Language:
English
Year of publication:
1989
Titel der Quelle:
History and Memory; Studies in Representation of the Past
Angaben zur Quelle:
1,2 (1989) 61-76
Keywords:
Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945) Historiography
Abstract:
Discusses difficulties encountered by historians in interpreting the Holocaust, especially the psychology of the perpetrators. Himmler and his generals were not driven by Hitler's overriding anti-Jewish ideological obsession, but by an irrational and mystical "Fuehrer-bond", and an elation at ever-increasing numbers of murdered Jews, thereby fulfilling the wish of the Fuehrer. The historian's unease stems from the non-congruence between intellectual probing and the blocking of intuitive comprehension of irrational elements in the perpetration of the Final Solution. Another source of unease is due to an attempt to insert the Final Solution into global historical interpretation. Yet the historian feels that there are undefined but clearly felt limits to interpretation (e.g. precluding interpretation from the point of view of the perpetrators). Even interpreters belonging to the neo-Nazi lunatic fringe do not try to justify the Final Solution; they deny its very existence. Concludes that the Final Solution, due to its historical exceptionality, could well be inaccessible to all attempts at a significant representation and interpretation.
Note:
Appeared also in "Lessons and Legacies" (1991). A German version appeared as "Die 'Endlösung': über das Unbehagen in der Geschichtsdeutung" in "Der Historische Ort des Nationalsozialismus" (1990) and in his "Nachdenken über den Holocaust" (2007) 125-139.
URL:
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