Canadian Dimension
May/Jun98
Vol. 32 Issue 3, p39, 2p, 2bw
Briemberg, Mordecai

In the beginning was Goldhagen

Early in 1996, Daniel Goldhagen published Hitler's Willing Executioners. The central argument of this book is that for several centuries, the overwhelming majority of ordinary Germans had a homicidal hatred of Jews unique in Europe. According to Goldhagen, what Hitler and his Nazi regime did was "unshackle and thereby activate Germans' pre-existing, pent-up anti-Semitism." It is an "eliminationist mind-set," enduring for hundreds of years and embedded in almost all Germans, that, according to Goldhagen, is central to explaining the holocaust--not the particularities of Nazism, or the specific social, political and economic conjunctures in preSecond World War Germany and Europe.

This PhD thesis-book, by a hitherto unheralded and untenured professor, has had popular sales of over 500,000 and been a bestseller in 13 countries.

The counterpoint to Goldhagen's popular success has been the unsparingly critical response by historians. Yehuda Bauer, professor emeritus of Holocaust studies at Hebrew University (Jerusalem) and director of the Research Institute of Yad Vashem (Holocaust museum) wrote: "Goldhagen's book has been praised by journalists and public figures, but I have yet to read of a single historian who has publicly expressed agreement. Not one, and that is a very rare unanimity. In my university, this book would never have passed as a Ph.D. dissertation."

Ruth Birn is one of the scholars critical of Goldhagen's book. Since 1991, Dr. Birn has been the chief historian employed by Canada's war crimes division of the Department of Justice. Ironically, according to the Boston Globe, Birn directed Goldhagen to the Ludwigsburg archival materials that are the foundation of his thesis. But after reading his book, she concluded' that "using Goldhagen's methods of handling evidence, one could easily enough find citations from the Ludwigsburg material to prove the exact opposite of what Goldhagen maintains."

Birn's critique was published in the Cambridge University Press Historical Journal.

Professor Norman Finklestein published his critique of Goldhagen's book in England's New Left Review. Both of Finklestein's parents were survivors of Nazi death camps, but he disclaims scholarly expertise in German history. What he does claim is forensic diligence.

Where Birn focused on Goldhagen's use of primary sources, Finklestein focused on Goldhagen's use of secondary sources and on the internal consistency of his reasoning. Finklestein concluded there is copious misrepresentation of ths secondary sources and gross illogic in Goldhagen's arguments.

Further, reflecting on this juxtaposition of glaring scholarly deficiency and enormous popular success, Finklestein concluded his critique with a sketch of the intellectual history of Holocaust studies. Therein, he advanced a hypothesis that one prominent branch of Holocaust studies, to which Goldhagen's work belongs, serves as the ideological appendage to an ongoing justification of Israeli state policies.

Holt, a major New York publisher, decided to print a single volume containing revised versions of both Birn's and Finklestein's articles, titled A Nation on Trial: The Goldhagen Thesis and Historical Truth. It was scheduled for spring release.

Some of the most internationally respected historians, including Raul Hilberg, Eric Hobsbawm, Arno Mayer, Christopher Browning and Ian Kershaw, sent Holt favourable reviews of the Birn-Finklestein manuscript. The counterpoint to scholarly recognition has been a vicious public campaign to block the book's publication. The authors are viii fled, castigated; their careers and Birn's present employment jeopardized.

In the U.S. publication New Republic, literary editor Leon Wieseltier and Anti-Defamation League (ADL) director Abraham Foxman have lobbied Holt, publicly and privately, to drop publication precisely because of Finklestein's "antiZionist and anti-Israel views" (Foxman).

For Joseph McCarthy, the slogan was "un-American"; for the ADL, the slogan is "anti-Zionist." Both appointed themselves enforcers of "loyalty."

If the ADL wishes to establish itself as a "House of un-Zionist Activities Committee," it will have much more work than the silencing of Finklestein.

Albert Einstein wrote that his "awareness of the essential nature of Judaism resists the idea of a Jewish state." Rabbi Elmer Berger, founder of the American Council for Judaism, wrote that anti-Zionism "has been-and is --a legitimate position in Judaism." Yeshayahu Leibowitz, designated winner of Israel's highest cultural award, insistently commented on the "Nazification" of his Israeli society. Sir Yehudi Menuhin recently echoed Leibowitz's observation.

But the ADL counts on our ignorance of this vigorous debate about Zionism among Jews, and simply wants us to distance ourselves from the "devil" they are serving up today.

Professor Finklestein's scholarship, including his Princeton Ph.D., centres on the ideological character of Zionism and the historical practices of the Israeli state. His major work is Image and Reality of the Israel-Palestine Conflict. Finklestein is being targeted at the very time his rigorous and amply documented critiques of Zionism and historical Israeli state practices are becoming more widely known and respected. Avi Shlaim, an Israeli scholar in this field, now teaching at Oxford, is one of those who has expressed his high regard.

Meanwhile, Irving Abella, incoming president of the Canadian Historical Association and past president of the Canadian Jewish Congress (CJC), pronounced Finklestein "an enemy of the Jewish people" and said that for Dr. Birn to publish with him is "like being published with someone from the Ku Klux Klan" (Canadian Jewish News, January 29).

With similar nuanced, scholarly phrasing and openness of mind, CJC spokesperson Bernie Farber decreed that Finklestein was "loathed and despised by the Jewish community" (Globe and Mail, January 26). Were Jews pronounced to be "loathed and despised by the Canadian community," who would not recognize this as hate-mongering?

Without apparent success in pressuring Holt to abandon publication of A Nation on Trial, the Canadian campaign focuses on pressuring Dr. Birn to withdraw her manuscript, thereby indirectly scuttling the book.

A complaint has been launched with the Justice Department to investigate and sanction Dr. Birn if she does not withdraw her manuscript from publication with Professor Finklestein. Birn has had the courage to resist.

She not only has refused to knuckle under, but told the Globe and Mail that the "real story for Canadians ... [is] the attempted suppression of fair comment through the exertion of political influence." For this statement, she herself was accused, by current CJC president Goldie Hershon, of "what some might consider an anti-Semitic canard" (Jewish Post and News, February 4).

One can imagine the pain of being accused of anti-semitism when you have devoted your professional career, as Birn has, to documenting the crimes of Nazism and investigating war criminals. Birn drew the lesson from the Holocaust that we need to build a society where one's thoughts and deeds, not "ancestry," count. She thought Canada might be such a place when she came here six years ago to work for the war-crimes division of our Department of Justice. Now she finds the fact that she was born a German is being used to reinforce the allegation she is anti-Semitic.

Holocaust historian Michael Marrus, dean of graduate studies at the University of Toronto, calls the attack on Birn "a scandal." He describes her work as "a distinguished contribution." But in general, there is a shameful public silence from those individuals and organizations who pride themselves as defenders of intellectual freedom in our country.

Where is their courage to speak publicly when the substantive issue is Zionism, Holocaust scholarship and explanations for Nazi extermination policies? Are they prepared to consign these vital events to one political organization for their "official" public account? Are they prepared to abandon to public pillory, intimidation and unemployment those whose scholarship and integrity does not serve that political organization's agenda?

There have been voices so eloquent and animated when persecution comes from proclaimers of other political orthodoxies. Where are you now?