Holocaust-Voices-Of-Scholars-2009

is book was published thanks to generous support from the Faculty of International Table of Contents and Political Studies and the Institute of European Studies of the Jagiellonian University, and the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum. e opinions expressed in this publication are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the policies or views of the Jagiellonian University or the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum. Foreword by Piotr M. A. Cywiński 9 Introduction by Jolanta Ambrosewicz-Jacobs All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, 13 or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publishers. I Yehuda Bauer: Holocaust Research – A Personal Statement 19 © e Jagiellonian University and the Individual Authors John K. Roth: Gray Zones: e Holocaust and the Failure(s) of Ethics 31 Ian Kershaw: Working on the Holocaust 41 John T. Pawlikowski: e Challenge of the Holocaust for 51 a Christian eologian Zdzisław Mach: Poland’s National Memory of the Holocaust 61 and Its Identity in an Expanded Europe Assistant Editor Translator Michael Jacobs II Michael R. Marrus: Holocaust Research and Scholarship Today 73 Managing Editor Charles S. Maier: Holocaust Fatigue 83 Anna Motyczka Omer Bartov: My Twisted Way to Buczacz 95 Editorial Assistants Shimon Redlich: Some Remarks on the Holocaust by a Marginal Historian 105 Katarzyna Nowak Dan Michman: e Challenge of Studying the Shoah as Jewish History: 101 Katarzyna Meroń Some Personal Reflections Cover Design Maria Orwid, Krzysztof Szwajca: Reflections on the Holocaust 121 Dorota Ogonowska from a Psychiatric Perspective Jonathan Webber: Auschwitz: Whose History, Whose Memory? 135 Layout My Personal and Professional Journey to Holocaust Research Izabela Witowska Nechama Tec: 149 Dalia Ofer: My View rough eir Lens: e Personal and Collective 159 in Writing about the Holocaust Printed by Feliks Tych: A Witness and His Path to Research 173 Cracow 2009 Debórah Dwork: e Challenges of Holocaust Scholarship. 189 A Personal Statement ISBN Robert Jan van Pelt: Salvage 205 Michael Berenbaum: My Way to the Holocaust 219 Stanisław Krajewski: Speaking About the Holocaust in Today’s Poland 233 Moshe Zimmermann: e Holocaust of the German Jews 245 Wolfgang Benz: Expulsion, “Ethnic Cleansing,” Genocide 257 Jan Woleński: Executioners, Victims and Bystanders 267 III Eleonora Bergman: Questions in the Polish Landscape 281 Elie Wiesel: Lift Your Eyes and Look at the Sky 285 About the Authors 289 Foreword Beneath my office window opposite Crematorium I on the grounds of Auschwitz I Stammlager, many thousands of people pass by every day. Mainly young people. For the most part their faces are concentrated, disoriented, depressed. ey have just seen everything that rouses the utmost protest in every person. Or should in principle. Because the problem is that it does not. Every year many millions of people visit museums and educational centers devoted to the history of the Holocaust. ese people very emotionally ask themselves how it was possible that the underground did not blow up the railroad tracks, that the Allies did not bomb the gas chambers, that the Red Cross did nothing, that moral and religious authorities did not call a spade a spade. Over dinner the same evening, these same people, watching Rwanda or Darfur, will be asking themselves: What is NATO doing? Why are there no blue helmets there? What does the European Union have to say about it? How strange that no one is doing anything! Watching the people passing by, finishing their tour of Auschwitz I and slowly heading for Auschwitz II Birkenau, I wonder sometimes how many days it will take before each and every one of them begins to shed their personal responsibility, today’s responsibility, shifting it to various institutions, preferably international ones. Today they are appalled by the silence of the world back then. Tomorrow they will begin to be part of that silence. e number of visitors to the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial is easily more than a million annually. 8 9 • • • Someday there will be new martyrdom museums which tell the tragic story of the African genocides of the early 21st century. Of the children So many teenagers all over the world have read Anne Frank’s diary. ey murdered with machetes before the eyes of TV reporters. And then, have very strongly recognized themselves in the person of young Anne. young people visiting those memorials will walk through – concentrated, ey have identified with her. disoriented, depressed. And they will be unable to understand what we did e majority of Holocaust education programs rely on that identi- back then. How was it possible that no one did anything? After all, they fication with the victims. Empathy is supposed to stimulate imagination, could have. an understanding that the victims were real. Perhaps it stimulates under- e greatest blame will then fall on today’s teachers. And on us, standing, but it does not convert it to a sense of personal responsibility. unfortunately – those who create Holocaust education programs. In the Anne Frank book, today’s teenager identifies with an innocent If, then, this collection of essays can to some small extent wrest person. But the identification is with a defenseless person, condemned in that teaching from the conventional dry enumeration of facts, and advance, who has no influence – neither by herself nor with her parents vacuous empathy, and encourage at least some readers to ask themselves – on her reality, surrounded by an unseen, faceless threat. A threat which a few questions, it will have been worth it. in any case inevitably triumphs over her. A threat which is always external. Empathy is not a bad thing. It is good that young people empathize. With hope, But let’s not fool ourselves that it leads to a greater sense of responsibility. Piotr M. A. Cywiński • • • Director, Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum e victim is not the problem. e problem for our understanding of human nature is the perpetrator. But who would be capable of looking at the camp’s barbed wire from the point of view of the camp guard? And of putting one question to oneself: In what circumstances could I have appeared in that position? Hatred and contempt probably can never be eliminated completely, but it can be opposed – actively. Every passive observer, then, let’s face it, is also the problem, particularly when the passive observers number in the tens and hundreds of millions. In the age of the Internet, live television, cellphones, the growth of civil society, at a time when the average salary is enough to pay for a safe landing in a country where innocent people are being slaughtered, the passive observer has no excuse. • • • translated from Polish 10 11 Introduction Because, friend, these are not just the bones of murdered Jews lying in this grave. e conscience of humankind lies buried here as well. My Żydzi polscy….We Polish Jews…, Julian Tuwim1 “What lies behind the timeless persistence of a tragedy from more than sixty years ago, an apparition which, like a recurring dream, haunts ever- new audiences though the actors long ago vacated the theater? ...How can it be that more than half a century has not healed the wounds? No one can answer the question alone. ...e sociologist must look to the psychologist, the anthropologist to the philosopher, the scholar of literature to the historian. And vice versa.”2 at is how the cultural anthropologist Joanna Tokarska-Bakir put the problem, and in so doing described our reason for publishing this book. It is a collection of essays touching on some of the most confounding questions of Holocaust research, edited and published by the Center for Holocaust Studies of the Jagiellonian University and by the Auschwitz- Birkenau State Museum. Answers to these questions are needed and sought, but in this book the intention is to portray the pursuit of answers, the struggle to come to terms with humanity’s most appalling experience. e invited contributors are a diverse international group, each one representing a significant dimension of engagement with the problem of the Holocaust. Among them are distinguished professors, researchers and 1 Julian Tuwim, My Żydzi polscy….We Polish Jews…, Isaac Komem, trans. (Warsaw: Fundacja Shalom, 2008), p. 47. 2 Joanna Tokarska-Bakir, “Historia jako fetysz,” in: Rzeczy mgliste. Eseje i studia (Sejny: Pogranicze, 2004), p. 97. 12 13 psychotherapists, and the heads and co-founders of important institu- experience of having plumbed the depths of that enormity, Elie Wiesel tions. ey are based in Canada, Germany, Great Britain, Israel, Poland closes the book with a call for us to preserve hope – hope as the condition and the United States. Many of their writings are known as fundamental of our humanity. works. e book presents the reflections of these scholars and public figures • • • whose work involves the subject of the Holocaust. We asked them to write about difficulties they have faced, and we posed several questions to them: As this volume goes to press we mark the passing of Maria Orwid, Do the analytical tools of the scholar, the researcher, the philosopher, a pioneer of the psychotherapy of children of the Holocaust and the second the sociologist, the artist, prove weak or ineffective in dealing with the generation; teacher, thinker and humanitarian, child of the Holocaust. Holocaust? More than sixty years after the liberation of Auschwitz, are we intellectually and emotionally baffled by the genocide the Nazis committed there? If so, what are the paths taken to overcome this? How Jolanta Ambrosewicz-Jacobs and why continue work on this most perplexing subject? Director, Centre for Holocaust Studies e essays are arranged from most general to most specific – only Jagiellonian University approximately, of course, as none of these papers are confined solely to reflections or to matters of practice.

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