The Modern Haman: Ghetto Diary Writers’ Understanding of Holocaust Perpetrators

Abstract

Yiddish diarists writing in the Warsaw, Łódź ghettos during the Second World War drew on a long history of Jewish responses to persecution. They reached out for biblical and historical comparisons to the disaster they were facing, but ultimately concluded that the Holocaust they were undergoing surpassed anything Jews had previously experienced. This realization encouraged these diarists to look past typical Jewish responses to annihlation in their attempts to understand it not only on theoretical and religious levels, but also on practical and rational ones. They were unconvinced by the previous responses which focused on a sin-retribution and restoration model that despite Jewish experiences of terror maintained God on the other side of a covenantal relationship. Removing God from the discussion of why the Holocaust was happening led them to instead reevaluate the humanity of Holocaust perpetrators themselves, the nature of Germans, local perpetrators and Jewish councils and police. Their evaluations of these perpetrators mark a shift in Jewish responses to catastrophe that sets an example for how we, living 65years after the event, might think about blame, threat, humanity and agency within the context of ghetto life during the Second World War.