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The Lessons of Genocide, Taught by the Son of Parents Who Survived It
Richard Perry/The New York Times
Menachem Z. Rosensaft, the child of Holocaust survivors, teaches a
class on the law of genocide at Columbia Law School. `The Holocaust
was a fact of life, something they talked about, but not something
they wallowed in,' Mr. Rosensaft said.
By RICHARD PÉREZ-PEÑA
Published: November 4, 2011
Just days after liberation, surrounded by starvation and disease, a
young woman looked into a soldier's movie camera and described the
horrors of the Nazi concentration camp at Bergen-Belsen.
A family photograph of the 1946 wedding of the parents of Menachem Z. Rosensaft.
Months later, the same woman, Hadassah Bimko, gave crucial, tearful
testimony at the trial of the camp commander and guards. Allied
prosecutors included her filmed interview in a shocking documentary
that was entered into evidence at the trial, at Nuremberg, of
high-ranking Nazis.
Menachem Z. Rosensaft showed that 1945 film clip to his class on the
law of genocide, at Columbia Law School, but to him, the woman in
flickering black-and-white was no distant witness to history. She is
his mother.
The law often tries to weigh matters clinically, but a class that
dwells on atrocities cannot escape emotion. And it cannot help being
personal when the professor is the Jewish son of two Holocaust
survivors whose families were wiped out.
Yet Mr. Rosensaft, 63, who is teaching the class at Columbia for the
first time, manages to take an almost dispassionate approach, as if to
say that outrage is fine, but then what? He peppers his lectures and
conversation with hypothetical questions devised to avoid easy
answers.
`Where are the lines separating free speech, hate speech and
incitement to genocide, which was a major factor in Rwanda?' he asked
his class recently. `Which one is it when Ahmadinejad calls for the
eradication of Israel?'
Noting that at Nuremberg, the Allies imposed new laws retroactively,
to prosecute people who could claim that their actions were allowed
under wartime German law, he asked, `How is that different than if the
Union had prosecuted Southerners after the Civil War for having been
slave owners?'
He draws students' attention to inconsistent verdicts and sentences at
Nuremberg, and the fact that, decades later, nations pivoted quickly
from treating Slobodan Milosevic, the Serbian president, as a
dignitary, to calling him a war criminal.
`There are always political elements to these cases,' he said. `There
are always ambiguities.'
Beneath the measured tone, he knows the meaning of genocide better
than most people. His parents, who came from different towns in
Poland, were both sent with their families to Auschwitz.
His mother was torn from her 5-year-old son, her first husband and her
parents, who all went to the gas chambers. A dental surgeon, she was
put to work caring for sick prisoners, but could not save her own
sister, who died in the camp. Knowing that the seriously ill were
killed, she tried to keep patients out of the infirmary when there was
a `selection' for gassing.
`Growing up, I saw countless women come up to her and say, `Doctor,
you saved my life,'' Mr. Rosensaft said.
His father, Josef, leapt from a train headed to Auschwitz, where his
first wife and stepdaughter were killed. He escaped, despite being
shot as he fled. After being rounded up again, he escaped from a labor
camp. Caught a third time, he was sent to Auschwitz and then to
Dora-Mittelbau, where prisoners were literally worked to death on
Germany's rocket program.
In the last months of the war, the Germans transferred prisoners,
including Mr. Rosensaft's parents, from other sites to Bergen-Belsen,
where starvation and disease killed an estimated 50,000 inmates.
His parents met and married in the displaced persons camp at
Bergen-Belsen, where he was born. They became leaders of the survivor
community, in Europe and later in the United States, where they moved
in the 1950s.
`They always were forward-looking, so the Holocaust was a fact of
life, something they talked about, but not something they wallowed
in,' Mr. Rosensaft said. `Some of the stories were almost like
adventure stories, and I knew those things before I knew all of the
horrors.'
As an adult, he has remained immersed in that world, as a leading
advocate and spokesman for children of Holocaust survivors. His wife,
Jean Bloch Rosensaft, an administrator at Hebrew Union College-Jewish
Institute of Religion, is also a child of survivors; his parents and
hers were good friends.
A lawyer by trade, Mr. Rosensaft worked in securities and
international law before becoming general counsel of the World Jewish
Congress. For several years, he has taught classes similar to the one
at Columbia, at the law schools of Cornell and Syracuse.
His Columbia students say his experience gives an immediacy to an
already powerful subject. `In this class, you can't be detached from
what you're talking about,' said one student, Sira Franzini, who is
from Italy - especially when `the professor is part of that history.'
More than half of the 21 students in the class are foreign, and
several said that to them, ethnic conflict and atrocities are not as
remote as they are to Americans.
Clare Lawson, who is from Ireland, said she had worked on the
prosecution of Yugoslav war crimes at the International Criminal Court
at the Hague. Several students are from the Netherlands, where such
cases, and questions of tolerance between Christians and Muslims, are
big news.
Mr. Rosensaft stresses that the field his class covers is new, and
still evolving. Until the Holocaust, the term `genocide' did not
exist, `crimes against humanity' was not yet a legal term, and
international courts did not try national leaders. It was generally
understood that if a nation slaughtered people within its own borders,
neighboring countries would not intervene.
`Each instance of genocide has its own characteristics, and each time
we learn how the law can be flexible and adapt,' he said.
`Unfortunately, we're still learning.'
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/05/nyregion/for-this-instructor-teaching-about-genocide-is-personal.html?_r=1&ref=europe
Richard Perry/The New York Times
Menachem Z. Rosensaft, the child of Holocaust survivors, teaches a
class on the law of genocide at Columbia Law School. `The Holocaust
was a fact of life, something they talked about, but not something
they wallowed in,' Mr. Rosensaft said.
By RICHARD PÉREZ-PEÑA
Published: November 4, 2011
Just days after liberation, surrounded by starvation and disease, a
young woman looked into a soldier's movie camera and described the
horrors of the Nazi concentration camp at Bergen-Belsen.
A family photograph of the 1946 wedding of the parents of Menachem Z. Rosensaft.
Months later, the same woman, Hadassah Bimko, gave crucial, tearful
testimony at the trial of the camp commander and guards. Allied
prosecutors included her filmed interview in a shocking documentary
that was entered into evidence at the trial, at Nuremberg, of
high-ranking Nazis.
Menachem Z. Rosensaft showed that 1945 film clip to his class on the
law of genocide, at Columbia Law School, but to him, the woman in
flickering black-and-white was no distant witness to history. She is
his mother.
The law often tries to weigh matters clinically, but a class that
dwells on atrocities cannot escape emotion. And it cannot help being
personal when the professor is the Jewish son of two Holocaust
survivors whose families were wiped out.
Yet Mr. Rosensaft, 63, who is teaching the class at Columbia for the
first time, manages to take an almost dispassionate approach, as if to
say that outrage is fine, but then what? He peppers his lectures and
conversation with hypothetical questions devised to avoid easy
answers.
`Where are the lines separating free speech, hate speech and
incitement to genocide, which was a major factor in Rwanda?' he asked
his class recently. `Which one is it when Ahmadinejad calls for the
eradication of Israel?'
Noting that at Nuremberg, the Allies imposed new laws retroactively,
to prosecute people who could claim that their actions were allowed
under wartime German law, he asked, `How is that different than if the
Union had prosecuted Southerners after the Civil War for having been
slave owners?'
He draws students' attention to inconsistent verdicts and sentences at
Nuremberg, and the fact that, decades later, nations pivoted quickly
from treating Slobodan Milosevic, the Serbian president, as a
dignitary, to calling him a war criminal.
`There are always political elements to these cases,' he said. `There
are always ambiguities.'
Beneath the measured tone, he knows the meaning of genocide better
than most people. His parents, who came from different towns in
Poland, were both sent with their families to Auschwitz.
His mother was torn from her 5-year-old son, her first husband and her
parents, who all went to the gas chambers. A dental surgeon, she was
put to work caring for sick prisoners, but could not save her own
sister, who died in the camp. Knowing that the seriously ill were
killed, she tried to keep patients out of the infirmary when there was
a `selection' for gassing.
`Growing up, I saw countless women come up to her and say, `Doctor,
you saved my life,'' Mr. Rosensaft said.
His father, Josef, leapt from a train headed to Auschwitz, where his
first wife and stepdaughter were killed. He escaped, despite being
shot as he fled. After being rounded up again, he escaped from a labor
camp. Caught a third time, he was sent to Auschwitz and then to
Dora-Mittelbau, where prisoners were literally worked to death on
Germany's rocket program.
In the last months of the war, the Germans transferred prisoners,
including Mr. Rosensaft's parents, from other sites to Bergen-Belsen,
where starvation and disease killed an estimated 50,000 inmates.
His parents met and married in the displaced persons camp at
Bergen-Belsen, where he was born. They became leaders of the survivor
community, in Europe and later in the United States, where they moved
in the 1950s.
`They always were forward-looking, so the Holocaust was a fact of
life, something they talked about, but not something they wallowed
in,' Mr. Rosensaft said. `Some of the stories were almost like
adventure stories, and I knew those things before I knew all of the
horrors.'
As an adult, he has remained immersed in that world, as a leading
advocate and spokesman for children of Holocaust survivors. His wife,
Jean Bloch Rosensaft, an administrator at Hebrew Union College-Jewish
Institute of Religion, is also a child of survivors; his parents and
hers were good friends.
A lawyer by trade, Mr. Rosensaft worked in securities and
international law before becoming general counsel of the World Jewish
Congress. For several years, he has taught classes similar to the one
at Columbia, at the law schools of Cornell and Syracuse.
His Columbia students say his experience gives an immediacy to an
already powerful subject. `In this class, you can't be detached from
what you're talking about,' said one student, Sira Franzini, who is
from Italy - especially when `the professor is part of that history.'
More than half of the 21 students in the class are foreign, and
several said that to them, ethnic conflict and atrocities are not as
remote as they are to Americans.
Clare Lawson, who is from Ireland, said she had worked on the
prosecution of Yugoslav war crimes at the International Criminal Court
at the Hague. Several students are from the Netherlands, where such
cases, and questions of tolerance between Christians and Muslims, are
big news.
Mr. Rosensaft stresses that the field his class covers is new, and
still evolving. Until the Holocaust, the term `genocide' did not
exist, `crimes against humanity' was not yet a legal term, and
international courts did not try national leaders. It was generally
understood that if a nation slaughtered people within its own borders,
neighboring countries would not intervene.
`Each instance of genocide has its own characteristics, and each time
we learn how the law can be flexible and adapt,' he said.
`Unfortunately, we're still learning.'
http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/05/nyregion/for-this-instructor-teaching-about-genocide-is-personal.html?_r=1&ref=europe