Modern Judaism Archives

The Second Time Around

February 21, 2007 08:22 AM

Updated 2/24/07 below

Meant to post this a little while ago. It's from an interview with Hungarian Nobelist Imre Kertesz, in which the author and Auschwitz survivor reflects on the persistence of European anti-semitism. There's no happy ending.

Am I right then, that you think of anti-Semitism as something persistent? That you do not keep the hope that this problem will disappear after some time...

As long as it is considered a problem, it will neither cease nor disappear. In any case, the Nazi death camps established for the extermination of European Jews, combined with the creation of Israel constitute a new development – a new problem, if you like – not only in the history of Jews but also in that of anti-Semitism. For instance, there is no fitting anti-Semitic response to Auschwitz – if not the denial of the very facts of Auschwitz and the Holocaust. At first this denial seemed to be an act verging on the ridiculous. Today, however, it counts as "serious academic pursuit" and if anti-Semitism is ever elevated to the level of the state, if it is considered a state programme, then the officially supported, institutional falsification of history will become possible once again, as we saw in single-party dictatorships.

In democratic states, criticism of Israel provides a new and effective avenue for anti-Semitism – particularly when Israel does something that prompts criticism, which by the way other states do, too, whether or not they have to fight for their existence. A language has developed that I would like to call Euro-anti-Semitism. For a Euro-anti-Semite, it is no contradiction to recall the victims of the Holocaust in mournful tones, and in the next breath, under the guise of criticism of Israel, to utter anti-Semitic statements. Such things have been repeated so often that they are almost cliches. Remembrance of the Holocaust is important to stop such things from happening again. But, in fact, nothing has happened since Auschwitz that would prevent another Auschwitz from happening. On the contrary. Before Auschwitz, the extermination camp was unimaginable. Today, it can be imagined. Because Auschwitz really happened, it has permeated our imagination, become a permanent part of us. What we are able to imagine – because it really happened – can happen again. [My emphasis]

I have not seen this perspective anywhere else, since discussion among those who foresee a "Second Holocaust" - see, for instance, Ron Rosenbaum - tends to take European moral revulsion at the "first" for granted. In this view, modern Europeans either don't recognize or fail to give due consideration to the signs that history is repeating itself - particularly in the demonization and gradual dehumanization of the Jews and, in the modern version, "Zionists." This view assumes that if Europeans really knew "what was coming" they would move to prevent it. But what if Europeans do see the direction things are headed and simply aren't troubled by the consequences that may await the Jews? What if Auschwitz numbed Europeans to the horror of genocide? Worse, what if it actually whetted the appetite, by revealing that such a completely insane goal - the entire elimination of this rootless, problematic clan - was achievable? These are the implications of what Kertesz' observes in modern Europe.

MORE: Read this piece by Anne Bayefsky and despair at our own government's financial contribution to the furtherance of Jew-hatred.

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