REVIEW OF DANIEL GOLDHAGEN’S ‘A MORAL RECKONING: THE ROLE OF THE CATHOLIC CHURCH IN THE HOLOCAUST AND ITS UNFULLFILLED DUTY OF REPAIR’
This essay will review Daniel Goldhagen’s controversial moral inquiry, ‘A Moral Reckoning: The Role of the Catholic Church in the Holocaust and Its Unfulfilled Duty of Repair’, published in 2002. Goldhagen attended Harvard University as a graduate, undergraduate and assistant professor until he was denied tenure in 2003; this possibly indicates his limited status as an academic. Goldhagen notes that he is ‘indebted’ to his father, a Holocaust survivor, for some of his findings on the Holocaust. This personal connection to the Holocaust on the one hand allows Goldhagen to write more passionately. On the other hand, it obscures his ability to view evidence objectively, evident in this book under review. Goldhagen status rose to notoriety due to the controversial nature of his first book, ‘Hitler’s Willing Executioners’ published in 1996. This received much criticism and perhaps more importantly to Goldhagen, plenty of publicity. The contentious assertions of the book, whether academically valid or not, established the relative novice amongst historians. This is evident in the abundance of secondary literature that comments on Goldhagen’s work including that edited by F. Littell and F. Kautz. Goldhagen’s credentials as a controversial author explain the extremist content of his second book, ‘A Moral Reckoning’. Goldhagen’s academic background in political science is evident in the books emphasis on the church as a ‘political institution’ and the pope as a ‘political leader’ (p. 184). . This limits his work as a historian as he fails to fully examine the role of the individual.
Goldhagen’s ...
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...es are manipulated for his argument. Goldhagen’s controversial and stimulating study encourages research to continue and in 2013 Jewish leaders pressured Pope Francis to open the Vatican archives from 1939-1947. The opening of these archives will instigate more investigations in this field and until these archives are opened the historical record will not be clarified. The importance of these archives illustrates the interesting nature of historical literature. The study of history focuses predominantly around primary materials, however these materials do not provide a definitive depiction of the past. Historians analyze primary sources to deduce an interpretation of the past. The discrepancies between historian’s interpretations form historiographical debate. It would be interesting to examine the extent to which historians are perhaps just academic storytellers.
The Holocaust is a topic that is still not forgotten and is used by many people, as a motivation, to try not to repeat history. Many lessons can be taught from learning about the Holocaust, but to Eve Bunting and Fred Gross there is one lesson that could have changed the result of this horrible event. The Terrible Things, by Eve Bunting, and The Child of the Holocaust, by Fred Gross, both portray the same moral meaning in their presentations but use different evidence and word choice to create an overall
Goldhagen's book however, has the merit of opening up a new perspective on ways of viewing the Holocaust, and it is the first to raise crucial questions about the extent to which eliminationist anti-Semitism was present among the German population as a whole. Using extensive testimonies from the perpetrators themselves, it offers a chilling insight into the mental and cognitive structures of hundreds of Germans directly involved in the killing operations. Anti-Semitism plays a primary factor in the argument from Goldhagen, as it is within his belief that anti-Semitism "more or less governed the ideational life of civil society" in pre-Nazi Germany . Goldhagen stated that a
Vanden Heuvel, William J. “The United States and Its Leaders Were Not to Blame for the Holocaust.” World War II. Don Nardo. Michigan: Greenhaven Press, 2005. Print.
It is my belief that the author presents a very controversial view of the causes and implementation of the Holocaust. The root of the controversy is his contention that the German people, as a society, are responsible for the attempted extermination of the Jews. According to Mr. Goldhagen, in the eyes of the Germans, the Jews as nothing more than a cancer that must be removed in order to cure the ills of their nation. In the book Mr. Goldhagen has gone to great extents to prove his views. However, “…his theories will probably remain a point of contention with historians for years to come.”4 The brutality and horror that is described throughout the book is, at times, overwhelming. To realize that one group of people can treat their fellow man with such heartlessness and savagery in what we call a civilized world is almost beyond comprehension.
The events which have become to be known as The Holocaust have caused much debate and dispute among historians. Central to this varied dispute is the intentions and motives of the perpetrators, with a wide range of theories as to why such horrific events took place. The publication of Jonah Goldhagen’s controversial but bestselling book “Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust” in many ways saw the reigniting of the debate and a flurry of scholarly and public interest. Central to Goldhagen’s disputed argument is the presentation of the perpetrators of the Holocaust as ordinary Germans who largely, willingly took part in the atrocities because of deeply held and violently strong anti-Semitic beliefs. This in many ways challenged earlier works like Christopher Browning’s “Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland” which arguably gives a more complex explanation for the motives of the perpetrators placing the emphasis on circumstance and pressure to conform. These differing opinions on why the perpetrators did what they did during the Holocaust have led to them being presented in very different ways by each historian. To contrast this I have chosen to focus on the portrayal of one event both books focus on in detail; the mass shooting of around 1,500 Jews that took place in Jozefow, Poland on July 13th 1942 (Browning:2001:225). This example clearly highlights the way each historian presents the perpetrators in different ways through; the use of language, imagery, stylistic devices and quotations, as a way of backing up their own argument. To do this I will focus on how various aspects of the massacre are portrayed and the way in which this affects the presentation of the per...
Rosenbaum, Alan S. Is The Holocaust Unique?. 3rd ed. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 2008. 387. Print.
an And The Controversy Over The Bombing Of Auschwitz." Journal Of Ecumenical Studies 40.4 (2003): 370-380. Academic Search Premier. Web. 30 Jan. 2014 Rice, Rondall. "
Tent, James F. In the Shadow of the Holocaust: Nazi Persecution of Jewish-Christian Germans. Kansas: University Press of Kansas, 2003.
Religious people from many religions all over the world need a response to the Holocaust to understand what to believe, why it happened, and what can be done to prevent it from happening again. Some religious people need a response to the Holocaust to justify their belief in God after such destruction has taken place, even though God is supposed to be benevolent, all loving. Jews specifically need a response to the Holocaust a great amount of those who died in the Holocaust were Jewish and since then many theologians have tried to decipher the message of the Holocaust. Fackenheim has a unique response to the Holocaust and his theory of a new commandment, and his answers of how to prevail after such evil was committed are unusual and controversial. The 'Commandment' is explicit and detailed, and although Fackenheim's theories do not explain why the Holocaust happened, or how to prevent it, he explains how to live after the Holocaust. Sacks continued to believe in God after the Holocaust and does not think that the Holocaust was unique, and recognises the previous persecutions of the Jewish people. Although this constant destruction against the Jewish people is not positive, the idea that the Jewish people can always survive and recover from such events is encouraging and hopeful.
Shriver Jr., Donald W. "BYSTANDERS: CONSCIENCE AND COMPLICITY DURING THE HOLOCAUST ." . Christian Century, 02 08 2. Web. 6 Feb 2014.
Levi, Neil, and Michael Rothberg. The Holocaust: Theoretical Readings. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 2003. Print.
Goldhagen, Daniel Jonah. Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust. New York: Vintage, 1997. Print.
Therefore, the church, to an extent can be considered to have been a bystander during the holocaust however it was through Pope Pius XII integration of political pressure, careful but sustained reproval while maintaining an essential impartiality in war-torn Europe, as well as direct action through himself and the local church where possible hundreds of thousands of Jewish lives were
James Rachels expresses his thoughts on what a satisfactory moral theory would be like. Rachels says a “satisfactory theory would be realistic about where human beings fit in the grand scheme of things” (Rachels, 173). Even though there is an existing theory on how humans came into this world there is not enough evidence to prove the theory to be correct. In addition to his belief of knowing how our existence came into play, he also has a view on the way we treat people and the consequences of our actions. My idea of a satisfactory moral theory would be treating people the way we wish to be treated, thinking of what results from our doings, as well as living according to the best plan.
He argues that the Holocaust can only be a product of modernity if Germany itself exemplified it as well --it does not. In Bauman’s opinion, standard sociology has belittled the significant of the event by presenting in one of two ways: as an inconsequential even in Jewish history or as an extreme case of human predisposition (p 1). In reality, there is something more heinous hiding underneath.