We dedicate this issue of Yad Vashem Studies to the memories of Professor David Bankier, a leading historian in the field and a personal friend, and to Avraham Sutzkever, arguably the most important Yiddish poet of our time, whose experiences as a partisan in Vilna, in the aftermath of the Shoah, and in the rebuilding of Jewish life influenced much of his work. David Bankier passed away before his time on February 25, and Sutzkever, on January 20.
David Bankier was a scholar with a phenomenally vast knowledge of many subjects, a penetrating analytical mind, remarkable speaking and teaching abilities, and a sharp wit. His riveting lectures in which he could weave together a broad range of subjects in order to integrate them into a cohesive picture were legendary. Bankier’s seminal contribution to the development of Yad Vashem’s International Institute for Holocaust Research during the last decade helped make this institute into the major international forum for research and discussion that it has become. His ongoing active participation on the editorial board of this journal, too, will be sorely missed. David’s comments on specific submissions and on substantive issues that arose were always sharp and clear, and he pushed us constantly to strive for the highest standards. He was always available for consultation, in addition to his regular activities as an editorial board member. And David Bankier was also a consummate friend, whose basic humanity, not to mention his regaling sense of humor, will not be forgotten.
Perhaps the most important aspect of Bankier’s oeuvre was its great impact on our understanding of Germans in the Shoah. Dan Michman opens this volume with an in-depth analysis of David Bankier’s work and contribution to the study of the Shoah. As Michman demonstrates, Bankier had a broad range of research interests that touched upon some of the central questions of the Shoah, and his research findings were often ahead of their time and reverberated widely throughout the scholarly world. From his research on German public opinion and German knowledge of and involvement in the elimination of the Jews, to his research on Hitler’s engagement in the details of anti-Jewish policy, to his more recent research relating to Pope Pius XII and the Vatican during the Shoah, Bankier left his mark.
Avraham Nowerstern follows with a moving and insightful discussion of the Yiddish verse of the great poet, the late Avraham Sutzkever. Nowerstern traces Sutzkever’s literary and personal development from the “Young Vilna” literary group of the prewar years, through the Holocaust era, and beyond to the poet’s prolific output for decades after World War II. He analyzes Sutzkever’s varied styles and influences, and demonstrates the Holocaust’s lasting effect not only on Sutzkever’s wartime writing but also and especially on his later material. The quotations from Sutzkever’s work are both penetrating and moving.
The research section of this volume opens with Lea Prais’s presentation of missing parts of Rabbi Shimon Huberband’s diary and essays written in the Warsaw ghetto in May and June 1942. Prais succeeded in identifying these handwritten documents in Yiddish that were archived as anonymous at the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw, in YIVO in New York, and at Yad Vashem, and matched them to Huberband’s known writings. Huberband’s critical comments on the role of the Warsaw ghetto Jewish “police” in the May 21, 1942 roundups of some 1,000 Jewish men in the ghetto for forced labor are important early observations on this institution and perhaps serve to preface the constabulary’s contribution during the Great Deportation in the summer. Similarly, Huberband’s not always flattering comments on ordinary people in the ghetto are important. Prais relates the meticulous and difficult process of matching the texts with their author, who was a central figure in the Oyneg Shabbes underground archive organized and led by Emanuel Ringelblum. Huberband’s insights into ghetto life in Warsaw are invaluable to our understanding of the largest and most complex ghetto created by the Germans.
Ayala Nedivi relates a remarkable and heretofore unknown story of an attempt to rescue tens of thousands of Hungarian Jews, days before the German entry into Hungary in March 1944. The rescue effort began with Aladár Szegedy-Maszak, director of the Political Department of the Hungarian Foreign Ministry, who summoned Zionist leader Moshe Krausz to his office on March 10, 1944, to warn him of the impending danger facing the Jews of Carpatho-Ruthenia. SzegedyMaszak urged Krausz to call on the country’s Jewish leadership to organize the transfer of these Jews to Budapest in order to ensure their safety. A dramatic week of frenetic activity ensued, but the efforts to rescue these Jews proved fruitless as time was too short and the Nazis’ intent too determined. The Hungarian government’s rescue initiative and the nearly successful achievement of unity among Jewish leaders are highlights of this unusual story.
Three articles address important postwar issues relating to how the Holocaust is remembered: Wulff Bickenbach’s account of official Swiss policy regarding clearing the name of former police commander and Righteous Among the Nations Paul Grüninger; Kierra CragoSchneider’s analysis of ongoing antisemitism among Germans in the American Occupation Zone after the war; and Doron Bar’s account of competition between Yad Vashem and the Chamber of the Holocaust on Mount Zion in the 1950s concerning which institution should be given charge of the ashes of victims that were brought to Israel at that time.
Bickenbach summarizes Grüninger’s rescue activity in 1938–39 in Switzerland’s St. Gallen canton. Under his interpretation of his superiors’ orders, the police chief saw his way to allow the entry into Swiss territory of hundreds of Austrian Jews fleeing the Third Reich. But for his deeds, which the author argues were based on his ethical and moral outlook, Grüninger was later deemed to have breached government policy and regulations, which led to an investigation by the federal and cantonal authorities, his summary dismissal from his position, and denial of his pension rights. However, the St. Gallen District Court posthumously rehabilitated him in 1995. In this article Bickenbach uncovers the attitudes to Grüninger of the local and federal officials in Switzerland over all these decades and even up to the present time. The author argues that although Grüninger was rehabilitated fifty-six years after the events, he has never been truly recognized in Switzerland for his rescue activity. The politicians have not yet made their peace with Grüninger.
Crago-Schneider looks at relations among Jewish Displaced Persons, Germans, and the American occupation authorities in the Munich area through the prism of trade and business. Local Germans complained of “unfair” and illegal business practices by Jewish survivors on the Möhlstrasse, Munich’s main commercial center at the time. Crago-Schneider examines a wide variety of previously untapped documentation in order to relate the story of the thinly veiled ongoing antisemitism among the local Germans, with economic stereotyping of Jews lingering even among the more liberal elements. As the American authorities understood, there was no real basis to these accusations, and German entrepreneurs actually participated in the black marketeering no less than anyone else. The article affords an unusual insight into life for Jews in Germany in the immediate postwar years.
Doron Bar examines an important aspect of the development of Holocaust commemoration in Israel in the first decade of the State’s existence – the interment of ashes of victims and some broader questions of religious aspects of memorialization and remembrance. At the root of the discussion between Yad Vashem and the Chamber of the Holocaust was the question of the connection between religion and the State in official matters. Whereas the Chamber of the Holocaust remains a small-scale, religiously based institution on Mount Zion, with all the concomitant sacred significance of this location, Yad Vashem is a national institution and hence secular by definition. In the end, national considerations held sway, and victims’ ashes were interred at Yad Vashem, on the Mount of Remembrance (Har Hazikaron), next to Mount Herzl.
The volume also includes review articles by Antony Polonsky on Samuel Kassow’s Who Will Write Our History?; Kiril Feferman on Ilya Altman’s Opfer des Hasses: Der Holocaust in der USSR 1941–1945; and Arkadi Zeltser on The Unknown Black Book: The Holocaust in the German-Occupied Soviet Territories; and letters to the editor from Jacek Leociak, Barbara Engelking, and Andrzej Żbikowski in response to David Engel’s review of their book in YVS volume 37:1, and Engel in response to them.
Sutzkever would have found cause for comment on these varied articles and the incidents they describe. He would have brought to bear his personal experience and intimate knowledge of underground writing during the Shoah, the difficulties and dilemmas of rescue attempts, the challenges that Jews faced in rebuilding their personal and communal lives after the Shoah, and the beginnings and development of Shoah commemoration in Israel. He was there for all of these events and developments, and he had a keen insight into them all. Bankier was a partner in planning this issue of Yad Vashem Studies, and he appreciated the wide variety of subjects, the intellectual stimulation they inspired, and the serious research that would serve as the basis for a good discussion and a lively debate. An era has ended with Avraham Sutzkever, and a void has opened in Shoah research with David Bankier’s passing. Both have left an indelible mark.