Lessons and Legacies: New Currents in Holocaust Research, vol. 6, Jeffry M. Diefendorf, ed. (Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2004), xxxiv + 547 pp., cloth $89.95; pbk. $34.95.

Abstract

In this compilation of papers presented at the sixth Lessons and Legacies conference, held at Northwestern University in 2000, editor Jeffry Diefendorf has arranged twenty-five essays into six thematic sections: rethinking Nazi policies; resistance and rescue; German scholars and the Holocaust; historiography and challenges to historians; trials, compensation, and Jewish assets; and (the concluding section) confronting the past. Diefendorf deserves credit for clearly articulating a host of complex issues in Holocaust research in his concise and informative introduction. The greatest contribution of the volume is, in the words of Paul Jaskot, “to clarify the complicated road that led to Auschwitz” (p. 6). Clarification often means opening intellectual discourse on the legacies of the Third Reich; while we cannot summarize all twenty-five authors’ contributions to this volume, a number deserve specific note. In an opening section on rethinking Nazi policies, Sybille Steinbacher convincingly argues that Auschwitz symbolized the essential unity between mass murder and German reconstruction. Paul Jaskot casts light on the formation of SS forced-labor policies, arguing that concepts of efficiency, productivity and oppression in the camps are inextricably linked to Nazi cultural policy. In an essay on the Jews of Italy and the Nazis, Richard Breitman elucidates the role of Gestapo officer Herbert Kappler, citing newly declassified intelligence sources in the U.S. National Archives; just as important in Breitman’s account is his clarification of the involvement of SS Chief-of-Staff Karl Wolff.