How the Jews Defeated Hitler: Exploding the Myth of Jewish Passivity in the Face of Nazism by Benjamin Ginsberg

How the Jews Defeated Hitler: Exploding the Myth of Jewish Passivity in the Face of Nazism Reviews

• 
  Peter Clothier

  I'll admit it, I picked up this book in the hope of reading some of the juicy WWII stories to which I am addicted. It's a conflict that fascinates me particularly because I was brought up in its shadow. We lived just sixty miles north of London during the Blitz, in a big old rectory that served to house not just our family, but numerous billetees from the armed services (particularly RAF, from the nearby Cranfield airfield) and intelligence: Bletchley Park, of Enigma fame, was a bike ride away. The Nazi leaders were the super-villains of my youth, and the evil of the Holocaust, known only at the end of hostilities, was the worst of all imaginable atrocities.
  
  All this was real to me, and I was looking for that kind of reality from the book--the nit and grit of real experience, the subversive deeds of defiant partisan resistance, the dangerous work of spies, all that excitement... If I was disappointed, then, it was due to my own expectations. Because the book is very largely a compilation of statistical information: the percentage of Jews in such and such an organization, the numbers of weapons delivered to the Soviets from America, and so on. It lacked the juice and the drama I was looking for. I found it to be interesting, but it failed to inspire or excite my imagination. I have no way of evaluating the information it assembles, but assuming it to be reliable, it's an impressive, comprehensive record of the Jewish contribution to the war effort, whether in England and America, the Soviet Union, or the German-occupied territories. It covers the work of scientists and spies, partisan groups and bureaucrats, in a methodical presentation of the historical facts.
  
  The author, Benjamin Ginsberg, is at pains to make a case that answers those who ask why Jews did not do more to resist Hitler and his followers. Those who died in the camps, the shtetls and the ghettos, he argues, had little opportunity to offer resistance: unarmed, untrained, they faced ruthless, well trained forces who had no compunction about slaughtering those who stood up to them. Only those Jews who escaped the slaughter--most of them in the years before the war--were in a position to contribute to the war effort; and indeed, as Ginsberg amply demonstrates, their work as an international diaspora was in many ways indispensable to the defeat of Hitler and Nazism.
  
  By far the most passionately argued part of the book, however, is the concluding passage devoted to "Aftermath and Afterward: From Tragedy to Farce," in which Ginsberg assails the anti-Semitism that persisted, despite the Holocaust, in the years that followed the war, and continues into our own time. He is particularly incensed by the antagonism of "the Left," both here in America and in Europe, provoked principally by Islamists and their intellectual allies, united in their hatred for the state of Israel. I see this as further tragedy, not farce. And however much truth there may be to Ginsberg's arguments, they seem misplaced in the context of his book's ostensible theme--and indeed, by the time we reach the end, seem almost to have replaced it with a new one.
  
  So passionate and prolonged is this epilogue, the reader is left to wonder whether it was not the author's true purpose at the outset. I personally don't for one moment question that anti-Semitism is an evil that should, by now, have been eradicated from the realm of human prejudice--along with all other forms of racism and irrational hatred. But Ginsberg allows his concluding screed, which constitutes a good quarter of his text, to become the tail that wags the dog. Forgive the extended metaphor, but I wish he had instead put a bit more meat on the bone he started out with.
• 
  Affad Shaikh

  I always enjoy searching all the things that are catalogued under my name on the internet. I am uncertain how this book, published in 2013, is just coming across my Google search. It may be that i am incredibly self-conceited to be doing Google searches on my own person, however, I would point out that there is nothing ego-centered about what I do. You may think otherwise, but I am putting it on the record. Now that I am done with that, let's just examine Benjamin Ginsberg's claims in relation to me, Affad Shaikh, and the overall book.
  
  "Another popular speaker is Affad Shaikh, civil rights coordinator of CAIR Los Angeles." Given that this book was published in 2013, I find it incredibly lazy of Ginsberg to associate me with CAIR Los Angeles in that present moment. I actually left CAIR Los Angeles in the summer of 2011. Furthermore, I actually was no longer the "civil rights coordinator" at the time, I had been promoted around 2009 to manager level, though, lets be on the record, I started the department from scratch and built it up over the process of my five years at that particular office. I haven't been employed by CAIR since that year, 2011.
  
  Now, the claim "Speaking at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD), Shaikh compared the school favorably to the University of California, Irvine." I actually have only one public speaking event at UCSD, Chief Justice Kavanaugh style, and that was on an alumni career panel that was focused solely on me being a pre-med student and choosing/looking at other opportunities, ie non-profit. Even as a board member of the Muslim Student Association at UCSD, I rarely spoke at public events. It took me quite some time, and a lot of Toastmaster sessions, to grow into public speaking. A simple google search for records of public events at UCSD held by the MSA would reveal whether I spoke or not, and at which events. If those were to difficult to google, a simple call would have provided the necessary information as this is a publicly funded university that keeps records, and all events on campus have to be approved by organizational advisors.
  
  Next, Ginsberg describes me as "another popular speaker." I am far from being a "popular speaker" let alone a "popular Muslim speaker." Even at my time at CAIR-Los Angeles, I was anything but a reluctant public speaker. Choose a "popular Muslim" speaker (pick any of the executive directors at CAIR, or look at Muslim Student Association events speakers lists) to google and then compare their speaking engagements to mine. The evidence speaks volumes, and I firmly offer that as how badly I am being mischaracterized. I accept I was a "public speaker" but that still didn't change the fact that I was a reluctant public speaker, so my speaking engagements were incredibly thin.
  
  This has a lot to do with my preferred form of expression - writing, and through my photography. And thats what Ginsberg uses as his evidence, my writing, and not even directly. Ginsberg cites the use of Joe Kaufman's blog, FrontPageMag, as the source of his information and the means of his characterization of me. Ginsberg didn't properly translate his source properly. Kaufman took great pains to describe that I was once a board member of the MSA, while at school there, and that I made my comments regarding the UCSD and UCI (anti-semitism) comparison as a blogpost and not an actual event in which I supposedly spoke at. If you cite evidence it behooves you to actually properly read it and present it to your readers Ginsberg. Thats just that one thing we are taught throughout English courses.
  
  Kaufman's own post, the one Ginsberg cites, uses a blogpost I had written for Muslamics in which I use sarcasm and mimicry (of far right pseudo scholars like Kaufman) to express the lazy, irresponsible, and overly broad brush strokes of generalizations, insinuations, guilt-by-association, based on paper thin evidence. I can not use comedy to present the situation of Muslims. Their goal isn't to provide actual integrity based scholarly research, but rather to provide yellow journalism rubbish.
  
  Furthermore, what Ginsberg and Kaufman both are getting at is the same thing - Muslims can not, should not, and must be prevented from having a voice of their own. For Kaufman its clear that the only "good Muslim" is the "non-Muslim"- one only has to search who he associates with to conclude that. They can not have agency. Which for Ginsberg is ironic since that is the crux of his books focus - it's in the title "How the Jews Defeated Hitler: Exploding the Myth of Jewish Passivity." Should Muslims be allowed to get away with anti-Semitic statements, absolutely not. Is everything said about Israel, a nation state and government with policies, anti-Semitic? Absolutely not. As Americans we pride our first amendment rights, and last i checked Israels policies were not excluded in the Bill of Rights as the point where freedom of speech stopped.
  
  I get to this conclusion simply by pointing out that 1) had I not written blogs where would they grab this material from and distort it which ever way that suited their needs, they certainly wouldn't have heard me speaking at events because I did very little of that; 2) a simple reading of sourced documents would provide the proper context of what Kaufman was trying to present, yet Ginsberg failed even at that. Instead, he paints his own sordid take to fit his own needs of what I presented, even if it is only in his imagination, and nothing close to what his sourced work was trying to say. And, 3) a serious scholarly work would have pursued simple records requests and other primary sources, which Ginsberg doesn't even bother doing (that post by Kaufman is referring to an original post that is still saved on the internet, one only has to follow the trail or the fact that you can get records of events held by school organizations to confirm was invited to spoke or didn't speak) he would have a much better foundation to stand on for his characterization of the current situation.
  
  What is sad about Ginsberg is that he took a very interesting and important historical moment and turned it into an ugly and groundless attack on a community. Jews are not passive, and there were many brave Jews who actively fought and resisted Nazis. I know this because of my work with interfaith communities, specifically within the Jewish community in California, and in my reading of history. Another mischaracterization of me, by Ginsberg, is his claim that I am against interfaith work. When Ginsbergs' book was published, a simple google search by Ginsberg would have found me actively engaged with NewGround: Muslim-Jewish Partnership for Change, in Los Angeles, as a fellow. I would later go on to be recognized as a USC Dornsief Future 50 leader for the Inter-religious Council of Los Angeles, attending the Union Seminary Millennial Leadership conference in New York city and even later on representing the Muslim community of Southern California through the Shura Council on an interfaith delegation to Central America to understand the root causes of migration with other faith leaders. This is all after my work at CAIR and does not include the much longer list of interfaith engagement during CAIR LA. Interfaith communities are something near and dear to my heart as I have always found other faith communities to be motivating my own interest in, exploration of, and development as a person of Muslim faith. What I have come to appreciate about being in this space is that helped cultivate important skills of finding ways to work together on common core issues across religious lines, how to engage through dialogue, convert engagement to collective action, and development of strong communication skills.
  
  Don't waste your time reading this simply because the brief examination of information provided on me is incredibly shoddy. A far more interesting read on this subject, a beginning point only in my opinion, is the brilliantly written work of Marion Kaplan, Between Dignity and Despair: Jewish Life in Nazi Germany. After reading that, check out a north star read for me, the ever important Viktor Frankls' Man's Search for Meaning. Finally, a much older read, published in 1987, is Yuri Suhls' They Fought Back.
• 
  Kristine

  I struggled to finish this book. It was very dry, with way too much detail and little meat.