Shifting guilt from Holocaust to the present

BY AARON MATZ

"There's no business like Shoah business," cynics have remarked about the public's continuing fascination with the Holocaust and the catastrophe's infinite ability to sell movie tickets and perplex historians. Events of the last several months have demonstrated that the Holocaust seems as urgent now as it was 50 years ago. The celebrated appearance last year of Daniel Goldhagen's Hitler's Willing Executioners was followed in recent weeks by the revelation of Secretary of State Madeleine Albright's Jewish ancestry--and of her grandparents' murder in Auschwitz--and especially by the unearthed role of Swiss banks during the Second World War.

While Goldhagen's book stirred up great controversy by asserting that ordinary Germans, not just the SS elite, were instrumental in the extermination of Jews, the debacle in Switzerland has struck an even more sensitive nerve. The World Jewish Congress (WJC) investigation into the whereabouts of assets deposited by Holocaust victims in Swiss banks before their deaths has thrown into question the wartime role of neutral Switzerland. In doing so, it has marked a shift from examining national guilt in Germany and occupied countries like France to reconsidering the role of a neutral land often mythologized as an idyllic Alpine refuge from an otherwise pervasive genocide.

Yet the public reaction to Goldhagen's book and to the disclosure of the Swiss bank assets has been as revealing as the controversies themselves. In Switzerland, the WJC's efforts have been met with considerable resentment and hesitation. Although the Swiss acknowledge wrongdoing dur-
ing the war, from financial dealings with
the Nazis to turning away thousands of Jewish refugees, many are naturally reluctant to be perceived as discreet hoarders of victims' gold.

In Germany, the response to Goldhagen's work has been slightly more astonishing. As the New York Times reported, the Harvard historian has received a hero's welcome by a nation strangely eager to hear the details of a national shame. Hitler's Willing Executioners was on the best-seller lists for weeks, and sold-out lectures and cheering audiences marked Goldhagen's book tour.

As these events unfold, I have been working at Yale's Fortunoff Archives for Holocaust Testimonies, translating French-language accounts of wartime hiding in France and miraculous survival from the death camps of Germany and Poland. The tape I have been working on during the Swiss bank scandal has been the testimony of Nathan Prochownik, who returned to France in 1945 after being deported to Buchenwald and Auschwitz.

Prochownik's testimony is quite different from the others: instead of a weepy account of omnipresent death, his is a nervous, fidgety monologue. He frequently pauses to ask the interviewer whether he did the right thing by running away at one point, or by securing an extra loaf of bread at another. Like today's Germans and Swiss, he is plagued by shame, and onscreen his survivor guilt appears just as acute as the collective guilt of an entire nation.

These instances of guilt are obviously extremely different matters, but at least one issue binds them together. Our own fascination with how others deal with guilt never ceases, especially when it comes to our era's paradigmatic source of shame. When I sense my own eagerness to witness Prochownik's self-examination, I am reminded of Goldhagen's lecture halls, packed with Germans zealous to hear about their own culpability in a 50- year-old crime. Curiosity, in these cases, is the first step towards recognition; such excitement marks a whole new step in comprehension and a radical new strategy of collective memory.

When it comes to the Switzerland affair, the search for historical truth is tied up in contemporary financial issues. We feel that we can not only recount the past, but also try to alleviate it with humanitarian funds. The international community's haste and zeal in demanding compensation from the major Swiss banks to Holocaust victims is necessary, but we must also be aware of our own role in the judgment.

WJC head Edgar Bronfman claims that his efforts are ultimately about truth, not money, and that the aging victims and their heirs deserve what is rightfully theirs. This is undeniably true. But if we are putting Switzerland on a civil trial, are our demands merely for compensation, or are our aims punitive? It is easy to locate guilt, but it is much more difficult to determine how much we revel in the shame of others, and how guilty we should feel about that.

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