You are here: 2000 / Plenary Sessions: Messages and speeches / Reception at the Stockholm City Hall / Speech by Professor Eberhart Jäckel
	Participants Countries and organizations Conference documentation Conference programme				Opening Remarks by Lord Janner of Braunstone Message by the Prime Minister of the Netherlands, Wim Kok Message by the Prime Minister of Denmark, Poul Nyrup Rasmussen Message by the Prime Minister of Austria, Viktor Klima Speech by Professor Eberhart Jäckel Speech by Professor Eberhart Jäckel Jäckel, Eberhart Speech by Dr. Eberhart Jäckel   There can be no doubt that the Holocaust was a crime. But if we want to understand its full meaning, determine its place in history, and reflect on how it can be prevented in the future, then, the statement that it was a crime is not enough. In order to go beyond a mere moral verdict, I want to make two points. The first is about the place of the Holocaust in history. My second and main point is that it basically was a catastrophe of the human mind. The Holocaust is often called unique. Crimes, however, are not unique. Everyone knows that human history from the very beginning has been full of cruelties and that crimes are still being committed almost every day in our own time. If the Holocaust was unique there must be a principal difference between it and other genocidal crimes. Still others pushed the uniqueness thesis too far by extending it to the Nazi regime in general. This, too, was obviously wrong. The regime, a terrorist dictatorship, had not been novel, and also concentration camps were new neither in name nor in kind. What was novel, and in this respect unique, was solely that until then no state had decided to wipe out as completely as possible a group of people whom it specified as Jews. It included the aged, women, children, and even infants, without any individual cases, implementing this decision through the enactment’s and coercive powers of government. The state not only killed the members of this group wherever it could seize them, but it transported them, in many instances across long distance, from foreign countries into its own sphere of influence to installations especially designed for the purpose of slaughter. Anti-Semitism was, of course, not novel either. But before anti-Semites had invariably persecuted and often killed Jews only in their own country. Never before had they gone into other countries and killed foreign Jews. The unique result was that of the six million murdered Jews about 98 percent were foreigners and just two percent Germans. This definition of the uniqueness of the Holocaust is neither moral nor quantitative, bur purely historical. It does not seek to convey the notion that this murder was particularly despicable or that other massmurders were less criminal. Neither does it emphasise the number of victims. It is no more than a scientific statement which incites that something of this sort had not previously occurred. Uniqueness does not mean incomparability. Of course, the Holocaust is comparable to other events. Logic even requires that it be compared, because only a comparison will show whether or not it was unique. The term is probably not sufficiently precise. For it can be argued that each event is unique in the sense that it always differs from other events. No event is ever completely like another. However, we divide events into kinds and find that some occur repeatedly. Repeatedly-occurring events are, for instance, wars, revolutions, and dictatorships. They are unique in that they differ from one another. But as they can be classified as kind of an event already known, they are not unique. The Holocaust was unique in the sense that it was without precedent, or simply that something of this kind had not occurred before. It would be more suitable to speak of unprecedentedness instead of uniqueness. Coming to my second point, what can be done to prevent that it will not occur again? There is, of course, the law. It proved not to be sufficient at the time. Murder was a crime, threatened with death penalty, according to the German penal code even under the Nazis. The Nazis did not bother to exempt the killings of Jews from their own penal code or to pass a special law. They simply acted against their own law. Since then, international law has made progress. In 1948, genocide has been declared a crime by the United Nations. The UN International Tribunal has become more active recently. Last year, the war of NATO against Yugoslavia has established a right of intervention in case of most severe violations of human rights. Even if such measures had been available at the time of the Holocaust, however, they would have been of no use since a state of war existed already. The crime was committed during the war. It may thus be doubted that law, either national or international, is sufficient. What about education? The assumption that man learn from history is too simple to be taken seriously. It may also be doubted that moral lessons are sufficient. They have been taught since times immemorial (”Thou shalt not murder”) and yet, looking at human history, moral progress is likely to be an illusion. There is no indication that moral standards are higher today than at any time in the past, and it seems fair to assume that the criminal potential of man has neither decreased nor increased in the course of history. But while there is probably no moral progress, there is progress in many other respects such as in the mastery of man over nature, in knowledge, in reason, in enlightenment. Rationalism has made and continues to make progress against irrationalism, knowledge versus superstition. More hope than in teaching moral lessons can therefore be placed in teaching the values of rationality. Surely, anti-Semitism has always been a superstition devoid of reason. It is simply unreasonable to assume that all members of a certain group invariably have the same qualities or defects. This, however, was and is the underlying conviction of anti-Semitism. The Nazis are an example. In the beginning, according to their racial theory, they seriously believed that there were inherent and natural differences between Jews and non-Jews such as the alleged Aryans. They tried to establish them by blood examinations or skull measurements. The attempt failed, of course, totally. But as they needed a definition, they derived it from religion. Whoever had four or three grandparents adhering to the mosaic faith was declared a full Jew, those with two such grandparents were half Jewish and so forth. Inversely, somebody who had four Christian grandparents was declared to be Aryan. This was not only against racial theory. It was against reason. It could be imagined that the grandparents had been Jewish and had converted to Christianity. If they had, the grandchildren were Aryans. If they had not, they were Jewish. Inversely, it could theoretically be imagined that descendants of the old Germanics had converted to the Jewish faith. Than their grandchildren were declared Jewish. This was a plain offence against reason, an insult of the human mind: The Holocaust was based on an intellectual aberration. Its essence was not the murderous persecution of opponents. Its essence was the insanity to assume that all Jews invariably were opponents. In this sense the Holocaust was a catastrophe of the human mind. There may be no means against murder. But there are means against superstition. They are enlightenment and rationality. From this perspective we may derive the hope that the Holocaust shall forever remain unique. >> Back to top				Introduction Opening Session: Messages and speeches Plenary Sessions: Messages and speeches Plenary Session 1 Plenary Session 2 Reception at the Stockholm City Hall Written Messages Workshops, Panels and Seminars Closing Session and Declaration Other Activities
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