June 1999 Historians vs. The People: Bridging the Gap By Rabbi Alvin Kass The Holocaust, which marked the Nazi murder of six million Jews, has become the benchmark of human evil. It has raised profound questions of all kinds. The search for answers has focused a great deal of attention on recent atrocities perpetrated by Serbs upon ethnic Albanians in Kosovo. It is hoped that by studying genocide in Kosovo, we'll understand better both the problem of genocide in general as well as the particular genocide directed against the Jews from 1939 to 1945. In his best-selling book, Hitler's Willing Executioners, Harvard Professor Daniel J. Goldhagen argues that the Nazi leaders could never have carried out their genocidal strategies against the Jews if they didn't have the acquiescence and support of most normal German citizens. The big question, therefore, is how do average people turn into heartless monsters? The answer of Dr. Goldhagen is that Hitler and his cohorts simply exploited centuries-old myths, believed by most Germans, which dehumanized and demonized the Jews. The Jews were condemnded as usurers, misanthropes, and Christ-killers. They were sub-human. Consequently, it was not necessary to manifest the usual moral and ethical restraints in dealing with them. Myriads of otherwise decent Germans believed that the Jews deserved the fate meted out to them by their leaders, and that to rid the world of Jews was an act of the utmost virtue. What we know about the events in Kosovo suggests that a similar dynamic is at work. President Slobodan Milosevic may very well be a power-mad dictator. It is, however, unlikely that he could put his genocidal policies into effect if he didn't have the backing of the preponderance of Serbs. It takes a lot of Serbs to cause the mayhem that has befallen the Kosovors. It is clear that Milosevic, like Hitler, is agitating antagonisms that go back centuries, antagonisms that instill Serbs with the feeling that their actions against the Albanians, which the rest of the world views as atrocities, are actually deeds of moral valor and religious vindication. They see the Albanians, not as human beings, but as accursed Muslims, narcotics traffickers, and subversive agents of the Ottoman Turks. Hence, the Albanians deserve everything they are getting and more! Recently, I attended a lecture by Professor Michael Stanislawski of Columbia about the disparity between popular and scholarly perceptions of Jewish history. Thus, most Jewish historians today accept the thesis proffered in 1928 by Professor Salo Baron that the lachrymose view of the Jews, which sees most of their history as a tale of unmitigated suffering and pain interspersed with episodes of scholarly creativity, is incorrect. Objectively speaking, according to Baron and his colleagues, Jews have not suffered much more than other peoples, save for the Holocaust. But, it is difficult to get Jews to go along with that idea, no matter how true it is, because they are heavily invested emotionally in the traditional outlook. Actually, there is a gross disparity within the ranks of all groups between the historical facts and the prevailing sterotypes. Thus, serious German and Serb historians all reject the prejudicial stereotypes that have generated terrible crimes against mankind. The masses, nevertheless, adhere obstinately to these spurious notions that afford them emotional satisfaction and justify the basest behavior. Quite obviously, serious historical research ought not be just an intellectual exercise for professional historians with no relevance to the real world. If we are ever to grow as human beings and to rise to higher levels of conduct, we have to be open-minded enough to reject stereotypes that objective investigation shows to be false. Falsehoods are a luxury the world cannot afford, no matter how emotionally satisfying our prejudices may be. The survival of mankind may very well require a direct correspondence between our beliefs and the state of our knowledge.