40
PARTISAN REVIEW
Hilberg shows us what the Germans took from previous anti-Semitism
- the intolerance , the discriminatory laws , the yellow star, the imag–
ery of contamination - and where they were forced to improvise , to
be original, especially in their program of mass destruction. In an in–
genious twist, they even made theJews pay for their own deportation
and death. Since there was never a "budget for destruction," and the
railroads punctually demanded excursion fares for every passenger,
by the mile, payment could be made only from the sale of confiscated
property . A tribute to German thrift , the "final solution" had to pay
its own way .
The Nazis' main inventions, besides the killing techniques, in–
cluded an astonishing range of tricks to keep the victims unwary ,
helpless, or slightly hopeful until the very moment they were gassed.
Those who had traveled some distance arrived in the camps already
half-dead from thirst and hunger. Constantly beaten, forced always
to run, stripped naked, they were treated to lying speeches in rooms
designed as reassuring stage sets, with signs stressing hard work and
good hygiene. Even the Zyklon gas at Auschwitz was delivered by a
"disinfection squad" in vans marked with a red cross, which also flew
over the "infirmary" at Treblinka where the old and sick were simply
dispatched with a bullet ("cured with a single pill") above an open
pit full of burning corpses. (This ghastly imagery of health follows
readily from the Nazi terminology of pollution and disease-the
'j
ewish bacillus.")
All the written business of the Holocaust takes place within the
same web of euphemism and deception . Lanzmann still hears terms
like "resettlement" from Nazis he interviews, men who kept the trains
running, not wanting to know where they went, or kept the noose
tightened around the Warsaw ghetto under the guise of "maintain–
ing" it. The Holocaust was to take place in a nameless void, hidden
from the Jews, hidden from the world, hidden-if you can believe it
- from the Germans themselves, screened from view above all by a
profound disbelief that such a thing could actually happen - this was
their secret weapon. By late 1943 most of the smaller death camps
had already been dismantled. Their job was done. All that was left
was the achingly beautiful countryside we see today . The scenario
was almost complete.
By telling us exactly what happened,
Shoah
settles historical
questions it never even raises, like the nagging issue of Jewish resis–
tance. How many times have we heard it ignorantly repeated - as if
we had the right to sit in judgment - that the Jews went to their deaths
