Germans, not Nazis, uber alles

"When I think of Germany at night, thoughts of sleep are put to flight," wrote Heinrich Heine in his powerful 1843 work "Night Thoughts" (Nachtgedanken). I was reminded of those haunting words again this week, as I often am at memorial events commemorating the Holocaust in Israel or elsewhere - even on the very turf that was the epicenter of the Final Solution.

In September 2006, I was privileged to attend an impressive commemoration of the 65th anniversary of the horrific slaughter at Babi Yar, in Kiev. On that blood-soaked killing field, tens of thousands of Jews met their end, mowed down by machine-gun fire.

Though there was abundant reference to "Nazis" and "Fascists," the Kiev ceremony, like many other such observances worldwide, contained not even a fleeting mention of the national identity of the main perpetrators. It is impossible not to notice this very disturbing phenomenon. While other protagonists (whatever their role, whether as perpetrators, bystanders or rescuers) are generally and unhesitatingly identified as Lithuanians, Dutch, Danes, Poles, Croats, etc., the masterminds of the genocide - the Germans (and Austrians) - seem to be exempt from this practice, as if by a divine act of grace. The effective withholding of such information from public discourse is akin to cases in which court orders forbid disclosure of the names of accused minors, to shield them from being identified or scrutinized. Thus, with de facto deference, the killers of millions of Jews are portrayed simply as "Nazis."

At that memorable ceremony in Kiev, an old acquaintance from Warsaw, himself a survivor, handed me a slim book in Polish entitled "Jewish Children Accuse."

That volume contains the testimonies of children who witnessed the murders of parents and whole families, and were subjected to unimaginable suffering and torment. The child survivors, to be sure, did not speak of "Nazis" - perhaps because they had not been exposed to such nuanced speech - and they certainly had no fear of offending the children, or grandchildren, of those who had murdered their parents, let alone defaming the murderers themselves.

"The Germans took them to the cemetery and ordered them to dig a hole... Mother jumped and fell. Father jumped after her and the Germans shot both of them," declared Rozalia, who was 9 when the war broke out. Another child, 7 years old when the killing began, described the way in which the Jews of Tluste, in east Galicia, were eliminated: "The children were thrown live into the ditches and covered with bodies. A German grabbed a child by the neck and shouted Nimm den Dreck und schmeiss herein [Take the dirt and throw it over here]. Children were swimming in blood in those ditches... All the clothes were taken to the town and stored in warehouses. Then the Germans carried them away."

It was not just Jews who, forgetting their manners or unaware of the niceties of polite discourse, directly identified those responsible for their misery, without mincing words. Zbigniew Mankowski, recognized by Yad Vashem as a "Righteous Gentile," was 11 years old in 1939. At risk of their lives, he, his parents and two older brothers who were later killed in the 1944 Warsaw uprising sheltered a Jewish woman in their own home. As recently as three weeks ago he reminded me, "I lived in occupied Poland from the beginning of the occupation until the very last day, and I never saw a single Nazi - only Germans."

In 1944, before the war had even ended, Ben Hecht, "the enfant terrible of American letters," opined: "The Germans sat at desks and held conferences, discussing the most economical ways to murder Jews. The Germans at these desks were not fantastic Germans. They were usual Germans. They were German professors, officers, city planners, businessmen, German writers, German heroes, German musicians, German scientists. At these desks were all the German students and leaders and polite citizens whom we will see again when, as tourists, we visit the streets of conquered Berlin..."

Hecht hastened to add, "Our reasonable thinkers are always assuring us that it is a sin against reason to condemn a whole people as evil when only a part of their soul is at fault; since it is obvious that, in addition to being murderers, they are also music lovers and very efficient with test tubes." Hecht, one-time Berlin correspondent for the Chicago Daily News, could find no compelling reason to camouflage the identity of these "usual" people. But 65 years later, as even the child survivors near the ends of their lives, things are very different.

Memory and history have probably never been so kind. Indeed, no other nation seems to have enjoyed such a measure of benevolence. One can only imagine how Hecht would have responded to this turn of events, though I suspect that he anticipated it.

Indeed, the Germans' success pales in comparison to the virtual free pass given their erstwhile associates who have been much less forthcoming in admitting any culpability at all, and who have convinced much of the world that Hitler was German and Beethoven Austrian... But that is another story.

I write these words almost seven decades since the German assault on Poland that triggered the start of World War II, and mindful of the great efforts modern-day Germany has undertaken to make amends for the past and its long record of friendship with Israel. This week, that was manifested again, when, to its credit, Germany, following Italy's lead, withdrew from the shameful Durban II proceedings. Successive generations cannot and should not be held accountable for the sins of their parents and grandparents - even if they must bear the weighty burden of history on their shoulders and are charged with the imperatives of remembering and teaching.

But a simple, undiplomatic truth must be stated: The prevailing practice (extending even to scholarly literature) of making reference to "Nazis" when we mean "Germans" (and "Austrians") constitutes a dangerous distortion of history, one that imperils the way in which the Shoah will be remembered in the future. One hundred years from now, will it be clear to anyone but social scientists that Nazism was born and thrived on German (and Austrian) soil - or that, although vast numbers of local people across the continent took part, the architects and prime executors of the plan to make Europe judenrein were Germans (and Austrians)? Or will it only be understood that people of many nationalities were accomplices to anonymous Nazis who annihilated the Jewish population of Nazi-occupied Europe?

The fact that we cannot answer these questions unequivocally should cause all of us sleepless nights...

Dr. Laurence Weinbaum is chief editor of the Israel Journal of Foreign Affairs, and co-author of a forthcoming book on the Warsaw Ghetto uprising.