Letters.

The Holocaust in American Life

Elliott Abrams, in his review of my Holocaust in American Life ("Genocide on Main Street," June 28), says that my politics "mar" the book. My "unpersuasive discourses about the Cold War" are "reminiscent of CNN's notorious series." I'm not much of a television watcher, so I didn't see the series, but I gather its critics charged that the series saw "moral equivalence" between the parties to the Cold War; thought the conflict the result of a "misunderstanding." As a lifelong anti-Communist, who volunteered for the Army during the Korean War  (when Mr. Abrams was in short pants), I find this characterization of my politics grotesque.

Mr. Abrams finds particularly absurd my argument that the Cold War "'led to marginalizing' the Holocaust because the Germans were now our allies." I am flabbergasted that this is argued in National Review, of all places. Jewish groups were indeed reticent about discussing the Holocaust in the early Cold War years because of the response to such talk in journals like this one. As I recount in the book, National Review described the trial of Adolf Eichmann by Israel as a "pernicious" affair; "an international apparatus of vengeance." The Israeli government was "titillating the world's appetite for horror stories." It was part of "a studied attempt to cast suspicion upon Germany. . . . It is all there: bitterness, distrust, the refusal to forgive, the advancement of Communist aims." Accompanying all of this (for details see the book) was a subtle, and sometimes not so subtle, anti-Semitic subtext.

As I make clear in the book, by the Sixties Jewish anxiety about this kind of response to talk of the Holocaust was waning. But, as I write, the line taken by National Review, which persevered longer in responding this way, represented "just the sort of backlash Jewish organizations feared."

Peter Novick

Chicago, Ill.

Prof. Novick is unhappy about my very positive review of his book because I noted his insertion into it of some pretty standard and often irrelevant liberal guff. Even this problem I minimized, leaving it for a late and brief mention in the review; more might have been said. I am pleased to learn that he is "a lifelong anti-Communist" and a Korean War veteran, but George McGovern was an anti-Communist, a World War II bomber pilot-and a liberal.

Prof. Novick's larger point is more interesting. I should not, he implies, have published in NR my review of his book because almost 40 years ago the magazine took positions he thinks terribly wrong on the Eichmann trial. I agree with him that the magazine's criticisms of the trial were entirely wrongheaded.

But Prof. Novick knows perfectly well that Jewish groups avoided discussions of the Holocaust in the early Cold War years for many complex reasons. To write now that it was "because of" articles in NR and "journals like" it is to contradict his own book for the sake of a silly debating point.

Prof. Novick says that the coverage of the Eichmann apprehension and trial by National Review suggests a "subtle, and sometimes not so subtle, anti-Semitic subtext." Speaking for the editors who wrote the editorials in question, I suggest that any anti-Semitism was so very subtle, only Mr. Novick picked it up.

Our colleague Elliott Abrams thinks our analysis wrongheaded. Perhaps he is correct. Rereading our texts, what did we say? (1) That the legal arguments for the apprehension of Eichmann, by agents of a country that didn't exist when the crimes were committed, were ad hoc; (2) that the long drawn out reiteration of the crimes of the Holocaust, in the year 1962, served no purpose ("overfamiliarity with bestiality can dull one's sense of horror. The diary of Anne Frank did more to bring out the horror of Buchenwald than the trial of Eichmann"); (3) that the enemies of a resurgent Germany would opportunize on the trial (said The New Statesman and Nation, "It is people like Eichmann who serve first Hitler, and then Adenauer, who are prepared to perpetrate the most hideous crimes against Jews and humanity . . ."); (4) that the Jewish philosopher and theologian Martin Buber might have been correct in worrying that the execution of Eichmann, after a trial by an Israeli court, might be "a mistake of historical dimensions"; and (5) that the "transcendent wrath" against Eichmann was such as to have justified stringing him up, the first chance Israelis, or anybody else, got.

Demonizing Serbs

In his effort to justify NATO's seizure from Serbia of its Kosovo province, David Pryce-Jones ("Kosovo, from Scratch," July 12) tries to demonize the Serbs as a people, and does not shrink from making charges that are patently false. His claim that the World War II concentration camp at Jasenovac was "operated by the Serbs" is ludicrous. The camp, as every source I've been able to consult states plainly, was operated by the Croatian Ustasha. While many thousands did die there "on account of their race" the majority of the victims were Serbs.

Such errors aren't made innocently, or at random. They are the product of a propagandist mentality that has dropped all trace of intellectual integrity.

Perhaps Pryce-Jones fears that Americans may start to doubt the wisdom of their military's destruction of a country that had never harmed the United States, or become distressed by the thuggery of their new Balkan "allies," the Stalinist KLA. His solution: falsify history in the most egregious manner, paint the Serbs not as victims of the Nazis, which they largely were, but as the most abject of collaborators, a people who run genocidal camps even "without benefit of German help." Maybe no one will notice the falsification, maybe something of the smear will stick, enough so Americans can feel good about killing Serbs even after Milosevic is gone.

Scott McConnell

New York, N.Y.

My purpose in mentioning Jasenovac was to illustrate how mass-murdering has conditioned political life in that unhappy region of the Balkans. Recent events in Kosovo confirm the persistent reality of this general point. Scott McConnell is correct: The Croat Ustashe ran Jasenovac, and Serbs were murdered there along with Jews and gypsies. It is a compliment of sorts that Mr. McConnell judges me so infallible that I cannot make a mistake. It was random, alas, a lapse of concentration. Had he merely corrected me, I should have been glad to make amends. But he goes on to speculate that I must have a hidden conspiratorial  agenda to mislead Americans. This reveals a mindset all his own, in which Serbs can do no wrong and their critics are only propagandists. When it comes to deliberately demonizing Serbs, nobody could have done a better job than Milosevic and those of his men who have put into practice his murderous policies in Croatia, Bosnia, and now Kosovo.

Going On the Record On Singer

I write to address an entry in "The Week" (July 12) concerning Princeton University's appointment of Peter Singer to a professorship. It quotes a letter Steve Forbes sent to Princeton spelling out his opposition to Mr. Singer's views. The entry disparages me, as a member of Princeton's board of trustees, for allegedly not taking "the bold step of publicly condemning postpartum baby- killing."

As one schooled in the Hippocratic oath, and as a leader in the fight against partial-birth abortion in the Senate, I would not think it necessary for me to condemn infanticide to prove my commitment to the preservation of life. Although your unfounded rhetorical challenge on "postpartum baby-killing" did not ask that I make my position on Mr. Singer publicly known, let me quote from a letter I have sent to a number of my Tennessee constituents who have inquired about it:

As you know, Mr. Singer's appointment has created a great amount of controversy. Like you, I am greatly disturbed by many of Mr. Singer's ideas, especially as they relate to the value and treatment of human life. As a physician, I have always fought to preserve life. I have also been a strong advocate for the rights of individuals with disabilities. I fundamentally disagree with Mr. Singer's positions and beliefs, and have strongly expressed my views on this matter with the administration of Princeton University.

I hope this clarifies my position on Mr. Singer and reiterates what should be an obvious position on "postpartum baby-killing."

Bill Frist, M.D.

United States Senator

Washington, D.C.

For the record, Sen. Frist's office had many opportunities to respond to our inquiries regarding his position on Peter Singer's appointment at Princeton. While we're delighted he's opposed to infanticide, we continue to encourage him to challenge Princeton publicly on the matter.

Clarifying Strauss

David Klinghoffer writes in the Letters section (June 14): In explaining the universe, do we take as our starting point the brute fact of physical existence? Or do we start from our intuition of God? The former approach tends to produce a materialistic cosmology. Leo Strauss identified these two starting points as respectively the Greek and the Biblical. So at the root of materialism, which plagues us today more than ever, we find the ancient Greeks. At least our respect for them, I argue, should be tempered by that fact.

Mr. Klinghoffer has misunderstood Leo Strauss. According to Strauss, the materialism that plagues us today is that of modern philosophy, beginning most notably with Machiavelli. Classical political philosophy, beginning with Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, is no more materialistic than the Bible.

Intuition of God, or of the Divine, is equally central to the classics. There is however a difference concerning the ultimate understanding of the Divine: whether it leads finally to the obedient love of God, or the unfettered cultivation of human reason. In the latter pursuit, there could be no articles of faith, or sacerdotal authority, to interdict philosophical inquiry. But neither was there any assumption that the conclusions of thought and the conclusions of faith would be inherently contradictory. Indeed, there is every reason to believe that the classics and the Bible are as one in directing man's life towards transcendent truth and in opposing the grounding of man's life on the brute facts of physical existence.

Harry V. Jaffa 

The Claremont Institute

Claremont, Calif.