Yad Vashem Studies volume 44:1 is dedicated to the memory of three important scholars who passed away several months ago — David Cesarani, Hans Mommsen, and Alfred Gottwaldt. In the previous issue I discussed these scholars’ very significant contributions to Holocaust studies, and this issue opens with articles on the oeuvre of each of them. Robert Rozett highlights the breadth and depth of David Cesarani’s research, publications, and public work in the field. Cesarani read voraciously and researched thoroughly in addressing many aspects of the Holocaust, always giving a voice to the victims, and examining events from a multifaceted and critical perspective. As such, David Cesarani became one of the most well-rounded and influential Ho locaust scholars of our time. Moshe Zimmermann highlights Hans Mommsen’s path to research the Nazi regime and the Holocaust and his seminal influence on the “Intentionalist-Functionalist” debate that stood at the center of discussion of the Holocaust for many years. Mommsen was one of the architects of the functionalist school of thought and was an important figure in the German Historikerstreit in the second half of the 1980s. Yaron Pasher and Joel Zisenwine analyze Alfred Gottwaldt’s contribution to our understanding of the role of the German railways during the Holocaust and World War II. Gottwaldt was able to access extensive archival material. Through his critical eye and penetrating questions, he laid bare the railroads’ extensive role in the persecution and murder of the Jews and developed tools for future research.
The five research articles in this issue examine a variety of subjects addressing both wartime and postwar issues. Daniel Reiser and Isaac Hershkowitz examine the thinking of two important rabbis during and after the Holocaust: Reiser on the Esh Kodesh, Rabbi Kalonymus Kalman Shapira, who transcribed his sermons in the Warsaw ghetto in real time; and Hershkowitz on Rabbi Dr. Mordechai Vogelmann, who escaped Poland early in the war and wrote his theological treatises in mandatory Palestine. Zvi Semel and Naphtali Wagner examine the performance of Verdi’s Requiem in Theresienstadt in 1944, through re- search on the novelized version of the event written by Josef Bor and how it was received. Simo Muir presents the heretofore unknown case of the postwar attempt to provide Holocaust survivors from Poland refuge in Finland. And Ekaterina Makhotina analyzes Holocaust me- morials in Lithuania since 1990; i.e., since it regained independence from the Soviet Union.
Daniel Reiser’s philological study of the original manuscript of the famous collection of wartime sermons in Warsaw by Rabbi Shapira, which were first published in the original Hebrew in the now famous book Esh Kodesh, is nothing less than path-breaking. Taking advantage of modern digital technology that was of course unavailable to the original editors fifty-six years ago, Reiser has been able to decipher words and phrases that sometimes change the meaning and under- standing of Rabbi Shapira’s sermons. Moreover, Reiser has deciphered Rabbi Shapira’s own annotation system; he demonstrates that Shapira edited his sermons throughout his life in the Warsaw ghetto, even crossing out some. Therefore, early sermons often were later edited, sometimes clearly influenced by events and by the author’s personal experience. The result is a call for a complete re-reading and re-interpreting of Esh Kodesh in order to understand the development of the thought of the rabbi who wrote one of the most important theological treatises to survive the Holocaust.
Isaac Hershkowitz presents the little-known writings of a Zionist rabbi who grappled with the Holocaust’s theological implications in the midst of the events. The Holocaust did not have its own ontological significance in his eyes. Rather the events of the Holocaust should be seen in the context of God demanding human responsibility and involvement in the present. Yet in Vogelmann’s focus on the need for good deeds, justice, and the striving for independence, the absence of an all-merciful God from his writing is striking. For Vogelmann the emphasis on national work is meant as a coping tool for the believer confronting basic existential questions imposed by the Holocaust.
Zvi Semel and Naphtali Wagner use Josef Bor’s 1963 Czech novel, The Terezin Requiem, and its 1965 Hebrew translation as the spring-board to examine how the Requiem was performed in Theresienstadt in early 1944, the degree to which the music was adapted, and other issues. The authors examine Bor’s book as a testimony written through a literary prism, while at the same time confronting its contents with survivors’ testimonies and musicological and historical analysis. In a sense they set out to determine what actually happened in the course of the preparations and performance of Verdi’s Requiem in Theresienstadt, what did not happen, and what could have happened. They show that the book’s various publications in many languages sometimes lent it an appearance of a survivor testimony and sometimes that of a historical novel. They also examine whether the artistic act itself included an element of protest or defiance. Several Theresienstadt survivors criticized the book as not reflecting the reality of the performance, yet in some ways the book’s distortion of reality may actually have contrib- uted to inscribing that reality in the collective memory.
Simo Muir presents the heretofore unknown story of the postwar efforts by the Finnish Jewish community to bring Polish Jewish Holocaust survivors to Finland. The detailed plan, developed in the shadow of Finland’s wartime alliance with Germany and postwar life in the sphere of the Soviet Union, foresaw settling a small number of Polish Jewish survivors in Finland and developing the country as a transit point to other destinations for many other Polish Jews. The Finnish government supported the schemes that were developed by the Jewish community; however, neither the leadership of the postwar Polish Jewish community in 1945–1948, nor various international Jewish organizations endorsed the idea for a variety of reasons. The article reveals the extensive planning that was undertaken and analyzes the reasons for its failure.
Ekaterina Makhotina examines post-independence Holocaust memorials in Lithuania. She demonstrates that in Lithuania, as in several other post-Communist countries, and in contrast to much of Europe, the Soviet period, and not World War II, stands as the central event in the collective memory. Concomitant with this memory, the Holocaust is seen as someone else’s history; it is a “learned” rather than a “lived” memory. The main Jewish museum, the Tolerance Center in Vilnius, depicts centuries of Jewish-Lithuanian relations as harmoni- ous, as would be politically appropriate in Lithuania. The memory of the Holocaust is limited largely to Jews and is depicted at the “Green House,” located in an out-of-the-way place in Vilnius. Whereas this museum touches on uncomfortable aspects of the past, such as the collaboration of Lithuanians in the murder of the Jews, it is generally not visited by Lithuanians. Defensive myths obscure Lithuanian complicity by emphasizing the role of Lithuanian rescuers of Jews, alongside the persistent “Double Genocide” assertions; that is, that Lithuania suffered a parallel and even more difficult and prolonged genocide at the hands of the Soviets. For most of Lithuanian society, it is clear which of the two competing commemoration discourses is most relevant. For them the Holocaust and World War II can be addressed mainly through the prism of “Double Genocide” and its attendant distortions of the Holocaust.
The review section includes five reviews of ten recent books. Ferenc Láczo reviews six books produced by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum: Jürgen Matthäus and Mark Roseman, eds., Jewish Responses to Persecution, Volume I, 1933–1938; Alexandra Garbarini with Emil Kerenji, Jan Lambertz, and Avinoam Patt, eds., Jewish Responses to Persecution, Volume II, 1938–1940; Jürgen Matthäus with Emil Kerenji, Jan Lambertz, and Leah Wolfson, eds., Jewish Responses to Persecution, Volume III, 1941–1942; Emil Kerenji, ed., Jewish Responses to Persecution, Volume IV, 1942–1943; Leah Wolfson, ed., Jewish Responses to Persecution, Volume V, 1944–1946; and Zoltán Vági, László Csősz, and Gábor Kádár, The Holocaust in Hungary: Evolution of a Genocide. He finds the achievement of the volumes on Jewish responses and on Hungary to be very important and the wealth of primary sources to be of great use, although he has some criticism as well. Guy Miron is full of praise for Kim Wünschmann’s innovative book, Before Auschwitz: Jewish Prisoners in the Prewar Concentration Camps, whereas Dieter Pohl is very critical of Timothy Snyder’s Black Earth: The Holocaust as History and Warning, finding it “unconvincing” as an interpretation of the origins and background of the Holocaust. Raphael Vago praises Ştefan Ionescu’s Jewish Resistance to “Romanianization”, 1940–44, although he does point to flaws in the book as well. Thomas Kühne finds Susanne Wein’s Antisemitismus im Reichstag. Judenfeindliche Sprache in Politik und Gesellschaft der Weimarer Republik empirically rich but not innovative conceptually.
As this issue was being completed, Geoffrey Hartman, another important scholar in Holocaust research, passed away. Hartman was known as the director and faculty advisor for The Fortunoff Video Archives for Holocaust Testimonies at Yale University. This project, which began with interviews with Holocaust survivors and witnesses in the New Haven, Connecticut, area, expanded in the 1980s, under Hartman’s leadership, to a systematic interview endeavor involving survivors in the United States and other countries. Hartman’s contribution to the study of the Holocaust through this major undertaking, as well as his publications and lectures on survivor testimony helped give voice to the victims. Many of the articles in this issue and the books reviewed in it also give voice to the victims of the Holocaust, in what is now a fully accepted methodology in Holocaust research. We trust that this issue is a fitting honor to the memories of Hartman and the three late historians commemorated herein.
