The Many Faces of Holocaust Research

By Dr. David Silberklang

Hilberg: “Beyond what I ever imagined”	Yablonka: Jewish survivor testimony central at Eichmann Trial	Cesarani: “Third Reich didn’t share values of Oxford University”
Nidam-Orivieto: Challenge to popular myths about Italy	Browning: Development of the “Final Solution”	Wittmann: Jewish experiences marginalized at German war trials

More than 50 years since the founding of Yad Vashem and nearly 60 years since the end of WWII, where do we now stand in Holocaust research? How has research developed and where is it heading? On 21-24 November 2004, 33 world-renowned scholars gathered at Yad Vashem to address these subjects at the International Institute for Holocaust Research’s international conference on “Holocaust Research in Context,” convened through the generous support of the Gertner Center for Holocaust Conferences. From Gerhard Weinberg’s opening keynote lecture challenging historians to address the interrelationships between the historiography of WWII and the Holocaust, to Raul Hilberg’s sweeping and moving closing remarks, this conference proved to be a treasure trove of keen insights into the origins, development, and state of research on the Holocaust.

Much of the early Holocaust research was conducted in the DP camps through recording survivor testimonies and early postwar documentation, explained Zev Mankowitz, Ada Schein, and Roni Stauber. Dalia Ofer and Robert Rozett examined survivor testimony as a source and its use in research over the years. Yet, survivor testimony played a mixed role in postwar trials and research and in public consciousness of the Holocaust. While the story of the Holocaust and the Jews was marginalized in both the Nuremberg trials and the later court cases in West Germany (Donald Bloxham and Rebecca Wittmann), Jewish survivor testimony was given center stage at the Eichmann trial in Jerusalem (Hanna Yablonka).

In the 1950s, it was still unclear what direction Israeli Holocaust research should take, or who should conduct it (Boaz Cohen). Holocaust research in Poland (Feliks Tych and Israel Gutman), in the USSR, and in the post-communist Baltic States and Russia (Itzhak Arad and Pavel Polian), has been greatly influenced by the collapse of communism, leading to a changing understanding of the Holocaust in that part of the world. Since the beginning of the 1990s, all these countries have seen a major shift in attitudes towards a more critical look at the past.

Holocaust research in Western Europe developed differently in each country, influenced by the individual country’s social and political outlook. From the general indifference of French historians to the subject (Georges Bensoussan), to the more serious and specialized research that has developed in the Netherlands (Ido de Haan) and the challenge to popular myths about the Italians in the Holocaust posed by the Center for Documentation of Contemporary Jewry in Milan (Iael Nidam-Orvietto), much still needs to be developed in this area.

A highlight of these national and regional overviews was David Cesarani’s astute analysis of Holocaust historiography in Great Britain. Cesarani demonstrated how British historians had for decades failed to pay close attention to Nazi ideology and Nazi policies regarding the Jews. One reason early British research did not confront Nazi ideology directly was its liberal-based distaste for Nazism. As Cesarani put it: “This was one of the problems of the Third Reich; it did not share the values of Oxford University.”

In contrast, the “Jerusalem School” of Holocaust research, argued Dan Michman, is based on the Jerusalem School of Jewish History, focusing on economic, social, and political factors in the history of the Jews themselves, and the sense of the unity of Jewish history, showing relatively little interest in “perpetrator history.” Interestingly, David Engel then illustrated just how little the Holocaust and Holocaust research have influenced the study of earlier periods of Jewish history.

A major highlight of the conference was the session marking the publication of the Hebrew edition of Christopher Browning’s new book, The Origins of the Final Solution, (part of Yad Vashem’s Comprehensive History of the Holocaust series). Browning articulately and persuasively assessed the development of the “Final Solution”—in the euphoria of victory in September-October 1941—and Hitler’s role in the decision-making process alongside the decisive contribution of a broad array of lower echelons in the Nazi state to its implementation. The Nazis’ racial war and racial imperialism in the East served as the context for the German consensus on the murder of the Jews. And, if Hitler did not write orders, how can we know what he was planning? “If one wants to know what Hitler was thinking, one should look at what Himmler was doing [in this period],” Browning says.

Having opened with Weinberg’s challenge, the conference closed with Raul Hilberg’s fascinating review of the development of Holocaust research from the first days of examining Nazi documents used at the Nuremberg trials to the present, reflecting his vast yet intimate knowledge of this material. Dividing the last 60 years of Holocaust research and writing into three periods, Hilberg characterized the current period of “maturity:” “You know what you’re dealing with; you know your context.” Yet, despite all we know, our picture of the Holocaust will always be only partial. At the same time, Hilberg was pleased at the volume and extent of Holocaust research currently taking place: “It is beyond what I ever imagined,” he said. This should be a source of encouragement for us all.

The author is Editor-in-Chief of Yad Vashem Studies

Copyright ©2004 Yad Vashem The Holocaust Martyrs' and Heroes' Remembrance Authority