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- Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
- Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
- Sprache: Englisch
- Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023
Ever since the end of World War II, when the sheer enormity of the Nazi crime against the Jews became apparent, there have been repeated attempts to deny that the Holocaust really happened. The existence of gas chambers was questioned and the testimony of survivors was thrown into doubt; the more witnesses spoke out, the more they were intimidated and attacked by a denialism that sought to present itself as a search for historical truth. The accusation of trickery and deception - so central to the centuries-old anti-Jewish hatred - continues to thrive in the present. Today, denialism takes a new and more insidious form: Jews are accused of exploiting the 'cult of the Holocaust' to justify the state of Israel and to take the reins of political power. Holocaust denial has merged with conspiracy theories, alleging the existence of a Jewish-controlled New World Order. Concisely and authoritatively, acclaimed philosopher Donatella Di Cesare reconstructs the evolution of denialism and sheds new light on one of the most troubling phenomena of our time.
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CONTENTS
Cover
Dedication
Title Page
Copyright
Preface
The New Denialism
Notes
If Auschwitz Is Nothing
1 Annihilation and Denialism
2 The Desecrators of Ashes
3 In Hitler’s Shadow
4 ‘Night and Fog’: Erasure in Language
5 In the Shallows of Denial
6 A Matter of Opinion?
7 Technical Expertise and Gas: On the Idolatry of the Real
8 The Face of the Asphyxiated: On the Sonderkommando
9 ‘… Even the Dead Will Not Be Safe’: Memory and Remembrance
10 The Future of a Negation
11 The Singularity of the Extermination
12 Saying Auschwitz
Notes
Antisemitism in the Twenty-First Century
Notes
Bibliography
End User License Agreement
Guide
Cover
Table of Contents
Dedication
Title Page
Copyright
Preface
Begin Reading
Bibliography
End User License Agreement
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Dedication
In memory of Shlomo Venezia, member of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Sonderkommando Thessaloniki 1923 – Rome 2012
If Auschwitz Is Nothing
Against Denialism
Donatella Di Cesare
Translated by David Broder
polity
Originally published in Italian as Se Auschwitz è nulla. Contro il negazionismo © 2022 Bollati Boringhieri editore, Turin
This English edition © Polity Press, 2023
This work has been translated with the contribution of the Centre for books and reading of the Italian Ministry of Culture.
Polity Press65 Bridge StreetCambridge CB2 1UR, UK
Polity Press111 River StreetHoboken, NJ 07030, USA
All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purpose of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher.
ISBN-13: 978-1-5095-5572-7
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Library of Congress Control Number: 2022945472
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Every effort has been made to trace all copyright holders, but if any have been overlooked the publisher will be pleased to include any necessary credits in any subsequent reprint or edition.
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Preface
The new edition of this book is the result of my unexpected and traumatic experience of a criminal trial. I was forced to endure this lawsuit because I had termed someone a ‘denier’ – as I considered quite appropriate – in an article published in La Lettura, the weekly cultural supplement of the Corriere della Sera, on 22 October 2018. The proceedings before the Tribunale di Milano concluded on 12 January 2021 with my complete acquittal.
What happened to me was perhaps an extreme and glaring example. But it was the result of a pre-emptive intimidation, the product of an increasingly aggressive and devious strategy pursued by the deniers, able to strike at their opponents while themselves evading all censure. Not only did I get justice from the verdict, but it also allowed me to see the depth and resilience of democracy, which can, when necessary, respond in a sharp, decisive manner.
As ever, moments of adversity also represent an opportunity. The trial forced me to reflect once again on the denial of the Shoah, also considering its recent avatars. Hence, the first, never previously published, essay in this volume is entitled ‘The New Denialism’. The aim, here, was not just to observe the incessant spread of this denialism and its disturbing intensification. Rather, what is striking is its 21st-century development, in which, although there are some elements of continuity, its conspiratorial matrix has come into view. This confirmed me in the thesis that I had earlier outlined, holding that denialism is not a mere revision of history, or a rhetorical strategy that can be analysed with the tools of sociology and linguistics. Rather, it is a political phenomenon, within which it is important to see the bond of complicity between yesterday’s annihilation and today’s denialism. This is what I argued in the essay ‘If Auschwitz Is Nothing’, first published on 12 January 2012 and featured here in an updated version.
Decisive, in the writing of these pages, were my encounters with Shlomo Venezia, whom I had met and got to know along with other witnesses to the Shoah, especially Piero Terracina and Sami Modiano. Of all of them, Shlomo Venezia stood out for his extraordinary charisma, dignity and steadfastness. One instantly got the sense that his story was similar to that of the other survivors, and yet also profoundly different. As a member of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Sonderkommando, he was the absolute witness who, forced to work in Hitler’s factories of death, had experienced their machinery from the inside and could prove the existence of the gas chambers and the ovens. He was, in short, the depository of what the Nazis had intended should forever remain a secret. This also made him into a target for the deniers. Shlomo Venezia was well aware that his testimony was the one they most feared. For years and decades, he had kept his silence. He began to speak out in 1992, aware that he was one of the world’s very few remaining members of a Sonderkommando. Perhaps he had unconfessed hopes that too simplistic judgements on the so-called ‘grey zone’ would be revised. But he was stirred from his silence by episodes of antisemitism. He told me that, travelling by bus through a street in the neighbourhood of Rome where we both lived, he had spotted swastikas on the shutters of the shops. He could not believe his eyes – he could not imagine still having to come across these symbols. Soon he came face to face with neo-Nazis and neofascists demonstrating in a square, raising their banners of hatred and attacking passers-by. In the moment, he had to control himself. But once he had got back home, he had no more doubts: it was finally time to bear witness. With his distinctive calm gestures and resolute tone, he weighed his words, carefully touching on the details with rigour and precision. Speaking took a lot out of him – not only for this reason, but also because, as he used to say, ‘you never leave the crematorium’; and he had never really returned from that anti-world, where he had been forced to live part of his youth.
Following the publication of the essay ‘If Auschwitz Is Nothing’, I was threatened by far-right groups and had to live under escort for almost three years. For me, this experience was further proof of the seriousness of this phenomenon, which, given its full import, can only be addressed within a far-reaching philosophical and political framework. During that time, I took part in numerous debates, some concerning the legal question of criminality, on which I had already taken a position that I have reiterated here.
I wrote a third essay which made up the entry on ‘Antisemitism’ in Treccani’s Lessico del XXI secolo (‘Lexicon of the 21st Century’), published in 2020. It is reprinted here, appended to the other chapters.
The New Denialism
1 Denialism is a form of political propaganda that has spread through public space in recent years. Sinking its clutches into various spheres, it has taken on increasingly insidious and violent notes. So, it would be a mistake to underestimate the significance of denialism: for far from simply having to do with how we interpret the history of the past, its effects also threaten the interpretative community of the future. For examples of this, we need only think of the recent disturbing denials of the pandemic – which were hardly just an extremist, fringe phenomenon – to say nothing of those who mock or belittle the climate emergency. We could mention many other cases. Today, we can speak of a real history of 21st-century denialisms, though this history has yet to be written. In denialism’s rejection of the ‘official narrative’, and in its much-vaunted search for ‘alternative information’, it offers an insight into the conspiracy-theorist mechanism from which it springs. This is why, in seeking to grasp present-day denialism and its devastating influence, we must consider its connections with the phenomena that have preceded and given it substance – first among them, the powerful myth of the ‘world Jewish plot’.
So, while denialism has spread far and wide, it also displays certain continuities. It is closely linked to the Holocaust – it is, in fact, a product of that context. Contrary to what is generally believed, denialism is not some dark residue of the past; rather, it is an unprecedented phenomenon which, since that first appearance, has grown, developed and consolidated itself. We should not imagine denialism’s path as a diversion that runs into a dead end, a track that thins out till it disappears entirely. The opposite is true. It is the latest point in a turn which is still getting sharper.
2 If we want to understand how denialism has grown and extended its reach, it is important to distinguish between its different phases. The first of these was the one that had already taken shape towards the end of World War II.
The first to deny the crime were the criminals themselves. A pre-emptive erasure was inscribed within Hitler’s annihilation policy. As the conflict drew to a close, the Nazis destroyed the gas chambers at the main extermination camps: Bełžec, Birkenau, Chełmno, Sobibor and Treblinka. The ones at Majdanek and Auschwitz 1 were left partly intact.
The accusations of ‘lies’, ‘fraud’ and the ‘falsification of history’ surfaced already in the immediate post-war years. This same strategy was reproduced everywhere, especially in the places where the crime had been perpetrated or where collaborators had been in no short supply. We are generally led to believe that 1945 represented a watershed moment, a caesura. This is not the case. Persistence prevailed over interruption.
The Europe in which the so-called ‘Jewish question’ found a ‘final solution’ – a continent which, with much of its territories now cleansed of Jews, would henceforth be Judenrein – did not abandon its past hatred. But anti-semitism appeared obsolete, being too closely linked to the genocide. So, it instead persisted in other guises, proliferating behind new masks in order to get around the discredit into which it had fallen and the censure that so impaired its fortunes. It was thus necessary to act as if nothing had happened. Denial provided the supreme means to this end. What had allegedly taken place was – it was said – nothing, or almost nothing; there was no place for the extermination. Here, denialism attempted to nullify the annihilation itself. With this one move, antisemitic Europe could absolve itself of all guilt, opening the way for the new-old forms of hatred that would loom over its future, from anti-Jewishness to anti-Zionism. An accusing finger was pointed at the Jews – it was they, after all, who were spreading the ‘tall tales about Auschwitz’, and who would have to answer for them.
From the outset, denialism was a cover for antisemitism, a pseudo-scientific shield against all accusations. Mockery, derision and sarcasm came one after another, in a strategy aimed at downplaying, belittling and ultimately denying what had happened. The clear intention in the first phase was to rehabilitate the past by absolving Nazism of all blame, exonerating fascism of any complicity in the murder of Europe’s Jews. The only way to make this possible was to erase all trace of the most shameful and abhorrent crime: the industrialized death in the extermination camps.
Over the years and decades, the gas chambers continued to be at the heart of denialism. Once these places had been declared non-existent – the product of an invention, indeed one using the slickest production values – it was possible to write the history of fascism and Nazism in a different way, concealing their ‘hardest-to-stomach’ episodes: that is, the crimes against humanity. Most importantly, this made it possible to prevent post-Auschwitz Europe from bearing the indelible mark of Zyklon B.
3 To definitively condemn Hitler, it would have been necessary to work through the past. But in 1945, there was no time for that. It was easier to cover up his victory and to conceal what he had really achieved. Instead, the outcome was cast as a total defeat for Hitler, just as complete as the victory over fascism itself. Thus emerged the political myth of the necessary, inevitable, self-evident defeat of Nazi-Fascism – a myth which is still alive and kicking today. For a democratic Europe that might feel vulnerable to blackmail, its peace at risk of being undermined, the gas chambers were a bothersome detail that concerned the Jews and no one else. Such a detail also had to be considered in the context of the great wartime bloodbath, the millions of dead and the many crimes committed.
But who had really won? And who was really defeated? Soon, these questions led to a first decisive role-reversal. It was the Germans who had turned out to be the losers of the war. Who could doubt it? On closer inspection, the Germans were the victims of an unmerited ‘disaster’, an abnormal punishment, which compromised Germany’s fate by holding it back from the mission to which it was summoned: the defence of Europe and the salvation of the West. The Allies would have to answer before the Court of History for this misdeed of global dimensions, this scandal that so threatened Germany. This wrong risked being passed over in silence, drowned out by the high-flown denunciations of phantom ‘crimes’ whose seriousness bore no comparison with the real crime that had been committed against the German people. Behind the Allies – occupation forces, be they Russian or American – were the emigrants on their way back, the returning foreigners, the Jews who could now give full vent to their ‘revenge’. The Jews were the real winners.
This role-reversal soon became a fait accompli. The Jews were Nazified, while the Germans were Hebraized, in an inversion that would successfully be repeated also in other contexts. The Jews exterminated in the camps were stripped even of their place as victims. There was instead a long-cherished image of ‘Germany, pale mother’ – a nation which had been violated, occupied, bled out and exhausted, but not definitively defeated, ready to retreat into its autumn years and wait for its moment in history to come round again.
As for the Jews, they were the victors even of this new bellum judaicum – and for several reasons. If the extermination was to be considered a real one, it ought to have been completed, down to the last Jew. Yet there were survivors – those who had kept on living, claiming to retell what had happened. So, what tales were they spinning? What slanders had they invented to hurt Germany and cast a shadow over the whole of Europe, passing themselves off as victims? It was suspected that they were exploiting the ‘tall tales’ about the gas chambers to their own advantage, in order to continue to weave the threads of their domination. In this lay the ‘revenge’ of these ‘hucksters’, which was yet to be consummated.
4 Standing at the heart of denialism, the so-called ‘Holocaust myth’ would already in its early years develop along different paths and with various motivations – or, rather, pseudo-motivations. Precisely because the decisive role of the survivors – the few who returned from the camps – was becoming apparent, their testimony had to be undermined, indeed to the point of hollowing it out entirely.
This pre-emptive annihilation of testimony sought to neutralize all the accusations and to deprive the victims of words, never mind arguments. This is doubtless one of the most repugnant and hateful chapters in the history of denialism. It struck against survivors who had resisted so that they would be able to tell of what had happened, and who devoted their subsequent lives to telling of what had happened, precisely as an act of resistance. But would they be believed? The deniers’ repeated blows struck against the camp survivors, who were still haunted by their executioners’ mocking warnings, as captured by Primo Levi: ‘None of you will be left to bear witness, but even if someone were to survive, the world will not believe him.’1 Here, too, it is essential to grasp the continuity between the two enterprises – annihilation and denial.
The witness’s credibility is, however, undermined not so much by the monstrosity of which they speak, as by the logic of the crime itself. Jean-François Lyotard pointed this out in his book Le différend, published in 1983.2 Some parts of this work drew on the writings of well-known denialists, and Lyotard thus spelled out their basic schema.
Somewhere, extermination camps are said to have been unearthed that no one had ever previously heard of – camps where the crime against humanity, the gassing, supposedly took place. But how could anyone be sure of this? The evidence is scant; in many camps, there is not even a shadow of the gas chambers, and in others there is nothing left but rubble, which has, in any case, often been tampered with. If there is no crime scene, it is only legitimate to doubt whether the crime itself took place.
Unless, that is, there is someone to bear witness to the crime. Here, a perverse logic comes into play. Either the witness has been through the gas chamber, has experienced that mechanism of death on their own body – in which case, they will surely not be able to speak, for they are dead already. Or, if the witness is still alive, they are not credible, and whatever they are spinning a yarn about is clearly no gas chamber. In this logic, the reliability of the witness depends on their being dead; but the dead cannot bear witness.
In other words, the denier will accept, as the only possible proof of the gas chamber, the victim reduced to ashes – whose testimony is itself impossible. If, on the other hand, a survivor speaks about what happened, their testimony is said to be merely bogus. Establishing this underhanded alternative between the witness who does have integrity – the gassed, incinerated one – and the fraudulent one – the survivor – the deniers seem to kill two birds with one stone. For they both shelter the gas chamber from all possible testimony, and undermine the witnesses’ reliability. The victims who have not been reduced to nothing, the few unexpected survivors, are condemned to not being believed. Such pseudo-justifications have been repeated for decades.
The denier asks the annihilated to account for their own annihilation. And he tells the survivor: the annihilation did not take place, or else you would surely have been annihilated. Breaking this perverse logic, inherent to the crime itself, becomes an imperative. As it became clear how extraordinarily important individual memories are for reconstructing the Nazi extermination, a wide-ranging reflection developed on the value of testimony, grasped in its full complexity. Reaching far beyond the legal sphere, this reflection occupied historians, philosophers, writers and poets. An inescapable point of reference in this regard is Paul Celan, who summarized the importance of the witness in a famous line of his poem ‘Aschenglorie’: ‘Niemand zeugt für den Zeugen’, ‘Nobody / bears witness for the / witness.’3 The witness’s word is irreplaceable, their responsibility irrevocable.
The survivor is not called in supra partes, as a third party who is meant to corroborate the facts. Rather, the survivors are those who lived beyond, those who are still standing. They are left the task of speaking on behalf of the others who are no more. The survivor’s voice echoes the screams of the drowned, the gasps of the dying, the silence of the annihilated. In the survivor’s testimony, they survive beyond the ashes; in the survivor’s word, they exist for our memory. To bear witness is to translate, to take beyond – in a certain sense, even to generate. The survivor carries the annihilated with them, points to their absence, summons them back to life. It is precisely because the survivor pushes beyond the abyss of nothingness that the deniers so fear what she has to say.
Testimony cannot be taken for an objective proof which imposes its truth all by itself, without any need for the other. The witness’s word makes the truth, articulates it by wrenching it from silence and entrusting it to those who listen. The other plays a decisive role. For this reason, testimony cannot be stashed in the archives and, if it is to be and remain testimony, it cannot stop bearing witness. From this stems both its fragility and its strength: it is exposed to every attack, and lacks defences, but it is also irreplaceable by any proofs.
It was the survivors who confronted the wave of deniers. Even with hindsight, we can say that this was an epochal clash, in an ‘age of the witness’ that was decisive not only for the purposes of historical reconstruction, but also in working through the past. Guides for democratic consciousness who proved able to respond to the extermination by constructing a shared memory, the survivors soon became victims of violent denialist propaganda – not because of simple hate, but rather because of the key role survivors played. The more the witnesses spoke, the more they were attacked, intimidated, mocked and labelled as ‘fraudsters’ by a denialism that, becoming less preoccupied with the rehabilitation of Nazism and fascism, increasingly tried to pass itself off as a search for the truth.
One emblematic example was Shlomo Venezia, a former member of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Sonderkommando, who had been forced to work at the crematoria in Hitler’s workshops of death. His testimony, which arrived with great difficulty in the early 1990s, had the added element that Venezia had seen the apparatus of extermination from inside the gas chambers.4 Venezia unveiled a secret that the Nazis had wanted to die with the Sonderkommando – and this made him into the deniers’ priority target, an exceptional witness whom they greatly feared.
5 As the crime against humanity perpetrated in the extermination camps gradually came to light, there was a growing tendency to deny that it had ever happened. But the exponents of the new antisemitic propaganda tried to pass themselves off as ‘revisionists’, as if their only intention was to critically review history, to scrutinize it, to reopen the debate, in the name of the dispassionate search for the truth. For a time, they succeeded in breaking down more than one defence barrier, and not only among the community of historians, by peddling their denial as an opinion just like any other, which thus deserved protection.
