Holocaust Takes Historical Perspective
Steve Bittner, from the History department, was this week’s speaker. Bittner is currently on leave from the history department. Bittner is a fellow member of the National Council of Eurasian and East European Research. He received his BA from University of Michigan, Ann Arbor and his master’s degree is from the University of Chicago. He recently finished editing the memoirs of Dmitri Sheperah, who was a colleague of the late soviet leader Joseph Stalin. His book is going to be published by Yale University Press later this year.
“I like to watch the ticker tape go across the screen, it convinces me even though I am always alone, there is always something important going on,” Bittner said at the beginning of the lecture.
“During my four years at Sonoma State I have come to miss the vitality of the bigger university. This lecture series is an exception; this is exactly the sort of thing you would find at Berkeley or UCLA,” Bittner said.
Bittner claims “There is an overlap in the scholarship of Stalinism and the scholarship of Nazism. They are joined by this concept we call totalitarianism.” Bittner stressed that the word “totalitarianism” has almost been used as much as the word terrorism, to the point where it’s meaning is void. “In regards to Stalinism and Nazism, despite all its flaws, I don’t think the Soviet Union was ever genocidal.”
Bittner says that “the Holocaust was a primarily Eastern European and Soviet event.” The American view of the holocaust, according to Bittner, is that of “Anne Frank curled up in the attic of her apartment building in Amsterdam.” Bittner points out that “three million Soviet Jews vanished in the holocaust.”
Philosophers tried to apply scientific law to the realm of politics and human behavior. By doing so, they gave up the American Revolution, and they gave up the French Revolution. “The enlightenment gave us the idea that human existence can be improved upon,” said Bittner.
Bittner claims that there are three structural developments that in return set the stage for the holocaust. Anti-Semitism is the first development that helped in the creation of the holocaust. Bittner says that “Semitism is a stupid word,” and that “there is no doctrine of Semitism.”
“Anti-Semitism refers to animosity towards Jews,” and that “[anti-Semitism] is known as Christianity itself,” he continued.
Bittner talked about rumors that Jews used the blood of children in their Passover moccasins, and further that Jews were targets of the Crusades in the 11th and 13th centuries, Jews were also targets of the inquisition, and in the 12th and 13th centuries, Jews were expelled from France and Spain. In the 18th century Jews were expelled from Prussia, and in Eastern Europe Jews were forbidden from owning land.
Bittner commented on how anti-Semitism became less religious and more racial. Jews were increasingly assimilated into their home societies. Pseudo-scientific theories made Jews appear to be greedy and ruthless. He claimed that “Jews were not patriotic, they were loyal to transnational groups.”
“Jews could be arch-capitalists, greedy in the extreme, or they could be atheist bullshitists,” says Bittner. He claimed though that, “This is hardly an exhaustive list of indignities that the Jews have been subjected to in the past two thousand years.”
Bittner’s second structural element is nationalism. Nationalism, by common understanding, is “the belief that groups of people are bound together by territorial, cultural and (sometimes) ethnic links.” He claimed that “the borders between nation-states were rarely perfect” and that “Billions of Europeans lived outside their nation state.”
The third element that set the stage for the holocaust is militarism. In 1870 every European state maintained a standing army. Between 1875 and 1914 military standing doubled in France and tripled in Great Britain and Germany. In Russia, the military accounted for one-third of the state’s budget. There were technological advancements such as the machine gun, new types of artillery, and chemical weapons.
The clock ticked 5:35, and students began to shuffle through their bags. However, Professor Bittner remained totally engrossed by his subject and undeterred by the waning attention spans. As he closed the lecture, students and community members alike left in awe. As a community attendee said, “Mr. Bittner kept me on the brink of my seat the entire time. There was a good mixture of facts, analysis, and his personal comments.”
