View the H-German Discussion Logs by month
View the Prior Message in H-German's October 2004 logs by: [date] [author] [thread] View the Next Message in H-German's October 2004 logs by: [date] [author] [thread] Visit the H-German home page.
Report: German Studies Association, 28th Annual Conference, Washington, D. C., October 2004 Session #45: Modes of Vergangenheitsbewaeltigung Moderator: Guillaume de Syon, Albright College "Bauhaus Master Josef Albers in Dewey's Realm: German Artist Emigres at Black Mountain College after 1933" Karl-Heinz Fuessel, Technische Universitaet Berlin "Seife Aus Judenfett - zur Wirkungsgeschichte einer Urban Legend" Joachim Neander, Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum "Jewish Remigration to West Germany after 1945. A Philosophical Inquiry" Peter Boehm, Canisius College "The Photo Journal of Corporal Postenrieder: A Case Study of Vergangenheitsbewaeltigung" Jeff Kleiman, University of Wisconsin Commentator: Harold Marcuse, University of California, Santa Barbara Since Karl-Heinz Fuessel did not attend, this panel had three presentations, which were introduced by moderator Guillaume de Syon of Albright College in Reading, PA: 1. Joachim Neander, a senior independent scholar from Poland, examined the origins and persistence of the urban legend that the body fat of murdered Jews was used to make soap; 2. Peter Boehm, a philosopher at Canisius College in Buffalo, used philosophical principles to argue the reasons why Jews remained in or returned to Germany after 1945 are different from the meanings that their return has for us; and 3. Jeff Kleiman, a specialist in US history at the University of Wisconsin who was a Fulbright professor in Poland, portrayed an album made after the war by a German soldier and hobby photographer from pictures he had taken while serving behind the eastern front. Neander began by showing how widespread the belief in the "soap from human fat" story still is today, on the internet and even at reputable institutions. For example, it is the theme of a short story that was required reading at all Polish schools from 1946 to 1999, and is still on the optional list. A bar of purported human soap was removed from a Rumanian museum only in 2000, and from the Stutthof memorial site museum in 2001-02. Neander cited materials from the World War I era, when the British claimed that the Germans were using fat from human corpses to make glycerin and lubricants. He then documented how that false rumor was "revived" among inmates in French internment camps and the Warsaw ghetto by 1940. It was also used by antisemitic Poles and Germans to humiliate and insult Jews. By November 1942 the claim had reached both Himmler's ears and the pages of the New York Times. Himmler, fearing a public relations nightmare, ordered the head of his Gestapo to find out whether this was happening, and to guarantee that all Jewish corpses would be burned or buried. The rumor was fueled by the stamp RIF, rumored to stand for "reines Judenfett" (actually for "Reichsstelle fuer industrielle Fette"), on bars of soap after rationing was introduced. The rumor boomed again at the end of the war, when the liberation of the camps offered graphic proof of the utter disregard of human life and incontrovertible evidence of the exploitation of human remains for raw materials. Testimony and evidence was presented at the Nuremberg Trial on Feb. 8 and 19, 1946, but it is no longer considered credible. In conclusion, Neander suggested some symbolic reasons why "soap," and not lubricant was the rumored product. He also argued that the debunked World War I rumor and the outlandishness of the soap-from-fat claim may have contributed to the overall Allied skepticism about the Holocaust. Written, oral and hypertext versions of Neander's paper are available at www.history.ucsb.edu/faculty/marcuse/dachau/legends/legends.htm. Boehm began his talk with a discussion of a 1997 statement by Raul Hilberg that he could not answer "why" the Holocaust happened, but only "how" it happened. Boehm argued that the causes of an event are not the same as the reasons why it happened, and he examined the implications of assuming that the reason for the Holocaust was the inherently evil nature of human beings. The existential freedom of choice underlying Jewish immigration to Germany after 1945, which may have been motivated by economic and political considerations, indicates trust that human nature is not inherently evil. While we still cannot fathom the reason why the Holocaust happened, the return of Jews to Germany after their ordeal indicates that it was probably not because of humankind's inherently evil nature. Kleiman obtained an album of about 100 photographs taken by soldier and amateur photographer Corporal Postenrieder between December 1942 and April 1943 on the Russian front, from his daughter, who now lives in the US. Kleiman also has copies of some three dozen letters spanning the period May 1946-April 1953, during which the former Obergefreiter worked on the album. Postenrieder made the album, titled "A Small Russian City," for his sister in New York, so that she would have "a true portrait of war in the Soviet Union," and at one point suggested that she translate and publish it. Although he wrote that he was finished in 1948 and 1951, he must have been dissatisfied, and kept working on the project until finally mailing it in March 1952. Kleiman examined the album's final text in comparison to Postenrieder's experiences as recounted in various letters. In one case Postenrieder wrote that he had never returned to a village, when in fact he had. In another case he said he left the photographing of "smashed skulls" to official photographers, but he did take pictures of corpses strewn on the ground after his company 'cleared out' a bunker of partisans. The photographs and album text offer a more positive portrayal of what happened in the Soviet Union than what Postenrieder experienced. Postenrieder's letters indicate that he worked on the album project more when his daily existence was more secure, and that he was more open about what happened as the threat of retribution by the Allied occupation diminished over time. Is this indicative of Vergangenheitsbewaeltigung more generally? Kleiman has also written a paper about Postenrieder's portrayal of his time in a Soviet POW camp in Siberia in 1945-46, and he has conducted several interviews with Postenrieder's daughter, who denies that atrocities were committed by Germans. He plans to examine how the denial of wartime reality that emerged in the late 1940s and early 1950s is connected to the Holocaust denial of subsequent generations. The daughter also has two diaries Postenrieder wrote in late 1941, and numerous other photographs. In my commentary I suggested that we can tie these cases together by conceiving of Vergangenheitsbewaeltigung as a "taking control of" the past, so that it does not subconsciously influence our decisions in the present. In a sense, the soap from human fat story was a metaphor victims and even perpetrators used to talk about the atrocities going on in their present. It acknowledged the debasement of human life, but also made it seem so absurd as to be implausible. After the war the atrocities that emerged were so horrific that the soap legend succinctly encapsulated them. Since, as Neander suggested, the WWI atrocity propaganda may have contributed to Allied skepticism about the Holocaust, we need to clarify what is true and what is false about the story, so that it does not hold sway over our understanding in the present and future. The care Postenrieder lavished on his album project was a working through of the past in the most literal sense. It is too bad that we don't know what he changed as the years went by, which pictures he added, which he removed, and how his text evolved. Still, this early 1950s document allows us to see how one soldier who witnessed horrific scenes wanted his experience to be transmitted to posterity at that time. And he succeeded, at least with his daughter, who claims that no atrocities were committed by the German army during the war. It is interesting to view this document in the context of the exhibition "Verbrechen der Wehrmacht," which has been touring Germany since 1995. Taking pictures of atrocities was widely practiced by soldiers, but most of those pictures disappeared after the war. This album shows that pictures of a bucolic utopia with a sprinkling of military action were considered suitable for public consumption. Boehm's interpretation of Jews returning to Germany after 1945 as an expression of freedom and a sign of hope about human nature can be seen as our present's attempt to take control of the postwar past, to draw meanings from it that help us to interpret our world today. If what he is arguing is that the meanings for the participants are different than the meanings we may draw from their actions, then I agree with him. A member of the audience noted that there are some parallels between this interpretation and Daniel Goldhagen's assertion that after 1945 (West) Germans were able to abandon a tradition of uniquely vicious antisemitism. For a complete listing of all sessions at the 2004 German Studies Association Conference, please visit <http://www.g-s-a.org>.
|