Holocaust awareness in America

[RACPISA]

After the war, when many survivors came to America, how long was it before the American public knew what they had been through? Because I've heard some stories, for example, where a person thought that the number on a survivor's arm was their telephone number. Was it the Eichmann trial that finally made the average American aware of the Holocaust?

[Penn44]

The Eichmann trial helped, but I think it took the success of the Six Day War to start the process towards greater Holocaust awareness not only in the US, but Israel as well.

Prior to the Six Day War, relatively few in Israel wanted to think of the powerless Holocaust victim. The image ran counter the more popular image of the strong, vital Zionist pioneer. Some Holocaust survivors report that they were shunned in different ways when they arrived in Israel by the pioneers because no one wanted to reflect on the powerless Jew at the mercy of his tormentors. However, the highly successful Six Day War gave the Israelis sufficient confidence in themselves to begin the process of openly dealing with these aspects of the Holocaust.

Also, after this time, the Israelis started to aggressively use the Holocaust as a propaganda tool to recruit other nations, especially the US, as well as Jews outside the Israel to the Israeli cause.


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[David Thompson]

RACPISA -- I think the American public got a pretty good idea from the news coverage of the liberation of the camps by US and British troops in 1945, and the subsequent newsreels. (In the olden days before TV, newsreels used to be shown with the motion pictures playing at the theater). In addition, the Nuernberg trials were extensively covered by the US press, and there were newsreels of that as well.

After that, there were books available at the public libraries, but not a lot of them. Not many folks who had been imprisoned by the Nazis wanted to relive their experiences for the public, and didn't talk much about it. I got the impression that they just wanted to get on with their lives. The Eichmann trial in 1961-62 generated a lot of additional interest in the subject. Several new documentary films came out, and a lot more books got written.

Mostly, however, the public was more concerned with the threat of thermonuclear war and communist expansion.

In the 1980s, documentaries and "docu-dramas" on the subject started to appear on television, and a lot of the old footage was recycled and re-shown. This may have been connected with the appearance of anti-semitic "holocaust deniers" about the same time.

[Scott Smith]

The Eichmann trial helped, but I think it took the success of the Six Day War to start the process towards greater Holocaust awareness not only in the US, but Israel as well.

Prior to the Six Day War, relatively few in Israel wanted to think of the powerless Holocaust victim. The image ran counter the more popular image of the strong, vital Zionist pioneer. Some Holocaust survivors report that they were shunned in different ways when they arrived in Israel by the pioneers because no one wanted to reflect on the powerless Jew at the mercy of his tormentors. However, the highly successful Six Day War gave the Israelis sufficient confidence in themselves to begin the process of openly dealing with these aspects of the Holocaust.

Also, after this time, the Israelis started to aggressively use the Holocaust as a propaganda tool to recruit other nations, especially the US, as well as Jews outside the Israel to the Israeli cause.

Couldn't a' said it better myself.

[Penn44]

Couldn't a' said it better myself.

Then I need to go in for a full checkup.

[Scott Smith]

Couldn't a' said it better myself.

Then I need to go in for a full checkup.

[Tholzel]

<<Also, after this time, the Israelis started to aggressively use the Holocaust as a propaganda tool to recruit other nations, especially the US, as well as Jews outside the Israel to the Israeli cause.>>

But this effort has had a strange, unintended consequence: The Jewish religion, at least in its popular sense, is letting itself become contaminated by the Holocaust--as if this horrible experience is somehow central to the Jewish experience, or "being Jewish," etc.

It is not as strange as it seems. What is the central pillar of Christianity? Death by torture on a cross!

An entire Holocaust industry has arisen that keeps its nose to the wind to catch any whisper of any comment made about the subject one way or the other. And they respond with fierce possessiveness to condemn any opinion that is not politcially correct.

One absurd example of this hypersensitivity is the case of Waldheim, who many Jewish organizations have pilloried as a major Nazi war criminal. They even put out a booklet on the man "proving" his guilt. But if you read the book, it only proves that he was a German office in WW-II, in Army units that did have some criminal elements in them. No connection of any kind was made in this booklet to any war crimes or any illegal behavior, in spite of strenuous and overheated claims. One ful page photo shows Waldheim standing in subservient attention amongst some high-ranking officers, and tries to make it seem as if he is one of the boys--and therefore guilty of something.

[Penn44]

But this effort has had a strange, unintended consequence: The Jewish religion, at least in its popular sense, is letting itself become contaminated by the Holocaust--as if this horrible experience is somehow central to the Jewish experience, or "being Jewish," etc.

Well, considering six million dead, one-third of all Jews in Europe, the Holocaust is a inescapable fact with which Jews must come to terms. I fully understand why the Holocaust has assumed such a large meaning within Judaism.

[David Thompson]

Tholzel -- Please try to stay on topic. The subject is when the American public became aware of the holocaust, not "an entire Holocaust industry" . . . "that keeps its nose to the wind," the "contamination" of the Jewish religion by the holocaust, the "absurd hypersensitivity" of "many Jewish organizations," or Kurt Waldheim.

If you want to discuss those subjects, start a new thread rather than change the subject in an existing thread.

[Tholzel]

<<If you want to discuss those subjects, start a new thread rather than change the subject in an existing thread.>>

One thing leads to another...

[Scott Smith]

<<If you want to discuss those subjects, start a new thread rather than change the subject in an existing thread.>>

One thing leads to another...

Keeping it on-topic when discussing the karma, chimera, and chameleon that is the Holocaust is a little like taking a shower with your rubbers on.

[Tholzel]

<<Keeping it on-topic when discussing the karma, chimera, and chameleon that is the Holocaust is a little like taking a shower with your rubbers on. >>

Or sort of like having a "no-peeing" section in a swimming pool?

[walterkaschner]

I grew up in a very small (population 2,000) hard-scrabble farm town in the mid-West during the 1930s and 40s. Through newspapers, illustrated magazines (e.g. "Life", "Look" and "Time"), to a certain extent through radio and news reels, and from occasionally seeing the German American Bund in action (it was fairly well organized in my part of the state) I was well aware as a young teenager that the Nazis were violently opposed to the Jews, for reasons that I could not comprehend (there being no Jews in my home town and as far as I knew I had never seen one.) But until 1945 I certainly had no idea (and probably would not have believed it had I been told) of the precise nature and extent of the extremity of the brutal measures the Nazis had taken against the Jews.

I was only 15 at the time but can vividly recall to this day the absolute horror and disbelief I felt in 1945 upon first reading in the newspaper the accounts of the discoveries of the American troops upon liberating some of the concentration camps, and even later, when photographs began to appear in the illustrated magazines I could scarcely believe what they showed.

Then, when newsreels taken at the liberation of the concentration camps began to appear in our movie theater, I had to accept that Germany, of which I had earlier had been an earnest admirer (primarily because of its composers), had committed sickening and almost incredibly bestial acts against a whole race of people, women and children included, who as far as I knew had committed no fault whatsoever other having been born what they were, i.e. Jews.

A bit later we received a long letter from my uncle, a doctor in the U.S. army who had been with the U.S. troops liberating Dachau, with a heart-rending description of the condition of the camp, so terrible that he confessed that he could not control himself and had to vomit. This was a clincher for me.

Although I do not remember the term "holocaust" being used at that time, certainly people in our little town were well aware by the Fall of 1945 that some terrible, unspeakable crimes had been carried out against the Jews, apparently in an attempt to eliminate them all.

Feelings among our townsfolk against the Germans had already run quite high due to casualties that relatives of local families had suffered in the war in Europe. I had another uncle, my Mother's youngest brother and the great white hope of the family, who was commander of a squadron of tanks and severly wounded in the head at Normandy - he was blinded and remained something of a vegetable the rest of his life. The news from the liberated concentration camps enormously intensified the anti-German feeling in our small community, and there was great opposition to the Nuremberg Trials at home - not because they were thought unjust, but because the feeling was that the Nazis did not deserve a trial and should be summarily shot instead.

So from my own experience I believe that it was generally recognized early on, at least by reasonably informed members of the American community, that an attempt had been made by the Nazis to eliminate the Jews. I don't personally recall hearing the term "holocaust" until I moved to New York in the mid-1950s, but I was well aware of the general outlines and effect of the program in 1945.

Regards, Kaschner

[David Thompson]

When I saw the films as a youngster in school during the 1950s they didn't have any "Zionist propaganda" that came with them -- just the regular US Army Signal Corps narration, or the British newsreel narration. I didn't see any "teleologies" -- just motion pictures of the living, the dead, the camp guards and shrunken heads and human skin artifacts being examined by US soldiers. I can't say I saw those conditions as something that "might have happened anywhere when wars are lost" -- they looked like war crimes to me, then and now. Several of my friends' fathers had helped liberate the camps, and on the occasions when they'd mention the events of 1945, their uniform attitude was one of disgust and contempt for the guards and camp administration.

[David Thompson]

The posts on internment as a weapon of war now have a thread of their own, at:

http://www.thirdreichforum.com/viewtopic.php?t=29639