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The Holocaust and the Neo-Nazi Mythomania
© 1978, The
Beate Klarsfeld Foundation
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the meaning of a confirmation of the rumours which
circulated in the public opinion. It is to be noted in addition that in this
article Streicher faithfully followed O. Dietrich's directives.
It is
often tempting to think that since the time that the decision was taken to
obtain the "final solution" of the Jewish question by the extermination of the
Jews, the Hitlerian power intended to distract public opinion from this
unsupportable aspect of the operation. This point of view is erroneous. The
anti-Jewish propaganda of the Nazis, beginning with that of Hitler in his major
public speeches, addressed itself to the German people in the intention of
obtaining its grateful acceptance of the operation which, by measures not to be
elaborated except perhaps in a distant future, were making the Jews disappear
from the German vital space, that means from the Urals to the Atlantic. In the
given circumstances, this meant their physical disappearance. These macabre
visions were combined with assurances that the "final solution" consisted first
of all in segregation with confiscation (Aryanization), then in deportation to
the East for the exploitation of Jewish manpower in the war economy. One may
recall that the deportations to the East did in fact take place as work
"assignments" (Arbeitseinsatz); this was in practice translated by the
extermination of about 80% of the deportees, proclaimed "unfit for work," and
by the temporary conservation of the rest, a labour force exposed to the
excessively harsh regime of life in a concentration camp. Both aspects, the
disappearance of the Jewish masses deported to the East to vanish there and
this same deportation as a furnisher of labour appear in the propaganda as
valid. But when. faced with the slightest curiosity concerning the process by
which this disappearance was obtained, the initiates and their multiple agents
did: their utmost to assure that it was a matter of nothing other than economic
exploitation in the war industry which lacked workers. These indignant
denegations of the "lies of the Jewish terror propaganda" (judische
Greuelpropaganda) were proferred without the slightest care of coherence with
the revelations that Hitler repeated publicly. Eichmann was questioned in
Jerusalem on the answers he gave to the curious and the anguished in regard to
the "final solution." He answered; (139):
"The directives were so numerous, and to such a degree diverse", that at that
time already one had to choose them oneself." He also declared;
(140) that as for the extermination of
the Jews, "the birds were singing it on the roof-tops" since the end of 1943.
It is natural that these macabre and unclear indications were not
easily assimilated by public opinion. One might advance that a German citizen
who did not revolt against his Government at the news of the extermination of
the Jews thus became an accomplice of the Nazi power. It was preferable not to
believe in the possibility of the horror which this power boasted of
perpetrating.
But this rejection became impossible for the categories
of Germans who, at diverse levels of the hierarchy, assured the functioning of
the
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The Holocaust and the Neo-Nazi Mythomania
© 1978, The
Beate Klarsfeld Foundation |
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Page 72 |
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