Michael R. Marrus

The politics of assimilation : a study of the French Jewish community at the time of the Dreyfus Affair

Thomas and Znaniecki were perhaps the first to suggest the importance of studying intra-European immigrant communities as well as transoceanic ones, for a more complete picture of the migration and sub-community ex? perience. This book, studying the French Jewish community in the 1890s?a community of old settlers and new immigrants?adds a worthwhile piece to that overall picture. The similarities and differences between the French Jewish community and other minority communities in other nations are in?

Official Apologies and the Quest for Historical Justice

This article examines apologies that are offered on behalf of public bodies—nations, governments, or institutions—in response to historic wrongs. The context is the insufficiency of justice seeking in the world, and the unhealthy, sometimes long-moldering residue left behind by generations that have ignored great wrongs or failed to address them properly. Because of this insufficiency, the passage of time, and the inaccessibility of more conventional means for righting these wrongs, societies may need to find unconventional solutions in a continuing quest for justice. For historic wrongs, I argue in this essay, apologies are worth considering.

Reflections on the Historiography of the Holocaust

one of the deepest differences which divide writers and thinkers, and, it may be, human beings in general.... On one side [are the hedgehogs], who relate everything to a single vision, one system more or less coherent or articulate, in terms of which they understand and feel-a single, universal, organizing principle in terms of which alone all that they are and say has significance -and on the other side [are the foxes], those who pursue many ends, often unrelated and even contradictory, connected, if at all, only in some de facto way, for some psychological or physiological cause, related by no moral or aesthetic principle; these last live lives, perform acts, and entertain ideas that are centrifugal rather than centripetal, their thought is scattered or diffused, moving on many levels, seizing upon the essence of a vast variety of experiences and objects for what they are in themselves, without, consciously or unconsciously, seeking to fit them into, or exclude them from, any one unchanging, all-embracing, sometimes selfcontradictory and incomplete, at times fanatical, unitary. intemal vision.

Antisemitism in the 1990s: A Symposium

We recently addressed the following statement and questions on the strength and nature of anti-Semitism in the 1990s to a number of Jews and non-Jews throughout the world: Talk of a ‘revival’ or ‘resurgence’ of anti-Semitism is now commonplace. This seems to be the result of developments in the former USSR and in Eastern and Central Europe since 1989, but also of increasing reports of anti-Semitic incidents taking place throughout Western Europe and similar problems emerging in North America, South America, Australia and South Africa. 1) How serious is the recent ‘resurgence’ of anti-Semitism? Is this in any sense a global phenomenon? Is talk of a ‘revival of antisemitism’ justified? 2) What are in your view the most important contemporary manifestations of anti-Semitism? Should anti-Semitism still mainly be seen as a phenomenon of extreme right- and left-wing politics and ideology, or is contemporary anti-Semitism more seriously present in popular culture, within political and social elites, in the school playground? 3) What role, if any, do you think the conflict between Israel and the Arab world is playing in fostering anti-Jewish sentiment? How important is the emergence of Islamic fundamentalism in this context? To what extent is anti-Semitism today taking the guise of anti-Zionism? 4) Finally, if there is indeed an upsurge in antiswemitism, what do you think are its major causes? What part is nationalism, particularly in the Commonwealth of Independent States and in Eastern and Central Europe, playing in causing or exacerbating contemporary anti-Semitism? Do you agree that there was until recently a post-Holocaust taboo on anti-Semitism that has now been lifted?

The End of the Holocaust

This collection of articles deals with the final phase of the Holocaust and covers such subjects as the issue of ransom negotiations, the forced marches of the Jews from territories abandonded by the Germans, the liberation of the camps and the post-war trials of the persecutors. This last volume aims to deal with some of the problems posed for historians by the final phase of the Holocaust.

French antisemitism in the 1980s

Examining both the assumption and the reality of French antisemitism today, Professor Marrus challenges the view that France is undergoing a revival of antisemitism comparable to the 1930s. He argues that popular anti‐Jewish feeling has in fact diminished. Group prejudice has tended over the past decade to fast en upon other objects than Jews.

Samuel Moyn. A Holocaust Controversy: The Treblinka Affair in Postwar France . Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press, 2005. xii, 212 pp.

“The Jews,” proclaimed the cover of the Gaullist magazine Le Nouveau Candide in mid-March 1966, “What No One Ever Dared to Say,” these words framing a black Swastika inside a white circle. Candide’s sensational headline announced the appearance in Paris of a book entitled Treblinka, the Revolt of an Extermination Camp, by an obscure journalist, Jean-François Steiner, twentyeight years old and keen to take on the world, as his publication interview made clear. In this splendidly researched and carefully argued book, Samuel Moyn tells us why Treblinka caused such a sensation, how individuals and groups reacted, and how the questions that the controversy raised are in some sense with us still. Steiner’s Treblinka challenged a universalistic perspective on Nazi criminality that was particularly dominant in France, largely unquestioned in the antifascist climate of the postwar era. In this view, these crimes, symbolically and conceptually culminating in “the camps,” were to be understood as a universal calamity whose victims had suffered a common fate. The key phrase was l’univers concentrationnaire, the title of what Moyn calls “the foundational French text on the concentration camps,” a respected history published in 1946 by the journalist David Rousset. A friend of Jean-Paul Sartre and a Marxist intellectual, Rousset “inaugurated the notion of a separate and isolated world constructed by the Nazi regime to contain its enemies,” as Moyn notes. Concentration camps were not distinguished from those, such as Treblinka, that were exclusively devoted to extermination and whose victims were overwhelmingly Jews. So strong was this perspective that it was scarcely challenged in the public sphere. People not only took its truth for granted, they sometimes did not even recognize Steiner’s challenge to this orthodoxy when it appeared, preferring to see Treblinka merely as a valued reminder of Nazi criminality. Simone de Beauvoir, who contributed a preface to the book and helped promote its great success, seems to have missed its obvious point. “The fact is that in the univers concentrationnaire all peoples behaved the same,” she wrote, mistakenly insisting that the SS had deliberately imposed the same crushing submission on all inmates. But what the Jews suffered, Steiner declared, was not the same as other inmates. Breaking with the French orthodoxy of the time, in which the discourse turned on an undifferentiated “deportation” from France of enemies of the Reich, Steiner insisted that for the Jews, the significance of being deported, and their experience in the camps, was entirely different from that of others. The Germans’ goal, for them, had nothing to dowith the repression of ideological or political opposition; it was, rather, about murder, pure and simple. “For the Jews,” he wrote, in characteristic allusive overstatement, “the real enemy was not Hitler ... it was death.” “When people talk about the war of 1939–1945, they confuse two wars that have absolutely nothing in common: a world war, the one Germany made on the world, and a universal war, the war of the Nazis against the Jews, the war of the principle of death against the principle of life. In their war the Jews were alone, but it could not be otherwise.” Book Reviews

The Origins of the Holocaust

An investigation into the causes of the holocaust, this volume establishes the ideological, legal, administrative, social and political precedents in Germany and Europe that facilitated the systematic mass murder of Jews. Historians have constantly sought connections between developments in German and European society and this book aims to answer some of the questions that have been posed since the end of World War II. This book sets the stage for studies in later works in this series.

Perspectives on the Holocaust

A collection of essays intended to introduce topics expounded upon at greater length later in this 15-volume series. This volume addresses such subjects as the historians quandary when dealing with this highly emotive period in 20th-century history with regard to the type of questions to ask, the tone to adopt and the kinds of evidence to employ.

The Unwanted: European Refugees in the Twentieth Century.

There have always been homeless people, but only in this century have refugees become an important part of international politics, seriously affecting relations between states. This book traces the growth of this 20th-century phenomenon, and takes a stern view of the international communitys apathy towards the vast homeless population. While a considerable portion of the book is devoted to the dislocations of the Nazi era, Professor Marrus also looks at the whole period from the late nineteenth century to the present, depicting the astounding dimensions of the problem. He also examines the impact of refugee movements on Great Power diplomacy, and considers the evolution of agencies designed to assist refugees, noting outstanding successes and failures. The books thesis is that the huge refugee inundations of the twentieth century in Europe represented a terrible new page in human history, presaging what we see today in parts of the Third World. Readership: students and teachers of modern history and politics, especially European.