Saul Friedlander's The Years of Persecution - Book Report/Review Example

Book Review of Saul Friedlander’s The Years of Persecution Introduction Saul Friedlander book The Years of Persecution can be said to a major contribution to Jewish Holocaust studies. This book won the Pulitzer Prize for the non-fiction category. Friedlander was son of the unfortunate Jewish parents who were persecuted by Hitler’s regime at Auschwitz. After completing his doctorate in 1963, Friedlander had published many articles and books and also a memoir, all of them were somehow or rather connected to Holocaust. This report makes an exhaustive analysis of the Saul Friedlander’s book namely “The years of Persecution1.” Analysis of Saul Friedlander’s Book The Years of Persecution In the introduction , Friedlander explained the main aim of his book as “ to describe an account in which policies of the Nazi are indeed are the central feature , but in which the engulfing world and victim’s demeanors , responses and fate are no less an essential part of this re-counting story”. In spotlighting the attention on Nazi anti-Jewish initiatives, which finally resulted in “Final Solution “, the author highlighted the accountability of Adolf Hitler. Thus, Hitler wanted to assume the role of a supreme leader of the world and hence, undertaken policies against Jews, which is most radical and extreme in the world’s view that Friedlander named it as “redemptive anti-Semitism2” which is the perception that Europe and Germany would be redeemed and will be placed in better position if they were purified and freed from the clutches of Jews. Friedlander instead of explaining how Hitler’s anti-Semitism worked and what its main aims were, he focused his attention on the mixture of a homicidal rage and a “committed” goal , exchanged by the Nazi leader and supported by his party , that ultimately made the Hitler’s final decision to exterminate the Jews3. The Part 1 of Friedlander’s book narrates the Nazi rule from the period Hitler’s succession to authority in January 1933 to the proclamation of the Nuremberg Laws at the close end of the 1935. Thus, the period between January 1933 and December 1935 was significant as during this period many shocking cultural and political transformations that had taken place in Germany. This above period witnessed many radical anti-Jewish initiatives, and the Nuremberg Laws also helped to isolate Jews from Germans. Friedlander describes in detail how Hitler’s anti-Jewish feelings worked where ordinary racial anti-Semitism is one the feature within a broader racist global perspective. In anti-Jewish feeling, the fight against the Jews is the major feature of a global panorama in which other racist compositions are but subordinate appendages4. According to Friedlander, the period between 1933 to 1936, was important years as major events pertaining to the Jewish Holocaust happened during this period Friedlander described that how Nazi and Hitler accomplished one of their utmost publicity triumphs: “ the victorious re-counting of the 1936 Olympic Games”5. He also narrated about the Kristallnacht program during which about 7,500 Jewish businesses were destroyed, 276 Jewish synagogues were vandalized and thousands of Jews were either butchered or forced to commit suicide6. Friedman gave a lot of evidence about the Holocaust by offering details from the government documents, quotes from diaries of both perpetrators and victims, and through the first-person narrations. Friedlander also tried to strike a good balance between functionalist and intentionalist perception of the Holocaust. Friedlander commented that “crimes unleashed by the Nazi regime were either a just product of some messy, involuntary, indiscernible and chaotic wave of unconnected incidents nor a prearranged performance of an unholy script; they were the outcome of the congregating elements, of the interaction between eventualities and intentions, between apparent chances and causes. General tactical decisions and ideological aims improved one another and always stayed open to more radical moves as scenarios transformed7. Friedlander’s storyline sweeps across the whole Europe, covering each and every nation impacted by the Nazi zeal for domination. In Slovakia and Bulgaria, strong protest against Holocaust compelled the governments which at the start tried to play music to the tunes of Nazis’ and later, on seeing the public outrage, these governments changed their stand on genocide. In the number of nations, the leaders of Roman Catholic Church played a vital role in articulating and supporting such feelings. Individual priests both in Germany and other parts of the Europe were persecuted due to their pro Jewish stand. However, Friedlander highly criticized that actions of many clerics, especially senior church leaders who remained inactive and silent and who feared that their open criticism of the Holocaust would earn wrath of Nazis on them. Jewish converts to Christianity, however, showed their strong protest against the extermination. In countries like Croatia, nationalist’s clergymen started to raise murder squads with their own image of religiously enthused anti-Semitism. Friedlander also narrated how Pope Pius XII who also remained as a silent spectator of the Holocaust, and he deliberated the arguments on both sides that have become more contentious8. During pre-war period , domination of Nazi did not extend to Judaic populations, which were living beyond the frontiers of Germany ; and the functional aim of Nazi Jewish policy was not aimed at the physical annihilation of the Jews but their compulsory separation from the German racial community namely Volksgemeinschaft and expatriation. In opposition to the liquidation campaign, particularly during World War II, which started behind the lines of the Russian Warfield and under the atmosphere of an all-out philosophical war of expansion, the pre-war anti-Semitic Holocaust was carried in Germany, that too, in peacetime, and for the majority portions of Holocaust was carried on in full view of the globe and the Germans. Nonetheless, in the initial stage, the major tools employed by Nazi against Jews were not physical violence per se but through economic discrimination or deprivation, exclusionary laws, bureaucratic harassment, and degradation in public. Friedlander’s historical reconstruction of the pre-war period is obviously skewed toward highlighting the supremacy of the role played by Hitler and his unique brand of anti-Semitic ideology. As per Friedlander, each and every anti-Jewish initiative embarked by the Hitler’s regime was not just way aimed to an end but a symbolic account. Thus, the symbolic importance is to be deciphered in the background of what one understand it as anti-Jewish feelings. Friedlander methodically nuanced his views, which are, in fact, very dissimilar in quality and kind. Friedlander does not posit a historical and undeniable brand of murderous anti-Semitism that obviously predestined gullible Germans to turn to be mass murderers but is precisely conscious of the historical intricacies of the issue and cautious of making any comprehensive generalizations. Even though Germany was not the anti-Semitic nation before the World War I, Friedlander views that due to sudden development of some distinctive features in Germany that predisposed German society to become a breeding ground for radical anti-Semitism. Thus, he is of the opinion that unlike the scenario in France, for example, in Germany, there was a segmentation between the political units of the state as such, “the concept of the country as a closed ethnos-cultural community which is not dependent and occasionally contrary to the state9. (85). German nation’s ethnos-cultural community is distinct from German politics or German economy as it stayed tightly closed to the German Jews, in spite of all their initiatives to assimilate into German society. The perception that the Jews are strangers, and intruders were aggravated by their anecdotal significance as agents of modernization and their subsequent link with all the disruptions brought about by their innovativeness. However, the most dreadful result was the ideologization and institutionalization of German anti-Semitism in the latter half of 19th century and at the start of the 20th century. Friedlander recognizes the merger of two different elements of racial anti-Semitism; the one being a biological component which is intimately related with the quasi-scientific study of race and eugenics theories and the other one is the pseudo-religious or visionary type which centered on the holy myth of the Aryan race. It is the latter type that turned into what Friedlander names it as “anti- Jewish feelings”. In this kind of anti-Semitism, the fight against the Jews obtains the sensation of an apocalyptic or religious war; the persecution of Jews and their purported power becomes a lever for cosmic deliverance. Friedlander’s “redemptive anti-Semitism” demonstrated the global perspective about Hitler and comparatively sealed the caste of hard-core Nazis. Friedlander is of the view that it was not shared from the inception by the mass of “ ordinary “ Germans and is evident that it failed as even after 6 years of never-ending brainwashing , it was not successful to penetrate into the broad extents of German society. To be certain, anti-Semitism was universal and intensely deep-seated into German society as a whole, but it failed to have fanatic and apocalyptic magnitude of Nazi anti-Semitism. It was embedded firmly enough to stop the German rank and file from showing compassion with the victimized Jewish minority. Moreover, it was not strong enough to make them to injure Jews vigorously in any radical way. As per Friedlander, during the November pogrom of 1938, “a clear difference of opinion arose from the outset between spectators and activists on the streets of big cities in Germany. (294).This has resulted in questioning of social and psychological mechanism that could turn the uncaring onlookers of 1938 into Goldhagen’s “keen assassins” particularly during war years. Thus, Friedlander seems to be suggesting the “violation of trust” of Germany’s spiritual, intellectual and professional leadership, which was for more critical in clearing the ground for the “Final Solution” instead of part played by famous German Anti-Semitism group. Thus, none of the above-mentioned leadership really espoused Hitler’s philosophy of “anti-Jewish feelings ”, and the Germany’s academic world, the liberal professionals, the Protestant and the Catholic Churches, as each group is following its own factional idea – established more than inclined to go along with the ethnic policies of the regime10. Moreover, the strength of the Friedlander argument rests predominantly on the enlightening of any radical new justification. In fact, Friedlander offers no new theoretical agenda that could account for the process of political and philosophical radicalization before the war. Friedman rebuttal to obligate himself to any one of the superseding conceptual model, facilitates him to evade the conformity and closure link with mono-casual clarifications. Footing upon a daunting group of secondary and primary resources, he seems more inclined on permitting the facts and protagonists to converse for themselves instead of making any outstanding deductions from his findings. His chief mechanism of integration is a deliberate splintered narrative, with a regular shifting focus of his views on the subject. This has facilitated him to assimilate the story of the persecutors, which acts as a foundation for the main chronological plot, with multi themes have been taken from the real-life experiences of the victims. Some of the significant passages in the book obtain their unique impact from the combination of varied magnitudes of reality with its disjunctive views by the perpetrators and their victims. Friedlander quotes the concluding remarks in Hitler’s triumph speech from on March 15, 1938, in Vienna as “I now report to history that my motherland has joined the German Reich.” Friedlander also accounts sarcastically how the famous Jewish historian of culture and playwright namely, Egon Friedell committed suicide when Gestapo came to apprehend him in his Vienna’s residence. Friedlander has an unmistaken taste for the more grotesque and bizarre features of the Nazi racial obsession, especially in his treatment of the persecutors. In this background, the cultural politics of the Third Reich receive his unique responsiveness; he seems to be happy in bringing out many of the inner frustrations and contradictions of the so-called self-styled custodians of the “Aryan” culture. Friedlander in the introduction section of the book narrates about the collective lives of the victims “after a short while of improved unity – started to crumble.” Nonetheless, the only available concrete anecdote that can be recalled remains that are narrated by the personal stories. As per Friedlander, the extinction of the Jews of Europe is observed by historians as definitive typical of evil, against which all magnitudes of evil may be evaluated. (1). As regards to the Jews, Hitler was pushed by ideological fascination, which was intended as maneuvers of a demagogue ; which is supported a very particular brand of racial anti-Semitism to its most radical and extreme limits. (3). It is criticized that Friedlander does not bestow more devotion to the activity and program of the Jewish Kulturbund as he bypasses the non-cultural elements of the central process of Jewish self-organization particularly under National-Socialist rule. The preponderances of Germans had been maneuvered by many guises of customary anti-Semitism and had acknowledged the isolation of Jews, not opposed the extensive violence against them, advocating their physical persecution or ouster from the Reich. The Nazi Germany first accomplished the segregation of millions of Jews from their German neighbours through the enhancing weight of official malice. Gradually, Jews were controlled in their shopping practices , their usage of cars, telephones ,bi-cycles , electrical appliances and in getting school admissions , they had to construct their own air-raid protections , to use their cobblers , were not allowed to have free access to gingerbread , fruit , chocolate , white bread , tobacco and furs. Germans generally felt upset what was happening to Jews but due to success of Nazi’s government successful propaganda , and in the face of the state’s callousness , they feared to raise their voices . Friedlander is of the view that Jewish persecution could not have been assumed its genocidal form without the Hitler’s personal mania and due to the endemic European hatred against Jewish population11. The Dresden Opera House music director Fritz Busch, who was a non-Jew, but he was blamed of maintaining too many Jewish contacts and having supported too many Jewish artists to perform. For the mass execution of Jews in Europe, it was alleged that cultural domain was the chief reason. German people might not consent with the callousness of the dismissals of Jewish scholars from their authority or positions, but they appreciated the cleansing of the “excessive influence” of Jews German cultural life12. Friedlander quotes writing from the diary of Thomas Mann, a non-Jew but married a Jew how the Jews whose rights in Germany are being taken away and who are being moved away, who have a significant contribution in the spiritual issues which identify themselves, with a grimace, in the Nazi political setup and can in good part can be regarded as the forerunners of the anti-liberal turn. (14). Friedlander cites that as on January 1933, about 525,000 Jews lived in Germany alone13. During the first quarter of 1933, Jewish association in Germany recapped Hitler through a letter that about 12,000 Jewish German soldiers had lost their lives in their fight against aliens on behalf of Germany. (15). Jewish Associations in Germany were of the opinion that initial non-cooperation from Hitler’s administration could be surmounted by a reaffirmation of Jewish identity or by showing patience. The German Jews believed that the accountabilities of the government, the sway of conservative members on the Hitler’s government, and a vigilant outside world would wield its moderating sway on any Nazi’s inclination to the excess. On April 1, 1933, Hitler’s administration issued a boycott order against Jewish business in Germany. (15). Jew’s shops were asked to close forcibly. Jewish judges and lawyers were attacked even in the court premises14. After the elections held in March 1933, anti-Jewish violence spread in fast phase. Dozens of East European Jews were held and sent to concentration camps. Friedlander’s main aim is to narrate in detail about the persecution of the Jews, who were considered as the main foe of Nazi Germany. Nazi Germany not only involved in the mass execution of Jewish community in Germany but also forfeited the assets of the victims. Hostility towards Jewish community made the Hitler to indulge in annihilation of the Jewish community not only in Germany but in other parts of the Europe as he ordered in the fall of 1943 to go ahead with the deportation of the Jews of Rome and Denmark, apart from the grave dangers associated like earning of wrath from Pope and the chances of unrest in Denmark when there can be no direct advantages to Nazis due to that operation. Nazi government, in July 1944, in haste, ordered for deporting Jewish communities from the Aegean Islands, and many hundreds of Jewish kids were deported from Paris just three days before the liberation of the city. As per Friedlander, the anti-Jewish mania that became the traits of the Hitler’s regime which enthused the relentless of its murder policies against Jews. Friedlander is of the view that the personal impact of Hitler, and his obsessive anti-Semitism was responsible for the large-scale anti-Semitism among Germans in that period. Friedlander is of the view that anti-Jewish ideology which finally played a key role that designed the Nazi policies to have a complete organized genocide in modern history against Jewish community. As per Goebbels, the mouthpiece of Hitler, the logic behind anti-Semitism lust emanated from the portentous, image of the Jew as the active and lethal enemy of the Reich, which intent on its annihilation. Hitler wanted to go immediate persecution of Jews as he visualized that else Jews would annihilate the Germany and would establish a new Europe within the Germany. Friedlander is of the view that generally, there existed anti-Jewish hatred among Christians which remained especially powerful in Eastern Europe, and Central-Eastern Europe and its fundamental folklores endured throughout Europe either in the secularized garb or in its original form. ­­This has been demonstrated by series of metamorphoses, a widespread faith in Jewish endeavors to accomplish world power or domination. Since, Hitler wanted to dominate the world, he thought that Jews would be a hindrance to accomplish his goal. “Findings and Conclusion” In his book, Friedlander offered a modernist histography about the Jewish Holocaust by integrating all the historical incidents by presenting them both ethically and technically. Saul Friedlander’s work gives the readers the pungent intuition and judicious outlook on Jewish Halocause by Nazi Germany government. Friedlander wanted to emphasis on one single fact that the Nazis were successful in utter persecution of Jews in Europe. Further , he was of the view that Zionists in Palestine regarded the Holocaust , chiefly in terms of its impacts for the establishment of a future Jewish state. In discussion about the legality of Nazi racial laws, he showed the assimilation of cross-oppotunitism and ideological enthusiasm which he called sentiments against Jews in Hitler’s Germany during 1930s. Thus , the main aim of the Friedlander’s book is to report an integrated anecdote of the Holocaust which syndicates what was stayed separate in many earlier narrations. Friedlander has argued that the Hitler’s resulting manias and Nazi ideology played a chief role in the Holocaust. Thus , Friedlander has examined the nature the war-time anti Jewish fe elings not only in Nazi Germany but also in the engulfing European nations that joined the fight against Jews or retaliated with indifference and silence. Friedlander main focus to emphasize that the anti-Jewish feelings are based on the belief that the “ Jews was a poisonous and real danger to all countries , to the German Volk and the Aryan race.” Friedlander explains how Nazi’s leadership was having the negative perception that the Jew is the only group that , since its presence in the world history , continuously conspired and contrived to mollify all of humankind. Friedlander is of the view that Nazi government viewed the Jews as an active and a real political subject who was indulged in designing a plot to announce a war of annihilation against German people15. Friedlander is of the view that the personal impact of Hitler, and his obsessive ill-feeling against Jews was responsible for the large-scale anti-Semitism among Germans. Friedlander is of the view that anti-Semitism lust emanated from the portentous, image of the Jew as the active and lethal enemy of the Reich. Since, Hitler wanted to dominate the world, he thought that Jews would be a hindrance to accomplish his goal and hence, he carried out their persecution. Bibliography Orna Kenan, Abridged version of the Years of Persecution (New York: HarperCollins e-books, 2010) 1-447 Saul Friedlander, Nazi Germany and the Jews: The Years of Persecution: 1933-1939 (London: Hachette, 2014), 1-441 Saul Friedlander, The Years of Persecution, Review of the Years of Persecution by Daniel Fraenkel, 239 Shoa Resource Centre, the International School of Holocaust Studies 1-10 Saul Friedlander , “the Years of Persecution” book review by Jeffrey Herf http://www.powells.com/review/2007_09_06.html Tim Gardam, “the years of extermination: Nazi Germany and the Jews”, The Guardian, September 16, 2007 Read More