Friday, February 04, 2005
Indeed
Q: Is the Shoah [Holocaust] at the summit of crimes against humanity?
Cardinal Lustiger: It is the summit because of the reasons put forward,
not the quantity of victims. I don't know about other situations. I don't
know how there were millions of dead in Communist China, I don't know how
there were millions of deportations under Stalin.
What makes the Shoah singular is not only the quantity but the nature of
the crime, namely, the massive, scientific, deliberate, willed destruction
through totally rational procedures, at the price of all economic,
geographic or historical rationality.
There was destruction for the sake of destruction, while the troops
withdrew and continued to exterminate -- for example, the extermination of
the Warsaw ghetto, real madness, even strategic.
And there were other events of this nature. It is the singular
characteristic of this destruction, which had a religious dimension, that
I have evoked. Why the Jews? Why that way? Why with such force, and such
mad rationality? And why such a lie?
It was necessary to camouflage everything. It was Saul Friedlander who
made evident the deceitful character which necessitated the fabrication of
a new language -- as the Soviets did later -- to say things without
talking about them.
Cardinal Lustiger: It is the summit because of the reasons put forward,
not the quantity of victims. I don't know about other situations. I don't
know how there were millions of dead in Communist China, I don't know how
there were millions of deportations under Stalin.
What makes the Shoah singular is not only the quantity but the nature of
the crime, namely, the massive, scientific, deliberate, willed destruction
through totally rational procedures, at the price of all economic,
geographic or historical rationality.
There was destruction for the sake of destruction, while the troops
withdrew and continued to exterminate -- for example, the extermination of
the Warsaw ghetto, real madness, even strategic.
And there were other events of this nature. It is the singular
characteristic of this destruction, which had a religious dimension, that
I have evoked. Why the Jews? Why that way? Why with such force, and such
mad rationality? And why such a lie?
It was necessary to camouflage everything. It was Saul Friedlander who
made evident the deceitful character which necessitated the fabrication of
a new language -- as the Soviets did later -- to say things without
talking about them.
