Against the background of the German law that prohibits the public denial of the

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1 THE HOLOCAUST 03: Dangers of Relativization Against the background of the German law that prohibits the public denial of the Holocaust, there have been several attempts since the 1980s, not so much to argue that the Holocaust did not take place as to relativize its impact. In 1980, the historian Ernst Nolte reduced the singularity of the Holocaust to the technical procedure of gas, provoking an argument among some historians about whether Auschwitz and the other death camps were unique or, rather, distorted copies of, and reactions to, Stalin s Gulag. According to Nolte, the actions of the Nazis -- the National Socialists -- and those of the communists were equally criminal. Then, in 1984, chancellor Helmut Kohl spoke during a speech to the Israeli legislature, the Knesset, about the mercy of the late birth. However, after fierce protests from many German historians in the mid-1980s, president Richard von Weizsäcker appeared to nip in the bud a movement that might ultimately have abolished the censorship of Holocaust denial, by reiterating the singularity of the Third Reich. []The issue arose once again after German unification in 1990, with special reference to the Mahn- und Gedenkstätten, former concentration camps in East Germany that had been preserved as memorials to the victims. At the end of World War II, up to 60,000 Germans had been interned in one such camp, at Sachsenhausen, known as Speziallager No. 7. Those reorganizing the memorial in 1991 seized on this fact in the third edition of a booklet entitled Sachsenhausen, 1936[-]1950, in which they stated that: {i}sachsenhausen is in the first place a scene of National Socialist and SS crimes. But it is also a scene of another ideological crime that had no less The Holocaust. Dangers of Relativization.doc\p1 of 5\04/03/05 02:49

2 [italics mine] implacable consequences. The credo of National Socialism and of Communism were the same: the enemy must be destroyed.{i} This equation was, to say the least, ironic: among those interned at Sachsenhausen in 1945 there had been hundreds of former SS guards. []Further ironies arose in 1992 in the course of the Waldheim trial, in which charges were brought against a judge who had pronounced 20 death sentences in 1950; and in the trial of two former citizens of East Germany who, on 4 June 1947, had killed Oberstabsrichter Erich Kallmerten in an internment camp for prisoners of war in Lithuania. Kallmerten, a former Nazi judge, had passed hundreds of death sentences on deserters and partisans. If he had not been murdered, he might, like almost all other former Nazi judges, have evaded punishment altogether. []From a conversation with the renowned publisher Wolf Jobst Siedler, reproduced in his book Deutschland, was nun?(germany, What Now?), the historian Arnulf Baring quotes Siedler s restatement of the intellectual case for the equation of National Socialism with Communism. National Socialism was only an authoritarian system, while Communism was a truly totalitarian system, to be sure without enormous criminal energy, but one that has left the world profoundly devastated. Siedler even believes that Communism in East Germany was, if anything, slightly worse than National Socialism: at least the Nazis left civil institutions intact. []Most, if not all, opponents of this trend concede that there were indeed affinities between National Socialism and Communism. For example, it could be argued that class corresponded with race ; that what for the Communist was capitalist became for the Nazis Jewry ; that the New Man was for the Communists the proletarian and for the Nazis the Aryan ; and so forth. However, they point out that, whereas the Weltanschauung of the Nazis consisted in the idea of the inequality The Holocaust. Dangers of Relativization.doc\p2 of 5\04/03/05 02:49

3 of human beings, said to be biologically determined, the pivot of Communist ideology was, at least in principle, the idea of human equality. On this view, National Socialism was a triumph of perverted chauvinism, while Communism was a continuation of political Jacobinism. In essence, National Socialism was nationalist, Communism internationalist. []Those who would preserve the ban on Holocaust denial also stress the uniqueness of mass murders executed in a meticulous and dutiful way, and on an industrial scale. Nolte and other German conservatives speak of National Socialism as merely Radikalfaschismus (as against Italian Normalfaschismus). While the latter does not necessarily amount to a denial that the Holocaust took place, its relativizing approach could have the long-term effect of reducing the general sense of horror felt at the enormities that took place between 1933 and For that reason, most German historians would keep this particular form of censorship in place. J.H. Brinks Further Reading Assheuer, Thomas and Hans Sarkowicz, Rechtsradikale in Deutschland: die alte und die neue Rechte, Munich: Beck, 1990; 2nd revised edition, 1992 Backes, Uwe, Eckhard Jesse and Rainer Zitelmann (editors), Die Schatten der Vergangenheit: Impulse zur Historisierung des Nationalsozialismus, Frankfurt am Main and Berlin: Propyläen, 1990 Baring, Arnulf, Deutschland, was nun? Ein Gespräch mit Dirk Rumberg und Wolf Jobst Siedler, Berlin: Siedler, 1991 Borchers, Andreas, Neue Nazis im Osten: Hintergründe und Fakten, Weinheim: Beltz, 1992 The Holocaust. Dangers of Relativization.doc\p3 of 5\04/03/05 02:49

4 Brinks, J.H., De rechterflank van Duitsland, Amsterdam: Boom, 1994 Brinks, J.H., Children of a New Fatherland: Germany s Post-War Right-Wing Politics, London and New York: Tauris, 2000 Butterwegge, Christoph and Horst Isola (editors), Rechtsextremismus im vereinten Deutschland: Randerscheinung oder Gefahr für die Demokratie?, 3rd revised edition, Bremen: Steintor, 1991 Farin, Klaus and Eberhard Seidel-Pielen, Rechtsruck: Rassismus im neuen Deutschland, Berlin: Rotbuch Verlag, 1992 Faulenbach, B., Empfehlungen zur Neukonzeption der brandenburgischen Gedenkstätten, 1992 Finn, G., Sachsenhausen, 1936[-]1950: Geschichte eines Lagers, Bad Münstereifel: Westkreuz, 1988; 3rd edition 1991 Funke, Hajo, Jetz sind wir dran : Nationalismus im geeinten Deutschland, Berlin: Aktion Sühnezeichen / Friedensdienste, 1991 Hacker, Friedrich, Das Faschismus-Syndrom: Analyse eines aktuellen Phänomens, Düsseldorf, Econ, 1992 Maaz, Hans-Joachim, Der Gefühlsstau: Ein Psychogramm der DDR, Berlin: Argon, 1990 Nolte, E., Vergangenheit die nicht vergehen will: Eine Rede, die geschrieben, aber nicht gehalten werden konnte in Historikerstreit: die Dokumentation der Kontroverse um die Einzigartigkeit der nationalsozialistischen Judenvernichtung, 2nd edition, Munich: Piper, 1987 Nolte, E., Zwischen Geschichtslegende und Revisionismus? Das Dritte Reich im Blickwinkel des Jahres 1980 in Historikerstreit: die Dokumentation der Kontroverse um die Einzigartigkeit der nationalsozialistischen Judenvernichtung, The Holocaust. Dangers of Relativization.doc\p4 of 5\04/03/05 02:49

5 2nd edition, Munich: Piper, 1987 Siegler, Bernd, Auferstanden aus Ruinen: Rechsextremismus in der DDR, Berlin: Tiamat, 1991 The Holocaust. Dangers of Relativization.doc\p5 of 5\04/03/05 02:49