An Old Evil Raises Its Weary Head

General Reinhard Gunzel was the commander of Germany's fabled Special Ops force, the KSK. No more. Last Tuesday, he was sacked for writing a letter to an obscure backbencher named Martin Hohmann. Normally, penning a letter to a parliamentarian hardly qualifies as high crime and misdemeanor. Germany is different, and for good reason.

In his missive, the general praised the deputy for an "excellent speech" and assured him that "the majority of our people shares your thoughts." What had Herr Hohmann said? He'd called the Jews not a nation of victims but a "nation of perpetrators," responsible for millionfold murder in the name of socialism and bolshevism. As "proof" he adduced Karl Marx, the son of converted Jewish parents, who had invented it all; Henry Ford, who detected the bloody Jewish hand behind Soviet communism in his infamous 1920s tract, The International Jew, which reads like an American version of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion; and finally, those Jews who were prominent leaders of the Bolshevik takeover: Trotsky, Kamenev, Zinoviev. Never mind that Lenin, the real Mr. Big, was no more Jewish than Hohmann. Never mind that thousands of Jewish communists were purged and murdered by Stalin. The Jews had done it, and now to Hohmann's dialectical somersault: Of course, this verdict "may sound horrible," he mused, but after all, isn't this precisely the "same logic" that led to the stigmatization of Germany as a "nation of perpetrators?"

For non-Germans, this screed cries out for decoding. The unspoken logic is this: if the Jews were as bad, or worse, than our forefathers, then they have no special moral claim on us. The original Holocaust was invented not by us, but by them; so let them stop pointing their fingers at us. If we are criminals, so are they. But if they aren't, how can we be? Thus, the score is evened, and we are (almost) out of the moral doghouse.

Is this anti-Semitism? The denigration and demonization, the attribution of boundless power and evil, clearly are classic signs of Jew hatred. But the more interesting question is this: Is anti-Semitism on a roll in Germany, 60 years after Auschwitz? The answer is no.

Hence Günzel's immediate dismissal by Defense Minister Peter Struck, who called him "a confused and lonely general who agreed with an even more confused statement by a conservative member of parliament." Hence the uniform condemnation of both men in the opinion pages of the German press. But there is more significant evidence still.

To hate Jews is not permissible in polite society, but to loathe Israel, and especially its Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, carries no such stigma.

Last year, the American Jewish Committee surveyed the opinions of 1,250 Germans. The news is pretty good: only 17% said they would rather not have a Jew as neighbor; far less welcome were Arabs (43%) and Africans (26%). Do Jews have too much influence? No, said 52%, while 21% had no opinion.

Seven out of 10 thought it "exceedingly" or "very important" that Germans learn about the Holocaust. Three-quarters claimed never to have heard "anti-Semitic statements." Though there were no comparative data, my bet is that in Germany the "AQ" (or "anti-Semitism quotient") is no higher — and perhaps even lower — than in neighboring West European countries.

So, can we sleep sound and tight? No. The problem with such data is that post-Holocaust anti-Semitism is enveloped in a most powerful taboo — people hide it and surveys underreport it. But perhaps there's another way to measure it. Judging from the news out of Brussels last week, one might surmise that some anti-Israelism is a form of sublimated anti-Semitism. To hate Jews is not permissible in polite society, but to loathe Israel, and especially its Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon, carries no such stigma. One can certainly oppose Israeli policy without being an anti-Semite. But something more than policy differences are behind the astounding poll released by the E.U. last week, which shows that six out of 10 Europeans regard Israel as the greatest threat to world peace, ahead of North Korea and Iran.

The results, said European Commission President Romano Prodi, "point to the continued existence of a bias that must be condemned out of hand." He might also have asked whether Israel has become the über-Jew, a legitimate target where individual Jews are not. There is a quip ascribed to the Israeli psychoanalyst Zvi Rex: "The Germans will never forgive the Jews for Auschwitz," meaning that Germans (and all of Europe that let it happen) do not want to live under the burden of the Holocaust forever. Hence the projection of a guilt — as most recently executed by Martin Hohmann — that evens the score and lightens the burden of moral responsibility.

If this is the bad news, what is the good news? It is obvious: the demise of "classical" anti-Semitism in Europe — of persecution, expulsion and murder. These fires have burned out. After a millennium of bloodshed, that is the best news of all.