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 , 1920s and 1930s. As their own history less proved safe or effective. Davis ends THE 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 , 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. The sec skein deeper and deeper into the ond, buried in February 1943, recesses of a lost world—along the held 9,829 pages, all from the pe way encountering and explain riod August 1942-February 1943. ing costume, religion, law, sport, For four years the first cache lay music, food, calendars, sexual in the ground, where water pene practices, work, buildings, tech trated the ten tin boxes and a fun nology, and so on. A Yiddish phi gal bloom ruined many documents lology, like classical philology, and photographs. The second ar would reconstruct the worlds of chive emerged from its seven years' books. But unlike classical philol inhumation in relatively better ogy, the worlds of the Yiddish phi condition, because its aluminum lologist still survived—until 1939. milk cans were more watertight. When the Yiddish Scientific In What was the Oyneg Siiabes stitute, or YIVO, was founded in project? In the first instance, it 1925, its goal was to recover this Emanuel Ringelblum, c. 1940 was people. About fifty or sixty of world. And it succeeded. Ques them, to be precise, nearly all in tionnaires about the way everyday life mitted to studying the monuments of tellectuals. Before the war they had been was lived were sent out, and back (lowed Jewish Warsaw and the physical space professors, journalists, writers, poets. In the answers. Ringelblum absorbed in which Jewish history was lived. If this the ghetto, they participated in Ringel both the message and the method of all sounds like Ringelblum was as much blum's project from their particular YIVO—its emphasis on philology, eco a Warsaw representative of the - vantage points, documenting house com nomics, folklore, history—and cele based Annates d'histoire economique as mittees, soup kitchens, or postal routes, brated it in a series of articles written of the Vilna-based YIVO, it might be be so as to interview, study, analyze, and re while he was still a student. As much cause hispromotor, Marceli Handelsman, cord daily life in that purgatory. Their as anything, Ringelblum's Marxism- actually was in sympathy with the early essays were then copied over by a sec he was a member of the Left Poalei Zion Annates School. Handelsman was a so ond group of collaborators. There was (LPZ), a Zionist group for which the cial historian, but he wrote extensively a third group, the executive committee, road to Tel Aviv passed through Mos about historical methodology and source that provided funding—typically, well- cow but nevertheless remained com criticism—and these "auxiliary sciences," to-do Jews whose surviving wealth was mitted to cultural education in the derived in the eighteenth century from spent on everything from pen and ink to Polish diaspora—amounted to a schol earlier antiquarian practice, provided an the medicines needed to keep valuable ar's commitment to blast away the old alternate path to the study of social and contributors alive. Ringelblum also took hierarchies of theme, evidence, and au economic reality. advantage of his position in the Jewish

The New Republic April 9, 2008 35 self-help umbrella organization in the documenting German crimes, and, later, cafes alongside school primers and re Warsaw Ghetto. The soup kitchens run alerting the outside world to the mass ports from orphanages. The first cache by the Aleynhilffed his writers. murder being perpetrated. It was, in of tin boxes also contained photographs, It was called OynegShabes,or Sabbath short, about truth. As Ringelblum later seventy-six of which survived, showing Joy, because its board met on Saturday wrote: "To ensure objectivity, to achieve street scenes, starving children, Jewish afternoons. But its content was secret. as accurate and comprehensive a picture police, the building of the walls, smug- Besides Ringelblum and his closest sec as possible of the War events in Jewish tilers throwing sacks of flour over the retaries, no one had contact with the life, we tried to have the same incident walls, people listening to loudspeakers three people whose task was to store and, described by as many people as possible. in the street, and so on. Last inserted on the appropriate signal, to bury the ar By comparing various accounts, the his were German posters announcing the chive. They lived entirely cut off from the torian is able to arrive at the historical deportation—these materials would not collective project, so that ifthe ring were truth, the actual course of the event." have existed prior to July22, and the first broken they would not be compromised. The archive commissioned essays and cache was buried thirteen days later. Revolutionary organizations had used a collected ephemera, knowing that one In the milk cans of the second cache cellular structure of this sort to protect day it would be precious documentation were placed penciled notes in shaky- the lives of killers; here it was adopted to of a world as strange and distant as deep- handwriting smuggled out of the Um- protect documents from the killers. sclilagplatz, begging for last-minute Not lives, but documents: every rescue. But there was also a much one in OynegShabes, at least by the higher percentage of "official" doc autumn of 1942, knew what their uments, both German and Jewish. fate would be. (Only three survived The surviving Jews now collected as the war, including one who knew much as possible about Treblinka. the location of the hiding place.) They also documented the psy Most importantly, perhaps, the chological consequences to those OynegSliabes group was a collec who survived the Great Depor tive—the first real "History Work tation, including the world of the shop." (It was the Oyneg Sliabes shops and barracks that replaced project that, in a head-spinning ghetto life. We find poetry of the irony, created the history of every period, as well as information on day life, Alltagsgescliiclite, which the first armed confrontation be German left-wing historians later tween the Jewish Fighting Orga re-invented in order to grasp bet nization (ZOB) and the Germans ter the enormity of the German in January 1943. The remaining slaughter of the Jews.) In Ringel contributors to the OynegShabes blum's archive, a scholarly instru project put their "ego documents" ment and a social ideal merged. into this second cache, including The ambitions of all those pre-war university diplomas and personal ethnographic projects now seemed writings. It was to these milk cans to offer the only way in which the that Ringelblum entrusted the en story of the Warsaw Ghetto could tire manuscript of the history of be adequately told. Collecting, Warsaw Jewry that he wrote dur comparing, and describing also ing the war—still unpublished, un- offered the Jews an ideal of sur cited, and, so it seems, unread; and vival—individual and collective— among the last documents in the to which they could cling amid the second cache was Ringelblum's shipwreck of Polish Jewry. essay on the OynegShabesArchive But as much as it was a collec OyncgSliabes milk can, 1943 itself, as well as pamphlets put out tive, posterity has committed no by the ZOB calling for armed re error in calling it the "Ringelblum Ar est antiquity. We find samples from the sistance. 'Ihe third cache, buried in April chive." For he led the executive commit underground press, documents, draw 1943 on the eve of the Uprising, probably tee, and shaped the research projects, ings, candy wrappers, tram tickets, ra contained more material of this sort. and enlisted the writers, and managed tion cards, theater posters, invitations to In early 1942, Ringelblum, and Me- the stages of the process, and oversaw concerts and lectures. The archive pre nakhem Linder, an economist, and the whole. Soon after the ghetto was serves copies of complex doorbell codes Eliezer Lipe Bloch, who in the pre-war walled off, in November 1940, Ringel for apartments housing dozens of ten period was director of the Jewish Na blum launched the enterprise, recog ants, and also restaurant menus adver tional Fund in Poland, re-conceptual nizing that this was a historically unique tising roast goose and fine wines. There ized the work of the archive under the moment. At this early stage, one could were hundreds of postcards from Jews in rubric of"Two and a Half Years"—a his still have imagined that there would be the provinces about to be deported into tory of the ghetto, and a history unlike a "post-war" Jewish world in Poland that the unknown, and there was the ghetto any history written in Europe at the time. would have to take stock of this unprec poetry of Wladyslaw Szlengel and Yit As Ringelblum formulated it, the project edented reality. And so the methodologi zhak Katznelson. There is the entire 'will describe the inner life of Jewish so cal goals of the Oyneg Sliabes group were script of a popular ghetto comedy called ciety in the Warsaw Ghetto.... Two and a to collect evidence and to study Jewish "Love Looks for an Apartment." There half years of war have produced as many society, gathering individual testimony, are long essays on ghetto theaters and changes for European Jewry as previous

36 April y, 2ouS The New Republic generations might have experienced in lages were being eradicated. Unlike the July-September 1942 removed 99 per decades." He and his colleagues compiled Yizker bikhr, the memorial books that cent of the children. (Of 51,458 chil comprehensive questionnaires, con were published after the war, which re dren in the ghetto, only 498 remained.) ducted interviews, and organized essay called villages through the memories of Indeed, the entire project almost col contests, all designed to yield a picture their survivors, the accounts in Ringel lapsed under the weight of the Great of the economic, cultural, and commu blum's archive were collected in real time Deportation. Though Ringelblum used nal lifewithin the walls. Ringelblum was from deportees who had found their way every resource at his disposal to shelter in charge of the cultural history, Linder to Warsaw, with a recognition that only his collaborators and to bribe the Jew of the economic history, and Bloch of the writing now stood between centuries of ish policemen who carried out much of communal history (which was devoted to Jewish life and oblivion. These accounts the work, his ranks were decimated. And the documentation ofJewish mutual aid). were full of information on deportation, those who were left had to face life with The whole was slated for 1,600 printed torture, and murder. out their wives or children. pages. The weekly meetings of the Oyneg Again, a normal response to the en Even in the midst of this devasta Shabes board worked out the theses and circling reality would surely have been tion, however, Ringelblum kept thinking the guidelines to be pursued. utter despair. But Ringelblum the his about how to study the changing pres Economic questions were approached torian thought in terms of change. Thus, ent so as to benefit the future. Statistics as windows onto cultural history. The as a part of "Two and a Half Years," the were key. One of the OynegShabes con commissioned essays include "New OynegShabes group launched a new sur tributors, Gustawa Jarecka, explained Trades in Wartime," "On Jewish Bar vey on the future of the Jews. In the War that "statistics and official proclamations bers," and "Processes of the Adaptation saw Ghetto! The researchers approached are the fundamental documents of the of the Jewish Artisan to Wartime Con fifty Jews from different backgrounds [Great Deportation]. Written accounts ditions," as well as an anonymous study and asked them what they thought the can only provide some additional details of the wealthy Jewish brushmaking en future would bring. Names of thirty-one about events and specific incidents. But trepreneurs Weitz and Krygier. Eliyahu ofthem have survived in the archive, and basically nothing is more expressivethan Gutkowski wrote on price changes in nine of the interviews were preserved in statistics!" It was one of the truly remark foodstuffs and various basic commod tact in the first cache. These responses able accomplishments of the archive that ities. There were studies of ghetto ex represented a cross-section of Warsaw the commitment to the authority of num ports, of the Transferstelle (where goods Jewish intelligentsia. bers never degenerated into the tyranny officially entered and exited the ghetto), The plan to document the lives of chil of numbers. In the OynegShabesArchive, and of the trade in used articles, and of dren in the ghetto was among the most the individual remains intact and cen the gigantic flea markets that emerged to painful. It was also left radically incom tral, unobscured and unvarnished. This satisfy unmet material needs. There were plete, since the Great Deportation of is a record of human beings, with human also essays on "Jewish Economic Life in Poland During the War and Occupation," on the black market in foreign currency, and on smuggling. The discussion of smuggling was par adigmatic. It began with the question of From the University of A IgcVpi how Jews in the ghetto did not starve to death. German rations for the more or Press less 400,000 Jews in the ghetto amounted to approximately 180 calories per day per person. For the Jews to survive, the ghetto had to buy food illegally. From legal means, the ghetto took in 1.8 mil Against the Grain lion zlotys' worth of food each month, but in order to buy enough food for the The Literary Life of a Poet community it had to spend another 70 A Memoir to 80 million zlotys per month. Where did all this money come from? The an REED WHITTEMORE swer, as was obvious, was smuggling. With ti Foreword by Garrison Keillor Less obvious, however, but entirely in keeping with Ringelblum's wider histor "Like Garrison Keillor, who in a fine introduction sets us off on ical vision, was that it took two parties to smuggle: Jews inside the walls, Poles out our deeper discovery of YVhittemore, we are likely to come away side the walls. And so he concluded that from this highly original memoir with a mixture of envy and ad the survival of the ghetto constituted a high point of hundreds of years of Polish- miration."—Keith Harrison, Minneapolis Star Tribune Jewish relations. After the war, he wrote Copublished by the University of Alaska Tress and Dryad Press

a monument to "the unknown smuggler" Cloth S26.95 would not be out of place in Warsaw. Another projected area of study was the shtetl—Jewish town and village life. Distributed by the University <>f Chicago Press This line of inquiry was launched when it iv'.vw.press.uchicago.edu became clear that Jewish towns and vil

The New Republic April 9, 2.008 .)'. voices, in an inhuman existence. There vio's fifteenth-century words describing science." (Ringelblum, note deposited are many essays in the archive written by the fragmentary survival of the ancient in the Archive, late 1942) parents memorializing their dead chil world, later repeated by Francis Bacon, "I consider it a sacred duty for everyone, dren. What on this earth could be more come to mind when contemplating what whether proficient or not, to write down personal than that? has come down to us from Ringelblum's everything he has seen or heard from This perhaps explains the singular world: "like planks from a shipwreck." others about what the Germans have importance of poetry in the archive: it done.... It must all be recorded without is the most individuated form of mem a single fact left out." (Menakhem ory, and thus the essential complement ura confers authority. The Mendel Kon, diary, Autumn 1942) to the project's social-scientific perspec A:conditions under which books "The mass murder, the murder ofmil tive. Ringelblum seems already to have jl \. are produced add to theirforce. lions of Jews by the Germans, is a fact understood what Arnaldo Momigliano Thanks to Samuel Kassow, the Oyneg that speaks for itself. It is very danger later posited as a rule for the study of an Shabes Archive is now restored to history. ous to add to this subject interpretations cient history: read poetry. It was the only But this is also a story about historiogra or analyses.Anythingthat issaidcan way to understand how people in the phy. Marc Bloch's The Historian's Craft quicklyturn into hopeless hysteriaor past actually felt. Wtadyslaw Szlengel, in is a wonderful book, but knowing that endless sobs. So one must approach this a poem called "Pomnik" or "The Monu its author was martyred in mid-sentence subject with the greatest caution, in a re ment," invokes Pindar and other classical changes the way we read it. The same strained and factual manner... this had poets of remembrance when he sings of could be said of Emanuel Ringelblum been my intention: not to express but to the Jewish mother and wife taken "just as and his archive. And reading it in this transmit, to note only facts but not to she was,/standing near the kitchen stove," light we may discern precepts for doing interpret." (Rachel Auerbach, writing of leavinga hole in space where once there history, for understanding the "histori the ghetto on the Aryan side, 1944) had been life. an's craft," as compelling as its narrative of life in the Warsaw Ghetto. Here are 4. Nothing is unimportant. For heroes—poems and rhapsodies!!! what we might call Ringelblum's Rules: "Collect as much as possible. They can For heroes—the homage of posterity, sort it out after the war." (Ringelblum to Their names etched in the plinths, 1.Seriousnessofpurpose is crucial. Hersh Wasser, recorded by Wasser) for them a monument ofmarble. "'When a Jewishsafer[scribe] sets out to "Comprehensiveness was the main prin But who will tell you, the people of copy the Torah, he must, according to ciple of our work."(Ringelblum, "O.S." the future, religious law,take a ritual bath in order [OynegShabes], late December 1942) Not about bronze or mythic tales to purify himself of all uncleanliness "Given the daunting complexity of so But that they took her—killed her, and impurity. This scribe takes up his cial processes, where everything is in That she is no more. pen with a trembling heart, because the terdependent, it would make no sense smallest mistake in transcription means to see ourselves in isolation We have "* h e OynegShabes project was com the destruction ofthe whole work. It to regard ourselves as participants in a pleted at the beginning of April is with this feelingof fearfulness that I universal attempt to construct a solid 1943, when the final trove of ma have begun this work with the above structure of objective documentation.... terials was buried. When the Uprising title. I am writing it in a hideout on the Let us hope that the bricks and cement broke out on April 19, Ringelblum was Aryan side. I am indebted to the Poles of our experience and our understand captured and sent to the Trawniki labor for having saved my lifetwice during ing will be able to provide a foundation." camp. He was there until August 1943, this war.... It is my wish to write objec (Ringelblum to Hersh Wasser,recorded when he was smuggled out by the Jew tively, sine iraetstudio,of the problem by Wasser) ish-Polish underground, brought back of Polish-Jewish relations during the to Warsaw, and sent into hiding on the present war." (Ringelblum, Polish-Jewish 5. Understanding thepast is an inter- Aryan side. There, in a bunker seven RelationsduringtheSecond World War) generationalproject. meters long by five meters wide that he "The record must be hurled like a stone shared with thirty-nine other Jews, in 1. Words are powerful. under history's wheel in order to stop cluding his wife and son, Ringelblum "We hate words because they too often it One can lose all hopes except the completed four major works: a detailed have served as a cover for emptiness or one—that the suffering and destruction study of the Trawniki camp, perhaps meanness. We despise them for they of this war will make sense when they the first study ever made of the concen- pale in comparison with the emotion are looked at from a distant, historical trationary universe; a report on Jewish tormenting us. And yet in the past the perspective." (Jarecka, "The Last Stage armed resistance; a treatment ofthe Jew word meant human dignity and was ofResettlement Is Death," late 1942) ish intelligentsia; and a survey of Polish- man's best possession—an instrument "Everything depends on who transmits Jewish relations during World War II. of communication between people." our testament to future generations, The first two were lost, the latter two sur (Gustawa Jarecka, "The Last Stage of on who writes the history of this pe vived. Ringelblum himself did not. The Resettlement Is Death," late 1942) riod. History is usually written by the bunker was eventually betrayed, and its victor. What we know about murdered occupants were taken away. In prison his 3. Facts matter. peoples is only what their murderers fellow inmates again sought to save him, "Facts!" (Anonymous, scrawled in vaingloriously cared to say about them. but he refused to abandon his boy, and the margin of a questionnaire being Should our murderers be victorious, soon afterward he was executed. prepared on the subject of German- should theywrite the history of this In the ghetto, the archive was not the Jewish relations in the ghetto) war, our destruction will be presented only thing buried in the earth. But only "Two and a Half Years... which goals? as one of the most beautiful pages of the archive rose up from it. Biondo Fla- A photograph of life. Not literature but world history.... Or they may wipe

>

n the Warsaw Ghetto, and else HOW MUCH CAN WE STAND? where across Europe, thousands of in- .- LdividualJews put pen to paper, often amid panic and terror, to record details A SECULAR AGE Americans, religious beliefisa childhood of their existence for readers in the fu ByCharles Taylor illusion that they have outgrown. They ture that they still believed in. The Oyneg (Harvard University Press, may retain a vague notion of there being Shabes Archive is a collection ofsuch in 874 pp., $39.95) some God "out there," but little more. dividual voices. It will stand as the out Here too, then, the same question standing twentieth-century rebuttal to arises that Larkin went on to pose: impersonal forms of social science. Fer- ored" and "uninformed" "What remains when disbelief has gone?" nand Braudel's Tfie Mediterranean and was how Philip Larkin felt Once the old dogmas and rituals are a the Mediterranean World in the Age of on entering a church, won distant memory, no longer worth fight Philip II is often described as the great dering: "when churches fall ing against, how should we live?Should est work of twentieth-century history, completely out of use / What we simply get on with the cultivation of but its eponymous hero is a subject for we shall turn them into." Unlike Brit our own powers, pursuing the goals that the historian on only the second to last of ain, where the pews are generally empty, lie within our reach, and forget about the its more than 1,200 pages. Braudel's so America is not likely to see its churches grander spiritual fulfillment that religion cial history is the sort that is uneasy with fall into disuse anytime soon. The ap once promised—the redemption of sin human beings. But after Kassow s truly parent vitality of religion on this side of and suffering, the conviction that our unforgettable book, can we ever again the Atlantic has long been invoked as a fleeting existence matters from the stand accept that understanding "the daunt conspicuous contrast with the increas point of eternity? Despite his boredom ing complexity of social processes," as ing de-Christianization of Europe. Yet with religious tradition, despite his gen Ringelblum puts it, requires an indiffer the indifference that Larkin professed eral distrust of enthusiasm, Larkin dis ence to the individual? in his great early poem "Church Going" agreed that we should lower our sights: a In 1944, while Ringelblum was com is widespread all the same. Most Amer life content to remain within the human pleting his great work in a bunker, Brau- icans say they believe in God and may sphere did not seem enough. "Someone del was completing his masterpiece in label themselves Catholic, Protestant, or will forever be surprising /A hunger in a German POW camp. In the half-cen Jewish, but far fewer care enough to go himself to be more serious," just like the tury that followed, Braudel and his vi further than that. Religion is largely ab poet inside the church. It is natural to sion of social-science history triumphed. sent from the art and culture ofour time. seek some deeper meaning in which our During those long years, Ringelblum's America's reputation for religiositystems limitations are transfigured, in which "all archive lay in the ground, or in restora from its evangelical movements, and our compulsions meet,/Are recognized, tion baths, or in closed cupboards, wait they generally view themselves as strug and robed as destinies," even if we balk ing, waiting, waiting. But what if Braudel gling against the mainstream. For many at actually believing in a God that would had been killed and Ringelblum had sur make such a meaning a reality. vived? What would the practice of his Charles Larmore is W. Duncan MacMillan This conflict in the modern mind is also tory have looked like these past decades? Family Professor in the Humanities at the theme of Charles Taylor's new book. This possible past may only now be begin Brown University. Taylor never mentions Larkin's poem,

The New Republic April 9, 2008 3 V TheNewUfl

r PUB APRIL 9, 2008 ♦ k$4.95

WE )SE ONE HOWOBAMAvs.CL THE DEMOCRATS 1! Noam 5c

/ •^it

AFTER JEREMIAH WRIGHT... EJ.DionneJr. THE TRUTH ABOUT NAFTA v lOHN B.Jl DIS DO CELL PHONES CAUSE CANCER? I./I Ml i ). Em ANI I.I

HISTORY IN THE SHADOW OF DEATH Pi i i k \. Miller Plus The Times' Sharia Obsession