Before beginning, I’d like to first confirm that we do not live in a parallel universe where Hitler won the Second World War. Germany, after all, initiated and controls the EU as well as the Deutsche mark renamed the euro, but that’s another story. The Jewish community rightly asks us never to forget the holocaust, but as with all history, it is not whether it is remembered, but how it is remembered that is the key.

The tour guide’s opening sentence at Auschwitz was telling. The Poles were the victims of this crime, not the perpetrators. This intrigued me. This statement stood awkwardly at the front of the tour, and this in and of itself was suspicious. I felt compelled to research this statement, and with it opened a Pandora’s box. 

The influx of Jewish refugees from the massacres in Ukraine, during the 1930’s famines there, had antagonised the Poles, and, with the onset of the Great Depression, this need for a scapegoat followed those refugees to Poland.  In 1935 quotas of all kinds and other anti-Semitic regulations were signed into law, rendering Poland’s Jewish citizens virtually stateless, and gave bands of thugs a carte blanche to beat Jews in the streets with impunity. 

Reading the accounts of survivors, I got a taste of the Polish population’s view of the Jews. While of course there are acts of individual heroism, I wanted to understand the behavior of the broader community. I wish to share the following and then swiftly move away from a focus on the Poles. 

As we drifted around Auschwitz in packs of tourists, from different parts of Europe, I looked at all the mugshots of the dead Jews on the walls and then at these lines of camera and phone wielding visitors. I found myself drifting into a surreal intermediary reality where these visitors became, by turn, either guards or work groups hurrying between blocks on shifts. For two hours the guide had painstakingly been telling us how the Jews were killed, but not once touched on the topic of why. I couldn’t help noticing the photos of well-fed Poles rummaging through the piles of clothes left by the gas chambers. The bulk of the killing took place over two and a half years, how could the Poles not know of this and how could the Jews continue to arrive without offering any resistance? These were two of the many questions that sprung to mind, and remained unanswered as the guide took leave of us. 

The ability to frame this crime in a purely Nazi context renders the lesson a false one. And this is what I discovered after reading as many books as I could on the matter. 

So first the Poles. When Auschwitz was emptied by the Germans on the approach of the Russians, leaving the sick, dying, and those wise enough to hide, it was 10 days before the first bewildered Russian soldiers arrived by chance. By this time, without food, water or medicine, the damage was done. 75% of those left behind died as a result of those ten days of solitude. The Russians rounded up some Polish women to help, begrudgingly, to clean and feed the sick. I found it intriguing that not a single Pole came to help in those 10 days, or to guide the Russian soldiers to the site, and nor would any have done anything, without a Russian bayonet at their back. 

Secondly, the Italian Jews talked of how, after the war, as they were moved from one rehabilitation camp to another by the Russians, it was essential to hide the fact that they were Jewish when talking to any Poles. They pretended to be Italian POWs caught fighting for the Nazis. The very few Jews from Warsaw who had survived talked about the fury that their return engendered in their neighbors who had already taken over their houses. The fact that they could not go out at night for fear of being lynched. They talked of how life in Poland after the war was so impossible that they had to immigrate to the US or Israel. These stories don’t fit easily with an exclusive Nazi crime. 

The pre-war anti-Semitic laws in Europe are better documented. The active participation of the Czechoslovakian and Hungarian governments in first cutting off the Jewish livelihoods, then outright confiscation of assets, followed finally by participation in their murder is clearly recorded. The memorial of Auschwitz stands in stark contrast to the absence of any in Slovakia or Hungary. The Poprad railway station, which was the gathering point for all Jews collected from the regions, has a small discrete plaque hidden to one side, and only installed in 2008.

What is not documented is the high levels of autonomy that the Germans gave the national governments of their occupied territories. Each nation was issued with orders to round up their Jewish populations and send them to the camps. It is telling to see the reactions of each government. Again, the label of a Nazi crime exonerates everyone else. But let’s look at these territories further West. In many movies we watch Nazi soldiers hunting under floorboards in French farms, where heroic French citizens risk death itself to protect the Jews. The reality is not quite the same. Not one, not a single German soldier, was employed in the physical rounding up of Jews in Romania, Holland, Belgium, France, Norway, or Denmark. A small number worked in the administration of the actions. This local work was carried out by the national police with the help of the civil authorities, and the local community. The reaction to a Nazi order was telling in the different levels of enthusiasm with which it was carried out. The order in which I present the countries above indicates the level of enthusiasm with which the orders were followed. In Holland, the transportation of the Jews to the death camps was carried out with such enthusiasm and efficiency, that many in the local administration received commendations from the Nazis! Only the Danes exited this period of history with their integrity intact, saving 90% of the Jews in an organised exodus to Sweden. Why did the other countries not do the same? This is a far more important question than the techniques used by the Nazi’s in the death camps to dispose of so many souls. 

Looking at the British and US governments which were in full knowledge of what was going on inside these camps, their refusal to give sanctuary to the vast majority of Jews not only places us among the guilty, but the British resettlement of any who did reach their shores to British Mandated Palestine in the 30’s, can be seen to have directly led to the conflicts in that region that still plague us today.

Lesson One – Anti-semitism was policy in much of Europe and a majority sentiment in all of it. We are all guilty of condoning through participating in the actions all the way up to the camp gates (dutch railway drivers drove their trains this far). Also in cordoning off the Jewish escape, in the case of Britain by refusing any meaningful number of refugees.

Only Romania and Switzerland have really funded a state sponsored review of their national involvement in the holocaust. Belgium rather belatedly joined the list in 2002. But really do we wish to understand the phenomena that created the holocaust? Not only do we falsify history by calling it a Nazi crime, we falsify it by pretending it was a single aberration of history. Hence the title of this article. The Nazi’s did not invent the yellow badge for Jews. They have been forced to wear it intermittently for a thousand years. Massacres have been going on since before European history was written. 

In the first century 50% of the 2 million Jews living in Judea were massacred in the two Jewish revolts, and most of the rest became refugees in neighbouring nations. Emperor Hadrian completed the erasure of Jewish history by even changing the name of Judea to Palestine. Again 1,200 years later, three nations managed to kill 100% of their Jewish population, and the rest of Europe to massacre approximately 50%. The year was 1349. The excuse given, the Black Death. Articles were promulgated across Europe that a Jewish conspiracy had been organised to poison all the Christians’ wells, and the pestilence was the consequence. Hundreds of bands of Fladulators  roamed Europe in bands as big as 500. They would be beating themselves with metal spiked whips. When they arrived at a town they would construct a wooden holding pen and, in conjunction with the local mob, take the Jews to it and once they were locked inside, they would set it alight and watch hundreds die in agony. Any who broke out were impaled to the roaring delight of the crowd. Not a single Jew was left alive in Holland, Austria, or Germany. In some cities as many as 6,000 Jews would set themselves alight in their own homes rather than give the mob the pleasure of organising it themselves. 

Lesson 2 – There is an innate blood lust in humans that seeks pleasure in others violent strife. News channels and documentaries play to this audience, as does Hollywood.

The only pattern we can find in these massacres is that when there is a famine, a pestilence, or economic collapse, the majority turn on the minority with an ancient blood lust that seems to only strengthen with each passing century. I believe this is one of the many lessons that needs to be remembered. 

While lending money at interest was barred by the church, it was also necessary for the wealthy to use middle men to lend money to the King. The King would offer protection to the Jews while he needed their money, but once he owed them too much, and his lenders, through their Jewish agents indicated they would lend no more, he would remove that protection, quietly encourage massacres, and pilfering from the agents himself, while declaring their loans null. The overriding rational here seems to have been cold bloodied economic calculation.

Lesson 3 – The prime reasons for pogroms throughout history have chiefly been economic in nature. With neighbours swift to loot and appropriate Jewish assets or write off their own liabilities. In Hungary in 1934 90% of bank employees were still Jewish and the Great Depression made loan repayments very hard.

The absurdity of anti-Semitism and its promulgation by our moral fathers the church is perhaps a second lesson. Lovers of ancient history will note two things about Jesus’ trial. Firstly, we are lucky to have still records of a number of trials overseen by Pontius Pilate himself. In none does he pass the role of judge to the mob. Secondly, we know that Pope Damascus I commissioned his secretary St Jerome, a Roman citizen, with the task of writing an official Latin bible against a backdrop of numerous different gospels and interpretations that were tearing the church apart. Is it any wonder that he wanted the Roman’s hand to be clean of the guilt of killing the Son of God? It is upon these few sentences that Papal Bulls were issued over the centuries authorizing all manner of abuses on the Jewish people. 

But genocide and holocaust are not the exclusive curse of the Jews, although they have been the focus of it in Europe. Beyond the limp excuses provided by scripture what is it about the Jews, as opposed to other minorities, that has made them such a focus of hatred? The answer to this came to me when reading a regular economic blog on the internet. This one was on Elon Musk. For once, my eyes trailed down to the comments section as the article ended. I saw someone writing how much they hated him. I scrolled further down, and it was page upon page of hate speech by dozens of anonymous individuals. Looking at other articles on him, I found more of the same. I found this intriguing. What was there for a person to hate in Elon Musk if they were not a direct competitor? A man who had built multiple companies, taught himself how to program, and even how to build rockets. Someone who is financially successful, but still works an 80 hour week, with passions chiefly focused on the long term saving of the human race. Casino moguls, even Jewish ones, didn’t seem to generate such vitriol. It became clear that they hated him BECAUSE he was clever, successful, married to a British model, and had 5 sons. He was shining a mirror on their own inadequacies and they hated it. 

When studying the statistics in Hungary for the Jewish population it also was also starkly obvious. Unlike, say the aboriginal communities across the globe, who sat at the bottom of the economic heap, the Jewish minority outdid themselves. Jews dominated higher education, the professions, and company management, in a classic example of the 20/80 rule. As 18% of the population they held 80% of these positions. The explanation to the average Hungarian was that it couldn’t possibly be that they saved a higher proportion of their income, worked longer hours, put all their children into University, and generally planned ahead. The only explanation was a Zionist conspiracy. This was the Jewish sin, to thrive DESPITE persecution. This hatred of the thinkers and leaders in a community was well articulated by the Cultural Revolution in China. This is another important lesson of the Holocaust.

Lesson 4 – There is an innate hatred of the intellectual by the less inquisitive which seems embedded in our DNA.

Reading the autobiography of Hoess, the head of Auschwitz, gives us more clues on the human condition that makes genocide part of our make-up. A man with little interest in the Jewish question, who took pride in doing his job as well as he could. Nothing in his early years, where he was being prepped for a career in the church, indicated a psychotic tendency. At his Nuremberg trial he couldn’t help but hide his pride in achieving as many as 9,000 deaths per day within the tight budget restrictions he worked under. He even chuckled at the lack of professionalism of researchers who suggested he had killed 2.5 million people. He quickly gave accurate numbers from each country and said he had only killed 1.55 million people and the researcher should check his facts. 

Lesson 5 – Most of the killing was organised and achievable on such a scale because of bureaucratically minded individuals who will obey any order or any target based on hierarchy, delivered by someone in a smart uniform and on a crisp stamp laden piece of paper, with little thought for its moral implications.

Next I wish to look at the reason why so many Jews went without a fight to their deaths. Surely there is a big lesson for us all here, that also must not be forgotten. My mind turns to the autobiography of Elie Wiesel, a Hungarian Jewish boy. Hungary had 45,000 Jews who had fled Ukraine and were therefore not Hungarian citizens. These Jews were rounded up and transported before the war to Hungary’s western border, where they were shot by Hungarian volunteers, and thrown into large pits. Elie Wiesel’s rabbi was one of these people. He, along with a couple of other young boys were shot poorly and survived by faking death and digging themselves out after their burial. This rabbi, at great risk, returned to his town and told everyone he met what occurred. Not a single soul believed him. Most believed that he had lost his mind, others that he was seeking sympathy. Elie admits to thinking both. It is clear, reading many stories that news of the death camps was available, but nearly everyone chose not to believe them. We chose what we wish to believe and live in an artificially constructed history which paints a falsehood of the nature of our community.

Lesson 6 – Focus on the beautiful with your heart, but face the horror of our own nature with the full force of your mind. Be aware of the delicacy of the human bonds around us.

Lastly a word on the Jewish Ghetto police and many within the Jewish community. Recently in my research, by accident, I discovered that Sabina Wolanski, who opened the Jewish Holocaust Memorial in Berlin, had been a teenage Jew Hunter during the war. Through this research I learnt about the network of Jews who kept themselves alive, well fed, and in many cases accumulated considerable wealth, by firstly keeping their community calm as the Transport Edicts were issued, then organised these transports, and eventually took on positions searching for hidden Jews on behalf of the Nazis. Stooge young sweet teenage Jews would go from house to house supposedly looking for shelter. If it was given, they would get a message out to their leader who would then begin extorting money and valuables from the other Jews hiding there or those who had hidden them. If they refused to pay, the Jew hunters would report the location to the Nazis. All these Jew Hunters were Jews themselves. They experienced no hunger, and did no labour during the war. 

Lesson 7 – The irony that the Jewish Holocaust Memorial was opened by a Jew Hunter was shocking, but perhaps the ultimate lesson for us all. That history is rewritten to make it palatable to us all, even to the Jews. As fellow victims, persecuted from outside their community, the real lessons on human nature are lost. As the social psychology experiments of Stanley Milgram and many others show, one man will betray another, will injure another wilfully with the smallest economic reward. History’s books and memorials appear more to hide this truth in creating myths and legends of a communities past with carefully selected data. We are liberators when it suits that falsehood, victims when it suits that falsehood. 

The real lessons of Auschwitz remain buried, because we are all perpetrators, even some whose ashes clogged the vents.