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Philip Mathews remarks on the national origins of Auschwitz guards, and of George Stein, October 18, 2004  Nationality does matter A LETTER from Frank Lowe published on your website suggests a mistake in a David Olère drawing because of the presence of SS "runes" on the uniform of an SS guard at Auschwitz. He writes: "According to all contemporary sources, including Austrian/American Jewish history professor George Stein of the State University of New York, the majority of SS guards in the camps of Poland were Latvian and Ukrainian." I'm afraid Mr. Lowe is confused. While Ukrainian and perhaps Latvian SS were well represented at the Aktion Reinhardt camps, this was not the case at Auschwitz. The sociologist Aleksander Lasik has studied the makeup of the Auschwitz SS from SS personnel files. [Anatomy of the Auschwitz Death Camp. Historical-Sociological Profile of the Auschwitz SS, pages 274 and 281, Indiana University Press, 1998]. He tells us that approximately seven thousand SS served at the camp, ranging from seven hundred in 1941 to 4,500 just before evacuation in January 1945. At no time throughout the camp's history did the percentage of SS who were German/Austrian constitute less than 50 percent of the entire SS contingent. So David Olère was in a position to see many SS with the SS "runes" during his stay at Auschwitz. I'd like to bring something else to your attention. Mr. Lowe identifies Professor Stein as a "Jewish" history professor. I can only imagine he believes this accords his source the highest credibility. I'm sure you would join me in condemning the implication that race, ethnicity, or religion has any correlation to scholarly achievement, and in affirming the proposition that Catholic, Lutheran, and Armenian scholars are no less deserving of credibility.
FRANK Lowe is one of my better correspondents, and I think the point he makes about George Stein being a Jew (assuming that he is) is valid: in our experience they are less like to be more emotional and less objective about their Holocaust history -- less skeptical, less able to "think sideways." That is common sense too -- just as Catholics are likely to be less objective about, say, the Pope or the Inquisition; or revisionists about Hitler, for that matter. C'est la guerre, and we are all in a war for truth. It has taken non-Jews like Prof. Christopher Browning (and myself) to establish for example that Adolf Hitler probably had little part in the decision-making process, or at least that that there is zero evidence that he had. I have not seen a single Jewish historian making (or even accepting) this fact. | ||||||||||||
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