Rights and Wrongs in Scholarly Understanding of the Topic of North Africa and the Holocaust

Abstract

Abstract The Holocaust and its impact are by now a vast interdisciplinary field of research that is carried out across the globe. Recently, growing attention has been paid to the fate of North African Jewry during the Holocaust period. The volume under review, based on papers from a 2015 conference on this subject at UCLA, raises some essential questions regarding the history and present state of research in this field. The review closely and critically examines the various chapters, which from the perspective of scholarly quality range from excellent to frustrating. This article elaborates on essential issues from the perspective of the broader field of Holocaust historiography: conceptualization of “the Holocaust” and what is part of it and what is not; the evolution of Holocaust historiography in general and as relating to North Africa; and knowledge by scholars in this field of the broader picture of the Holocaust, especially the evolution of anti-Jewish policies. The conclusion is that research has to be done with an awareness of the multifacetedness of the Holocaust and without simplistic generalizations and trivializations.