The Environmental History of the Holocaust

ABSTRACT

The introduction conceptualizes environmental history of the Holocaust as a subdiscipline of Holocaust studies. The authors approach this emerging field of research through the context of environmental humanities with its current interest in the Anthropocene, soil science, forensics, multispecies collectives, and explorations of relations between ecocides and genocides. Proposed approach considers post-Holocaust spaces and landscapes as specific ecosystems and examines relations between its actors (human and non-human) in order to show the Holocaust’s spatial markers and long-terms effects. The article outlines existing literature on the subject, identifies the central research problems and questions, and discusses sources and methods. The authors demonstrate that the environmental history of the Holocaust applies a hybrid methodology that uses methods from various disciplines with the aim of creating new theories and interpretive categories and thus should be considered complementary to existing approaches in Holocaust studies. The authors follow the methodological principles of grounded theory in generating new concepts and seeking multidisciplinary methods for explaining nature’s role in the Holocaust and how Holocaust has changed nature. The authors claim that environmental history of the Holocaust broadens Holocaust studies as a field of research and opens up new questions concerning relations between nature and extermination in order to provide a more holistic perspective for exploring the relationship between culture and nature, genocide and ecocide. The approach proposed here shows Holocaust and post-Holocaust landscapes in terms of ecological/natural heritage, which might influence the way these spaces are commemorated, conserved and preserved, as well as used for tourist purposes.     

The Postholocaust Landscape of Chelmno on the Ner (Kulmhof an der Nehr): An Ecological Perspective

ABSTRACT

This article shows how the ecology and nature of the Rzuchów Forest (in the Rzuchów district of the Ko?o forestry inspectorate in Greater Poland) was indirectly affected by the extermination of the Jewish population as a result of it being used to camouflage evidence of the crimes. Tracing the environmental history of commemoration in the forested part of the former death camp at Che?mno on the Ner (Che?mno nad Nerem/ Kulmhof an der Nehr) will give an indication of the ecological consequences of efforts to preserve the material traces of the camp and its natural surroundings. These efforts continued into the late 1980s. The ecology of commemoration and environmental commemoration form the two poles of this ecological continuum. It is possible to bring them closer together by furthering debates on the relationship between genocide and ecocide, while also expanding existing narratives on the Holocaust by turning to environmental aspects. This research is guided by the idea that it is necessary to rethink existing (and planned) forms of commemoration of crimes against humanity in the context of environmental ethics, with this approach leading to forms of commemoration at killing sites that give more consideration to the environment.     

“Genocide is Fascism in Action”: Aron Trainin and Soviet Portrayals of Genocide

ABSTRACT

This article examines the Soviet legal scholar Aron Trainin’s evolving writings on international law. Initially, Trainin formulated aspects of his concept of “crimes against peace” as a sort of Soviet alternative to Raphael Lemkin’s crimes of barbarity and vandalism. Crimes against peace both converged with the larger international movement to outlaw aggressive war, provided a Soviet alternative to proposed international crimes that they believed would threaten Soviet sovereignty, and provided a Soviet response to Lemkin’s proposals to outlaw mass killings. During World War II, Trainin articulated the Nazi extermination of the Jews as “crimes against peaceful civilians,” linking the Nazi atrocities to his concept of crimes against peace. Trainin’s concept of “crimes against peaceful civilians” encompassed the atrocities of the Holocaust while also asserting that the Soviet experience of the war – most notably Soviet sacrifice and suffering – meant that the Soviets should determine how international criminal law punished the war’s perpetrators. After World War II, when it became clear that genocide, rather than “crimes against peace” or “crimes against peaceful civilians,” was becoming the primary concept in international law to understand mass killings, Trainin portrayed the concept of genocide according to the perspective of Soviet propaganda, opposing an international criminal court for genocide, supporting the concept of cultural genocide, and portraying genocide as an inevitable outcome of capitalism. At the same time, Trainin and the Soviets never abandoned his concept of “crimes against peace,” portraying capitalism as inherently bound up with war and genocide. Trainin was the most significant genocide scholar in the Soviet Union, and his work exemplifies both the ways in which Soviet approaches to international law converged with other approaches, and the ways in which the Soviet Union diverged from non-Soviet international law.     

Holocaust Archaeology: Archaeological Approaches to Landscapes of Nazi Genocide and Persecution

Abstract

Debate concerning the events of the Holocaust is well embedded in the historical discourse and, thus, clearly defined narratives of this period exist. However, in most European countries the Holocaust has only recently begun to be considered in terms of its surviving archaeological remains and landscapes, and the majority of known sites are still ill-defined and only partially understood from both spatial structural points of view. Additionally, thousands of sites across Europe remain unmarked, whilst the locations of others have been forgotten altogether. Such a situation has arisen as a result of a number of political, social, ethical, and religious factors which, coupled with the scale of the crimes, has often inhibited systematic search. This paper details the subsequent development and application of a non-invasive archaeological methodology aimed at rectifying this situation and presents a case for the establishment of Holocaust archaeology as a sub-discipline of conflict studies. In particular, the importance of moving away from the notion that the presence of historical sources precludes the need for the collection of physical evidence is stressed, and the humanitarian, scientific, academic, and commemorative value of exploring this period is considered.     

Becoming Cleopatra: the forgotten Zionism of Raphael Lemkin

The biography of Raphael Lemkin has emerged of late as a highly contested lieu de memoire in charged political debates in Europe, the United States and the Middle East about the meaning, past and present, of the Holocaust and genocide. At the same time, scholars have attempted to demythologize Lemkin by reinscribing his life into its pre-World War II Polish context. Yet thus far no one has identified the precise political activities and affiliations that shaped Lemkin’s concept of genocide. In this article, I show that Lemkin, far from being a Jewish Bundist, a Polish nationalist or an apolitical cosmopolitan, was an active member of the interwar Polish Zionist movement, from which he drew the ideas that inspired his idea of the crime of genocide. In the first part of this article, I use his published writings from the 1920s and 1930s in Hebrew, Yiddish and Polish to recover a rich Jewish political framework in which his concepts of barbarism and genocide first began to emerge. In the second section, I ask how this crucial dimension of Lemkin’s life and thought vanished from the historical record, and why it has yet to be recovered in spite of the boom in biographical scholarship. Finally, I suggest how the recovery of Lemkin’s Zionism helps to reframe the current political impasse in the historiography of Holocaust and genocide studies.     

The Politics of Nature at the Former Auschwitz-Birkenau Concentration Camp

ABSTRACT

This article seeks to develop a new approach in Holocaust studies, namely an environmental history of the Holocaust. A case study of the former concentration camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau demonstrates the extent of the entanglement of the politics of memory and the politics of nature, or political ecology, to use Bruno Latour’s term. I suggest that memorials should be treated as an environment, and thus explored as an assemblage of human and nonhuman (f)actors. Analysing both the official preservation strategies adopted by the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum as well as artistic projects (including ?ukasz Surowiec’s Berlin-Birkenau), I consider commemorative practices’ environmental impact. My investigation thus primarily focuses on the role of the figure of the tree-as-witness in preservation work and in the use of powerful herbicides (namely Roundup) in preserving traces of the camp. This study could open the way to further comparative studies of ecocide and genocide.     

The Significance of the Christian-Jewish Dialogue and Holocaust Studies for Catholic Ethics

Abstract

When I survey the vast field of literature on social ethics, including that from progressive Christian scholars, I find little, if any, recognition that the positive development in the understanding of the Christian-Jewish relationship these past forty years have any relevance for shaping Christian perspectives on social ethics today. In this presentation I share some reflections on various areas of study within the context of the Christian-Jewish dialogue, especially the experience of the Holocaust, which in my judgment do make an important difference in the way we present Christian thinking on social ethical questions. The positive impact of the Hebrew Scriptures is one important area as is the enhanced understanding of law in the Hebrew Scriptures and in Judaism generally. Also of significance is the growing body of literature linking Jesus positively to the Jewish tradition of his time, including in terms of his moral teaching. The same holds true for new studies on Paul's positive relationship to Judaism. Finally the Holocaust provides us with important links to contemporary moral issues such as genocide and human rights.     

The Modern State,the Question of Genocide,and Holocaust Scholarship

This review article asks: what defines mass violence in the twentieth century as particularly modern and how does the Holocaust figure in this history? The article compares the work of two path-breaking historians—Mark Levene and Timothy Snyder—while also discussing recent research by other scholars. It argues that the emergence of nation-states, together with technology and scientific knowledge to alter the environment, created the conditions for distinctly modern violence aiming to destroy diversity in societies and the environment. The article examines the relation between genocide, including the Holocaust, and the rise of twentieth-century nation-states. It follows the persistent idea that the Holocaust is unique in a way that establishes a hierarchy of Holocaust/genocide/other mass violence. As Levene argues, the contextualization of the complex set of events and processes called the Holocaust within the violent history of ethno-national and ethno-religious “homogenization” of nation-states challenges this framework. The article then turns to Snyder’s argument that, since Hitler’s worldview of racial struggle over land and food rejected agricultural science, genetic engineering in agriculture is one way to heed the Holocaust’s warning. A discussion of the devastating impact of genetic engineering in agriculture—in the frame of the violent implications of modern “development”—underscores how the destruction of societies perceived as “backward,” particularly indigenous groups in the Global South, follows the destruction of their biodiverse habitats and agriculture to make way for monoculture genetically engineered crops. A focus on case studies of such mass violence and the responses by indigenous groups facilitates, finally, a discussion of the recent turn to microhistories in Holocaust scholarship. These offer another contextualized view: of the societies that faced the assault of nation-states. The article concludes that the complexities on the social level, each rooted in specific circumstances and histories, challenge the analytical value of the general term “Holocaust.”     

New models,new questions: historiographical approaches to the Romanian Holocaust

This essay surveys the historiography on the Romanian Holocaust, focusing in particular on four monographs published by Western historians within the past five years. Earlier research was limited both empirically and theoretically, and these works suggest new research paradigms and raise new questions about the genocide in Romania during the Second World War. Dennis Deletant assesses the rule of General Ion Antonescu in light of his responsibility for the Holocaust and attempts to explain why the General began and ended the Holocaust when he did. Vladimir Solonari argues that the Holocaust should be read in the context of plans for ethnic homogenisation which were implemented when the opportunity presented itself in 1941. Jean Ancel examines the expropriation of Jewish property and shows that, among other things, the Romanian perpetrators were motivated by a desire to enrich themselves at the expense of the Jews. Finally, Armin Heinen reads the Holocaust by looking at how different groups of perpetrators used violence and attempts to recreate the logic that shaped their actions. In addition, the essay discusses Holocaust denial, survivor memoirs and the state of primary-source collections on the Romanian Holocaust.     

SUCCESS,TRUTH, AND MODERNISM IN HOLOCAUST HISTORIOGRAPHY: READING SAUL FRIEDLÄNDER THIRTY‐FIVE YEARS AFTER THE PUBLICATION OF METAHISTORY1

This essay provides a close reading of Saul Friedländer's exceptionally successful comprehensive history of the Holocaust from the theoretical perspective of Hayden White's philosophy of history. Friedländer's The Years of Extermination has been celebrated as the first synthetic history of the “Final Solution” that acknowledges the experiences of the victims of Nazi genocide. But Friedländer has not simply added the voices of the victims to a conventional historical account of the Holocaust. Instead, by displacing linear notions of time and space and subtly deconstructing conventional concepts of causality, he has invented a new type of historical prose that performs rather than analyzes the victims' point of view. Friedländer's innovation has particularly radical consequences for the construction of historical explanations. On the one hand, Friedländer explicitly argues that anti‐Semitism was the single most important cause of the Holocaust. On the other hand, his transnational, multifaceted history of the “Final Solution” provides a wealth of data that escapes the conceptual grasp of his explicit model of causation. Friedländer chooses this radically self‐reflexive strategy of historical representation to impress on the reader the existential sense of disbelief with which the victims experienced Nazi persecution. To Friedländer, that sense of disbelief constitutes the most appropriate ethical response to the Holocaust. Thus the narratological analysis of The Years of Extermination reveals that the exceptional quality of the book, as well as presumably its success, is the result of an extraordinarily creative act of narrative imagination. Or, put into terms developed by White, who shares Friedländer's appreciation of modernist forms of writing, The Years of Extermination is the first modernist history of the Holocaust that captures, through literary figuration, an important and long neglected reality of the “Final Solution.”     

SIX QUESTIONS ON (OR ABOUT) HOLOCAUST DENIAL

Six questions are outlined and then responded to about Holocaust denial. These consider (1) Holocaust denial's view of the Holocaust counterfactually—if it had occurred; (2) the presumed adequacy of the binary choice between Holocaust denial and affirmation; (3) the status and credence of their own assertions among denial advocates; (4) the often implied historiographic uniqueness of Holocaust denial; (5) the contributions to Holocaust history of the denial position; (6) the measures—scholarly, legislative, practical—that have been or might be directed at the phenomenon of Holocaust denial.     

The Green Matzevah

ABSTRACT

This article examines the extent to which historical memory, including the symbolism of Auschwitz-Birkenau, can be considered not only in terms of its close connections to both Polish and Jewish national and political imaginaries, but also in terms of its entanglements with survivors’ memories of nature. I analyse the presence of the post-camp space of Auschwitz-Birkenau in Helena Birenbaum’s poetic testimonies. This is a space that has often been described as tainted and contaminated while being treated as a lifeless “landscape of death” and cemetery. Readings of Birenbaum’s testimonial poetry alongside archival and field research conducted at the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum have enabled me to talk about grey and green camp’s landscape. I have sought to demonstrate that such spaces function in Auschwitz testimonies under the cover of metaphorical constructions and poetic images that I call “the green matzevah,” that contain significant analytical and empirical potential. I explore how the camp’s dead grey zones have over the years turned into green matzevahs, i.e. terrain that has experienced post-traumatic curating by invasion of plants. I argue that drawing attention to the world of nature as represented in testimonies can expand knowledge of the camp, challenging the martyrological framing that prevailed under communism and help to imagine how to preserve a memory of this place when there are no human witnesses.     

Surviving the Holocaust: Emil Utitz’s ‘As-If Technique’

ABSTRACT

The aim of this article is to present the work of Emil Utitz, the Czech-German Jewish philosopher and psychologist, who was also a survivor of Theresienstadt. The power of the imagination and its intensification by the daily reality of the concentration camp was central to Utitz’s conception of life, which reveals the influence of the then popular ideas of Hans Vaihinger, and especially his theory of the importance of the human ability to act as though something was true. More specifically, the article reconstructs and contextualizes Utitz’s thought along two axes: the Kantian philosophical tradition, and Viktor Frankl’s and Hans Günther Adler’s conceptions of the Holocaust experience.     

Uncovering a Painful Past: Archaeology and the Holocaust

Abstract

Places connected to the Holocaust, and the physical evidence that lies within them, survive as reminders of the crimes perpetrated by the Nazis. Both the treatment of these sites and attitudes towards them have varied considerably in the years since the Second World War. In recent years, a number of archaeological investigations have been instigated by curators at Holocaust sites in a direct attempt to enhance visitor experiences and education programmes. Archaeologists have initiated investigations at other forgotten and dilapidated sites in an attempt to raise awareness of these places. This paper will discuss two case study sites where archaeological investigations have been undertaken and where attempts have been made to inform conservation, heritage management, and education strategies. It will highlight the various challenges that may arise in the course of developing dissemination tools and discuss strategies that have been adopted to account for them. Specifically it will focus on how archaeologists can present novel means by which to locate, record, and re-present the physical evidence of the Holocaust and how they can tell the stories of difficult heritage sites even when traditional forms of memorialization/muzealization is not wanted or practical.     

Marginalisation through commemoration: Trends and practices in Holocaust education in the United Kingdom

This provocation reflects on trends in Holocaust education in the UK. It argues that an emphasis on cultivating memory means much teaching and learning about the Holocaust is commemorative rather than educational. In this pursuit it forwards five theses about the current condition of much teaching and learning about the Holocaust.     

Genocide as Fact and Form

ABSTRACT

In June 2019 Canada's National Inquiry into Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women and Girls released its final report. This short Reflection focuses on the National Inquiry's supplementary legal analysis, which concerns the law of genocide. I contend that this analysis is correct in holding that the murder and disappearance of large numbers of Indigenous women, girls, and other persons ought to be understood as an ongoing crime facilitated by specific policy choices, legal decisions, and socio-economic structures. I also contend that the systemic, recurrent, and large-scale nature of this crime is best captured by the term “genocide.” I argue that formal legal definitions of “genocide” such as the one offered in the 1948 Genocide Convention, though conceptually clunky, historically contingent, and politically inadequate, are key to illuminating some of the structural forces underlying and animating a range of events that may otherwise appear unrelated. Genocide, the ultimate collectivist crime, is a concept of preponderantly legal origin, which means that serious consideration must be given to its specifically legal definition when trying to determine whether it is justifiable or appropriate to apply it to a given social phenomenon. Its standard legal definition may be unable to do justice to the specificities of different modes of group violence, but its abstract generality is also what enables those who employ it to highlight the intrinsically systemic character of such destruction. Ultimately, I suggest that Canada's genocide “debate” turns on the relation between “law” and “society”—the question, that is, of how precisely a legal definition is to be interpreted and applied under different, and often rapidly changing, social conditions.     

Peace without social reconciliation? Understanding the trial of Generals Ríos Montt and Rodriguez Sánchez in the wake of Guatemala’s genocide

ABSTRACT

This article argues that the legal trial against Generals Efraín Ríos Montt and José Mauricio Rodriguez Sánchez for genocide and crimes against humanity has evidenced the interplay between the complex factors shaping post-conflict reconstruction and social reconciliation in post-genocide Guatemala, and, ultimately, the disjunctive impact of the country’s peace process. The ‘genocide trial’ then is more than a legal process in that it represents a thermometer for Guatemala’s peace process and, ultimately, for testing the nature and stability of the post-genocide/post-conflict conjuncture. Interiorization of human rights frameworks and justice mechanisms by indigenous and human rights activists, including of the Genocide Convention, has consolidated a partial rights culture. However, the trial and the overturning of its verdict have simultaneously evidenced the instability, fragility and disjunctive nature of post-conflict peace and the continuing impact of the profound legacy of the genocide and of social authoritarianism. The article argues that while the trial has wielded broad impact within both state institutions and society, consolidating indigenous political actors, it has simultaneously fortified spoilers and evidenced indigenous collective memory as a fragmented and contested sphere.     

On the 80th anniversary of the Racial Laws. Articles reflecting the current scholarship on Italian Fascist anti-Semitism in honour of Michele Sarfatti

ABSTRACT

This special issue of the Journal of Modern Italian Studies, edited by Annalisa Capristo and Ernest Ialongo, marks the 80^th anniversary of the implementation of the Racial Laws in Fascist Italy. It is an opportunity to assess the evolution of the historical literature on Fascist anti-Semitism and to mark future directions for research, but also to pay homage to Michele Sarfatti, who was critical in the development of the current state of the historiography on the subject. Where the earlier work, before the 1980s, was founded on the idea of ‘Italiani brava gente’, wherein Italy’s role was downplayed in the persecution of the Jews and in the Holocaust, that Italians were simply too humane to have participated in such horrific events, Sarfatti’s work launched a veritable revolution in the field, which dismantled all the tenets of the original consensus. This introduction surveys these developments, and summarizes the contributions of the varied authors published here who continue to challenge old truths and bring us closer to a more full and accurate understanding of Fascist anti-Semitism.     

Between Apartheid,the Holocaust and the Nakba: Archbishop Desmond Tutu’s Pilgrimage to Israel-Palestine (1989) and the Emergence of an Analogical Lexicon

ABSTRACT

On 22 December 1989, the anti-apartheid activist and Nobel Peace Prize laureate, Archbishop Desmond Tutu conducted a Christmas pilgrimage to Israel and the Occupied Territories. Tutu used his visit to relay political messages in support of the Palestinian liberation struggle and to criticize Israeli-South African ties, and his statements evoked sever criticism on the part of Zionist Jewish constituencies. Through a tighter focus on Tutu’s various public statements and their reception in the years leading up to the visit, this article traces the history of different sets of interlocking analogies in Tutu’s thought, positioning his 1989 visit to Israel-Palestine—neglected thus far in the critical literature —as a landmark in his thinking. In so doing, it offers a critical analysis of another instance of the Israel-apartheid analogy in the political struggle against the Israeli occupation. At the same time, it points to the genesis of the analogy in Tutu’s ongoing engagements with the suffering of Jews during the Holocaust.     

Holocaust scholarship: towards a post-uniqueness era

This article examines the contemporary theoretical approaches that combine Holocaust studies and genocide studies, and the historiography of the Holocaust with the German occupation of eastern Europe. It analyses the sources of the idea, long dominant in Israeli historiography and among Jewish historians in the United States, that the Holocaust was an event of unique historical significance, as well as the crisis that has beset this perspective since the beginning of the twenty-first century. The place of the national-martyrological view of the Holocaust has been taken by new ideas that seek to incorporate the Holocaust into a broader history of the twentieth century. The article's premise is that the current trend of writing about the Holocaust as part of genocide studies offers only a partial answer to the need to write an integrated history of the Holocaust. It must be supplemented by the development of an approach that incorporates Holocaust studies into the broader national context of the countries and societies in which it took place, particularly eastern Europe, where European Jews were murdered alongside millions of members of the other nations that lived in the region.