Scholars Humiliating Students: CODOH ad in the “Georgetown Voice”

When the staff of the Georgetown Voice decided to run the CODOH advertisement titled, “A Revisionist's View of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum,” it was perfectly aware that the ad would cause controversy and bruise the sensibilities of some.

The Voice moved deliberately. After substantial preliminary discussion, it placed the issue before the newspaper's general board. Though uncertain, and even doubtful, that every assertion of fact in the ad would prove to be accurate, the Voice found “a compelling reason” to run it. In an open letter to Voice readers the editors wrote in part:

Endlessly deferring the publication of controversial materials to others creates a climate that endangers free debate. Running controversial articles or advertisements would then always become someone else's responsibility. If someone doesn't take the initiative, then all groups outside the mainstream will forever go unheard, including (or perhaps especially) those whose voices and dignity have been stripped away.

It's difficult to imagine a more succinctly elegant defense of the responsibility of the press toward the ideal of the First Amendment. And I have yet to see a more tawdry and vulgar response to the idealism and practical wisdom of university journalists than the reaction to by Georgetown faculty.

The individual leading the attack on the Voice appears to be Professor Michael Berenbaum. Professor Berenbaum teaches Holocaust studies at Georgetown, was Project Director of the Museum from 1988-93, and is presently a professor of theology. In a column published by the Voice, Berenbaum objects to the ad because it is “false—and known to be false”:

The Voice has shown us that it has no commitment to truth and less to decency […] for $200 the Voice will print distortions and known lies. It has betrayed the values of this academic community and brought shame on itself. It deserves scorn, and perhaps pity for its naivete and disdain. And it should get it from the student body and the faculty.

There's more but there you have the gist of it: the invective of a cornered academic.

“There is no debate as to whether the Holocaust happened,” Berenbaum writes disingenuously. Of course, I didn't frame the issue that way.

The ad points out the obvious—that the Holocaust Museum (which Berenbaum helped “create”) displays no proof whatever that German homicidal gas chambers existed anywhere in Europe, and no proof that even one person was gassed in any camp liberated by the Allies. The obvious is oftentimes what drives weak professors to want to humiliate students.

“No one called me,” Berenbaum whines. “After all, I have been teaching the Holocaust for more than a decade on campus.” We are expected to understand that if only the staff had run the ad by him first he could have explained to the Voice where the ad is “false—and known to be false.”

But when Berenbaum wrote his column for the Voice, did he expose the many “falsehoods” in the ad? Did he expose one? Or did he cut and run? Two guesses. In any event, what kind of “teacher” is a man who calls on the student body and his own peers publicly to scorn students who disagree with him about what to publish and what not to publish in a student newspaper? Students at Georgetown would do well to raise their standards as to what they expect from tenured professors of Holocaust studies.

The Professor Berenbaums are our campus True Believers. They always write that “the issue is truth” and they always believe they are the ones who have it. What cultist doesn't? These petit scholars struggle against the limitations inherent in merely teaching. They want obedience. They want students to lick their boots.

And let's not forget Professor Berenbaum's idol, Professor Emeritus Jan Karski. Berenbaum calls Professor Karski a “true hero” of the Holocaust. Karski has “graced” the Georgetown campus for three decades. You wash my back, I'll wash yours. The problem with Karski, and this is just for starters (believe me), is that his “eyewitness” report on the Belzec camp is demented fantasy. Competent Holocaust scholars avoid him like the plague.

Raul Hilberg, author of The Destruction of the European Jews, and widely considered the dean of Holocaust scholars, agrees with the revisionists on this one. “I would not put him [Karski] in a footnote,” Hilberg told the Jerusalem Post. Why would Hilberg dismiss Berenbaum's “hero?” Let us count the ways.

In his Story of a Secret State Karski wrote that he entered Belzec as a spy disguised in an Estonian uniform, that Estonians guarded the camp, that the inmates were Warsaw Ghetto Jews, and that he saw the camp prisoner population being removed on a train. Hilberg says it's all false! Hilberg is right—and we know that's only the tip of the Karski iceberg. If Berenbaum wants a little background on Professor Emeritus Jan Karski, I'll be glad to supply it.

The irony of Michael “the bully” Berenbaum exploiting a man like Jan Karski to crush and humiliate Voice journalists is almost exquisitely ugly. Furthermore, Berenbaum is either ignorant of Karski's unsavory background, or he's covering it up. In either case he is not fit to sit in judgement on the Voice staff. One can only try to imagine his baleful influence on the Museum he “helped create.”

I'm with the Voice on this one and against those who, like Berenbaum, are against the Voice. There is no falsehood in the text of my advertisement, to my knowledge. If the ad does contain an inadvertent falsehood, all the mighty Berenbaum has to do is show me where it is and I'll change the text to get it into accord with the facts. Where's the problem?

(This piece was not printed by the Voice.)

NOTE: If your paper runs this opinion piece, please send me a tear sheet. Thanks. (BRS)