Jews in the Christian Gaze: Munich's Churches before and after Hitler

Abstract

Kauders sets out to examine three interrelated topics: the nature of antisemitism after the Second World War; the continuity in thinking about the Jews in the twentieth century; and the problem of responsibility inherent in any analysis of the events surrounding the Holocaust. In what follows, emphasis is placed on the Catholic and Protestant churches in the Bavarian capital of Munich, whose reactions to Jew-hatred before 1933 and after 1945 are studied in some detail. Several conclusions emerge from this investigation. Both churches embraced völkisch thinking before 1933, without approving of violent manifestations of racialist thought. Both Catholics and Protestants, whenever they defended the Jews before the rise of Hitler, did so in order to safeguard Christian dogma, and in particular the value of the Old Testament as well as the Jewish origins of Jesus and Paul. After 1945 clerics employed language that ignored events between 1933 and 1945, describing the ‘Jewish question’ as if the issue was still embedded in Weimar politics; they did so because they assumed that a majority of Germans had been innocent of any wrongdoing, so that a pre-1933 image of ‘the Jew’ (which did not allow for extremism and violence) could be re-adopted with impunity after 1945. Christian views began to change in the late 1950s and early 1960s, when Jews were increasingly seen as Others who were to be respected as such. Although German-Jewish irreconcilability was thereby cemented, this shift also entailed an acceptance as opposed to a denial of the Jew as different from Christians and ‘Germans’.     

The ‘Post-Holocaust Jew’ and the Instrumentalization of Philosemitism

Abstract

Altfelix attempts to examine and explain why xenophiles are politically prone to an ambivalent re-utilization of xenophobic images of the Other. In Germany both ‘the Jew’ and ‘the Ausländer’ have been instrumentalized xenophilically in their capacity as abstract notions by certain system actors and publics in a manner which appears to shed more light on the in-group than the Other. Xenophilia as a self-oriented, positive in-group evaluation may be identified as particularly evident in the post-war German political discourse on the Holocaust. In similar fashion to antisemitism, philosemitism represents an ‘allosemitic’ (Bauman) abstraction of ‘the Jew’, whose evocation is comparable to the idea of a ‘good foreigner’ as expressed in Ausländerfreundlichkeit (foreigner-friendliness). Xenophilia/philosemitism—like xenophobia/antisemitism—is dependent upon a relative opposition between ‘concretized Self’ and ‘abstracted Other’. Altfelix argues that this relationship emerges for two reasons. First, manifestations of xenophilia are generally preceded by bouts of xenophobia. Consequently, some publics may identify a need for creating a positive in-group focus. In this, the Other must not become too concrete for fear of distracting attention away from the xenophile's agenda. Second, the difference between Self and Other must be effectively maintained, since the xenophile's raison d'être depends upon it. Post-war German philosemitism appears to be a good exemplar for this definition of ‘xenophilia’. It demonstrates the dangers of moving within an allosemitic cycle in which difference becomes a method of keeping otherness at bay through abstraction. The fear of a misremembrance of the Holocaust resulting from an abstract memorialization seems to provide a very solid political basis for perpetuating a philosemitic identity construction of ‘the Jew’ as abstracted Other.     

Cutting the fuse: the explosion of global suicide terrorism and how to stop it,by Robert A. Pape and James K. Feldman

This article considers a ‘new-old’ media – that is, a relatively newly created medium with deep historical roots – that has gained increasing popularity in recent years: a subgenre of the comic book, most often referred to as the graphic novel. Presented here as an antidote to dominant interpretations of political violence ranging from the state terrorism of the Holocaust to the events of 9/11, the article briefly traces the history of graphic novels and details their growing popularity before describing and analysing representations of terrorism, both written and visual, in eight paradigmatic works that purvey variously victim, survivor and perpetrator perspectives.     

Reviews

Stone accepts the genuine motives of those promoting the Holocaust memorial day in Britain, but criticizes the proposal on three counts: first, the day will probably be ignored by large sections of the population, causing sorrow to the survivors and others concerned; second, the working of collective memory means that the efforts that have been made over the last decades to bring the Holocaust to the centre of British culture may come under threat if a single day were to encourage people, as it possibly might, to forget the Holocaust during the rest of the year; and third, the day will act as a convenient opportunity for the government to present itself as morally upright, thereby occluding involvement in contemporary ethnic, religious or other forms of discrimination. Stone argues for a plurality of forms of Holocaust remembrance-in which memory work does not become reduced to homogenized rituals (wreath-laying) or automatically uttered mantras ('never again')-that challenge people to think about just what it is that they are     

Foreword

Recent political statements have revitalized the debate over Fascist antisemitism and the response by Italians to Benito Mussolini’s anti-Jewish campaign. Luconi offers an overview of the current reassessment of the attitude of Italians towards Jews during Il Duce’s rule in English- and Italian-language scholarship. Contrary to previous findings that have tended to emphasize the Italian people’s effective contribution to efforts to help Jews under the Fascist regime and the Nazi occupation of their country, more recent research has stressed that, notwithstanding remarkable exceptions, Italians—both inside and outside the Fascist hierarchy—were far from being immune to antisemitism and, therefore, did not refrain from actively participating in the discrimination, persecution and deportation of Jews in the pre-war and war years.     

The birth of the memory of Communism: memorial museums in Europe

This article argues that the memory of Communism emerged in Europe not due to the public recognition of pre-given historical experiences of peoples previously under Communist regimes, but to the particularities of the post-Cold War transnational political context. As a reaction to the uniqueness claim of the Holocaust in the power field structured by the European enlargement process, Communism memory was reclaimed according to the European normative and value system prescribed by the memory of the Holocaust. Since in the political context of European enlargement refusing to cultivate the memory of the Holocaust was highly illegitimate, the memory of Communism was born as the “twin brother” of Holocaust memory. The Europeanized memory of Communism produced a legitimate differentia specifica of the newcomers in relation to old member states. It has been publicly reclaimed as an Eastern European experience in relation to universal Holocaust memory perceived as Western. By the analysis of memorial museums of Communism, the article provides a transnational, historical, and sociological account on Communism memory. It argues that the main elements of the discursive repertoire applied in post-accession political debates about the definition of Europe were elaborated before 2004 in a pan-European way.     

Feminism and Utopia: Irigaray Reading Kant

The student revolution of the late 1960s and the early 1970s was a major impetus for the development of new academic disciplines. Topics that had not been considered'proper academic material' only a few years earlier, such as women's studies and Holocaust studies, received recognition and began to be taught in American universities. Soon, universities throughout the world followed suit. Sometime during the early 1990s initial attempts were made in the United States and Israel to prepare courses that incorporated themes from women's studies or gender studies into the study of the Holocaust. The result was a number of courses dealing with women and the Holocaust located in the fields of history, sociology or literature. Taught initially in only a few institutions, the topic was slowly taken up by scholars throughout the world. After a decade of research and teaching the subject in academic institutions throughout the world, scholars of the Holocaust and gender suddenly found themselves facing opposition from historians and public figures. Baumel deals with the more common attitudes towards the subject, experienced by those dealing with the topic. She provides a short survey of the arguments used against scholars of the Holocaust and gender, an overview of the state of research on the topic and guidelines for future research.     

Debates in Ukraine over nationalist involvement in the Holocaust, 2004–2008

The article concerns debate about the memory of the Holocaust in Ukraine. It covers the period 2004–2008.     

Unacademic academics: Holocaust deniers and trivializers in post-Communist Romania

The Romanian Academy (and much of the country's historical establishment) is packed with Holocaust deniers and trivializers, many of whom indulge in Holocaust obfuscation against the background of the post-Communist “competitive martyrdom” between the victims of the Holocaust and the Gulag. Quite a few of these deniers and trivializers are also former secret police informers. On closer examination, however, it turns out that explaining the reluctance to face the country's “dark past” as being the independent variable resultant of the post “Romanianization” of the Communist Party and its Securitate is a partial explanation at best. A substantially more convincing one might be provided by scrutinizing the phenomenon as the product of post-mnemonic cultural traumas.