Jeffry M. Diefendorf, ed. Lessons and Legacies VI: New Currents in Holocaust Research. Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 2004. xxxiv + 547 pp. $34.95 (paper), ISBN 978-0-8101-2001-3.
Reviewed by Jürgen Matthäus (U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum)
Published on H-German (September, 2005)
[DISCLAIMER: The opinions presented here are solely those of the author and do not reflect the opinions of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum.]
Holocaust Research: New Currents and Old Questions
Any publication presenting additional insights into the history of the Holocaust can expect to find a receptive and relatively large audience despite the fact that the murder of the European Jews is widely regarded as well researched. This book combines a selection of papers presented at Northwestern University in 2000 as part of the ongoing "Lessons and Legacies" conference series sponsored by the Holocaust Educational Foundation in cooperation with major U.S. universities. In its six broad chapters ("Rethinking Nazi Policies," "Resistance and Rescue," "German Scholars and the Holocaust," "Historiography and the Challenges to Historians," "Trials, Compensation, and Jewish Assets," and "Confronting the Past"), twenty-five authors cover a range of subjects that reflect, as the subtitle implies, recent trends in Holocaust historiography. Making no claim to comprehensiveness, editor Jeffry Diefendorf presents a collection of stimulating analyses on new insights, open questions, and persisting problems in dealing with the history of the "Final Solution."
What makes this book stand out in the wave of recent publications on the Holocaust is that it combines empirical research results with reflections on the role of historians then and now. Konrad Jarausch provides what can be regarded as the anthology's centerpiece around which, in varying proximity, many of the contributions gravitate. By placing the current debate about the collaboration and complicity of well-known West German historians like Werner Conze, Karl-Dietrich Erdmann, and Theodor Schieder into the broader context of how historians work, Jarausch identifies "the conflict-ridden process of generational succession" (p. 198) as a key factor for the heavy criticism voiced by younger scholars against the "founding fathers." That professional envy as well as "an undercurrent of moralizing presentism" (p. 200) play a role in this process should not come as a surprise given the mechanics of academia. For Jarausch, the case of German historians during and after the Third Reich highlights the need for "greater self-reflexiveness among historians about the constraints of their own discipline"; a closer look confirms that these constraints are narrower than one might like to believe.
Despite new currents in Holocaust scholarship and a wealth of sources, mainstream historiography is still circumnavigating important problems. Sybille Steinbacher observes that in past decades there has been "more reasoning about, than research on, Auschwitz" (p. 21)--an imbalance her own writings have helped to even out.[1] Contributions by Pal Jaskot (on the Nazi concentration camp system), Richard Breitman (the Holocaust in Italy), David Pendas and Rebecca Wittmann (the Frankfurt Auschwitz trial), Susannah Heschel (women in the SS), Hilary Earl (the Nuremberg Einsatzgruppen trial), Helen Junz (Holocaust-era assets), Ian Buruma (children's perspectives on the Holocaust), Pieter Lagrou (Holocaust-perceptions in France, Belgium, and the Netherlands) and Suzanne Brown-Fleming (Catholic postwar perceptions of the Holocaust) present an amazing array of new findings while pointing to areas not yet thoroughly investigated. Christian Gerlach asks how anti-Semitism, despite its identification as one of the driving forces for the process of destruction, actually worked (p. 292), and indeed, available explanations tend to say little on the forms, functions and effects of anti-Semitic stigmatization after 1933. Perhaps even more surprisingly, the same applies to ideological indoctrination in Nazi Germany in general. While it rarely had an immediate trigger effect on Holocaust perpetrators, it nevertheless formed part of their milieu and mindset--together with other interests, expectations, and stereotypes.[2] More research is needed on the origins, agents and transformations of induced motivation, not in abstract terms, but in its concrete manifestations before, during, and after the Holocaust.
It is indicative for the state of Holocaust research that all of the contributions to the volume deal in one way or another with the murder of the European Jews. While one can find more publications than ever on the persecution of "gypsies," homosexuals, or Soviet prisoners of war, the "final solution of the Jewish question" remains the predominant scholarly focal point. As for Holocaust studies in this narrower sense, the volume reflects the preoccupation with perpetration, its origins, scope and consequences: only one of the volume chapters--with insightful contributions by Yehuda Bauer, Jonathan Goldstein, Yehudi Lindeman, and Lenore Weitzman--is devoted to Jewish actions and reactions.
There seems to be widespread agreement that the long-term reference framework for Holocaust analysis--the controversy between intentionalists and functionalists--has lost its usefulness. However, it is not clear which interpretative model is going to replace it. Multi-causality, favored by most empirical historians, allows for a mosaic of explanations that can stand next to each other and, seen in conjunction, provide as coherent and nuanced a picture of the deadly course of events as is possible to comprehend from the vantage point of the present.
At the same time, the growing complexity and level of detail unearthed in many case studies makes it increasingly difficult not to lose sight of what constitutes the "big picture." Contributions by Dan Michman and Gerhard Weinberg discuss Christopher Browning's work on the "crucial months" in the development towards the "Final Solution" and his thesis of a decision by Hitler in October, 1941, further elaborated and contextualized in his recently published magnum opus.[3] Yet the insights into the importance of local structures and events especially in Eastern Europe gained in the past ten years from a wealth of sources raise doubts about the usefulness of stressing the centrality of top-level decision making. Christian Gerlach has a point when he argues that "[o]ne single order or one decision by Adolf Hitler and the help of his willing executioners were not enough to murder the Jews of Europe" (p. 294). Future research will in all likelihood lead further away from the Berlin centers towards events at the geographic as well as institutional periphery, from "big bang" theories towards the perception of a gradual, uneven acceleration of the killing process with more than one caesura.
Current representations appear in sharper relief when seen against the backdrop of the role of historians in the Third Reich. Patricia von Papen-Bodek describes in detail the work of the "Institute zur Erforschung der Judenfrage" between 1939 and 1945--one of several institutions in Nazi Germany that served as, in the words of Alan Steinweis, "consultants to policymakers."[4] This kind of engagement with the public and the political establishment leaves little room for optimistic visions about scholarly intervention. Confronting this legacy requires critical awareness of the framework within which historiography thrives. Jarausch's suggestion that the reticence in West Germany to address the "continuity of Nazified thinking" might have been "an essential part of a process of 'silent democratization'" echoes what Hermann Lübbe called, as early as twenty years ago, the "certain quiet" as a prerequisite for the formation of a civic society in postwar Germany.[5]
Willingness to confront Holocaust history is widely seen as an indicator for a society's openness, its abandonment as a sign of discriminatory stereotypes and prejudices; however, the interrelation between what historians identify as lessons to be drawn from the past and their legitimizing function for current politics remains problematic and subject to changes in perception. For James Young, Germany's decision to build a memorial to the murdered European Jews in the heart of Berlin marked "a watershed for Germany's memory and identity" that facilitated the country's participation in NATO's "intervention against a new genocide perpetrated by Milosevic's Serbia" (p. 541). Jeffrey Herf claims that the Holocaust "emerged in American life because the United States became a less anti-Semitic and less racist society," and points to the "expansive, universalist 'use' of the memory of the Holocaust" in the form of calls for military intervention to prevent the "ethnic cleansing" against Bosnian Muslims in the 1990s (pp. 467, 469). While conceding that "memory of past horror and injustice ... may be the handmaiden of a renewed ethnocentrism and nationalism," Herf sees the events of September 11, 2001, as assurance for the Holocaust's "continuing place in an America more serious and more burdened with tragedy" (pp. 470-471).
The risk of historians getting "involved in actively making history" can be reduced, Konrad Jarausch hopes, by "balancing an adherence to rational methods with a commitment to human rights"; yet preventing "perversion of scholarship" (p. 203) requires acceptance of humanistic values: that is, the existence of the very mindset it attempts to create. Compared to its position in the scholarship of other parts of the world, the Holocaust is firmly rooted in Western historiography and university teaching. Dariusz Stola's contribution on the problems in Poland outlines some of the issues confronting historians in avoiding the pitfalls of apologia in the context of ongoing nation-building. Here as elsewhere, trends in analysis and interpretation often reflect less historical reality than prevailing political and economical interests; in some cases--like in regard to German compensation policies after 1945 showcased by Constantin Goschler--"the bargaining power of individual groups" (p. 403) appears as the driving force for setting the historical record straight.
Despite its inherent problems, it seems that the ongoing historicization of the Holocaust has the beneficial effect of raising awareness about scholarship's role in legitimizing interest politics as well as of enticing historians to follow Jarausch's advice and be more critical about their own work. In the volume at hand, Jonathan Steinberg questions his involvement in the Historical Commission on the activities of the Deutsche Bank by asking whether he and his colleagues had "been bought" (p. 427). Similarly, James Young voices his concerns about self-righteous over-identification among those involved in the shaping of the Berlin "Denkmal für die ermordeten Juden" (p. 531). These pieces alone make the reading of Lessons and Legacies VI a worthwhile undertaking for anyone interested in the events of the Holocaust and their representation. In its combination of historical analysis and historiographical reflection, this anthology offers a remarkably broad range of insights into the potentials and problems of current Holocaust research.
Notes
[1]. In addition to Sybille Steinbacher's contribution to the volume, see her "Musterstadt Auschwitz": Germanisierungspolitik und Judenmord in Ostoberschlesien (Munich: K.G. Saur, 2000), and _Auschwitz: A History (New York, Ecco, 2005).
[2]. Jürgen Matthäus, Konrad Kwiet, Jürgen Förster, and Richard Breitman, Ausbildungsziel Judenmord? "Weltanschauliche Erziehung" von SS, Polizei und Waffen-SS im Rahmen der "Endlösung" (Frankfurt am Main: Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, 2003).
[3]. Christopher R. Browning (with contributions by Jürgen Matthäus), The Origins of the Final Solution: The Evolution of Nazi Jewish Policy, September 1939--March 1942 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2004); see H-German review by Hilary Earl at <http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.cgi?path=121091118770420 > .
[4]. Alan E. Steinweis, "Antisemitic Scholarship in the Third Reich and the Case of Peter-Heinz Seraphim," in The Impact of Nazism: New Perspectives on the Third Reich and Its Legacy, ed. Alan E. Steinweis and Daniel E. Rogers (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2003), p. 75; see H-German review by Hilary Earl at <http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.cgi?path=105981076280454 > .
[5]. Hermann Lübbe, "Der Nationalsozialismus im politischen Bewußtsein der Gegenwart," in Deutschlands Weg in die Diktatur, ed. Martin Broszat (Berlin: Siedler, 1983), p. 334.
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Citation:
Jürgen Matthäus. Review of Diefendorf, Jeffry M., ed., Lessons and Legacies VI: New Currents in Holocaust Research.
H-German, H-Net Reviews.
September, 2005.
URL: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=11126
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