Abstract
The study of the Holocaust creates its own momentum; every question leads to tentative answers, and they, in turn, raise new dilemmas. For example: Was the Holocaust unique? An affirmative or a negative response raises serious moral, psychological, theological, and historical considerations that certainly could not be answered in this essay; and this issue, one might reasonably argue, is a relatively “easy” one.
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Notes
Donald Niewyk and Francis Nicosia, The Columbia Guide to the Holocaust (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000).
Some of the standard texts would be: Yehuda Bauer, A History of the Holocaust (New York: Franklin Watts, 1982).
Lucy Davidowicz, The War Against the Jews, 1933–1945 (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1975).
Martin Gilbert, The Holocaust: A History of the Jews of Europe During the Second World War (New York: Henry Holt, 1987).
Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews, 3 vols. (New York: Holmes and Meyer, 1985).
Leni Yahil, The Holocaust: The Fate of European Jewry (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990).
Raul Hilberg, Perpetrators, Victims, Bystanders: The Jewish Catastrophe, 1933–1945 (New York: Harper Collins, 1992).
Saul Friedländer, Nazi Germany and the Jews: The Years of Persecution, 1933–1939 (New York: Harper Collins, 1997).
Yehuda Bauer, Rethinking the Holocaust (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001), 118.
Primo Levi, The Drowned and the Saved (New York: Vintage International, 1989).
Inga Clendinnen, Reading the Holocaust (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999).
Tadeusz Debski, A Battlefield of Ideas: Nazi Concentration Camps and Their Polish Prisoners (New York: Columbia University Press, 2001).
Terrence Des Pres, The Survivor: An Anatomy of Life in the Death Camps (New York: Oxford University Press, 1976), 59.
Robert Jay Lifton, The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide (New York: Basic Books, 1986), 418–429.
Cf. Abraham J. Edelheit and Hershel Edelheit, History of the Holocaust: A Handbook and Dictionary (Boulder: Westview Press, 1994), particularly part 2, entitled, “Dictionary of Holocaust Terms.” Also, Debski, Battlefield of Ideas, in the section entitled, “Camp Language,” 263–265.
Cf. Gita Sereny, Into that Darkness, An Examination of Conscience (New York: Vintage Books, 1983), passim
Rudolf Höss, Death Dealer: The Memoirs of the SS Kommandant at Auschwitz (Buffalo: Prometheus Books, 1992), passim.
Cf. e.g., Olga Lengyel, Five Chimneys: The Story of Auschwitz (Chicago: Ziff-Davis, 1947), 1, which opens with a “mea culpa”
Also, see Anton Gill, The Journey Back From Hell, Conversations with Concentration Camp Survivors: An Oral History (New York: Avon Books, 1988), 15, 92, passim.
Cf. Gill, Oral History, passim; also, Lawrence L. Langer, Holocaust Testimonies, The Ruins of Memory (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991).
Cf. Isaaiah Trunk, Judenrat: The Jewish Councils in Eastern Europe Under Nazi Occupation (New York: Macmillan, 1972)
Raul Hilberg, Stanislaw Staron, and Josef Kermisz, eds., The Warsaw Diary of Adam Czerniankow, Prelude to Doom (Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 1999)
Lucjan Dobroszycki, ed., The Chronicle of the Lódz Ghetto, 1941–1944 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1984)
Also, see Primo Levi, Moments of Reprieve, A Memoir of Auschwitz (New York: Penguin Books, 1995), especially 119–128, dealing with the seemingly contradictory role of Chaim Rumkowski in the Lódz ghetto.
For a lengthy treatment of the process of social acceptance and eventual widespread support of Nazi racial policy see Michael Burleigh and Wolfgang Wippermann, The Racial State, Germany 1933–1945 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991)
also, see Robert Gellatelly, Backing Hitler, Consent and Coercion in Nazi Germany (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001)
also, an exceptionally good selection of excerpts from major works dealing with the issue of “Bystander Reactions” throughout organized Europe is contained in Donald L. Niewyk, ed., The Holocaust: Problems and Perspectives of Interpretation, 3rd ed. (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 2003)
see as well Eichmann recounting that “my superiors held the knife to my throat,” and “there was nothing I could do,” in reference to the sending of an Evangelical clergyman into “protective custody” for aiding and “interceding with the authorities in favor of Jews” in Jochen von Lang with Claus Sibyll, Eichmann Interrogated: Transcripts from the Archives of the Israeli Police (New York: Da Capo Press, 1999), 107.
As for the role of ordinary people as executioners, see Christopher R. Browning, Ordinary Men, Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland, with a new Afterword (New York: Harper Perennial, 1998) and
Daniel Goldhagen, Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1996).
Primo Levi, Survival in Auschwitz, the Nazi Assault on Humanity (New York: Collier Books, 1984), 44.
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© 2005 Stanislao G. Pugliese
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Warmund, J. (2005). The Gray Zone Expanded. In: Pugliese, S.G. (eds) The Legacy of Primo Levi. Italian and Italian American Studies. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781403981592_16
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