Two men named John

I have been reading about two remarkable figures of the 20th century, both of whom died in 1963:  Pope John XXIII and John F. Kennedy, born one hundred years ago.

It's hard to take that in since JFK seems forever an icon of youthful energy, despite being burdened by daily pain and much suffering.  The list of his life-long ailments is astounding, mostly hidden from public view during his life.  I have been reading Gretchen Rubin's Forty Ways to Look at JFK, a handy way to approach this complicated man (even if she doesn't really give us forty perspectives).

Why does this assassinated President, who served barely three years in the White House, remain in our minds as one of the greatest presidents, even if his actual accomplishments are less than great?  Rubin does a good job of responding to this issue of image and character; I might comment more fully later when I give a talk on this book.

The other talk I am giving deals with Pope John and the Jews: both his courageous work to secure the rescue of thousands of Jewish and other refugees during his days in Istanbul (1943-44), which is not well known, and his breakthrough outreach to Jews as pope.  In calling the Second Vatican Council, he addressed the Catholic Church in relation to the world and to other religions, and found, as a former diplomat, that a major cause of anti-Semitism is rooted in Christian belief and practice.

Hence came the landmark document Nostra Aetate, which declared, officially, that the Jews should not be held responsible for the death of Christ and should not be blamed but respected as the elder brothers of Christians.  He and his successors went on to condemn anti-Semitism as a great evil.

He was, in the words of Rabbi Moguilevsky of Buenos Aires, "a man truly created in the image of God." He could not have done more than he did to save the lives of thousands of Eastern European Jews at the end of the war, and later to re-orient Christianity in a more positive way, especially in embracing Jews.  He is now known as St. John XXIII.

The two Johns worked together, indirectly, at one of the most critical moments of the century: the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962.  Because Pope John, warm and genial and skilled in diplomacy, believed in reaching out to adversaries, he had been in contact with Premier Khrushchev. Kennedy, desperate for a solution, had sent the writer Norman Cousins to Rome; this resulted in the Pope writing the Russian letter begging for peace. Khrushchev, an atheist, welcomed the gesture and saw the papal letter as a means to end the stalemate between the Soviet Union and the U.S. over the presence of Soviet missiles in Cuba. Nuclear war was averted.

The full details are outlined in many books, including the two biographies of John XIII I have consulted: one by Peter Hebblethwaite, the other by Thomas Cahill. I am grateful to both authors, and to Gretchen Rubin, for reminding me of the two major figures of the 1960s and the century.

Looking Back (in amazement and revulsion)

In recent weeks, I have been reading about the Mitford sisters, enjoying the lively memoir by Jessica Mitford, Daughters and Rebels (1960), which led me to look at the lives of the other five daughters and the notorious family  that made weekly headlines in British newspapers in the Thirties.

Just this week, the last of the Mitfords, Deborah (Dowager Duchess of Devonshire) died at 94. She was the youngest daughter of Baron Redesdale and lived a quiet life presiding over the grand country home, Chatsworth, where she collected Elvis memorabilia. Several of her sisters  carried eccentricity to much more alarming heights. Four wrote books about the family, creating the Mitford Myth.

Jessica became an American and a Communist (and later a civil rights activist) after running away to Spain to fight in the civil war with Churchill's nephew, with whom she eloped; this happened just after her sister, Unity, became "Hitler's English girlfriend," having become a pistol-carrying Nazi, complete with black leather outfit and swastika.  The most glamorous sister, Diana, also met and adored Hitler: she left her husband and two sons for the fascist leader Oswald Mosley. She was married in home of Joseph Goebbels in 1936, with the Fuhrer in attendance. Diana and Mosley were interned in prison during World War II for treason.

So much for the three main ones. Two lived quietly. Another, Nancy Mitford, wrote fourteen books, including fiction based on the family and its tyrannical father, whose hated of foreigners and overall bigotry was something the children absorbed in various degrees yet also rebelled against.  Each of them carried the title The Hon. before their names, but few were honorable: they come across as arrogantly assured of their own privileges and opinions.

Like their parents, they never apologized for what they did because they felt they were always right. I refer mainly to Diana, the worst of the bunch, who until her death at 93, never altered her view that Hitler was wonderful. Her obit called her "A charming, unrepentant Nazi who was fatally loyal to her Blackshirt husband."  She and Unity, who shot herself in the head when England declared war on Germany, were described in one book as representing the "frivolity of evil."

As I look at this family and this period, when so many in the upper classes in Britain were also fascist or pro-German and anti-Semitic  (even when England went to war against Nazi Germany), I have many questions about what the origins of such attitudes.   How much of the Mitfords' hate came from their upbringing, how much from their upper-class milieu, how much from their need to be independent?  What leads talented, bright, attractive people to such dangerous extremes?

Jessica, whose life is the most colorful and amazing, sensibly says, "We delighted in matching wits with the world and this became a  way of life, an ongoing battle against our class."

Although these class distinctions are less sharp in today's world, similar kinds of anger and hatred are alive and well in Europe today, where again anti-Semitism is on the rise and where terrorists are poised to strike at what we call the civilized world.  Can we not learn lessons from recent history? If not, we need the humility to recognize, unlike those now-dead English aristocrats, that we are not always right.

Dealing with Hate

It's easy to deal with annoying emails: they get deleted or put into spam.  When a troubling message from someone I know arrives, as it did this week--a message of bias and bigotry, I am nonplussed.
After I delete it, I am still affected by its contents.

The message was about David Irving, the once respectable British historian who was found guilty of denying the Holocaust in a libel case in 2000. He is known as a Holocaust denier, racist, and anti-Semite. Now he has re-surfaced, giving talks to fellow travelers at carefully selected and secure locations where the press and opponents can be denied access.

A local historian, teacher, and friend, a man with a Ph.D., was excited about the prospect of hearing Irving speak somewhere in Florida and so sent me an email invitation. The topic of the talk was Rudolf Hess, whose case interests me. And it's possible that Irving might say interesting things about Hess that I don't know. But he would probably use the occasion to spread his own biased version of modern events.

I don't know how reliable Irving would be on any topic when he has been discredited as an objective historian, who calls mainstream writers and biographers "conformist historians" since he sees himself as a crusader for "truth," writing (he said) "what I call history."  I would call it hate.

I can't imagine paying money to hear David Irving.  And what is especially troubling is that the man I know and thought I respected believes that, because of "free speech," Irving should be heard; that my friend wants to hear his twisted version of events is very disturbing. I begin to wonder what my friend's students have been hearing about modern history, about minorities in general and Jews in particular.

Irving, you see, is quoted in the British press as perpetuating the old stereotypes of fear and hatred of "Jewish power."  He says that the Jews in America control all the media and banks.  He seems indifferent to what happened in Germany in 1933 when Jews were blamed for the economic woes of the time, as if unaware of the consequences: 6 million perished.

Does he admit this?  Begrudgingly now, after years of questioning the gas chambers--but adds: The Jews were advised by a PR firm to give what happened to them a name--the Holocaust--and the result is a billion-dollar enterprise.  Auschwitz is "hugely inflated and hyped up. It's like Disney.  It has no part in history." (This from an August 13 article by Simon Usborne).

My historian friend is eager to hear such a man? Can I still call him a friend? I am horrified.

I spent several years teaching a course The Faces of Evil, all about hatred and racism. I included a section about Holocaust denial, using David Irving and his trial as evidence that anti-Semitism is alive and well, even among articulate, educated and widely published authors.

As I read about Irving today, at the age of 75, I can see a man to be pitied and shunned: he has become paranoid about the press and criticism (for good reason), and his own narcissism and prejudices have made him blind to facts, logic, and objective reality.  He is deluded, and somehow I have to tell my friend that I for one want nothing to do with David Irving and people like him.   Free speech does not allow a forum for disseminating bias and hatred.