History, Memory, and the Historian: Dilemmas and ResponsibilitiesAuthor(s): Saul FriedländerSource: New German Critique, No. 80, Special Issue on the Holocaust (Spring - Summer, 2000),pp. 3-15Published by: New German CritiqueStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/488629Accessed: 13/10/2010 01:53

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History, Memory, and the Historian: Dilemmas and Responsibilities

Saul Friedlander

On July 9, 1942, Henry Montor, the President of the United Pales- tine Appeal, asked Richard Lichtheim, the representative of the Jewish

Agency in Geneva, to send him a 1500-word article reviewing the posi- tion of the Jews in Europe. "I feel at present quite unable to write a

'report'," Lichtheim answered Montor on August 13, "a survey, some-

thing cool and clear and reasonable. .... So I wrote not a survey but

something more personal, an article if you like, or an essay, not of 1500 words but of 4000, giving more of my own feelings than of the 'facts.'. . ." Lichtheim ends his accompanying letter with "all good wishes for the New Year to you and the happier Jews of 'God's own

country'." Lichtheim's essay, entitled "What is Happening to the Jews of Europe," opens with the following two paragraphs:

A letter has reached me from the United States, asking me 'to review the position of the Jews in Europe.' This I cannot do because the Jews of Europe are today no more in a 'position' than the waters of a rapid rushing down into some canyon, or the dust of the desert lifted by a tornado and blown in all directions.

I cannot even tell you how many Jews there are at present in this or that town, in this or that country, because at the very moment of writ- ing thousands of them are fleeing hither and thither, from Belgium and Holland to France (hoping to escape to Switzerland), from Ger- many - because deportation to Poland was imminent - to France and Belgium, where the same orders for deportation have just been issued. Trapped mice running in circles. They are fleeing from Slovakia to

3

4 History, Memory, and the Historian

Hungary, from Croatia to Italy ... At the same time, thousands are being shifted under Nazi supervision from the ghetto of Warsaw to forced-labor camps in the country further east, while other thousands just arrived from Germany or Austria are thrown into the ghettos of Riga or Lublin...

We do not know whether, when Lichtheim sent his "essay," on August 13, 1942, he was privy to the information that five days earlier his Geneva colleague, Gerhard Riegner, had conveyed to the State Department and the Foreign Office. In fact, the plan for a general exter- mination of European Jewry that Riegner transmitted to London and Washington had already been implemented for months; by August 1942, close to a million and a half European Jews had been extermi- nated. Yet, even if Lichtheim's description of "what was happening to the Jews of Europe" was factually false because it missed the defining aspect of these events, total physical extermination, it conveys in words not to be forgotten, something that defies direct expression: the sense of despair and doom of tens and tens of thousands of Jews fleeing "hither and thither" like "trapped mice running in circles," as well as - unre- ported by him, but sensed throughout his essay - the suffocating terror of the remaining millions.

"I am bursting with facts," Lichtheim went on, "but I cannot tell them in an article of a few thousand words. I would have to write for years and years. . . . That means I really cannot tell you what has happened and is happening to five million persecuted Jews in Hitler's Europe. Nobody will ever tell the story - a story of five million personal trage- dies every one of which would fill a volume."

As strange as Henry Montor's demand for a 1500-word report on the situation of the Jews in Europe may appear to us today, it can, in a way, be considered as paradigmatic for most representations and commemora- tions of the Shoah; Lichtheim's answer expresses an opposite mode of evocation. On the one hand, a report provides precise factual information offered within strict limits and usually around a central idea that gives it coherence; on the other, Lichtheim's answer is an outburst of pain and despair that, in principle, rejects the possibility of order and coherence.

Over the last decades, the memory of the Shoah has crystallized around these two poles. Whereas the first one means closure, the second

Saul Friedldnder 5

indicates an open-ended process of remembrance. In other terms, the first is embodied in set rituals and in organized presentations ranging from textbooks to museums, from monuments to public commemora- tions. This public memory demands simplicity as well as clear interpre- tation; its aim, unstated and maybe unperceived, is to domesticate incoherence, eliminate pain, and introduce a message of redemption. The second domain knows no rules. It disrupts any set rendition among those who imagine this past - the immense majority now - and those who still remember it. In the testimonies of those who remember, both expressions of the past resurface: the organized, oft-rehearsed narration on the one hand, the uncontrolled and chaotic emotion, on the other.

In the long run, the memory of the Shoah will probably not escape com- plete ritualization. Yet, to this day at least, an open-ended representation of these events seems present in the Western world and possibly beyond. More so, it appears to be growing as time goes by. After interpreting the paradoxical expansion of this memory and pointing to the complex inter- action between the memory of the Shoah and the writing of its history, I conclude by dwelling on the challenges and responsibilities incumbent upon the historian. In this domain there can be no credo, merely some reflections about compelling assignments and unresolved questions.

The Expanding Memory of the Shoah The two decades following the war can be characterized as a period of

virtual silence about the Shoah: The consensus was one of repression and oblivion. Adult contemporaries of Nazism still dominated the public scene. Even the survivors chose to remain silent, since very few people were interested in listening to them (even in Israel) and since, in any case, their own main goal was social integration and a return to normalcy.

In the mid-1960s, a first wave of debates shook these defenses. The generation born during or toward the end of the war was moving into the limelight. Mainly in Europe, the students' unrest of the late 1960s and its sequels called into question various aspects of contemporary culture as well as the lies and the obfuscation regarding the Nazi

period. The major turmoil occurred in Germany, but the famous slo- gan of the French students, "We are all German Jews" [nous sommes tous des juifs allemands], intended to protest against the expulsion of the Jewish student leader, Daniel Cohn-Bendit, had more than one meaning. At the same time, in Marcel Ophuls's The Sorrow and the

6 History, Memory, and the Historian

Pity, France witnessed a first rift in the construction of the mythical self-representation of its history during the war years. However, this return of the past was quickly neutralized by theoretical abstractions about all pervasive "fascism," produced mainly on the extreme left, and by the extreme politicization of the debates.

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, a second wave of controversies opened the way for a growing subjectivity and weakened the hold of some of the theoretical constructs of the previous decade. An expan- sion of autobiographical literature, among Germans and among Jews, of deeply probing and innovative films, as well as the quest for the his- tory of everyday life under Nazism created a new, more direct confron- tation with the past. However, some of these endeavors, in Germany in particular, also carried an unmistakable apologetic urge and early post- modem representations of the Nazi era were not devoid of perverse fas- cination. Strangely enough, it was a mass media event, the screening of the NBC miniseries "Holocaust" in 1978-79, that became a turning point all over the West, drawing increased attention to the extermina- tion of the Jews as the defining event of the Nazi period. Over the last decade, this past became even more present, particularly, it seems, for the third postwar generation, the "generation of the grandchildren," fol- lowing the fierce debates of the 1980s in Germany, known as "the his- torians' controversy," and as an indirect sequel of the downfall of communism and German reunification.

The duration of the phases varies in different national and religious contexts. For example, the period of "amnesia" may have been particu- larly lengthy and the passage to broader awareness quite abrupt in France and, even more so, in Switzerland. In France, the surge of a national memory of Vichy's anti-Jewish policies found its first major expression some twenty years ago, first on the judicial level then on the political and institutional one, as well as in the intellectual and artistic domains. As for the unexpected uproar over the role of Switzerland dur- ing the war, it has led to fierce public controversy about the material and financial exploitation and defrauding of Jewish victims, not only in that country, but throughout Europe. This debate, it has to be added, has contributed to the reappearance, in Switzerland and possibly elsewhere in Europe, of a kind of anti-Semitism that seemed to be a thing of the past: an anti-Semitism of the middle classes that is "salonfdhig" or, in other words, openly acceptable again.

Saul Friedldnder 7

The religious domain may have an even more lasting impact on the presence of the past than the national one. Establishing a Carmelite con- vent at Auschwitz was a minor matter compared to the storm that may erupt around the imminent beatification of Pius XII, if maintained. The entire set of controversies regarding the role of Christianity, its anti- Jewish teachings and its traditional hostility towards the Jews - all of which provided the obviously involuntary, but historically unavoidable background to their extermination - would reappear again. Thus the presence of the Holocaust in western consciousness resembles that of some sort of lava rising ever closer to the surface and announced by ever stronger eruptions. Yet, recognizing this growing presence of the past does not explain it. Let me turn to three possible interpretations: a generational factor, an ongoing demand for justice, and the transforma- tion of Nazism into the metaphor of evil for our time.

The generational factor is the first explanation that comes to mind. The "generation of the grandchildren," mainly among Europeans (Germans in particular) but among Jews as well, has now acquired sufficient distance from the events in terms of both the sheer passage of time and personal involvement to be. able to confront the full impact of the past. Thus, the growing rise of the memory of the Shoah could be interpreted as the gradual lifting of collective repression, induced by the passage of time.

This interpretation could be understood, metaphorically speaking, as "working through" but also, possibly, as a collective "return of the repressed." Are we now ready to face the worst aspects of this past or is the repressed returning, as the historian Dominick LaCapra expressed it, in the form of "renewed disavowal in certain quarters ... and commer- cialized, politically tendentious, and self-interested (if not porno- graphic) representations in other quarters?"'

In other words, are we mainly witnessing a gradual lifting of defenses or could one argue that, simultaneously, the growing aware- ness of the past is also due to very different impulses, such as the fas- cination with the aesthetics of Nazism that flourished in the 1970s, or, more recently, the growing diatribes of negationists and the activism of radical right-wing groups?

I. Dominick LaCapra, Representing the Holocaust: History, Theory, Trauma (Ith- aca: Comell UP, 1994) 189.

8 History, Memory, and the Historian

Generations are not merely categories of time but also clusters of shared formative experience. In terms of experience, those Germans who served in the Wehrmacht were far apart from adolescents merely two or three years younger, who at the end of the war were only "Fla- khelfer," that is, those who manned anti-aircraft batteries. One single year could make a major difference. While this issue demands a longer disquisition, suffice it to mention here that mainly in Germany there often is an age group (or generational) element in what I called the return of the repressed.

In the 1980s, the "Historians' Controversy" took place among schol- ars who, with the exception of two out of some twelve of fourteen, were all members of the Hitlerjugend generation, having all been ado- lescents in the Third Reich. Their positions were sharply divided, as we know, but the intensity of the debate stemmed, in part at least, from the impact of these long-buried experiences and their refraction through the prism of later political choices.

Last year, Martin Walser's outburst and the standing ovation that he received at the Friedenspreis ceremony in Frankfurt, or the accolades from people like von Dohnanyi or Augstein, carried once more the signs of an age group. Ignaz Bubis, however clumsily or angrily, expressed the outrage of a memory much less deflected or reinvested by time.

In a letter to Karl Jaspers, Hannah Arendt wrote on August 17, 1946: "The Nazi crimes, it seems to me, explode the limits of the law; and that is precisely what constitutes their monstrousness. For these crimes, no punishment is severe enough. It may well be essential to hang G-ring, but it is totally inadequate. That is, this guilt, in contrast to all criminal guilt, oversteps and shatters any and all legal systems. That is the reason why the Nazis in Nuremberg are so smug. They know that, of course. And just as inhuman as their guilt, is the innocence of their victims. Human beings simply can't be as innocent as they all were in the face of the gas chambers. . . . We are simply not equipped to deal, on a human, political level, with a guilt that is beyond crime and an innocence that is beyond good and virtue."2

Arendt's letter is a cri du coeur that made much sense in 1946; yet,

2. Hannah Arendt, Karl Jaspers, Correspondence 1926-1969, eds. Lotte Kohler & Hans Saner; trans. Robert & Rita Kimber (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1992) 54.

Saul Friedldnder 9

even today, many people would opt for such an absolute stand in regard to Nazi crimes. The present-day judicial process is basically not at issue anymore (the Papon trial in France was possibly the last major court case regarding Nazism and related crimes) but the demand for an abso- lute, uncompromising, and almost metaphysical justice remains, mainly in the community of the victims. It also appears in segments of Euro- pean society somehow involved in the collaboration with Nazism. There it becomes a demand for distinctions between degrees of involvement, of responsibility, and of guilt. On all sides, the quest for justice focuses on the shaping of memory and contributes to the growth of memory.

The demand for justice is also fueling fierce debates on comparative victimization within the Nazi system of terror and extermination itself and among various terror and extermination systems, the Stalinist and the Nazi, for example. Over the last three decades or so, some of these debates have spread to the American scene. The growing demand of diverse ethnic minorities for the recognition of their own historical heri- tage, one that would offer a tale of suffering and triumph, is leading to overt confrontations about degrees of historical martyrdom. In this con- text, the Holocaust has become a focus of resentment and the demand for justice fuses with increasingly acrimonious arguments about the his- torical comparability or exceptionality of the extermination of the Euro-

pean Jews. Mainly, the adoption of the Holocaust by popular culture has increasingly added a peculiar dimension to its image in the con- sciousness of vast sectors of U.S. and Western society.

Nazism has become the central metaphor of evil of our time. In our age of genocide and mass criminality, apart from its specific historical con- text, the extermination of the Jews of Europe is now perceived by many as the ultimate standard of evil against which all degrees of evil are mea- sured. Such a perception of Nazism was already present before and

mainly during the war among the Allies, in occupied Europe, and even

among resistance groups in Germany itself. After the war, Hannah Arendt identified Nazism with "radical evil." Her later notion of the "banality of evil" was no contradiction. In our epoch, radical evil is linked to the utter banality of its perpetrators, the Eichmanns of this world.

The most extreme insult that one can hurl against any brutal behavior is to compare it with Nazism, the worst tag applicable to a hated leader is the comparison with Hitler. And, incidentally, the only Christian name that may have disappeared from the repertory after 1945 is

10 History, Memory, and the Historian

"Adolf." In other words, Nazism and evil have become so naturally intertwined that this identification triggers an ongoing and expanding process of representation but also of recall by association: "Schindler's List," "Life is Beautiful," The Reader; Kosovo, Le Pen, Heider; gay bashing, mercy killing, abortion or anti-abortion, and so on. But doesn't that ever spreading reference mean an ever growing dilution, and ever growing simplification, and ever growing vulgarization? Moreover, is the process self-triggered or does it fulfill a function in our society?

I wish to suggest here a link between the simplification in the represen- tation of Nazism and the Holocaust in popular culture and the function of this simplified representation in our society. By function I do not mean to dwell again upon the politics of identity of various groups in this coun- try nor upon the diverse forms of instrumentalization of the Holocaust. More relevant would be the urge of the Catholic church to make sure that believers today and in the future be convinced that at the time of its greatest challenge, the Papacy was resolutely on the side of the victims and that the Vicar of Christ stood undaunted against evil in our time.

The most basic function of this representation of evil is inherent to the self-image of liberal society as such. Nowadays, liberal society is not faced with any concrete enemy; its existence was not threatened, even before the complete demise of communism. But, in order to iden- tify its own ideals and the nature of its institutions, any society needs to define the quintessential opposite of its own image. Due to its unques- tionable horror, to the immense number of its victims, to the heroic sac- rifices demanded to achieve victory over it, Nazism did and does fulfill the function of the enemy per se. This is true for the United States but also, for different and no less obvious reasons, for present-day liberal, democratic Germany and for the western world more generally. In fact, few are the regimes that, since 1945, would have chosen to identify with the Nazi model.

The memory of the extermination but also that of the suffering and the agony imposed by Nazism or that of the fateful commitments demanded of those willing to resist it remains a landscape of death on the background of which choices were made that still appear to many as the most important ever decided upon in modem times. In a world in which such choices have all in all disappeared, the memory of the Shoah is paradoxically linked to a simplified, watered down, yet real and probably deep-seated longing for the tragic dimension of life.

Saul Friedldnder 11

On Memory and History It may have become evident, from what has been said until now, that

the various facets of the expanding memory of the Holocaust create a whole array of dilemmas in the writing of its history. The impact of generational change on the transformation of the historiography of Nazism and the Shoah has often been mentioned.3 The personal memo- ries of those historians who were the contemporaries of Nazism do indeed find their expression in distinct forms of emphasis or avoidance.4

More specifically, it has been argued that emotional involvement in these events precludes a rational approach to the writing of their his- tory. The "mythic memory" of the victims has been set against the "rational" understanding of others. I certainly do not wish to open old debates but merely to suggest that German and Jewish historians as well as those of any other background cannot avoid a measure of "transfer- ence" in regard to this past. Of necessity, such involvement impinges upon the writing of history. But the historian's necessary measure of detachment is not hindered thereby providing the presence of sufficient self-awareness. It may indeed be harder to keep one's balance in the other direction; whereas a constantly self-critical gaze might diminish the effects of subjectivity, it could also lead to other, no lesser risks, those of undue restraint and paralyzing caution.

The main aspect of the interaction between the memory of the Holo- caust and its historiography belongs to the moral dimension of the events, that is to the demand for justice and to Nazism as a metaphor of evil.

In the early 1980s, German historians seized upon the TV show "Holocaust" and similar media representations in order to criticize a black and white, so-called moralistic representation of Nazism. In the unfolding "historians' controversy" and in the debate about the histori- cization of National Socialism, among other themes at stake was this "moralistic," "black-and-white" dimension of the representation of the events and, thus, the limits of their historicization.5

3. See in particular Norbert Frei, "Farewell to the Era of Contemporaries: National Socialism and Its Historical Examination en route into History," History & Memory 9.1/2 (Fall 1997): 59ff.

4. See, in particular, Martin Broszat and Saul Friedliinder, "A Controversy about the Historicization of National Socialism," Reworking the Past: Hitler, the Holocaust and the Historians' Debate, ed. Peter Baldwin (Boston: Beacon, 1990).

5. The most profound comment on this debate and its implications is to be found in Joim Rilsen, "The Logic of Historicization: Metahistorical Reflections on the Debate between Friedliinder and Broszat," History & Memory 9.1/2 (Fall 1997): 113-44.

12 History, Memory, and the Historian

To this day, the intertwining between the writing of the history of the Holocaust and the unavoidable use in its interpretation and narration of implicit or explicit moral categories remains a major challenge. It is around these shared moral categories that history and memory encoun- ter one of their central differences. It may well be that the apparent dichotomy between a necessarily "detached" history of National Social- ism and the no less unavoidable presence of a moral dimension in deal- ing with this epoch may find its resolution only in the sensitivity and creative intuition of the historian.

In the memory of the contemporaries and increasingly so in present day perception, the extermination of the Jews may have become one of the defining events of our time. Yet it seems impossible to situate its historical place. How can historical inquiry define the significance of Chelmno, Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka, sites whose sole function was immediate extermination?6

Approximately two million victims were murdered at these sites alone within a year or so. How can the significance of such events be inte- grated in the interpretation of our epoch as they neither influenced the course of the war, nor any major trend in postwar history, and as, for many historians, so brief a span of time is but the foaming crest on the waves of long duration? Is the real impact of this history solely in the memory it has left?

Historical writing about the Holocaust has increasingly attempted to circumvent such problems by focusing on the mechanisms that led to the "Final Solution" within Nazism itself, or on the logistics, the tech- nology and the bureaucratic processes of its implementation, on the agencies of extermination and the behavior of the perpetrators. For example, in regard to his The Destruction of the European Jews, Raul Hilberg stated that he had mainly concentrated on the "how" rather than on the "why" of that history. Such historical inquiry into the mecha- nisms of the "Final Solution" is the very basis of our knowledge and undoubtedly, remains a primary task. But, ultimately, the "why" over- shadows all other concerns.

It goes without saying that major issues of interpretation, of historical roots, of historical categories, have also been addressed from the very beginnings of this historiography. We all know at least some of these

6. Arno Mayer, Why Did the Heavens Not Darken? The "Final Solution" in His- tory (New York: Pantheon, 1989).

Saul Friedlinder 13

interpretations: the special course of German history, anti-Semitism (eliminationist or not), fascism, totalitarianism, modernity. It is at this level that a peculiar responsibility of the historian comes to the fore.

On the Historian's Responsibility The historian cannot be and should not be the guardian of memory.

The historian's gaze is analytic, critical, attuned to complexity, and wary about generalizations. But the historian should not avoid the precise def- inition of interpretive concepts and categories in a domain so wide open to extraordinary flights of imagination or malicious denials in interpre- tive endeavors. Moreover, on a very different level, historians should dare to challenge the complacency and routine already existing in their domain. Regarding the first issue, let me choose the continuing debate about the comparability of Nazi and Stalinist crimes within the frame- work of two similar totalitarian regimes as a brief illustration.

Totalitarianism as a key interpretive category is on the rise again. Decades ago during the cold war, it helped to fight communism; today totalitarianism is used to bury communism historically by trying to show that Stalin's crimes may have been worse than those of Hitler. In eastern Europe, first and foremost, but also in France and to a lesser

degree in Germany, this revival of the "Greater Evil" theory has some- times taken strange accents. We are not confronted with Arendt's query into the origins of totalitarian systems but with a crusade of sorts, aim- ing to demonstrate that totalitarianism is the explanation of it all and that on the scale of mass criminality Stalin was first, Hitler in mere sec- ond place. It certainly is a legitimate query, but one that demands, for

example, that the following be considered. The fall of 1942 the Wehrmacht was about to cross the Volga at Stal-

ingrad. Had the Germans succeeded, they would probably have brought about the military collapse of the Soviet Union, a significant prolonga- tion of the war, the non liberation of Auschwitz in January 1945 and the

complete extermination of the remnants of European Jewry. Are there

many people today who, notwithstanding their knowledge of Stalinist crimes, would declare in retrospect, that they wish the Wehrmacht had crossed the Volga?

The majority that still would answer negatively remains, I believe, influenced by a vague intuition related to a historical-philosophical dis- tinction most admirably expressed by the French-Jewish intellectual

14 History, Memory, and the Historian

Raymond Aron. Aron's anti-Stalinism was straightforward and uncom- promising from the immediate postwar years onward, but, nonetheless, he clearly perceived the difference between Nazism and communism, as Arendt did in her "Questions of Moral Philosophy" and as many histori- ans do to this day. Aron identified the quintessential difference between the two regimes at the conceptual level - and there indeed it lies: "For those who wish to 'save the concepts'," Aron wrote, "there remains a difference between a philosophy whose logic is monstrous, and one that lends itself to a monstrous interpretation."7

It remains the historian's prime responsibility to probe the concrete aspects of such distinctions and to work through the details of related arguments. Therein lies the major challenge as well. In the face of sim- plified representations of the past, the historian's duty is to reintroduce the complexity of discrete historical events, the ambiguity of human behavior, and the indetermination of wider social processes. The task is daunting due to the difficulty of conciliating the nuanced results of schol- arship and the necessary reference to historical, but also moral/philosoph- ical categories. In the face of a phenomenon such as Nazism, however, such tasks are not yet sufficient. There is, as mentioned, a run-of-the-mill history of the Holocaust that demands to be thoroughly questioned.

Some two years ago, the Berkeley historian Thomas Laqueur wrote a highly perceptive critique of what he called the "business as usual" his- toriography of the Holocaust, one that "fails to confront both the partic- ular moral breakdown these events imply and the subjective terror that they inspired."8 For Laqueur, as for myself, only the integration of the individual fate within the historical narration could eventually enable the historian to overcome the dichotomy between the unfathomable abstraction of the millions of dead and the tragedy of individual life and death in the time of extermination.

In other words, how can we render a history of the Holocaust wherein not only the history of the victims as a collectivity is included, but one which also comprises the narration of the events according to the vic- tims' perceptions, as well as descriptions of their individual fate? Laqueur evoked the thousands of short biographical data and pictures of children deported from France, collected by Serge Klarsfeld. These children could

7. Tony Judt, The Burden of Responsibility: Blum, Camus, Aron, and the French Twentieth Century (Chicago: U of Chicago P, 1998) 154.

8. Thomas Laqueur, "The Sound of Voices Intoning Names," London Review of Books (5 June 1997): 3.

Saul Friedldnder 15

not speak in their own voice, but the little that could be found about the life and deportation of a boy of eight or a girl of three sufficed, pre- cisely because it was so little.

The victims' testimonies cannot enlighten us about the internal dynamics of Nazi persecutions and exterminations, but they put Nazi behavior in its full perspective; they describe the face to face encounter of the perpetrators with the victims during the persecutions, the deporta- tions, and the killings. But, mainly, the victims' testimonies are our only source for the history of their own path to destruction. They evoke, in their own chaotic way, the depth of their terror, despair, apathetic resignation - and total incomprehension.

The integration of the victims' voices radically widens the narrative span. This integration has to be complemented by the historian's effort to find correspondingly new concepts that would express, however inadequately, the breakdown of all norms and the dimensions of suffer- ing that traditional historiography cannot easily deal with.

Wittlich (in the Mosel region), November 10, 1938. The synagogue has been set on fire, the Jewish shops have been destroyed. Herr Marx, the butcher, as most Jewish men, has been shoved into a truck about to leave for a concentration camp. On the street, in front of the ruined shop, among jeering SA men, Frau Marx stands wailing: "Why do you do this to us? What did we ever do to you?" And, on both sides of the street, the Marxs' life-long German neighbors stand at their windows, watching her - in silence.

Was it fear, was it hatred, was it just plain human indifference to the despair of today's outcasts who had been yesterday's friends? The most elementary human ties had disappeared and the tornado evoked by Lichtheim in his anguished letter had not even started.