The tragic myth of ‘never again’

It is widely believed that shortly after the second world war the West pledged that Jews should never again suffer anything resembling the Holocaust. Unfortunately this is a myth. There never was such a promise.

The claim was once again expressed in a Jewish Chronicle leader timed to coincided with Holocaust Memorial Day. Under the headline “ ‘Never Again’ is more vital than ever before” it had a photo of an entrance to a Nazi camp. The editorial argued near the start that “the incantation ‘Never Again’ is more vital than it has ever been”. It then went on to bemoan the fact that “Never Again has been little more than an abstract expression of intent and goodwill”.

The argument is misleading on at least three fronts. First, few conceived of the mass slaughter of Jews as a distinct event, reflected in the use of the term ‘Holocaust’, until the late 1950s. Then it took 20 more years to capture the popular imagination. Until then Jews were generally seen as collateral damage in a tragic broader conflict. Second, the idea of ‘never again’ did not capture the public imagination either until decades after the second world war ended. Finally, the problem with the slogan was not that it was too abstract but that it was all too concrete in many contradictory ways. It has meant fundamentally different things at different times to different people.

Let’s take each of these points in turn.

Both the word ‘Holocaust’ and recognition of a distinct slaughter of Jews did not take off until decades after the war. As David Cesarani, a leading Jewish historian, noted in a 1992 study: “It may be a paradox which defies easy understanding, but in the 1990s awareness of the Holocaust is deeper and more pervasive than was the case immediately after it ended. The notion that the free world reeled before the revelations of what had occurred under the Nazis is a myth. ‘The Holocaust’ was not an issue: in fact, it did not even exist as a historical or cultural concept” (Justice Delayed, 1992, p162-163).

This description is confirmed by the indictment for the Nuremberg war crimes trials of Nazi leaders. It focused on “Crimes against Peace, War Crimes, and Crimes against Humanity, and of a Common Plan or Conspiracy to commit those Crimes”. The mass murder of the Jews could of course fall under these rubrics but they were not treated as a distinct case. There was no mention of the Jews, let alone use of the term Holocaust, in the indictment.

Cesarani goes on to argue that “The plight of Jewish survivors did elicit a visceral outpouring of concern but only for a brief period” (p165). The British authorities in particular refused to grant Jews a distinct status. That meant Jewish refugees often ended up sharing displaced person [DP] camps with people who a few weeks before had been trying to murder them (p165). Many of these locations were former concentration camps.

Attitudes to Jews in Britain was also becoming more hostile in response to the conflict with Jewish underground forces in British mandate Palestine. Cesarani notes that on the August bank holiday weekend of 1947 mobs of youth shouting anti-Semitic slogans raged in many Jewish districts. Jewish-owned shops and properties were destroyed, synagogues were vandalised and cemeteries desecrated (p168).

The idea of a distinct Holocaust did not emerge till decades after the war ended. In expert circles the term Holocaust was not really used until the late 1950s (Gerd Korman “The Holocaust in American Historical Writing” Perspectives on the Holocaust 1989). But it was in the late 1970s, with the international success of an American television drama called Holocaust, that the term really took off (Christopher Browning “A critical introduction” George L Mosse, Toward The Final Solution, 2020).  As an academic discipline it only emerged rapidly in the 1980s (Browning). The first international Holocaust Memorial Day was not until 2001, over half a century after the war ended.

The use of the Hebrew term Shoah (Holocaust or catastrophe) followed a similar pattern. The first Yom Hashoah (Shoah Day) was observed in Israel in 1951 (Hebrew). But it was not until the release of Claude Lanzmann’s landmark 1985 documentary called Shoah that the term started to be widely used internationally (German).

In any event even in relation to the term ‘Holocaust’ there has always been some ambiguity. For example, the official British site for Holocaust Memorial Day mentions the six million Jews slaughtered by the Nazis as well as the millions of others murdered by the Nazis. It then goes on to feature instances of mass killings in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia and Darfur.

Of course one Jewish life is not worth any more or less than a non-Jewish life. But the record since the second world war shows a marked reluctance to acknowledge the specificity of Jewish suffering. The world has consistently shied away from recognising that the annihilation of the Jews was a central tenet of Nazi ideology. Anyone who insists that anti-Semitism had a privileged place in Nazi ideology is likely to be denounced as an “exceptionalist”. That helps explain why Holocaust education often emphasises the existence of non-Jewish victims of the Holocaust. This is presented as a straightforward fact but all too often involves downplaying the centrality and special character of anti-Semitism.

Nira Yuval-Davis, an anti-Zionist Israeli sociologist and leftist activist, gives an example of the type of reasoning involved. She does not even like term anti-Semitism, preferring anti-Jewish racism instead, because of what she sees as an implicit Jewish exceptionalism (admittedly the term ‘anti-Semitism’ is a peculiar one but not for the reason Yuval-Davis gives). She then goes on to argue that a Genocide Memorial Day would be better than a Holocaust Memorial Day: “While I know that many antiracist activists, Jewish and non-Jewish, are expanding the range of genocides and other crimes against humanity which are memorialised on those days, the fact that it was called the Holocaust Memorial Day and not Genocide Memorial Day, for instance, retains the Holocaust, ahistorically, as the archetypical case of genocide that all other cases would have forever to be measured against.”

A key point missing in this argument is the particular character of anti-Semitism. It is not just a form of prejudice or discrimination. On the contrary, it involves a particular perception of evil in the world with Jews playing a leading role. This has taken different forms over time but in any event makes anti-Semitism fundamentally different from other forms of racism. It has included the idea of Jews epitomising speculative capitalism, modernity and communism as well as Israel as the fount of white supremacy and colonialism.

That helps explain why the Holocaust was unique. There were of course other elements too including the orgaisation of the murder, the methods and the experimentation on human beings.

Unfortunately relatively few have accepted the uniqueness of the Holocaust. Even if the discussion of the topic starts with Jews it all too often becomes a broader moral fable about the supposed evil of human beings. Alternatively it is increasingly often cast as just another form of colonialism.

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‘Never again’, like the term Holocaust, is also relatively new in popular usage. It is often attributed to Meir Kahane, the founder of the Jewish Defense League (JDL), a genuinely far right organisation, who had a book with that title published in 1972. However, there are also reports that Kahane lifted the phrase from a documentary by a Swedish filmmaker. 

Another possibility is that Kahane lifted the phrase from a 1926 Hebrew poem called Masada. That is a reference to the fortress in the Judean desert where Jewish Zealots made a final stand against Roman forces (the Zealots where a Jewish political movement at the time). The poem stated that “Never shall Masada fall again!”.

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In any event the striking feature of the slogan, and of the sentiment behind it, is that it has meant different things to different people. 

There are reports, although I have not been able to check the original source, that Raul Hilberg, one of the greatest Holocaust historians, referred to the slogan. He evidently refers to newly released concentration camps using it to refer to the danger of a revived Nazi Germany or a European imitator.

Others have used it in multiple different ways. These include genocide in general (for example, President Jimmy Carter), specific incidents of alleged genocide (for example, President Bill Clinton on Rwanda) or to the consequences of the wickedness of man ( for example President George W Bush). In Germany the term is often broadened to “Nie wieder Faschismus” (Never Again Fascism), therefore linking the Holocaust to the country’s Nazi past in general.

There are numerous other examples of the phrase ‘never again’ being used in different ways. These range from the serious to the flippant.

The only consistency is the widespread reluctance to refer it to the specific experience of the Jewish people as the targets for total annihilation. Even those who start off by referring to the slaughter of Jews all too often end up talking about the horrors of different types of hate.

There never was a time when the notion ‘never again’ was widely applied to the fate of the Jews specifically. This is an understanding that needs to be argued for in the period ahead.

PHOTO:  "Entrada a Auswitch - Auschwitz" by ReservasdeCoches.com is licensed under CC BY 2.0.