Scholar Says World Must Respond to the Enormity of the Holocaust

Emil L. Fackenheim, professor of philosophy at the University of Toronto, declared today that unless the world responds with vigor to the enormity of the Holo- caust “we will all be destroyed by it.” He made his remarks at a press conference during the opening day of the four-day “international Scholars Conference on the Holocaust — A Generation After” sponsored by the Institute of Contemporary Jewry of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and the United Jewish Appeal.

Fackenheim said the only “total act of defiance” to the Holocaust has been the creation of the State of Israel. He said for one small moment the world had a “twinge” of conscience when the United Nations voted for the establishment of Israel, He said now that same UN has become the world center of anti-Semitism.

Noting that French Nobel prize winners in opposing UNESCO’s anti-Israel resolutions said UNESCO was calling on paper for the destruction of Israel, Fackenheim said that before the Nazi era there was a hundred years of calling for Jewry’s destruction on paper in anti-Semitic writings.

Nathan Rotenstreich, professor of philosophy at Hebrew University and chairman of the conference, said the purpose of the gathering at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace was to put the Holocaust into perspective 30 years after the liberation of the concentration camps. He said scholars from North America, Europe and Israel would discuss the historical and philosophical meaning of the Holocaust as well as the effect Nazism has on today’s anti-Semitism.

ROLE OF JUDENRAT DISCUSSED

Today’s session focused on Jewish reaction to Nazi rule, Raul Hilberg professor of political science at the University of Vermont, and the author of “The Destruction of the European Jews,” said that his studies showed that the Nazis set up a bureaucratic machinery for the destruction of Jews, He said the Judenrat, the Jewish Councils in the ghettos, were designed to facilitate the destruction of the Jews. However, Hilberg stressed that the Jewish members of the Judenrats were not collaborators or ideological supporters of Nazism but thought they were acting to help save Jewish lives.

Yehuda Bauer, head of the institute of Contemporary Jewry, said that the leaders of the ghetto, by seeking to preserve normal life in the ghetto, did not help the Nazis but were building morale. He said that acts of morale-building should be seen as resistance to the Nazis. He said there was no possibility of real opposition to the Nazis. Several scholars noted that the Jews had no weapons and others questioned why no intelligence system was set up by the Jewish councils. Much of the discussion today was based on Dr. Isiah Trunk’s book, “Judenrat,” Dr. Trunk, chief archivist at the YIVO Institute, couldn’t attend today because of illness.

During the press conference, Hilberg said the interpretation of the Jewish response to the Nazis has important political implications for world Jewry, Israel and the world. He said Jews are seeking an image, and the models they have are Auschwitz and Israel. He said Jews and others have to come to terms with what happened and explain it to themselves.

But Fackenheim said that Jews were murdered for no other reason that they were Jews and there was nothing they could have done in the ghettos to prevent it. He said the real questions are: Why did a civilized nation in the center. of 20th Century Europe murder one-third of the Jewish peoples and what can be done to prevent it from happening again.