The History of History - By Ida Hattemer-Higgins Page 0,101
German romanticism and fascism. Several essays were published about it in very well-regarded journals. But that did not quite explain the strength of the crowds that turned up in the auditoriums where it was shown.
“Over time, my brother became maniacal. We fell out of contact—one year, two, three—I lost count. Then, out of nowhere, I received news that he was dead. He killed himself. It happened while he was abroad, visiting his East German son, who had defected to the States by then—a disastrous visit, obviously. All this, just as his reputation was enjoying a softer chapter.
“He left behind an elliptical, highly out-of-character suicide note, which I have always assumed he pieced together from other people’s writings—it was plagiarized, I believe, mostly from the letters he received from the university students, but it was unsettling to me nonetheless. It ran to forty-five pages. He wrote, among other things: ‘I can no longer live with my love of the sublime. What are we, what sort of animal is man, that even our elite feeds off the slaughter of the most beautiful among us to satiate its aesthetic needs?’
“He went on to defend himself and his followers, drawing a parallel between Christianity—a religion built around the gruesome crucifixion of the ‘lamb of God’—and the religiosity surrounding the Holocaust, which rests on the invocation of the gruesome murder of the innocent.”
The doctor put her hands down on the desk. She was quiet.
Margaret could not breathe. The doctor was not going to continue. Margaret colored. Sweat raced down her nose. “But that’s ridiculous. There’s no connection between the crucifixion and the Holocaust.”
The doctor remained silent.
“Your brother, he was jumping on the bandwagon,” Margaret said. “Our culture—no—Christianity, the way it’s become, it doesn’t get a spiritual reward from human sacrifice—not as it’s practiced now.” Margaret coughed. The lights were spinning. She felt sick. “If there was interest in that movie,” she said, making a grab at an authoritative tone, “it was because people crave sensation, and the spectacle of the old Nazis is something morbid that everyone wants to see.” She sat up straighter, trying to catch her breath, thinking of her customers wandering around Sachsenhausen and her own loud voice ringing against its walls.
“But you,” she went on after a moment. The doctor wasn’t responding; she had dropped her head forward. “You—how could you show this movie to me?” Margaret said. “It’s nothing but a snuff film. You called it ‘the most meaningful thing ever made,’ wasn’t that it?” Margaret was stretching her neck up, swallowing the lump in her throat. “You were trying to hypnotize me.” She left off. Her temples jounced. She found she wanted to take the tiny old woman and shake her by her shoulders until the gigantic head fell off and rolled across the floor.
And then something occurred to her. Why was the doctor casting the whole thing in such an atrocious light? Why was she making Margaret feel such shame? Margaret burst out: “But what about it? What would be the problem if the crucifixion and the Holocaust were understood the same way? Christianity,” Margaret stuttered, “is a path of the spirit. Why can’t the study of the Holocaust help the world in the same way—a spiritual path—if it can be that. If it can be that, then why not?” Her eyes unexpectedly filled with tears.
But the doctor came back to life and laughed. “You mean, if the sadistic torture and murder of an innocent prophet can lead via proxy sacrifice to cathartic cleansing of guilt in third parties even two thousand years hence, then why can’t the more recent murder of six million European Jews have exactly the same effect? Remember what we are talking about, my dear: the death of Jews at the hands of those claiming to be redeemed by the crucifixion of a Jew. And now you want the killing of six million more to nourish the spiritual life of future generations, is that it?” The doctor tapped her fingers on the desk.
Margaret pulled her hands over her ears, and her voice, when she spoke, came out in puffs. “You’ve made this into a terrible thing. I know why you showed me the film. I see what you were driving at all along: you were accusing me. You think I am one of those young people in the university, slavering over the hallucination of the beautiful sacrifice. That’s why you showed me the film at the beginning—to expose me as a cannibal,” and the