Book Reviews : The Holocaust in Historical Perspective, by Yehuda Bauer, Sheldon Press, London, 1978. £5.95
| Author | M.R. Brett-Crowther |
| Published date | 01 April 1981 |
| Date | 01 April 1981 |
| DOI | 10.1177/004711788100700122 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
1085
Great
Britain
is
perhaps
ninety-nine
per
cent
to
blame
for
her
part
in
Armenia’s
history;
British
policy
has
been
selfish,
deceitful,
cowardly
and
stupid.
At
Smyrna,
in
1922,
while
Greeks
and
Armenians
were
looted,
raped
and
murdered-as
so
often
in
their
past-
the
ships
of
Great
Britain,
France,
Italy
and
the
United
States
made
no
attempt
to
intervene.
Only
feeble
efforts
were
made
to
rescue
some
of
the
280,000
refugees
who
crowded
the
quayside.
Armenian
refugees
say
that
the
bluejackets
turned
hosepipes
on
any
refugees
who
swam
towards
their
vessels
and
tried
to
board
them
(p.345f).
Walker
concludes
that
two
things
should
be
done.
First,
Turkey
should
acknowledge
what
the
former
regime
did
to
the
Armenians.
Yet
the
government,
the
universities
and
Turkist
supporters
throughout
the
world
refuse
to
admit
the
truth
of
Walker’s
data.
Second,
the
uninhabited
medieval
city
of
Ani,
exactly
on
the
Turkist-Soviet
border,
should
be
incorporated
in
Soviet
Armenia
in
exchange
for
one
or
two
Azeri
villages
in
the
north.
Although
one
cannot
imagine
Mr.
S.
De:nirel
willingly
undertaking
either
task
of
conscientious
change,
one
can
see
that
if
these
were
the
conditions
of
easier
Western
economic
assistance
to
Turkey
both
Mr.
Demirel
and
Mr.
B.
Ecevit
might
act
with
honour
and
belated
shame.
One
can
add
that
if
NATO
means
anything,
freedom
and
justice
mean
more;
and
it
would
be
as
well
for
NATO
and
the
EEC
to
oblige
Turkey
to
make
concessions
on
Armenia,
past
and
present.
It
is
conceiv-
able
that
to
encourage
a
new
decadence
in
Turkey
by
passive
acceptance
of
Turkish
illusions
is
to
make
Soviet incursions
probable
once
instability
has
spread
through
the
country.
Certainly
Armenian
terrorists
have
killed
Turkish
notables
in
recent
years
for
the
failure
of
Turkey
to
acknowledge
its
guilt
over
Armenia.
It
must
be
assumed
that
Armenian
revolutionaries
will
continue
their
campaign
for
restitution.
Their
entire
community
amply
deserves
it.
—M.
R.
Brett-Crowther.
The
Holocaust
in
Historical
Perspective,
by
Yehuda
Bauer,
Sheldon
Press,
London,
1978.
£5.95.
Bauer
is
head
of
the
Institute
of
Contemporary
Jewry,
Hebrew
Uni-
versity
of
Jerusalem.
This
book
is
an
excellent
survey
of
the
Holocaust
because
it
relies
on
two
main
themes.
First,
Bauer
asks
what
is
informa-
tion
and
when
and
how
it
becomes
knowledge.
Second,
he
asks
why
people
failed
to
see
the
victims
as
human
beings
who
needed
to
be
re-
spected
and
saved.
The
first
chapter
describes
the
roots
of
antisemitism
and
asks
questions
about
Western
responses
to
Hitler’s
aims.
As
Bauer
points
out,
’antisemitism’
is
a
pseudo-scientific
term
invented
in
1879
for
’Jew
hatred’,
and
there
is
no
’semitism’
to
which
Jew-haters
are
opposed.
’Antisemites
do
not
hate
Semites;
they
hate
Jews.’
(p.8)
The
Nazis
used
racism
and
a
systematic
symbolic
but
distorted
language.
Bauer
says
that
American
Jews
could
not
understand
that
European
Jews
were
being
murdered
because
of
their
identity,
because
American
society
had
not
prepared
them
for
what
one
may
call
such
segregating
logic.
By
the
Bermuda
Conference
(which
opened
the
same
day
as
the
Warsaw
ghetto
rebelled,
19
April
1943),
the
British
and
the
US
Govern-
ments
had
both
concluded
that
nothing
could
be
done
’except
to
win
the
war
quickly
and
save
whatever
could
be
saved
that
way.’
(p.26).
All
the
negative
decisions
were
left
secret,
while
false
hope
lingered
that
positive
decisions
had
been
reached.
American
Jewish
organizations
had
psychological
difficulties
in
facing
the
information
about
the
Holocaust
and
about
the
Allies’
future,
and
also
had
the
problem
of
taking
radical
action
in
protest
against
the
Roosevelt
administration.
This,
for
all
its
faults,
stood
between
the
Jews
and
American
antisemitism
which
had
persisted
until
1942
at
least.
A
demonstration
against
Roosevelt
would
have been
a
demonstration
against
the
war.
Bauer
closes
the
chapter
with
a
passage
from
Ben-Gurion
(1944),
which
asks
whether
the
Allies
would
have
acted
negatively
if
English,
American
or
Russian
women,
children
and
aged
had
been
mass-murdered.
Having
re-established
this
painful
reality
with
its
questions,
Bauer
casts
a
cold
eye
over
the
various
attempts
to
minimise
and
deny
the
To continue reading
Request your trial