As I look around the books in my study, I come up with the following writers: Saul Friedlander, Peter Longerich, Michael Marrus, Robert Paxton, Christopher Browning, Deborah Lipstadt, Leni Yahil, Walter Laqueur, Arthur D. Morse, Nora Levin, Susan Zuccotti, Alexander Donat, David S. Wyman, Martin Gilbert, Yehuda Bauer, Timothy Snyder, Tony Judt, Caroline Moorehead, Ian Kershaw, and Raul Hilberg. By anybody's measure, an honor roll of the major historians of modern European history. Everyone of them uses the term "The Holocaust" to distinguish the Nazi mass murder of European Jews from other Nazi mass murders. Most of them also have studied the other Nazi mass murders. The term is solely a classification term and none of those writers to the best of my knowledge ignore or even downplay the other mass murders. The publication dates of these studies range from 1967 (Arthur Morse) to 2013 (Susan Zuccotti). Joel Mc (talk) 10:17, 7 March 2015 (UTC)
Refugee policy
editSince the 19th century, Switzerland had a positive humanitarian image based upon the tradition of granting asylum, providing good offices, humanitarian aid, particularly through the work of the Geneva-based International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC). However, after the First World War, Switzerland was not immune to xenophobic and anti-semitic sentiments that were spreading through Europe. As in other Western countries in the 1930s, Switzerland, increasingly applied restrictions on the admission of foreigners in the name of national security.[1]
Switzerland, apparently on its own initiative began to openly apply racist selection criteria according to the Nazi definition. In 1938, even before the war broke out the Swiss Government requested the Nazi authorities to stamp all passports of German Jews with a "J" as the Swiss did not recognize the right to asylum of those fleeing racial persecution. With the increasing persecution of Jews by the Nazi regime, Swiss restrictive was set apart from other restrictive policies of the Allies due to its geographical location: it was the easiest country on the continent for refugees to reach. Thousands of refugees were sent back even though authorities knew that they were likely sending them to their deaths.[2]
The ICE concluded:
"Switzerland, and in particular its political leaders, failed when it came to generously offering protection to persecuted Jews. This is all the more serious in view of the fact that the authorities, who were quite aware of the possible consequences of their decision, not only closed the borders in August 1942, but continued to apply this restrictive policy for over a year. By adopting numerous measures making it more difficult for refugees to reach safety, and by handing over the refugees caught directly to their persecutors, the Swiss authorities were instrumental in helping the Nazi regime to attain its goals."[3]
Refugee figures are hard to come by. However the Commission concluded that during the Second World War Switzerland offered refuge from Nazi persecution to some 60,000 refugees for varying periods of time, a little under 50% of whom were Jewish.[4]
The commission carefully explained the difficulty of estimating the number of refugees, most of whom were probably Jewish, turned away. In a preliminary report for the Commission, an estimate of 24,000 "documented rejections" was published.[5] However in the final report, perhaps having taken into account criticism of the earlier figures,[6] the commission was more cautious, indicating that it must be assumed that "Switzerland turned back or deported over 20,000 refugees during the Second World War." Specifically, they reported that during the period from 1 January 1942, after the borders were closed, to 31 December 1942, 3,507 refugees were turned back.[7][8]
In August 2001 when the Commission issued a final conclusion, with respect to refugee policy, stating that, "measured against its previous stand in terms of humanitarian aid and asylum where its refugee policy was concerned, neutral Switzerland not only failed to live up to its own standards, but also violated fundamental humanitarian principles."[9]
Uniqueness
editDr. Shimon Samuels, director for International Liaison of the Simon Wiesenthal Centre, describes the acrimonious debate that exists between "specifists" and "universalists". The former fear debasement of the Holocaust by invidious comparisons, while the latter places the Holocaust alongside non-Jewish experiences of mass extermination as part and parcel of the global context of genocide. Dr. Samuels considers the debate, ipso facto, to dishonour the memory of the respective victims of each genocide. In his words, "Each case is specific as a threshold phenomenon, while each also adds its unique memory as signposts along an incremental continuum of horror."[10] Peter Novick argued, "A moment's reflection makes clear that the notion of uniqueness is quite vacuous [… and], in practice, deeply offensive. What else can all of this possibly mean except 'your catastrophe, unlike ours, is ordinary'."[11]
Adam Jones, professor at the University of British Columbia Okanagan (Canada), believes that claims of uniqueness for the Holocaust have become less common since the 1994 Rwandan genocide.[12] In 1997, the publication of The Black Book of Communism led to further debate on the comparison between Soviet and Nazi crimes; the book argued that Nazi crimes were not very different from the Soviet ones, and that Nazi methods were to a significant extent adopted from Soviet methods;[13] in the course of the debate, the term "Red Holocaust" appeared in discourse.[14] Some scholars strongly dissent from this view.[15] In his controversial book,[16][17] The Holocaust Industry, Norman Finkelstein argues that the uniqueness theory does not figure within scholarship of the Nazi Holocaust.[further explanation needed] He writes that the reason these claims persist is because claims of Holocaust uniqueness also confer "unique entitlement" to Jews, and serve as "Israel's prize alibi."[further explanation needed] [18] Steven Katz of Boston University has argued that the Holocaust is the only genocide that has occurred in history, and he defines "Holocaust" to include only "the travail of European Jewry" and not other victims of the Nazis.[further explanation needed][19]
Notes
edit- ^ ICE (2002)pp. 498-499
- ^ ICE (2002)p. 168.
- ^ ICE (2002)p. 168.
- ^ ICE (2002)p. 117.
- ^ ["Switzerland and Refugees in the Nazi Era" http://www.uek.ch/en/publikationen1997-2000/fbere.pdf ICE (2000) p. 263]
- ^ Klarsfeld (1999)
- ^ ICE (2002)p. 115.
- ^ More recent research carried out by University of Geneva historian, Ruth Fivaz-Silbermann, comes up with the figure of a little under 3,500 cases of refoulement at the Franco-Suisse border, which she estimates to be some 2,600 persons.Fivaz-Silbermann 2014
- ^ ICE (2002)p. 499.
- ^ Samuels 2001, p. 209.
- ^ Novick 1999, p. 9.
- ^ Jones 2010, p. 254.
- ^ Courtois 1999, p. 9.
- ^ Möller 1999; Rosefielde 2009.
- ^ Stephen G. Wheatcroft. The scale and nature of German and Soviet repression and mass killings, 1930–45. Europe-Asia Studies Vol. 48, No. 8 (Dec., 1996), pp. 1319–1353.
- ^ Stephen Roth; Stephen Roth Institute (1 September 2002). Antisemitism Worldwide, 2000/1. U of Nebraska Press. pp. 119–. ISBN 0-8032-5945-X.
- ^ Damir Skenderovic (15 September 2009). The Radical Right in Switzerland: Continuity and Change, 1945-2000. Berghahn Books. pp. 227–. ISBN 978-1-84545-948-2.
- ^ Finkelstein, Norman G. (2003). The Holocaust industry : Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering (2nd ed.). London: Verso. pp. 47–49. ISBN 1-85984-488-X.
{{cite book}}:|access-date=requires|url=(help) "The claims of Holocaust uniqueness are intellectually barren and morally discreditable, yet they persist. The question is, Why? In the first place, unique suffering confers unique entitlement."(pg. 47) "In effect, Holocaust uniqueness – this 'claim' upon others, this 'moral capital' – serves as Israel's prize alibi."(pg. 48) - ^ Novick 1999, pp. 196–197.