The Holocaust and the eternal Jewish Problem

In addition to my occasional contributions to TOI I also host a weekly blog on JPost, Antisemitism and Jewish Survival. That column represents a an organized discussions surrounding the survivability of the Jewish People in the Diaspora, and begins with a discussion of Christian scriptural writings which inspire what is an eternal Christian Jewish Problem and proceed to discuss secularization of the “problem” in the Age of Reason. Currently the focus is on aspects of the Holocaust and, most immediately, the Auschwitz bombing debate and America’s role in that attempted Final Solution to the Jewish Problem. 

Two persistent criticisms of my writings are that I do not raise important issues regarding individual topics and, related, that I do not go deeply enough into the issues I do raise. And both criticisms are just, from the perspective of my critics. And that is the source of our difference, that all of us have a different perspective, and while there is some commonality between us, that which is important to one might not be so to the other. And while I appreciate all criticisms, I am still obliged to test them against MY project: Christendom’s eternal Jewish Problem, and the place of the Jewish People in an hostile (only occasionally apparent) Christian-hosted Diaspora.

My response below is an adaptation of one written for one such critic.

What is happening to the Jews in Christendom is my issue, “X,” not what happened or why in the Auschwitz debate. In some cases it can be argued that “tactics” is the key to “strategic” victory. Regarding the Shoah, the Final Solution and not the details of the horror is the “tactic” in the larger issue, Christendom’s need to solve its pathological Jewish Problem. Whatever virtues or not Poland or Britain or the US in their conduct during the war, their response to the Holocaust represents no more than minutiae: pebbles in the stream of Diaspora history in which tens of millions Jews have been murdered, before Auschwitz.

When I discuss “Roosevelt,” for me he is part of a mythos. Not a real person but a stand-in for a moment in the millennial flow of our History. When I speculate on his “motives,” such as rationalizing to justify not taking a humanitarian step, making even a gesture on behalf of those about to be turned into smoke; or that in his role as commander in chief, his decision to not bomb might have been playing to Hitler’s “obsession” to murder Jews; that diverting attention to murdering Jews distracted from military action against American soldiers in the war. Perhaps a “rational” military decision in context to the larger war, still me suggesting such does not represent me as providing “FDR” a human face, an effort, as you see it, of me trying to “understand” him. The Holocaust was an enormous event in our participation as Jews in this dance of death, “X”. But it is just that, the most recent “event.” And in the historical process underlying its emergence in the 20th century it is just that, the most recent. In this discussion, horrible as the Shoah was, in terms of my writings, it is an Event. It is not the topic.

“Roosevelt,” “Hitler,” “Germany,” “America:” these are bit players in the full enormity of the topic under discussion, my ISSUE. Their appearance in my writings is but to illustrate the underlying PROCESS, not explain the more obvious: their accidental participation/presence in that process: the Final Solution to Christendom’s Jewish Problem.