I welcome the opportunity to explain the significant dangers posed by the steps
called for by the signees of the Prague Declaration.
There is no small degree of irony in Barry Rubin’s choice of the
quote from the Prague Declaration that “those who neglect their past
have no future” (Magazine, August 13) to promote his case for Jewish
and Israeli support for that document which seeks to obtain official
recognition that the crimes of communism were equivalent to those
of Nazism and that both constitute a European “common legacy,” which
must be recognized as such for the continent to ever achieve unity.
For it is precisely my concern to preserve the accurate narrative and memory
of our Jewish past which motivates me to do whatever I can to inform
the Israeli and Jewish public about the dangers of the Prague Declaration
and its potentially dire consequences for the future of Holocaust
memory and education.
As a proud member of the group which Rubin accuses
of waging “a relentless campaign” against the June 3, 2008 document,
I welcome the opportunity to explain the flaws in his arguments and
the significant dangers posed by the practical steps called for by
the signees.
The heart and core of Rubin’s case is his assertion
that by rejecting the Prague Declaration, which promotes a historically
false parity or equivalency between crimes by communists and those
of the Nazis, we become accomplices in the decades-long efforts to
hide the ravages of communist totalitarianism and repression, and
even the crimes committed against Jews by the Soviet Union and other
communist regimes. Yet nothing could be further from the truth.
THE OPPOSITION to the Prague Declaration has never
been based on a desire to hide communist crimes, nor do we oppose
any initiative to honor and commemorate their victims or punish those
guilty of committing those crimes. On the contrary, any such steps
are in fact long overdue and would help mitigate the “Holocaust envy”
so prevalent in Eastern Europe, where there is widespread jealousy
of the recognition and restitution accorded to the Nazis’ Jewish
victims, in contrast to the general failure to sufficiently acknowledge
the suffering of those victimized by the communists, compensate those
wronged and prosecute those responsible.
Such steps are extremely important, but they do not
turn communist crimes into a historical phenomenon equivalent to
the devastation of the Holocaust. As the doyen of Holocaust historians,
Prof. Yehuda Bauer, of Yad Vashem, pointed out so convincingly in
his seminal essay on this subject (“Remembering accurately on International
Holocaust Day,” The Jerusalem Post, January 25), “There is ground
for deep concern about repeated attempts to equate the Nazi regime’s
genocidal policies, with the Holocaust at their center, with other
murderous or oppressive actions, an equation that not only trivializes
and relativizes the genocide of the Jews... but is a mendacious revision
of recent world history.”
In addition, it is important to emphasize that the
practical steps called for in the Prague Declaration pose an immediate
and long-term threat to Holocaust memory and commemoration, as well
as the accuracy of the currently-accepted Holocaust historical narrative.
Thus, for example, the initiative to designate August 23 as a joint
memorial day for all victims of totalitarian regimes undermines the
current status of the Holocaust as a unique tragedy and will ultimately
bring into question the validity of a special memorial day for its
victims.
A pluralistic, globalized world will undoubtedly prefer
a more inclusive day of commemoration, and two days a year for the
same tragedy will no doubt be considered excessive. In the same vein,
the Institute of European Memory and Conscience which is planned
would make institutions like Yad Vashem superfluous.
WHAT RUBIN fails to take into account are the hidden
motives behind the Prague Declaration and its insidious agenda. If
the real goal was to merely gain official recognition for communist
crimes and international empathy for its victims, both important
and legitimate goals, we could support the Prague Declaration without
any reservations. By seeking equivalency with Holocaust crimes, however,
it becomes clear that among its primary motivations is to help the
countries of Eastern Europe deny, relativize and/or minimize their
sins of collaboration with the Nazis in Holocaust crimes and change
their status and image from that of perpetratornations to nations
of victims.
Such a transformation would not only neutralize the
justified criticism of their wartime crimes and failure since independence
to bring to justice their unprosecuted Holocaust perpetrators, but
would put them on the same pedestal as Holocaust survivors and earn
them not only approbation and sympathy but financial compensation
as well. And it is precisely this unthinkable scenario that we find
so objectionable, and what we are trying to prevent when we criticize
the Prague Declaration and fight against its acceptance and implementation.
Perhaps the best proof of its dangers can be found
in one of Rubin’s assertions about the rationale behind the document.
Thus according to him, “If the USSR had not backed Hitler during
the 1939-1941 period, there would have very possibly not been a Second
World War or Holocaust at all.”
Indeed an ostensibly powerful argument and one that
underscores the choice of August 23, the day of the Soviet-Nazi Molotov-Ribbentrop
Nonaggression Pact as a joint memorial day for all the victims of
totalitarian regimes.
The only problem is that, as Bauer clearly demonstrates,
the argument is baseless. In his words, “The greater threat to all
of humanity was Nazi Germany, and it was the Soviet army that liberated
Eastern Europe, was the central force that defeated Nazi Germany
and thus saved Europe and the world from the Nazi nightmare... World
War II was started by Nazi Germany, not the Soviet Union, and the
responsibility of the 35 million dead in Europe, 29 million of them
non-Jews, is that of Nazi Germany, not Stalin. To commemorate their
victims equally is a distortion.”
So if a well-intentioned Jewish scholar has to resort
to historical distortion to justify the Prague Declaration, it should
be obvious why those who aspire to a better future based on a concern
for the past totally reject this dangerous document.
The writer is the chief Nazi-hunter of the Simon Wiesenthal
Center and the director of its Israel office.
His most recent book is Operation Last Chance: One Man’s Quest to
Bring Nazi Criminals to Justice.
jpost.com
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