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Like sheep to the slaughter

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"Like sheep to the slaughter"(Hebrew:כצאן לטבח) is a phrase that refers to the idea that Jews went passively to their deaths during theHolocaust.It derives from a similar phrase in theHebrew Biblethat favorably depictsmartyrdomin both the Jewish and Christian religious traditions. Opposition to the phrase became associated withJewish nationalismdue to its use inJosipponand by Jewish self-defense groups after the 1903Kishinev pogrom.During the Holocaust,Abba Kovnerand otherJewish resistanceleaders used the phrase to exhort Jews to fight back. In postwar Israel, some demonized Holocaust survivors as having gone "like sheep to the slaughter" while armed resistance was glorified. The phrase was taken to mean that Jews had not tried to save their own lives, and consequently were partly responsible for their own suffering and death. This myth, which has become less prominent over time, is frequently criticized by historians, theologians, and survivors as a form ofvictim blaming.

Background[edit]

Religious[edit]

Further information:Isaiah 53andPsalm 44
Judaism

InIsaiah 53,a chapter in theHebrew Bible,[1][2]a virtuous servant is murdered but does not protest: "Like a sheep being led to the slaughter or a lamb that is silent before her shearers, he did not open his mouth" (Isaiah 53:7). His silence is praised because there was no "deceit in his mouth" (Isaiah 53:9). But RabbiAbraham Heschelpointed out that the context is more ambiguous, becauseIsaiahhimself protestsGod's punishment of theJewish people.[1]InPsalm 44,themartyrdomof Jewish people persecuted for their religion is presented favorably: "Nay, but for Thy sake are we killed all the day; / We are accounted as sheep to be slaughtered" (Psalms 44:23).[3][4]Jewish liturgy uses the phrase inTachanun,a prayer derived from Psalm 44, which is traditionally recited each Monday and Thursday in theShacharis(morning prayers):

Look from heaven and perceive that we have become an object of scorn and derision among the nations; we are regarded as the sheep led to slaughter, to be killed, destroyed, beaten, and humiliated. But despite all this we have not forgotten Your Name—we beg You not to forget us.[5]

The Hebrew phrase in the Bible, "like sheep to be slaughtered" (כְּצֹאן טִבְחָה,ke-tson le-tivhah), is distinct from the later variant "like sheep to (the) slaughter" (כצאן לטבח,ke-tson la-tevah).[6]

Christianity

InChristianity,the phrase was interpreted as the virtue ofmeekness,related toJesusallowing himself to becrucified;Jesus was symbolized as theLamb of God.PresbyteriantheologianAlbert Barneswrote, "the fact that [Jesus] did not open his mouth in complaint was therefore the more remarkable, and made the merit of his sufferings the greater". He considered Isaiah 53 prophetic typology that had been "fulfilled in the life of the Lord Jesus", a typology that would continue as part ofChristian interpretations of the Holocaust.[7]

Secular[edit]

The inverse of the phrase, contrary to what was previously believed, was coined by the writer of the 10th-century Jewish historyJosippon,which quotedMattathias,a leader of theMaccabean Revolt,as saying, "Be strong and let us be strengthened and let us die fighting and not die as sheep led to slaughter".[8][9]In a different context, the phrase was used by United States founderGeorge Washingtonin 1783 to warn of the dangers of removing the right tofreedom of speech:"the freedom of speech may be taken away, and dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep, to the Slaughter".[10][11]

The inversion of the phrase was revived by Jewish self-defense leagues in theRussian Empirein the wake of the 1903Kishinev pogrom,although it remained rare compared to other imagery of victimization.[12]In reference to the pogrom, theNew York Timesreported that "The Jews were taken wholly unaware and slaughtered like sheep".[13]Yosef Haim Brenner's Hebrew novellaAround the Pointfeatured a protagonist who asked, "Were the Jews like sheep to be slaughtered?" but immediately rejected the idea. By 1910, the second version of the phrase, invented inJosippon,was more commonly used.[14]In a 1920 article titled "Will They MakeJerusaleminto a Kishinev? "Zalman Shazar,later the thirdpresident of Israel,argued against negotiating with the BritishMandatory Palestineauthorities because "The brothers of theTel Haiheroes will not be led as sheep to slaughter. "[15]

InYizkor,a 1911 book memorializing Jews killed by Arabs, the inverse was attributed to Ya'akov Plotkin, the leader of a Jewish self-defense organization in Ukraine, who hadimmigrated to Palestineand was killed during theintercommunal conflictinPalestine.According toYitzhak Ben-Zvi,later Israel's second president, Plotkin had previously used the phrase in regard to defense against thepogroms in the Russian Empire.The book was widely read byZionistsin Eastern Europe.Yael Feldmansuggests that this is the probable source for the verbiageAbba Kovnerused in his declaration of 1 January 1942.[16]

In the Holocaust context[edit]

During the Holocaust[edit]

Further information:Jewish resistance during the Holocaust

During the Holocaust, Abba Kovner was the first to use the phrase as a call for action in a 1 January 1942 pamphlet[10]in which he argued that "Hitler is plotting theannihilation of European Jewry".[9]Kovner urged Jews in theVilna Ghettoto resist the Germans:[10][17]

We will not be led like sheep to slaughter. True we are weak and helpless, but the only response to the murders is revolt. Brethren, it is better to die fighting like free men than to live at the mercy of the murderers. Arise, Arise with last breath.

— Abba Kovner,Let us not go like lambs to the slaughter!

Instead of viewing Jews as sheep, Kovner instead attempted "to cause a rebellion against the very use of that term", according to Holocaust historianYehuda Bauer.[18][19]In a speech Kovner gave to members of thePalmachafter arriving in Israel in October 1945, he explained that his phrase had not meant thatHolocaust victimshad gone "like sheep to the slaughter" and attributed that interpretation to non-Jews, such as aSoviet partisancommissar.Kovner also said of the inability of so many victims to fight back, "All and everyone did go like this!", includingSoviet prisoners of war,Nazi collaboratorskilled by their former allies, and Polish officers.[20]

The pamphlet was smuggled to other ghettos, where it inspired similar calls for resistance.[21]In theKraków Ghetto,Dolek Liebeskindsaid, "For three lines in history that will be written about the youth who fought and did not go like sheep to the slaughter it is even worth dying."[21]During theGrossaktion Warsaw,the mass deportation of Jews from theWarsaw Ghettobeginning 22 July 1942, Jewish archivistEmanuel Ringelblumcriticized the brutality of theJewish Ghetto Policeduring roundups and the Jewish masses' passivity. Ringelblum asked, "why have we allowed ourselves to be led like sheep to the slaughter", and concluded that Jews were ashamed and disgraced because their "docility" did not save their lives. He concluded that the only option was armed resistance, even as a symbolic gesture.[22]

After the war[edit]

In Israel[edit]

In the immediate postwar period in Israel, before the Eichmann trial, survivors who had not fought with thepartisanswere stigmatized for having allegedly gone like sheep to the slaughter.[23][24]In response, somechild survivorspretended to besabras(native Israelis), and other survivors never mentioned their experience.[25]Armed resistance was glorified, partly because theestablishment of the State of Israelalso requiredarmed conflict.[26]For example, the most popular textbook for elementary school students devoted 60% of its Holocaust coverage to theWarsaw Ghetto uprising.[27]In contrast, other reactions to the Holocaust were demonized:[26]one textbook approved by theMinistry of Educationread that "the heroic stand of the Ghetto Jews also compensated for the humiliating surrender of those led to the death camps" and that Holocaust victims had gone "as sheep to the slaughter".[27]

British historian Tom Lawson argues that the idea of Jewish passivity during the Holocaust confirmed stereotypes ofdiaspora Jewsheld by theYishuv,the Jewish community in Palestine, which contributed to their ascendance.[28]Israeli historianYechiam Weitzargues that the "sheep to slaughter" trope "insinuat[es] that millions of Jews who perished in the Holocaust did not measure up" and, if they had fought back, Jewish national honor would have been preserved.[29]Israeli historianIdit Zertalwrites that Holocaust survivors were blamed for not choosing Zionism in time.[29]

Israeli historianHanna Yablonkacriticizes this perception, arguing that Holocaust survivors shaped Israeli memory.[29]Feldman describes the myth as deriving from traditional Europeanantisemiticstereotypes of Jews as "the dishonorable antithesis of all the 'virile' qualities deemed necessary by modern nationalism".[30]An alternate explanation advanced by Israeli historianTom Segevis that the sheep metaphor enabled Israelis to downplay the suffering of Jews during the Holocaust as a defense mechanism against cultural trauma.[31]Initially, little was known about the Holocaust, leading to over-generalization.[26]According to thejust world hypothesis,Holocaust victims and survivors must have done something to deserve their fate.[32]

Kovner's speech of October 1945 was not available to the public for four decades, and many falsely attributed the accusation against Israeli Holocaust survivors to him.[33]Disturbed by this, Kovner said in 1947 that one who had not witnessed the events of the Holocaust could not use the phrase appropriately; "like sheep to the slaughter" meant something different in Israel than it had in the Vilna Ghetto in 1942.[34]Meanwhile, he continued to claim authorship of the inversion of the statement despite the previous precedent.[33]

The Israeli attitude toward Holocaust survivors was revolutionized by the highly publicizedtrialofAdolf Eichmann,a key Holocaust perpetrator, in Jerusalem. During the trial, prosecutorGideon Hausnerwent beyond proving Eichmann's guilt.[35]He attempted to educate Israelis about Nazi crimes,[36]"assumed the role of defense attorney for the dead and the living Jewish people", and called many survivors as witnesses.[35]The public questioned whether resistance was an option for the masses, and the activity of rescue groups such as theAid and Rescue Committeewas viewed more favorably. Public opinion shifted to blaming the perpetrators exclusively.Revisionist ZionistpoetUri Zvi Greenbergsaid, "It is a crime to say that, in the time of Hitler, Diaspora Jewry could have gone to their deaths differently." TheLabor ZionistwriterHaim Guriwrote:

We should ask forgiveness from countless numbers for having judged them in our hearts... We often generalized categorically and arbitrarily that these poor souls [went to their deaths] "as sheep to the slaughter." Now we know better.[37]

Outside of Israel[edit]

TheWarsaw Ghetto boy

After the war, the idea that Jewish Holocaust victims and survivors had been passive was reinforced by photographs of liberatedNazi concentration campsdepicting emaciated survivors. BecauseNazi propaganda filmswere often the only source of footage, their use in postwar documentaries supported the idea of Jewish passivity, as did the iconicWarsaw Ghetto boyphotograph. The claim that Jewish concentration camp prisoners were more passive than non-Jewish prisoners often obscured historical fact, such as the fact that Jews launched six of the seven uprisings in concentration or death camps.[38]

In 1946, survivor and psychologistViktor Franklwrote the bestselling bookMan's Search for Meaning,based on his own experiences, in which he claimed that apositive attitudewas essential to surviving the camps. Consequently, he implied that those who died had given up. Historians have concluded that there was little connection between attitude and survival.[39]In 1960, Jewish psychoanalystBruno Bettelheimclaimed that "Like lemmings, [millions] marched themselves to their own death" and thatAnne Frankand her family were partly to blame for not owning firearms.[40][17]In his 1961 bookThe Destruction of the European Jews,historianRaul Hilbergcharacterized Jewish resistance as an extremely marginal phenomenon. However, he evaluated the resistance solely by the number of Germans killed.[17][41]Instead, he argued that Jews had "speeded the process of destruction" by obedience to German orders conditioned by the passivity ofJewish diasporaculture. In the 1985 edition, Hilberg quoted Ringelblum to support this argument.[42]

Hannah Arendtexplicitly rejected the idea that Jewish victims had gone "like sheep to the slaughter", because all victims of Nazi persecution had behaved similarly. She argued that Bettelheim expected that Jews would somehow divine Nazi intentions better than other victims and privately criticized Hilberg for "babbl[ing] about a 'death wish' of the Jews".[43]Although she criticized Israeli prosecutorGideon Hausnerfor asking survivors why they had not resisted,[43][44]she also described Jews as obeying Nazi orders with "submissive meekness" and "arriving on time at the transportation points, walking under their own power to the places of execution, digging their own graves, undressing and making neat piles of their clothing, and lying down side by side to be shot", a characterization American Holocaust scholarDeborah Lipstadtfound "disturbing". Arendt blamed theJudenratfor collaborating with the Nazis, an assessment not commonly accepted today.[44]Despite her more nuanced portrayal, her arguments inEichmann in Jerusalemwere equated with those of Hilberg and Bettelheim and harshly criticized.[45]

After the first three decades, the trope became less of a driving force inHolocaust historiography,according to Lawson.[28]But Richard Middleton-Kaplan cites the 2010 filmThe Debt,about a Nazi war criminal who taunts and escapes from his Jewish captors, as a recent example of a work perpetuating the perception that Jews passively acquiesced to their fate, because the Nazi's claims to that effect are not rebutted.[46]Israeli settlers protestingevacuationfrom theGaza Stripsaid "we will not go as sheep to slaughter", which was considered hyperbole.[47]

Criticism[edit]

The phrase became so widespread and widely believed that historians of Jewish resistance during the Holocaust used it as the title of works challenging perceptions of Jewish passivitity.[48]Daniel Goldhagencriticized the "maddening, oft-heard phrase 'like sheep to slaughter'" as a "misconception" in his blurb for the 1994 bookResistance: The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.The entry on Jewish resistance in Eastern Europe in the 2001The Holocaust Encyclopediaopens by debunking the "false assumptions" behind questions such as "Why did the Jews go like sheep to the slaughter?"[49]

Yehuda Bauer has argued that "those who use it are identifying, even unconsciously, with the killers", who denied their victims' humanity.[19]He notes that "Jews were not sheep. Jews were Jews, Jews were human beings" who were murdered, not slaughtered.[18][19]American sociologistNechama Tecsays she is frequently asked "Why did Jews go like sheep to the slaughter?", which she calls "a blatantly false assumption" because the opportunity to resist was not often present, and many Jews employed creative survival strategies. Tec strongly criticizes the idea that "the victims themselves were partly to blame for their own destruction".[17]According to Holocaust historianPeter Hayes,"nothing in the literature on the Shoah is more unseemly than the blame cast by some writers on an almost completely unarmed, isolated, terrified, tortured, and enervated people for allegedly failing to respond adequately".[50]

Survivors includingElie WieselandPrimo Levihave also criticized the tendency to blame Jews for their plight during the Holocaust, which Wiesel called "The height of irony and cruelty: the dead victims needed to be defended, while the killers, dead and alive, were left alone."[51]PsychologistEva Fogelmanargues that the victim-blaming tendency stems from the desire to "avoid confronting the question: What would I have done? And would I have survived?" According to Fogelman, "Blaming the victims not only distorts history; it also perpetuates their victimization."[52]

RabbiEmil Fackenheimwrote that "the loose talk about 'sheep to slaughter' and 'collaborationist'Judenräte"is caused bywillful ignoranceof the facts of the Holocaust because "it is more comfortable to blame the victim".[53]Rabbi Yisrael Rutman argued that the "true meaning" of the phrase is the spiritual strength of Jews who had no opportunity to resist their murder.[11]Rabbi Bernard Rosenberg writes that to understand the fallacy of the "sheep to the slaughter" myth, one must consider the lived experience of survivors who had no opportunity to fight back against their oppressors.[54]Rosenberg argues that survival and the effort to rebuild lives, communities, and the Jewish state after the Holocaust was a form of fighting back, as is preserving Jewish tradition today.[55]Orthodox Rabbi and authorShmuley Boteachcalls the phrase a "double insult to the martyred six million" because it both accuses them of cowardice and blames them for their fate.[56]

References[edit]

Citations[edit]

  1. ^abMiddleton-Kaplan 2014,pp. 3–4.
  2. ^Cohen & Mendes-Flohr 2010,p.369.
  3. ^Middleton-Kaplan 2014,p. 4.
  4. ^Feldman 2013,p. 147.
  5. ^Middleton-Kaplan 2014,pp. 4–5.
  6. ^Feldman 2013,pp. 147, 151.
  7. ^Middleton-Kaplan 2014,pp. 5–6.
  8. ^Feldman 2013,p. 155.
  9. ^abFeldman & Bowman 2007.
  10. ^abcMiddleton-Kaplan 2014,p. 6.
  11. ^abRutman 2002.
  12. ^Feldman 2013,pp. 156–157.
  13. ^Gordis 2010,p.164.
  14. ^Feldman 2013,p. 157.
  15. ^Feldman 2013,p. 158.
  16. ^Feldman 2013,pp. 143–145.
  17. ^abcdTec 2013.
  18. ^abMiddleton-Kaplan 2014,p. 7.
  19. ^abcBauer 1998.
  20. ^Feldman 2013,pp. 145–146.
  21. ^abMiddleton-Kaplan 2014,pp. 6–7.
  22. ^Lawson 2010,pp. 235–236.
  23. ^Middleton-Kaplan 2014,p. 9.
  24. ^Bar-On 2004,p. 106.
  25. ^Bar-On 2004,p. 107.
  26. ^abcYablonka 2003,p. 5.
  27. ^abPorat 2004,p. 622.
  28. ^abLawson 2010,p. 236.
  29. ^abcYablonka 2003,p. 10.
  30. ^Feldman 2013,p. 143.
  31. ^Bar-On 2004,pp. 107–108.
  32. ^Bar-On 2004,p. 108.
  33. ^abFeldman 2013,p. 146.
  34. ^Ofer 2000,p. 43.
  35. ^abYablonka 2003,p. 17.
  36. ^Porat 2004,pp. 623–624.
  37. ^Yablonka 2003,pp. 17–18.
  38. ^Middleton-Kaplan 2014,p. 8.
  39. ^Middleton-Kaplan 2014,pp. 9–10.
  40. ^Middleton-Kaplan 2014,p. 10.
  41. ^Middleton-Kaplan 2014,p. 11.
  42. ^Middleton-Kaplan 2014,pp. 11–12.
  43. ^abLipstadt 2016,p. 53.
  44. ^abMiddleton-Kaplan 2014,p. 14.
  45. ^Lipstadt 2016,p. 54.
  46. ^Middleton-Kaplan 2014,pp. 24–25.
  47. ^Feldman 2013,p. 152.
  48. ^Middleton-Kaplan 2014,p. 15.
  49. ^Middleton-Kaplan 2014,pp. 22–23.
  50. ^Middleton-Kaplan 2014,p. 25.
  51. ^Middleton-Kaplan 2014,p. 17.
  52. ^Middleton-Kaplan 2014,pp. 21–22.
  53. ^Middleton-Kaplan 2014,p. 21.
  54. ^Rosenberg 1999,pp. 18–20.
  55. ^Rosenberg 1999,pp. 20–21.
  56. ^"Like Sheep to the Slaughter?".The New York Observer.3 February 2014.

Print sources[edit]

Web sources[edit]

Further reading[edit]

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