The Legacy Of Guilt

Press, Volume CVII, Issue 31542, 2 December 1967, Page 4

The Legacy Of Guilt

The Incomparable Crime: Mass Extermination in the Twentieth Century; the Legacy of Guilt By Roger Manvel! and Heinrich Fraenkel. Heinemann. Diagramatie illustrations, notes on sources, appendices of document*, book list, index. 339 pp. This Is a painstaking, thoroughly documented review and analysis of the organised bestiality of the Nazis in their plan to torture, dehumanise and. destroy those who disagreed with them. Germans as well as others, but in particular the Jews of Europe. The gas chambers and crematoria and other ways of killing are estimated to have disposed of from 5,000,000 to 6,000,000 Jews and 4,000,000 nonJews.

How did a nation noted for its philosophers and for its accomplishments In the arts of music, painting, sculpture and literature permit itself to rink to this sub-human level? Fear, the authors say. They explain:

Hitler, like certain authoritarian Heads of State today, created auch circumstances in order to maintain his control. What is most significant about th* Nazi regime is that it rapidly became a social system in which virtually all relationships were based on varying degrees of tear. This fear infected Hitler's relations with all those who served him; both Goring and Himmler, tor example, were afraid of him to a degree that became almost pathological, just as those

dependent on their favour were also afraid.

In the many-tiered system of fear there were the sadis-tically-inclined who took to brutality without demur and others who were forced to become accustomed to the practice of it Rolf Hochhuth, who used the theme for his play “The Representative,” is quoted as saying: “These are scenes of surrealism. It is scarcely believable that they were played out in the world we live in. . .”

“Yet” say the authors, “they were, and we must face the consequences. After examining the thoughts and the sayings of the exterminators, the authors offer the suggestion that in almost every case they are nearer “our common mentality than we care to think.”

We breathe the same air as these exterminatory perhaps in Germany we brusn shoulders in the crowd with one of thousands of them who are still at liberty, or who have been released after serving some relatively light sentence or sentences which have been shortened. Perhaps in Egypt, the Argentine, or Paraguay, as well as in Germany, we work with them as colleagues. The author* tell the full story of the exterminations, from the beginning to long after the end; They tell how news of what was going on got out to the world, but-was either not believed or thought exaggerated by the representatives of nations, even by the Jews themselves. They discuss the position, and the criticism of the Roman Catholic Church, the position of Britain and the United States, Britain’s troubles in Palestine, Jewish arrangements with the Nazis through Eichman to train illegal emmigrants for Palestine, British efforts to keep them out, the operations of the- Stern Gang and other Palestinian guerrilla organisations, the protests by the Arabs. ,

Although it deals extensively with the past and the near-past, this book is exceedingly helpful in the under-

standing of the contemporary present in the Israel-Arab confrontation. It provides a background suggesting that the present is only a continuation of the past th that area.