary election.259 Italian right­ wing politician Gianfranco Fini sees being invited for an official visit to Israel as a moral clearance for both himself and his Alleanza Nazionale Party. In his interview, Shmuel Trigano discusses the special role former French president Mitterrand attributed to the Jews in his political schemes. This phenomenon of the Jew as a tool in the hands of politicians manifests itself in many other ways. Another important common theme concerns the reactions of the Jews them­ selves. Why did some of them stand up for their collective interests after the war, while others did not? Why, by the 1980s, had the Jews gained enough confidence to protest publicly and to take on both local and international political leaders? The 1985 protest against President Reagan’s visit to the Bitburg cemetery, where members of the Waffen SS are also buried, is one example; the protest against the Frankfurt showing of Fassbinder’s play is another; the protests against the Carmelite Convent at Auschwitz is a third.

The ‘landmarks’ that have changed public perceptions of the Shoah is another important topic. What triggers influence individuals to personally  ‘connect’ with the Holocaust and to even undertake major initiatives? For some, the Eichmann trial, visits to Auschwitz, individual historical research, Shoah-related movies and television series, etc. played a major role, one which cannot be ignored (as pointed out by Beker in his interview).

The presence of deeper similarities despite surface differences appears again when comparing Sergio Minerbi’s analysis  of Romano’s revisionist  publication in Italian, with that of Trigano’s assessment (in his interview) of Todorov’s book in French. To these, many other examples of persistent topics and common themes can be added.

Introducing Order into an Overlarge Agenda

The Crusades might be considered Europe’s first ideological venture. They were accompanied by the mass murder of Jews. Europe’s attitude toward the Jews in the twentieth  century can be summarized by saying that, on that continent, the chances of a war-criminal  surviving to old age were much higher than those of a Jew. This sad assessment underlines both the scope and gravity of the Holocaust bloodbath, and the leniency and disinterest of Europeans toward its perpetrators after it. As for today, while some naive Jewish leaders may have thought, a few years ago, that the main challenges to the Jewish people were behind it,  any sensible person now understands that, whatever the future may bring, the Jewish people will continuously have to confront many major challenges.

To put some order in an overlarge Jewish agenda, a much better understanding of the recent past is required. With all due respect to the Jews’ many potential allies, scattered throughout the Western world, Jewish leaders will themselves have to ensure that this research is undertaken and then draw strategic operational conclusions from it. One of these will be how to deal with anti-Semitism, which will continue to reemerge both in its classic variants and many new forms.

How to Proceed?

Some important issues concern the fight for memory and study of the post-war Holocaust past. Jews and their allies must continue to struggle to open the archives, and to indelibly record the history of the Jews in those European locations in which their memory scarcely remains. Holocaust museums and other institutions will have to reconsider the focus of their role. The example of Croatia, which had to wait several years before being recognized by Israel, shows that Israel can play an important role in this fight for the truthful recording of the past.

How should we proceed after we realize that, to protect our future, we need to better understand our past? Historians will need to prepare an infrastructure of knowledge, to permit, inter alia, an analysis of the present European delegitim­ ization of Israel and the Jews against the background of similar Nazi propaganda in the days before they came to power.

Psychologists will need to explain the motivations behind the varied types of defamation of the Jews over the centuries, and play a leading role in interpreting the current ones. Psychiatrists need to clarify the pathological aspects and under­ pinnings of anti-Semitism and suggest possible responses and therapy. Lawyers, public affairs experts and politicians can propose what concrete actions should be taken. Communications experts can indicate the shape and likely impact of such actions, before they are implemented.

All this has to be done even while new problems emerge within the rapid dynamics of post-modern society. Several core elements of this multidisciplinary process have been identified above. Others will, hopefully, result from additional research and operational thought  over the coming years.

Notes 

1. Jonathan Sacks, “The New Anti-Semitism,”  Ha’aretz, September  8,
2. Anti-Defamation League Press Release, “ADL Survey of Five European Countries Finds one in Five Hold Strong Anti-Semitic Sentiments; Majority Believes Canard of Jewish Disloyalty,” (New York), October 31, 2002.
3. “European Attitudes Toward  Jews:  A  Five  Country  Survey,” Anti-Defamation  League,October 2002.
4. “European Attitudes Toward Jews, Israel and the Palestinian-Israeli Conflict,” Anti-Defam­ation League, June 27, 2002.
5. Simon Epstein, “Cyclical Patterns in Anti-Semitism: The Dynamics of Anti-Jewish Viol­ence in Western Countries since the 1950s,” Analysis of Current Trends in Anti-Semitism, 2 (Jerusalem: Hebrew University), 1993, p. I.
6. Simon Epstein, cit., p. 2.
7. Simon Epstein, cit., p. 4.
8. Israel Charny, How Can We Commit the Unthinkable? Genocide: The Human Cancer(Boulder: Westview Press, 1982), p. 108.
9. Ibid., p. 109.
10. Ibid., p. 113.
11. “Israel-Kritik oder Antisemitismus?” Neue Zurcher Zeitung, April 26, [German]
12. Hannah Arendt,  Anti-Semitism  (New York: Harcourt,  Brace & World, ,  1967), Part One of The Origins of Totalitarianism, p. 25.
13. Ibid.
14. Bernard Wasserstein, Vanishing Diaspora: The Jews in Europe Since 1945 (UK: Penguin, 1996), xii.
15. Lawrence Summers, “Address at Morning Prayers,” www.ajc.org, September 17, 2002.
16. Robert Fife, “UN Promotes Systemic Hatred of Jews, MP says,” National Post, April 2, 2002.
17. Ibid.
18. Yoav Bezalel, “Rescuing Women’s Lost Voices from the Holocaust,” Ha’aretz, September 4,
19. Jonathan Sacks, “The New Anti-Semitism,”  Ha’aretz, September 8,
20. Yair Sheleg, “A World Cleansed of the Jewish State,” Ha’aretz, April 18, 2002.
21. Thomas Friedman, “Campus Hypocrisy,” The New York Times, October 16, 2002.
22. Alan Dershowitz, “Treatment oflsrael Strikes an Alien Note,” National Post, November 5, 2002.
23. Michael Freund,  “Arab  League  to  Participate  in  Holocaust  Denial  Symposium,”  The Jerusalem Post, August 28, 2002.
24. Anti-Defamation League Press Release, “Arab League Think-Tank Labels Holocaust  ‘AFable,'” August 28, 2002.
25. Michael Slackman, “Arab Forum Assails Jews, 9/11 ‘Propaganda,'” Los Angeles Times,August 31, 2002.
26. Michael Slackman,  “Arab States Disavow  Anti-Jewish  Remarks,”  Los  Angeles  Times, September  1, 2002.
27. “Homework, Health and Environment,” Grade 7, 98 in Jews, Israel and Peace in Palestinian School Textbooks 2000-2001 and 2001-2002, p. 43, Center for Monitoring the Impact of Peace Report, November 2001.
28. Geography of Palestine, Grade 7, 77, op. cit.
29. James Dorsey, “Wij zijn alleen Palestijn om politieke redenen,” Trouw, March 31, 1977.[Dutch]
30. Michael Slackman, “Arab Forum Assails Jews, 9/11 ‘Propaganda,”‘ Los Angeles  Times, August 31, 2002.
31. “The Big Lie,” com, September 4, 2002.
32. Ibid.
33. Amiri Baraka, “Somebody Blew Up America,” from adl.org.
34. John Edward Emerich, First Baron Acton, Lectures on Modern History (London: Macmil­ lan and , Ltd., 1906), pp. 4-5.
35. Deborah Lipstadt, Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory (New York: Plume,  1994).
36. 200046701 Defamation – Libel – Ruling on Meaning – Defence of justification – Defam­ ation Act 1952 s 5 – Irving versus Penguin Books Ltd & anr – Queen’s Bench Division- Gray J – April 12, 2000, Section 13.161, p. 247.
37. Deborah Lipstadt, op. cit., p. 17.
38. “Es droht ein Bund von Rechtsradikalen und Islamischen  Extremisten,” Die  Welt, Nov- ember 9,   [German]
39. Fredy Rom, “Holocaust Denier Admits Links,” JTA, November 21, 2001.
40. Ibid.
41. Gerd Langguth, “Anti-Israel Extremism in West Germany,” in Robert Wistrich [editor] The Left Against Zion: Communism, Israel and the Middle Ease (London: Vallentine Mitchell, 1979), p. 257.
42. Maurizio Molinari, La Sinistra e gli Ebrei in Italia: 1967-1993, (Milan: Corbaccio, 1995), 93-94. [Italian]
43. Jonathan Kay, “Hating Israel is Part of Campus Culture,” National Post, September 25, 2002.
44. Ibid.
45. Robert Wistrich, “The Origins of the Demonology of the Jew: Ideological Anti-Semitism in the Twentieth Century: The Nazi, Soviet and Islamic Models,” Nativ (English ed.) Vol.I, No. 1, 1990.
46. Anne Bayefsky, “Terrorism and Racism: The Aftermath of Durban.” Jerusalem View­ points, No. 468, December  16, 2001, JCPA.
47. Anne Bayefsky, “Since Durban: An Entrenchment of Hatred,” The Jerusalem Post, Sep­ tember  13, 2002.
48. Ibid.
49. Ibid.
50. AP, “Group Condemns Palestinian Attacks,” The New York Times, November  1,2002.
51. Michael Belling, “News Analysis:  As Development  Conference Ends,” JTA,  September 4, 2002.
52. Robert Fife, “UN Promotes Systemic Hatred of Jews, MP Says,” National Post, April 2, 2002.
53. Ibid.
54. Anti-Defamation League Press Release, “ADL: Palestinian Summer Camps Teach Terror Tactics, Espouse Some Found to Be Funded by UNICEF,” New York, September 9, 2002.
55. Melissa Radler, “Kirkpatrick blasts  UN’s anti-Semitism,”  The Jerusalem  Post,  October 29,
56. Shmuel Trigano, “The Perverse Logic of French Politics,” Jerusalem Viewpoints, 479, June 2, 2002, JCPA.
57. Ibid.
58. Press Release from the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights, “Rise of Antisemitism in Europe Obscured by Governments’  Handling of Data,” August  27,
59. Interview with Gidon Remez, Israel Radio Network  B, April 3,
60. Manfred Gerstenfeld, “Wartime and Postwar Dutch Attitudes Toward the Jews: Myth and Truth,” Jerusalem Letter/Viewpoints, 412, August 15, 1999.
61. Government of The Netherlands, Regeringsreactie naar aanleiding van de rapporten Tegoe­ den  Tweede  Wereldoorlog, March 21, [Dutch]
62. Chaya Brasz, Removing the Yellow Badge: The Struggle for a Jewish Community in the Postwar Netherlands, 1944-1955 (Jerusalem: the Institute for Research on Dutch Jewry/ the Ben-Zion Dinur Institute for Research on Jewish History/the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1995), 67.
63. Pieter Lagrou, The Legacy of Nazi Occupation: Patriotic Memory and National Recovery in Western Europe, 1945-1965 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000).
64. Pieter Lagrou, “Return to a Vanished World: European Societies and the Remnants of their Jewish Communities, 1945-1947,” Background paper for Yad Vashem Symposium,
65. Unabhiingige Expertenkommission Schweiz – Zweiter Weltkrieg, Die Schweiz und die Fluchtlinge zur Zeit des Nationalsozialismus (Zurich: Chronos, 2001), 166-167 [German]
66. David Kranzler, The Man who Stopped the Trains to Auschwitz, (Syracuse: Syracuse Univer­ sity Press, 2000), 298.
67. Bruce Pauley, From Prejudice to Persecution: A History of Austrian anti-Semitism (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991), p. 305.
68. Encyclopedia Judaica, cit.
69. “Ignatz Bubis, Er wich keine Diskussion aus,” Spiegel-Online, August 13, [German]
70. Ruth Gruber, “Second Annual Jewish Heritage Day,” JTA, September 25, 2001.
71. Ruth Gruber, “Arts & Culture: Klezmer Booms in Germany,” JTA, March 31, 2002.
72. Ruth Gruber, “Around the Jewish World: Kreplach and Klezmer in Kazimierz,” JTA,July 7, 2002.
73. Personal communication, Shai Schellekes.
74. Yehuda Bauer, “Delegitimization of the Jews from Today’s Perspective,” Lecture at the JCPA’s First Herbert Berman Memorial Symposium, Defamation and Moral Compensation: The Holocaust and Today, November 22,
75. Gunter Thielen, Press Release “Statement by Gunter Thielen, Bertelsmann AG Chairman and CEO on the Occasion of the Independent Historical Commission’s Final Report,” Munich, October 7, 2002.
76. H. Fried, Cafe 84. “Experiences from Ten Years’ Activity with Survivors from the Holocaust and their Children,” Socialmedicinsk tidskrift. Vol. 73, 1996, pp. 408-11. [Swedish] As quoted in: Lilian Levin, Traumatized Refugee Children: A Challenge for Mental Rehabilitation, Medicine, Conflict and Survival, Vol. 15, 1999, p. 343.
77. Jan Bastiaans, “Isolation and Liberation” in: Jozeph Michman, , Dutch Jewish History, Vol. 2. Proceedings of the Fourth Symposium on the History of the Jews in the Netherlands, 7-10 December, Tel Aviv-Jerusalem, 1986 (Jerusalem: The Institute for Research on Dutch Jewry/ Hebrew University of Jerusalem/Maastricht: Van Gorcum, 1989), pp. 296-297.
78. Levin, cit., p. 346. 79 Ibid., p. 344.
79. Ibid.
80. Greer Fay Cashman, “Austrian Fund Aids Survivors of Nazi Persecution” The Jerusalem Post, August  31, 2002.
81. Hadassa Ben-Itto, Introductory Remarks to the Panel on Jurisdiction of the CRT and Different Types of AFA Study Day, 1999.
82. Avi Beker, Introductory article, “Unmasking National Myths,” 21 in Avi Beker [editor] The Plunder of Jewish Property During the Holocaust: Confronting European History (Hounslow: Palgrave, 2001).
83. Yoav Bezalel, “Rescuing Women’s Lost Voices from the Holocaust,” Ha’aretz, September 4, 2002.
84. Toby Axelrod, “German Anti-Semitism  on the Rise,” JTA, September  10, 2002
85. www.ajc.org.
86. Manfred Gerstenfeld, Israel’s New Future -Interviews (Jerusalem: Rubin Mass , Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, 1994) Interview with Dan Segre, p. 60.
87. Manfred Gerstenfeld, Israel’s New op. cit., p. 62.
88. Op. cit., p. 64.
89. Ibid.
90. Sharon Sadeh, “Dialogue needed, before we turn into a leper state,” Ha’aretz, August 21,
91. Hannah Arendt, A Report on the Banality  of Evil:  Eichmann  in Jerusalem  (Middlesex, England: Penguin Books,  1984), p.  14.
92. Ibid.
93. Hadassa Ben-Itto,  Lecture  at the JCPA’s  First  Herbert  Berman  Memorial  Symposium,Defamation and Moral Compensation: The Holocaust and Today, November 22, 2001.
94. Fiamma Nirenstein,  “The Journalist  and the Palestinians,”  Commentary, January,   95 Ibid.
95. Ibid.
96. Personal communication, Herb Ginzburg
97. Personal communication, Willy Lindwer
98. Ibid.
99. Laurence Weinbaum, The Strugglefor Memory in Poland, Auschwitz, Jedwabne and Beyond,Policy Study No. 22, (Jerusalem: Institute of the World Jewish Congress, 2001).
100. Manfred Gerstenfeld,  Israel’s  New  Future:  Interviews,  Interview  with  Sergio Minerbi, p.89.
101. Manfred Gerstenfeld, Israel’s New Future: Interviews, cit., p. 88.
102. Philo Bregstein, op. cit., p. 140.
103. Julia Pascal, “Vichy’s shame,” The Guardian, May  11, 2002. 104 Ibid.
104. Ibid.
105. Haim Shapiro, “Uncle Sumer’s Shop,” The Jerusalem Post Magazine, November 9, 2001.
106. Le Monde, February 7,  1999. [French]
107.  Ibid.
108. “Neonazis marschieren gegen Wehrmachtsausstellung,” Suddeutsche Zeitung, October 12, [German]
109. Alfred Durr,  “Einig im Kampf  gegen  Rechts,”  Suddeutsche  Zeitung, October  9, [German]
110. Amir Oren, “German ceremony here to honor Wehrmacht, SS dead,” Ha’aretz, October 27, 2002.
111. “German embassy puts off Wehrmacht, SS memorial ceremony,” Ha’aretz, October 27, 2002.
112. Ori Golan, “In Memory of Tomorrow,” The Jerusalem Post Magazine, October 11,2002.
113. Yehuda Bauer, speech at the ceremonial opening of the “Stockholm International Forumon the Holocaust,” January 26, 2000.
114. Ibid.
115. Ibid.
116. Ori Golan, “In Memory of Tomorrow,” The Jerusalem Post Magazine, October 11, 2002.
117. Personal communication, Simon Epstein
118. U.S. Department of State, “U.S. and Allied Efforts to Recover and Restore Gold and Other Assets Stolen or Hidden by Germany During World War II,” May 7, 1997.
119. Norman Finkelstein, The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering (London: Verso, 2000).
120. Ronald Zweig, Journal of Israeli History, 20, nos. 2/3 (Summer/Autumn, 2001) pp.208-216.
121. “Martini: riconciliazione con gli ebrei,” Corriere della Sera, September 10, [Italian]
122. Michel Goldberg, Namesake, (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1982), p.86.
123. Jan Philipp Reemtsma, “Wie hatte ich mich damals verhalten?” Lecture at University of Munich, January 27, [German]
124. Tilman Krause, “Walser will <lass der Holocaust verschwindet,” Die  Welt, October  14, [German]
125. “In hohem Masse antisemitisch,” Die Welt, June 6, [German]
126.  “Walser kommt” Die  Welt, June 6, 2002. [German]
127. Martin Walser, “Rede zum Friedenspreis” lecture, [German]
128. Tilman Krause, “Walser will <lass der Holocaust verschwindet,” Die  Welt, October  14, [German]
129. Klaus von Dohnanyi, “Eine Friedensrede: Martin Walsers notwendige Klage,” Frankfurter Allgemeine November 14, 1998. [German]
130. Hans Mommsen, “Erinnerung und Selbstverstandnis,” lecture at the Stiftung Topographie des Terrors, February 3, [German]
131. Joachim Koppner, “Die Geduld Verloren,” Deutsches Allgemeines Sonntagsblatt, December 4, [German]
132. Ernst Cramer, “Schaner ist <loch unsereiner!” Die Welt, September 19, [German]
133. Achim Neuhauser,  “FDP: Im Triiben fischen verboten” Suddeutsche Zeitung, September 23, 2002. [German]
134. Reuters, “Mollemann:  Karsli  bleibt  Fraktionsmitglied”,  Suddeutsche  Zeitung,  May  24, [German]
135. Herbert Prantl,  “Mollemanns  braune  Klassiker”  Suddeutsche  Zeitung,  May  17, [German]
136. Helmut Breuer, “Sein Riicktritt ware ein Geschenk des Himmels,” Die Welt, September 19, [German]
137. Arne Delfs, “Mollemann fiigt sich und tritt als Parteivize zuriick,” Die Welt, September 24, [German]
138. Pauley, cit., p. 297.
139. Pauley, cit., p. 296.
140. Pauley, op, , pp. 301-2.
141. Ibid.
142. Pauley, cit., pp. 309-10.
143. Ibid,
144. “Wie Riess-Passer von den Parteifreunden gestfirzt wurde,” Die Welt, September 9,[German]
145. Pauley, cit., p. 332.
146. Pauley, cit., p. 303.
147. Alexander Stille, “In Italy, a Kinder, Gentler Fascism,” The New York Times, September 28, 2002.
148. Hulda Liberanome, “No Roman  Holiday for Italy’s Jews,” Ha’aretz,  October  5,
149.  Ibid.
150. Fiamma Nirenstein, L’ Abbandono, Come /’Occidente ha tradito gli ebrei, (Milan: Rizzoli,2002), p.  19. [Italian]
151. Maurizio Molinari, cit., (Milan: Corbaccio, 1995), p.  115. [Italian]
152. Molinari, cit., p. 116.
153. Molinari, cit., p. 120.
154. Manfred Gerstenfeld, “The Italian Stage,” Jerusalem Letter/Viewpoints, 347, December 1, 1996, JCPA.
155. Interview with Silvio Berlusconi, Yediot Aharono f, October 25, [Hebrew]
156. Sergio Romano, Lettera a un Amico Ebreo (Milan: Longanesi & , 1997), p. 32. [Italian]
157. Romano, cit., p. 84.
158. Romano, cit., pp.  138-139.
159. Sergio Minerbi, Risposta a Sergio Romano: Ebrei, Shoah e Stato d’lsraele, (Florence: La Giuntina, 1998) [Italian] p.  19.
160. Ibid.
161. Minerbi, cit., pp. 8-9.
162. Minerbi, op. cit., p. 72.
163.  Adar Primor, “Fini in the Name of Italy,” Ha’aretz, September 24, 2002.
164. Ibid.
165. Adar Primor, “Setting Things Right,” Ha’aretz, September 13, 2002.
166. “Italy’s Exiled Royals Seek Sympathy,” The Associated Press, September 14, 2002.
167. “I Savoia condannano le leggi razzali,” la Repubblica, September 13, [Italian]
168. Alexander Stille, “In Italy, a Kinder, Gentler Fascism,” The New York Times, September 28, 2002.
169. Jean-Paul Sartre, Anti-Semite and Jew (New York: Schocken, 1965) 71.
170. 70 Sartre, op. cit., p. 72.
171. See Shmuel Trigano, “France and the Burdens of Vichy,” in Avi Beker, op. cit., pp. 177-192.
172.  “Papon est sorti de prison,” Liberation,  September  18, 2002.  [French]
173. “Manifestation a Marseille contre la liberation de Papon,” Liberation, September 27, [French]
174. “Chronology of Maurice Papon Case,” The Associated Press, September  18, 2002.
175. Ibid.
176. Shirli Sitbon and news agencies, “French Nazi Collaborator Papon Released from Jail,” The Jerusalem Post, September 19, 2002.
177. Frederic Chambon and Anne-Frarn;oise Hivert, “II n’a pas fait preuve de la meme bienveill­ ance en octobre 1942,” Le Monde, September  18,  [French]
178. Ibid.
179. “Doutes et  protestations  a la  liberation  de  Papon,”  Le  Monde,  September  18,[French]
180. Ambrose Evans-Pritchard,  “Jews  Suffer  Surge  of  Hate  on  Streets  of  Belgium,”  News Telegraph, May 30, 2002.
181. Isi Leibler, statement delivered at the WJC meeting in Brussels, April 23,
182. 182 Guy Verhofstadt,  letter to Isi Leibler, June 3, 2002.
183. Encyclopedia Judaica,Greece
184. Daniel Perdurant, “Anti-Semitism in Contemporary Greek Society,” Analysis of Current Trends in Anti-Semitism, 7 (Jerusalem: Hebrew University, 1995) p. 10.
185. Ibid.
186. Amnon Rubinstein, “Let Us Assume that Israel Never Existed,” Ha’aretz, April 3,
187. 187 AP, “Greece: Church Falsely Accused Jews,” The Jerusalem Post, March 20, 2001.
188. “Anti-Semitism Worldwide 2000/1,” Stephen Roth Institute, Tel Aviv
189. AP, “Greek Jewish Leader Suggests Police Involved in Vandalism,” The Jerusalem  Post, April 24, 2002.
190. “Sharp Increase in Greek Anti-Semitism,” The Jerusalem  Post, June  10, 2002.
191. Anti-Defamation League Press Release, “ADL Calls on Greek Government to Condemn Anti-Semitism in the Press,” July 22,
192. Efraim Zuroff, “Aerligt opg0r giver hab,” Berlingske Tidende, February 16, [Danish]
193. Andrew Osborn, “Denmark Urged to Reveal Long List of Nazi Collaborators,” The Guardian, August 28,
194. Bjorn Westlie, “Coming to Terms with the Past: The Process of Restitution of Jewish Property in Norway,” Policy Forum 12, November 1996, Institute of the World Jewish Congress, p. 8.
195. Westlie, cit., p. 10.
196. Westlie, cit., p. 12.
197. Ibid.
198. Richard Chesnoff, Pack  of  Thieves (New York: Doubleday,  1999) pp.  112-113.
199. Efraim Zuroff, “Vi har dissuntal okanda namn,” Aftonbladet, February 23, [Swedish] See also Zuroff, “Sweden’s Refusal to Prosecute Nazi War Criminals: 1986-2002,” Jewish Political Studies Review, Vol. 14, Nos. 3 & 4, Fall 2002.
200. Sven Fredrik Hedin and Goran Elgemry,  “Sweden’s Financial  Links to Nazi Germany,” in Avi Beker, cit., pp. 207-8.
201. Ibid.
202. Ibid.
203. Zuroff, “Aerligt opg0r giver hab,” cit.
204. David Kranzler, cit., p. 172.
205. Avi Beker, cit., p. 13.
206. Hadassa Ben-Itto,  Introductory  Remarks  to  the  Panel  on  Jurisdiction  of  the  CRT  and Different Types of Procedures, AFA study day,
207. For a review of its activities, see Helen Junz, “Confronting Holocaust History: The Bergier Commission’s Research on Switzerland’s Past,” Post-Holocaust and Anti-Semitism, No. 8, May 1, 2003.
208. Michel Simmons, “Jews vow to expel nuns at Auschwitz,” The Guardian, July 25,
209. Laurence Weinbaum, “The Struggle for Memory in Poland,” cit. See also Joanna Michlic, “Coming to Terms with the ‘Dark Past’: The Polish Debate about the Jedwabne Massacre,” Analysis of Current Trends in Anti-Semitism, no. 21 (Jerusalem: Hebrew Univer­ sity), 2002. And Laurence Weinbaum, “Penitence and Prejudice: The Roman Catholic Church and Jedwabne,” Jewish Political Studies Review, Vol. 14, No. 3 & 4, Fall 2002, pp. 131-154.
210. Monika Scislowska,  “Report  documents  Poles’  widespread  crimes  against  Jews,”  The Jerusalem Post, November 3, 2002.
211. Michael Zeeman, “Kertesz: zonder verwachtingen  en toch nieuwsgierig,”  de  Volkskrant,October  10, 2002. [Dutch]
212. Alan Riding, “Hungarian Novelist Wins Nobel Prize in Literature,” The New York Times,October 11, 2002.
213. “Existen Medios Para Dominar Al Hombre,” El Pais, March 11, [Spanish]
214. As quoted in Riding, cit.
215. Yehuda Lahav,  “No  Hungarian  rhapsody  on  the  far-right,”  Ha’aretz,  October  30, 2002.
216. Ibid.
217. Efraim Zuroff, “Justice from the Lithuanians,” The Jerusalem  Post, March 20, 1990.
218. Ibid.
219. Philo Bregstein, Terug naar Litouwen:  Sporen van een joodse familie  (Amsterdam: Van Gennep, 1995), 128. [Dutch]
220. Efraim Zuroff,  letter  from  Simon Wiesenthal  Center to colleagues and friends, August 2002.
221. Ibid.
222. Elli Wohlgelernter, “$10,000 Reward Yields Leads on Nazi War Criminals,” The Jerusalem Post, September 10, 2002.
223. Neil Lewis, “Documenting a Death Camp in Nazi Croatia,” The New York Times,November  14, 2001.
224. Ibid,
225. Miriam Shaviv, “Croatian President Mesic apologizes to Jews from Knesset podium,” The Jerusalem Post, November 1, 2001.
226. Ibid.
227. Ibid.
228. John Cornwell, Hitler’s Pope: The Secret History  of Pius XII (New York: Viking Press, 1999).
229. Haim Shapiro, “HU Quits Vatican Holocaust Commission,” The Jerusalem Post,November 2, 2001.
230. Robert Wistrich, “The Demise of the Catholic-Jewish Historical Commission,” Midstream, December 2001.
231. Paul Webster, “New Shocker from the Man who Invented Death-row Chic: the Christian Swastika,” The Observer, February 17, 2002.
232. Arieh Doobov, “The Vatican and the Shoah: Purified Memory or Reincarnated Responsi­ bility?” Policy Forum, 15, (Jerusalem: World Jewish Congress, 1998) pp. 24-25.
233. From ‘Remarks  by  Ambassador  Stuart    Eizenstat  to  the  Israel  Council  on  Foreign Relations,’ Jerusalem, June 15, 1998, quoted in Avi Beker, op. cit. , p. 324.
234. Hulda Liberanome,  “No Roman Holiday for Italy’s Jews,” Ha’aretz, October 5,
235. Quoted in Henriette Boas, “Commemorating the Holocaust in Holland: Positive and Negative Aspects” in Michman, 2, op. cit., p. 320.
236. Michael Zaidner, , Jewish Travel Guide 2001, International edition (London: Vallentine Mitchell, in association with The Jewish Chronicle, 2001). p. 154.
237. C. H. Blom, ‘The Persecution of the Jews in the Netherlands,” in: Michman, Vol. 2, cit., p. 289.
238. Jacques Presser, De vervolging en verdelging van het Nederlandse jodendom.Part 2, (The Hague: Staatsuitgeverij,  1965), p. 515. [Dutch]
239. W.J. Sannes, Onze Joden en Duitsland’s greep naar de wereldmacht, Amsterdam, 1946, pp. 6–7. [Dutch] as quoted in: Presser, op. cit., p. 516.
240. Dienke Hondius, [Return] Antisemitisme in Nederland rand de bevrijding. 2nd edition (The Hague: SDU Uitgevers, 1998). [Dutch]
241. Michal Citroen, U Wordt Door Niemand Nederlandse joden na kampen en onder­ duik. [Nobody Is Expecting You] (Utrecht: Spectrum, 1999), p. 9. [Dutch]
242. Joel Fishman, “The War Orphan Controversy,” in: ‘The Netherlands: Majority-minority Relations’ in: Jozeph Michman & Tirtsah Levie, eds. Dutch Jewish History, [Vol. l]: Proceed­ ings of the Symposium on the History of the Jews in The Netherlands, November 28-De­ cember 3, 1982, Tel Aviv-Jerusalem. (The Institute for Research on Dutch Jewry, 1984), p. 431.
243. Isaac Lipschits, De Kleine Sjoa: Joden in Naoorlogs Nederland (Amsterdam: Mets & Schilt, 2001), 10. [Dutch]
244. Prime Minister Wim Kok’s speech, International Forum on the Stockholm, January 26, 2000.
245. Commissie van Kemenade, Tweede Wereldoorlog: Roof en Eindrapport van de Contactgroep Tegoeden WO II, January 27, 2000. p. 102. [Dutch]
246. Gerard Aalders, Berooid: De beroofde joden en het Nederlandse restitutiebeleid sinds 1945 (Amsterdam: Boom, 2001), 194ff. [Dutch]
247. “Er viel niet veel te willen,” NRC Handelsblad, November 14, [Dutch]
248. Lien Heyting, “Teruggave oorlogskunst verloopt niet vlekkeloos,” NRC Handelsblad, Oc­ tober 9, [Dutch]
249. Lipschits, cit. p. 97.
250. Ido de Haan, Na de Ondergang: de herinnering aan de Jodenvervolging in Nederland 1945- 1995 (The Hague: SDU Uitgevers, 1997) 104. [Dutch].
251. Aalders, cit., p. 196.
252. Nederlands-Israelitisch Kerkgenootschap, Jaarverslag, 2000: Het morele boek gaat nooit [Dutch]
253. Ibid.
254. Ibid.
255. “Vertoning anti-Israel film op islamitische basisschool,” De Volkskrant, February 5, [Dutch]
256. Simon Kuper, Ajax, de joden,  Nederland  (Amsterdam:  Hard Gras, March  22, 2000),[Dutch]
257.  Ibid.
258. 1999-2000 Annual Report,  The  Stephen  Roth  Institute  on  Anti-Semitism  and  Racism, Tel Aviv University, See also the web site: www.tau.ac.il/Anti-Semitism/asw99-2000/ netherlands.htm
259. Toby Axelrod, “Despite Community’s Small Size,” JTA, September 16, 2002.