ARMED ROBBERY FOLLOWED BY MURDER

"The Belgian government and banks agreed on Tuesday to pay $170 million to Holocaust survivors, families of victims and the Jewish community for their material losses during Word War II."-- Associated Press

This announcement by the Belgium government is a timely reminder of what we are really talking about when the Holocaust is mentioned. The word itself has taken on a sacred meaning, requiring its withdrawal from everyday life. I was rereading recently President Eisenhower's farewell speech, famous for its comments about the military-industrial complex. He mentions several great wars in which the United States participated, referring to them as "holocausts", plural. The word can no longer be employed this way without risking a claim that the speaker is an antiseminte, discounting the fate of Europe's Jews at the hands of Hitler, Himmler, their legions of German killers, and still larger legions of European collaborators.

The Holocaust is reserved specifically for Jews. Which is why when a few people are killed in Gaza the Arab propaganda machine goes into overdrive to speak of the "real holocaust", you know the one perpetrated by the Jews, who are of course the Nazis, against the innocent people of Gaza, who have been robbed of their homes and their identity. As you may know it is particularly important for these Arabs to get this focus correct because the current President of Iran has encouraged their hopes by declaring his intention to soon rid the world of Israel. Sometimes he mentions sending the people back to Europe, sometimes he refers to them as bacteria who will be cleansed. You get the idea -- they will disappear. Is it possible to have the Holocaust twice? This is going to pose some very real linguistic problems. But before addressing these, I would like to clear up some confusion about the first one.

The murdered Jews of Europe died within the context of a world war. Millions of others died as well, many millions more than they. Which is why Hitler was able to carry out his plans. This is not the place to review the development of his policies which culminated in the gassing gulags in Poland. Suffice it to say that he announced his intention of killing the Jews with gas in Mein Kampf which he published in 1923. This was the vision he came out of the war with and its realization is his enduring legacy, along with ending a thousand year migration of German peoples into the eastern marches.

The fixation of people on the methods of this murder -- bureaucratic thoroughness, tatooing, slave labor, starvation-- has created an image of the events which actually obscures something both simple and profound. As you know political antisemitism argued that the Jews ruthlessly controlled the world's wealth, using manipulation of capital, interest rates etc. to keep everyone else in thrall. It is endlessly pointed out that most Jewish victims were simple people from eastern Europe who were not well off. This is emphasized repeatedly by well-meaning people seeking to rebut the antisemitic canard about Jews controlling the world's wealth. Sadly, it is not possible to rebut a lie with facts, but it is possible to obscure simple truths.

Every victim who was murdered by the German Nazis and their European collaborators was a person who lived somewhere. He was a person who had a family, he had a house, he owned shoes, clothes, pots and pans,had some books, maybe a bicycle, some photos -- you know he was a person like yourself, had a life, possessions etc. What you need to remember is that before each one of them was murdered, they were ROBBED.

The Holocaust may or may not be unique, but armed robbery followed by murder is a very well known category of crime. Indeed, it is the category of crime which arouses the most immediate demands for harsh police action. As it should. If you can allow yourself to think of these people as five or six million INDIVIDUALS who first were robbed and then murdered, often with quite a bit of sport and degradation in between, including raping most of the women, experimenting on lots of them etc., then you will be able to better understand some of the developments in Europe since 1945.

Let me mention several of the most important. 1. ABOLITION OF THE DEATH PENALTY Collusion with the Nazis was so widespread, stolen real estate and other wealth was so widely spread among the leading citizens of many localities, there was a strong interest in limiting the punishment that might be inflicted on collaborators. The first thing to be outlawed was the death penalty after a few show trials. 2. REPARATIONS In the last few years some museums have had to cough up several paintings which were looted, but rest assured nobody asked the national banks to give back the gold fillings that were ripped from the helpless mouths of hundreds of thousands of people. You see what I mean by armed robbery followed by murder? People who moved into vacated apartments, drove looted cars, wore stolen shoes were never asked to return these. A collective responsibility freed all individuals of any responsibility. 3. DECAY OF RELIGION. If Hitler had defeated Russia, I have no doubt he would have initiated a new State Religion. Upon his death he would have been deified. The collusion of the Roman Catholic Church with the Nazis in Croatia and elsewhere, the widespread support of clerics in many countries and many denominations, profoundly compromised these churches and left them gravely weakened in the aftermath of WW2. None of them have recovered their followings. The post-1945 generation of Europeans avoided all of the authorities that had supported and participated in the robbery, looting, and murder that characterized European life from the mid-1930s. National Socialism replaced nationalism and Christianity in Europe and National Socialism is the orthodoxy of the European Union.

I do not know what Arab propagandists say to Arabic speakers about the doings on Israel's borders. I do not recall much attention being given to the 4000 rockets shot into Israel by Hizbullah or the several thousand sent from Gaza. I do not doubt there is going to be quite a bit more shooting and killing, even real war. But mass murder of the kind perfected by the Europeans, that I do not see. We might even see ethnic cleansing of the kind that is currently working in Darfur and western Kenya, but not genocide, at least not from the Israeli side. Unless you think the use of nuclear weapons is inherently genocidal.

When you next hear talk of the Holocaust, I ask you to pause for a second and think, armed robbery followed by murder. You might also ask yourself what took Belgium sixty-three years.
Now for the contest. There is only one lesson to be learned from the Holocaust: IT WORKS. Having been demonstrated to work, it will be copied and improved upon. So in order to be prepared, can we have a name ready for it. You see how badly prepared we are from the response in Rwanda. Unnamed, it is already forgotten. The destruction of Liberia and the Congo are unnamed and unnoted. If you want to sell something, anything, you have to name it first. So, any suggestions for a universal, all-purpose name for the next BigOne are welcome.