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4.0 out of 5 stars
Encyclopedic in Scope; Propounds a Dubious Holocaust Uniqueness, September 5, 2006
This review is from: The Holocaust in Historical Context: Volume 1: The Holocaust and Mass Death before the Modern Age (Hardcover)
Perhaps the greatest value of this volume is its systematic cataloguing of man's inhumanity to man and the fact that mass murders in the past had been generally exaggerated.
For all of the prominence of Crusader violence in Jewish thought, less than 1% of European and Mediterranean Jews were killed during the Crusades (p. 335), and no more than 2% of European Jews met the same fate (p. 82). The total number of Jews (conversos) killed by the Spanish Inquisition is less than 2,000 (pp. 82-83), and that over more than a century.
The Inquisition in general was lenient and progressive (for its time) in its treatment of the accused (pp. 498-499). Furthermore, 90% of the penalties it imposed were solely canonical (p. 540).
No more than 100,000 European witches were executed over three centuries (p. 404). Only a small fraction of accused witches were executed, and repentant witches were typically spared (pp. 500-501). Some 5-15% of witches executed were men (p. 504), while 99.9% of Europe's women survived the witch craze (p. 404, 503). So much for gynocide! Ironically, the persecution of witches intensified after witchcraft became a secular crime (p. 502). At no time in western history were homosexuals put to death in significant numbers (p. 519, 524). The institution of slavery was mild in nearly 80% of societies that practiced it (p. 223).
Katz differs from many Jewish authors in repudiating the notion that Nazism was a continuation, or at least an intensification, of previous Christian persecutions of Jews (e. g., the "Hitler by anticipation" view, p. 15). For one thing, Christian Jews were murdered by the Nazis (p. 250). The Holocaust did not happen while Christianity was politically dominant (p. 231, 317). Christian theology always recognized the fact that Jews possessed ultimate positive value in God's sight (p. 235). With one quasi-exception, no pope permitted the conversion of Jews by force (pp. 318-319) and at least the higher-level Christian clergy almost always condemned violence directed against Jews (pp. 161-162, 322, 333, 348). The charge of "ritual murder" had been repudiated by the church 850 years ago (p. 342), and the then-current pope forcefully condemned the view that the Jews were in any way responsible for the Black Death (p. 350). As for religious prejudices, they were a two-way street. Katz acknowledges the fact that Jews had their prejudices against Christians (p. 366).
Steven T, Katz, like Yehuda Bauer, is a strong proponent of the view that the mass murder of Jews was an absolutely unique event because it was the only time in history that an ENTIRE group was deliberately targeted for extermination. In fact, and unlike Bauer (who uses the term Holocaust for this purpose), Katz breaks with the original definition of Raphael Lemkin by using the term genocide to refer solely to the Jews (p. 131). Katz also believes that the total extermination of a group must be an actualized intent, not merely a wish (p. 61, 128). He also contends that being a Jew was an automatic death sentence (p. 500), that killing of all Jews was for the Nazis "a self-imposed obligation" (p. 495), and an "ideological, all-consuming, uncompromising intention"(p. 534). Moreoever, all Nazi aims were subordinate to the Endlosung (p. 200) which was transcendental in nature (p. 221)--even a sacral act (p. 33).
The views of Bauer and Katz have often been called the "Not all of the victims of the Nazis were Jews, but all Jews were victims of the Nazis" argument. However, Katz never discusses the practical implications of this view. Does it mean, for instance, that the 5-6 million Jews are entitled to 100 times the attention of the 2-3 million murdered Poles, in the American educational system, or only twice as much?
Katz even suggests that the views of Raphael Lemkin would be very similar to his own had Lemkin known about the scope of the extermination of Jews (pp. 129-130). This is unbelievable! As anyone who has read Lemkin knows, he was well aware of the fact that the European Jews had been largely exterminated. But, unlike Katz, Lemkin recognized the fact that exterminatory German intentions and actions were also pursued against the Poles and other Slavs. Only the tactics and timing differed. Can it be seriously supposed that exterminatory German attitudes and tactics would have been the same as they actually were had there existed a few hundred million European Jews but only a few million Slavs?
The extermination of Jews themselves fails to support Katz' contentions. To begin with, western European Jews were not targeted as intensively as eastern European Jews. Finland's (Germany's ally) Jews were never molested and Bulgaria's Jews were only pursued halfheartedly. The neutrality of Switzerland and Sweden was consistently respected despite their Jewish populations (especially the famous escaped Danish Jews sheltered by the latter). Known Jewish Allied POWs were spared. Thousands of European Jews were used by Germany for forced labor and, with some exceptions, were not killed in the latest days of the war. As for the PERMANENT acceptance of known Jews by the Nazis, nearly 1,700 Jews were freed in the Kastner-Eichmann deal and thousands of full-blooded German Jews were arbitrarily declared Aryans, and thereby spared (the Schutzjuden). While a variety of factors were involved in these events, the central fact remains that all the foregoing Jews were allowed to live as a deliberate choice of the Nazis. It is clear that, following Katz' reasoning, Nazi attitudes and actions had NOT completely crossed from the realm of wishing all Jews dead to intending all Jews dead. So much for unique intentionality! And the fact that the murder of Jews was so commonly delayed or thwarted by practical considerations refutes Katz' claim that the Nazis viewed such actions as necessarily subordinate to other goals, let alone transcendental or "all-consuming" in nature.
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