FORMER WEST GERMANS AND THEIR PAST
543
difference whether Auschwitz was unique or not. If the Germans did not
commit a crime that differs from all others in the degree of its horror,
then they need feel no more ashamed than any other nation and can act
on the international stage unburdened by a responsibility for a past that
is unique in the world."
That is a strange statement coming from an historian.
It
is com–
pletely illogical. Why should it be the case that comparing the Holo–
caust to other genocides should remove all shame from German memo–
ries? Auschwitz is terrible enough, whether or not it is unique. One
could even make the case that comparing the Holocaust to other mass
murders should make members of a supposedly civilized people more , not
less, ashamed of their ancestors' fall from civilization.
It
is not clear to me how this issue of uniqueness can possibly affect
the unassuageable regret, shame, and indignation that anyone must feel,
German or otherwise, who studies the Holocaust. To use an analogy so
simple-minded that surely it occurred to some participants in the debate:
if I murder someone, I am no less guilty, and my crime no less terrible,
just by virtue of the fact that I am not the only murderer in the world.
The interesting question remains: why did I do it? That others have done
comparable things is, on the moral level, simply beside the point.
Evans clearly stated the real agenda of many of those who ruled that
denying the uniqueness of the Holocaust was illegitimate: to paralyze
West German action in the present by constant reference to a past that,
increasingly, took on an iconic character as a set of received opinions
and rigid moral judgments having less to do with historical understand–
ing or the desire for it than with political mythology in the name of
progress, democracy, and humanity.
So, the scholarly result of the
Historikerstreit
-
which had far more
twists and turns that I can possibly recount here - was nil. The political
result was considerable: comparing Auschwitz to anything else became
more than ever politically suspect and, in practice, illegitimate. This was
understandable in view of the power relations and power interests of
West German elites in the 1980s, but it was intellectually inconsistent.
Because, of course, every major historical event is at the same time both
unique and the result of actions and beliefs that, to be explained, have to
be understood in context. On one level, Auschwitz was of course
unique: no one else ever did what was done there. On another, it is part
of history, and comparison is the necessary starting-point for any under–
standing of uniqueness, difference, causes, and motives.
A secondary result of the
Historikerstreit
was that it was also ruled il–
legitimate to try to understand any aspect of World War
II,
not just the
