Let’s analyze the following statement: “Ukrainians cannot be Nazis because their president is a Jew.” That, on the face of it, is nonsensical. But if you try to pry some logic out of it, you inevitably end up with “A Jew cannot be a Nazi” and “If your president cannot be a Nazi, then neither can you.” While the latter statement allows for some wiggle room—well, some Ukrainians might be Nazis, but not all of them—the former statement seems more like a rule of logic. The key ingredient here is the Holocaust, during which Jews were victims of Nazis. If Jews were victims of Nazis then Jews cannot be Nazis, right? Why?
Never mind why, this is just an abstract rule. So what if over 150000 Jews (technically called “Mischlinge,” or half-breeds) served in the Wehrmacht (a safe place for Jews at the time), quite a few of them quite bravely, with hundreds of them earning the Iron Cross and 20 of them earning the highest decoration of the Third Reich—the Knight’s Cross (Ritterkreuz)? A rather famous example, endlessly lionized as a “perfect German soldier” in the Nazi press, was the tall, blond, blue-eyed, heroic-looking Werner Goldberg, whose father was Jewish. So, as a matter of fact, Jews certainly could be and were Nazis. Clearly, this is not a reality-based rule; but then what is it?
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