'What We Know About Murdered Peoples'

all—this being a protest, after all, against the state of medicine and science—are its New Age tones. A well-trained and Peter N.Miller reputable cancer epidemiologist might be expected to produce a book based 'WHAT WE KNOW ABOUT on research and data rather than un substantiated claims and anecdotes. But MURDERED PEOPLES' throughout The SecretHistoryofthe War on Cancer there is a continuing hom age to "treatments" that have not even WHO WILL WRITE OUR HISTORY? that interested the best historians ofthe been subject to serious research, much EMANUEL RINGELBLUM, 1920s and 1930s. As their own history less proved safe or effective. Davis ends THE WARSAW GHETTO, AND was coming to an end, these historians the chapter titled "Doctoring Evidence" THE OYNEG SHABES ARCHIVE were breaking new historical ground. by recounting the experience of people, By Samuel D. Kassow And if the contents, or even just the con such as the husband of Donna Karan, in (Indiana University Press, tours, oftheir work had been known, the using "yoga, meditation, massage, acu 523 pp., $34.95) shape of historical research in the sec puncture, herbs, detoxing systems and ond halfof the twentieth century might prayer" to fight cancer. Even worse, she have been different. seems to argue against the need to evalu ~y HIS MAY WELL BE the most But almost no one knows about the ate these "treatments" through research: important book about history OynegShabes Archive. The reasons are "For new herbal and nutritional remedies that anyone will ever read. It is many. It was written in Yiddish and Pol against cancer, or even for new uses of also a very important book of ish. It was buried in tin boxes and milk the soothing sounds and relaxing smells history, telling the story of an cans under the ghetto's buildings in of aromatherapy, we can't persuade pa extraordinary research project in the 1942 and 1943. And after it was exca tients who've been told they will die to Warsaw Ghetto between 1940 and 1943. vated from beneath the rubble, in 1946 agree to sit through a trial they may not As a tale about why doing history matters, and in 1950, the surviving 35,000 pages see the end of." Samuel D. Kassow's book has few equals of documents were locked away in the The notion that these "treatments," es in our collective record. Marc Bloch, ar Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw. pecially the herbal and nutritional ones, rested by Klaus Barbie's henchmen and Only recently has a substantial restora might help, and so need not be subjected executed in 1944,has become the martyr- tion project been undertaken. A com to a research trial, is dangerous. Many saint of modern history, and his book plete catalogue still does not exist. There such agents are unregulated and contain The Historian's Craft, left incomplete and are few translations (and existing ones unknown ingredients. More importantly, published posthumously, has emerged as are of poor quality). Only a handful of as we learned the hard way with Vitamin our time's classic work on the meaning of scholars have worked on the material, E and beta-carotene supplements, what doing history. Now, with the publication and its popular echoes are dim. Kassow, seems healthy may actually promote can of Who Will Write Our History?, Marc a historian of imperial Russia with a Yid- cer growth. And then there is the unfor Bloch will have to share his great and dishist s sixth sense for the cultural land gettable climax, Davis's epilogue. Much dark honor with Emanuel Ringelblum. scape of interwar Poland, is the first to of it is a moving portrait of her mother's Like Bloch, Ringelblum is a hero of his give a picture of the whole project, and of death from stomach cancer, which is one tory and a hero of historiography. its amazing chief protagonist. For all of the least treatable cancers. But then In 1940, Warsaw had a population of these reasons, this book—itselfan act of Davis tells a long story of her own toxic around 1.2 million people, its Jewish historical rescue—is a work of tremen reaction to the stings of two dozen hor population swollen to almost one-third dous significance. nets, and it contains this: of that number by forced immigration. In the autumn of that year, the Jews of And yet, had it not been for a All I know is that the day I almost died, Warsaw were walled into a 3.5-square- most malign fate, Emanuel Ringel I floated into the whitest, holiest, most mile area of buildings—30 percent of the blum would probably be unknown comforting and shimmering radiance city's population less than 3 percent of today. He was born in 1900 in the east I have ever known. I came face to face its space—where, in the next year and a ern Galician town of Buczacz, the same with a beatific, white-robed, vaguely half, 83,000 proceeded to die from hun town memorialized by his landsmann maternal, olive-skinned being. I ges ger. In the summer of 1942,300,000 Jews S.Y. Agnon (and whose more recent fate tured to my body on the table below were taken away for murder, mostly at has been studied by Omer Bartov in his and told her, "This is just lovely. Really Treblinka. In April and May, 1943, the re book Erased). Ringelblum went to War wonderful. But, I'm not ready. I would maining Jews,perhaps 60,000were killed, saw, taught in school, took a doctorate like to get back." or captured and deported, in the Warsaw in history, and became active in social I woke up.... Ghetto Uprising, during which the Ger ist Jewish politics, serving as editor of a mans leveled that part of the city. variety of journals. His pre-war life re The fact that Davis includes this hallu To contemplate, to plan, and to carry flected the tumultuous times. Yiddish, cination in a purportedly serious book out an elaborate project of scholarly Bundist, Zionist, anti-Zionist, Polish on cancer makes me wonder if she re self-study under such conditions is al cultural and religious politics: they all ally did wake up. Call me old-fashioned, most unimaginable. But even had it not roiled away through the pre-war decades. but when it comes to science, and to his been undertaken in one of the deepest tory, I like to stick to the facts, and noth circles of hell, the Oyneg Shabes project Peter N. Miller is a professorand the chair ing but the facts. The stakes are too high would still be astonishing for the sophis of academic programsat theBard Gradu for anything else. ♦ tication of its approach to the questions ate Center in New York. A4 April 9, 2008 The New Republic But Ringelblum's intellectual path also dience. Marxism legitimated the demo Much of Ringelblum's historical writ cut across many important themes of lition job, but it did not really provide, or ing was "descriptive," paraphrasing and modern historical—and modern Jewish guide, the content. This was an eclectic summarizing court documents. Some historical—scholarship, such as the rise Marxism not much different in function professional scholars, reflecting the of folklore studies in Eastern Europe and from the Marxism of Walter Benjamin— centuries'-old division between anti the opening to economic and social his a method of historical imagination, and quaries who collected, described, and tory. In this, one could say that Ringel a stumbling block for the orthodox. compared, and historians who spun blum followed the path first sketched out Ringelblum's doctoral dissertation on smooth-surfaced narratives, mocked by the great Jewish historian and thinker the medieval and early modern Jews of Ringelblum for this "descriptiveness." Simon Dubnow and later elaborated Warsaw was published in 1932. True to But the winds of change were behind by Isaac (Ignacy) Schiper (1884-1943), the message of Yiddish philology and Ringelblum. The future, though his crit a pioneering scholar of medieval Jewish YIVO, he brought a whole new cast ics might not have realized it, would economic history. In those years, an eth of characters into Jewish history: tav belong to the describers. Folklorists, an nographic and economic horizon jointly ern keepers and pickpockets, beggars thropologists, sociologists, geographers, opened onto the world not of the "Sab and vagabonds, wandering jesters and and social historians would rule the bath Jew" but of the "Everyday Jew." And thieves. But Ringelblum was also com- social sciences in the second half of the this Jew spoke Yiddish. The "Task twentieth century, even if this of Yiddish Philology," as it was future would not belong to him. formulated before World War I, was to hitch the study of Yiddish literature—of great writers such manuel Ringelblum as Mendelc Mocher Seforim and took his vision of an ethno- I.L. Peretz—to the folklorists' and J—/graphically informed social ethnographers' study of Yiddish history with him into the War life. This call to rediscover and to saw Ghetto. What emerged from explore the uncharted world of the ground, nearly a decade later, the Yiddish universe was no dif was this amazing record of an ex ferent from the fifteenth-century traordinary research project, the Italian humanist's call to explore Oyneg Shabes Archive. The first the universe of ancient Latin lit cache of documents, buried prob erature. He, too, started with the ably on August 3, 1942, contained text and followed its unraveling 25,540 pages of material.

Load more