What year is it, again?

Editorial

There is a great deal of confusion about what year it is in Europe. Earlier this month, Rockwell Schnabel, the United States' ambassador to the European Union, told members of the American Jewish Committee that anti-Semitism is "getting to the point where it is as bad as it was in the '30s."

The next day, Schnabel's officials in the diplomatic corps clarified and downplayed the ambassador's comments. According to the New York Times, an embassy spokesperson said Schnabel's comments were "neither a personal opinion of Ambassador Schnabel nor the view of the U.S. government."

The ambassador, according to the spokesperson, was merely "referring to published accounts by observers of anti-Semitic activities worldwide that the number of recent incidents was as worrisome as those in the 1930s."

To clarify: It's not the 1930s. It's just that anti-Semitic incidents are "as worrisome as those in the 1930s." This raises questions over whether we merely worry now over lesser affronts than we did in the 1930s. The implication, taken to its most extreme, is that we should just worry less about anti-Semitism. Or perhaps the clarification meant that the "number" of incidents is as worrisome as the 1930s, but the severity, the intent and the eventual result could not possibly reach the destructive conclusion of the similar verbal and physical attacks of the 1930s.

The degree and meaning of anti-Semitism (in 2004) has been the subject of a great deal of concern because of issues around the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Desecrations of synagogues and cemeteries, combined with anti-Jewish comments and violence, may be undertaken in the name of ending the occupation, but anti-Semitism has always had its "respectable" covers, be they racial purity, religious non-conformity or economic scapegoating.

What is most alarming about Schnabel's comments and the diplomatic clarification is that they do not elucidate the issue of anti-Semitism in Europe and elsewhere, but cloud it. For those who believe that rising anti-Semitism is a genuine threat, it seems counterproductive to downplay the significance of violent actions and imagery. The approach we should take (and insist others take) in this "debate" is to discuss anti-Semitism openly and not pretend, as the diplomatic clarification attempted to do, that it is not as serious as some would make out.

The 1930s have been the subject of an entire branch of historical research. We have analyzed how the liberal regime of Germany in 1930 turned into the European killing machine of 1940. We have placed blame on everyone from individual German citizens to the appeasing leaders of Western democracies.

Human history has rarely seen a decade as amenable to evil and filled with tragic miscalculations as the 1930s. To invoke its imagery deserves some sober caution. But it also deserves more than vague generalities. It may be unfair to suggest that contemporary anti-Semitism in Europe has reached the levels of 1939. It may be getting closer to the truth to suggest that it is akin to 1931. The objective, in invoking such imagery, is not to overstate the reality, but to elucidate the potential. The purpose of remembering that decade is to prevent such tragic and horrific events from happening again.

So, though few would suggest that Europe 2004 is Europe 1939, it is less outrageous to suggest it may be 1931 or 1932. Making such comparisons is not to cheapen the historical facts, but to prevent them from being repeated. Just a clarification.

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