On the "War" between Holocaust Historians and Jewish Historians

Abstract

On the "War" between Holocaust Historians and Jewish Historians David Cesarani David Engel . Historians of the Jews and the Holocaust. Stanford Studies in Jewish History and Culture. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2010. Pp. xvii + 314. According to David Engel's new book, Historians of the Jews and the Holocaust, there is "a wall separating study of the Holocaust from study of all other aspects of the Jewish past" (p. 23). It precludes meaningful exchange between the two subject areas and, consequently, impoverishes them both. This assertion is derived partly from his personal experience of moving between what some of his colleagues regard as separate spheres, though he does not. But he also supplies evidence that points to a distinct division of labor. Over the last three decades, many leading Jewish history journals in the Unites States and Israel have published hardly any articles on Holocaust-related topics. Only a tiny percentage of the panels at the Association of Jewish Studies annual conference cover Holocaust history or literature. Some university courses on modern Jewish history taught in North America and elsewhere devote only a couple of sessions to the years 1933 to 1945. Lloyd Gartner's textbook on the Jews in the modern world assigns just thirty out of 437 pages to the Nazi-era persecution and mass murder of the Jews. Having pondered his own experiences and this evidence, Engel concludes that the separation is not accidental but expresses "a principled position deeply rooted in the professional discourse of Holocaust scholars and historians of the Jews alike" (p. vii). Where has it come from? The answer, as set out here, is a fascinating commentary on modern Jewish historians and the evolution of Holocaust studies. Whether or not it is convincing is another matter. Indeed, it is even arguable that Engels is starting from the wrong place. [End Page 91] Both the academic study of the recent Jewish past and professional research into the Nazi era are "disciplines" and as such have their codes and regulatory bureaucracies, not to mention institutional rivalries and personal jealousies. In the struggle to gain recognition, both have claimed certain monopolies of wisdom and mandated particular qualifications as a condition of entry. The destination of articles in manuscript and the choice of conference panel reflect these tacit professional protocols. The vast scope of Jewish studies makes it inevitable that almost any sub-area will occupy a fraction of space on the entire program at the AJS conference. Conversely, it would seem odd if one of the numerous gatherings of Holocaust scholars had sessions on, say, contemporary rabbinical texts or Jewish poetry. Practical issues also govern the space allotted to the period 1933 to 1945 in survey courses and textbooks. Engel's evidence often consists of comparing apples with pears or not comparing them with anything at all. Lloyd Gartner may assign only thirty pages to the Holocaust, but he covers Zionism, the history of the Yishuv, and Israel up to the 1980s in little over fifty pages—even though the matter occupies a much greater chronological span than the tragedy of Europe's Jews. However, Engel's evidence of a profound disjunction is merely an opening gambit. The core of this study in historiography is an inquiry into the intellectual formation of key Jewish historians and their influence. Here Engel is surely onto something. His reading of works by Salo Baron, Arthur Hertzberg, Gershom Scholem, Jacob Katz, Ben Zion Dinur, Yitzhak Baer, Yehezkel Kaufmann, Shmuel Ettinger, and Uriel Tal is subtle and illuminating. His treatment of Raul Hilberg and Hannah Arendt is nothing short of revelatory. He may overstate the impact that all these historians have had on their disciples and their disciplines (and there is a touch of the conspiracy thinker in the connections he sees between them), but he compels us to think again about several of the most important controversies that have wracked the Jewish intelligentsia over the last half century. Despite the fact that Salo Baron gave expert testimony at the trial of Adolf Eichmann, he has been canonized by historians who bemoan the way that the Holocaust allegedly eclipses a full appreciation of the Jewish historical experience. They cite his...