YFAAT WEISS
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murders carried out by the Wehrmacht, but murders carried out by the
Russians in
I941
during their hasty withdrawal. There is also some
doubt over the cataloging of other photographs. The organizers of the
exhibition were forced to delay its departure for New York, choosing to
convene a committee of senior historians to reexamine the findings, and
to restore credibility to the exhibition.
I believe that the Israeli observer faces two primary difficulties in
understanding the significance of the controversy. The "sensation" at
the exhibition, the fact that it sheds doubt on the Wehrmacht's purity,
has no effect since Israelis attach no particular importance to differences
between Nazi Germany's various military and party formations. But
Israelis are also left indifferent to what undermines the exhibition's cred–
ibility. Some eleven photographs out of a total of
I,433
are quite inca–
pable of undermining its credibility, because to the Israelis the
Wehrmacht is not a sacred cow, and the average Israeli is not surprised
by the Wehrmacht's involvement in extermination operations. The
knowledge that the Soviets also murdered civilians is central to the
ongoing German and European public debate, made up of different ten–
dencies in contemporary antitotalitarian criticism, which is trying to
highlight the manifest similarity between Nazism and Communism
while exposing the extent of Soviet destructiveness. Just as
The Black
Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression
is not central to the
public debate in Israel, so eleven photographs, however criminal, are
unable to arouse a public debate in a society whose key issues are so
completely different.
There are a number of interpretations for this difference. The first,
inescapable, interpretation concerns the question of relevance. All of the
debates referred to here relate to Germany's past. As a result, they con–
stitute a cornerstone in the shaping of German identity. The debates
which concern most Israelis revolve round the past, identity, and the
existence of Israel. These experiences-the German one and its Israeli
counterpart-are not complementary to each other, and sometimes are
not even antitheses: they are mutually alien experiences. These utterly
simple matters are a bit more complex because they expose the growing
gap between Israeli interest in the Holocaust, and the fact that the real–
ity in which the Holocaust took place is slipping away from Israelis'
understanding.
In
order to comprehend the Holocaust, it is not suffi–
cient to be familiar with Jewish history. There is a need to understand
Europe, including its traditions-high and low. Israel has become very
remote from Europe. This is not a critical lament of Israel's oriental
character. I am simply arguing that Israeli "rejection of the Diaspora"
