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German Jews Confront Nazism, As Reflected in Jewish History1

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German Jews Confront Nazism, As Reflected in Jewish History1 German Jews Confront Nazism, as Reflected in Jewish History1 Otto Dov Kulka (Hrsg.), Anne Birkenhauer und Esriel Hildesheimer (Mitarbeiter), Deutsches Judentum unter dem Nationalsozialismus. Dokumente zur Geschichte der Reichsvertretung der deutschen Juden 1933- 1939, vol. 1 (Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 1997), XXIV+ 614 pp. Reviewed by Richard I. Cohen As Holocaust historical research sways furiously between Daniel Jonah Goldhagen and those who consider Nazism no more than a “traffic accident” in German history, it is surely worth contemplating the history of that era from the ground up—from the sources themselves. This, however, may seem slightly puzzling at this stage of historical inquiry. After comprehensive studies have been published on so many problems of the Holocaust and after a wide range of generalizations have been propounded—let alone in an era in which the subjective voice in historiography is growing considerably—can one even suggest returning to the fundamentals? Why go back, as it were, to a “positivistic,” “conservative” historiography that believes in the ability to arrive at the truth? Would this perspective not overlook the questions that disturb research and postpone formulating a thesis about those fateful days in Germany of 1933–1945? Otto Dov Kulka has assumed, it seems to me, an especially daunting task. In our days, research on Nazism and the Holocaust has taken on an additional burden of historiographical controversies—of which the latest is certainly not the last. Now, of all times, in such a period, Kulka stresses the supreme importance of documentation. The present volume is the first of two that aim to introduce the inner world of German Jewry through the prism of its 1This review is based on remarks presented at the International Center for Holocaust Studies at Yad Vashem on February 19, 1998. __________________________________________________________________________ 1/11 Shoah Resource Center, The International School for Holocaust Studies internal organizational structure. This collection presents 120 documents, along with detailed introductions that place the sources within the broad context of National-Socialist policy and the behavior of German Jewry in view of the crisis of 1933. Detailed notes, with explanations of concepts, names, institutions, and other matters, allow readers to orient themselves through the torrent of internal events that riveted the Jewish community’s efforts to cope during those years. Why, however, make such a monumental effort to revitalize these documents today? The editor seems to be stating—as echoed many times in this work, as well as in his previous studies—that, although the factual information attests to the contrary, the old hypotheses concerning the Jews’ organizational alignment against the National-Socialist system are being exhumed. Claims made in research and in public discourse imply that no evidence to contradict the previous hypotheses has been presented. Such hypotheses regard the actions of internal Jewish organizations as having been nothing but responses to the Nazi extermination “machine,” and their working assumption (not stated explicitly) avers that the Jews were threatened with extermination throughout the 1933-1945 period. Kulka’s study is presented as a counterweight to the rising tide of hypotheses and counter-hypotheses. In contrast to their historiographical common denominator, it describes the inner world of German Jews from the standpoint of their profound confrontation with the historical past and the emerging reality as if two currents overarching wrestled with each other—the sense of the trivial on the one hand, the premenition of a fateful day on the other. Thus, Kulka strives to bring the Jewish experience under National- Socialist rule to the center of Jewish history. Perhaps by so doing he wishes to respond meta-historically to remarks by the Jewish philosopher Martin Buber, which he uses (by citing them in various locations in his articles) as a sort of personal credo for the entire period. Here are Buber’s words from the introduction to a collection of his articles and speeches from 1933–1935, Die Stunde und die Erkenntnis, published in Berlin in 1936 by Schocken Press: If the striking of the old tower-clock is so audible as if it had never struck before, then it is time to interpret the ringing and the clock itself. The __________________________________________________________________________ 2/11 Shoah Resource Center, The International School for Holocaust Studies interpretation does not have to be invented; should not be invented; one must simply recognize that which has existed since time immemorial, as the truth after all has, and pronounce it. Why pronounce it? In order that the bond, which has perceived its fate in that hour and its recognition, stays together although it is torn apart in space. Whether it stays together as a community, nay, whether it becomes one. Whether it becomes one again, this will mysteriously determine the next ringing of the chimes. If it breaks up into isolated individuals then it, and perhaps more then it, is lost.2 My sense is that Kulka is trying as it were, to retrieve these attenuated individuals for the community, for Jewish history, as a collective. His intent is to guarantee that these years not be lost and not fall captive to a historiographical view that obfuscates their intrinsic eternal truth until the bell tolls again. A researcher’s worldview can be revealed even in a collection of sources, and here I address myself to the underpinnings of this study, which began in the 1960s. It was then that Kulka first discovered the archives of the Reichsvertretung der Deutschen Juden (National Representation of the German Jews), which had been preserved in the cellar of a half-destroyed synagogue in what was then East Germany. Before I explore the historiographical assumptions that, in my opinion, informed the selection of documents in this book—i.e., Kulka’s historical worldview—I preface my remarks with comments about aspects that reverberate in many different forms in the instructive introductions to these documents. In a brief study on the SS deportation order for the Jews of Czechoslovakia in August 1939—a study that Kulka published many years ago—he presented a document from a debate among members of the Kehilla committee of the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia. The debate was led by Dr. Kafka, chairman of the Prague Kehilla, and his remarks, although not 2Martin Buber, Die Stunde und die Erkenntnis (Berlin: Schocken, 1936), p. 7, quoted from Kulka in his article, “Major Trends and Tendencies in German Historiography on National Socialism and the ‘Jewish Question’” Israel Gutman and Gideon Greif, eds., The Historiography of the Holocaust Period, Proceedings of the Fifth Yad Vashem International Historical Conference (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 1983), p. 6. __________________________________________________________________________ 3/11 Shoah Resource Center, The International School for Holocaust Studies presented in this collection, are astonishing. Kafka began by saying that, in view of the feeling that Czech Jewry is approaching its demise, he has a clear sense of historical connection with his forebears, who encountered a different fateful situation: “This old Kehilla building, in which we have gathered today, has witnessed many events, good and bad. At the entrance to the hall, one encounters the picture of the head of the Prague Kehilla, Israel Spiro, . [who] headed the Kehilla at the time when Maria Theresa issued the famous edict banishing the Jews from Prague. The 20,000 Jews of Prague, including women, children, and meager belongings, were forced to leave their ancient residence in Prague in the midst of a fierce winter and to migrate to small rural communities in Bohemia. In their millennium-old history, however, the Jews of Bohemia have not experienced times as difficult as the present.”3 Kafka mentioned neither the fate of German Jewry nor of Austrian Jewry in the Nazi era. Instead, he cited analogies with a more distant past, the eighteenth century—when Empress Maria Theresa sought to expel the Jews of Prague and Bohemia from their birthplaces. The year was 1744. Here, historical memory and historical context worked in a special way: the evident partnership in fate is with a different era in Czech Jewish history, not with the general, amorphous Jewish fate. This is a solid manifestation of Jews’ sense of belonging to a place and to history. In this construct, the past is not a sealed book but one that is still open and plays a substantive role in the consciousness of contemporaries. The nexus is illuminating in itself, but it also lets us observe the realities of Jews, under the harsh conditions of 1933–1945, from a different point of view. The Jews’ behavior is construed not only as a “response” to National Socialism but also, and mainly, as a contemplation of the phenomenon from within, i.e., in the relationship of the community and its members to general and local Jewish history. Perhaps it is meant to express Buber’s purpose: “In 3See Otto Dov Kulka, “Elucidating the Jewish Policy of the SD in the First Occupied Countries (Unknown Documents from 1938–1939),” Yalkut Moreshet 18 (November 1974), p. 168. This is not the place to discuss Kafka’s historical “accuracy” in regard to the number of Jews banished from Prague in 1744. __________________________________________________________________________ 4/11 Shoah Resource Center, The International School for Holocaust Studies order that the bond, which has perceived its fate in that hour and its recognition, stays together although it is torn apart in space.” Anyone who reads about and researches the Holocaust period can probably imagine similar states of consciousness, which urge one to ponder the predicament differently and free oneself from the historiographical vise imposed deliberately or otherwise by the literature of guilt and polemics. When Jews sought an analogy between their lives and the lives of other Jews, far removed from them in time, place, and crisis, they did so in order to express a substantive affiliation with different worlds of consciousness, not necessarily in order to escape from their reality.
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