Language:
German
Year of publication:
2002
Titel der Quelle:
Zeitgeschichte
Angaben zur Quelle:
29,2 (2002) 87-97
Keywords:
Jews History 1939-1945
;
Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)
;
National socialism
Abstract:
Commenting on the conclusion of a commission that the shock caused by the exhibition "Crimes of the Wehrmacht" was due to the gap between research and public knowledge, argues that the relation between these is more complex. On the one hand, some knowledge of the role of "ordinary men" in the massacres of civilians was certainly handed down in drinking fellowships and even in families; massacres were also portrayed in literature and film. On the other hand, although historians wrote about the role of the Wehrmacht in massacres very early on, they concentrated more on Auschwitz, which stands for an impersonal, industrial murder ending in the "black hole" of the gas chambers. Thus they continued to fulfill the purpose of the Nazis: to deny individual responsibility for the murders. The same result emerged both from the intentionalist attribution of the Final Solution to a few Nazi leaders and the structuralist attribution to an impersonal bureaucratic machinery. All these devices spared the feelings of the scholars as well as of their audiences. The public has always known; but the knowledge was repressed and must be constantly refreshed.
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