No one wanted to see it
In “Five reasons to remember the Holocaust and watch for the signs today” (January 29), Jack Rosen writes, “No one saw it coming.” This is wrong. He should have written, “No one wanted to see it.”
Religious Jews knew the prophecies and educated Jews knew the history of violence against Jews. People I have spoken with from Germany and Eastern Europe between 1932 and 1945 have told me what they witnessed. They knew about Hitler and Nazism! Most assimilated German Jews thought that Hitler was a joke and didn’t believe Nazis could hurt them. Some were frightened and fled in the early 1930s. Zionists found it particularly opportune; Eastern European Jews who were less educated knew about Hitler but did not understand the possibilities. Hasidim devoted to Torah, Talmud and family had a don’t-bother-us-and-we-won’t-bother-you approach. Some governments, particularly the Soviet Union, restricted public information. Also, gun ownership was generally illegal and few Jews even wanted one until it was too late.
Western European Jews didn’t leave in the early 1930s when they might have been able to; Eastern European Jews who had heard rumors of Nazi massacres refused to believe them at first; by the time they knew for sure what was happening, they had no good options. Like today, split, indecisive and sometimes uninformed Jewish leadership failed to take decisive action – and six million of us were murdered.
MARK SMITH
Rockford, IL
I applaud Sam Sokol’s nuanced article (“Holocaust scholars worry that memory is a victim of Israel’s ties with Eastern Europe,” February 3) regarding the dangers of downplaying European culpability for the horrors of the Holocaust in favor of political exigency. Whereas in the body politic, Israel’s foreign relations with European governments are indeed important, we must not forget our responsibility to the memory of the six million Jews who died in the ghettos, killing pits and gas chambers. In the words of the Warsaw Ghetto’s “Oneg Shabbos” secret organization, led by Emmanuel Ringelblum, which gathered documents and artifacts in the ghetto to record the awful reality for posterity, we must continue to “scream the truth at the world.”
MARION REISS
Beit Shemesh