Source: https://codoh.com/library/document/on-the-causes-of-hostility-towards-jews/
Introduction
In the verdict of my trial before the Stuttgart District Court, Ref. No. KLs 83/94, handed down on June 23, 1995 with a 14-month prison sentence without parole, I was certified to be deeply anti-Semitic, which, in view of the absurdity of this statement, elicited all kinds of emotions from my relatives, friends and acquaintances, ranging from deep consternation to hearty laughter. Especially as the court was looking for a motive for the crime that was falsely attributed to me, but found none apart from “anti-Semitism”, this motive was simply constructed. Since I didn’t even know what Semitism was before the verdict was announced, let alone anti-Semitism, I began to take a roundabout approach to this complex issue, which I will soon have over a year of my life to think about. I hereby present the first results of my thinking about a problem that has so far affected me very little, but which seems to be the central intellectual problem of our time. Is there any better proof of the central importance of this topic than the fact that a young innocent scientist and family man has to spend 14 months in prison just because he holds scientific and technical opinions that certain Semites and philosemites do not like?
I
Gunnar Heinsohn recently posed the question, which in his opinion remains unresolved to this day: Why could the Nazi genocide occur, which he believes to have been proven.[1] Heinsohn argues that, apart from the many and supposedly comprehensively answered questions of who, how, where, when and how much, the question of why has hardly been asked, let alone answered; that research tends to elevate this question to the mystically unfathomable, which is not conducive to scientific understanding.
He listed 42 answers to the question “Why Auschwitz?”, which in his opinion should be taken seriously and which have so far been mentioned in scientific discourse. He discussed them and contrasted them with his own thesis: The mass murder of Auschwitz was the albeit failed attempt of National Socialism to replace the Jewish “Thou shalt not kill!” with the social Darwinist misunderstanding: “Kill the weaker” in the service of a racist world view. In order to be able to abolish the 5th Commandment of the Lord, the most primal cultural bearer of the human prohibition of killing – the Jew – must be killed.
There are three interesting things about Heinsohn’s book. First, his first thesis to explain Auschwitz is the revisionist, negating one. He refers to two old books by Paul Rassinier and a leaflet by Robert Faurisson from 1980, hence old and unproductive sources, but cites new sources to refute them, such as the recently published book Denying the Holocaust by Deborah Lipstadt.[2] Since these books are reactions to more recent revisionist publications, such as the Leuchter Report, one has to wonder why Heinsohn does not at least mention these sources. On the other hand, it would probably be more surprising if he were to cite more recent revisionist works,[3] as this would not be customary in “academic” circles.
In view of his giving revisionism the short shrift, it seems necessary to clarify what is actually meant by Auschwitz. While Gunnar Heinsohn, in accordance with the official doctrines, primarily understands this to mean the entirety of the industrial mass killings of Jews allegedly planned and carried out by the National-Socialist regime, revisionists are convinced that there was no planned, industrial mass murder. In Heinsohn’s opinion, an explanation of Auschwitz would be superfluous for the revisionists, if the mass murder associated with it had not taken place.[4] I, on the other hand, believe that even in the absence of industrial extermination, the question of why remains justified, and an answer to it necessary. For it remains a fact that in the German wartime sphere of influence, Jews suffered manifold injustices in the form of disenfranchisement, expropriation, expulsion, deportation, internment and forced labor.
Even in the opinion of revisionists, the victims of at least grossly negligent malnutrition, lack of medical and sanitary care, overwork and maltreatment as well as killings in the course of draconian punishments or summary hostage shootings as part of the fight against partisans number in the hundreds of thousands. The name Auschwitz also symbolizes this, a camp to which the Reich government sent hundreds of thousands of people despite the epidemics known to be raging there, thus exposing them to a high risk to life and limb through gross negligence.[5] Why this happened will be examined forthwith.
Second, Heinsohn does not seem to have found a theory in the academic discourse that has taken place to date which makes the anti-Semitic theories of a (pseudo-)scientific nature the subject of a discussion, on which National Socialism built its Jewish policy after all. The (pseudo-)rational basis of National-Socialist hostility towards Jews therefore does not appear to have been explored to date.[6]
Third, it is astonishing that Heinsohn does not recognize this shortcoming and remedy it, but rather that, contrary to his statements, he transports the understanding of the Nazi persecution of the Jews itself into an irrational, mystical sphere instead of examining the causes at the root. For to want to make his conceptual content of the word Auschwitz understandable as a kind of symbolic sacrifice to the Jews in order to lift the human inhibition to kill means nothing other than conceding to National Socialism in toto a mystical dimension of black magic, in which sometimes, for example a doll, is symbolically “killed” in order to achieve something completely different, such as causing harm to a person.
If the National Socialists wanted to restore the right to kill by murdering people of a certain worldview, then they would have had far more reason to kill all Christians, for whom the ban on killing goes further than that of the Jewish religion due to their universal claim, and who had and have a far greater influence on the moral formation of modern man than the Jews.
Heinsohn takes a similarly mystical approach elsewhere. In an article on the explanation of anti-Semitism, he postulates that the Jews’ rejection of the sacrificial cult of archaic and ancient cultures was the reason for these cultures’ hostility towards the Jews, which continues to this day. He explains the Jewish pogroms as a violent attempt by non-Jews to combat the Jews’ refusal to sacrifice by offering the Jews themselves as sacrifices:[7]
“The people educated to take an apocalyptic view of reality […] also choose a sacred king in Hitler, a ritual murderer […]. But the six million Jews who are now thrown into the furnaces of the German extermination camps can neither bring the longed-for salvation, nor are they killed by a Messiah without guilt entanglement for the community. The message of Judaism that no salvation can be expected from human sacrifice […] is to be nullified with the extermination of the Jews […]. The philo-Semitism that often occurs after Jewish massacres naturally resembles the […] idolization […] of the living being killed in the sacrificial ritual. […] But in Germany, too, they [the Jews] are again seen as preventing the removal of guilt – this time German guilt[8] for the murder of the Jews. In order to break through the belief in human sacrifice that led to Auschwitz, the state is now being used to get rid of the guilt for the Holocaust.”
Heinsohn then accuses Cardinal Josef Höffner of encouraging a pogrom mood among those contemporaries who are not prepared to remain silent about Kohl and Reagan’s visit to the Waffen SS grave in Bitburg and Kurt Waldheim’s time in the Wehrmacht in Yugoslavia with his thesis that guilt cannot be overcome but can only be forgiven by divine grace. In view of the fact that innocent, young soldiers of a fighting force lie in Bitburg, murdered by the Americans in violation of international law, and that the unsubstantiated accusations against Kurt Waldheim were based on forged documents, this clearly shows what kind of intellectual child Heinsohn is.
The common thread running through Heinsohn’s book is the thesis that Judaism, with its fundamental Ten Commandments, established the first moral rock in the human surf of amorality more than 2000 years ago and still holds it today. No religion introduced the prohibition of infanticide and the prohibition of killing in general so early and so comprehensively and made it the highest maxim. No religion has declared charity to be the central concern as early and unreservedly as Judaism.[9] It is another matter that this type of argument is more than embarrassing in view of the anything but new findings of behavioral research on the genetically fixed inhibition to kill members of one’s own species and on the altruistic instincts of humans, which have been expressed in various ways in many cultures since time immemorial.[10] But Heinsohn’s praise of Jewish ethics goes even further.
For him, today’s overpopulation problem exists primarily because the Christian church has wrongly universalized the Jewish prohibition of infanticide. While Talmudic Judaism expects Jewish women to have at least two children to reproduce the population and forbids infanticide, it accepts contraception and abortion in order to avoid unwanted and therefore unloved children. Christianity, on the other hand, had already begun to criminalize abortion and contraception as well as infanticide in the third century of our era. The peak of Christian punitive action, the persecution of witches from the late 15th Century onwards, was primarily aimed at wise women with knowledge of contraception and abortion, i.e. midwives and “herbal witches”.[11]
There is no doubt that the passages cited by Heinsohn exist in the Old Testament and in the Talmud, the Jewish law book written in late antiquity and based on many rabbinical interpretations of the Torah. However, the selectivity with which Heinsohn quotes these passages[12] is strongly reminiscent of the apologetics conducted by Jewish and philo-Semitic scholars at the end of the 19th Century and the beginning of the 20th Century, which had to fend off fierce attacks by anti-Semitic scholars, especially from the German-speaking world.[13]
This debate reached its peak during the Weimar Republic. Although the writings published at that time are rare today, some of them can still be found in large libraries. It is worth reading them to find out what stage the “Jewish question” had once reached in the debate. After reading it, one realizes that after the Second World War there was practically no longer any discussion about it, but rather that there is only a monologue from the philo-Semitic side, which can get away with pretty much anything with regard to one-sided interpretations, since arguments against it today can be punishable by law, but in any case lead to social stigmatization.[14]
Nevertheless, some of the most important writings of this secondary and tertiary literature on the Jewish scriptures, which played a major role on the part of the anti-Semites at the time, are briefly listed here, and a small summary is attempted in order to approach the answer to the why.
It must first be explained that, until the end of the Third Reich, the term anti-Semitism did not have the negative connotations it has today. On the contrary, at that time it was a clear positional designation that was just as inconspicuous as anti-nationalism or anti-Bolshevism. At that time, especially in Germany, there was no ritual of distancing oneself from anti-Semitism, as is essential today if one wants to make a decent living at all. Back then, if someone described themselves as not anti-Semitic, they could certainly be believed, whereas today it is usually lip service, with the speakers usually not even knowing what they are actually distancing themselves from.[15]
II
Dr. Erich Bischoff, an Orientalist who also acted as an expert witness in these disputes, undoubtedly led the ranks of the outstanding authors in the debate on anti-Semitism at the time with his numerous contributions to this discussion.[16] He, who published in the anti-Semitic publishing house par excellence, Hammer-Verlag, was often quoted by the anti-Semites as a neutral expert,[17] which he undoubtedly was. He did not see himself as an anti-Semite.[18] Bischoff’s writings are still required reading for anyone who wants to understand the events of the time. Gunnar Heinsohn seems to have been unaware of him.
The Institutum Judaicum, which has been active in Berlin since the mid-1880s, has also produced a series of writings, the first of which, titled Jüdisches Fremdenrecht (Jewish Alien Law), is probably the most important in this context.[19]
In addition, the Buch vom Kahal (Book of the Kahal)[20] should be mentioned, in which the minutes of the Council of Jews in the Minsk Ghetto, which were kept over many decades, were published and analyzed, particularly with regard to Jewish customs.
The most prominent German anti-Semite, Theodor Fritsch, also contributed to this dispute with works that were recognized at the time, such as the book Der Streit um Gott und Talmud (The Dispute over God and Talmud).[21]
Since it is not important here to determine whether the opinions set out in these writings are correct, but only whether and to what extent they can provide an answer to the revisionist question “Why Auschwitz?”, I would like to limit myself here to the statements made in these publications. The reader should therefore always bear in mind that these are the theoretical foundations of radical anti-Semitism at the beginning of the 20th Century, and not necessarily balanced, comprehensive and scientifically proven findings.[22]
The central dispute in the debate on anti-Semitism at the time revolved around the questions of the extent to which the Jewish law books Talmud and Shulchan Aruch 1. corresponded to Christian or Western moral concepts, 2. to what extent they were valid for the Jews of the time, and 3. how their origin can be explained.
The first question was thought to have been clearly answered at the time, namely to the effect that the Jewish written law could not be reconciled with our understanding of the law. Firstly, the Talmud and Shulchan Aruch are not formally organized, but rather represented a chaotic collection of laws that contradicted each other over wide areas, and secondly, a good part of these laws would allow Jews, with impunity, to regard non-Jews, and among these especially Christians, as people of lesser right. It was therefore permitted or even required to lie to them, deceive them and exploit them. An oath before a non-Jewish court was not valid. The property of non-Jews was to be regarded as ownerless, their lives were worth as much as those of animals. Furthermore, the Jewish law books would prescribe in various places that Jews should behave justly towards non-Jews if there was no other way of doing so for the sake of peace, and to avoid damaging the reputation of Judaism.[23] These law books also contain extremely misogynistic passages as well as sexually perverse regulations, which I will refrain from mentioning here for reasons of good taste. The fact is that many of these regulations are contradicted by other regulations, so that ultimately everyone can get what they want out of the law books.
In his Book of the Shulchan Aruch,[24] E. Bischoff concluded that there was no other religion, world view or politically constituted society in the world that laid down so many contradictory things in its codes of law as the Jewish religion. Moreover, there is probably no code of law on earth that considers behaviors that are otherwise interpreted as clearly immoral to be exempt from punishment or even required when it comes to actions towards outsiders, i.e. that demands ethical behavior only towards members of one’s own ethnos. Although other religions have sometimes acted according to similar ethnocentric or religiocentric maxims, these have never been covered by their law books. The history of Christianity, for example, is a sequence of disenfranchisement and massacres of non-Christians, which was in no way covered by the teachings of Christ.
Similar parallels could probably be found for all religions and also for all peoples, who, however, when they behaved unethically towards others, usually acted contrary to their own written laws – if they had any. To elevate ethnocentrism to the status of law would mean, for example, elevating Macchiavellism to the statutes of the UN, and thus to the guiding principle of peoples and nations (which, incidentally, has happened in part in Articles 53 and 107, the anti-German enemy-state clauses). In view of the massacres in Rwanda, Somalia and Serbia/Bosnia, this would be honest and consistent, but would certainly not defuse the conflict.
Elevating ruthless ethnocentrism to a written and binding law was therefore reserved for Judaism. The anti-Semitic literature that focused on these passages in Jewish law books therefore sometimes interpreted the Jewish faith as Satanic per se.[25]
The second question about the validity of these codes of law for contemporary Jewry was answered dramatically, particularly by the publication of the Book of the Kahal,[20] to the effect that, for Eastern Jewry that dominated Europe at the time and persisted in ghetto life, this validity was also fully given with regard to the passages that were clearly to be regarded as immoral. In Central Europe, too, corresponding incidents brought to public attention revealed that the Talmud was still being used in its entirety to educate young Jews, at least until the end of the 19th Century.
Erich Bischoff noted that modern Reformed Judaism had more or less energetically distanced itself from these law books. However, Judaism had no choice but to retain the Talmud and the Shulchan Aruch in their entirety if it did not want Judaism to degenerate into arbitrariness, because Judaism was founded on the Talmud and the Shulchan Aruch as its only codes of law. As there is no authority in Judaism that decides on the valid dogmas and laws, such as the Pope in Catholicism, one has to rely on what was formed thousands of years ago.[26]
While the apologetic side repeatedly pointed out that the radical, anti-human Jewish laws were a consequence of persecution, which the Jews could only escape through extreme, even hostile isolation, the anti-Semitic side sought the justification for Jewish extremism elsewhere. Prof. Passarge, for example, as a geographer and ethnologist, believed that the reason for Jewish amorality lay in their nomadic past of the pre-Christian millennia.[27]
In fact, the Talmud was created in the period between the 2nd and 4th centuries AD, especially in the Orient, when there were no particular ghettoization or persecution measures. And even then, the oral Jewish laws recorded in the Talmud will not have emerged from nothing, but will have had a history of many centuries behind them. Heinsohn writes that from around the 1st Century BC, Judaism developed into a religion with high moral standards, moving away from the brutal laws of the Near Eastern peoples.[28] The Talmud, based on the orally transmitted laws of the time and overlooked by Heinsohn, unfortunately speaks a somewhat different language here. However, it is undoubtedly true that the origin of the Jewish laws can be found in the ruthless, brutal laws of oriental life at that time.[29] This life was dogmatically fixed in the Jewish law books and exported to Europe, where it was bound to meet with rejection and hostility in the face of Western Christian moral concepts.
The rest of the story can be described as a process of mutation and selection. According to Passarge, those Jews who softened the radical core of their religion vanished by assimilation after a few generations, as the abandonment of the strict Jewish laws often meant a path into the “reformed Judaism” of Jesus Christ, meaning into the bosom of the Christian churches. Judaism could therefore only survive in Europe as such if it defined itself strictly against European moral concepts. According to Passarge, this Jewish amorality in turn could only survive in the isolation of the ghettos, because if lived out freely, harsh conflicts with the rest of the population were the inevitable consequence.
Prof. Passarge describes this historically documented oscillation between ghetto here and assimilation there on the one hand and the escape of Jewry from the ghetto and the resulting conflicts with the population, including pogroms, on the other. In his opinion, the confrontation between first-generation emancipated Jews and the host people led to conflicts even when the Jews reformed, i.e. distanced themselves from the Talmudic laws. The reasons for this were that the Jews had been extremely influenced by the teachings of the Talmud before their reformation. Jewish life in the ghetto was shaped by these writings in an extreme way like that of no other people.
The result of this extraordinarily authoritarian, even merciless upbringing from childhood onwards were people who, through the study of scriptures, were extremely mentally resilient and often superior to other people in this respect, but who exhibited a state of mind “completely deviating from Western thinking”[30] that could not be grasped either with our logical laws or with our moral concepts. Despite the individual’s formal emancipation from the strict rules of his religion, a reformed Jew or even a convert one could not be expected to be able to shed this state of mind. Solidarity with other Jews, a certain distanced, if not hostile, at least uncomprehending attitude towards the host people, distorted moral concepts and illogical, sometimes even paranoid thought structures could hardly be overcome.
Even later generations of such converts would only gradually shed these characteristics, depending on how intensively they were embedded in a non-Jewish, occidental milieu from the outset. It should be obvious that such people, who have the very best prerequisites for an intellectual career, do not exactly become culture bearers for their host peoples in the traditional sense. In fact, these people have always been perceived by certain quarters as a corrosive element that should be eliminated, both in economic life, in politics and in intellectual and cultural life.[31]
III
By and large, the prevailing opinion in parts of academic society during the Weimar Republic was that Judaism was still characterized by the immoral laws of the Talmud and Shulchan Aruch, as it had undisputedly been for centuries, and as such represented a danger to every society, which is why this danger had to be eliminated. Prof. Siegfried Passarge explained this particularly clearly in his epilogue to the Book of the Kahal, whereby, with his non-racist view, he saw his goal in the disappearance of Judaism, which in his understanding of the law was archaic and nomadic, through assimilation into Europe’s cultural world, for which great patience was required in view of the process lasting several generations. He himself knew that he saw himself in opposition to strong racist movements, which regarded the legal moral concepts of the Jews laid down in the Talmud and Shulchan Aruch as nothing more than an outgrowth of their racial depravity,[17] but he recognized in these ideas those movements which, through their violent excesses, would repeatedly give Judaism the opportunity to see itself justified in its radical moral concepts and thus to reactivate them.[32]
The fact that Judaism is as dependent on anti-Semitism as a fish is on water is therefore not something that has only been known since today.
The fact that these ideas of the time about Judaism as a materialistic, domineering, racist religion with strong traits of organized white-collar crime are to be seen as the most important driving force behind Auschwitz can be seen, for example, from the importance that the book Handbuch zur Judenfrage (Handbook on the Jewish Question) had in the Third Reich. In fact, the discussion of the Jewish question conducted in and around the Hammer publishing house outlined in detail the measures later carried out against the Jews under National Socialism,[33] and underpinned them with (as far as racism was concerned, pseudo)scientific arguments based on a discussion that had been going on for centuries, if not millennia. Incidentally, it is astonishing that the question of the authenticity of the so-called “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” hardly played a role in the discussion at the time, because in view of the material provided by the Talmud and Shulchan Aruch, it was really not necessary to enter into such propagandistic sideshows. The fact that today one can only hear a discussion about these Protocols when the topic of reasons for anti-Semitism is raised may be due to the fact that the Protocols can easily be used by the apologists to polemicize and distract from the real issues.[34] In any case, Hitler’s view of the Protocols will have had little influence on his opinion of the Jews. It may only have been a further confirmation of his view, similar to the initial role of the Jews in the Bolshevik Revolution.
That Hitler was far from alone in his views on the October Revolution can be seen, for example, in the warnings of S. Passarge. In view of the Jews’ part in the Bolshevik atrocities in Russia, however, Prof. Passarge was not the first to warn of new pogroms that would be more terrible than anything that had ever happened before.[35] Sonja Margolina, for example, reports on Russian Jews who saw the situation in exactly the same way at the time.[36] The fact that the escalation of the treatment of the Jews by Nazi Germany, which finally began with the Russian campaign in 1941, had to end as it did has recently been explained by Joachim Hoffmann.[37]
New documents found in Russia’s archives prove that Stalin had planned the war as a war of extermination against Germany long before 1941, with all the atrocities at the front and in the partisan warfare that actually took place. Does this not make it clear that during the war the German Wehrmacht was forced to take draconian measures against Stalin’s political commissars and against the partisans, those groups of people who had to carry out Stalin’s extermination order at the base? The fact that Jews made up an extremely disproportionate share of these groups had the familiar, if sometimes exaggerated, consequences.
It is true that Bolshevik terror did not, as in the early days, remain conspicuously often in the hands of the Jews, but later, under Stalin, Jews also became victims. However, contrary to the opinion of G. Heinsohn,[38] this does not alter the fact that the anti-Semites regarded the turn of fate of the Russian Revolution towards bloody terror as a product of Jewish decomposition, and thus as a confirmation of their thesis of the harmfulness of the Jews per se. In this respect, the anti-Semitism of the time did not see the fight against the Jews as a fight against Bolshevism, but as a fight against a power that would inevitably lead to inhuman things, including Bolshevism.
IV
It is remarkable in this context that the most determined, namely racist opponents of Jewish amorality before and during the Nazi era propagated or applied a similar amorality in order to get rid of their opponents. After all, the disenfranchisement and treatment of the Jews, who were declared sub-human in some propaganda, followed nothing other than the ethnocentric rules that had previously been sharply criticized in the Talmud: Classifying people of other faiths as people of lesser right and subsequently disenfranchising and exploiting them (expropriation, forced labor, etc.). By persecuting the Jews for being Jewish in the Jewish way, Hitler himself became, in a certain sense, the “head Jew”. The fact that he had the support of many Zionist Jews in this until 1941 closes the circle.[39]
The Jewish form of Talmudic, chauvinistic, racist nationalism and extreme ethnocentrism could also be briefly described as Jewish National Socialism, with millennia-old Judaism representing the original and German National Socialism, which is not millennia old, the bad, because unsuccessful, plagiarism. What did the anti-Semite Hitler do wrong? The true anti-Semite[40] who wants to fight Judaism successfully must fight any publicly expressed unobjective anti-Semitism, which only benefits Judaism in the long term, in the same way as he fights philo-Semitism through appropriate objective criticism.[41] Hitler’s extreme anti-Semitism not only provoked worldwide resistance from Jews, but also helped post-war Judaism to achieve a strength previously thought impossible.
Finally, the Talmud-like but openly expressed and implemented ethnocentrism of National Socialism challenged the resistance of other peoples in a way that the hidden Talmudic ethnocentrism never could in such an extreme way.
Heinsohn’s theory that Hitler wanted to abolish the morality of the Jews and replace it with his amorality of the right to kill is based, among other things, on Hitler’s statements in which he described parts of the Christian-Western ethics he rejected as being based on Jewish inventions.[42] Furthermore, Hitler described conscience, which prevents people from asserting their natural rights, as a Jewish invention.[43]
Would it not be more likely, after the above, that Hitler demanded for his people what the Jews demanded for themselves, namely to place their rights at the very top, above the rights of other peoples? But that he fought against what was then often called falsehood and deceitfulness in the Jews, namely that Judaism speaks with a forked tongue in its writings? Did Hitler criticize the fact that the Christian world adopted only the “conscience” from the moral concepts of the Jews, but stripped away the devious Talmudic ruthlessness and thus enabled the Jews to be the only ones to behave in a deliberately ruthless and insidious manner? Did Hitler cooperate with the Zionist Jews because they openly prioritized the rights of their people to their own empire and their own leader, just as Hitler did for the Germans? And did he fight the other Jews who were unwilling to emigrate because, in his opinion, they spoke with a forked Talmudic tongue and acted accordingly, thereby harming their host peoples?
V
If the perceptions of Jewish things at that time were as they appear from the publications presented above, and if these publications are rare today, but have not completely disappeared, the question arises as to why established Holocaust research, including Gunnar Heinsohn, does not seem to know or deal with these things. In order to answer this question, we must first ask ourselves where Judaism stands today. To do this, it is worth taking a look at Israel, to which mainly Eastern Jews immigrated after the events of the Second World War. It is at least conceivable that this could have the consequence that the dominance of Talmudic teachings in the Eastern Jewish communities could also have a formative influence here. In his recently published book Jewish History, Jewish Religion,[44] Israeli chemistry professor Israel Shahak takes a sharp line against precisely those excesses that the Talmudic understanding of law has brought about in Israel’s current policy towards non-Jews. The book suggests that today’s Israeli-Jewish understanding of the law hardly differs in many areas from that which was castigated by Central European anti-Semites 60 years ago and more. However, Shahak also mentions that the Jewish group of the Karaites does not recognize the Talmudic scriptures and defines itself solely from the Torah.[45] But the question of the state of mind of the Jews in Israel alone can hardly be decisive for the conduct of Holocaust research worldwide, so that a look at the role and attitude of Jews worldwide seems necessary.
According to S. Passarge, the Jews in the Western European states (the so-called Sephardim in France, England, the Netherlands and their colonies) had never been influenced by the ghetto and thus did not exhibit those conflict-promoting Talmudic deformations in such an extreme way as their Eastern co-religionists.[46] That a large stream of Eastern Jews poured into Central Europe, Western Europe, the USA and other overseas territories before, during and after the Second World War is probably undisputed. The fact that this sometimes enormous increase in Eastern Jews (Ashkenazim) could also lead to the undesirable developments that Passarge has described so vividly for Central and Eastern Europe cannot be ruled out. Due to my lack of involvement with this subject matter, I am hardly in a position to judge how the confession of the Jews looks today in Europe, and especially in Germany.[47]
The fact that many Jews confronted us Germans after the war according to the slogan “an eye for an eye “[48] and still refer to us in places today as the people of Amalek, whom they swear every year on their Purim festival to wipe out worldwide, including their memory, further demonstrates their attitude, which apparently does not necessarily need to resort to the Talmud in order to be inhumane in its extreme ethnocentrism.[49] Moreover, in view of the many exhortations from the Jewish side on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the end of the war, who would doubt that Judaism has distanced itself from its oriental-barbaric legal rules of ruthlessness, the inability to forgive and forget, clan liability and collective accusation? In any case, there is nothing to be seen here of the love of neighbor and foreigners postulated by G. Heinsohn, which was a morally high good for the Jews.[50]
The Jewish writer and poet Erich Fried made it clear to us in 1992 that this cannot be far off the mark: “I remember how proud I was as a child to read in the Torah: ‘You shall not oppress or oppress a stranger,’ and how disappointed I was when I learned that the word STRANGER, -Ger- in Hebrew, only refers to a stranger who has converted to Judaism.”[51] So even today it seems that the Jews are not very far from distancing themselves from racist ideas.
How could this be possible in a religion that defines only one people as chosen, that tends to define the members of its own religion by blood (a Jew is anyone who has a Jewish mother), that forbids all those Israeli Jews to marry who are to be described as “bastards” for racial reasons,[52] that promises the Jews the kingdom of God on earth in finite time, in which the Jews will rule over all other peoples (Deuteronomy 15:6; 28:1).[53] Even today, the Jews see themselves not only as a religious community, but also as a strongly ethnocentric people.[54]
Now, all this should be of little concern to us if it were not for the hasty submission of our own elites to those personalities who exploit their supposedly experienced or only retrospectively known allegedly singular sacrifice to present themselves as our supreme, unassailable moral apostles. Hans-Dietrich Sander quoted Ernst Wiechert as an example of this, who, in the face of Auschwitz, demanded of the German youth: “Let us recognize that the hard law was written for us: ‘An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, blood for blood.’ Let us not rebel against it… “[55] They were therefore only too willing to submit prematurely to the expected barbaric demands for revenge from the Jewish side.
The role of the Jews in the subjugation of the Germans after the war and their alienation from their political and cultural roots has been described phenomenologically by H.-D. Sander using many examples.[56] In view of the impudent audacity (Jewish: chutzpah) with which Mr. Bubis (back then head of the Central Council of Jewish in Germany) and Mr. Friedmann and all those who are preemptively obedient are nowadays able to pretend what is good and what is evil, who dares to contradict the fact that the field voluntarily cleared for the Semites and philosemites is today almost exclusively cultivated by them?[57] These gentlemen in particular often speak of German anti-Semitism without Jews, which they cannot comprehend, and there are said to be people who sway their heads in agreement with these words.
The fact that the situation in the Western world is similar to that described by Prof. Passarge as a critical state shortly before pogrom-like riots, namely the domination of the host nations by Jewish elites, is even proudly proclaimed by the latter in places: “When the Israeli weekly Haslem Hazeh on Aug. 4, 1982, p. 30, rejoiced that the American Jews, through their ‘key positions in the media world,’ are in a position to ‘prevent the publication of any information whatsoever,’ things once again drifted into the same river which, with increasing acceleration, is becoming the Maelstrom,” reports H.-D. Sander.[58] If one adds to this the report in the German Jewish weekly Allgemeine Jüdische Wochenzeitung of September 24, 1992, p. 11, in which it is stated how good and important it is that Jewish people are present in every German broadcasting council in order to prevent disagreeable news, then all questions should be answered, especially since the media are the key to power in modern information societies. All that remains is to add, with H.-D. Sander, what the voice of the people used to say: “Back then I helped Jews ten times at the risk of my life. I wouldn’t do that today.”[59]
In view of all these circumstances, it is hardly surprising that the world’s professors cannot come up with anything witty to answer the question “Why Auschwitz?”, because the consequences of wit in this world are now fatal, which in turn is proof that some things st… Precisely because things are coming to a head, one should always be aware that only permanent assimilation can solve the Jewish problem outside a Jewish nation. Unless one considers expulsion to the Jewish homeland.
Endnotes
[1] Gunnar Heinsohn, Warum Auschwitz?, Rowohlt, Reinbek 1995.
[2] Deborah E. Lipstadt, Denying the Holocaust, Maxwell Macmillan, New York, 1993.
[3] For example: A.R. Butz, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century, 5th ed., Armreg, London, 2024; W. Stäglich, Auschwitz: A Judge Looks at the Evidence, 3rd ed., Castle Hill Publishers, Uckfield, 2015; Germar Rudolf, Lectures on the Holocaust, 4th ed., Castle Hill Publishers, Bargoed, 2023; Jürgen Graf, Der Holocaust auf dem Prüfstand, Guideon Burg, Basel, 1993; idem, Der Holocaust-Schwindel, ibid.; idem, Auschwitz: Tätergeständnisse und Augenzeugen zum Holocaust, Neue Visionen, Würenlos, Switzerland, 1994; Serge Thion, Vérité historique ou vérité politique?, La Vieille Taupe, Paris, 1980.
[4] G. Heinsohn, op. cit. (Note 1), p. 39.
[5] See Ernst Gauss (= Germar Rudolf), “The Controversy about the Extermination of the Jews: An Introduction”, in: idem. (ed.), Dissecting the Holocaust: The Growing Critique of ‘Truth’ and ‘Memory’, 4th ed., Armreg, London, 2024, pp. 15-58, esp., pp. 33-36.
[6] Only his theory 12: “Auschwitz as liberation from an archaic cultural fossil” contains an approach in the corresponding direction, which, however, is not deepened, G. Heinsohn, op. cit., (Note 1), pp. 66f.
[7] “Monotheismus und Antisemitismus – auf immer unerklärbar?”, in: Rainer Erb, Michael Schmidt (eds.), Antisemitismus und jüdische Geschichte, Wissenschaftlicher Autorenverlag, Berlin 1987, pp. 409-447, esp. pp. 446f.; analogously the presentation in: idem, “Was ist Judentum?,” in: Zeitschrift für Religions- und Geistesgeschichte, 43(4) (1991), pp. 333-344, esp. pp. 343f. In this book, the sacrificial death of the Son of God Jesus for mankind and its symbolic commemoration in the Eucharist in the form of Jesus’s blood and flesh (wine and bread) is assessed as a relapse of Christianity into the cult of sacrifice! In the book criticized here, Warum Auschwitz?, op. cit. (Note 1), p. 15, Heinsohn simply declares Jesus’s sacrificial death as “[…] the Christian conviction that salvation can only arise from a human sacrifice […] ”, failing to recognize that Christians regard Jesus as the Son of God and thus not as a human being sacrificed for God, but as God himself, who is prepared to sacrifice himself for mankind. Such misinterpretations suggest certain religious ties on the part of Heinsohn. One is also inclined to ask who is actually the cause of repeated protests among animal rights activists worldwide in the face of seemingly senseless, allegedly religiously prescribed ritual slaughter, i.e. the bleeding to death of living animals: Christians or Jews?
[8] Behold: Prof. Heinsohn encumbers Germany with collective guilt and clan liability!
[9] G. Heinsohn, Warum Auschwitz?, aaO. (Anm. 1), S. 13, 135, 137f.; vgl. auch ders., Was ist Judentum?, aaO. (Anm. 7), passim.
[10] See Irenäus Eibl-Eibesfeld, Die Biologie des menschlichen Verhaltens, 2nd ed., Piper, Munich, 1986.
[11] G. Heinsohn, Otto Steiger, Die Vernichtung der Weisen Frauen, 3rd ed., Heyne, Munich, 1989, esp. pp. 48-51; see also idem, “Theorie des Tötungsverbotes und des Monotheismus bei den Israeliten sowie der Genese, der Durchsetzung und der welthistorischen Rolle der christlichen Familien- und Fortpflanzungsmoral,” in: J. Müller, B. Wassmann (Hg.), L’invitation au voyage zu Alfred Sohn-Rethel, Festschrift zum 80. Geburtstag, Unibuchladen Wassmann, Bremen, 1979; on Heinsohn’s population policy theses, see also idem, R. Knieper, Theorie des Familienrechts: Geschlechterrollenaufhebung, Kindesvernachlässigung, Geburtenrückgang, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt on Main, 1974; idem, Rolf Knieper, Otto Steiger, Menschenproduktion. Allgemeine Bevölkerungstheorie der Neuzeit, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt/Main, 1979.
[12] Which, by the way, he indirectly admits: G. Heinsohn, Was ist Judentum?, aaO. (Anm. 7), p. 339: “The essay ‘What is Judaism?’ might annoy the connoisseur of detail by reducing to core ideas what in reality exists in great abundance and at the same time in shades of contradiction.”
[13] A fairly comprehensive bibliography of anti-Jewish attacks from 1500 to 1887 is listed in: Thomas Frey (= Theodor Fritsch), Antisemiten-Katechismus, Verlag von Th. Fritsch, Leipzig 1887, pp. 209-219.
[14] Hans-Dietrich Sander has also hinted at this fact: Die Auflösung aller Dinge, Castel del Monte, Munich 1988, p. 202: “Habermas […] prose authoritatively decreed that the Rubicon of a critical view of the Jewish question must not be crossed a second time by the German mind”; quoted from Jürgen Habermas, Philosophisch-politische Profile, Frankfurt on Main, 1971, pp. 63, 65. The fact that Habermas received an honorary doctorate from Tel Aviv University for his fight against a taboo-free historical discussion in the so-called Historikerstreit shows who Habermas is willingly or unwillingly at the service of (Stuttgarter Nachrichten, April 24, 1995).
[15] Including yours truly, who is only now, forced to confront this issue by the wrongful conviction, beginning to fathom it.
[16] Erich Bischoff, Die Kabbalah. Einführung in die jüdische Mystik und Geheimwissenschaft, Th. Griebens Verlag, Leipzig, 1903; idem, Die Elemente der Kabbalah, reprint, Verlag Richard Schikowski, Berlin, 1985; idem, Rabbi und Diakonus, Walter Kramers Verlag, Leipzig, 1929; idem, Rabbinische Fabeln, ibid., 1922; idem, Das Buch vom Schulchan Aruch, Hammer Verlag, Leipzig, 1929; idem, Das Blut in jüdischem Schrifttum und Brauch, Ludolf Beust Verlag, Leipzig, 1929.
[17] See for instance Theodor Fritsch, Handbuch zur Judenfrage, 11th ed., Hammer-Verlag, Leipzig, 1932, S. 128.
[18] This emerges in particular from his book Die Elemente der Kabbalah, op. cit. (Note 16), Part 2, pp. 210ff., in which he expresses his high regard for Jewish mysticism and theosophy.
[19] Gustaf Marx, Jüdisches Fremdenrecht. Antisemitische Polemik und jüdische Apologetik, Schriften des Institutum Judaicum, Berlin, Nr. 1, H. Reuther’s Verlag, Karlsruhe/Leipzig, 1886.
[20] Jacob Brafmann, Das Buch vom Kahal, 2 vols., Hammer-Verlag, Leipzig, 1928, edited by Siegfried Passarge.
[21] Hammer-Verlag, Leipzig 1922. E. Bischoff mentions him in praise in Das Buch vom Schulchan Aruch, op. cit. (Note 16), p. 110.
[22] While it can be assumed that there is no balance, as anti-Semitism was strongly focused on specific aspects of Judaism, the accuracy of some of the statements may well be different, especially as the publications mentioned here dealt intensively with all possible counter-arguments of the Jewish apologists. But if you want to get an objective picture, you have no choice but to study the primary literature (Torah, Talmud, Shulchan Aruch) for yourself, preferably in the original language and with knowledge of the Oriental world of the time. In any case, I do not allow myself to judge whether what was written at that time is true and comprehensive. Cf. e.g. Lazarus Goldschmidt (ed.), Der Babylonische Talmud, 12 vols., Verlag Biblion, Berlin, 1929-1936. A 4th edition of the work is soon to be published by Suhrkamp.
[23] E. Bischoff, Das Buch vom Schulchan Aruch, aaO. (Anm. 16), S. 50f. According to Bischoff, the just treatment of non-Jews for tactical reasons alone is morally worthless. But does it not even represent a special form of malice?
[24] In English translation: E. Bischoff, The Book of the Shulchan Aruch, Castle Hill Publishers, Bargoed, 2023; https://armreg.co.uk/product/book-shulchan-aruch/.
[25] Thus the Hebrew word for their god – (El) Shadai – is occasionally interpreted as having the same root as our word Satan, cf. Theodor Fritsch, Der falsche Gott, Hammer-Verlag, Leipzig, 1919. H. Lummert recently explained to me that this is a misinterpretation: “Our word ‘Satan’ is a Hebrew word: satam (sin-tet-mem); it means to oppose, to feud, to combat. Satan (sin-tet-nun) is the enemy, opponent, adversary. Hasatan (Satan) is the accuser, “our” Satan. Shadai (shin-dalet-jod): mighty, almighty; a name of God (El Shadai); thus roughly The Almighty. Shadad (shin-dalet-dalet): to harm, be violent, devastate, plunder, destroy, annihilate.”
[26] Das Buch vom Schulchan Aruch, op. cit. (Note 16), pp. 30-35, esp. p. 33.
[27] S. Passarge in: Jacob Brafmann, op. cit. (Note 20), Vol. 2, pp. 343ff.
[28] G. Heinsohn, op. cit. (Note 1), p. 137.
[29] I am indebted to Horst Lummert for pointing out that the Torah can be better understood if it is not viewed through the lens of a dialog between God and his people, but as the real history of a people with all its good and bad qualities, with positive and negative events. Only through the mythological-theological interpretation of this history did it become a dogmatic religious edifice. Even if one agrees with this, the fact remains that the problems arise precisely from the fact that the Jews often interpret in the Talmud and Shulchan Aruch what was recorded in the Torah as historical events metaphorically, either literally or (un)analogously, but in any case dogmatically.
[30] E. Bischoff, Das Buch vom Schulchan Aruch, op. cit. (Note 16), p. 123, note 205.
[31] Precisely in the sense of Sanders’s Auflösung aller Dinge (Note 14).
[32] S. Passarge in: Jacob Brafmann, op. cit. (Note 20), Vol. 2, pp. 381f.
[33] With the exception of the targeted, industrial extermination, of course, which, according to revisionist conviction, did not take place.
[34] Hans Sarkowicz, “Der Protokolle der Weisen von Zion”, in: Karl Corino (Hg.), Gefälscht!, Rowohlt, Reinbek, 1992, pp. 56-73.
[35] S. Passarge in: Jacob Brafmann, op. cit. (Note 20), ., Vol. 2, pp. 377ff.
[36] Sonja Margolina, Das Ende der Lügen, Siedler, Berlin, 1992, esp. p. 58; H.-D. Sander, aaO. (Anm. 14), p. 35, has expanded that series by quoting from S. Dubnow, Mein Leben, Berlin 1937, S. 224: “[…] Dubonow spoke […] of the ‘terrible guilt’ with which ‘the Jews have burdened themselves through their participation in Bolshevism.’”
[37] Joachim Hoffmann, Stalin’s War of Extermination 1941-1945, reprint, Castle Hill Publishers, Uckfield, 2015.
[38] G. Heinsohn, op. cit. (Note 1), Theory acc. to Ernst Nolte: “Auschwitz as a fight against Bolshism,” pp. 119ff.
[39] Vgl. Francis Nicosia, The Third Reich and the Palestine Question, 2nd ed., Transaction Publishers, New Brunswick, 1999.
[40] I still do not count myself among them, even if some philo- and anti-Semites want to force me into such a role; cf. Note 5.
[41] An example of how not to do it is the book by Harold Cecil Robinson (= Johannes Peter Ney), Verdammter Antisemitismus, Neue Visionen, Würenlos, 1995, which marks an epochal step backwards in quality compared to the writings on the Weimar period.
[42] G. Heinsohn aaO. (Anm. 1), p. 138.
[43] Ibid., p. 19.
[44] Israel Shahak, Jewish History, Jewish Religion, Pluto Press, London, 1994.
[45] Ibid., pp. 60, 83, 85f. According to H. Lummert, however, this non-recognition of rabbinical authority is worthy of death in the sense of official Judaism.
[46] S. Passarge, in: Jacob Brafmann, op. cit. (Note 20), pp. 360ff.
[47] So far I have only come across Josef Ginsburg by chance, who at the time accused the Jews tied up in the Shoah business of (false) Talmudic understanding; see Josef G. Burg, Zionnazi-Zensur in der BRD?, Ederer, Munich, 1980.
[48] To realize this, it was not necessary for John Sack’s book of the same title to be published, BasicBooks, New York, 1995.
[49] Deuteronomy 25:19; similar H.-D. Sander, op. cit. (Note 14), p. 192.
[50] G. Heinsohn, op. cit. (Note 1), p. 137, basing himself on Exodus 22:20; 23:9; Leviticus 19:33f. Of course, he omits the corresponding contradictory passages from the Talmud and Shulchan Aruch.
[51] Reprinted in the magazine links, 3/1992, p. 30.
[52] According to a report in the German daily Die Welt of December 22, 1994, the Israeli Ministry of Religion is said to have drawn up a list of ten thousand Israelis who are not allowed to marry because they are considered “bastards” or “unclean”.
[53] On the anti-Jewish criticism of the Old Testament at the time, see Th. Fritsch, Handbuch zur Judenfrage, op. cit.
[54] Defining membership of a group by blood relationship is not unusual for a people, as the German citizenship regulations prove, but it is extraordinary for a religion. In this respect, it becomes clear that the Jews see themselves not only as a religious community, but also as a people. The fact that Germany’s Jews also see themselves first and foremost as Jews may be clear from the name of their association: After all, the Central Council of Jews in Germany is not called the Central Council of German Jews.
[55] Ernst Wiechert, Rede an die deutsche Jugend, Munich, 1945, p. 33; as cited by H.-D. Sander, aaO. (Anm. 14), p. 185.
[56] H.-D. Sander, op. cit., (note 14), especially p. 189: “As always, the Jews intervened in this world-historical process [of the total subjugation of the Germans to the victors] only in an aggravating way.” Also worth reading in this context is Hans Jürgen Syberberg, Vom Unglück und Glück der Kunst in Deutschland nach dem letzten Kriege, Matthes & Seitz, Munich, 1990.
[57] I am convinced that it is not even the Jews themselves who play the biggest role, but rather those non-Jewish forces who are always rashly prepared to do what they merely believe is in the Jewish interest. Whether this is always the case is doubtful, especially as there are certainly many different opinions among the Jews as to how one should best behave towards them.
[58] H.-D. Sander, op. cit. (Note 14), p. 193
[59] Ibid., p. 192, footnote. Incidentally, Gottfried Weise also saved the lives of many Jews when he brought them safely through the Russian artillery at the end of the war. For this he was put behind bars for life by a Jewish professional liar and false witness. Would Weise do it again today? Cf. R. Gerhard (ed.), Der Fall Weise, 2nd ed., Türmer, Leoni 1991; Claus Jordan, ” The German Justice System: A Case Study”, in: G. Rudolf (ed.), Dissecting the Holocaust, op. cit., pp. 137-171. Otto Ernst Remer told me personally that he also saved the lives of numerous Jews when he used force to prevent the Ukrainian civilian population from committing pogroms at the beginning of the Russian campaign.
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