‘The Theory and Practice of Hell’

Abstract

This chapter explores the attempts to grapple with the genocide of the Jews. It highlights the primary role played by social psychologists in the academic study of Holocaust during the post-war era. There were efforts, inside and outside the discipline of European History, to relate the 'Final Solution' to a more long-term narrative of Jewish history. The chapter analyses accounts of Jewish persecution subsumed within prominent renderings of the Nazi state as totalitarian. Propaganda initiatives involved historical interpretations of Nazi violence. Raphael Lemkin offered a picture of Nazi police organisations operating without orders and outside of legal frameworks, putting into practice the ideological desires of their leaders. The most notable thing about the work of the institutes and the survivor historians that contributed to them was the recognition that there existed a specific Jewish experience at Nazi hands which required its own history and interpretation.