Johannes
>From today's Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung:
www.faz.com
A Topic Too Hot to Handle
By Lorenz Jäger
FRANKFURT. In 1953, when Lavrenty Beria, the head of the Soviet secret police, was liquidated, subscribers to the Great Soviet Encyclopedia received a letter from the editor. They were politely requested to cut out the entry "Beria" and send it back to the Encyclopedia. In return they were offered an updated version of the entry "Bering Strait," to be pasted into the empty space.
These days there are good reasons to remember this anecdote. Two books from the United States had the German public talking for weeks last summer. The first is Norman G. Finkelstein's "The Holocaust Industry" and the second is Peter Novick's study of the "Americanization" of the Holocaust, "The Holocaust in American Life."
Reflective and Moderate, Stridently Polemical
Both books address in critical-historical terms the media representation of Nazi Germany's policy of genocide. Novick is reflective and moderate, Finkelstein is sometimes splendidly and sometimes stridently polemical.
Above all, the third section of Finkelstein's book, the hard core of his argument, which questions whether the number of survivors has been overestimated, created quite a stir. In his book, he maintains among other things that considerable sums from German compensation funds are not being sent to survivors but wrongly directed to more and more new Holocaust museums and education programs.
Both books appear this week in German translation. The regional broadcaster SWR commissioned TV journalist Tina Mendelsohn to make a documentary on Finkelstein's arguments. The film begins with swing music and Joseph Goebbels howling in the late 1930s and early '40s about Jews who escaped to Paris, London and New York. It shows survivors of the National Socialist genocide, former forced laborers, representatives of the Jewish Claims Conference, lawyers in various major trials of recent years, a spokesperson for a Swiss bank.
The film shows historians who reject Finkelstein's arguments, such as Hans Mommsen, who believes that the book fuels mindless resentment in Germany. And it shows others, such as Lutz Niethammer, who seem to recognize a grain of truth in Finkelstein's criticism of victim organizations. Finkelstein himself appears in the film, explaining his arguments again. It also shows Salomon Korn, accusing the author of propagating conspiracy theories.
These are diverse voices. No one who sees the film will find assessing Finkelstein's book any easier; on the contrary. One of the most effective images in the film is the interview with one of the pioneers of the Claims Conference, describing the unimaginable difficulties of the institution's early stages. How can anyone decide how much compensation is due for a dead mother? A dead brother?
Censorship in the Guise of Protection
Watching this, it is hard to remain unmoved. But the German public won't be watching it. The documentary has been taken off the programming schedule. It was to have aired on Monday night, but last Friday newspapers received a polite letter. At the instigation of television head Christof Schmid, the broadcaster informed the press that "the film could unleash reactions that the filmmaker Tina Mendelsohn and the responsible editors do not intend. A revised version of the film will be aired at a later date. We ask that you return the videocassettes." The paternalistic gesture that transforms the censored reporter into one requiring protection should be noted.
Schmid is known as a thoughtful man. Observers describe him as a man of wide intellectual horizons. Did he have no idea that his decision to withdraw the film would unleash precisely what he feared -- a revival of the ugliest possible stereotypes of the "Jewish influence" on the media? What motivated him? No one knows. Even Mendelsohn was unable to speak with him last Friday.
The scandal begins where management intended it to break off. Mendelsohn is an experienced television documentary filmmaker and was awarded a prize for her work in 1997. Cynics may say that the broadcaster's unthinking decision can only be to her advantage, increasing her public profile.
But SWR has pushed her into an extremist corner, where she doesn't actually belong. In future, caution will prevail whenever her name is mentioned. Anyone who wants to see how she really works will be able to watch one of her earlier films on Monday night. The broadcaster hastily decided to show Der Skandal und die Wehrmachtausstellung (The Scandal and the Wehrmacht Exhibition) instead.
At the end of the Finkelstein film, Raul Hilberg, the first to research the extermination of European Jews, has a say. He has seen fashions in the politics of remembrance come and go. He explains that many of his more skeptical views on the compensation policy of recent years would be condemned by current opinion as anti-Semitic.
As one who came to Germany with the U.S. Army in 1945, this would not apply to him. But the others would have to be more careful, he says, especially the Germans and the Swiss. He's probably right.