Robert Rozett: Murderers can't be heroes
[Dr. Robert Rozett is the director of the Yad Vashem Libraries, and author of "Approaching the Holocaust, Texts and Contexts," Vallentine Mitchell (2005).]
The celebration is over, and the anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall has come and gone. Now is the time for more sober assessments. Especially with regard to the place of the Holocaust in much of the former communist bloc, some serious issues remain to be resolved.
In the search for a usable past, dissidents, anti-communists and nationalists are generally regarded as heroes. In some cases, they were indeed just that. Andrei Sakharov comes to mind as one such courageous individual, who fought for freedom at great personal risk and is worthy of emulation as a humanist. Others, however, may well have strong anti-communist credentials, but fall far short of having displayed the kind of humanism embodied by Sakharov. During the Holocaust era, some of these so-called heroes took part in the persecution and murder of their Jewish neighbors, and of others. Despite this, they are frequently glorified as patriots and paragons.
Father Jozef Tiso, the head of the Slovak puppet government established by Nazi Germany in early 1939, is a clear example of a figure who has often been adulated in spite of his crimes. Tiso presided over the first, at least nominally, independent Slovak entity, and for this he is commonly revered. The regime he headed, however, played a crucial role in the murder of Slovak Jewry. The same could be said of Ante Pavelic, leader of the Croatian Ustase government, another Nazi puppet that engaged in wholesale murder. Although such men were fervent nationalists and anti-communists, they can hardly be regarded as patriots, since they fostered the murder of their peaceful, innocent neighbors. Not all people living in the former communist bloc have fallen into the trap of lionizing such criminals. But significant elements, either through ignorance or meanness of spirit, have...
... Lastly comes the conflation of the crimes of the Nazis and communists. Although both systems committed mass murders in an overlapping time frame, they were different. Vastly different ideologies motivated them. And they chose their victims for widely different reasons. There is no question that the crimes of both are worthy of discussion, research and commemoration. But when melded together, the distinctions between them blur - and blurred distinctions do nothing to further our understanding. They neither do honor to the memory of the victims, nor ensure that those responsible are held accountable...
Read entire article at Haaretz
The celebration is over, and the anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall has come and gone. Now is the time for more sober assessments. Especially with regard to the place of the Holocaust in much of the former communist bloc, some serious issues remain to be resolved.
In the search for a usable past, dissidents, anti-communists and nationalists are generally regarded as heroes. In some cases, they were indeed just that. Andrei Sakharov comes to mind as one such courageous individual, who fought for freedom at great personal risk and is worthy of emulation as a humanist. Others, however, may well have strong anti-communist credentials, but fall far short of having displayed the kind of humanism embodied by Sakharov. During the Holocaust era, some of these so-called heroes took part in the persecution and murder of their Jewish neighbors, and of others. Despite this, they are frequently glorified as patriots and paragons.
Father Jozef Tiso, the head of the Slovak puppet government established by Nazi Germany in early 1939, is a clear example of a figure who has often been adulated in spite of his crimes. Tiso presided over the first, at least nominally, independent Slovak entity, and for this he is commonly revered. The regime he headed, however, played a crucial role in the murder of Slovak Jewry. The same could be said of Ante Pavelic, leader of the Croatian Ustase government, another Nazi puppet that engaged in wholesale murder. Although such men were fervent nationalists and anti-communists, they can hardly be regarded as patriots, since they fostered the murder of their peaceful, innocent neighbors. Not all people living in the former communist bloc have fallen into the trap of lionizing such criminals. But significant elements, either through ignorance or meanness of spirit, have...
... Lastly comes the conflation of the crimes of the Nazis and communists. Although both systems committed mass murders in an overlapping time frame, they were different. Vastly different ideologies motivated them. And they chose their victims for widely different reasons. There is no question that the crimes of both are worthy of discussion, research and commemoration. But when melded together, the distinctions between them blur - and blurred distinctions do nothing to further our understanding. They neither do honor to the memory of the victims, nor ensure that those responsible are held accountable...