Perfection (Historical Context)

Historical Context

The Holocaust

The Holocaust is the name given to the genocide of the Jews and other minority groups and so-called undesirables carried out by Nazi Germany and its allies during World War II (1939-1945). It is estimated that around six million Jews were killed in the Holocaust in what the Nazis called the final solution of the Jewish question or the cleaning. The Nazis promoted the belief that the Jews were a physically and morally inferior group that should be exterminated. Hundreds of thousands of Jews perished in the extermination camps set up in Germany and collaborating countries by the Nazis. Early on in the war, as happened to Roger's parents, many were marched to the edge of a pit, where they were shot, a method later found to be too costly a use of ammunition. The pit was then filled in by bulldozers. Later when the Nazis wanted to speed up the killing and use a cheaper method, death camp prisoners were gassed in custom-made chambers with a common delousing poison, zyklon B.

Minority groups murdered by the Nazis in extermination camps included Roma (gypsies), Poles, Serbs, homosexuals, mentally and physically disabled people, communists, dissidents and intellectuals, black people, resistant Catholic and Protestant clergy, and various criminals. Taking these groups into account brings most estimates of those killed in the Holocaust to an estimated eleven million.

The Nazi extermination camp at Majdanek, where Roger was born and where he witnessed his parents being murdered, was two miles from the Polish city Lublin. It was one of two camps where zyklon B was used in the gas chambers, though carbon monoxide was also used. According to data from the Majdanek State Museum, about 300,000 inmates passed through the camp, of whom over 40 percent were Jews. It is estimated that around 100,000 Jews lost their lives there, half dying from disease, exhaustion, and harsh conditions, and half being executed or gassed.

Holocaust Denial

Some people do not believe that the Jews were killed in an event of genocide during World War II. People who do not believe the Holocaust occurred are commonly called Holocaust deniers, but they themselves generally favor the term Holocaust revisionists. Key beliefs of Holocaust deniers include rejecting the fact that the Nazi government had a deliberate policy of targeting Jews for extermination; that around six million Jews were killed in the Holocaust; and that mass extermination of Jews occurred in camps designed for that purpose. Some Holocaust deniers claim that the gas chambers found in the camps after the end of the war were for delousing inmates and that the camps were for prisoners of labor and not for extermination. In the last decade of the twentieth century, some commentators claimed that Jews invented or exaggerated the Holocaust for financial or political gain. They coined the term, Holocaust industry, to describe this notion. In "Perfection," the character of Roger is placed in opposition to Holocaust deniers, in that he is determined to "bear witness" to the truth of the death of his parents and so many others, "even as others might forget, ridicule, dismiss, or demean it."

In many countries, Holocaust denial is illegal. In 2005, British historian David Irving was sentenced to three years imprisonment in Austria based on books he had written and speeches he had given claiming the scale of the extermination of Jews in World War II was exaggerated, that Hitler knew nothing of the Holocaust, and that there had been no gas chambers at the Auschwitz camp. In 1998, Irving launched an unsuccessful libel suit against U.S. academic Deborah Lipstadt and her publisher. The presiding judge, Charles Gray (as reported in the Guardian Unlimited article, "The Ruling against David Irving: Excerpts from High Court Judge Charles Gray's Ruling in the David Irving Libel Suit"), ruled that characterizations that Irving is a "Holocaust denier," that he is "anti-Semitic," and that he has "for his own ideological reasons persistently and deliberately misrepresented and manipulated historical evidence" were "substantially true." The case also demanded that the judge rule on the truth or otherwise of the events of the Holocaust itself. After hearing evidence from both sides, the judge concluded, "It is my conclusion that no objective, fair-minded historian would have serious cause to doubt that there were gas chambers at Auschwitz and that they were operated on a substantial scale to kill hundreds of thousands of Jews."

Hasidic Judaism

Hasidic Judaism, of which Roger is an adherent, is a form of Haredi Judaism, which in turn is sometimes known as Ultra-Orthodox Judaism. The word, Hasidic (Chasidic is an alternative spelling) derives from the Hebrew word for "piety." Hasidic Judaism was founded by Rabbi Yisroel ben Eliezer (1698-1760), a mystic who is commonly referred to by Hasidic Jews as the Baal Shem Tov (generally translated as Master of the Good Name), or as Besht for short. Hasidic Judaism stresses joy, faith, and ecstatic prayer, accompanied by song and dance, and places religious exaltation above intellectual knowledge. One of its central beliefs is that the entire universe is a manifestation of God but that God also transcends the universe. This belief tends to give rise to optimism about the human condition, as it teaches that everyone and everything possesses a divine spark in which God is manifested.

Hasidic beliefs and practices are expressed in "Perfection" in Roger's love for, and wonder at, the marvels of creation; in his sensitivity to visions of "the House That Ruth Built" as being filled with music and dance; in his easy familiarity with ecstatic states; and in his assumption that he and, ultimately, the Yankees can reflect divine perfection in the relatively mundane act of playing baseball.

Hasidic dress is distinctive. Hasidic men usually wear a black hat and black clothes with a white shirt, and on the sabbath they wear a black satin or silk robe with a prayer belt. In common with other Jews, Hasidic Jews follow dietary laws, and food produced in line with these laws is called kosher. In "Perfection," under Roger's influence, some Jewish rules of dress are adopted by the Yankees baseball team, and some of the dietary rules are followed within the stadium, shocking the media and the public.

COMPARE & CONTRAST

• 1940s: The Nazis murder approximately six million Jews, in a genocide that comes to be known as the Holocaust, in extermination camps in Germany and its allied countries.

  1950s: In the United States and other countries to which Jews immigrate after World War II, the Holocaust is not much discussed either within or outside Jewish circles. Jews who survive the Holocaust and immigrate to the United States are discouraged by customs officials from talking about their experiences, on the presumption that Americans are not interested.

  Today: The Holocaust is the subject of documentaries, films, and books and is commemorated in museums and monuments. Holocaust denial is illegal in many countries.

• 1940s: The Holocaust destroys all Hasidic groups in Eastern Europe.

  1950s: Survivors of the Holocaust immigrate to various countries, including the United States and Israel, and establish new centers of Hasidic Judaism modeled on their original communities. In the United States, the largest communities are in Brooklyn, New York.

  Today: Hasidic Judaism thrives, especially in U.S. cities, with approximately 165,000 Hasidic Jews living in the New York City area. Hasidic Jews preserve the Yiddish language and many of the religious traditions of pre-Holocaust Eastern European Judaism. The American Hasidic Jewish reggae artist Matisyahu is popular. His music is primarily aimed at non-religious Jews to bring them closer to Judaism.

• 1940s: Palestine is partitioned into Arab and Jewish regions, and the Jewish state of Israel is set up in 1948, largely to provide a homeland for the Jewish people where they can avoid the possibility of another Holocaust.

  1950s: From 1951 to 1956, hundreds of attacks on Israel are carried out by Arab resistance groups called fedayeen, operating from the Arab countries of Egypt, Jordan, and Syria. In 1956, Egyptian president Nasser's nationalization of the Suez Canal, an international waterway through which Israeli ships passed, threatens British and French oil and trade interests in the region. In the hope of ending the fedayeen attacks, Israel joins with France and Britain in attacking Egypt, though this war ends in the same year.

  Today: Hostilities between Israel and neighboring Arab countries continue. Israel builds a West Bank barrier purportedly to defend the country against attacks by Palestinian groups, though opponents claim the barrier is a way for Israel to appropriate land.