Censorship Map of Europe

Censorship map of Europe, 2026: red: the writing of history is prescribed by penal law; light grey: historical dissent is an offense only if committed concurrently with disparaging victims, witnesses and/or survivors, or statements likely to cause violence and/or hatred. Since all EU member states must enact such laws, the white spots on this map will steadily decrease in years to come.

An Update

By Germar Rudolf ∙ June 20, 2026

On page 33 of the first, 2014 edition of his book Breaking the Spell, Dr. Nicholas Kollerstrom included a map showing the countries in Europe that had enacted laws dictating Holocaust historiography at gunpoint. (The map is on p. 34 of the 7th, 2024 edition.) I remember spending quote some time creating this map, using various online resources to figure out which country has which laws. Over the years, I have updated this map, and included a simple list in my Holocaust Encyclopedia in its entry on censorship.

When the latest case of a law banning Holocaust skepticism was enacted in Finland in early 2026, I wrote an article about this. I mention in this article that one motivation for Finland to introduce such a law was pressure from the European Union. I wondered back then how Finland could succumb to that pressure while other European nations which are already in the EU or strive to be accepted managed to resists, especially in the Balkans.

While writing my most-recent book in History at Gunpoint, I revisited the issue with the aim of getting things updated. During my research, I stumbled across an excellent resource in this regard on the Bosnian website trial.ba of the organization Trial International, which grew out of a dedication to document the massacres committed by all sides during the war fought mainly on that country’s territory between 1992 and 1995, to help victims and hold perpetrators accountable. This organization compiled a list containing information for all European countries regarding any laws they have enacted banning denial of the Holocaust and/or of other genocides or mass atrocities.[1] This table was uploaded in February of 2020, hence cannot contain legislative changes made after that date.

Going through that table, I realized that my map and related table had been incomplete all along: Northern Macedonia had introduced a general anti-genocide denial law already in 2004, hence three years before the European Union 2007 issued its decision to make such a law mandatory for all member states. While pure denial can get you between one to five years in that country, if it is combined with the “intent to instigate hate, discrimination or violence,” a prison term of at least four years is imposed, with no upper limit given, probably meaning that even a life sentence is theoretically possible.

Albania followed a year after Europe’s mandate, but its general ban on genocide denial is embedded in a law regulating online offenses, so denial is punishable only if it is “deliberately disseminating to the public through computer systems.” The punishment threatened is between 3 and six years.

Malta followed a year later, in 2009, albeit only if general “genocide denial” is done in a way likely to incite to violence or hatred, or likely to disturb public order. Therefore, I changed the color of Malta on the new map from red (unconditional ban) to grey (conditional). Also, I added Malta to the list of countries in the encyclopedia, where it had been omitted for some inscrutable reason. The threatened punishment is 8 months to two years imprisonment.

Montenegro enacted a general ban on genocide denial in 2010 for cases conducted “in a manner which can lead to violence or cause hatred against a group,” and if that genocide has been declared a fact by “a final and enforceable judgment of a court in Montenegro or of the International Criminal Tribunal.” The threatened punishment is between six months and five years. The expression “a manner that can lead to violence or cause hatred” is too diffuse to qualify as a conditional ban. Even the most rational and unemotional scrutiny of a genocide can lead someone to develop feelings of hate, and push some deranged mind to resort to violence. At least words like “is likely to cause” are needed to qualify a law to be a conditional ban only. Hence, I have given Montenegro the red card on the map.

2011 saw three European countries introduce laws banning genocide denial in general, Croatia made it conditional by mandating that the offense needs to be perpetrated “in a manner likely to incite to violence or hatred,” while Cyprus did not include such a qualifier. Bulgaria made it conditional on the offense posing “a risk of violence or hatred”, but there is no qualifier on how high the risk must be, so it doesn’t count as a conditional ban. Croatia imposed prison terms of up to 3 years, Cyprus of up to 5 years, and Bulgaria from a minimum of one year up to five years. Cyprus defines genocides as something that has been determined by an “irrevocable decision of an international court,” meaning that the findings of the IMT show trial probably also count as incontestable.

After Spain’s High Court had thrown out that country’s first, 1995 attempt at banning Holocaust denial as unconstitutional, Spain introduced a general ban on genocide denial in 2015, making that act an offense, if it “promotes or favors a climate of violence, hostility, hatred or discrimination.” That law has led to the conviction of Holocaust skeptic and National-Socialist activist Pedro Varela in 2024, whose considerable activities of promoting National-Socialist ideas was moreover judged to be an indirect justification of that past regime’s genocidal acts. Denial plus NS ideology pushed the judiciary over the edge, sending Varela to prison for 18 months. Spain’s new anti-denial law was criticized by Spanish legal scholars as unconstitutional, especially since its “qualifier” requires a mere hypothetical risk of “violence, hostility, hatred or discrimination” by merely favoring a climate.[2] It can’t be more wishy-washy. Varela’s case is currently moving through the various appellate stages, and may be heard by the Constitutional High Court within five years or so. Until then, I have given Spain a conditional status, as denial itself isn’t able to trigger the law, but very much its convolution with NS propaganda.

Next on the list of countries I missed is Serbia, which introduced its law in 2016, with a thin conditional veneer of acts that “could lead to violence or incitement to hate.” Defining genocide like Montenegro via decisions of national courts or the ICC, Serbia imposes of six months to five years on convicted offenders. That’s a red card for Serbia.

Before we move on the rest of the Balkan countries and some special cases, an explanation is due regarding the UK, which does not have a formal law banning Holocaust skepticism at all, as many have rightly observed. I have included it on the map and in my list anyway, with the year given 2017. This is not based on the adoption of any law, but on case law created by the case of musical artist Alison Chabloz. She was indicted under Section 127(1) of the Communications Act of 2003 for communicating via “a public electronic communications network” (internet) messages that the judges considered “grossly offensive.” The offenses are said to have been committed by satirical songs on Holocaust survivors and their tales which Chabloz wrote and performed. I loved the songs when I listened to them back in 1916 and 1917. I thought the melodies were pleasing, voice and instrumentals were excellent, and the lyrics were written with wit and intelligence. But turning Holocaust skepticism from dry scholarship into living art evidently is a crime.[3] Therefore, the UK definitely meets the criterion of conditionally banning Holocaust skepticism, if combined with disrespectful statements about victims and/or survivors. This was highlighted with the case of Ian R. Millard, who mixed general expressions of disbelieve in the mainstream Holocaust narrative with anti-Jewish statements.[4] Castle Hill Publishers and their successor Armreg Ltd, the two most-productive media outlets of Holocaust skepticism in this century, have operated from the UK since 1998, and have never been impeded or harassed. It is therefore safe to say that, as long as it is boringly scholarly, Holocaust skepticism is legal in the UK. But I changed the year to 2018, the year of Chabloz’s first conviction.

Bosnia had the new Article 145a of its penal law banning general genocide denial imposed by that country’s High Representative in 2021.[5] It was not well received by many among the country’s Serbs, hence caused quite some tensions. It requires that denial be done in a “manner likely to incite to violence or hatred,” and comes with prison terms between six months and five years. It defines genocide by a final court verdict, hence the IMT probably qualifies. Bosnia’s law is primarily designed to ban denials of genocidal killings committed during that country’s civil during the 1990s war rather than directed against Holocaust skeptics.[6] The expression “likely to incite to violence or hatred” was taken straight from a EU Framework Decision on Combating Racism and Xenophobia.[7] While this expression is suppose to prevent the stifling of academic freedom, member states are free to include or omit such a requirement. Bosnia has included it, making this a case of conditional banning of genocide denial. This turns the country grey on my map (it has been red so far).

Moldova has two laws, one banning general genocide denial (Art. 135² of its Criminal Code, one to three years imprisonment) and one introduced also in 2021 specifically banning Holocaust denial (Article 1761), likewise with prison terms between six months and five years. It defines the Holocaust as “the systematic persecution,” “annihilation and extermination of a large number of members of the Jewish community by Nazi Germany, as well as by its allies and collaborators, during the period 1933-1945” (Art. 13419).[8] Denial is not a crime, however, if done “in the interest of art or science, research or education.” I am reluctant to grant Moldova the grey conditional status for this, because any popular but non-polemical statement could be denied that privilege, and judiciaries have the tendency to define the “interest” of science and research by that community’s consensus, which tends to exclude skeptic voice. So that’s a red card for Moldova.

Armenia’s Article 136 of its penal code, completely overhauled in 2022, threatens with up to four years imprisonment those who deny genocides in general “for the purpose of provoking hatred, discrimination or violence.”[9] It’s neighbors Turkey and Azerbaijan have so far refused to adopt similar laws, as those nations’ citizens at times engage in that kind of activity regarding the genocide Armenians suffered during the First World War. I grant Armenia a conditional status, which more radical faction in its society don’t like, who want to tighten that law even more.[10]

Also in 2022, Belarus implemented a law against genocide denial. However, their law merely bans the denial, minimization or justification of the genocide committed against the Belarusian people by German forces during World War II, even though no such thing occurred. The massacres presumably committed by the German wartime Einsatzgruppen against both local Jews and Jews deported to Belarus from central and western Europe were rebranded by Alexander Lukashenko’s regime as victims of the general populace.[11] While the law effectively denies Jews their main-victim role, its primary function is to suppress modern political dissent, in particular by stigmatizing pro-democracy opposition groups as ideological “descendants of Nazi collaborators.”[12] Of course, strictly speaking, all countries with such laws use it to oppress what they stigmatize as “Nazis” or “Nazi” sympathi­zers, whether that label is accurate or not. Since Belarus’s law does not ban Holocaust skepticism as such, but only events that are said to have happened on Belarussian soil, I have not shaded that country on my map.

The last country to add to the new list is Kosovo. Mimicking its big sister Albania, Kosovo followed suit a year later, in 2023, by adopting a similar law unconditionally banning general genocide denial if disseminated to the public through computer systems, also with prison terms between 3 and 6 years.[13]

Therefore, if we ignore the European Union as an umbrella organization with its framework decision, 41 countries currently enforce the writing of history to one degree or another at gunpoint.

Hence, leaving aside Belarus, only six European countries have not (yet) formally banned Holocaust skepticism in one form or another: Iceland, Ireland, Denmark, Estonia, Azerbaijan and Georgia:

# Year Country Max. Term

1. 1986 Israel 5 years

2. 1990 France 1 year

3. 1992 Austria 20 years

4. 1994 Germany 5 years

5. 1995 Belgium 1 year

6. 1995 Netherlands (conditional) 1 year

7. 1995 Liechtenstein 2 years

8. 1995 Switzerland 3 years

9. 1997 Luxembourg 2 years

10. 1997 Slovenia 2 years

11. 1998 Poland 3 years

12. 2001 Slovakia 3 years

13. 2001 Czechia 3 years

14. 2002 Romania 3 years

15. 2002 Australia (HRC)* –

16. 2004 Macedonia 5 years

17. 2007 European Union (framework law) 3 years

18. 2007 Portugal (conditional) 5 years

19. 2008 Albania (computer distribution only) 6 years

20. 2009 Latvia 5 years

21. 2009 Malta (conditional) 2 years

22. 2010 Hungary 3 years

23. 2010 Montenegro 5 years

24. 2011 Croatia (conditional) 3 years

25. 2011 Bulgaria 5 years

26. 2011 Cyprus 5 years

27. 2012 Lithuania 2 years

28. 2014 Russia 3 years

29. 2014 Greece (conditional) 3 years

30. 2015 Spain (conditional) 4 years

31. 2016 Serbia 5 years

32. 2016 Italy 6 years

33. 2018 UK (conditional) 2 years

34. 2021 Ukraine 5 years

35. 2021 Bosnia (conditional) 5 years

36. 2021 Moldova 2 years

37. 2022 Armenia (conditional) 4 years

38. 2022 Belarus (very limited, see text) 5 years

39. 2022 Canada 2 years

40. 2023 Kosovo (computer distribution only) 6 years

41. 2024 Sweden 2 years

42. 2026 Finland 2 years

conditional: only in conjunction with verbal abuses and/or threats, likely to cause violence or hatred.

* a human-rights commission can issue a cease-and-desist order. If ignored, it can lead to prosecution for ignoring a government order.

Endnotes

[1] trial.ba/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/Table-overview-of-denial-laws-in-other-countries.pdf

[2] Carmen Alastuey Dobón, “El derecho penal ante el negacionismo. Comentario a la sap de Barcelona de 9 de septiembre de 2024 (Caso de la Librería Europa III),” Revista de Derecho Penal y Criminología, Vol. 32, no. 3, July 2024, pp. 483-520; https://revistas.uned.es/index.php/RDPC/article/download/44193/31985/133342

.

[3] See Alison’s blog at https://alisonchabloz.com/

; see Laura Bliss, “Magistrates Court: Social Media: ‘A Theme Park just for Fools’ – R v Alison Chabloz,” The Journal of Criminal Law, Vol. 82, No. 4, 2018, pp. 301-304; https://doi.org/10.1177/0022018318792937

; Frank Cranmer, “Is Holocaust denial a crime in England and Wales? No – but see R v Chabloz,” Law & Religion UK, 15 Feb. 2019; https://lawandreligionuk.com/2019/02/15/is-holocaust-denial-a-crime-in-england-and-wales-no-but-see-r-v-chabloz/

.

[4] Timothy Edgley, “Disgraced New Forest barrister posted antisemitic hate online,” Salisbury Journal, 15 March 2024; https://www.salisburyjournal.co.uk/news/24187095.disgraced-new-forest-barrister-posted-antisemitic-hate-online/

.

[5] https://www.ohr.int/high-representative-valentin-inzko-introduced-today-amendment-to-the-bh-criminal-code/

[6] https://trialinternational.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Legal-prohibition-of-denial-of-adjudicated-war-crimes-concerns-all-victims-of-war-Analysis.pdf

[7] European Council, Framework Decision 2008/913/JHA, 28 November 2008, on combating certain forms and expressions of racism and xenophobia by means of criminal law; https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=celex%3A32008F0913

.

[8] https://bwcimplementation.org/sites/default/files/resource/MD_Code%20No.%20985%20of%202002_EN.pdf

[9] Harut Sassounian, “Pashinyan rejects committing crime of Armenian Genocide denial,” Armenian Weekly, Feb. 5, 2025; https://armenianweekly.com/2025/02/05/pashinyan-rejects-committing-crime-of-armenian-genocide-denial/

[10] Gayane Saribekian, “Opposition Again Seeks Tougher Punishment for Armenian Genocide Denial,” Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, Sept. 03, 2025; https://www.azatutyun.am/a/33520882.html

.

[11] Kamil Kłysiński, “The anti-Western narrative in Belarus’s historical policy becomes harsher,” Ośrodek Studiów Wschodnich, 14. Jan. 2022; www.osw.waw.pl/en/publikacje/analyses/2022-01-14/anti-western-narrative-belaruss-historical-policy-becomes-harsher.

[12] Oxford Belarus Observatory et al. (eds.), “WWII Collective Memory and its Politics in a Real War Context, in Belarus,” August 22, 2022; obo.web.ox.ac.uk/files/wwiicollectivememorypdf.

[13] Article 277A; see https://gzk.rks-gov.net/ActDocumentDetail.aspx?ActID=84232

, p. 4.

 

Jews Control Postwar Holocaust Trials and Narrative

The genocide of European Jewry has been given undeserved legitimacy by the numerous trials conducted by the Allies after World War II. The first trial held in Nuremberg from 1945 to 1946, officially known as the International Military Tribunal (IMT), is by far the most significant of these trials. The governments of the United States, the Soviet Union, Great Britain, and France tried the most prominent surviving German leaders as war criminals in this trial. In addition, the United States government alone conducted 12 secondary Nuremberg trials (NMT) from 1946 to 1949. Similar trials were also conducted in other locations by Great Britain, West Germany, the United States, and Israel, including the highly publicized trial in Israel of Adolf Eichmann.

The IMT and later Allied-run war-crimes trials are repeatedly cited as proof of the Holocaust story. For example, Jewish American judge Norbert Ehrenfreund wrote:[1]

“Germans of the 21st century know what happened during the Nazi era because they learn about it in school, through television programs and various other sources. And this information did not arise from rumor or questionable hearsay. Nor was it a fabrication of the Jewish people, as suggested by some anti-Semitic factions. Proof of the Holocaust was based on the record of solid evidence produced at the [Nuremberg] trial.”

However, the IMT and later Allied-run trials were politically motivated proceedings that falsely accused Germans of conducting a policy of genocide against European Jewry. They were a travesty of justice organized by Jews who wanted to demonize and convict Germans of genocide. This article documents that Jews and Jewish groups controlled and abused these Allied-run postwar trials.

Jews Control Nuremberg Trials

The predominately Jewish control of the Nuremberg trials is indicated by Nahum Goldmann in his book The Jewish Paradox. Goldmann, president of the World Jewish Congress (WJC), admitted that the idea of the Nuremberg Tribunal and German reparations originated with WJC officials. Only after persistent efforts by WJC officials were Allied leaders persuaded to accept the idea of the Nuremberg trials.[2] Also, the WJC made sure that Germany’s alleged extermination of European Jewry was a primary focus of the trials, and that the defendants would be punished for their involvement in Germany’s extermination process.[3]

Two Jewish U.S. Army officers played key roles in the Nuremberg trials. Lt. Col. Murray Bernays, a prominent New York attorney, persuaded U.S. War Secretary Henry Stimson and others to put the defeated German leaders on trial.[4] Col. David Marcus, a fervent Zionist, was head of the U.S. government’s War Crimes Branch from February 1946 until April 1947. Marcus was made head of the War Crimes Branch primarily in order “to take over the mammoth task of selecting hundreds of judges, prosecutors and lawyers” for the NMT trials.[5]

Allied prosecutors gave special attention to the alleged extermination of 6 million Jews at the IMT. For example, chief U.S. prosecutor Robert H. Jackson declared in his opening address at the IM[6]

“The most savage and numerous crimes planned and committed by the Nazis were those against the Jews. […] It is my purpose to show a plan and design to which all Nazis were fanatically committed, to annihilate all Jewish people. […] The avowed purpose was the destruction of the Jewish people as a whole. […] History does not record a crime ever perpetrated against so many victims or one ever carried out with such calculated cruelty.”

Sir Hartley Shawcross, the chief British prosecutor at the IMT, echoed Justice Jackson’s sentiments in his final address to the Tribunal:[7]

“There is one group to which the method of annihilation was applied on a scale so immense that it is my duty to refer separately to the evidence. I mean the extermination of the Jews. If there was no other crime against these men, this one alone, in which all of them were implicated, would suffice. History holds no parallel to these horrors.”

Shawcross also stated in his closing address that “more than 6 million” Jews were killed by the Germans, and that “[…] murder [was] conducted like some mass production industry in the gas chambers and the ovens of Auschwitz, Dachau, Treblinka, Buchenwald, Mauthausen, Majdanek and Oranienburg.”[8]

Numerous observers spoke of the predominance of Jews at the IMT. For example, American prosecutor Thomas Dodd wrote to his wife on September 20, 1945, about the prosecution staff at the IMT:[9]

“You know better than anyone how I hate race or religious prejudice. You know how I have despised anti-Semitism. You know how strongly I feel toward those who preach intolerance of any kind. With that knowledge—you will understand when I tell you that this staff is about 75% Jewish. Now my point is that the Jews should stay away from this trial—for their own sake. For—mark this well—the charge ‘a war for the Jews’ is still being made and in the post-war years it will be made again and again. The too large percentage of Jewish men and women here will be cited as proof of this charge.”

Some U.S. Congressmen also denounced the Jewish-controlled Nuremberg trials. For example, Congressman John Rankin of Mississippi declare[10]

“As a representative of the American people I desire to say that what is taking place in Nuremberg, Germany is a disgrace to the United States. […] A racial minority, two and a half years after the war closed, are in Nuremberg not only hanging German soldiers but trying German businessmen in the name of the United States.”

U.S. Sen. Robert A. Taft courageously denounced the Nuremberg trials in an October 1946 speech: “The trial of the vanquished by the victors cannot be impartial no matter how it is hedged about with the forms of justice.” Taft went on to state:[11]

“About this whole judgment there is a spirit of vengeance, and vengeance is seldom justice. The hanging of the 11 men convicted will be a blot on the American record which we will long regret. In these trials we have accepted the Russian idea of the purpose of the trials—government policy and not justice—with little relationship to Anglo-Saxon heritage. By clothing policy in forms of legal procedure, we may discredit the whole idea of justice in Europe for years to come.”

Gen. George Patton was also opposed to the war crimes trials. In a letter to his wife, he wrote:[12]

“I am frankly opposed to this war criminal stuff. It is not cricket and it is Semitic. I am also opposed to sending POWs to work as slaves in foreign lands, where many will be starved to death.”

Nevertheless, many defenders of the Holocaust story maintain that the 42-volume Trial of the Major War Criminals (The Blue Series) supplies a massive compilation of damning evidence against Germany’s National Socialist regime. In his book Made in Russia: The Holocaust, Carlos Porter confronts the evidence directly by reproducing page after page from the Blue Series. Porter shows that many of the charges made at the IMT are so bizarre that most defenders of the Holocaust story have long since let them lapse. In addition to killing Jews in homicidal gas chambers, the Germans at Nuremberg were accused of (all page numbers from IMT, Vol. 7 unless stated otherwise):

building special electrical appliances to zap inmates to death with mass electrical shocks (p. 576);
killing 20,000 Jews in a village near Auschwitz with an atomic bomb (Vol. 16, p. 529);
forcing prisoners to climb trees and then killing the prisoners by cutting down the trees (p. 582);
killing 840,000 Russian prisoners at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp using a pedal-driven brain-bashing machine, and then burning the bodies in four mobile crematories (p. 586);
torturing and executing people at the Yanov camp in Russia in time to music created by a special orchestra selected from among the prisoners, and then shooting every member of the orchestra (p. 451);
grinding the bones of 200 people at one time as described in documents and photographs that have disappeared (pp. 549f.);
making lampshades, handbags, driving gloves for SS officers, book bindings, saddles, house slippers, etc. out of human skin (p. 171);
killing prisoners and concentration camp inmates for everything from having soiled underwear to having armpit hair (pp. 434f.); and
steaming people to death like lobsters in steam chambers at Treblinka.[13]
After this incredible survey of Nuremberg atrocity evidence, Carlos Porter provides numerous examples of improper prosecution tactics at Nuremberg. The defendants at Nuremberg were rarely able to confront their accusers, since affidavits from witnesses who had been deposed months before sufficed. The prosecution made it difficult for the defense lawyers to have timely access to the documents introduced into evidence by the prosecution. Also, photocopies and transcripts were usually submitted into evidence instead of the original German documents, which in many cases seemed to have disappeared. Finally, the defense had access only to those documents which the prosecution considered material to the case. The defense had no right to review the tons of remaining documents that might help them defend their clients.[14]

It is also notable that Dr. Hans Laternser, the defense counsel for the General Staff and the O.K.W., submitted no fewer than 3,186 affidavits during the IMT sworn to by key German witnesses. None of these affidavits was ever published in the IMT Blue Series.[15]

Jews Torture Rudolf Höss

Auschwitz commandant Rudolf Höss was the star witness at the IMT. Frustrated by their inability to locate Höss, the British decided to intimidate his wife and their five children. On March 7, 1945, Jewish British Cpt. Howard Harvey Alexander arrested Höss’s wife Hedwig and interrogated her in a prison cell, but she refused to reveal her husband’s hiding place. Alexander then interrogated Höss’s children, all minors (3 to 16 years old), who had been left behind alone on their farm. Not getting the answers he wanted, Alexander jailed them as well. Hedwig, however, still would not talk.[16]

Since their tactics of imprisonment and intimidation had failed, the British soldiers decided to use a new approach. A noisy old steam train was driven past the rear of the prison. Alexander burst into Hedwig’s cell and informed her that this train was about to take her young son to Siberia, and that she would never see him again. Waiting a few moments to let his message sink in, Alexander told Hedwig that she could prevent her son’s deportation if she told him where her husband was living and under what alias. Alexander left Hedwig sitting on her cot with a piece of paper and a pencil. When Alexander returned 10 minutes later, Hedwig had written a note with Höss’s location and his alias.[17]

A group of about 25 men were sent the night of March 11, 1946 to arrest Höss. Many of them were German Jews such as Alexander. Some had kept their original names, such as Kuditsch and Wiener; others had taken on British-sounding names, like Roberts, Cresswell and Shiffers. There were also English-born soldiers from Jewish families, such as Bernard Clarke and Karl Abrahams. Most of these men were enraged and eager to take out their revenge on Höss.[18]

In 1983, the anti-National Socialist book Legions of Death by Rupert Butler documented that Sgt. Bernard Clarke and other British officers tortured Rudolf Höss into making his confession. The torture of Höss was exceptionally brutal. Neither Bernard Clarke nor Rupert Butler finds anything wrong or immoral in the torture of Höss. Neither of them seems to understand the importance of their revelations. Bernard Clarke and Rupert Butler prove that Höss’s confession was obtained by torture.[19]

Moritz von Schirmeister, a former associate of Joseph Goebbels, also confirmed that Höss’s confession was obtained by torture. At Nuremberg, von Schirmeister sat in the backseat of a car together with Höss, with whom he could speak freely during transit. He remembered Höss’s following statement:[20]

“On the things he is accused of, he told me: ‘Certainly, I signed a statement that I killed 2 and a half million Jews. But I could just as well have said that it was 5 million Jews. There are certain methods by which any confession can be obtained, whether it is true or not.’”

British Pvt. Ken Jones confirmed that the British used sleep deprivation to break Höss. Jones stated:[21]

“We sat in the cell with him, night and day, armed with axe handles. Our job was to prod him every time he fell asleep to help break down his resistance. When Höss was taken out for exercise, he was made to wear only jeans and a thin cotton shirt in the bitter cold. After three days and nights without sleep, Höss finally broke down and made a full confession to the authorities.”

On April 15, 1946, Höss appeared in court at the IMT. Ernst Kaltenbrunner’s defense lawyer, Dr. Kurt Kauffmann, asked Höss a series of questions designed to prove that Kaltenbrunner had never visited Auschwitz. Höss affirmed that Kaltenbrunner had never visited Auschwitz, and that Kaltenbrunner didn’t order the execution of Jews at this camp.[22]

U.S. prosecutor Col. John Amen next started reading from an affidavit Höss had signed on April 5, 1946 in front of American prosecutor Whitney Harris. Höss’s testimony at the IMT was probably the most important and striking evidence presented there of a German extermination program. Höss in his testimony said that more than 2 and a half million people were exterminated in the Auschwitz gas chambers, and that another 500,000 inmates had died there of other causes.[23] No defender of the Holocaust story today accepts these inflated figures, and other key portions of Höss’s testimony at the IMT are widely acknowledged not to be true.

Höss’s testimony, however, was reported around the world. A New York Times article described it as the “crushing climax to the case.” The Times in Britain said of Höss’s signed testimony:[24]

“Its dreadful implications must surpass any document ever penned.”

Höss was regarded as the star prosecution witness at the IMT, and his testimony became the framework for the official Holocaust story.

The defendants at Nuremberg were often shocked by the evidence presented to substantiate the alleged genocide of European Jewry. For example, Hans Frank, the wartime governor of German-ruled Poland, testified that he had not known of a program of mass killings against the Jews during the war. However, when asked if he had participated in the annihilation of the Jews, Hans Frank stated:[25]

“I say yes […] particularly after hearing the testimony of the witness Höss, my conscience does not allow me to throw the responsibility on these minor people. […] A thousand years will pass and still this guilt of Germany will not have been erased.”

This last sentence has been repeatedly quoted in books and articles about the National Socialist period. It does not prove that Germany had a program of genocide against the Jews. It only shows that Hans Frank believed the false testimony from Rudolf Höss that had been criminally obtained through torture.

Contrary to what is often claimed or insinuated, none of the defendants at the IMT stated that they knew anything of an extermination plan of Jews during the war. Hermann Göring, Hans Frank, Ernst Kaltenbrunner, Albert Speer, Gen. Alfred Jodl, and the other IMT defendants all denied knowing anything of an extermination policy against European Jewry. While such testimony is often dismissed as lying, the categorical and consistent nature of their testimony, sometimes by men who assumed they would be hanged, suggests that they are telling the truth.[26]

Jews Torture Other German Witnesses

Jews tortured and intimidated other German defendants and witnesses. Jewish prosecutor Benjamin Ferencz admitted in an interview that he used threats and intimidation to obtain confessions:[27]

“You know how I got witness statements? I’d go into a village where, say, an American pilot had parachuted and been beaten to death and line everyone up against the wall. Then I’d say, ‘Anyone who lies will be shot on the spot.’ It never occurred to me that statements taken under duress would be invalid.”

In the same interview, Ferencz admitted to being an observer of the torture and murder of a captured SS man:27

“I once saw DPs [Displaced Persons] beat an SS man and then strap him to the steel gurney of a crematorium. They slid him in the oven, turned on the heat and took him back out. Beat him again, and put him back in until he was burnt alive. I did nothing to stop it. I suppose I could have brandished my weapon or shot in the air, but I was not inclined to do so. Does that make me an accomplice to murder?”

Benjamin Ferencz, who enjoyed an international reputation as a world peace advocate, further related a story concerning his interrogation of an SS colonel. Ferencz explained that he took out his pistol to intimidate him:[28]

“What do you do when he thinks he’s still in charge? I’ve got to show him that I’m in charge. All I’ve got to do is squeeze the trigger and mark it as auf der Flucht erschossen [shot while trying to escape…]. I said ‘you are in a filthy uniform sir, take it off!’ I stripped him naked and threw his clothes out the window. He stood there naked for half an hour, covering his balls with his hands, not looking nearly like the SS officer he was reported to be. Then I said ‘now listen, you and I are gonna have an understanding right now. I am a Jew—I would love to kill you and mark you down as auf der Flucht erschossen, but I’m gonna do what you would never do. You are gonna sit down and write out exactly what happened—when you entered the camp, who was there, how many died, why they died, everything else about it. Or, you don’t have to do that—you are under no obligation—you can write a note of five lines to your wife, and I will try to deliver it.’ […Ferencz gets the desired statement and continues:] I then went to someone outside and said ‘Major, I got this affidavit, but I’m not gonna use it—it is a coerced confession. I want you to go in, be nice to him, and have him re-write it.’ The second one seemed to be okay—I told him to keep the second one and destroy the first one. That was it.”

The fact that Ferencz threatened and humiliated his witness and reported as much to his superior officer indicates that he operated in a culture where such illegal methods were acceptable.[29] Any Harvard-law graduate such as Ferencz knows that such evidence is not admissible in a legitimate court of law.

Many of the investigators in the Allied-run trials were Jewish refugees from Germany who hated Germans. These Jewish investigators gave vent to their hatred by treating the Germans brutally to force confessions from them. Joseph Halow, a Dachau trial court reporter, quit his job because he was outraged at what was happening there in the name of justice. He later testified to a U.S. Senate subcommittee that the most brutal interrogators had been three German-born Jews.[30]

Tuviah Friedman was a Polish Jew who survived the German concentration camps. Friedman said he beat up to 20 German prisoners a day to obtain confessions and weed out SS officers. Friedman stated:[31]

“It gave me satisfaction. I wanted to see if they would cry or beg for mercy.”

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn cited the case of Jupp Aschenbrenner, a German who had been tortured into signing a statement admitting that he had worked on wartime gas vans during the war. Aschenbrenner was finally able in 1954 to prove that at the time he was in Munich studying to become an electric welder.[32]

Oswald Pohl, who was not imprisoned until May 1946, was tied to a chair during his interrogation by American and British officials. Pohl was beaten unconscious, kicked, and generally maltreated until he was prepared to incriminate IMT defendant Walter Funk in writing.[33]

Pohl, who was later hanged on June 7, 1951, described the nature of the postwar trials of German leaders:[34]

“It was obvious during the Dachau trials, and it also came out unmistakenly and only poorly disguised during the Nuremberg trials, that the prosecution authorities, among whom Jews predominated, were driven by blind hatred and obvious lust for revenge. Their goal was not the search for truth but rather the annihilation of as many adversaries as possible.”

Jewish American Lt. Paul Guth sometimes used clever means to obtain signed statements from Mauthausen trial defendants. Guth employed to stunning effect techniques he had learned while training both at Camp Ritchie in Maryland and the 21st Army Group Intelligence Center in Devizes, England. Rather than intimidate, Guth often used flattery or the promise of better treatment to obtain written confessions from the defendants. As Guth later explained “[…] The prospect of clemency is a powerful inducement.”[35]

Defense witnesses at the Mauthausen trial repeatedly testified to improper interrogation techniques used by the prosecution. Defendant Viktor Zoller, the former adjutant to Mauthausen commandant Franz Ziereis, testified that Paul Guth said:

“I received special permission and can have you shot immediately if I want to.”

When Zoller refused to sign a confession, Guth acted as if he was going to shoot Zoller. Zoller still refused to sign the confession and wrote:[36]

“I won’t say another word even though the court might think I am a criminal who refused to talk.”

Defendant Georg Goessl testified that Guth told him to add the words “and were injected by myself” to his statement. If Goessl did not write down what Guth dictated, Guth visually demonstrated to Goessl that he would be hanged. Goessl testified that he then signed the false statement and planned to clear up the matter in court (pp. 184-187).

Defendant Willy Frey testified that the prosecution witnesses had never seen him before and wouldn’t be able to identify him if he didn’t have a number hanging around his neck. Frey testified that he had been severely beaten in Mossburg by an American officer. Frey signed his false confession only because he was afraid that he would be beaten again (pp. 201-204).

Defendant Johannes Grimm also testified that he signed a false statement that Lt. Guth had dictated to Dr. Ernst Leiss. When asked why he signed this false statement, Grimm replied:

“I already described my mental condition on that day. I had memories of the previous interrogations. My left cheekbone was broken and four of my teeth were knocked out.”

Grimm further testified (pp. 205-210):

“The only superior I had to obey was Lt. Guth telling me to write this sentence.”

American defense attorney Lt. Patrick W. McMahon, in his closing argument at the Mauthausen trial, said there was grave doubt that the defendants’ statements were freely given. Further, the striking similarity of the language made it obvious that the statements contained only language desired by the interrogators. McMahon cited numerous examples in which defendants used similar language to say crimes committed at Mauthausen could not be ascribed to any one leader. McMahon also cited several examples where similar language was used in the defendants’ statements regarding shootings of inmates in Mauthausen to prevent further escapes (p. 218).

Some German defendants were also prevented from living to see the beginning of their trials. For example, Richard Baer, the last commandant of Auschwitz, conveniently died before the beginning of his trial in Frankfurt, Germany. He was arrested in December of 1960 in the vicinity of Hamburg. Baer during his pretrial questioning adamantly refused to confirm the existence of homicidal gas chambers at the Auschwitz Main Camp during World War II.

Baer died in June 1963 under mysterious circumstances while being held in pretrial custody. An autopsy performed on Baer at the Frankfurt-am-Main University School of Medicine stated that the ingestion of an odorless, non-corrosive poison could not be ruled out as the cause of his death. There was no further probe into the cause of Baer’s death, and chief public prosecutor Fritz Bauer ordered his body cremated. Conveniently, the Auschwitz Trial in Frankfurt, Germany began shortly after Baer’s death. The statements Baer made during his pretrial interrogations were not read into the trial record. With Baer’s death the prosecutors at the Auschwitz Trial were able to attain their primary objective—to reinforce the gas chamber myth and establish it as an unassailable historical fact.[37]

It has been widely known ever since the illegal abduction of Adolf Eichmann in Argentina that the Israeli Mossad has immense capabilities. Given the fact that chief public prosecutor Bauer was a Zionist Jew, which should have precluded him from heading the pretrial investigation, it is quite possible that the forces of international Jewry were able to murder Baer while he was in jail. If anyone knew the truth about the gas chamber allegation, it was Baer, the last commandant of Auschwitz. Baer’s untimely death prevented him from giving testimony that would have contradicted the official Holocaust narrative. Baer’s death was certainly a relief for the promoters of the Auschwitz Trial.41

Endnotes

A version of this article was originally published in the January/February 2026 issue of The Barnes Review.

[1] Ehrenfreund, Norbert, The Nuremberg Legacy: How the Nazi War Crimes Trials Changed the Course of History, New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2007, p. 140.
[2] Goldmann, Nahum, The Jewish Paradox, New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1978, pp. 122f.
[3] World Jewish Congress, Unity in Dispersion, New York: 1948, pp. 141, 264-267.
[4] Conot, Robert E., Justice at Nuremberg, New York: Harper & Row, 1983, pp. 10-13.
[5] Butz, Arthur R., The Hoax of the Twentieth Century: The Case against the Presumed Extermination of European Jewry, Newport Beach, Cal.: Institute of Historical Review, 1993, pp. 27f.
[6] Office of the United States Chief of Counsel for the Prosecution of Axis Criminality, Nazi Conspiracy and Aggression (11 vols.), Washington, D.C.: U.S. Govt., 1946-1948. (The “red series”) / NC&A, Vol. 1, pp. 134f.
[7] International Military Tribunal, Trial of the Major War Criminals Before the International Military Tribunal, 42 Vols. Nuremberg: 1947-1949. (The “blue series”) / IMT, Vol. 19, p. 501.
[8] Ibid., p. 434.
[9] Dodd, Christopher J., Letters from Nuremberg: My Father’s Narrative of a Quest for Justice, New York: Crown Publishing, 2007, pp. 135f.
[10] Congressional Record-House, Vol. 93, Sec. 9, Nov. 28, 1947, p. 10938.
[11] Delivered at Kenyon College, Ohio, Oct. 5, 1946. Vital Speeches of the Day, Nov. 1, 1946, p. 47.
[12] Blumenson, Martin, (ed.), The Patton Papers, 1940-1945, Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1974, p. 750.
[13] IMT, Vol. 32, pp. 153-158; this document had been prepared by the Polish government.
[14] Porter, Carlos Whitlock, Made in Russia: The Holocaust, Historical Review Press, 1988.
[15] Irving, David, Nuremberg: The Last Battle, London: Focal Point Publications, 1996, p. 166.
[16] Mattogno, Carlo, Commandant of Auschwitz: Rudolf Höss, His Torture and His Forced Confessions, Uckfield, UK: Castle Hill Publishers, 2017, p. 18.
[17] Ibid., pp. 18f.
[18] Ibid., p. 19.
[19] Faurisson, Robert, “How the British Obtained the Confessions of Rudolf Höss,” The Journal of Historical Review, Vol. 7, No. 4, Winter 1986-87, pp. 392-399.
[20] Mattogno, Carlo, op. cit., p. 16.
[21] Ibid., pp. 16f.
[22] Harding, Thomas, Hanns and Rudolf: The True Story of the German Jew Who Tracked Down and Caught the Kommandant of Auschwitz, New York: Simon & Schuster, 2013, p. 257.
[23] Taylor, Telford, The Anatomy of the Nuremberg Trials: A Personal Memoir, New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1992, p. 363.
[24] Harding, Thomas, op. cit., pp. 259f.
[25] Taylor, Telford, op. cit., p. 368.
[26] Weber, Mark, “The Nuremberg Trials and the Holocaust,” The Journal of Historical Review, Vol. 12, No. 2, Summer 1992, pp. 197-199.
[27] Brzezinski, Matthew, “Giving Hitler Hell,” The Washington Post Magazine, July 24, 2005, p. 26.
[28] Jardim, Tomaz, The Mauthausen Trial, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2012, pp. 82f.
[29] Ibid., p. 83.
[30] Halow, Joseph, “Innocent in Dachau: The Trial and Punishment of Franz Kofler et al.,” The Journal of Historical Review, Vol. 9, No. 4, Winter 1989-1990, pp. 459f. See also Bower, Tom, Blind Eye to Murder, Warner Books, 1997, pp. 304, 310, 313.
[31] Stover, Eric, Peskin, Victor, and Koenig, Alexa, Hiding in Plain Sight: The Pursuit of War Criminals from Nuremberg to the War on Terror, Oakland, Cal.: University of California Press, 2016, pp. 70f.
[32] Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr, The Gulag Archipelago I-II, New York: Harper & Row, 1974, p. 112 (note 15).
[33] Maser, Werner, Nuremberg: A Nation on Trial, New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1979, p. 100.
[34] Weber, Mark, op. cit., pp. 192f.
[35] Jardim, Tomaz, op .cit., pp. 104-106.
[36] Greene, Joshua M., Justice at Dachau: The Trials of an American Prosecutor, New York: Broadway Books, 2003, pp. 179f.; subsequent page numbers in the text from there.
[37] Stäglich, Wilhelm, Auschwitz: A Judge Looks at the Evidence, Institute for Historical Review, Newport Beach, Cal., 1990, pp. 238f.

John Wear
https://codoh.com/

The Buddha and the Catch-22

It is now twenty-five years since the publication, in 1961, of Joseph Heller’s astonishing novel, Catch-22 (New York: Simon and Schuster; London: Jonathan Cape Ltd.); yet so far, it seems, there has been no public comment on certain striking parallels between the Buddha’s Teaching and some of the content of that novel. Perhaps it would be as well to discuss those affinities now, before another quarter century elapses.

The most immediately obvious (though hardly the most profound) similarity between the Teaching and the novel is that both are deeply concerned with man’s mortality. “Old age, sickness, and death” is a phrase that occurs repeatedly in the Buddha’s Teaching, as recorded in the Pali Suttas (and, indeed, throughout the later Sanskrit, Chinese, and Tibetan texts as well). A citation of even a small portion of such textual references[1] would be far beyond the scope of this brief discussion: the fact of man’s mortality — a constant peril in an inconstant world — is a perception absolutely fundamental to the perspective of life presented by the Buddha’s Teaching.

And in Catch-22 the protagonist, Yossarian (a bombardier in World War II), is no less deeply concerned about old age, sickness, and death. The spectre of their imminence is his constant dread. As his friend Dunbar puts it,

“Do you know how long a year takes when it’s going away? This long.” He snapped his fingers. “A second ago you were stepping into college with your lungs full of fresh air. Today you’re an old man.”

“Old?” asked Clevinger with surprise. “What are you talking about?”

…”You’re inches away from death every time you go on a mission. How much older can you be at your age?” — pp. 38-9

As for sickness:

Yossarian had so many ailments to be afraid of that he was sometimes tempted to turn himself in to the hospital for good and spend the rest of his life stretched out there inside an oxygen tent with a battery of specialists and nurses seated at one side of his bed twenty-four hours a day waiting for something to go wrong…. Aneurisms, for instance; how else could they ever defend him in time against an aneurism of the aorta? …He wondered often how he would ever recognise the first chill, flush, twinge, ache, belch, sneeze, stain, lethargy, vocal slip, lose of balance or lapse of memory that would signal the inevitable beginning of the inevitable end. — pp. 171-2

But even more than old age and sickness, it is the spectre of death itself that haunts both Yossarian and the novel: “At night when he was trying to sleep, Yossarian would call the roll of all the men, women and children he had ever known who were now dead. He tried to remember all the soldiers, and he resurrected images of all the elderly people he had known when a child…” — p. 339. Yossarian is enmeshed in a killing war which is (as the novel’s disclaimer makes clear) representative of a larger framework,[2] a war to which “there was no end in sight. The only end in sight was Yossarian’s own” — p. 16. Nevertheless, Yossarian “had decided to live forever or die in the attempt, and his only mission each time he went up was to come down alive” — p. 29. Yossarian feels death hovering about him — indeed, even living with him, in the form of a dead man named Mudd, who was not easy to live with.

However, old age, sickness, and death are not apprehended merely as things, as objects in a world of objects, in themselves neutral. The fact of death changes Yossarian’s world, as it does ours, radically, and Heller’s insistence upon this point is the beginning of the novel’s profundity.

In a world in which death is an unavoidable presence, “it made sense to cry out in pain every night” — p. 54. Indeed, the disorder that the awareness of death introduces into a world which, throughout our lives, we are forever trying to order, leaves us with neither simple order nor simple disorder, but rather with “a world boiling in chaos in which everything was in proper orders” — p. 143. Death, the great modifier, alters everything, so that for Yossarian “nothing warped seemed any more in his strange, distorted surroundings” — p. 402.

It is this strange distortion that is the keystone of the novel’s humour — not merely that of its many throwaway jokes but also of the tragicomic perception which circles round and round the death of Snowden (“Where are the Snowdens of yesteryear?” — p. 35: what a poignant joker), drawing ever closer, while at the same time mockingly inverting that trivial sensibility which ordinary men use to deny the disorder of death: “the Texan turned out to be good-natured, generous and likable. In three days no one could stand him” — p. 9; “Nately had a bad start. He came from a good family” — p. 12; “Yossarian couldn’t be happy, even though the Texan didn’t want him to be” — p. 16; “strangers he didn’t know shot at him with cannons every time he flew up into the air to drop bombs on them, and it wasn’t funny at all. And if that wasn’t funny, there were lots of things that weren’t even funnier” — p. 17. But it is not merely the one-liners that are inversions of everyday logic: that everyday sensibility is twisted into various shapes, so that each character is seen to exist in his own uniquely topsy-turvy world, a world whose shape hovers somewhere between a wry smile and a teardrop.

And of all the characters who live in their separate worlds of twisted logic (and the names, often as twisted as the logic, seem nearly endless: Hungry Joe, Chief White Half-oat, Doc Daneeka, Major — de Coverly, Milo Minderbinder, Major Major Major Major…) perhaps the most logically insane character of all is the soldier in white, who “was encased from head to toe in plaster and gauze. He had two useless legs and two useless arms” — p. 9.

Sewn into the bandages over the insides of both elbows were zippered lips through which he was fed clear fluid from a clear jar. A silent zinc pipe rose from the cement on his groin and was coupled to a slim rubber hose that carried waste from his kidneys and dripped it efficiently into a clear, stoppered jar on the floor. When the jar on the floor was full, the jar feeding his elbow was empty and the two were simply switched quickly so that the stuff could drip back into him. — p. 10

Changing the jars was no trouble to anyone but the men who watched them changed every hour or so and were baffled by the procedure.

“Why can’t they hook the two jars up to each other and eliminate the middleman?” — p. 168

The other patients in the ward… shrank from him with a tenderhearted aversion from the moment they set eyes on him…. They gathered in the farthest recess of the ward and gossiped about him in malicious, offended undertones, rebelling against his presence as a ghastly imposition and resenting him malevolently for the nauseating truth of which he was a bright reminder. — p. 166

Although Yossarian too is mystified by the soldier in white, yet he “would recognize him anywhere. He wondered who he was” — p. 358. And if we need an image of samsāra we would have to look far to find a better one, or one more universal. The message of the soldier in white (who keeps turning up again)[3] is as universal as that of the letters in black (p. 8) — the letters which Yossarian, as bored censoring officer, blacks out completely or nearly so (and endorses them “Washington Irving” or, sometimes, “Irving Washington,” thus unwittingly endangering the chaplain’s life), “thereby leaving a message far more universal.”

This tragicomic perception of man’s condition (in which lots of things aren’t even funnier) leads naturally to the question of the purpose of such a life, or of any life at all. (On the soldier in white: “It wasn’t much of a life, but it was all the life he had….”) Dr. Stubbs, in conversation with Dunbar, raises this point but fails to answer it:

“I used to get a big kick out of saving people’s lives. Now I wonder what the hell’s the point, since they all have to die anyway.”

…”The point is to keep them from dying for as long as you can.”

“Yeah, but what’s the point, since they all have to die anyway?”

“The trick is not to think about that.”

“Never mind the trick. What the hell’s the point?”

Dunbar pondered in silence for a few moments. “Who the hell knows?” — p. 108

But if the point of life is not known, and if life is nevertheless perceived as both tragic and comic, then from another perspective it could as well be seen as both sane and insane: and this leads naturally to the novel’s comic inversion of the notions of sanity and insanity, an inversion which is an underpinning of the book’s logic (or, as some would have it, illogic). Continuing their conversation, Dr. Stubbs and Dunbar discuss Yossarian and the dreaded approach of a particularly dangerous mission:

“That crazy bastard.”

“He’s not so crazy,” Dunbar said. “He swears he’s not going to fly to Bologna.”

“That’s just what I mean,” Dr. Stubbs answered. “That crazy bastard may be the only sane one left.” — p. 109

Indeed, in a world in which “men went mad and were rewarded with medals” — p. 16 — who is sane, save he who would escape from that world? This is Yossarian’s dilemma, the “vile, excruciating dilemma of duty and damnation” (p. 136): he doesn’t want to be in the war. He doesn’t want to die. “He thirsted for life” — p. 331. For Yossarian the enemy is not the Germans, or at least not only the Germans. “‘The enemy,’ retorted Yossarian with weighted precision, ‘is anybody who’s going to get you killed….'” And because of this “morbid aversion to dying” — p. 297 — men shrink from him and regard him as crazy. Clevinger is such a one. “You’re crazy!” Clevinger shrieks at Yossarian on p. 16; but later (p. 75) we are told that the patriotic and idealistic Clevinger was a dope “who would rather be a corpse than bury one”; and finally (p. 103): “Clevinger was dead. That was the basic flaw in his philosophy.” And yet, by the very fact of being part of such a world one cannot be completely sane; and to be not completely sane is to be not sane at all. But if one tries to escape is that not then evidence of a spark of sanity? Perhaps so; but the problem is that when we try to escape we discover that we can’t: every effort to free oneself from (in Buddhist terms) involvement with craving, aversion, and delusion or (in the novel’s terms) the war — every effort apparently brings one back to the same dilemma, and results only in making the problem more urgent (and perhaps also more evident), as will be recognized by anyone who has ever tried to extirpate the root of craving, and failed. Is it not madness, then, to try to escape?

And yet, if to do nothing is regarded as less insane, still that too does not lead to disengagement from a mad world. This is the very crux of Yossarian’s dilemma, and ours as well: a dilemma illuminated in experience by the effort to practice the Buddha’s Teaching and in fiction by Yossarian’s effort to escape from the war. Heller puts it this way:

“Can’t you ground someone who’s crazy?” [Yossarian asks the flight surgeon, Doc Daneeka.]

“Oh, sure. I have to. There’s a rule saying I have to ground anyone who’s crazy. “

“Then why don’t you ground me? I’m crazy…. Ask any of the others. They’ll tell you how crazy I am.”

“They’re crazy.”

“Then why don’t you ground them?”

“Why don’t they ask me to ground them?”

“Because they’re crazy, that’s why.”

“Of course they’re crazy,” Doc Daneeka replied. “I just told you they’re crazy, didn’t I? And you can’t let crazy people decide whether you’re crazy or not, can you?”

Yossarian looked at him soberly and tried another approach. “Is Orr crazy?”

“He sure is,” Doc Daneeka said…. “I can ground Orr. But first he has to ask me to.”

“That’s all he has to do to be grounded?”

“That’s all. Let him ask me.”

“And then you can ground him?” Yossarian asked.

“No. Then I can’t ground him.”

“You mean there’s a catch?”

“Sure there’s a catch,” Doc Daneeka replied. “Catch-22. Anyone who wants to get out of combat duty isn’t really crazy.” — p. 45

Thus Yossarian’s efforts to establish a rational basis for being grounded must fail. Logic is an inadequate tool to deal with the human situation, for whenever we apply logic there is always a catch. This is not to suggest that logic is not necessary, but rather that it is not adequate. In this computer age we could hardly manage without logic. Let alone computers, without logic we could make neither mathematics nor music nor marmalade. But whenever we try to deal with the fundamentals of existence, with the forever unanswerable question, “Who am I?” (or any other question concerned with “me”), we find that logic neither answers that question nor shows us the way to stop asking it.[4] (“‘Why me?’ was his constant lament, and the question was a good one” — p. 34.)

And the reason for this, the Buddha informs us, is because of avijjā, or ignorance. But avijjā is not a mere absence of information; it is a refusal to see what is at all times there to be seen. It is not failure to see one particular thing among other particular things, but a radical refusal to see the way all particular things are, and in this respect it is as great a modifier as death — indeed, the two are (so the Buddha tells us) inseparable. The dependent arising formulation says, in summary, “With ignorance as condition, ageing and death, sorrow, lamentation, pain, grief, and despair come into being.”

The deluded person, in refusing to see the nature of all things, refuses also to see the nature of his refusal to see (which is also a thing). That is, he refuses to see delusion. Thus, by denying itself delusion sustains itself. This is stated in the Suttas (e.g. Sammāditthi Sutta, M. 9) as follows:

Friends, that which is non-knowledge of suffering, non-knowledge of the arising of suffering, non-knowledge of the ceasing of suffering, non-knowledge of the way leading to the ceasing of suffering, this, friends, is called ignorance.

For after all, what is “the way leading to the ceasing of suffering”? It is (the Suttas tell us) the noble eightfold path. And what is the first factor of this path? Right view. Ignorance, then, involves non-knowledge of right view. And right view is knowledge of the arising of suffering; that is to say, knowledge of ignorance. Right view is knowledge of right view, and also knowledge of wrong view, whereas wrong view is non-knowledge of wrong view, and also non-knowledge of right view. And this structure of ignorance is, in fact, Catch-22 at its most fundamental level:

There was only one catch and that was Catch-22, which specified that a concern for one’s own safety in the face of dangers that were real and immediate was the process of a rational mind. Orr was crazy and could be grounded. All he had to do was ask; and as soon as he did, he would no longer be crazy and would have to fly more missions. Orr would be crazy to fly more missions and sane if he didn’t, but if he was sane he had to fly them. If he flew them he was crazy and didn’t have to; but if he didn’t want to he was sane and had to. Yossarian was moved very deeply by the absolute simplicity of this clause of Catch-22 and let out a respectful whistle.

“That’s some catch, that Catch-22,” he observed.

“It’s the best there is,” Doc Daneeka agreed. — p. 46

Thus, with absolute simplicity, we are condemned to madness. And if this is not convincing, Heller presses his point home by telling us (on the same page) that Catch-22 is like the flies that Orr sees in Appleby’s eyes.

“Oh, they’re there, all right,” Orr had assured [Yossarian]… “although he probably doesn’t even know it. That’s why he can’t see things as they really are.”

“How come he doesn’t know it?” inquired Yossarian.

“Because he’s got flies in his eyes,” Orr with exaggerated patience. “How can he see he’s got flies in his eyes if he’s got flies in his eyes?”

It made as much sense as anything else….

Yathābhūtam na pajānāti: he does not see things as they really are: the phrase — so typical a Sutta description of the puthujjana, the unenlightened commoner — is used here by Heller to illuminate precisely the characteristic of being entrapped in a situation. Not only does the puthujjana have flies in his eyes, he does not see that he has them, and he does not see this because he has them. His dilemma is that though he must find a way to see, yet he cannot find that way precisely because he cannot see. Indeed, he cannot even see for himself that this is his problem. And this is the dilemma which, at its most fundamental level, is the specific concern of the Buddha’s Teaching. The structure of avijjā, the structure of Catch-22, the structure of “having flies in one’s eyes”: they are one and the same. Catch-22 is avijjā. The title character in both the novel and in our lives never appears and yet is omnipresent.

All of this does not oblige us to conclude that Heller is enlightened, or that he is even a Buddhist. Describing something and seeing it directly are two different things; and even in direct perception there are different levels of profundity. “At the field a heavy silence prevailed, overpowering motion like a ruthless, insensate spell holding in thrall the only beings who might break it. The chaplain was in awe” — p. 371. This, it is clear enough, is of the same nature as having flies in one’s eyes; and yet it is also clear enough that this sort of spell is of a much less fundamental grade. Not only can we on the outside see it, it is conceivable that the men at the field could be aware of the spell at the same time they were (for the time being) powerless to break it. Appleby, on the other hand, must be entirely unaware of the flies in his eyes.

On an even less fundamental level is the situation of the men while they await the dreaded mission to Bologna. The mission cannot be flown until the rain stops and the landing strips dry out. But the rain-forced delay in the mission only gives the men more time to be more terrified. “Their only hope was that it would never stop raining, and they had no hope because they all knew it would…. The more it rained, the worse they suffered. The worse they suffered, the more they prayed that it would continue raining” — p. 117. Again we have a situation of entrapment, but on a crude and manifest level of experience.

But though we would describe these various levels of Catch-22 as being only rough approximations to the subtle and pervasive deception of avijjā, as expounded by the Buddha, we must also recognize Heller’s achievement in seeing the central significance of this self-replicative structure in human existence and (though he doesn’t know what to do about it) in describing it in a form which has struck a deeply responsive chord in so many. Although he may lack the wisdom to resolve the dilemma he describes, yet he has sufficient wisdom to not let go of that perception; nor should we, for by being manifest such occurrences can serve both to remind us of the subtle central dilemma which is the template upon which those coarser experiences depend and also to provide us with a model which, applied with proper attention, can indicate what action, or what sort of action, can bring that central dilemma to an end.

In the end, perhaps due to the exigencies of the novel’s form, Heller does suggest a solution to Yossarian’s dilemma. Whether this solution works artistically is not of concern to us here. Rather, we need to understand why this suggestion of a solution is incompatible with the Buddha’s Teaching.

The Buddha’s Teaching is concerned with letting go of what can be surrendered within the sphere of the unenlightened (namely, sensuality, hatred, lethargy, agitation, and doubt — the five hindrances) in order to allow for the possibility of seeing what might be let go of beyond that sphere. This further perception can be indicated by one who has already seen for himself, and must be initially accepted by the practitioner as an act of faith, until he too comes to see it. At that point it is possible for there to be a further letting go, a giving up of what can be surrendered only outside the sphere of the unenlightened, namely, all beliefs concerned with selfhood (sakkāyaditthi, attavāda) and, eventually, the conceit “I am” (asmimāna). Thus the Buddha’s Teaching is a course of practice concerned fundamentally with renunciation. Without giving up the world to the limits of one’s ability to do so one will never be able to extend those limits: one will instead remain entrapped within the world.

Heller considers this approach, but rejects it. Yossarian certainly sees the problem: he is “unable to adjust to the idea of war” — p. 297 — and repeatedly flees the oppressiveness of the world by running to “the cloistered shelter of a hospital” — p. 177 — with a supposititious liver ailment. That this flight is meant to be seen as (at least in a sense) religious is borne out by a doctor who tells Yossarian that the family of a just-deceased soldier have

“travelled all the way from New York to see a dying soldier, and you’re the handiest one we’ve got.”

“What are you talking about?” Yossarian asked suspiciously. “I’m not dying.”

“Of course you’re dying. We’re all dying. Where the devil else do you think you’re heading?”

“They didn’t come to see me,” Yossarian objected. “They came to see their son. “

“They’ll have to take what they can get. As far as we’re concerned, one dying boy is just as good as any other, or just as bad. To a scientist, all dying boys are equal….” — p. 181

Thus the doctors, the staff of that cloistered shelter, perform the essentially religious function of reminding Yossarian (“how could he have forgotten”) of his mortality; and they also insist that he observe the celibacy normally associated with monastic institutions:

“How do you expect anyone to believe you have a liver condition if you keep squeezing the nurses’ tits every time you get a chance? You’re going to have to give up sex if you want to convince people you’ve got an ailing liver.”

“That’s a hell of a price to pay just to keep alive….” — p. 181

Precisely: giving up sensuality (to say nothing of hatred, lethargy, agitation, and doubt) is a price Yossarian is not prepared to pay. He wants the sybaritic salvation sought also by Hungry Joe, to whom women were “lovely, satisfying, maddening manifestations of the miraculous, instruments of pleasure” — p. 52 — and he dreams of being interred for the duration of the war (i.e. for all eternity) in Sweden, an earthly (and earthy) paradise where he could keep himself busy siring dozens of illegitimate little Yossarians. Yossarian wants the world’s pleasures without having to endure the world’s drawbacks, and he fails to see the essence of the world’s dangers. (Hungry Joe is more consistent than Yossarian on this point, for he goes to pieces each time he finishes flying the number of missions Headquarters requires, and recovers only when Headquarters raises the number of missions required, as it inevitably does, throwing him back on combat status. )

If any character in Catch-22 comes close to accepting the Buddha’s advice it would be Dunbar, who tries to increase his lifespan by cultivating boredom, on the grounds that when you’re bored time passes slower. His idea seems to be that if only he could achieve a state of total and absolute boredom he would be, for all intents, eternal. This sounds like a rough literary approximation to meditation (although we must remember that the Buddha, unlike many Eastern teachers, quite explicitly stated that meditation by itself is an insufficient condition for enlightenment).

Dunbar, given to cultivating boredom, to seeking eternity, lies motionless in bed: he goes so far in his efforts that at one point Yossarian, looking at him, wonders whether he is still alive. This will remind us of the story of the Ven. Sañjīva who, we are told (M. 50: i,333), was seated immersed in the highest meditative attainment when some cowherds, shepherds, and ploughmen, passing by, saw him and thought, as did Yossarian of Dunbar, that he was dead. They collected grass, wood, and cowdung, heaped it up about the Ven. Sañjīva, set his pyre alight, and went on their way. The next morning Ven. Sañjīva emerged from his meditative attainment and went wandering for almsfood. His would-be cremators were astonished at seeing him alive and gave him the name by which he became known, Sañjīva, which means “with life.” Dunbar seems to have lacked the Ven. Sañjīva’s meditative abilities, but each sought to escape death (Ven. Sañjīva, the Sutta tells us, successfully), and each came thereby to be taken as dead.

It is common, of course, for beginning meditators to be assailed by boredom (as well as the other four hindrances); however, this does not justify equating boredom and meditation: on the contrary, boredom is an enemy of meditation. Despite the story of Ven. Sañjīva, then, we must regard any effort to equate meditation with the cultivation of boredom as tenuous, and as being further weakened by the episode in which Dunbar becomes a fortiori. However, we must also note that it is immediately after Dunbar becomes convinced, upon re-encountering the soldier in white, that (p. 358) “There’s no one inside! …He’s hollow inside, like a chocolate soldier” — thereby perhaps suggesting something of the Buddha’s teaching of anattā, of not-self — that Dunbar is disappeared. We never learn the meaning of this cryptic event (“It doesn’t make sense. It isn’t even good grammar” — p. 359), but if the parallel with meditation is accepted then the further parallel that would be suggested here is with nibbāna, extinction. After being disappeared Dunbar is described (p. 360) as being “nowhere to be found”, which is exactly how the Suttas describe beings who have attained full enlightenment (arahattā).[5]

Perhaps a literary parallel of an achievement that transcends literature (let alone literature, nibbāna transcends bhava, being) could not be more closely described; but in any case we cannot allow that the parallel is more than a suggestion, and (no doubt inevitably) an inaccurate one at that. And in any case to be disappeared sounds, from Heller’s description of it, far less desirable than extinction, from the Buddha’s description of that. (Still, it would be interesting to know how much acquaintance Heller actually had, if any, with any school of Buddhism during the seven years in which he was writing Catch-22.[6])

And if any character tries, however ineffectually, to understand the real nature of his situation, it is not Yossarian but the chaplain. The chaplain (he was named Shipman in the hard-cover edition, but for some reason the name was changed in the paperback edition to Tappman — not his only identity crisis), who has an open mind, is continually

wondering what everything was all about. …There was no way of really knowing anything, he knew, not even that there was no way of really knowing anything. Was there a single true faith, or a life after death? …These were the great, complex questions of ontology that tormented him. Yet they never seemed nearly as crucial to him as the question of kindness and good manners. He was pinched perspiringly in the epistemological dilemma of the skeptic, unable to accept solutions to problems he was unwilling to dismiss as unsolvable. He was never without misery and never without hope. — pp. 262-3

In the chaplain’s tale the human dilemma is presented from a different point of view: it is not a question of sanity or insanity but, in Kafkaesque terms, one of guilt or innocence. Because it is the nature of beings that they are continually trying to establish an existence that continually eludes them[7] their existence is perpetually in doubt, and they exist, if at all, in a state of guilt. This, it would seem, is the basic perception of Kafka’s Trial: Joseph K. arrests himself by recognizing that his existence, being unjustifiable, is essentially guilty. And the chaplain (for whom the question “Who am I?” becomes acute when he is formally charged with “being Washington Irving” — p. 378) is also in this situation:

“You’ve got nothing to be afraid of if you’re not guilty. What are you so afraid of? You’re not guilty, are you?”

“Sure he’s guilty,” said the colonel. “Guilty as hell.”

“Guilty of what?” implored the chaplain, feeling more and more bewildered. …”What did I do?” — p. 373

And later the chaplain’s identity crisis and dilemma of existential guilt is expressed in the same terms that were used earlier to describe Catch-22:

“I offered it to Sergeant Whitcomb because I didn’t want it.”

“Why’d you steal it from Colonel Cathcart if you didn’t want it?”

“I didn’t steal it from Colonel Cathcart!”

“Then why are you so guilty, if you didn’t steal it?”

“I’m not guilty!”

“Then why would we be questioning you if you weren’t guilty?” — p. 377

Thus each of us faces the question of our basic unjustifiability in a purposeless world. Some, of course, flee from these questions and deny them (by indulging in sensuality, hatred, lethargy, agitation, and doubt); but the questions return for so long as their root, the conceit “I am”, exists, and the verdict is inevitable: Guilty.

“Chaplain,” he continued, looking up, “we accuse you also of the commission of crimes and infractions we don’t even know about yet. Guilty or innocent?”

“I don’t know, sir. How can I say if you don’t tell me what they are?”

“How can we tell you if we don’t know?”

“Guilty,” decided the colonel.

“Sure he’s guilty,” agreed the major. “If they’re his crimes and infractions, he must have committed them.”

“Guilty it is, then,” chanted the officer without insignia…. — p. 379

And guilty it is for all of us, if the charge is the fundamental one of being possessors, or even of simply “being”: being what?

And thus Heller repeatedly and ingeniously offers us brilliant literary expressions of the dilemma of existence. The formulations are lucid and compelling, and they fully take account of the circular and self-sustaining nature of the dilemma. For this we can praise Catch-22, and perhaps find it of use as a tool in keeping to the forefront of our awareness the nature of our problem. But it would be asking too much to expect the novel to offer the means of resolving that dilemma. For that we must turn to the Buddha’s Teaching.


Footnotes:


1. E.g.: As the herdsman drives his kine with a stick to pasture-land,
thus decay and health’s decline
drive out the life of man.   — Dh. 135

2. Perhaps it would be going too far to discover in this larger framework a reference to the Buddha’s recognition of samsāra, the round of deaths and rebirths; but it cannot be excessive to relate the facts of birth and death to the minute and Learical apocalypse achieved in the vision of Snowden’s death: “Man was matter, that was Snowden’s secret. …Ripeness was all.” — pp. 429-30

3. The circular nature of samsāra finds its parallel in Catch-22 — if circles can have parallels — not only in the re-appearance of the soldier in white, but also in the circling round the death of Snowden, going around twice over Ferrara, the soldier who saw everything twice, and many other recurrent events and phrases. Each time Yossarian gets close to having completed his missions Headquarters raises the number required: there is always another tour of duty. Like Rohitassa (see Samy. II,26 = Ang. IV,45), and like us, Yossarian cannot reach an end by going.

4. It is for this reason that the Buddha’s Teaching is said to be atakkāvacara, not in the sphere of reason or logic. (Catch-22 is not the only well-known book which asserts the insanity implicit in being in a situation. In Alice in Wonderland the Cheshire Cat tells Alice, “We’re all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad. You must be or you wouldn’t have come.” Indeed, Catch-22 contains a number of very specific allusions to the Alice books.)

5. The phrase occurs frequently in the Suttas. See e.g. the concluding lines of the Vakkali Sutta (Samy. XXII,87). At Dh. 180 we find:

That tangle of snares by which he’d be penned isn’t found anywhere.
His range has no end, that Buddha awake.
What track can there be to trace one who’s trackless, craving-free?

6. This question was put to Mr. Heller. The reply was that he knew “not an inkling.” The range of the puthujjana, it seems, is more extensive than commonly supposed. [Back to text]

7. Thus the question “Who am I?”, whether or not it is answerable, is recognized at once to be vital and fundamental to the epistemological dilemma we each face; indeed, it is thus that there is the concept of such a dilemma at all. 

Sāmanera Bodhesako

Biography of Sister Vajirā (Hannelore Wolf)

by Hellmuth Hecker

14.10.1928 Hamburg – 7.12.1991 Maschen

In an upper class neighbourhood in Hamburg a wife lived in well to do conditions. She had two sons and no concerns. However, somehow she sought for a deeper meaning and came across Schopenhauer while reading. Then a wandering preacher of a Christian sect appeared in Hamburg who appealed to her religious feelings and she followed him. Soon she got a child from him: Hannelore Wolf. Although the sect worshipped the child as the God-sent heir to the master, he himself abandoned mother and child without giving any financial support. They had to live in St. Pauli in a damp cellar. The government child inspector, on the reason of neglect, gave the child to foster parents. Her foster father Bading was an employee at the department of finances in Hamburg. Hannelore grew up in this family together with two adopted sisters. After finishing school she followed a course in technical design. In the meantime, her physical father had turned to politics and had ended up in a mental home before the war. Her physical mother suffered a similar fate and died in the early 1950s.

Hannelore was looking for religious meanings. In early summer 1949 she noticed a poster that announced a four part introductory course to the teachings of the Buddha. It was held by Paul Debes. Thus she went to the university’s main lecture theatre where the talks were given on 23.6.1949. After the first talk she hesitated to go again, but nevertheless did so.

The talk was especially agreeable to her. I wrote to my friend Fritz Schäfer in Itzehoe on 25.6.1949: “It was great. It was dead silent in the hall and nobody left (same as during talk No. 1). The spiritual contact was remarkably close. Although nothing new was really said, I was completely taken.”

Hannelore was so much impressed that she listened to the next talks, came to the seminary group of Debes, and took part in his first “weeks of investigation” in an Adults’ Education College in the Lüneburger Heide area on 6-27.8.1949. I noticed her there. On her belt she wore a medallion with the inscription “In tempestate securitas.” She told me that the summary of the Buddha’s teaching was: “To increase good, decrease evil, avoid staying on.” The next year she only participated during 3 days of the 3 weeks study course of the second “weeks of investigation”. There she said that she wanted to become a nun in Ceylon. She remarked: “All of you like it too much around here.”

During both courses of “weeks of investigation” she had become friendly with Mrs. Erika v.d. Osten (PhD). … She suggested to Hannelore to become a private teacher for her son and daughter. Thus Hannelore moved to their place in Sept. 1950, and lived quite happily with the family. When Mrs. v.d. Osten’s husband returned from internment as a prisoner of war, the family moved back to Hannover. Hannelore returned to Hamburg and worked as a technical designer again. She also joined the circle of Debes-friends there.

She wrote to me in London on 12.4.1953, where I did some studies in order to prepare legislative on Army Service Refusal: “All of you are lovely and terribly worldly people. Always hanging out in the world without ever finding satisfaction.” After returning from London, I met her frequently at Dhamma talks. In autumn 1953 she founded, together with two female friends from the Debes group and me, a Dhamma discussion group … Hannelore played an influential role in the Buddhist circles and tried to deflate tensions.

In June 1954 the Sinhalese monk Ven. Nārada suddenly turned up in Hamburg. Hannelore took the opportunity trying to get a chance to go to Ceylon as a nun. Debes had tried in vain to find such an opportunity through sister Upalavanna. At the instigations of Ven. Nārada “Hamburg Buddha Mandala” was founded, out of which the Buddhist Society of Hamburg evolved on 9.10.1954. Ven. Nārada gave Pali names to many Buddhists and Hannelore, called Hanna, became Vajirā. The founding of the society and Hanna’s ambitions caused a lot of unrest. My brother in law, Wolfgang Seel, also a Buddhist and later working as a psychologist, who had good character knowledge, was of the opinion that it was much to early for Hanna to go to Ceylon and to isolate herself completely from her cultural background. It would not be good for her.

After much turmoil she finally got a chance to go to Ceylon. In 1955 the Vihāra Mahā Devi Hermitage at Biyagāma near Colombo was to be opened, where Buddhist nuns (dasa sila upāsikā = ten precept female followers) lived. Through the mediation of Ven. Nārada and Mrs. Salgado, the leader of a Buddhist women society supporting the Sangha, she could go there. After I had vouched for any possible costs of a return journey, she got her visa and departed on 1.4.1955. from Genoa by the ship called “Asia”. I brought her on board and she said: “Now I go away to meet the real life, and you return, hopefully in order to get fed up with the world.”

On board she got to know the astronomer Dr. Winfried Petri, who later converted to Buddhism. He was on his way to Ceylon to watch a solar eclipse. Together with him she visited Ven. Nyānatiloka and Ven. Nyānaponika in Kandy as well as the Island Hermitage of Polgasduwa, about which she wrote:

“After I had seen this island, I can only say: If someone does not become a saint here, he will never become one, because he is not internally capable of doing so, as the external conditions are perfect. … On the whole island there are only 3 monks and an upāsaka. Solitude is difficult to bear.”

After she had moved from the house of Mrs. Salgado to Biyagāma on 6.5.1955 where at that time ten young Singhalese women lived as nuns, she also took on the 10 rules and was ordained as Sister Vajirā by Ven. Nārada on the full moon of July. About her life she wrote: “By the way, I live here as if in a fairy-tale. In my whole life I have not had it so good and beautiful as here… I can’t describe the peace entering my heart when I see a sunset, which is different every day… I am surprised how gentle I have become, in any case, with regards to judging others.” (1955)

To provide her with even greater quiet, generous supporters built a nice bungalow for her in the palm-tree forest of the monastery garden. However, before long her moods changed. She suffered internal lack and noticed that she could not possibly meditate all day long. At the turn of 1955/56 she wrote, that she had reached the end of her wits. She felt relief when the cars of her donors came up the driveway to the monastery and would bring some diversification. Finally, she became even physically ill.

The abbess, Sister Sudhammā, was also a [school] teacher in Colombo. Sister Vajirā found it non-ascetic when a nun was earning money and wrote a critical memorandum in English with her views about the defects of the nun’s life. She sent me the text and requested me to make cyclostyle copies of it so that she could distribute it. When I declined, she turned to Mrs. v. d. Osten, who made the copies of the text. After the polemic pamphlet had been sent out, Vajirā made herself many enemies. They took offence that the stranger, who was living on the alms food of the country, knew everything better. The nuns, for example, switched off the power supply to her kuti and turned a cold shoulder on her. When I got to hear about it, I approached Ven. Nyānaponika for help, who made an extra effort and went to her and mediated with a lot of difficulties, so that at least she could remain at Biyagāma, now only tolerated with Buddhist equanimity.

Taking on scholastic work offered itself as a way out of her frustration. Having learned English quickly, she then started with intensive Pali studies and soon started to translate texts and carried on a correspondence about Dhamma topics. On her request, I sent her a type writer.

She once visited Sister Upalavanna, but the two women from Hamburg did not get along with each other. Dr Petri, still a Catholic at the time, wrote to me in his report about his journey to Ceylon, having expressed his reverence for Ven. Nyānatiloka and Ven. Nyānaponika:

“With the German postulant Vajirā I could not escape the impression of a rigid and completely unfeminine ambition… It seems that she envisions the founding of a Buddhist nunnery for Europeans following the example of Nyānatiloka, of which she was to become the first abbess. … She categorically refused to participate in any communal religious activities-not even making exceptions for the sake of doing others a favour.”

One of the dāyakas of the monastery who also donated for her benefit and whom she respected a lot, was Dr. Ananda Nimalasuriya from Colombo. He owned land east of Galle, at Heenatigala near Talpe, in the dry zone, which offered healthier conditions than the coastal zone near Colombo. He got a nice bungalow, a small hermitage, built there, to which she moved in 1959. Young Sinhalese women venerated her very much there, and one lived temporarily with her as a disciple.

In September 1961 I had sent her the first edition of my Ethik des Buddha. She replied that especially the description of renunciation was not convincing enough, which was true. She also wrote that she was learning the Dhammapada by heart in Pali and had started with an English translation with the text newly arranged. She also had visited Ven. Nyanāloka on Polgasduwa, and complained about the oppressive climate. Wolfgang Seel had written to her in September 1961 and had criticised her a lot. She did not reply. In any case, correspondence with German Buddhists, I included, faded away in 1961. Only with Mrs. v.d. Osten she continued corresponding.

Around autumn of 1961 the English monk Ven. Ñānavīra Thera, who lived 40 km from her in a kuti in the jungle as a hermit, had sent both to me and to her, a text he had written, A Note on Paticca Samuppāda, wherein he criticized the extension over three-lives interpretation. Vajirā had briefly met him and his friend Ven. Nyānamoli at the Vajirārāma monastery in Colombo in 1955. About that she wrote this to Germany at the time:

“I was told that he tried to live in solitude in the mountains, because he is a great friend of meditation; however he had to return because he did not get enough to live on.”

In 1956 Ven. Ñānavīra had written an article called A Proof of Rebirth in the Buddha Jayanthi magazine, which was published in Colombo to commemorate the 2500th anniversary of Buddhism. Vajirā liked it so much that she translated it into German and sent it to Max Ladner in November 1956. He agreed to publish it in the magazine Einsicht. However, Ven. Ñānavīra did not agree with the translation and publication which in the end didn’t take place.

On 12.11.1961 she thanked Ven. Ñānavīra for sending the Note, “which could have been written for me,” [original quote in English] for a letter of 9.11.1961 and notified him that she would like to meet him on Polgasduwa, where he was staying for a few days, to talk about his text. On 18.11.1961 she arranged that her supporters bring her there by car early in the morning. A conversation which lasted for several hours took place on the island. Thereupon an intensive exchange of letters followed. She wrote sixteen more long letters, the last one on 25.1.1962. His letters she burned, for which she apologised: “That I burnt your letters and notes was the most dangerous act that I ever committed.” (Clearing the Path, p. 530.) [quote in English]

Years later Ven. Ñānavīra, who had sent her letters to a friend, wrote about her:
“Sister Vajirā is an extremely passionate and self-willed person, with strong emotions, and apparently, something of a visionary … she alternates between modes-one could almost say attacks-of emotional periods and of admirable clear-headedness … emotion for her is quite normal, as it is for nearly all women.” (op.cit. p. 386, letter of 24.8.1964) [this quote and the following letters are left in English in Dr. Hecker’s book]

To her last letter, of 25.1.1962, in which she assumed that he controlled the wind-element through breathing exercises, he answered dismissingly on 29.1.1962, saying that the wind-element rather controlled him for the last ten years and disturbed his digestion, so that he could not exercise mindful breathing in and out. This letter was left lying in her kuti for years, until it was discovered after his death.

In the meantime the following had happened. On 5.2.1962 Mrs. Salgado had written to Ven. Ñānavīra: “I have to tell you something very sad. Sister Vajirā has gone out of her head. Please do not answer any of her letters on the Dhamma. Some girls have stayed with her for the last few days and came and told Mrs. Nimalasuriya that she is very bad.”

Upon his letter of 7.2. Mrs. Salgado wrote on 12.2.:

“We went on the 6th and brought sister to Colombo. She ran away in the night from Mrs. Nimalasuriya’s house and was walking along the streets, several followed her and with great difficulty put her into a car. Dr. Nimalasuriya, Dr. Shelton Fernando and their wives along with me forced her into a car and took her to Sulamin Hospital at 2 a.m. … Now she is much better after the treatment; there also, twice she has jumped through the window and roamed about, but the nurse and attendants managed to bring her back. Now Sister Vajirā says that she wants to get into a saree and at times says that she wants to go back to Germany. We are now wondering what to do with her. By this same post I am writing to Rev. Nyānaponika also.”

On 24.2. the Sinhalese Siridhamma wrote to Ven. Ñānavīra, that they had sent rs. 200-300 worth of clothes for Vajirā:

“Although she was speaking of marriage at one stage, prior to her departure, she had said that she would go back to her foster parents and lead a quiet life (single).”

On 26.2. Mrs. Salgado wrote to Ven. Ñānavīra:

“Just a line to inform you that Sister Vajirā left for home on the 22nd. She had recovered but not perfectly normal. She was well enough to go by herself, without anyone else to look after her. The Embassy made arrangements for her trip … she gave up her nun’s life and became a lay woman. She said that she does not want to be a nun again…”

At around the same time, I got three letters from Ceylon: One from Ven. Nyānaponika in Kandy; one from Ven. Nārada in Colombo; and one from the German embassy there. In this way I was informed about the above developments. The embassy wrote that Ms. Wolf had to be repatriated due to her health situation. Her situation had stabilized to relatively normal, but a ship journey could not be taken into consideration, so that I had to transfer the vouched travel costs for the airplane to the attaché at the embassy. They put her on an airplane and telegraphed me the time of arrival at Hamburg-Fuhlsbüttel. On the morning of 24.2.1962 she arrived. I waited for her in the arrival hall and brought her to the car of Paul Debes, who had also brought his daughter Monika along. The four of us drove to Hannover. The drive over the Elbe bridges was full of obstructions because there was work going on everywhere to repair the damage caused by the flood disaster of 17.2.. About her inner flood she only spoke hesitatingly. She had fallen in love with Ven. Ñānavīra and had had the feeling that he had come through the air (wind-element) to her in her kuti. On Sunday 5.3. I went to Hannover where she was staying with Erika v.d. Osten. There she spoke about some more things, part of them she told me directly; part of them I heard through Mrs. v.d. Osten.

On 7.4. she moved from Hannover to Hamburg-Fuhlsbüttel, where a Buddhist nature path practitioner, Else Münster, was living in a suburban house together with her brother. They provided Hanna with a spacious loft room, where she was taken care of. I visited her several times there. She told me that she dreamt of Ñānavīra every night. Because I did not agree with the opinions about the Dhamma which she expressed, I wrote a dismissive letter to her beginning of June. Apparently that caused another crisis. She declared that Ven. Ñānavīra had disrobed, was in London already, and would become King of Ceylon and she the Queen. Yes, that he was already waiting for her in her old house at Heimhuderstrasse. Else Münster quickly decided to take a taxi and bring her there. There she changed her ideas.

While I was on holiday in the Tessin in June-July 1962 she wrote to me that had secretly left the Münster family without saying goodbye and had returned with her suitcase to her foster parents who put her up. That was the beginning of a return to normal. With a lot of effort the foster parents managed to convince her to take up her profession again. And thus she started to work for the textile machine factory Artos in Hamburg on 1.9.1962. Her foster mother died around that time.

End of 1963 I met her and we drove to Rohlfshagen because she wanted to visit Debes one more time, before he went off on his journey to meditate in Burma and Ceylon for more than a year. She had gotten addicted to smoking, had become fat and remarked that she regrettably was only a caricature of herself.

Since I did not hear from her for almost two years, I wanted to visit her in 1964 at her foster father’s. She was there, as she said later, but did not open the door. On 2.7.1965 I tried to visit again, met the foster father on the stairs and thus got in. She said that everything seemed to her so far away; she did no really recall whether we had addressed each other in an intimate and casual or in a distant and formal way [in German “du” or “Sie”, “you” or “you”]. The inner split could only be overcome very slowly; there were hard battles. She did not want to have anything to do with Buddhism, and she had thrown away all the issues of “Buddhistische Monatsblätter” [periodical of Buddhist Society Hamburg]. She did not want to visit Mrs. v.d. Osten, and in any case did not want to have anything to do with women. She maintained that she had not received a copy of Ven. Ñānavīra’s Notes on Dhamma which had been published in the meantime, but she still held him in high esteem. She smoked one cigarette after the other. What she would like to do was travelling and going out.

After he foster father had married a 26 year old woman, whom she did not get along with, she moved to a room in Maschen in 1968, closer to the company she worked for. In 1971 she got a little apartment there and in 1978 her company moved to Maschen, too. Her job was the best therapy for her. She had to get focussed, had to get along with her colleagues and was too tired at night to follow phantasies. Every year she went on a four weeks’ holiday in Bavaria. Once she even went to England. Until 1966 she only wore sarees. When her boss forbade her this, she sewed long dresses for herself, which resembled the Indian ones. Her sewing machine was the only “luxury” in her spartanically equipped apartment without television or telephone. She continued shaving her head and wore a wig. She dismissed requests from Buddhists to meet her. Debes visited her in Maschen one more time.

In 24.3.1986 Samanera Bodhesako had written to her from Ceylon to request permission to publish parts of her letters to Ven. Ñānavīra in the planned book Clearing the Path. She sent me this letter on 8.4. and asked me to inform the Samanero of her agreement, which I did on 11.4. and added that he could cite her as Sister Vajirā. On 20.3.1988 he wrote me that the book was done and sent out. Also that she, too, had received a copy. On 23.6. I answered him that I had read the book with great interest and asked him if he had received a confirmation from her. I did not get a reply to this letter, which also contained some questions and corrections. He had died suddenly in Nepal on 19.8.1988.

On 31.3.1984 Hanna lost her employment at the company for which she had been working for 22 years, because they were reducing personnel. As a compensation she got 32,000 DM [€16,361.35]. She had never had that much money at one time. She gave in to the temptation to drown the shock of being pensioned in alcohol. Then, however, her Buddhist insight did appeal again: should she wait until her money was used up and she would be forced to stop drinking by external causes? For the time being she reduced it. She radically stopped smoking in 1988.

On 14.2.1989 I went to Maschen and visited Hanna. Most important in the two and a half hours of conversation was her statement that she was still a Buddhist. She had not been in Hamburg since 1978, not even for the burial of her foster father who died in 1982, and who supported her financially until his end.

On the evening of 7.12.1991, she had breathing difficulties, opened the windows of her apartment a bit and sat down at her desk. There her heart failed and she was in another world. That’s how she was found two days later. She was buried in nearby Hittfeld.


Revised translation of:
© Hellmuth Hecker:
Lebensbilder Deutscher Buddhisten
Ein bio-bibliographisches Handbuch
Band II: Die Nachfolger
Konstanz, 1997
Section 119. pp. 374-386.
Translation © Path Press, 2008