“Never again”: can you explain what that means?

What is a memorial, and does if make a difference whether it’s to the Holocaust?

K. is a magazine about Jews in Europe. It is mainly contributed to and read by Jews in Europe, but it is also read by others who are not Jewish people, such as me, who am one of those who are aware of the European political situation which, with the resurgence of antisemitism, affects Europe itself. On their website, K. set out the context in which they publish, as follows:

In 1939, there were about 10 million Jews living in Europe. Today, there are about 1.3 million (Source: Institute for Jewish Policy Research, October 2020). Three quarters of the Jews who, after the Holocaust, had been present in Europe since the end of the war have finally left the continent. The current population of Jews is only 15% of the number of those who lived there in 1939. The proportion of Jews now represents 0.2% of the European population. It is as low as it was a thousand years ago and continues to decline.

How and why, in a social and political environment that has been totally reconfigured over the past 70 years, are anti-Jewish sentiments returning and circulating with such intensity? What perspectives, for Jews and for Europe, can be drawn from this current environment?

The discussion about weaponisation of the Holocaust therefore has to be seen in light of the fact that, despite the Jewish population of Europe being today but a fraction of its size at the start of the war, it still attracts all this attention. Part of it is the knee-jerk reaction that the Nazis helped instil in people’s minds (Jews are a problem), whereas trying to refocus on another scapegoat group would lack in recognition (leather upholsterers are a problem) even if there were just as scant evidence for the accusation. Because Jews are an established scapegoat, they tend to remain the lazy person’s target for polemic. The same might be said of immigrants.

In 1982, I visited the Dachau memorial site near Munich in Germany, for the first of many visits within the realm of my duties as a tour guide. The companies I worked for—American Institute for Foreign Study and American Leadership Study Groups—organised coach trips to Europe for American high school students under the guidance of their teachers as chaperones. On the whole, the students were in the age range of 14 to 16. My role as tour leader went beyond simple efficient execution of the arrangements booked by the company as the building blocks of each day’s activities, but was to augment and enrich the experience with entertaining repartee and an insight into Europe that the kids could not, or only with difficulty, gain from their home vantage point. I was to bring home to them the reality of Europe: its make-up, its politics (in suitably neutral fashion, of course), its history, the pageant of its sights and beauties (in one year, Europe having been gripped in the thrall of renovation madness, a tour of the finest scaffolding the continent has to offer) and an enquiry into why things are different here to how they are back Stateside. In amongst all that, I felt there was a need for more sombre moments: it was not inappropriate to organise a side trip to Dachau concentration camp as part of these kids’ edu-vacation.

The visit began in the administration block that serves as the site’s main exhibit, with large tableau photographs and descriptions—in Modern Hebrew, German, English, Russian and French—to tell the observer what they were seeing. I would guide the group through the key exhibits in that area and time the progress to arrive at the doors of the small theatre for the moment when a film would be exhibited with English commentary. When you’re at the movies, there comes that moment at the end when you hurtle out of the place like a Le Mans 24 racing start; either that or you wallow in the thoughts evoked by the film, before returning to reality. The movie they show at Dachau ends and the return to reality is the very same place where the footage was shot. That is a realisation that may not fail to strike the viewer. The film is a venture into another time, but not another place and, perhaps, not another reality. Not unless the viewer changes the reality: for we are not passive subjects of our reality; we are in large part its author.

After the film, I would allow the students some time to walk down to the boiler house and its gas chamber (which, for some unknown reason, was never put into use). Dachau was the first (permanent) Nazi concentration camp, but it was not a death camp like Treblinka or Auschwitz were. Oranienburg camp is depicted in the early part of Thames Television’s acclaimed series The World At War, in which Laurence Olivier narrates footage of its first days with the words, “Conditions were at first crude, rather than brutal. At this time the camps were run by the Sturmabteilungen—the SA. They bullied more than they murdered.”

Image: happier, less-brutal days at Oranienburg concentration camp (screengrab from The World At War).

Things would, of course, change. There would be plenty time for both crudeness and brutality, murder as well as bullying. On another trip, this time to Auschwitz but with the same object in mind, the brutality was too great for one participant, whom I needed to escort away from the horrors. As the Dachau visit drew to a close, my task was to sum up what we had seen at the memorial site in words that didn’t constitute a panacea, that weren’t shrouded in some clichéd, almost chocolate-box sentiment of pity and regret. Instead, my closing words were more or less the following.

I shan’t say that I hope you’ve enjoyed yourselves today. The aim was not that. The aim was to shift our viewpoints a little. To look long and hard at a historical fact that still has its repercussions on us today. For, the horrors that were enacted at Dachau and elsewhere have not receded. The reality depicted in the movie and the reality recalled by the remains on site are not a memorial, but rather a living reality for some elsewhere in this world, albeit not in today’s West Germany. As you reflect on that, I invite you also to reflect on the words inscribed in stone at the site’s entrance: never again. If, like me, you felt feelings of abhorrence at what was done here, then, like me, you will reflect on what it would take to impel me, us, to do likewise. Whether my rejection of past acts is resolute enough to ward off future acts. Whether never again means what it says.

Never again sets an objective standard. It’s two little words. Nie wieder. Plus jamais. Больше никогда. But Man is a crafty creature and will have it all ways. Who’s to say how it was formulated in the minds of those who carved it: a dispassionate observation of another man’s horror inflicted on an innocent victim? An appeal by that victim to those who come in later years, that they should think twice before repeating such acts of genocide? Or an incitement to the victims themselves to take up arms and make doubly sure that there be no such repeat: we shall not go as lambs to the slaughter again? The three viewpoints are valid, but which is most valid? Exhortation from afar? A plea for clemency from within? Determination to make sure no Jew is ever gassed again?

We resign ourselves to our fallibility as a race and, after some dignified lapse of time has passed, we relativise the meaning of simple words, like never. What does never mean? Never say never, they say.  If we can relativise the dangers that gave rise to legislation in the aftermath of great disasters like the Wall Street Crash, and relax the safeguards built into standards imposed for load-bearing structures like bridges and condominiums, or do away with costly safety and inspection provisions designed to keep everything, so to speak, on the rails, then the safeguards inherent in a statement like never, can they not likewise be allowed to work loose a little after time, like the rivets holding a bridge together?

The problem with mottos is that they’re so short, pondering what they mean in the detail can be difficult. But detail there always is, to words, to sentiments, to feelings, to … reality. How are we to understand these words never again?

“What befell the inmates of Dachau concentration camp must never happen again”?

Who will split my hair? “Genocide as practised by the Nazis must never happen again”?

“Genocide must never happen again”?

“We must never indulge in genocide again”?

“I must never indulge in genocide.”

Never again is an appeal to the community of which we form part that, perforce, has to be construed by the individual forming part thereof. It thereby passes through a process by which we expect things to occur or not to occur but still absent ourselves from the ability to bring any influence to bear on how they happen or don’t happen. It is as if a community existed as an entity apart from those who constitute it, which is illogical. A group entity cannot exist, adopt a stance, prosecute a policy unless that be the combined policy of all its members. We are all members of the community that has resolved never again. We cannot distance ourselves from that. A party is bound to his contract, but not to the contracts of others. This is an undertaking that cannot be contracted away, however. This is an obligation that rests upon us all. Because the consequences of failure to abide by this undertaking are not theoretical. We have had, in Nazi Germany, ample evidence of what happens when the obligation is negated. We have had ample evidence since then as well. Not adhering to never again poses a clear and present danger. The phrase should therefore be clear and present in our minds.

What I do not believe the words never again can be understood as meaning is that the victims of Nazi outrages are thereby rendered incapable of guilt on any score. Communists can still perpetrate evils. Homosexuals are perfectly capable of depriving others of their freedoms and rights. Gypsies are utterly able to perform criminal offences. And, though Dreyfus was innocent, Jews can be criminals, too.

If the law of nature is only to kill when one is hungry, then the acts of others should not instil in us hunger. Our legal systems administer justice dispassionately, when called upon by law to do so, and to exercise judgment and compassion to the degree necessary to achieve justice.

Immunity is the law’s recognition of the potential for those with responsibility to cause great distress by their actions. Like never again, immunity is conceived out of the burden of responsibility that rests upon the actor, and is a gesture of understanding towards those who wield authority. It is not blank permission to indulge in the unspeakable any more than never again is to be understood as any group’s entitlement to exact any kind of revenge. Much rather, immunity, rather than bestowing freedom on the beneficiary, augments their responsibility. It is a reminder of the gravity of the consequences that can follow from what they do. And, likewise, the words never again are far more than a simple aspiration, somehow with limited shelf life, for whatever government might make decisions impacting such matters. Much rather they are a constant statement of obligation incumbent on all of us—for which reason they are inscribed in stone—every last member of this human civilisation. Civilisation—the rule of nature by man’s reason—is the opposite of the law of nature. But if, in nature, one only kills when one is hungry, I wonder what kind of an aspiration civilisation constitutes.

In modern Europe, the Europe that concerns the publishers and readers of K., we hear that antisemitism is on the rise. There can be little doubt but that, were the question posed in certain quarters, the entire diaspora of the Jewish people and the entire Jewish state, as also the Jewish state’s officers and politicians, would receive blanket treatment in whatever comment were to be given on the subject of them (be it favourable or unfavourable). To mete out standardised judgment of a group of persons involved in the same or similar acts, the same attitudes, the same end result, is not how we view fair justice. Each person’s individual acts and intentions and viewpoints must be examined case by case. It is a principle of fair justice, not to be lumped together and treated the same as others, even if the accusations are the same.

Sentiments that are directed against Jews and Jewish culture and tradition are what is generally subsumed under the term antisemitism. Antisemitism exists and has probably always existed. Take the prefix anti- and just about any other philosophical, religious or political thought, and one needn’t search long to find proponents of the idea and detractors from it. The range of matters on which anyone can potentially be pro- or anti- is limitless. It is so limitless than even bringing up this simple truth seems trite and unnecessary, and yet it is necessary precisely because of the extremes to which the term antisemitism has itself been taken. To the point almost where it is antisemitic to question the definition of antisemitism.

It is understandable, on a compassionate view, for Jews to feel vulnerable in light of the sentiments being exchanged in media and social media outlets worldwide. Of course they want to ward off any potential exposure to danger by raising an intuitive defence that is morally supported by the fact that great numbers of their like were in the past subjected to cruel treatment for just being who they are. If I could raise a defence that no one should speak ill of homosexuals for precisely the same reason, I would do so. But I can’t, because it doesn’t wash as an argument. I can point to the shootings in Oslo and Florida, to the gay bashing in London and Edinburgh, to the ostracism of those who seek to discover their inner Selves—a laudable endeavour that all too few of us occupy ourselves with—and plead that gays are a special case, because of the suffering that we went through at the hands of the Nazis. I don’t know if there were six million homosexuals murdered by the Nazi killing machine, or six million gypsies, or six million handicapped people, or six million communists, or six million Ukrainian nationalists, but we do know that there were six million Jews. And whether the magnitude of the Jews’ number in the final toll of Nazi outrage grants them, as a category, some form of moral ranking over homosexuals, I suppose only God can answer that.

The aeroplane that recently crashed in Brazil bore passengers who were all of Brazilian nationality. Twenty-seven of the 62 who died were from the city where the flight had started out from. I guess that makes this quite a landmark event in the history of the city of Cascavel. Perhaps they will erect a memorial, to remember their lost townsfolk. I wonder how affected the town would be if only one of the souls on board had been from there. Would they erect a memorial for one person? Why not? And, if they would, why, then, would they erect a memorial at all? What is a memorial? I explored the notion of commemorations in this piece.

It is at this point that we return to K. In 2021, Romano Bolkovic published an article which is about a memorial and why it was proposed. The article is entitled Between Nazis and Ustachis: Croatia’s Holocaust Memorial. He writes:

“In his older age, [Branko] Lustig [a Jewish concentration camp survivor, who produced the film Schindler’s List] returned to Croatia. A couple years ago, he proposed to the Mayor of Zagreb, that Zagreb as a capital should get a Holocaust monument. The late Mayor Milan Bandić accepted his proposal and this is where the troubles began, which now look like a sequence drawn from a Coen Brothers movie.

“Out of the best intentions to mark the suffering of Jews on Croatian soil in World War II arose a situation in which the World Jewish Congress (WJC) condemned the monument to the victims of the Holocaust in Zagreb as an attempt to cover up the role of the [Nezavisna Država Hrvatska, or Independent Croatian State] in the crimes. Moreover, WJC called on the city to abandon the whole idea, accusing the Croatian authorities of trying to cover up the monstrous crimes of the Ustashas by creating a false impression.

‘The World Jewish Congress joins its community in Croatia in condemning the Zagreb Assembly’s decision to erect a monument to six million Jewish victims of the Holocaust, which blindly ignores the active role of the Independent State of Croatia during the Ustasha regime in committing these crimes during World War II.’”

The mouthpiece for victims of this genocidal outrage opposed the erection of a memorial to those victims on the ground that (my words) the memorial was intended as a whitewash of Croatia’s active participation in the acts thus commemorated.

This seems at first blush like a pissing game (on the basis that it is, in the WJC’s view, the WJC, not the government of Croatia, that gets to decide where what is commemorated in terms of the Holocaust in Croatia). However, it could, in the end, have a more substantial foundation: that the Croatians do indeed want to use the memorial as a whitewash for their said involvement.

On another view, could it not be an act of atonement? And what’s the difference in any case? Well, atonement goes to the depth of the soul, and whitewash just paints the soul with an acceptable colour, that, unfortunately, is the difference. But how do you know which it is? And do what you think are the motivations of the people putting up the memorial affect the message that those visiting the memorial take away with them? Is there not always a propaganda element to memorials?

In Moerdijk, in the Netherlands, there is a plaque in a field marking the spot where an NLM aircraft crashed after take-off from Rotterdam airport in 1991, the only known case of an aircraft that was downed by a tornado. It lists the names of those who died (including one on the ground). The plaque does not in the best sense of the word commemorate the accident, but simply notes it. As a Holocaust memorial, would that be sufficient? Would the World Jewish Council get involved and object to a simple plaque in a field? Maybe not in Croatia?

Similar accusations to those raised against Croatia have been raised against Poland, in fact. A half-German, half-British, Jewish barrister I once lived with said to me, “The day the Germans issue a fifty-mark note emblazoned with the words Verzeihen Sie uns, bitte (please forgive us), then and only then will I accept that Germany has shown contrition for its role in the extermination of the Jews.” It is a harsh standard for him to have set, but it was a harsh extermination and, when push comes to shove, why should his expectation be unreasonable?

The memorial site at Dachau is not in Croatia, but in Germany. Does Germany thereby try to whitewash its culpability in the acts that constituted the Holocaust? Dachau was established as a memorial by former prisoners, who worked on the project after the camp ceased to be used in the 1960s to house Sudeten Germans ejected from Czechosolvakia after 1948. Rather than being viewed as a whitewash by Germans, the memorial could be a daily reminder to Germans of what their forefathers did. I wonder whether it works. Like the request at the Brussels Tomb of the Unknown Warrior, that passers-by should remove their headgear (see here for my further discussion of the effects of such notices). Or do Germans pass by the entrance to Dachau (which is fairly out of the town) and feel nothing at all as they go merrily on their way down the lane?

In the times when I was guiding American school students around Europe, the one merit that Dachau’s memorial had that it now doesn’t have was that it was the only opportunity to actually see the place, the real place, where real history had happened. Nowadays, there are tours on YouTube, so no one actually needs to go there. People can memorialise the place as they see fit, as fits their own rationales and motivations, without pesky tour guides telling them what to think (YouTubers never tell you what to think, do they?). And that is exactly what they do do. No less than do those who erect memorials in places like Zagreb.

What is a memorial? Journalist Simon Jenkins has long since voiced the view—and I think it holds a great deal of water—that the annual ritual in Britain and elsewhere of commemorating the end of the First World War is geared to preparing the nation for the next armed conflict and not, as I believe it should, to acting as a warning to prevent further conflict at all. My article How resolute the resolve to prevent disaster? examines the German railway disaster at Eschede in 1998, in which 101 people died, on the train and on the bridge it collided with. Deutsche Bahn, the railway company, repelled all questions of its culpability for the wheels that disintegrated, causing the train in question to derail at a set of points. They were not liable.

In Eschede, there now stands next to the location of the disaster an orchard of 101 cherry trees, planted to commemorate the lives lost. What does not make sense is the fact that the memorial site was partly paid for by Deutsche Bahn, the company that had so vehemently fought to preserve its good name in the courts. What was the cause of its generosity in instituting this memorial? Will Deutsche Bahn perhaps erect a memorial to the townsfolk of Cascavel who perished on Voepass Linhas Aéreas Flight 2283? Why not? Their connection to the two disasters is pretty much the same.

Of course, DB’s connection to Eschede is greater if a memorial is viewed as a way of saying … we feel sorrow, we sympathise and want to express empathy with those who have lost someone dear to them. It was their train, after all. And, without question, this is something that is part and parcel of a memorial: we feel for those who died. But DB doesn’t have feelings. They’re a joint stock corporation.

Is it an admission of guilt? Corporations can admit guilt, like folk, even if they can’t have feelings. Clearly, with DB in Eschede: no, it is not an admission of guilt. They feel themselves no more culpable after the memorial was instituted than before the crash that caused the deaths. Does the city of Zagreb feel guilt at the deaths of Jews at the hands of the city’s former administration? Well, that’s something on which you can have a view, and on which the WJC does have a view: Zagreb’s tears are crocodile tears. That’s a harsh judgment to make of anyone, but it is the WJC’s to make, and I am not able to detract them from it.

Is there any other form of sentimental function that a memorial can fulfil? I think so. It is the one function that is of true worth in any memorial. It is the reverse of the function of a flag or a national anthem: symbols of patriotism serve to incite and encourage those who are destined to fight the wars contracted by old men; and symbols of past wars fought, while purportedly serving the opposite purpose, in fact serve the same one, which is Simon Jenkins’s argument that the memorialisation of wars is used as a tool to support the recruitment of men for yet another one. Instead, in my view, war memorials should serve the very purpose that is proclaimed at Dachau, for all to read, in four languages, lest comprehension be lacking: never again.

The Dachau memorial site is an exhortation to mankind not to pursue the genocidal folly it embraced there. It does not expressis verbis limit its exhortation to observers of atrocities, or to culprits thereof, or to their victims. It sets forth no sub-clauses and no exceptions. It is masterly in its directness. It should not be hard to understand. If it is appreciated as this, and if that appreciation is taken to heart, and if that heart is deployed in future dealings, then the message will have been fruitful, whatever the intention was when inscribing it on that block of stone.

It is beyond credulity that those who outlived the atrocity they were subjected to and who erected a plea that no man have imposed on him what they suffered, ever again, should be questioned upon applying those two simple words to a stone, “Can you explain what they mean?”