Holocaust Studies, 5

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Clarissa

November 16, 2015

There were Jews who survived Auschwitz. But there were none who survived Babiy Yar, Sobibor, Belzec, Krupki, Chelmno, etc.

Yet for most people Holocaust is synonymous with Auschwitz, even though the majority of Jews had already been slaughtered before Auschwitz started its work of mass murder.

The reason why Holocaust is limited to Auschwitz in so many people’s minds is that it was convenient to do that. For Germans, this was a way to perpetuate the myth that most German civilians had no idea of what was being done to Jews. It’s easier not to notice one place than one thousand places.

This was also extremely convenient for the hundreds of thousands of non-Germans who collaborated with the Nazis in the task of killing Jews.

The USSR also gained heavily from drawing attention to Auschwitz because it was one of the very few places where the extermination of Jews was not conducted with the help of a crowd of Soviet citizens.

Obviously, I’m not saying that we need to forget Auschwitz. It’s important to remember, though, that memory is selective in a way that serves somebody’s purpose.

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12 responses to “Holocaust Studies, 5”

J. Otto Pohl

November 16, 2015

The list is a bit odd in that it mixes death camps in with massacre sites. Babi Yar and Krupki were massacres were people were shot in the course of a very short period of time. Sobibor and Belzec were along with Treblinka part of the Operation Rheinhard death camps. There were 58 survivors of Sobibor after it was shutdown after the uprising. Not a lot considering the 250,000 Jews murdered there, but not none at all. Belzec had seven known survivors out of 500,000 victims. Auschwitz is well known because the camp itself survived intact to be captured by the Red Army unlike Sobibor or Belzec. Also unlike the Operation Rheinard Camps it was not solely an extermination camp. It also had two labor camps in it. So it had a much larger number of survivors. There are still about 300 living Auschwitz survivors today.

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1. Clarissa
  
  November 16, 2015
  
  I’ve heard the version that Auschwitz is remembered because there were survivors. I’m sure this was a factor. But this doesn’t explain the complete erasure of killing sites from the understanding of the Holocaust. Later I will show an example of that. People literally believe that there were almost no Jews shot at all because Nazis were too tender – hearted to do something like that. Crazy stuff.
  
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  1. J. Otto Pohl
    
    November 16, 2015
    
    The Einsatzgruppen killings have been well documented in the scholarship at least since the publication of Raul Hilberg’s The Destruction of the European Jews in 1961.
    
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    1. Clarissa
      
      November 16, 2015
      
      Scholarship, absolutely. But regular folks – even the educated ones – don’t read scholarship. They watch Hollywood films and that’s about it. Scholars also don’t try to popularize their research a whole lot.
      
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      1. J. Otto Pohl
        
        November 16, 2015
        
        I think one of the things Snyder was trying to do with his previous book, Bloodlands, was to change the popular perception of the Holocaust as being centered around Auschwitz by focusing on the mass shootings in Ukraine and the Baltic States.
        
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        Clarissa
        
        November 16, 2015
        
        I haven’t read it but I’m definitely planning to. There is a huge resistance to this vision, though. Just yesterday there was a scoffing reference in the NYTimes to the idea of bloodlands and to the need to pay so much attention to the events on the Eastern front as if that was the only place where the action happened.
        
        You and I are doing something very noble with our blogging that popularizes important ideas.
        
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        J. Otto Pohl
        
        November 16, 2015
        
        It wasn’t the only place where there was any action. But, it was where most of the fighting and killing including the Holocaust took place as far as Europe was concerned. I don’t think we have any real good figures on civilian losses in China at the hands of the Japanese during World War II still.
        
        My blog has almost no readers so it isn’t popularizing anything. But, I don’t think I have much on the Holocaust there. I teach the Holocaust as part of my Aspects of World History class 1914-1945 and I use Snyder’s Bloodlands and Gellately’s Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler: The Age of Social Catastrophe as my main texts.
        
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        Clarissa
        
        November 16, 2015
        
        Ah, this is actually something I wanted to ask you about. Is Gellately a good author? My husband was going to buy a book by him but I said I wanted to ask you first. I don’t want to be reading anything that is garbage and that will make me angry and you know the kind of thing that makes me angry. 🙂
        
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        J. Otto Pohl
        
        November 16, 2015
        
        I like Gellately a lot. But, I am really only familiar with the one book I use for class. He is primarily an historian of Nazi Germany and that part of his book is considerably stronger than the Soviet parts.
        
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        Clarissa
        
        November 16, 2015
        
        Good to know, thank you. If you have any more reading recommendations, they are always welcome.
        
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Bob Basil

November 16, 2015

Thanks to the people here for a very enlightening thread.

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1. Clarissa
  
  November 16, 2015
  
  Thank you for your interest in the subject.
  
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