Studying the Soviet Victims of the Holocaust in Our Schools
We've all been taught about the Holocaust since we were little, and the primary victims who are studied are the Jewish people. I wonder, however, why we do not study the Russian and other Slavic peoples who were killed by the Nazis as extensively as the Jewish victims. The Nazis killed roughly 6,000,000 Jews, but they also killed between 20 and 27 million Soviets during the war, and planned to kill even more. While the Nazis stole the possessions of the Jewish people, the planned to conquer the entire Soviet nation and turn it into a giant German colony.
Why are the Jewish victims of the Holocaust studied so extensively whilie the Soviets are glanced over? Is this in any way Cold War related?
If the Jewish people themselves, had not made strong witness of the Holocaust, to what extent would it have already faded away into mere hostorical facticity? To what extent does the Holocaust exist, as a matter of public domain registration, simply through the work of this Jewish witnessing?
So why was such witness important to the Jewish people: and less so, or not so, to the USSR, and to the USA; and where have other societies struck their degree of witness of the Holocaust?
For the Jewish people, certainly those of territories administered by the Nazis, the Holocaust was a Total Event: one which ended what had been for them, and opened up prospect only of their annihilation; there was intent of Final Solution, and historically it went beyond crucial tipping point. For the USSR all their own loss of life, massive though it was, was a sub-part of a Total Event: facism was only one front on which they fought, and on which they cut pragmatic deals; their society was not pushed beyond tipping point, and in fact Stalin was able to rally the country, on basis of traditions he had had hitherto persecuted. Given that a foremost opponent was the USA, this dis-emphasis was an aspect of the Cold War.
In Europe, certainly in the UK, Soviet losses, and the Soviet past in the War are given stronger emphasis. As a child, I was brought up on stories of the Atlantic convoys, taking supplies, probably from America, to Murmansk, for the Soveit war effort. I was exposed to many books which documented the starving and working to death of Soviet POWs; amd was aware of the numbers involved. I always understood, that no matter what part other nations undoubtedly played: WW2 was lost for the Germans on the Eastern Front; that it was Soviet blood that drowned the Third Reich, and Soviet factory production which smashed its structures. Why we have never celebrated this sufficiently, is a big question. It should be noted, that even in European terms, Scotland has always been Socialist in tone: and there is much antipathy to American foreign policy, though not the country and its people; in the 20C the UK government always feared what might come from Red Clydeside.
I have never understood why Hitler persecuted the Jewish people: and I don't find proffered explanations for this to have much depth. If he had allowed the Jewish people to have been part of his Reich, then I am sure that they would have been loyal Germans, as they had been in WW1: where, concievably, with the contribution of the Jewish Germans, and the resource not deployed to their persecution, and exiled Jewish people not working for the Allies; he might well have won the war. Somewhere along the line, a truer understanding of this antipathy towards the Jewsih people, would have to be worked into an explanation of what the Holocaust has come to mean for that people, as an action of witness.
The Jewish people have been resourceful in managing their witness, with the Shoah (sp!) project a recent exemplary example: where this management has become integrated into the Zion project; both as regards a constructive support for Israel; and as an entrenched conviction, that in failing to collectively prevent the Holocaust, the wider world can no longer be expected to safequard the Jewsih people, wthout forceful cultural intervention by that people themselves. This intention has seen the Holocaust become a global reality, and not just a Jewish rememberance: and this reality woven into the culture of other countries, such as the USA and the UK. Having lost so many, and having been left to their fate for too long, the Jewish people have worked their corner: that they might not again go like lambs to slaughter, they have grasped the global cultural context; they ceaselesly put in place, as historical witness, and in modern media forms, what puts protection around their people. They have see the work required: they have done, and do the work required; they have a bulwark, that is the presented witness of the Holocaust.
The down side of this is imbalance. Those others in the human project, who also have been violated, by the machinery of our projects, are not so witnessed. The reasons for this are complex. Few people have the continuity of culture, ontology and history of the Jewish people. The USSR has been fought over by armies and ideological projects: which turned against their own people; which were never fully a part of that people; which have never known their place in the world, as do the Jewish people. The Jewish faith can comprehend the depths of its people: it is the depths of its people; its conceptions have endured. Other peoples have been subject to perspectives which come and go, which are fought over, which are aspirational only in some negative manner. The advocacy that other people can expect of their culture, pales beside that offered to its people by the Jewsih faith. Other people have the muscle of controlling the social arrangements, of a time and place: but the perspectives which sustained them, tend to die with them; the Jewish people have been persecuted under the power of these arrangements, but have retained a faith that has always outlasted them. The Jewish people have a historic sense, which sees them creating amd witnessing their journeys and experiences as history: other people have been been about other things; and part of this involves their history and witness being weak, compared to that of the Jewish people. Even today the Jewish citizens of Israel are forging the events of conflict with the Palestinians, into a historical witness, which is creating allies abroad in powerful places, and leaves the Palestinians reeling in a frustration of powerlessness: the most powerful instrument wielded by Israel is her history; and today that history is their version of this struggle with the Palestinians.
Where the other side makes their own historical witness, as does Milla, and for the USSR: then our own historical witness has to be qualified; and we have allowed that for Milla.
Where we have to be careful, is where we block the other side, and dismiss their contribution, their historical witness.
I would suggest that we always have to do more, to countervail the consequences of those who remain unwitnessed in history: those who do not have a people to work their corner; those whose voices are stilled in the mire of history.
I would suggest we also have to do more, to open ourselves to those whose rights of advocay are weak, often through their collective being demonsied: such as with the Palestinians, at least in some quarters; and also with NiemandheißtBoshaftigkeit, whose call of b.s. is as worthy of being heard, as is our own to the contrary.
