Probing the Limits of

~ Representation
<<<>>>
NAZISM AND THE "FINAL SOLUTION"

Edited by
Saul Friedlander

HARVARD UN I VERS ITY PRESS

Cambridge, Massachusetts
London, England
1992

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 Copyright C> 1992 by the Pt•sldent and Fellows o{ Haivard College
Introduction copyright C> 1992 by Saul Friedlander
All righu reserved
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Probing the limit• of representation, Nui,m and the "Fin&! Solution'

edlted by Saul Friedlander.
p. cm.
Includes index.
ISBN 0-674-7076.5-6 (&lk. paper), ISBN 0-674-70766-4 (pblc )
I. Holocaust, Jewish (1939- 1945)-Hlstoriogniphy.
2. Holocaust. Jewish 0939- l!MS)-lnftuenct\.
.J. Holocaust, Jewish (1939- 1945), in lilt'tatllre.
I. Friedlindor, Saul, 1932- .
080(.3, P76 I 992
940.53'1~cl!O 91-29009
CII'

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Acknowledgments

The conference on ''Nazism and the 'Final Solution's Probing the

Limits of Representation" which led to this volume was held at the
University of California, Los Angeles, on April 26-29, 1990; it was
organized under the auspices and with the help of the Department of
H istory at UCLA and the "1939 Club~ of Los Angeles. The conference
was made possible by the generous financial assistance of the Center
fo.r Sooial Theory and Comparative History at UCLA; the Critical
Studies and the Hun1an Sciences Focused Research Unit (UCLA); the
College of Letters and Science (UCLA); the German Academic Ex_-
change Program; and the University of California Humanities Re-
search Institute, Irvine.
The papers of all the commentators at the various sessions could not
be included in this volume because of space constraints. Their intellec-
tual input during the conference and in the preparation of this volume
has been considerable. Their names are mentioned with gtatitude;
Peter Baldwin (UCLA,), Edward fleren$On (UCL,\), M!ln<lDna Birn-
baum (UCLA), Robert Boyers (Skidmore College), Philippe Burrin
(Graduate Institute of lnte mational Studies, Geneva), Arnold David-
son (Chicago), Denis Donoghue (New York University), David James
Fisher (UCLA), Michael Geyer (Chicago), Wulf Kansteiner (UCLA),
Rudy Koshar (University of Southen1 California), Peter Loewenberg
(UCLA), Leo Loewenthal (UC Berkeley), Charles Maier (Harvard),
Peter Novick (Chicago), Froma Zeitlin (Princeton).
Finally, as convener of the conference, 1 would like to thank espe•
cially my two assistants, Beatrice Kansteiner (Durnin) and Wulf Kan-
steiner, without whose help it would have bee n difficult to organize
the event.
Saul Friedlander

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ll~IIVFI\SITI •l Ml .1l ~II
 Contents

Introduction 1
Saul F~d/.ander

1 German Memory, Judicial Intertogation, and llistoricai

Reconstruction: Writing Perpetrator History from
Postwar Testimony 22
Christopher R. BrOW!llng

2 Historical Emplotment and the Problem of Truth 37

Hayden White

\ 3 On Emplottnent: 'lwo Kinds of Ruin 54

Perry Anderson

'. -<1 History, Counterhistory, and Narrative 66

Amos Funkenstein

5 Just. One Witness 82

Carlo Cinzburg

6 Of Plots, Witnesses, and Judgments 97

Martin/av

7 Representing the Holocaust; Reftections on the

Historians' Debate 108
Dominick LaCapra
I 8 H istorical Understanding an.d Counterrationality:
I
The Judenrat as Epistemological Vantage 128
Dan Diner

9 History beyond the Pleas-ure Principle: Some lnoughts

on the Representation of Trauma 143
Eric L. Santner

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 10 Habermas, Enlightenment, and Antisemitism 155
Vincent P. Pecora

11 Between Image and Phrase, Progressive History and the

•Final Solution" as Dispossession 171
Sande Cohen

12 Science, Mode rnity; and the ..Final Solution· 18.5

Mario Biagioli

x_.13 Holocaust and the End of History: Postmodern

""'Historiography in Cinema 206
Anton Kaea

14 Whose Story Is It, Anyway? Ideology and 1'sychology

in the ,R epresentation of the Shoah in Israeli Literature 223
Yael S. Feldman

15 Transiating Paul Celan's ''Todesfuge":

Rhyt hm and Repetition as Metaphor 240
John Felatlner

16 "The Crave i'n the Air": U11bound Me taphors

in Post-Holocaust Poetry 259
Sidra DeKoven Ezrahi

17 The Dialectics of Unspeakability: Language, Silence,

and the Narratives- of Oes1,1bjectili~tion 277
PeterHaidu

18 The Representation of Limits 300

Berel Lang

✓
, /19 The Boole of the Destruction 318
Geoffrey H. Hartman

Notes 337
Contributors 399
Index 401

IJ!j II 11
 On111r nl from
UNIVERSITY OF MIG--IIGAr.l
 Introduction

SAUL FRIEDLANDER

When I - t Into our or,1~ olBc.e thJs morning, ii WU • temble ffl0!$ ; ii had
~n requisitioned as a dressing room for the [muskalJ n,vue. 11M, revue .ii
talc!ngov,r the whole camp. Thtte are no overalls for people on outside duty,
but the :revue bu .ii • ovenll t..llet•-.o day and night people sewed ovenlb
with Uitle pulred ,leeves ror the dancert. Wood &om the synagogue In Asien
bu been sawed up to make a stage ... Ob, Maria, Maria-Before the last
tra,uport, the people who were due to leave worked all day K>r ,t h-, ttvue .
Everything here bu an indescribably clownish madness and sadnes•.

kiter &om Etty Rlllesum to a friend, Westerliorlt camp (Holland), 2 Septem•

ber 1943. liiUesum died In Auschwitz on JO November 1943.

Most of the contributo is. volume~sual interlocutors

in discussions of e Holoca ·D!Uhough a few ofthem are scholars
who have dealt elltensively with issues related to Nazism and the ex-
termination of the Jews of Europe, the majority are not. The aim here
is not to deal with a specific historical aspect of these events or with
their particular expression in literature, in the arts, or in philosophy.
The underlying assumption is that we are dealing with an event of a
kind which demands a global approach and a general reftection on the
difficulties that are raised by i representati
Thas project evokes some dou ts w ich are not easily dispelled. Can
the extermination of the Jews of Europe ~&he o~ct of theoretical
discussions? ls, it not unacceptable to debat rmal d fil)s&act ~sues
in relation to this catastrophe? It would be if ese abstract issues were
not directly related to the way contemporary culture reshapes the im-
age of this pasl Present memory of Nazism and its orimes is directly
inftuenced by global intellectual shifts intrinsically: linked to the ques-
tions raised in this volume. The necessity of such discussion is thus
clear; it Will be evident, moreover, that none of the contributors has
forgotten the horror behind the words.
The ba.~ic problem we. shall be dealing with has been on the minds
< l >

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Lll,IIIEl\',ITf['IFMII Ii .•I
 Saul Friedlander
<2>

of many since the very end of the war, and Theodor Adomo's (often
misunderstood) utterance about writing poetry after Awchwitz has
turned into its best-known point of reference. Nonetheless, the chal-
lenge has become more perceptible during the last two decades, as the
result of an ongoing shaping and reshaping of the image of the Nazi
epoch, During the seventies, film and literature opened the way to
some sort of "new discourse: 1 Historiography followed and the mid-
eighties witnessed heated debates about new interpretations of the
''Final Solution~ in history (the best-known of these debates being the
German "historians' controversy/ and, In more general terms, about
the proper historicization of National Socialism, that is, of"Auschwitz."
lo these various domains new narratives about Nazism came to the
fore, new forms of representation appeared. In many cases they
seemed to test implicit bounc4ries and to raise not only ;iesthetic and
intellectual problems, but moral issues too. The question ofthe limits
q-,repre~•:~r Nazism and its crimes has become a recurrent
theme in re at1on to various concrete subjects. Here the overall aspect
of this problem is our main concern.
The immedaate incentive for the conference leading to this volume
was a debate which took place in 1989 on '"History, Event, and Dis-
course,'' during which Hayden White and Carlo Ginzburg presented
opposing views on the nature of historical truth , The echoes of such a
debate were reinforced by still-lingering COl)troversies on the histori-
cization of Nazism. The e~ermination of the Jews of Europe, as the
most extre me case of mass criminality, must challenge theoreticians of
historical relativism to face the corollaries of positions otherwise too
easily dealt with on an abstract level. Of course the basic questions
.asked here refe r also to forms of representation other than the histor•
ical.
The very nature of this project called for the expression of a great
divetSity of views, some of which I have reservations about. Therefore,
this Introduction is not me rely a traditional presentation and pulling-
together of the themes rai$ed by the contributors from the point of
view of a "neutral" editor; it is equally the expression of a persona.I
stand.

f'!be ext~nninati~n of the J~ws of Europe is _as ~ssible to both rep-

resentation and interpretation as any other h1stoncal event. But we are

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lmll\/Fl\',IT'IC\FMII Ii N
 Introduction
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dealing with an event whioh tests our traditional conceptual and re~
resentational categories, an "event at the limi~ ...1
What turns the "Final Solution" Into an event at the limits is the
very fact that it is the most radical form of genocide encountered in
history: the willful, systematic, industrially organized, largely success-
fuJ attempt totally to exterminate an entire human group within
twentieth-<:entury Western society. Jn Jiirgen llabennas' words;
"There [in Auschwitz) something happened, that up to now nobody
considered as even .possible. There one touched on something which
represents the deep layer of solidarity among all that wears a human
face; notwithstanding all the usual acts ofbe-.i.stliness of human history.
the integrity of this common layer had been taken for granted . . .
Auschwitz 1w changed the basis for the continuity of the conditions of
life within history.''t
It would seem self-evident that such a monstrous marufestation of
human "potentialities" would not be forgotten or repressed. If one
adds the.fact that the_perpetrators invested considerable effort not only
in camouflage, hut in effacement of all traces of their deeds, the obli-
gation to bear witness and record this past seems even more compel-
ling. Such a postulate implies, quite naturally, the imprecise but no
less self-evident notion that this record should not be distorted or·ba-
nalized by grossly inadequate representations. Some claim to "truth~
appears particularly imperativl]t suggests, io otbec words, that tbei;t
e limits to representation whu;h should not be but can easil be
tra !!:? c arac eristics of such a transgression are,
owever, is far more intractable than our definitions have so far been
able to encompass.
It may be that we feel the. obligation of keeping the record of this
past through some sort of "master-narrative," without actually being
able to define its necessary components. The reason for the sense of
obli ar1 but the difficulty in establishing the elements of
such a maste.r-narr11tiv e pt on the simplest faclulll level) may stem
is event, perceived in its totality, may sis•
nify more than the sum of its components. Our problem thus appears
to center on intangible but nonetheless perceived boundaries. The di-
lemma we are identifying 1s not one of gross transgression (the dental
of the Holocaust, for instance). The intractable criterion seems to be a
kind of uneasiness. The problem is neither narrowly scientmc nor bla-
tantly ideological: one cannot define exactly what is wrong with acer-

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 Saul Friedlander
<4>

tain representation of the events, but, as Christopher Browning sug-

gests, one senses when some interpret~r R:{)Wsentation is _
~ Can it be that this kind of reaction is due to the sensitivity or
~nsitivity found among a specific generation-be it among
Jews, Germans, or others still deeply sensitized to the Nazi epoch? l
would agree with Dominick LaCapra that in this case the problem of
"transfetence" is indeed more Widespread and complex by far than for
most nther historical events, and is not limited to the contemporaries
of those years.
l shall come back to the transference question. O•uur_:rceg_eiinrtta:t-diileti11m14.
can be defined as confronting the issues raised b · istorical relativism
and aesthetic experimentation in the f.tre of two poss1 y con rary con-
straints: a need for "truth," and the problems r.tised by the opaqueness
of the events and the opaqueness of langµage as such. This dilemma
leads us to consider some of the following points;
The implications of historical relativism in general;
The implications of the construction of any number of historical nar•
ratives about Nazism and the .. Final Solution; as long as the facts
are not falsified (this is the gist of various arguments regarding the
historicization of Nazism and the "Final Solution');
The existence or nonerjstence of limits to literary and artistic rendi-
tions of the Shoa,h (in general terms);
The contradictory implications of specifio approaohes to this last
type of rendition.
Let me dwelt. on this IIISI: point as it is linked to contrary epistemologi-
cal, aesthetic, and ideological positions: "postmodemism," as opposed
to traditional and modernist modes of repre$entation.
First, some obvious problems of limits, as understood here, have
already appeared in the wake of the @plication ofpostmodern aesthet-
ics to the rendition of Nazism and the Shoah, fron1 Luohino Visconti
and Lina Wertmiiller lo Hans Jurgen Syberberg in film, from Michel
Toumier in literature to some of the paintings of Anselm Kiefer, among
others. An argument could obviously be made for the necessity ofide-
ologjcal ambiguity and aesthetic experimentation in the face of events
which seem to escape usual categories of representation.
Second. postmodern thoughfs rejection of the possibility of identi-
fying some stable reality or truth beyond the constant polysemy and
self-referentiality of linguistic constructs challenges the need to estab-

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 Saul Friedlander
< 6 >

In his foreword to Lyo~·s Heidegger and "the Jews," David Caroll

phrases very precisely what is at stake.
We are requ_ired to judge the philosophical, literary, political, histor-
ical and moral effects of the different ways of talking or not talking
about "that" [the Shoah) and )'et we do not have the systems of belief
or knowledge, the rules, the historical certainty or the philosophical
or political concepts necessary to derive or determine judgment. If
for Lyotard (and K'an~). the lack of determining criteria characterizes
the political and th_e aesthetic "Gelds" in general, thlS indeterminacy
has special signi6cance·when it comes to the Shoah, this limit case of
knowledge and feeling, i n terms of which all such systems of belief
and thought, all forms of literary and artistic expression, seem irrel-
evant or even criminal, This does not diminish the role of the critical
faculty but on the contrary makes it all the more crucial and neces-
sary,•

In summation, the nature of the even!:$ we are dealln,g with m.ay

lead to various approaches in terms ofrepresentation, and the outright
negation of most of them would not do justice to the contradictory
demand$ raised by the evocation of this past.

The issue of histori.cal knowledge, of histori "truth, which is at the

origin of this debate, must be referred to at the ve outset. rt is at this
initial point that the implications of Hayden White's positions can be
confronted. White does not call into question the possibility of assess-
ing the reality or even the exactness of historical events. But a mere
enumeration of events leaves us at best with annals or a chronicle. In
order to provide a full-Hedged historical narrative, a coherent emplot-
ment linkin beginning, middle, and end within a specific framework
n erpretatum 1s vo1
Whites ami iar position aims at systematizing a theory of
historical interpretation based on a fundamental redefinition of tradi-
tional historical understanding:, Language as such imposes on the his-
torical narrative a limited choice of rhetorical forms, implying speci6c
emplotments, explicative models, and ideological stances. These un-
avoidable choices determine the specificity of various interpretations
of historical events, 1:hece-is oo "ohiective," outside criterion to estab-
lish that one particular interpretation is more true than another. In that
sense White is close to what could be termed a postmodern approach
to history. 5

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,I
 Introduction
< 7 -,.

Io his 1982 article, "The Politics of Historical Inte rpretation," White

suggested that traditional historiography has repressed the indetermi-
nacy of the. ~sublime;' The one exception in this regard is, according to
bun, the f°as(:ist view of history. "The kind of perspective on history 1
h.ive been implicitly praising," he wrote, "is conventiona)Jy associated
with the ideologies of fascist regimes. Something like Schiller's notion
of the historical sublime o~ Nietzsche's version of it is certainly present
in the thought of such philosophers as Heidegger and Ge.o tile and in
the intuitions of Hitler and Mussolini." However, he added, ~We must
guard agllinst a sentimentalism that would lead us to write off' such a
conception of history simply because it has been associated with fascist
ideologies. One must face the fact that whe11 it comes to apprehending
the historical record, there are no groond.s to be foond in the historical
record itself fo.r
•
preferring one way of construing its meaning over
another" (my italics),• Although White has rec;ognized the transparent
horrors of fascism as weil as the dile mma stemming from his extreme
relativism, he has not offered any solution before attempting a compro-
mise position in this volume.
For most historians a precise description of the unfolding of events
is meant to carry its Q~ interpretation, its own truth. This, for in-
stance, is the impact of the empirical evidence presented in Christo-
pher Brownin.g's account of the murderous trail of Ordnungspolizei
Unit 101 from llarnburg when tran.s ferred to the small Polish Oewi_sh)
town of Jozef6w on 13 July 1942. Browning's eirtremely detailed and
precise description of the behavior of this unit and of individuals be-
longing to it, showing the passage from the "normality" of an ordinary
police formation to its functioning as an instrument of mass murder,
intuitively substantiates an Interpretative framework which extends far
beyond the history of this particular set of events. For Browning "there
are no clearly distinct and separate categories of attestable fact on the
one hand and pure interpretation on the other: Rather there is a spec- H,,y_ f<
trum or c;ontinuum•: the very mass of ascertainable facts rtainin to ' .,,JI.I(/>\
I
the ~Final Solution" determines the overall inlmpreiation, not the
other way around, There is.still,--however, the question of how one
moves from the- chronicle (Hayden White would probably c.'Onsider
Browning's harrowing acc;ount in the category of the chronicle) to lev- ·..;
els of historiography where inte retive frameworks are dete rminant,

Whereas Christopher Browning·s critique of White adopts in fact

! Jlj II

ll~II\/F!\",frl
 Saul Friedlander
<8 >
j the "thick description" position, Amos Funkenstein attempts to dem-
onstrate the paradox to which White's relativism may lead, by invoking
the polemical-rhetorical genre of"counterhistory." l'le, too, however,
f. .Ju..r·b has to substantiate the fact that some e~eTcises in "worldmaking" ~r.,e
less arbitrary"fl ian.others,j>y referringtoaiiTt'itu'itive criterion not un-
like 'Browning's. "If true," he writes, "reality, wliatever its deli11ition,
must 's_~ine t~~ugh it' [the narrativeflike Hfi°ideggeis being-and,
like tbe latter, without ever appearing directly.''
,;n.!c.,z..,,~ Perry Anderson's critique confrontsWfiite's analytic categories di-
rectly. At the end~f \ils analysis of one of the core texts of the "histori-
ans' debate: Andreas Hillgruber's Zweierlei Untergang,1 Anderson
writes:
Ffrst, cettain absolute limits are set by the evidence. Denial of the
ell:istence of either-the regime or Its crimes-is plainly ruled out
... Narrative strategies, to be credible, always operate within me-
rlor limits of this kind. Second, however, .such narrative strategies
are in tum subject to a•double. Interior limitation, On the one hand,
certain kinds of evidence preclude certain sorts of emplotment, the
Final Solution cannot historically be written as romance or as
comedy. On the other hand, any genenc emplotrnent has only a
weak determinative power over the selection of evidence. Hill-
gruber could legitimately depict the end of East Prussia as tragic;
that choice, however, permitted by the evidence, did not in itself
dtctate the series of particular empirical judgments that make up bis
account of it.
Although the criticism of White's positions mentioned thus far opts
for an epistemological approach, Carlo Ginzburg's passionate plea. for
historical objectivity and truth is as much informed by a deeply ethical
position as by analytic categories. Ginzburg quotes a letter from the
French historian Pierre Vidal-Naquet referring to the controversy,
launched in France by Nrevisionists'' such as Robert Faurisson, about
the enstence or nonexistence of gas chambers in the Nazi camps. "l
was convinced that there W!lS an ongoing discourse on gas chambers,n
writes Vidal-Naquet, "that everything should necessarily go throt1gh to
a discourse; but beyond this, or before this, the,.e was something irre-
ducible which, for better or worse, I would still call reality. Without
this reality, how could we make a difference between fiction and his-
tory?" Here we are indeed-as Hayden White himself perceived- at
the ~irreducible" core of our discussions; here we are confronted with

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ll~II\IFR<;IT'(
II

ll ,I
 lntroiluction
< 9 >

the unavoidable linlc between the ethical and the epistemological di-
mensions of our debate; Instead of directing his critique primarily to
White's concepts aI such, Ginzburg seelcs to uncover the intellectual
origins of White·s approach and theit possible consequences for our
discussion.
Cinzburg underlines the intellectual influence exercised on White's
thought by Italian neoidealism, particularly by Benedetto Croce and
Giovanni Gentile. Gentile's radical idealism, his rejection of any-truth
to be derived from facts, led him, within the context of Italian fascism
(of which h e was the prime philosopher), to establish "effectiveness" as
the only criterion for the validity of any historical-political interpreta-
tion. According to Ginzburg, in ''The Politics of Historical Interpreta-
tion," White ultimately equivocates when it comes to a distinction be-
tween true interpretation and lies, and he too seems to rely on the
criterion of"effectiveness" as the only compelUng mode of distinction.
(1!1- my opinion, White's position could be open to different readings
011 this pOint.) For Ginzburg, the influence of the philosopher of fas-
cism on White's theory of history is thus unambiguously established.
Finally, Ginzburg rounds off bis thesis by stating the most extreme
counterposition to White's relativism: even the voice of one single wit-
ness gives us some access to the

At the outset of his chapter Ginzburg discusses what may have been a
topos of Jewish historical narration over centuries: the survival of two
witnesses to tell about major catastrophes. Less than fifty years ago,
tOJJOS and reality became one; the rhetoric of historical narration and
the ascertainable facts converged. In the cases reported by Ginzburg,
two witnesses survived of the forty who committed collective suicide.
At the Belzec extetmination site, two survived of the approJCimately
600, 000 Jews who were massacred at this location.

Hayden White's position as expressed in the present voful!le appear$ a

search for compromise, a way of escaping the most e;tlreme corollaries
or implicatioos of hiS relativism. In Martio Jay's words, "In his anxiety
to avoid inclusion in the ranlcs of those who argue for a kind of relativ-
istic anything goes, which might provide ammunition for revisionist
skeptics about the. existence of the Holocaust, he underc.ul$ what is
most powerful in his celebrdted critique of naive historical realism."

1;,q II 11 I i}

ll~II\/Fl\',ITI CIFMII ll ,,I

 Saul Foedlimder
< 10 >

But White's compromise position is different from that suggested by

Jay, ·who believes in the possibility of reaching a consensut within the
community of scholars on the ba~is of a Habermasian process of com-
municative reason. (Incidentally, such a position should be no less of
an .anathema to Carlo Ginzburg than is White's traditional stance, as
truth ultimately is established by growing rational consensus, which
does not necessarily mean by document and witness.) White does ad-
mit that not every form of emplotment. can be l!Sed for the historical
narration of every set of events: "In the case of an emplotment of the
events of the Third Reich in a 'comic' or 'pastoral' mode, we would be
eminently justified in appealing to ' the facts' in order to di.smiss it from
the lists of'competing narratives' of the Third Reich." The hypothesis
of an fronic emplotment which would allow for a metacritlcal comment
on comic or pastoral emplotments of the events of the Third Reich
would indeed not raise any specific problem, because it would cancel
the validity of the comic or pastoral emplotments. The poin( is that
pastoral or comic emplotments are excluded by "the facts" as plausible
independent discourses about these events.
White's theses are, in my opinion, open to additional critique and,
all in all, appear untenable when their corollaries are considered
within the ·present context. For instance, what would have happened
if the Nazis had won the war? No doubt there would have been a
plethora of pastoral emplotments of life in the 1nird Reich and of
comic emplotments of the disappearance of its victims, mainly the
Jews. How, in this case., would White (who clearly rejects any revision-
ist version of the Holocaust) define an epistemological criterion for re-
futing a comic interpretation of these events, without using any refer-
ence to "political effectiveness"?
White puts considerable emphasis on the sea.rob for an adequate
"voice" to represent events such as Nazism and the Holocaust, that is,
for a rhetorical mode which would fit extreme occurrences in the mod-
em epoch. Without entering here into a discussion of the ~middle
voice," or "intransitive writing," which White considers as the possibly
adequate mode, I would suggest that the corollary of this quest is fairly
apparent: it is the reality and,ngnificance of modem catastrophes that
generate the search for a new voice and not the use of a specific voice
which constructt the significance of thete catastrophes.

The rather sharp dichotomy I have tried .to outline repeats itself ac-
cording to a somewhat more complex pattern of associations withi!l a

11,111, • Go ,glc
 I ntroducticn
< 11 >

second set of essays. Dominick LaCapra's opening teKt leads in several

directions: the search for new categorie.s of historical analysis in the
face of the "Final Solution~ (in this sense LaCapra is close .t o Lyotard"s
overall position as well as to Hayden White's quest for a new rhetorical
mode); and the centrality of the subject position of the historian in the
understanding of any approach to these events (this postulate leads of
necessity to the problem of German identity, through various w4ys of
working through or repressing the Nazi .past, as shown in Eric Sant-
ner's text). LaCapra's and Santner·s shared concentratiQII on the psy-
chologic.J dimens1on of the dilemmas facing postwar Germany is thor-
oughly opposed by those. who, on critical-ideological grounds, see
Western capitalism and its speclnc -rationality" as the matrix within
which Nazism and its crimes unfolded ..
In his search for new categories of historical analysis, LaCaprn fun-
damentally calls into question any positivist approach: the historian has
to rethink traditional C11tegories when confronted with events such as
the Holocaust. which in turn may lead one to a much .more radical
reconsideratjon. "I do not think," writes LaCapra. ~that conventional
techniques, which in certain res~ are necessary, are evet suffi-
cient, and to some extent the study of the Holocaust may help us to
reconsider the requirements of historiography in general."
Although such a position seems to me highly convincing. it depends
ultimately on the concrete development of new historiographical
thinking and on the possibility of achieving a conceptualization of the
new categories called for by events such as the Holocaust. If we set
aside Hayden White's quest for a new rhetorical mode, for a new way
to narrate these events, at least one of the contributors has attempted
work on a new category of historical analysis: I am referring to the
notion o counterrationa, ity sugges e an Diner.
Diner raws 1s concept om the form of thought of the Jewish
Councils when confronted with Nazi demands and policies. This form
~'(Jf tliougnt, induced by Nazi behavior, was nonetheless unable to re-
construct rationally the "logic" of this behavior: "Via the perspective of
the Judenrat . . . ," writes Diner, ~it is possible to arrive al the conclu-
sion that if rationality was involved here at all, it could be termed 'frac-
tured.' n Once the historian observes the events from the perspective
of the Judenriite, "the very subject matter acts to cancel, to deactivate
the connection between an assumption of rationality, or the ability to
understand, and meaningful reconstruction," One could suggest,
though, that "ex-post" the historian can easily perceive and reconstruct

1,,11. • Go ,glc IJJI II 11 II,;

llNI\/FJ\'ilTI C'I M1C1•HCi•N

 Saul Friedlander
< 12 >

the perverse rationali.ty the Nazis used in fooling their victims and in
rendering it impossible for them to understand their tormentors'
••togic-.."
LaCapra's second line of argument refers to the unavoidable con-
straint imposed on the historian's study of this past by his Or lier s1,1b-
ject position in relation to the past and thus,by the unavoidable trans-
ferential relation to this object of inquiry. "The Holocaust," writes
LaCapra, "presents the historian with b:ansference in the most trau-
matic form conceivable-but in a form that will yary with the differ-
ence in subject position of the analyst, Whether the historian or anas
lyst i.s a survivor, a relative of survivors, a former Nazi, -a former
collaborator, a relative of former Nazis or collaborators, a younger Jew
or German distanced from more immediate contact with survival, par-
ticipation, or collaboration, or a relative 'outsider· to these proble111s
will make a difference. even in the meaning of statements that •may be
formally identical." Hayden White's rhetorical "no exit" is replaced
here by psychological constraints which unavoidably mold the histori-
an's discourse but are nonetheless open to self-reflexivity and "work-
ing-through."
Following the same line of reasoning, Eric Santner considers the
forms taken by "working through" or "acting out" in relation to the Nazi
past, within the complex process of regaining -a German identity, as
illustrated in the "historians' debate" or in the production of the tele-
vision series "Heimat." But Santner develops the working-through no-
tion and, referring to Freud"s Beyond the Pleasure Principle, suggests
a form of coping with the mourning necessitated by the trauma of the
Nazi e,cperience through the ongoing.retrieval of minor-enactments of
loss and the "redemption" of that past. According to Santner, however,
this.path has, all in all. not been adopted by most Germans, who prefer
a ·~fetishization" of the narrative of the Nazi period; in other words, an
avoidance of the pain through the choice of a risk-free reshaping oflts
n1ost difficult sequences. What the result of this psychological devel-
opment may be in terms of the future attitudes of a majority of Ger-
mans is hinted at in Santner's conclusion: "Tiiere is, perhaps, little tea-
son to be hopeful that this crucial pe~ocl of national .reconstitution may
become a real opportunity for rellection-not onJy on the issues asso-
ciated with the breakdown of state socialism, which are indeed formi-
dable, but also on a wide range of moral. political, and psychological
questions that have not ceased to emanate from the traumas of Nazism
lllld the 'Final Solution.""

11,,11. . Go ,gll' IJ!I II II hi.u !

ll~IIVFI\Srr1 •l Ml .11 .. /,I
 Introduction
< 13 >

Santner's position is very close to that of Jurgen Habermas. It is part

of what may be called the traditional master-narrative about a "special
courseH(Sonderweg) of German history which led to the N~ catastro-
phe. ~ special development imposes on postwar Germany the duty
ofa slow working-through which would lead to a new identity tying the
Germans again to the liberal tradition of the West. Such a view of Ger•
man history fits within the conception ofa progressing rationality and
indeed posits Nazism, its explicit ideology and its crimes, as the abso-
lute counterimage to the ideals of Western Enlightenment.
Such a position can be and has been attacked from three entirely
ditferent angles. ~t-wing critics-be they German neoconservative
historians or extreme anticommunists (particularly in today's Eastern
Europe)-airn at undermining the notions of special historical devel-
opment in the form of a German Sonderweg and of the specificity of
the crimes of the ~Final Solution." Their efforts are a result of tradi-
tional German nationai positions on the one hand and, on the other,
are intended to push the magnitude of "Bolshevik" crimes to the fore-
ground of a new global interpretation ofworld events since 1917.
The second an,gle of attack is that of the left, which considers the
development of Western capitalism as the overall carrier of oppression
and exterminatory policies in various forms and degrees. Nazism (or
fascism generally) thus appears as- a particularly barbaric outgrowth of
the Western capitalist system. It is linked in many instances to the
postmodern critique of the course (and discourse) of modernity+
Finally, a .third critique stems from to«il despair in the face of the
process of civili~tion, as i result of the very occurrence of"Auschwitz."
The "Dialectic of Enlightenment" does not allow, in this view, for any
faith in the ultimate triumph of rationality.
Some aspects of the second form of criticism have found their
expression in this volume. Not surprisingly, one of the main targets of
this critidsm has been Jiirgen Habermas, or more specifically, the way
he refers to the historical place of "Auschwitz.v Left-wing critics take
exception to Habermas' "utilization'' of "Auschwitz," to his general con•
ception of Enlightenment and the progress of rationality, and parlicu-
larly to 'his choice of"the West" as representing the norms ofan exem-
plary political culture.
Vincent Pecora takes Habermas to task for bis choice of a Western
point of reference by indicating that the history of the West is itself a
story of oppression and.massacres, even genocidal policies: this history
cannot serve as a point of reference to condemn Nazi barbarity. Pecora

IJII !I ti h1.11 !
llNI\/FJ\SITI ll Ml .1l '- ,I
 Saul Friedlander
< 14 >
uses Max Horlcheimer."s and Theodor Adomo's condemnation of the
Enlightenment, and their harsh judgment o£ a civilization that system-
atically elil'llinated and eliminates "otherness," in order- to bQlster b:is
critique .of }{ahermas' understanding of Nazism and the "Final Solu-
tion" in history, S1111d¢ Cohen starts with a similar critique of Haber-
mas, grounding it more specifically in a critique of Western capitalism.
To the Hahermasian starting position, he opposes the liberating dis-
course of postmodemism and Jean-Frm~is Lyotard's understanding
of the place of"Auschwitz" in Western civflization.
Mario Biagioli's analysis of Nazi "science" in the camps seems at first
glance to belong to another set of questions. His conclusion certainly
places him ideologically in the vicinity of Cohen and Pecora, however.
For Biagioli, the tr-adition of Western science itself, and of Western
medicine in ~cular, with its itnperative of eicperimentation at any
price as its incontrovertible raison d'etre, led to the possibility of the
Nazi "experiments." Thus, !Nazi science and Nazi experimentation on
camp inmates is not an aberration or a total reversal of the ethics and
goals of Western science: it is one of its possible outcomes: it carries
the very core of its tradition.
Although I am not in agreement with all the positions represented
in tbfs volume, none is so Jar from my own that I would wish to re-
nounce it entirely. It is, after all, a matter of nuances within an open
and complex discourse. A ~e in point i$ the convergence of left-wing
critiques of Habennas. In my opinion the criticism expressed here has
not sufficiently taken into account Habermas· own critique. of various
aspects of the dominant economic-political sphere and of the constant
impingement of functional rationality on the domain of the "life-
world," the domain of communicative reason. It is within that general
context that both Habermas' critique of developments in the Federal
Republic of Germany and his reference to "Auschwitz'' must be under-
stood. But even in terms of his more specific and concrete critique of
present German developments, one cannot dismiss lhe intellectual
and moral role Habermas has played within the German political cul-
ture with regard to the relativization of the Nazi past. In that context it
is unwarranted to speak ofa "utilization" of"Auschwitz"; as for the sy5•
tematic reference to Western values, it seems to me essential.
My dis;i.greement with the ptevio•us "anti-Western" theses extends
to Hans Jurgen Syberberg's Hitler: Ein Film aus D~tschland; I am
probably more critical ofthe film than Anton Kaes in his thorough and

,,,,,, , ·Go ,glL" IJ!i II II hi.u !

ll~II\/FRSITI •l Ml .11 i: 1,1
 Introdtlction
< 15 >

nuanced analysis. Syberberg launches his attack on the West from a

neocooservative, oeoromantic angle. For•him, Hitler is the expression
of the most secret wishes of Western civilization, he is the product of
perverted RomanticisQJ, but essentially of the poisoning of the roman-
tic soul by modem rationalism and industrial civilization, Hitler the
filmmaker, the stage designer who chose the world as his stage, ap-
pears, in some ofSyberberg's utterances, as no more criminal ,t han the
producers of the ultimate poison of the Western mind: the Hollywood
culture industry. For Syberberg, Nazism Is the product and the mur-
derous multiplicator of the all-destructive impulse of modernity. But
the "Final Solution," Nazism, and modernity ultimately lose all signifi-
cance from the cosmic perspective Syberberg invokes when be
reaches out for the galaxies or nanates myths about the beginning and
the end of the world.

Whereas the first group of texts essentially deals with issues ofhistori--
cal relativism and the second with ideological critique (the critique of
"German ideology" and that of"Westem ideology" in their relation to
the Nazi epoch), the thitd group moves from the problems of aesth.etic
representation of the Shoah to the complexities of appropriation and
misappropriation of t his literature and art and 6nally t.o some general
statements about the Shoah, its remembrance, and its place in present
consciousness.
Syberberg is considered by many to be a magician of the represen-
tation of Nazism, of"Hitler,'' of the "Final Solution." He is indeed the
creator of any number of confticting discourses, the inventor of an al·
most endless chain of ·representations. For Anton Kaes, notwith-
standing some of the sharp critical comments he malces on Syberberg's
ideological premises, -this constantly self-deconstructing feat of post-
modernist aesthetics, this refu,s al of narrative closure, this relentless
probing into the deepest recesses of the Cennan, the Romantic, the
Western imagination, oalls for a multifaceted u.nderstanding which
may confuse, but may also prove of considerable significance for ap-
proaching this past.
Kaes writes:
The 61m's-postmodetnist multiple coding and the constantly shift-
ing position of the author/filmmaker as brit;oleur require an audi-
ence ready and willing to enter the slippery realm of le.-tuality (and
any recourse to statements by the fllmmalcer that ·would constrain

lj!j !I ,, hi.u !
lmll\/Fl\",IT/ •l Ml .1l t./,1
 Saul Friedlander
< 16 >
the· potential meaning of the film does injustice to the textual multi-
valence of the film's coUage prindple). Not surprisingly, the prolifc
eration, dfsjunction, and layering of con8icting-sounds and images· in
a BU}et like Nazism and the Final Solution pose a danger. The sheer
number of conflicting angles (including always the angle of the Nazi
perpetrator) from which each event is simultaneously viewed leads
inexorably to ambivalences that do not 1>reclude readings of the film
(such as the Germans in the role of victims, nostalgia fur a Helmat
and a sense of lost grandeur, etc.) that are clearly revisionist in their
implication . . . The butden is placed on the spectator to engage in
a dialogue with the film. and create his or her own version of the Nazl
story, which the film lays out in all its daunting complexity.

Syberberg's film is a prime illustration of the problem of limits with

which we are dealing; the virtuosity of the aesthetic dimension is such
that the viewer remains spellbound, o.otwithstffiding the extreme am-
biguity of the multiple messages conveyed almost subliminally. Anti-
Western diSC-Ourse blends with the overwhelming nostalgia for a Ger-
man Romanticism, which constantly seeps through the representation
of Nazism itself. Some of the best-known documents of the extermina,
lion of European Jewry are indeed heard and repeated, as Heinrich
Himmler twists and sweats under the agi]e hands of his Finnish mas-
seur, Felix Kersten. But the compelling aesthetics numb any sense of
horror even when a ghostly SS figure repeatedly comes forward on the
screen. 1n short, in this postmodern rendition of Nazism and the "F{-
nal Solution" the 11esthetic dimension inevitably dominates ffid over-
whelms a spectator lacking the necessary knowledge of the events. In-
cidentally, this may be a problem for any postmodern rendition of
Nazism and the Shoah: the perpetrator's voice carries the full force of
aesthetfc enticement:• the victims cany only the horror and the pity.
One cannot. but mention a book by Syberberg which reinforces the
message of the 6- Jm (with the addition of a strong dose of statements
about the American-Jewish domination of postwar German culture). 11
It seems to 1>rove that the multiple ruptures in the postmodern nao-a-
tive1 although they dominate the aesthetics of the 6Jm, do not convey
a fundamentally complex and multiple mes.sage but cover a blatantly
aggressive ideological discourse.
Syberberg's experiment would certainly have drawn much less at-
tention were it not-for Its theme: Hitler, Nazism, the •Final Solution.n
It indicates that the problems of the limits we are examining cannot

, , ,,11. • Go ,gll" l;!j !I ti h1.1J !

ll~IIVFr..srr, 11 Ml .1l .. /,I
 Introduction
< 17 >
easily be considered in the abstract, but have to be faced in context.
Each work creates problems of its own, but most of them seem to re-
volve in one way or another about some sort of"truth.'' It appears, for
instance, that literary works which use allegoric elements to present
the Shoah have to keep enough direct references to the "real" events
to avoid the possibility of total disjunction, of too much allegoric dis-
tance. The novels of Aharon Appelfeld and David Grossman, for in-
stance, seem to belong to a hybrid category which partakes both of
allegory and of the realistic novel. In other words the function ofreal-
istic elements in allegories dealing with the Shoah (I am aware of the
self--00ntradictory aspect of this formulation) appears different from
their ~ction in allegory in general.
Thus the problem of realism as presented by Beret Lang is not easily
dismissible. Lang's ~ e n t is not that the challenge posed by fiction-
alization is insuperable, but "that jt is unavoidable and that it has both
unusual force and an unusual form," due to the subject we are dealing
with. John Felstiner writes about Celan that he ··was never too fustidi-
ous to speak about truth in connection with poetry:
It is easier to point to literary and artistic works which give a feeling
of relative "adequacy" in bringing the. reader and viewer to insights
'aoout the Shoah than to-define the elements which convey that sense.
One would readily think., among several well-known examples, of Ida
Fink's stories or of Claude Lanzmann 's film Shoah. A common denom-
inator appears: the exclusion of straight, documentary realism, but the
use of some sort of allusive or thatanced realism. Reality is there, in jts
starkness, but perceived thr0ugh a filter: that of memory (distance in
time), that of spatial disvlacement, that of some sort of narrative miu--
gin which leave-s the unsayable unsaid.••
Even when the unsayable is almost directly presented, the exis-
tence of this narrative margin appears a necessity, lest our capacity for
comprehending and perceiving be entirely blunted:, lest we create
an internal barrier to supplement the absence of external distanc-
ing. Such an external and aesthetic diSta.ncing is cleiu-Jy part of Lanz-
mann's Shoah. Consider Simon Srebnik, one of the two survivors of
Chelmno, returning to the site so1ne forty years after the events: •11 is
hard to recognize, but it was here. They burned people here ...
Yes, this ts the place. No one ever left here again . . . It was terrible.
No one can describe it . . . And no one can understand it. Even l.
here, now .. . l can't believe lam here. No, I just can't beHeve it.

11 ,,11 • • Go ,gll' IJlj II 11 I i}

 Saul Friedlander
< 18 >

It was always this pe~ful here. Always. When they burned two
thousand people-Jews-every day, It was just as peaceful. No (H'le
shouted. Everyone went about his work. It was silent. Peaceful. Just
as it is now." 11

Yael Feldman's "Whose Story Is Jt, Anyw.i.y?'', in analyzing the mech-

anisms of ideological appropriation of the Shoah in Israeli literature,
focuses on one area where the theory of represenbltion and the politics
of memory meet. I t is impossible within the framework of this book to
enter into the details of Israeli literature on the Shoah and to confront
Feldman's position. What she probably considers a blatant trlfflsgres-
sion is, in my m.i nd. a much less obvious process: the multiple cross-
currents in Israeli literature about the Shoah express, it seems to me,
a very wide field of ideological positions.
In any case open ideological appropriation is not the most perplex-
ing problem. The Shoah is faced with a necessary and i.mpossible prob-
lem of ''naturalization," starkly defined by Sidra Ezrahi: "Since the
·scorched ea,rth' which is the locus of this language cannot generate a
natural audience for it, the issue of naturalization becomes crucial.
Where, in our sym·b olic geography, do we locate Auschwitz or the
Warsaw Ghetto: in Poland? In Nazi-occupied Europe? ln the vast res-
onant spaces of Jewish memory? Or as the metonymic limit ofWestem
civilization?" Both John Felstiner and Sidra Ezrahi attempt io unravel
some of the paradoxes of this "naturalization."
Felstiner's analysis of Celan's reception and appropriation in Ger-
many touches on one more ·impossible" situation: the poem is per-
formed vocally in high schools ~to make polyphony audible" (the quo-
tation is from a German teacher's journal) but, in Felstiner's words ~not
one sente nce [in the meticulous analysis of the contrapuntal elements
in Todesfuge] recognizes that the poem's very Conn, the rhythm and
repetition so amenable to pedagogic technique, may itself-in mimiqg
German musical mastery-indict the nation that orchestrated mass
murder." Ezrahi addresses both the general problem of appropriation
and the specific issues of Celan's and Pagis' poetry. She
evokes the existence of a "natural audience," that of the survivors,
which implies a barrier against misappropriation, an immediate under-
standing between author and reader. But beyond this (dwindling)
group, the issue becomes more intractable. Has Dan Pagis, writing in
Hebrew, found in Israel the natural-audience us ually built by common-

1,111 11 ,, hi.u !
ll~II\/Fl\",ITI tl Ml .ll "-/J
 Introau.ction
<- 19 >
ality of language and existential and historic references? The answer
seems to me inconc1usive. Ultimately Dan Pagis' verses or Aharon Ap-
_pelfeld's stories are both rooted in and estranged from their Hebrew
surroundings. As for Celan's German rhymes In post-Holocaust Eu•
rope, it is possibly their withdrawal into an increasingly hermetic lan-
guage which ensures their inviolability against misappropriation. "The
more personal or idiosyncratic the inscription . . . ," writes Ezrahi,
"the more immune it is meant to he to both the debasement of meta-
phor and its reification in history."
The problem of the "audience," of its manipulation, appr9prjation,
or rejection of the Shoah can, in fact, he understood in even more
encompassing terms, Here, indeed, we again reach limits which be-
long both to the events as such and to their acceptance by the audi-
ence. As Geoffrey Hartman points out, the ~incredible" aspect of the
events challenges the very • credibility of redemptive thinking.'' ·so
threatening was the shoah," he adds, "that disbelief . . . touched the
survivors themselves ·and added to the silence of the world. When
speech returns, two phrases stand out in their testimony: 'I was there'
and 'I could not believe what my eyes had s~n.'"
Such "incredibility" runs counter to the "categorical imperative"
which has dominated the existence of all those who lived through these
events and of many others: to salvage the memory, It was, as. 'has often
been told, one of the ·most fundamental needs of the camp inmates and
of those who reached the day of liberation: "The need to tell our story
to 'the rest,' to make 'the rest' participate in it." as Primo Levi ex-
presses it, "had taken on for us, before our liberation and after, the
character of an immediate and violent impulse, to the point of compet-
mg with our other elementary needs." 1•

Whereas Geoffrey tlartman's closing tert oontains, among other

themes, a meditation on memory, Peter Haidu's chapter add!'{lsses the
universalization of the significance of the Shoah. In the way in which it
is usually formulated , this oft-discussed problem raises, in fact, no in-
trinsic difficulty. Whether one considers the Shoah as an exceptional
event or as belonging to a wider historicai category does not impinge
on the possibility of drawing a universally valid significance from it.
The difficulty appears when this statement is reversed. No universal
lesson requires reference to the Shoah to be fully comprehended. The
Shoah carries an excess, and this excess cannot be defined .e xcept by

1,111. • Go ,gll" l_;!j u tlhl.1J t

ll~IIVFr..srr, 11 Ml .1< t./,1
 Saul Friedlander
< 20 >
some sort of general statement about something "which must be able
to be put into phrases [but] cannot yet be.~ Each.of us tries to find wme
of the phrases.
One may tum to a quasi-mystical form of rendition in the vein of
what Hartman presents as "a latter-day parable.. i:n the opening para-
graphs of his chapter. One may alternatively tty to find the concrete
applicability ofa "middle voice," along the lines o£White's suggestion;
or, indeed, concentrate on any number of possible modes and ap-
proaches, discussed here, with all the l!ncertainty they convey, Most
of them are probably necessary; none appears to be sufficient. The
ambiguity surrounding the more extreme attempts remains.
It has probably been apparent throughout this introduction that not•
withstanding the importance one may attach to postmodern attempts
at confronting what escapes, at least in part, established historical and
artistic categories of representation, tl:!e eguiv~tjol!. of postmodern•
is_m cgn~nµ_n_g "t:~ality" and "tru~h"-that is, ultiinately, its funda-
--- -· - -- ~
mental relativism-confronts any discourse about Nazism and the 1
-- '

-shoah~th-~nsiderabTe cliffic~ ~ ~ t but adopt P1erre

Naquet s already quoTed words: I was convu1ced that . , . everything
Vl~-1·
should necessarily go through a discourse .. , but beyond this, or be- \
fore this, there was something irreducible which, fur better or worse, /
I would still call reality. Without this reality, how could we make a
1
difference between fiction and history?" How, indeed, can one not V
wish to ascertain the distinction between fiction and history when cit•
tteme events such as the Shoah are concerned? But the truth aimed at
by history's, as opposed here to 6ction·s, speciJic form of discourse
needs the maintaining of other convergent paths as well: "It does not
kill the possibjlity of art-on the contrary, it requires it for its transmis-
sion, for its realization in our consciousness as witnesses." 13

The documentary material itself often carries the story of min ute inci-
dents which seem to escape the overwhelming dimension of the over•
all catastrophe but which nonetheless express the excess that cannot
yet be put into phrases or, differently stated, that leaves an extraordi-
nary uncertainty in the reader's mind, notwithstanding the ultimate
sjgni6cance and total "concreteness" of what is being reported. Here,
precisely because the events are "minute," an endless ~pace seems to
surround the facts.
Lithuania, early 1942. Einsatzkommando 3 of Einsat:zg!Uppe A,

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 Introduction
< 21 >

under the command of SS Colonel Karl Jaeger, has completed the exe-
cution of approldmately 137,000 Jews, among whom were 55,000
women and 34,000 children. This is the apocalyptic background. An
incident among thousands is inscribed in the 14 January 1942 entry of
the Kovrw Ghetto Diary. It reads as follows: ''An order to bring all dogs
and cats to the small synagogue on Veliuonos Street, where they were
shot." A footnote adds a complementary indication: "The bodie s of the
cats and dogs remained in the synagogue on Veliuonos Street for sev-
eral months; the Jews were forbidden to remove them.''"

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ll~II\/FI\Slrl 1J Ml .1l
!
:I
 <l>

German Memory, Judicial Interrogation, and

Historical Reconstruction:
Writing Perpetrator History from
Postwar Testimony

CHRISTOPHER R. BROWNING

Shortly before dawn on 13 July 1942 a convoy of trucks carrying more

thlPI 450 men from Reserve Police .Battalion 101 halted before the Pol-
ish village of Jozef6w some sixty miles south of the district capital of
Lublin.' The reserve policemen, middle-aged family men mostly of
working-<:lass background from the city of Hamburg, were considered
too old to be of use to the German army-their average age was th1rty-
nine-and they had been drafted into reserve units of the Order Po-
lice instead. They had arrived in Poland less than three weeks earlier.
This was to be the ir first major action, but they had not yet been told
what to expect.
The battalion commander was Major Wilhelm Trapp, a fifty-three-
year-old career policeman affectionately known by his men as .. Papa
Trapp." As daylight was breaking, he assembled the rnen in a half-
circle. With choking voice and tears in his eyes, he visibly fought to
control himself as he explained the battalion ·s assigJ1ment. They had to
perform a frightfully unpleasant task, he said, that was not to his liking,
but the orders came from the highest authorities. If it would make
their task any easier, they should reme mber that in Germany the
bombs were fallil!g on women and children , that the Jews had insti-
gated the American boycott against Germany, and that these Jews io
the village ofJozef6w supported the partisans.
Trapp proceeded to explain the assignment. The battalion was to
round up the Jews in Jozef6w. The males of working age were to be
separated 11nd taken to ·a work camp. The remaining Jews-the
women, children, and elderly~were to be shot by the battalion.
Trapp then made an extraordinary offer: if any of the older men
< 22 >

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 German Memory, /udicial. lnterrogation, Historical Reconstruction
< 23 >
among them did not feel up to the task that lay before him, be could
step out. After some moments one man step~ forward from Third
Company. His captain, one.of only two career SS officers in the battal-
ion, began to berate him. The major silenced the captain, and ten or
twelve other men stepped forward as well. They turned in their ri8es.1
Major Trapp, who was seen ~weeping like a childn during much of
the day, then met with the company commanders and gllVe them their
respective assignments. First and Second companies were to round Up
the Jews, while Third Compafiy cordoned off the village. Then First
Company was to form firing squads in the woods, while Second Com-
pany was to guard the Jews assembled in the marketplare and load
them on the trucks which shuttled to and from the forest. Any Jew
trying to escape or hide was to be shot on the spot: anyone too sick or
frail to walk to the marketplace, as well as infants, were also to be shot
on the spot.
Before departing for the woods, the men of First Company were
given a quick lesson in the gruesome task that awaited them. The bat-
talion doctor traced the outline of a h·wnan figure on the ground an_d
showed the men how to use a ~ed bayonet placed between and just
above the shoulder blades fur aiming their carbines. Several men ap-
proached the First Company Sergeant, one of them confening that he
found the task "repugnant", they were released Ji-om the firing squad
and reassigned to accompany the trucks.
Totally Inexperienced in organizing firing-squad procedures that
would maximize detachment between shooter and victim, the First
Company Sergeant formed two groups of about thirty-five men, which
was roughly equivalent to the nwnber of Jews loaded into each truck.
lo tum each squad met an arriving truck at the edge of the forest. the
individual squad members paired off face-to-face with the indiVJdual
Jews they were to shoot, then marched their victims into the forest.
'The Jews were forced to lie face down in a _row. On signal the pelice-
men fired their carbines at point-blank range into the necks of their
victims. A noncommissioned officer had to deliver so-iled mercy
shots, because many of the men, some out of excitement and some
intentionally, shot past their victims. By midday ·alcohol appeared from
somewhere to "refresh~ the shooters. After the shooting started, a
group of men approached th.e First Company captain, the other career
SS officer in the battalion, and pleaded that they were fathers with
children and could not continue. The cap~n C\lrtl)' refused their plea.

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ll~II\/Fl\",ITI •l Ml ,;l '- I
 Christopher R. Browning
< 24 >
Subsequently, however, the First Company Sergeant released them
and a number of other older men as well.
By midmorning it had become apparent that the rate of execution
was too slow for the task to be completed by nightfull. Thitd Co mpany
was callee:! in from 'i ts outposts around the village to take over close
guard of the marketplace, and the men of Second Company were in-
formed that they had to join the shooters in the woods , At least one
sergeant once again offered his men the opvartunity to report if they
did not feel up to it. No one took up his offer.
Unlike First Company, Second Company received no instruction on
how to carry out the shooting. Initially bayonets were riot 6xed as an
aiming guide. Thus many of the men did not give neck shots but 6red
direc tly into the heads of their victlms at point-blank range. The vic-
tims' heads exploded, and in no time the policemen's uniforms were
saturated with blood and splattered with brains and splinters of bone.
ThoQgh alcohol made its appearance in Second Company as well, the
dropou t rate among its shooters was even greater than among First
Company.
As one policeman remembered: "I myself took part in some ten
shootings, in which I had to shoot men and women. I simply could not
shoot at people anymore, which became apparent to my sergeant .. .
because at the end I repeatedly shot past. For this reason he relieved
me. Also other comrades were sooner or late r relieved, because they
simply could no longer continue.~ Another recalleda
The shooting of the men was so tepugoaot to me, that I missed the
fourth man. It was simply no longer possible for me to aim accu-
rately. I suddenly felt nauseous and ran away from the shooting site.
I have expressed myself incorrectly just now. It was not that I could
no longer aim accurately, rather that the fourth tim.e I intentionally
missed. I then ran into the woods, vomiteQ, and sat down against a
tree. To make sure that no one was nearby, I called loudly into the
woods, because I wanted to be alone .. . My nerves were totally
llnishe<l. I think that l remained alone in the woods for some two to
three hours.
In the confusion of men coming and going 11round the trucks, some
me n evaded shooting altogether.
It .,.,as in no way the case, that those who did not w;lllt to or could oot
carry out the shoolfng of human beings with their own hands could

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 German Memory, Jud/ciQl lnterrogation, Historical Reconstruction
<C 25 >
not- keep themselves out of this task. No strict control was being car-
ried out here. l therefor~ remained by the arriving trucks and kept
myself busy at the arrival point. In any case I gave my activity such
an appearance. It could not be avoided that one or another of my
comrades noticed that I was not goi,ng to the exooutions to fire away
at the victims. They showered me with remarks such as •shithead"
and "weakling" to express their disgust. But l suffered no conse•
quences for my actions. I must mention here, that I WllS not the only
one who kept himself out of participating in the executions.
Most of the men, however, continued lo shoot all day. The forest
was so Siled with dead bodies that in the end it was difficult to find
places to make the Jews lie down. Around 9:00 P. M., some twenty-nine
hours after Reserve Police Battalion 101 had arrived in Jozef6w, the
last of approximately 1,500 Jews was s hot. After the men had returned
to their barracks., they were gl.ven extra rations of alcohol They were
depressed, angered, embittered, and shaken. They talked little, ate
al1nost nothing, but drank a great deal. One policeman expressed the
sentiments of many, when be said: "I'd go ctazy if I had to do thji
again.~ But in fact it was only the beginning of Reserve Police Battalion
10l's involvement in the Final Solution, which was to stretch over
many months.

I have begun my essay with this narrative of the events that took place
on that one day in Jozef6w not only lo set the basis for discussing the
difficulties and limits encountered in creating such a ~tive but also
to remind us th11t the Holocaust is not an abs~tion. It was a, real
event in which more than 6ve million Jews were murdered, most in a
manner ·so violent and on a scale so vast that historians and others
trying to write about these events have experienced nothing 4i their
personal lives that remotely compares. Historians of the Holocaust, in
short, know nothing- in an experiential sense-about their subject.
This experiential shortcoming is quite different from their not having
experienced, for example, the Constitutional Convention in Philadel-
phia or Caesar's conquest of Gaul. lndeed, a recurring theme of wit-
nesses ls how •unbelievable" the Holocaust was to them even as they
lived through it.
How have historians until now sought to cope with writing about the
Holocaust? What kinds of Holocaust history have they produced? Very
briefty, historians have traditionally focused on one of three groups-

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 Christopher R. Browning
< 26 >

perpetrators, victims, and bystanders. With the growth of Holocaust

studies and the emergence of its own historiography, there is now also
a fourth group, namely the historians who have written about the other
three." I will confine myself to the problems inherent in writing the
Srst of these, perpetrator history.
Initially perpetrator history dominated the field. It was primarily
either ideological history, focusing on antisemitism and racism among
the perpetrators (Hitler In particular), or institutional history focusing
on the implementation of Nazi racial policy. The evidentiary base was
above all the German documents captured at the end, of the war, which
served not only the historian but also the prosecutors at postwa.r trials.
The tnitial representation af the Holocaust perpetrators was that of
criminal minds, infected with racism and antisemitism, carrying out
cri.mi.nal policies through criminal organizations. Only in 1961., with
the appearance of Raul Hilberg's monumental work The Destruction
of the European ]f!tt•s, was this "Nuremberg view" replaced by the
portr.iyal or representation of the Holocaust as a vast and complex ad-
ministrative process carried out by a multitude of often faceless bu-
reaucrats who were infused with an u elation~ or ''hubris" because they
were making history.• Taking Adolf Eichmann as her prototype, Han.
nah Arendt coined her famous phrase about ''the banality of evil,"
which has subsequently become a veritable cliche for expressing this
general approach to perpetrator history and has supplanted Hilberg's
own metaphor-that ofthe "machinery of destruction:
Hilberg's work has remained the preeminent synthesis of perpetn1-
tor history since its first a,ppearance. Thereafter the writing of perpe-
trator history has basically been a typical historians' struggle between
two modes of explanation which, in their caricaturish extremes, ex-
plain causality either through the actions oflcey individuals motivated
by particular ideas (in this case, Hitler and his "program" for Lebens•
raum and mass murder of the Jews) or through the •impersonal institu-
tional and social structures and contradictions that create dynamics of
collective behavior transcending the Wills and ideologies of individual
historical actol'S, Insofar as these two approaches have been applied to
the historians of Nazi Germany, they have been dubbed the "'inten•
tionalists" and the ''functionalists."•
This ..lntentionalist-functionalist" controversy was played out before
a rather limited academic audience until quite recently. As long as the
disputants merely quarreled over interpretations of causality iii rela-

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ll~II\/FRSITI 11 Ml ,;l L I
 German Memory, Judiciol lnterrogation, Historical Reconstruction
< 21 >
tion to policymaking but agreed upon the centtality of the Holocaust
to understanding National Socialism and the centrality of National So-
cialism to understanding German history, the situation remained.
What thrust perpetrator history into the orbit of embittered. public
dispute-at least in Germany-was the Historikerstreit: the.collapse
of this consensus regarding the centrality of the Holocaust and Na-
tional Socialism. Academically the Historikentreit has been a sterile
rather than fruitful dispute, in the sense that new questions have not
been posed, new avenues of research and interpretation not opened,
new methodologies not explored.0 This has been a dispute that gener-
ates far more beat than light. The excitement bas come above all from
the political implications that certain questions-hitherto taboo or at
least COil.fined, by virtue of their bad taste, to neo-Naxi circles-have
now been raised and indeed proudly llaunte<l in the form of what
Charles Maier has aptly dubbed "the negative interrogative," whose
practitioner par excellence is Ernst Nolte. 7
fn what directions, then, should perpetrator history develop now? I
wouli! argue that one such direction should be a renewed study of the
"lcillers'' -the "little men" at the bottom of the hierarchy of the "ma-
chinery of destruction" who personally carried out the millions of exe-
cutions. Understandably the postwar trials aimed at the higher ecbe-
lons of the Naxi leadership. The capture and trial of Eichmann 1 along
with the publication of Hilberg's book, initiated ma.ny studies of the
middle-echelon perpetrators,• Now the time has come to go beyond
the ideology and policymaking of the Nazi leaders and the initiatives
and organizing of the "banal'' bureaucrats who made implementation
of the Final Solution possible. Ultimately the Holocaust took place be-
cause at the most basic level individual human beings killed other hu-
man beings, And they did so in large numbers o\/er an extended period
of time. They became ~professional killers."
Can the hisfol')' of S\lch men be written? Not just the.social, organi-
zational, and institutional history of the units they belonged to. And
not just the ideological and decision-making history of the policies they
carried out. Can one recapture the experiential history of these kill-
( ers-the choices they faced, the emotions they felt, the coping mech-
anisms they employed, the changes they underwent?
Obviously, the historian attempting such an endeavor encounters
numerous difficulties, only some of which are peculiar to Writing about
the Holocaust. The first and most basic problem is that of sources. For

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 Christopher R. BroW!).ing
<. 28 >

my case study of Reserve Police Battalion 101. for example, there are
virtually no contemporary documents available. Unlike the desk-
murderers the reserve policemen in the Seid did not leave a lengthy
paper trail behind them. Unlike Heydrich's stable of intellectuals sent
into Russia at the head of the Einsatzgruppen. the reserve police did
not compile self-congratulatory reports to document their achieve-
ments vis-~-vis their rivals in the field, A few reports from other Order
Police units, vividly documenting their participation in the murder of
Jews, have survived, but not a single such "smoking pistol" dooument
for Reserve Police Battalion 101 has been found. If one had to rely on
contemporary documentation, there would quite simply be no history
of Reserve Police Battalion 101 ,a nd the Final Solution.
After contemporary documents, the postwar testi'mony of witnesses
js the historian's next resort. Those struggling to survive often felt im-
pelled by a mission to tell their tale-to ensure that the Nazi crime
would not be kept secret and that the world would henceforth "never
forget." In many cases, where survivors were in prolonged contact with
their immediate persecutors, such as in the camps and ghettos, their
testimony has been a major contribution to our understanding of the
perpetrators. But Reserve Police Battalion 101 was itinerant. Its units
moved from town to town, killing Jews or driving them out of the ghe~
tos and onto the death trains headed for Treblinka. From Jozef6w, we
do not know of a single survivot. From survivors of other towns that lay
in the battalion's destructive wake, we. learn nothing about the unit.
Unknown men arrived , carried out their murderous task, and left. Sel-
dom, in .fact, can the survivors even remember the peculiar green uni-
forms of Order Police to identify what kind of unit was involved. Thus
there can be no history of Reserve Police Battalion 101 from survivor
testimony.
Unlike the survivors, of course, the perpetrators did not rush to
write their memoirs after the war. They felt no mission to ~never for-
get." On the contrary. they hoped to forget and be forgotten as quickly
and totally as possible. Again there is no history of Reserve Police 11at-
talion 101 through voluntary testimony of the perpetrators.
In 1960, however, the Zentralstelle der Landesjustizverwaltungen
in Ludwigsburg, West Germany, began an investigation of the battal-
ion. Once the Zentralstelle was convinced the case should be pursued
further, it was assigned to the state prosecutor's office an Hamburg.
Over the course of more than 6ve years, the investigators there were

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 German Memory, Judicial Interrogation, Historical Reconstruction
< 29 >
able to identify, locate, and interrogate 210 former members of the
battalion. Almost everything we know about the men ofR,esetve Police
&ttalion 101 and their role in the murder of Polish Jews is based upon
the testimony contained in roughly 125 of these 210 interrogations (the
others being useful only for compiling statistics about average age, oc-
cupation, and social background),
To read about the same events experienced by a single unit as fil-
tered through the memories of 125 different men more than twenty
years later is disconcerting for a historian looking for certainties. Each
of these men played a dilferent role that day. Each saw and did dilfer-
ent things. Each subsequently repressed or foi:got certain ~ t s of
that e*rience-or reshaped his memory of it in a dilferent way. Thus
one inevitably encounters the Rathomon elfect of multiple perspec-
tives and multiple memories gone berserk Paradoxically, one would
have the illusion of being more certain about what happened in Joze•
f6w that day with one-detailed recollection instead of 1251
Beyond the dilfering perspectives and memories, there is also the
interference caused by the circumstances in which the testimony was
given. Quite simply, some men dellberately lied about what they re-
membered, for they feared the judicial consequences of telling "the
truth" as they remembered it. For instance, former rank-and-file po-
licemen who admitted having the choice and not shooting, along with
those who admitted shooting but denied having had a choice, were not
indicted. Those who admitted both having a choice and shooting stood
a much greater chance of being put on trial. Thus not only repression
and distortion but conscious mendacity shaped the.accounts ofthe wit-
nesses. Furthermore, the interrogators asked questions pertinent to
their task ofcollecting evidence for specific, indictable crimes commit-
ted by particular people, but did not systematically investigate othe~
broader, often more impressionistic and subjective facets of the police-
men's experience that are important to the historian, if not to the
lawyer,
As historians have increasingly recognized over the past half.
century, there is no clean distinction between "facts" 11nd"'interpreta-
tion," in which the latter emerges as self-evident or is constructed out
of the undisputed raw materials of the former.• For instance, probably
the only "facts" of the opening narrative that are beyond contention
are that Resetve Police Battalion 101 arrived in Jozef6w on the morn-
ing of 13 July 1942 and shot many hurtdreds of Jews in the nearby

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 Christopher R. BroWning
< 30 >

forest. Such "facts" quite simply allow no interpretation, no meaning

of the event at all. at least in tenns of the questions to which I am
seeking answers.
Virtually no other element of the narrative at the beginning of the
chapter was simply a building block of "historical fact'' out of which I
reconstructed the events in a way that corre~ponded to the·• reality" of
what occurred in that place on that day: For the history of one day in
Jozef6w, as for all history, virtually every "fact" was an act of i.nterpre-
tation in itself, which is to say that it ~lted from a judgment on the
part of the historian, The many accounts and perspeotives had to be
sifted and weighed. The reliability of each witness had to be assessed.
Much of the testimony had to be partially or totally dismissed in favor
of other conflicting testimony that was accepted. Many of these judg-
ments are both straightforward and obvious. For instance, when one
man states that his company was merely assigned to guard duty, but
many others in the company admit that their unit was sent to the
woods to shoot and can recall the shooting in the most vivid and
graphic detail, and in so doing potentially e,cpose themselves to crimi-
nal prosecution, the first witness can easily be dismissed. But not all
matters of "fact" can be settled so easily, and historians must o~en
make more difficult judgments when working through such diffuse ma-
terials. As self-conscious as historians try to be, at times they undoubt-
edly make purely instinctive judgments without even being aware of
it. Quite simply, different historians reading the same set of interroga-
tions would not produce or agree upon an identical set of "facts"-
beyond an elementary minimum-out of which a narrative of the
events of that day could be created.
Even if different historians did agree on a long list of basic facts or
particular events which occurred that day in Jozef6w, they would pro-
duce neither the same narrative nor the same interpretation. They
would not structure their retelling of those events in the same way;
they would not find identical meaning and importance in those events.
Hayden White has argued that inherent in historical narrative is the
"impulse to moralize reality." The "plo( of tlie narrative imposes a
meaning on what in reality is a chaotic, incohe rent, meaningless series
of e\>ents. But thls plot, which produces the "rnotal" of the story, he
continues, is an "embarrassment" which must seem to be found in the
story rather than put there by narrative technique. 10
I would disagree only with certain aspects of this asses$ment. First,

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 Gennan Memory, Judicial Interrogation, Historical Reconstruction
< 31 >
I do not .find the moral dimension an "embarrassment" that must seem
immanent in the story. Quite clearly, what oi:gaoizes and drives my
narntive of Jozef6w is a series ofmoral concerns. What choice did the
policemen have? How did they react when faced with this choice?
What happened to them subsequently, depending on the choice they
made? What are the implications of the policemen's behavior for pre•
vious explanations or interpretations of the perpetrators? Ifother kinds
of questions had been asked. other aspects of the testimony would
have seemed more important and been selected instead; 11 different
story would have been told.
Second, although I would not disagree that it is the plot that deter-
mines the narrative, I would add that the questions being posed shape
the plot and narrative together. It is the concerns and unanswered
questions of historians that from the beginning will cause them to
screen out some testimony as irrelevant, ponder and weigh other tes-
timony for its importance, and immediately seize upon yet other testi•
mony as obviously crucial. These questions will set the parameters
within which any plot and narrative can be constructed, but the full
dimensions of the plot or "moral of the story" are not known before the
research begins. Furthermore, even if the moral stance and concerns
of the historian undertaking the research are already shaped, they too
can change \lnder the impact of the research itself. There is a constant
dialectical interaction between what the historian brings to the re-
search and how the research affects the historian.
These kinds of historiographical issues are relevant to the writing of
any history, not just that of the Holocaust. But they become particu-
larly crucial when the writing of Holocaust history is at stake. Quite
simply, if a number of ~valid" histories of that one day in Jozef6w {or
any other aspect of the Holocaust) can be written, is any version of
events of that day (or any other Holocaust event) valid? The standard
refrain Qf one lawyer for the oeo-Nazi revisionists is that all history is
mere opinion, and there is no such thing as even a bare minimum of
uncontrovertible historical fact. 11
If the offensive thrust ofsuch oeo-Nazi revisionists is that the Holo-
caust never happened, their first line of legal defense is more sophisti-
cated, namely that this denial is as historically valid as any account that
states the opposite. It would be, in the •logic" of this position, no less
valid to write a history of Jozef6w based on the testimony of the few
members of the battaliop wbo claim to r'emernber nothing l\bout it, and

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ll~II\/FRSITI •l Ml .11 .. /,I
 Christopher R, Browning
< 32 >

to conclude that the massacre never took place, than to write any num-
ber of possible histories of Jozef6w based on the "incontestable" fact
that a massacre occurred. Since the testimony of the other witnesses is
inconsistent and in conflict on so many -points, virtually all of the wit•
nesses must be telling something other than the truth much of the
time,•• Why, then, should any of tl\eir testimony have any preferred
value? Wl\ere, in short, does one draw the line between differing but
valid histories and invalid or pseudohistories?
Hayden White broaches the question and denounces the very no-
tion of the denial of the Holocaust to be "as morally olfensive as it is
intellectually bewildering." 13 The grounds on which this Judgment was
m.ade remain unclear, however, for his main concern in this regard
seems to be to prevent this self-evident concession from being eit·
tended too broadly. thus in the same article he subsequently rejects
the notion of an "objective" historical methodology, opposes the notion
of invalidating history on the basis of ideological deformation, and ul-
timately declares that the study of history is ··never innocent." At best,
if l read h i'm correctly, he accepts a theqretical distinction between
interpretations that deny the very reality of events they treat and those
that draw dilferent conclusions·from reOection on events whose reality
is "attestable on the level of 'positive' historical inquiry." I, at least,
remain puzzled as to how" 'positive' historical Inquiry'" dilfers from the
"objective historical methodology" th.it White elsewhere chides oth-
ers, such as Pierre Vidal-Naquet or Lucy Dawidowicz, for invoking.
In my yiew there are no distinct and separate categories of attestable
fact on the one hand and pure interpretation on the other. Rather
there is a spectrum or continuum. No one, not even the neo-Nazis,
doubts that Adolf Hitler headed II Nazi government in Germany from
1933 to 1945 and that World War U occurred. They do not doubt that
the Japanese navy attacked the American naval base at Pearl Harbor
on 7 De<:ember 194.l or that the British carried out nighttime area
bombing of German cities. The neo-Nazis and their fellow travelers
claim only to doubt that millions of Jews lost their lives during the war
and that gas chambers were constructed in mermination camps as
part of the Nazi program to destroy European Jewry. In fact at least
olie historian, Amo Mayer, has claimed that certainly in Auschwitz and
probably in all of Europe as well, more Jews perished from so-ealled
natural causes of disease, starvation, and exhaustion that were inher-
ent in the terrible living conditions the Nazis inflicted upon them than
from so-called unnatural causes like gassrng and shooting."

,,,,,, , · Go ,glc iJII !I ,, hLII !

ltl\ll\/FF\'ilTI JI Ml ,Jl --/,I
 Gennan Memory, Judicial Interrogation, Hiatortcal Reconstruction
< 33 >

The mixing of"fact" and "interpretation" becomes even more appar-

en.t in the debate over a Hitler decision and order for the Final Solu-
tion. Many historians have argued for d.ilferent interpretations about
when such a decision or series of decisions was made and the order or
series of orders given, and in what way the very concepts of a Hitler
decision or order should be understood. Two historians- · Martin
Broszat and Hans Mommsen-have argued that there was ''in fact" no
Hitler order or decision at all. i• This is an interpretive argument partly
.about the m.eaning of ooncepts (what is meant by a FuhrerlJefehl, or
Hitler order) and partly about a disputed or contested "historical
fact"-a time- and place-specific event-that could conceivably be de-
finitively resolved if the evidentiary basis were less incomplete. More
purely interpretive are disputes about the relative importance of
causal factors-antisemitism, the authoritarian habits of German polit-
ical culture, the "banality of evil," and so on-in "explaining" the Holo-
caust. More purely interpretive still would be statements about the
"significance" or "meaning" of the Holocaust, and what it tells us about
Western civilization or the modem industrial/bureaucratic society or
human nature. Virtually no one would claim that statements of this
nature are "factual ."
ls there some scientific or positivist methodology that can delineate
absolute boundaries along this continuum, that can say here is where
bedrock, indisputable fact ends; here is where transparent, politically
motivated falsification begins: here is a clear case of obvious neglect of
readily available evidence that any -open-minded" and careful scholar
should have taken into consideration, given the structure of the argu-
ment and the nature of the evidence which is referred to; here is a
question of fact that theoretically could be resolved if evidence were
not misnng but in the present circumstances cannot be established as
bedrock fact, and thus can be argued only in terms of degree ofplausi-
bility; and here are interpretive assertions that can give insight, that
can be more or less coherent and persuasive in their presentation, but
that cannot be proved or claimed as fact? I can sympathize with the
judge who remarked of pornography: "I can't define ii, but 1 know 1t
when I see it." The archetypal cases seem obvious. But if there is a
clear~ut method to decide the borderline cases, I do not know it.
The legal profession has, of course, also wrestled with the issue of
establishin.g ot proving "facts," and since World War 11 events of tbe
H olocaust have been the S'Ubject of numero'Us legal proceedings, The
so-cal.led war crimes trials cond1,1cted by the AUies in the late 1940s

11111, • Go ,glL" lj!j !I ., hi.u !

lmll\/Fl\",ITf •l Ml .ll '- I
 Christopher R. Browning
< 34 >

were- followed by numerous German trials of so-called NS crimes in

the 1960s and 1970s. Extradition proceedings in the United States
have added another chapter in the 1980s. In all these cases eyewitness
testimony, documents, physical evidence, and circumstantial evi-
dence-the same materials that historians use-have regularly been
invoked to prove "beyond a reasonable doubt• that certain tim.e- and
place-specific crirt)ittal acts were committed by par,ticuJar people. The
historian and lawyer often ask different questions and meet different
levels of proof (the historian often has the luxury of settling for "pre-
ponderance of evidence•· as opposed to ''beyond reasonable doubt").
Nonetheless, the historical study and judicial investigation of the
Holocaust have been inextricably intertwined, as historians and law.
yers have used the fruits of one another's labors.
A different kind of legal case, focusing directly on the issue of writ-
ing about the Holocaust, was that of the neo-Nazi publisher Ernst Zun-
del, who was tried twice, in 1985 and 1986, before a court in Toronto,
Canada. 1 • The ultimate resort was to the "reaso.nable man" embodied
in a jury of twelve people. who were persuaded "beyond a reasonable
doubt" that the neo-Nazi denial of the Holocaust contained in a partic-
ular pamphlet was both false and known to be so by its author and
publisher, and furthermore constituted a potential danger to the pub-
lic intere.st in the form of inciting r.icial hatred. Some subsequent pam-
phlet, embodying the same denial of the Holocaust but less clumsy in
its construction, which successfully concealed the obvious intent of the
author and publisher to falsify, would be in a diJfere-nt legal category,
s1,1bject to public denunciation or refutation but not to successful legal
prosecution under present Canadian law. Moreover, a different Jury in
a different, nazilled culture could find in the same pamphlet the
praiseworthy harnessing of history to the higher political goal of Nazi
resurgence. The "intent" of the author is all too slippery, and the "rea-
sonable man" judging historical disputes is obviously culture-bound.
The individual problem of a particular pamphlet may have been solved
by the combined clumsiness of neo-Nazi author and publisher, the al-
ways abrasive and frequently counterproductive behavior of defense
counsel, and the ucommon sense" of a Canadian jury, but the wider
theoretical question is not
If my history of Reserve Police Battalion 101 in Jozef6w is one
among a number of valid histories that could be written, and if the
issue of drawing a borderline for an "invalid" or pseudohistory remains

lj!j II tlhl.1J !
ll~II\/FRSITI 11 Ml .11 .. /,I
 Gennan Memory, Judicial lnteNYJgatlon, Historical Reconstruction
< 3.5 >

uncomfortably unresolved, another and quite different question is

whether my history, shaped by the particular questions I have posed,
should be written. 1wo kinds of issues have recently been raised in this
regard. The first concerns the merits and dangers of so-called Alltagt•
geschichte (history of everyday fife). The second concerns the desira-
bility of empathy in writing this or any kind of perpetrator history.
Some of my Israeli colleagues writing Holocaust history have felt
considerable unease about the emergence of Alltagsgeschichte in Ger-
many. They fear that it will normalize the image of the Nazi regime by
concentrating on the mundane, everyday aspects of life that continued
relatively undisturbed. They also fear that it will tum attention away
from the most significant-the so-called world-historical-features of
the Nazi regime, in particular the genocidal mass murder of European
Jewry.
My own view is that the issue is not in fact a methodological one.
Traditional diplomatic and military histories of Nazi Germany can and
indeed have all too easily ignored the Holocaust as well. No method-
ology guarantees the inclusion or exclusion of certain subject matter,
My study is, I would argue, the Alltagsgeachichte of a particular police
unit in Nazi-occupied Poland. Rather than turning attention from the
Holocaust, it demonstrates that for Germans in occupied Poland the
mass murder of the Jews was incorporated into the very fabric of their
everyday life-to the point that tracking down and killing individual
Jews who had escaped to the forest before the clearing of the ghettos
(the so-called Jew 'hunt, or Judenjagd) was routine-In the words of
one policeman Mour daily bread." In .short. there is nothing inherent in
the methodology of AUtagsgeschichte that necessarily diminishes the
centrality of the Holocaust in the history of Nazi Germany. On the
contrary, I would argue, it is the•best method for revealing how deeply
mass murder was embedded in the lives of German personnel sta-
tioned in OC'Cupied eastern Europe.
As for the issue of empathy, Bruno Bettelheim, in a review of Robert
Llfton's Nazi Doctor$, expresses regret about the subject and approach
of that book which would equally apply to my history of Reserve Police
Battalion 101, He notes; "I restricted myself to trying to u11derstand
the psychology of the prisoners and I shied away from trying to under-
stand the psychology of the SS-because of the ever-present danger
that understanding fully may come close to forgiving . . . I believe
there are acts so vile that our task is to reject and prevent them , not to

lj!j II ,, hi.u !
'''" • ·Go ,gll· lmll\/FR<,rr, ,, Ml .11 "'·'
 Christopher R, Browning
< 36 >

try to understand them empathetically . . ."17 Certainly, the writing of

my history of Reserve Police Battalion 101 requires a rejection of de-
moni2Ation. The men who carried out these massacres, like those who
refused or evaded, were human beings. I must recognize t;bat in such
a situation I could have been either a killer or an evader- both were
human-if I want to understand an.d e~lain the behavior of both as
best I can, This recognitic;,n does indeed mean an attempt to empa-
thize. What I do not accept, however, are .the old clichis that to ex-
plain is to excuse, that to understand is to forgive. Explaining is not
excusing; understanding is not forgiving. The notion that one must
simply reject the acts of the perpetrators and not try to understand
them would make impossible not only my history but any perpetrator
history that sought to go beyond one-dimensional caricature. 18
Even if the empathy necessary to writing perpetrator history is de-
sirable, is it possible? Elie Wiesel has argued that the core ofthe l-lolo-
caust is beyond the human comprehension of anyone but the survi-
vors. These survivors suffered an expenence within the universe of the
cam))5 that is beyond communicability even by the "messengers," and
certainly cannot be re-created, represented, or understood by those
who were not there. Is an understanding, representation, and com-
municability of the perpetrators· experience as impossible as Wiesel
thinks it is of the survivors· experience? Saul Friedlander suggested as
much at a 1990 conference at Northwestern University, when he ar•
gued that the historian's attempt to 6nd a "psychological common de-
nominator" with the perpetrators resulted in an "intractable unease."
An "intuitive Verstehen" of the perpetrator was not possible in the face
of an "immorality beyond evil" that bad been brought forth in an ethos
ofFiihrer-Bindung and "elation.01•
If I understand him correctly, the terms of Friedlander's eloquent
argument were addressed to the top Nazi leadership. I do not see how
they can apply to the reserve policemen who carried out the massacre
at Jozef6w. I find no Fi.ihrer-ilindung in a situation in which the com-
manding officer, openly before his men, disa~sociated himself from the
orders he had received from above. 1 find no ~elation" in a situation in
which the oveiwhelmingly predominant reaction of the men-both
those who killed all day and those who refused, evaded, or stopped-
was sheer horror and physical revulsion at what they had been asked
to do. Eventually, of course, they got used to the killing. ,But In that
too, they were alJ too human.

1,111 , • Go ,gll" 1,111 11 ,, hi.u !

ll~IIVFl\",IT/ •l Ml . ll .. /,I
 <2>

Historical Emplotment and the

Problem of Truth

There is an inexpungeable relativity in every representation of rustori-

cal phenomena. 'fhe relativl!Lof the re.2.i:esentatjon is .a,fyl')£.tiQ!l of the
~guage used_to~e~ _ii_~_D,P.<! ..t~.!lWll'...Q2!.'1Stitute past events as pos-
~h.1.~ objects 9f explanation=and understanding. This is obvious when,
as in the social sciences, a technical langu;ige i s so used. Scientific ex•
planations openly purport to bear upon 0J1ly those aspects of events-
for example, quantitative and therefore measurable aspects-which
can be denoted by the linguistic protocols used to describe them. lt is
less obvious in traditional narrative accounts of historical phenomena:
first, narrative is regarded as a neutral "contalni:r" of historical fact, a
mode of discourse "naturally" suited to representing historical events
directly; second, narrative hi.stories usually employ so-called natural
or ordinary, rather than technical, langua,ges, both to describe their
subjects and to t.ell their story; and third, historical events are sup-
posed lo consist of or manifest a congeries of "rear or "lived'" stories,
which have only to be,uncovered or extracted from the evidence and
displayed before the re-.ider to have their truth recogniud immedi-
ately and intuitively.
Obviously I reglll'd this view of the relation between historical story-
telling and historical reality as mistaken or at best misconceived. Sto-
ries, like factual statements, are l.inguistic entities and belong to the
order of discourse.
The question that arises Y(ith respect to "historical emplotments" in
a study of Nazism and the Final Solution is this: Are there,any limits
on the lnnd of story that can responsibly be told about these phenom-
ena? Can these events be responsibly emplottecl in any of the modes,
symbols, plot types, and genres our culture provides for "making
sense" ofsuch extreme events in our past? Or do Nazism and the Final
Solution belong to a speclal class of events, such that, unlike even the
< 37 >

,,q
, ,,,11, • Go ,glc 11 11 I
ll~IIVFl\',frf['IFMII ll
I}

,,I
 Hayden White
< 38 >

French Revolution, the American Civil War, the Russian Revolution,

or fhe Chi.n ese Great Leap Forward, they must be viewed as manifest-
ing only one story, as being emplottable in one way only, and as signi-
fying only one kind of meaning? In a word, do the natures of Nazism
and the Final Solution set absolute limits on what can be truthfully said
about them? Do they set limits on the uses that can be made of them
by writel"S" of .fiction or poetry? Do they lend themselves to emplot-
ment in a set number of ways, or is their specific meaning, like that of
other historical events, infinitely interpretable and ultimately unde-
cidable?
Saul Friedlander bas elsewhere distinguished between two kinds of
questions that might arise in the c.-onsideration of historical emplot-
ments and the problem of "truth": epistemological questions raised by
the fact of"competing narratives about the Nazi epoch and the 'Final
Solution'" and ethical questions raised by the rise of "representations
of Nazism .. . based on what used to be [regarded asl unacceptable
modes of emplotment." Obviously, considered as accounts of events
already established as facts, "competing narratives" can be assessed,
criticized, and ranked on the basis of their fidelity to the factual record,
their comprehensiveness, and the coherence of whatever arguments
they may contain. But narrative accounts do not consist only of factual
statements (singular existential propositions) and arguments; they con-
sist as well of poetic and rhetorical elements by which what would oth-
erwise be a list of facts is transformed into a story: 1 Among these ele-
ments are those generic story patterns we recognize as providing th~
"plots." Thus, one narrative account may represent a set of events as
having the fonn and meaning of an epic or tragic story, and another
may represent the same set of events-with equal plausibility and
without doing any violence to the factual record-as describing a
farce.• Here the conB.ict between "competing narratives" bas less to do
with the facts of the matter in question than with the different story-
meanings with which the facts can be endowed by emplotment. This
raises the question of the relation of the various·generic plot types that
can be used to endow events with dilferent kinds of meaning-tragic,
epic, comi.c, romance, pastoral, farcical, and the like-to the events
themselves. Is this relationship between a given sto_ry told about a
given set of events the same as that obtaining between a fai:itual state-
ment and its referent? Can .it be said that sets of real events are intrin-
sically tragic, comic, or epic., such that the representation of those

I I I' I I ·Go ,gll" lj!j II tlhl.1J !

ll~II\/FRSITI 11 Ml .ll .. /,I
 H~torical Emplotment and the Problem of Truth
< 39 >

events as a tragic, comic, or epic story can be assessed as to its factual

accuracy? Or does itiill have to do with the perspective from which the
events are viewed?
Of course, most theonsts of narrative history take the view that em-
plotment produces not so m1,1ch another. more comprehensive and
synthetic factual statement as, rather, an interpretation of the facts.
But the distinction between factual statements (considered as a prod-
uct of object-language) and interpretations of them (considered as a
product of one or mo!'e metalanguages) does not help us when it is a
matter of interpretations produced by the modes of emplotment used
to represent the facts as displaying the form and meaning of different
kinds of stories. We are not helped by the suggestion that "competing
narratiVes'' ;u-e a result of "the facts" having been interpreted by one
historian as a "tragedy" and interpreted by another as a "farce." 3 This is
especially the case in traditional historical discourse in which "the
facts" are always given precedence over any "interpretation" of them.
Thus for tTaditional historical discourse there is presumed to be a
crucial difference between an "interpretation• of "the facts" and a
"story" told about them. This difference is indicated by the currency of
the notions of a "real" (as against an "imaginary") story and a "true" (as
a~nst a "false") story. Whereas interpretations are typically thought
of as comm-entanes on "the facts," the stories told in narrative histories
are presumed to inhere either in the events themselves (whence the
notion of a" real story') or in the facts derived from the critical study of
evidence bearing upon those events (which yields the notion of the
"b'ue" story).
Considerations such a.~ these provide some insight into the prob-
lems both of competing narratives and of unacceptable modes of em-
plotment in considering a period such as the Nazi epoch and events
roch as the Final Solution. We can confidently presume that the facts
of the matter set limits on the kinds of stories that can be properly (in
the-sense of both veraciously and appropriately) told about them .only
if we believe that the events themselves possess a ".story" kind of form
and a "plot" kind of meaning. We may then dismiss a "comic" or "pas-
toral" story, with an upbeat "tone" and a humorous "point of view,"
from the ranks of competing narratives as manifestly false to the facts-
or at least to the facts that matte.r ~.of the Nazt era. But we could dis-
miss such a story from the ranks of competing narratives only if {l) it
were presented as a literal (rather than figurative) representation of

IJ!i t!I ., hi.u !

ll~IIVFI\Srr1 •l Ml .11 .. /,I
 Hayden White
< 40 >

the events and (2) the plot type used to transfortn the facts into a spe-
cific kind of story were presented -as inherent in (rather than imposed
upon) the facts. for unless a historical stocy is presented as a literal
representation of real events, we cannot criticize it as being either true
or untrue to the facts of the matter. Hit were presented as a figuratfve
representation of real events, then the question of tts truthfulness
would fall under the principles governing our assessment of the truth
of fictions. And if it d id not suggest that the plot type chosen to render
the facts into a story ofa specific kind had been found to inhere in ~he
facts themselves, then we would have no basis for comparjng this par•
ticular account to other kinds of narrative accounts, infonned by other
kinds of plot types, and for assessing their relative adequacy to the
representation, not so mucli of the facts as ofwhat the facts mean.
For the differences among competing narr(llives· are dilferences
among the "modes of emplotment~ which predominate in them. It is
because narratives are always emplotted that they are meaningfully
comparable; it is because narratives are differently emplotted that dis-
criminations among the kinds of plot types can be made. ln the case of
an emplotment of the events of the Third Reich in a "comic" or "pas-
toral" mode, we would be eminently justified in appealing to "the
facts" in order to dismiss it from the lists of "competing narratives" of
the Third Reich. But what if a story of this kind had been set forth in a
pointedly jronic way .a nd in the .i nterest of making a metacritical com-
ment, not so much on the facts as on versions of the facts emplotted in
a comic or pastoral way? Surely it would be beside the point to dismiss
thi.r kind of narrative from the competition on the basis of its infidelity
to the facts. For even If it were not positively faithful to the facts, it
would at least be negatively so-in the fun it poked at narratives of the
Third Reich emplotted in the mode of comedy or pastoral.
On the other hand, we might wish to regard such an ironic emplot-
ment as "unacceptable" -i n the manner suggested by Friedlander in his
indictment of histones, novels, and films which, under the guise of
seeming to _portray faithfully the most horrible facts of life in Hitler's
Germany, actually aestheticize the whole scene and translate its con-
tents i.nto fetish objects and the stuff of sadomasochistic fantasies.• As
Friedlander has pointed out, such "glamorizing" representations of the
phenomena of the Third Reich used to be "unacceptable,~ whatever
the accuracy or veracity of theu- factual contents, because they of.

! Jlj II

ll~II\/Ff\",IT(
 Hlstoricat Emplotment and the Problem of Truth
< 41 >

fended against morality or taste. The fact that such representations

have become increasingly common and therefore obviously more uac•
ceptable• over the last twenty years or so indicates profo11nd changes
in socially SllllCtioned standards of morality and taste. But what does
this circ11mstance suggest about the grounds on which we might wish
to judge a narrative account of the Third Reich and the Final Solution
to be "unacceptable~ even though its factual content is both accurate
and ample?
It seems to be a matter of distinguishing between a speci6c body of
factual "contents" and a specific "form" of narrative and of applying th.e
.kind of rule which stipulates that a serious theme-such as mass mur•
der or genocide-demand$ a noble genre-such as epic or tragedy-
for its proper representation, this is the kind of issue posed oy Art
Spiegelman's Maw, A Suroioors Tale,' which presents the events of
the Holocaust in the medium of the (black-and-white.) comic book and
in a mode of bitter satire, with Germans portrayed as cats, Jews as
mice, and Poles as pigs. The manifest content of Sptegelman's comic
book is the story of the artist's effort to e,ctract from his father the story
of his parents' experience of the events of the Holocaust. Thus, the
story of the Holocaust that is told in the book is framed by a story of
how this story came to be told. Jlut the manife st contents of botn the
.frame story and the framed story are, as it were, compromised as fact
by their allegprization as a game of oat-and-mouse-and-pig in which
everyone-perpetr.itors, victims, and bystanders in the story of the
Holocaust and both Spiegelman and bis father in the story of their
relationship-comes out looking more like a beast than like a human
being. Maw presents a particularly ironic and bewildered view of the
Holocaust, but it is at the same time one of the most moving narrative
accounts of jt that I know, and not least because it makes the difficulty
of discovering and telling the whole truth about even a small part of it
as much a part of the story as the events whose meaning·it is seeking
to discover,
To be sure, Maus is not .a oonven.tiotlal history, but it is a represen•
talion of past real events or at least of events that are represented as
having actually -OCCUrred. There is nothing of that aestheticization of
which Friedlander complains in his assessments of many recent 61mic
and novelistic treatments of the Nazi epoch and the Final Solution. At
the same time, this comic book is a masteq>iece of stylization, 6gura-

, , ,,11. • Go ,gll· IJ!j !I ,, hi.u !

l 1~11\/F I\':,lrl •l Ml .11 ., /,I
 Hayden White
< 4.2 >

tion, and allegorization. lt assimilates the events of the llolocaust to

the conventions of comic book representation, aod in this absurd mix-
ture ,of a "low" genre with events of the most momentous significance,
Maus manages to raise all of the crucial issues regarding the 1imits of
representation" in gener.il.
Indeed, Maus is much more critically self-conscious than Andreas
Hillgruber's Zweierlei Untergang: Die Zerschlagung des Deutschen
Reiches und das Ende des europahchen Judentums.(1\vo kinds of ruin:
the shattering of the German Reich and the end .o f European Jewcy). •
In the first of the two essays included in the book, Hillgruber suggests
that, even though the Third Reich lacked the nobility of purpose to
permit its "shattering" to be ciuled a ''tragedy," the defense of the east•
em front by the Wehrmacht in 1944-45 could appropriately be em-
plotted-and without any violence to the facts-as a "tragic~ story.
Hillgruber's manifest purpose was to salvage the moral dignity of a part
of the N:.zi epoch in German history by splitting the whole of it into
two discrete stories and emplotting them differently-the one as a
tragedy, the other as an incoJDprehensible enigma. 7
Critics of Rillgruber immediately pointed 01,1t: (1) that even to cast
the account in the mode of a narrative was to subordinate any analysis
of the -events to their aesthetioization; (2) that one could confer the
morally ennobling epithet tragic on these events only at the cost of
ignoring the extent to which the "heroic" actions ofthe Wehnnacht had
made possible the destruction of many Jews who might have been
saved had the army surrendered earlier; and (3) that the attempt to
ennoble one part of the history of the "German Empire" by dissociat-
ing it from the Final Solution was as morally offensive as U was scientif-
ically untenable.• Yet Hillgrubels sQggestion for emplotting the story
of the defense of the eastern front did net violate any of the conven-
tions governing the writing of professi0nally respectable narrative his-
tory. He simply suggested narrowing the focus to a particular domain
of the historical continuum, casting the agents and agencies occupying
th.a t scene as charact_ers in a dramati~ conflict, and emplotting trus
drama in terms of the familiar conventions of the genre of tragedy.
Hillgruber's sugge$tion for the emplotment of the history of the
eastern front during the winter of 1944-45 indicates the ways in which
a specific plot type (tragedy) can simultaneously determine the kinds
of events to be featured in any story that can be told about them and

, , ,,11, . Go ,gll' Ii .,I

 Histcmcal Emplotment and the Problem of Truth
< 43 >

provide a pattern for the assignment of the roles that can possibly be
played by the agents and agencies inhabiting the scene thus consti-
tuted.• At the same time, Hillgruber's suggestion also indicates how
the choice of a mode of emplotment can justify ignoring certain kinds
of events, agents, actions, agencies, and patients that may inhabit a
given historical scene or its context. There is no place for any form of
low or ignoble life in a tragedy; in tragedies even Villains are noble or,
rather, villainy can be shown to have its noble inC!U'll3tiohs. Asked
once why he had not included a ~atment of Joan of Arc in his Waning
of the Middle ,i\ges, Huizinga is s.ud to have revlied; "Because 1 did
not want my story to have a heroine." Hillgruoer's recomrnendation to
emplot the story of the Wehrmacht's defense of the eastern front as a
tragedy indicates that he wants the story told about it to have a hero,
to be heroic, and thereby to redee.m at least a remnant of the Nazi
epoch in the history of Germany.
Hillgruber may not have considered the fact that his division of one
epoch of German history into two stories-one of the shattering of an
empire, the other of the end of a people-sets up an oppositional
structure constitutive of a semantic field in which the naming of the
plot type of one story determines the semantic domain within which
the name of the plot type of the other is to be found. Hillgruber does
not name the plot type which might provide the meaning of the story
of •the end of European Jewry." But if the plot type of the tr$gedy is
reserved for the telling of the story of the Wehrmacht on the eastern
frnnfin 1944-45, it follows that some other plot type must be used for
the end of European Jewry.
In forgoing the impulse to name the kind of stoty that should be told
aho11tthe Jews in Hitler's Reich, H.i llgruber approaches the position of
a number of schol'ars and writers who view the liolocaust as virtually
unrepresentable in language, The most extreme version of this idea
takes the form of the commonplace that this event ('~usohwitz," "the
Final Solution," and so on) is of such a nature as to escape the grasp of
any language to describe it or any m~ium to represent it. Thus, for
example, George Steiner's famous remarl<: "The world of Auschwitz.
lies outside speech as it lies outside reason:· •0 Or Alice and A. R. Eck-
hardt's question: ''How is the unspeakable to be spoken about? Cer-
tainly, we ought to speak about it, but how can we ever do so?" 11 Berel
Lang suggests that expressions such as tl\ese must be understood ligu-

, , ,,11. • Go ,glL" IJ!1111tlh1.1J!

ll~II\/FRSrrt 11 Ml .11 .. /,I
 Hayden White
< 44 >

ratively, as indicating the difficulty of writin.g about the Holocaust and

the extent to which any representation of it must be judged against the
criterion of respectful silence that·should be our 6rst response to it.,.
Nonetheless, l.;l1!8 himself argues ag;unst any use of the genocide as
a subject of fictional or poetic writing. According to him, only the most
literalist chronicle of the facts of the genocide· comes close to passing
the test of "authenticity a nd truthfulness:· by which both literary and
scienti6c. accounts of this event must be judged. Only the facts must
be recounted, because otherwise one lapses into figurative speech and
styliution (aestheticism). And only a chn,tiick of the facts is war-
ranted, because otherwise one opens up oneself to the dangers ofnar-
rativization and the re lativization ofemplotment,
Lang's analysis of the ]imitations of any literary .r epresentation of the
genocide and its moral inferiority to a sparse or denarrativized histori,
cal account is worth considering in detail , because it raises the ques-
tion of the limits of representation in the matter of the Holocaust in
the most extreme terms. The analysis hinges on a radical opposition
between literal and 6gurative speech, the identillcation of literary lan-
guage with figurative language, a particular view of the peculiar effects
produced by any figurative characterization of real events, and a no-
tion of ~morally extreme" events of which the Holocaust is considered
to be a rare, if not historically unique, Instantiation. Lang argues that
~h,f.',_gr,pgs:ide. quite apart from being a real event, ilfle vent that really
happened, is also a literal event, that is, an event the natute of which
permits it to serve as a paradigm of the kind of event about which we
can be permitted to spealc only in a "literal" manner.
Lang holds that 6gurative language not 011ly tums or swerves away
-.. ...,_. ' - .• 'T···- ·- --· - -
from literalness of e,wression, but also deflects attention from the
s~.tes of affairs ~\iout whicl,i i,t pretends'tp ~ak. Any [iii~; e~re~-
s1on, he argues, '¥!-J.s·to the representation of the o 1ect !Q. which tt
r:~s. First, it adds itself (that is, the specific 6gure used) and the
decision it presupposes (that is, the choi~-e to use one 6gure rathet
than another)~iguration propuces stylization, which directs attention
, to the author and.his or her creative talent. Ne,ct, figuration produces
a ~P.(!TS~tive'' on tpe referent.Qf the utterance. but in featuring one
particular perspective it necessarily closes off others. Thus it reduces
or obscures certain aspects of events·. 1~ Third, the .k ind of 6guration
needed to transform what would otherwise be only a chronicle of real
events into a story at once personalizes (humanizes) and generalizes

1,11, • Go ,gll" IJlj II 11 I

lt~II\/FR<;rr1 r:,;:1-411 ltr

i}

,I
 Hiatorical Emplotmentandthe Problem afTruth
< 45 >

the agents and agencies involved in those events. Such figuration per·
sonalizes by transforming fhose agents into the kind of intending, feel,
ing, and thinking subjects with whom the reader can identify and em-
pathize, in the way one does with characters in fictional stories. It
generalizes them by representing them as instantiations of the types of
agents, agencies, events, and so on met with in the genres of literature
and myth.
On this vie~ of the matter the imer<?Pri.ID of any lite_!'ary represen-
tation of the genocide derives from the distortions of the facfsof the
~atter effected by the use of figurative language. Over against any
merely literary representation of the events comprising the genocide
Lang sets the ideal of what a literalist representation of the facts of the
matter reveals to be their tl"IU! nature. And it is worth quoting a longish
passage from Lang's hook in which he sets up this opposition between
-figurative and literalist speech as being h omologous with the opposi-
tion between false and truthful discourse:

H. . . the act of genocide is directed against individuals who do not

motivate that act"" individuals; and if the evil represented by geno-
cide also reflects a deliberate intent for evil in principle, ,in concep-
tualizing [a] group and in the decision to annihilate it, then the in-
trinsic lirnitations of figurative discourse for the representation of
genocide come into yiew. On the account given, imaginative repre-
sentation would personalize even events that are impersonal and
corporate, it would dehistoricize and generalize events that occur
specifically and contingenily.
· And the ooavolda:ble dissonance here is evident. For a subject
which historically combines the feature of impersonality with a chl!l-
lenge to the concepti<ln of morat boundaries, the attempt to person-
alize it-or, for that matter, only to add to it-appears at once gra-
tuitous and inconsistenl gratuitous because 'it individualizes where
the subject by its nature is co.rporate; inconsistent because it sets
limits when the subject itself has denied them. The effect of the ad-
ditions is then to misrepre~ent the subject and thus-where the as-
pects misrepresented are essential-to diminish it. In asseqing the
possibility of .alternate figurative perspectives, furthermore. the
writer asserts the process of representation and his own persona as
parts of the representation-a further diminution of what (for a sub-
ject like the Nm genocide) is its essential core; beside this, an "in-
dividu~" perspective is at mo$! irrelevant. For certain subjects; it
seems, their significance may be, too broad or deep to be chanced by

1,11, • Go ,gll' 1;,q II 11 I i}

ll~II\/Fl\",ITI ['IFMll Ii ,,I

 Hayden White
< "46 >

an individual point of view, [and the significance may be] morally

more compelling-and actual-than the concept qf possibility can
sustain. Under this pressure, the presumption of illumination, usu-
ally conceded prima facie to the act of writing (any writing), begins
to lose its force.••
But literacy writing anj the kind of histotical.~~g ~t-aspi~s to
_!!ie statµ.s_~f lite,:ary writing are es~c:!ally- objectionable to Lang, be-
cause in them the ligure ofthe author obtrudes itself between the
thing to be represented and the representation of it. The figure of the
author must obtrude itself into the discourse as the agent of that act of
figuration without which. the subject of the discourse would remain
unpersonalized. Since literary writing unfulds under the delusion that
it is only by figuration that individuals can be personalized, ~the impli-
cation is unavoidable," Lang says, that "a subject . . . could be repre-
sented in ,many different ways and as having no necessary and perhaps
not even an actual basis. The assertion of alternate possibilities [of:fig-
uration] , . • suggests a denjal of limitation: no possibilities are ex-
cluded," neither the possibility of figuring a real person as an imaginary
or nonperson nor that of figuring a real event as a nonevent. ,,
It is considerations such as these that lead Lang to advance the no-
tion that the events of the Nazi genocide are intrinsically "anti-
representational,'' by which he apparently means, not that they cannot
be represented, bu!_ th!!J_hex..~ . ~r.a~~~__a!i~..of the kind of. e.v ent
.!!iat can be spo_ken about only in a factual and literalist manner. In-
deed, the genocide consists of occurrences in which the very distinc-
tion between "event" and ''fuct" is dissolved. 1• Lang writes, "If there
ever was .a 'literal' fact, beyond the possibility ofalternate formulations
among which reversal or denial must always be one, it is here in the
act of the Nazi genocide; and if the moral implication of the role of facts
needed proof, it is also to be found here, again in the phenomena of
the Nazi genocide." 17 It is the overriding actuality and literalness of
this event which. in Lang's view, warrant the effort on the part of his-
torians to represent real events "direct[ly] . . . immediately and un-
altered" in a 11\nguage purged of all metaphor, trope, and figuratiQn,
Indeed, it is the literalness of this event which indexes the difference
between "historical discourse" on the one hand and "imaginative rep-
resentation and its figurative spare" on the other: "However ii may be
conceived beyond [the distinction between history and fictionJthe fact
of the Nazi genocide is a crux that separates historical discourse from

. Go ,gll" l;!j !I ti hl.1J !

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 Hayden White•
< 48 C>

expectant, patterned, and then, having seen, as representing it in his

own writing. For the writer who writes-himself, writing becomes itself
the means of vision ot comprehension, not a mirror of something in-
dependent, but an act and commitment-a doing or making rather
than a Tellection or descriptioo," 11 Lang explicitly commends intransi-
tive writing (and speech) as appropriate to individual Jews who, as in
the recounting of the story of the Exodus at Passover, ''should tel1 the
story of the genocide as though he or she had passed through it" and in
an exercise of se.lf-identiflcation specifically Jewish in nature. 2ll But the
further suggestion is ,t hat the product of intransitive writing, which is
to say a distance,.denying discourse, might serve as a model for any
representation of the Holocaust, historical or fictional. And it is with a
consideration of the ways in which th.e notion of intransitive writing
might serve as a way of resolving many of the iss1.1es raised by the rep-
resentation of the llolocaust that I would like to conclude.
First, I would note that Berel Lang invokes the idea of intransitive
writing without remarking that Bart hes himself used it to characterize
,- the differences between the dominant style of modernist writing and
that of classical realism. 'In the e.ssay entitled ..To Write: An Intransitive
Verb?'' Barthes as'ks if and when the verb .. to write• became an intran-
sitive verb. The question is asked within the context of a discussion of
"diathesis" ("voice") in order to focus attention on the different kinds of
relationship that an agent can be represented as bearing to an action.
He points out that although modem lndo-European languages offer
two possibilities for expressing this relationship, the active and the
passive vojces, other lang1.1ages have offered a third possibility, that
expressed, for example, in the ancient Greek "middle voice." Whereas
in the active and passive voices tne subject of the verb is presumed to
be external to the action, as either agent or patient, in the middle voice
the subject is presumed to be interior to the action,.., He then goes on
to conclude that, in literary modernism, the verb .. to write" connotes
neither an active nor a passive relationship, but rather a middle one.
'Thus," Barthes says,
in the middle voice of to write, the distance between scriptor and
language diminisbes asymptotically, We could even say that lt is the
writings of subjectivity, such as romantic writing, which are active,
for in them the agent is not interior but anterior to the process of
writing: here the one who writes does not write for himself, but as if
by proxy, for an exterior and antecedent person (even if both bear

, , ,,11. • Go ,gll' IJ!i t!I ,, hi.u !

lt~II\/FR<;rr1 •l Ml .ll .. /,I
 Historical Emplotment and the Problem of Truth
< 49 >

the same name), while, in the modem verb of middle voice to write,
the subject is constituted as immediately contemporary with the
writing, being 'effected and affected by It: this is the exemplary case
of the Proustean ruu-rator, who exis4 only by writing, despite the
references to a pseudo-memory."'
This is, of course, only one of the many differences that distinguish
modernist writing &om its nineteenth-century realist counterpart. But
this difference indicates a new and distinctive way of imagining, de-
scribing, and conceptuali~ng the relationships obtaining between
agents and acts, subjects and objects, a statement and its referent-
between the literal and figurative leveJs of speech and, indeed, there-
fore, between factual and fictional discourse. What modernism envi-
sions, in Barthes' account, is nothing less than an order of experience
beyond (or prior to) that expressible in the kinds of oppo$itians we are
forced to draw (between agency and patiency, subjectivity and objec-
tivity, literalness and figurativeness, fact and fiction, history and myth,
and so forth) iii any version of realism. This does not imply that such
oppositions cannot be used to represent some real relationships, only
that the relationships between the entities designated by the polar
terms may not be oppositional ones in some experiences of the world.
What I am ,g etting at is expressed very well in Jacques 'Derrida's
explication of his notion of differance, which also uses the idea of the
middle voice to express what he means to convey. De rrida writes:
Differance is not simply active (MY more than it is a subjective ac-
complishment); it rather indicates the middle voice, it precedes and
sets up the opposition between passivity and activity . . . And we
shall see why what is designated by dijferance is neither simply ac-
tive nor simply passive, that it announces or rather recalls something
like the middle voice, that it speaks of an operation that is not an
operation, which cannot be thought of either as a piwion ot as an
action of a subject on an object·, as starting &om an agent or a patient,
or on the basis of, or in vtew of, any·of these terms. And philosophy
has perhaps commenced by distributing the middle voice, express-
ing a certajn intransitivenes$, into the active and the passiv~ voice,
-and bas itself been constituted by this repression.25
I cite Derrida as representing a modernist conception of the project
of philosophy, founded on the recognition of the differences between a
distinctively modernist experience of the world (or is it the experience
ofa distinctjvely modernist world?) and the notions of representation,

,,'"' . •Go ,glL" IJ!j II 11 I i}

ll~II\/Fl\',ITI ['IFMII ltr 11

 Hayden White
< '50 >
knowledge, and meaning prevailing ih the ihherited "realist" cultural
n endowment. And I do so in order to suggest that the kind of anomalies,
enigmas, and dead ends met with in discussions of the representation
of the Holocaust are the result of a conception of discourse that owes.
too much to a realism that is inadequate to the representation of
events, such as the Holocaust, which are themselves "modemisC in
.J nature.• The concept of cultural modernism is relevant to the discus-
sion inasmuch, as it reflects a reaction to (if not a rejection of) the great
efforts of nineteenth-century writers-both historians and 6ction-
eers-to represent reality "realistically"-where reality is understood
to me.a n history and realistically to mean the treatment, not only of the
past but also of the present. as history. Thus, for example, in Mimesis,
a study of the history of the idea of realistic representation i:n Western
culture, Erich Auerbach characterizes "the foundations of modem re-
!!!!.,m·· in the following terms; '!1ie serious treatment of everyday re-
ality. the rise of more extensive and socially i11ferior human aoups to
the posit.io;-of sub'ject matter for problematic-existential representa-
tion, on the one hand; on the other, the embedding of random i>E!rsons
and events in the general course of contemporary fiisto..!)'.. the ftuid
background-these, we believe, are the foundations of modem real•
.ism..,..,
On this view, the modernist version of the realist project could be
seen as consisting of a radical rejection of history, of reality as hi&tory,
and of historical consciowneu itself. But Auerbach was concerned to
show the continuities as well as the ditferences between realism and
modernism. Thus, in a famous exegesis of a passage from Virginie
Woolfs to the Lighthowe, Auerbach identifies among the ~distin-
gt1ishing stylistic characteristics" of that "modernism" which the pas-
sa.ge has been chosen to exemplify:

l. The
-
disappearance
-
of- ~the_"writer
t'---+
as narrato:r gf.objectiye facts;
,,_.
almost everything stated appears by way of reflection in the con-
sciousness of the dramatis personae";
2. The dissolution of any "viewpoint ... outside the novel from
which the people and events within it are observed . . :·;
@The .pred~roinance o~ a "t?ne of doubt and q~estioning"_ in ~e
narrator's interpretation of those events seemingly descnbed m
an • objective" manner;
4. The employment of such devices as "erlebte Bede, stream of con-

11,,11, . Go ,gll" l;!j t!I ti h1.1J !

ll~IIVFr..srr, 11 Ml .11 .. /,I
 Hutorlcal Emplotment and the Problem of Troth
< 51 >
sciousness, monologue interieur for ~aesthetic purposes" that
"obscure and obliterate the impression of an objective reality
completely known to the author . . .";
5. The use of new techniques for the representation of the experi-
ence of time and temporalin-. e,g, , use of the "chanc,, Q<'Plsion"
to release "processes of consciousness• ' which remain uncon-
nected to a "specf6c subject of though(: obliteration of the dis-
tinction between "exterior" and ''interior" time; and representa-
tion of "events,'' not as "successive episodes of ,(a) story," but as
random -occurrences. 18

This is as good a characterization as any we might find of what -,

Barthes and Derrida might have called the style of "middle voiced-
ness." Auerbach's characterization of literary modernism indicates, not
'
that history is no longer represented realistically, but ra_!!ter that the
conceptions of both history and realism have changed. Modernism ls
still concerned to represent reality "realistically," and It still identifies
reality with history. But th~}lisl_9,!Y whi<,h ~odernj~,l ll g>nfronts is not
the history env_isag~ by _nineteenth-ilen.tw:y realism . And this is be-
cause the social order which is the subject of this history has under-
gone a radical transformation-a change which permitted the ccystal-
lization of the toW.itarian form that Western society assumed in the
twentieth century.
As thus envisaged, cultural modernism must be seen as both a re-
ftection of and a response to this new actuality. Accordingly the affini-
ties of form and content between literary modernism and social totali-
tarianlsm can be granted-but without necessarily implying that
modernism is a cultural expression of the fascist form of social totalitar-
ianism... Indeed, another view of the relation between modernism
and fascism is possible: li_terl\!'}'~emistn was a product of an effort
to represent a hi~t< n:i~-~ality for which the older, classical realist
modes ofrepresen~ioo w~r~. i_!!,~equate, bas~~~.Y. w~ e on dif.
ferent experiences r,f h.istQ_!y or, rather, on experiences of a differ_t:_nt
~histo ." · --• - -. --
~emism was no doubt immanent in classical realism-in the way
in which Nazism and the Final Solution were immanent in the struc-
tures and practices of the nineteenth-cefitury nation-state and the so-
cial relations of production of which It W3$ a political expression.
Looked at i.n this way, however, modernism appears, less as a rejection

1,111 11 ti hi.u t
ll~I 1/FRSITI 11 Ml .1l t./,1
 Hayden White
< 52 >

of the realist project and a denial of history, than as an anticipation of a

new fonn of historical reality, a reality that ihcluded, among its suppos-
edly unimaginable, unthirtkable, and unspeakable aspects, the phe-
nomena of Hitlerism, the Final Solution, total war, nuclear contami-
nation, mass starvation, and ecological suicide; a profound sense of the
incapacity of our sciences to e~lain, let alone control ar contain these:
and a growing awareness of the incapacity of our traditional modes of
representation even to describe them adequately.
What all this suggests is that modernist mode.s of representation
may offer possibilities of representing the reality of both the Holocaust
,- and the experience of it that no other version of realism could do. In-
deed, we can follow oat Lang's suggestion that the best way to repre-
sent the ffo)ocau$t and the experience of it may well be by a kind of
"lntransitive writing" which lays no claim to the kind of realism aspired
to by nineteenth-century historians and writers. But we may want to
consider that by Intransitive writing we must intend something like
the relationship to that event expressed in the middle voice. This is
not.to suggest that we will give up the effort to represent the Holocaust
realistically, but rather that our notion of what constitutes tealistic rep-
resentation must be revised to take account of experiences that are
unique to our century and for which older modes of representation
have proven inadequate.
t' In point of fact I do not think that the Holocaust. Final Solution.
Shoah, Churban, or German genocide of the Jews is any more unrep-
resentable than any other event in human history. It is only that its
representation, whether in history or in fiction, requires the kind of
style, the modernist style, that was developed in order to represent
the kind of experiences which social modernism made possible, the
kind of style met with in any number oE modernist writers but of which
Primo Levi must be invoked as an example.
In Il Sistema pe,-icdico (The _periodic table}, Levi begins the chapter
entitled "Carbon" by writing;
The reader, at this paint. will have realized for some time now that
this is not a chemical treat!~ my presumption does not reach so
far-"ma vo!x est filible, et meme un peu profane." Nor is it an auto-
biography; save in the partial and symbolic llmjts in which every
piece of l"ritin,g is autobiographical, indeed every human work; but
it is in some .fashion a history.
rt is-or would have liked to be-a micro-history, the history of a

IJ!i II tlhl.1J !
ll~II\/FRSITI 11 Ml .11 "'•I
 Historical Emplotment and the Problem of Truth
< 53 >

trade and its defects, vfotories, and miseries, such as everyone wants
to tell when he feels close to co11cludJng the arc of his cateer and art
ceases to be long.
Levi then goes on to tell the story of a "particular" atom of •carbon"
which becomes an allegory (what he calls "this completely arbitrary
story" that is "nonetheless true,. "I will tell just one more story," he
says, "the most secret, and I will telJ it with the humility and restraint
of him who knows from the ~tart that this theme is desperate, the
means feeble, and the trade of clothing .facts in words is bound by its
very nature to fail."
The story be tells is of how an atom of carbon that turns up in a glass
ofmilk which be, Levi, drinks., migrates into a cell in liis own brain-
"the brain of me who is writing, and [how] the cell in question, and
within it the atom in question , is in charge ofmy writing, in a gigantic
minuscule game which nobody has yet described." This "game" he
then proceeds to describe In the following terms: "It is that which at
this instant, issuing out of a labyrinthine tangle of yeses and nos, makes
my hand run along a certain path on a paper, marks it with these vo-
lutes that are signs: a double snap, up and down, between two levels
of energy, guides this hand of mine to impress on this p11per this dot,
here, this one.•

huJ
,,'"' , •Go ,gJL" IJ!i 111 ,,
ll~II\/FI\Slrl 1J Ml .1l
!
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 <3>

On Emplotment: Two Kinds of Ruin

PERRY ANDERSON

Of the literature involved in the historical dispute that broke out in

West GernianY' four years ago, one work stands out in retrospect. An•
clreas !iillgruber's Tu."O &nt4 of Ruin 11ot only poses what is likely to
be the most persistent substantive problem, it also raises the most sig-
nificant formal issue to emerge from that debate. The tel!.t comprises
two essays, whose respective subjects are designated by the subtitle,
The Shattering of the Gennan Reich and the End of European ]ewry. 1
In their original versions these were written separately; the latter,
much shorter than the former, concluding a colloquium on "The Mur-
der of European Jews iil the Second World War.." But both essays are
terse, their economy not unusual in this historian.
The lint question pre5eoted by the tellt is an obvious one. The two
accounts that make up the work are not interwoven, but remain at a
distance from each other. What, then, is the force of their juxtaposi-
tion? A dissociate double narrative is a rare form of historical composi-
tion. Plutarch·s Lwes, a biographical undertaking, is perhaps the only
sustained use of it. What is its function here? If we adopt the vocabu-
lary of Metahist-0ry, the figural ground of the text is the trope termed
in classical rhetoric collatw-two objects are set in parallel, without
'b eing identified, by means of a metaphorical projection across them.
Hayden White does not discuss this particular device, but his claim
that tropes typically govern the narrative strategies of historians3 -
whatever its general validity-undoubtedly holds good here, In this
case the initiating trope commands the emplotrnent in a quite precise
sense. The conventiopal narrative of World War II represents it as a
gigantic ordeal that nevertheless ends with the reconciliation of a for-
tunate victory-that is, in the technical terms used by Frye and
White, plots it as comedy. Hillgruber's figure reverses this represen-
tation, by the gesture of an apposition which draws the fate of Ger-
many into the orbit of that of Jewry, an area of incontestal,le tragedy,
< 54 >

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< 55 >

He insists on the category of tragedy, expressly, in a significant passage

on the German beginning and ending of the war. "Whether the con-
cept of the tragic can be applied to the events that culminated in the
Second World War, may be left open; guilt and fate, legjtimate demand
and blatant injustice, tyranny and entanglement, were here inextrica-
bly mixed. But in the case of the German East in 1944-45 we ought
indeed to speakofttagic processes, fotthere it is clear that there-w\iS
no way out for the soldiers and inhabitants of those provinces."•
In The Content of the Fann White bas argued that narrativity always
involves moralization- historical emplotments invariably embodying
ethical judgments.• Plutarchian parallelism is certainly a case in point.
What is the moral effect of Hillgruber's construction? In the historians'
controversy it was assimilated by his critics to the effects of Ernst
Nolte. Both were charged with relativi7..ing the Nazi extermination of
the Jews, by extenuating comparison-in other words, a banalization
of evil. The procedures of the two were nevertheless distinct. Nolte's
work fully meets the charge. Its direct effect is to diminish the enor-
n1ity of the Judeocide; in two arguments: that it was typologically-in
quantity and quality-no worse than other great massacres of the
twentieth century; and that it was causally precipitated by the·fear and
example of Communist terror, within a European civil war. Hillgrub-
er's text makes neither of these claims. His essay on the Final Solution
asserts it to be historically unique, and ascribes it essentially to Nazi
racial doctrine.• Within the spectrum of scholarly interpretations of the
extermination program (as of the war aims) of the Third Reich, Hill-
gruber, who died in May 1989, was an intentionalist. He stressed Hit-
ler's fanatical pursuit of biological purification and territorial expansion
in the East, as the central goals-the nucleus-of Nazi ambitions at
large. 7 A certain intentionalism, by concentrating overwhelmingly on
the demonic figure of the Fuhrer himself, can tacitly exonerate any
wider sections, or longer traditions, of German society from responsi-
bility for the crimes of the regime. Hillgruber, who went out of his way
to rej~t any view that would put Nazism into a realm of pathology
outside history, was not of this kind. He dates the origins of both the
tum to virulent antisemitism and the drive for an immense empire in
the ea.st to the year 1916, when Wndenburg and Ludendorlf t()()k com•
mand of the Third Army on the Russian front,• When the fatal oppor•
tuni_ty of limitless conquest and killing came twenty-five years later, he
stresses, responsibility for them was very widely shared. In the party

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 Perry Anderson
< 56 >

and state apparatus, apolitical functionaries.as well as zealots organized

the e,rter.mination of the Jews; much larger .n umbers carried out their
deportat;ion; while "the mass of the German population," preoccupied
with the pressures and hardships of the war, predictably accepted the
unvermeidlichen.oeue nur u11t."1iinglich verschltierten Vorgang (a pro-
cess that could never be more than inadequately concealed)! It would
be difficult to find a stronger statement of far-ranging moral responsi-
bility than this. The officer corps too, Hillgru.ber argues, was deeply
implicated in the pr.ictices of exterminism unleashed by Operation
Barbarossa. From the Wilhelmine epoch on, the traditional tension
within it between an ethos of corporate honor and a duty of strict obe-
dience had shifted steadily toward unconditional fulfillment of orders;
and when the operation ended, freebooters outside the service knew
no law but violence anyway. Since 1918 German soldiers had been able
to take the ~th of the Freikorps o·r that of the Reic;hswehr under
.Seeckt. "These roads seem to have divided," Hillgru!)er grimly ob-
serves, but in the collaboration of the SS and Wehrmacht elites in the
l;lussian campaign of the forties, "they ran more or less closely back
together again." 10 Without the active or passive collaboration of'a large
part of the traditional military leadershtp of the country, in whom all
moral substance had been lost, Hitler could never have waged his un-
precedented war of al)nihilation in the East, which from the start had
combined territorial expansion and racial extermination.

It cannot therefore be said that the purpose of Hillgruber's dual narra-

tive is to normalize the Final Solution, by assimilating it to other mass
killings. Its function is rather to solemnize the German Expulsion JIS a
tragedy, too, albeit of another kind, historically adjacent to it. The dis-
tinction is not mere artifice. It corresponds, as we have seen, to two
quite different treatments of the Judeocide. Nevertheless, it remains
to be asked: within the generic category of tragedy, which in principle
might allow any number of illustrations, what is Hillgruber's specific
justification for associating the late o(the Germans in the east with that
of the Jews? His foreword asserts more than thefomial characteriza-
tion of both as national catastrophes, of which there have been many.
It argues that this particular pair "belong together." 11 What reasons
does Hillgruber give for this commonality? He stresses, in the same
sentences, that the prehistory of and responsibility for each differed.
''The murder of the Jews wa.~ exclusively a consequence of the radical

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 On Emplotment: 1wo Kindt of Ruin
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racial doctrine that in 1933 became the ideology of the state in Hitler's
Gennany." 1• The expulsion of the Germans, on the other hand, was
not simply a response to the crimes of the Nazi dictatorship; 1t also
answered to independent war aims of the Allies, formulated .1n igno•
ranee of the fuU measure of these crimes. Later in the text H illgruber
arg1.1es that in a longer-term historical perspective, the fatal idea of
wlkische Feld- und Flurbe.r einigung-,ethnic clean sweeps-can be
seen to have spread practices of organized mass killing and forcible
population transfer from the European periphery, when Armenians
and Greeks were their princi~ victims, to the whole of Europe under
Nazi domination, not le<1ving even the British or Ame.rican record in•
tact by the end of the war. 13 Critics have objected to this contextuali-
zation, but it is difficult to deny it all validity. Hillgruber does not here
equate the Judeocide with the massacres and deportations that pre-
ceded it, but views it rather as the 6nalized absolute of an inhumanity
of which they were initial or relative versions. The argument, how-
ever, is not pressed. Hillgruber's linkage of the destiny of the Germans
of the east with that of the Jews does not essentially depend on e ither
the proXjmate causes or precise character of the disasters which over•
took them; It rests instead on the ultimate consequence that issued
from them. They belon.g together, above all, for their common effect,
which was to destroy the so-called Europe of the center. Once the
middle of the continent was broken to pieces in the cataclysm of war,
Europe as a whole-was the loser. Division and subordination to the two
great powers on its wings inevitably foUowed."

How js this construction to be assessed? Much of the discussion of it

has treated Hillgruber's text as if it were more homogeneous·than it is.
In fact, it contains a number of different arguments, which require a
more discritni:nllting response. Let us look at four of them. The first is
in a .sense the most obvious. Because Hillgruber never directly com-
pares the two processes of which his title speaks, but simply juxtaposes
them under a runic adjeptive zweierlei (two kinds), the parallel narra-
tive cannot acoord them their due disproportionate weight. The result
fs inevitably to scale down, however inadvertently and Indirectly, the
nature of the Judeocide. The effect of this oblique reduction is then
11ggravated by the register in which the end of the German east is de-
scribed. Notoriously, Hillgruber declares that the presumptively Ger-
man historian is obliged to ''identify" with "the concrete fate of the

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 Perry Anderson
< 58 >
German population in the East~ and therefore also with "the desper.!te
and sacrificial efforts" of the German armed forces to protect it from
the vengeful advance of the Red Army, with its train of savageries and
deportations. 15 The notion of identification, often at work in the prac-
tice of historians, but rarely .so ingenuously professed, belongs to a
certain traditional canon of tragedy. Hillgruber's appeal to it bas been
emphatically and rightly dismissed by Wehler and Maier, in particu•
lar. 1• Behind it, almost certainly, lies biographical experience. Hill-
gruber grew up in Konigsberg, where his father was a schoolteacher
dismissed by the Nazis, and as a young man he fought in the Wehr-
mllCht's defensive campaign in East Prussia in the winter of 1945, an
event he describes as allowing two million refugees to escape across
the Baltic to Denmark_ or Schleswig-Holstein. Had Hillgruber simply
noted this personal bacli;ground as a subjective basis for his account of
the situation confronting German civilians and troops in the eastern
provinces, rather than declaring identification with them objectively
mandatory, few could have quarreled. But with this false move Hill-
gruber slipped in one step fro·m the understandable to the indefen-
sible. His const.ruction is immediately compromised. For identifica-
tion with the fate of the Jews is not demanded of the historian in the
companion essay. Perblll)s he tho\Jght that otiose.
The procedural fallacy of Hillgruber's plea for identification, never•
theless, does not in itself dispose of the substance of his analysis of the
collapse of the German east. Hillgr-uber makes three fundamental
claims here. The first concerns the final year of the German military
effort against Russia. lo June 1944 the Wehrrnacht had suffered its de-
cisive defeat of the war; when the strongest of its forces, Anny Croup
Center, was suddenly overwhelmed and bro.ken by a Soviet offell$ive
in Belorussia that cost it 350,000 casualties-four times the number at
Stalingrad-and drove a huge breach through the German front, ex-
posing E;ast l'russia to immediate attaQ.k. ;. month later the military
opposition led by Von Stauffenberg attempted to kill Hitler and over-
throw the Nazi regime. How does Hillgruber judge the attentatofjuly
20? He argues that by that date, alter so many previous op,x,rtunities
had been missed, the conspiracy was too late. The war was by now lost
anyway, and even if the coup had been successful, it would only have
led to strife and chaos in the German leadership, accelerating the
debacle on the eastern front. The motive of the Resistance plotters was
an ethic of expressive intention, designed to show the world that a

! Jlj II

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 On Emplolment: 'lwo lunds ofRuin
< 59 :>-
Germany other than that of the regime existed. By contrast, he sug-
gests, many of those soldiers and officials who fought on did so out of
an ethic of responsibility, seeking to lessen the consequences of loom-
ing Soviet conquest and vengeance for the German population in the
east. Hillgruber in effect validates their choice. The continued resist-
ance of the Wehm:iacht permitted, he argues, the escape of two million
-people across the Baltic, and the eventual surrender of some 60 per•
cent of the troops in the east-close to another two million-to the
western Allies rather than to the USSR, so saving large numbers of
further lives. From a strictly German standpoint, then, the prolonga-
tion of the war for another ten months appears &om Hillgruber's ac•
count to have been the lesser evil. lt is this suggestion, more than any
other in Zweierlei Untergang, which lacks arty historical warrant. Here
the full strength of the moral reaction against Hillgruber expressed by
Habermas and Wehler is justified. 17 For in those months German mil-
itary and civilian casualties alone amounted to between one and a half
and two million dead-half the total killed in the lighting of the entire
war-not to mention the continuing victims of Nazi terror and tbe Al-
lied casualties OJl the other side. If a co0pterfactual calculation is to be
made, the overthrow of Hitler in July 1944, by shortening the war,
would without question have saved far more lives than the continua-
tion of the fighting hypothetically saved before Germapy·surrendered.
Moreover, the surrender itself would all but certainly have been par-
tially negotiated-;15, despite the principle of unconditional surren-
der, was in practice that of Japan , in a far weaker position vis-A-vis the
Allies in August 1945 than a Goerdeler government would have been
in August 1944; to say nothing of the peace concluded by Finland in
September. Postwar sulferihg and loss lot Germany would thus also
have been curtailed.
For the terms of the peace in turn play a central role in Hillgruber's
second argument. One of the major themes of his text ls that the trun-
cation of Germany, by the transfer of East Prussian, Pomeranian, and
Silesian lands to Poland in 194S, cannot be regarded simply as geopo-
litical retribution for Nazi criminality In the east. It had already been
projected a~ a strategic goal by leadillg. Polish politicians in the inter-
war period, and was then adopted by Britain and the United States
during the war, with the aim of eradicating wh~t was widely supposed
to be, the driving force of Prussian militarism and thus putting an end
to Ce~y as a major Ellfopean power. These plans, Hillgruber ar-

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 Perry Anderson
< 60 >

gues, envisaged the expulsion of up to si:l million people from their

homes, in the name of raison d'etat, not of commubltive justice. In the
event, the nUJ'llber of those expelled at the end or the war was eleven
million, of whom probably two million perished in the process. These
deportations were-Hillgruber's account is so powerful that he does
not even need to say so-unjus.tiflable. Herein lay the final German
tragedy of the war.
The most extended attempt to rebu.t this case has been undertaken
by the English historian Richard Evans, in his general review of the
German controversy entitled In Hitler's Shadow. Evans argues that
the role of the German minorities in Poland. Czechoslovakia, and else-
where before the war had revealed their subversive potential, con-
vincing the western Allies of the need to ·remove them; that Poland
had to be oompensated in the west for its loss of territories to Russia in
the east; and that in any case, however they were brought about, "forty
years of uninterrupted peace add up to an unanswerable defense of the
arrangements reached In 1945." Evans concedes that the expulsions
were accomplished with ~appalling harshness," but maintains that "the
wholly unacceptable means by which the expulsions were effected can
and must be distinguished from the end sought by the expulsions
themselves." 18
The distinction, however, does not convince. What are the accept-
able means of forcibly dispossessing miUions of people from their
homes and driving them from their native lands? Sudeten irredentism
did provide the pretext for Hitler's aggression against Czechoslovakia;
but did it therefore warrant the wholesale deportation of the German
communities.of the area after the war? On the authority of the current
Czech president himself, it did not. Was Pol:and's extension to the
Oder-Neisse Line in the west a compensation of equivalent nature to
its contraction behind the Curzon line in the east? In the territories
lost, Poles were a minority of perhaps 30 per-cent of the population-
which was why the Entente had originally awarded them to Russia
after World War I; in the territories gained, Germans were a majority
of nearly 90 percent of the population. 1• Js the fact of subsequent peace-
in itself justifl~tion of these events? Both ethically and logically it is
quite insufficient. Peace has reigned for seventy years along Turkey's
eastern frontier, over the graves of the Armenian community: is that a
defense of them ? The population of the German east was expelled, not
massacred; but is it really the case that peace depended on sucb expul-

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 On Emplctment: 'lwo l<Jnds of Rulil
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sions- that no alternative settlement was conceivable? Allied calcula-
tionSc precluded any other outcome, it may be said; that, however, is to
confirm the force of Hillgruber's observation that not only universal
values but traditional imperial interests, capable of overriding such
values, determined the fate of Germany in 1945. ., The violences com•
mitted then were in no way commensurate with those infticted by the
Nazi state. But for the millions who lived through them, they were
suffering enough:"'
When Hillgruber was asked in a questionnaire what was his fondest
dream , and ironically replied, to live a life in Konigsberg, his answer
commands respect. Jt does not mean he thought the disappearance of
his native province reversible; but he ree;alled fot explan;ition, and
criticized, the e,cpulsions which had brought ii about. Although Hill-
gicuber's reflection is here at its most nationally self-absorbed, the is•
sues it raises are paradoxically of most contemporary concern to Jews
too-as Israeli historian.s recover, against official legends, the complex
-and painful realities of the mass ftights involved in the birth of their
country, at a time when some voices envisage their repetition in the
We.« Bank of today.

Finally, beyond the dilemmas of German soldiers or the e,cpulsions of

German farmers-, there was in Hillgrubec's view a third tragic element
in the collapse of 1945. The obliteration of the German east, he ar-
gued, broke Europe itself in two; for it had historically been Germany,
the "Land of the Middle," which had been the principal bridge be-
tween the western and eastern halves of the continent-mediating, in
innumer"'1ble economic, cultural, and political as well as military ways,
influences from beyond the Rhine into the vast area between the Baltic
and the Black seas. Once this bridge was destroyed, Europe's center
could not hold, and the continent was doomed to scission and subjec•
lion by the rival great powers on its flanks. The dismemberment of
Germany thus also spelled the overthrow of Europe as a whole in
world poJitics. It remained to be seen whether a common German na-
tionality and a Europe of the center could be reconstructed anew.as
These reflections were bitterly attacked by Habermas, who charged
them with threatening "the only reliable basis of our connexion to the
West/ and by \Vehler, who declared that they 5ubverted loyalty to the
West ~far more effectively even than the foolish talk of the Greens." 13
For Habermas and Wehler the very idea of Germany as a "Land of the

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 Perry Anderson
< 6.2 >

Middle," indeed of a Europe of the center, was to be rejected as incom-

patible with the anohorage of the Federal Republic in the west-not
just Western Europe, hut the Western world headed by tbe United
States. Modem German national identity, Habermas maintained,
could take only one legitimate form: a constitutional patriotism cen-
tered on Bonn. Anything else was a dangerous lure.
How are we to judge this exchange? Strangely, in their haste to re-
_pudiate Hillgr\lber's whole problem.itic, sut;h critics overlooked what
is in fact the main reproach to be made against his treatment of it.
Hillgruber starts by linking-programmatically-the Jewish and Ger-
man catastrophes as dimensions of the collapse of Central Europe. But
in what follows, whereas the role played by Germans in the history of
the region is directly touched u,pon more than once, that of the Jews is
not. Logically Hillgruber's argument requires some rendered account
of the contribution of European Jewry to the binding of the two halves
of the continent. That role merits the term mediation much less ambig-
uously than the German, since it was always essentially economic .and
intellectual, free of the stains of political and military domi.n ation that
marked the latter. The consequences of its removal are evident
enough-there are few more·vivid illustrations of the diS<1ppearaoce of
what a Europe of the center once ·meant than the culture of, say, post-
war Austria. Hillgruber finds no words for this. Yet to register it is not
to deny, but to ~pt, the validity of the notion of peoples and places
located in the middle of Europe, on whose fate the linkages between
its western and its eastern ends historically depended. Hillgruber's
own concern -with this theme was, of course, not simply a scholarly but
also an avowedly political one. Despite the catastrophe of World War
II, he maintains, Germany's tole in the center of Europe has not been
inevitably canceled fur all time, German national identity cannot be
divorced from the spatial setting of an undivided nation. Replying to
his critics, Hillgruber wrote. that it was necessary always to keep in
mind the prospect-the hope-that one day Germany would be re-
united again on the basis of self-determination.., In however unfore-
seeable a way, the possibility of a reconstruction of Central Europe was
still open.
In November 1989 the Berlin Wall was breach.e d, and less than a
year later German unification was at hand. Hillgruber, a conservative,
saw thin~ here more lucidly than his liberal critics. One might say
that his equations are taking shape before our eyes. The reunion of

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 On Emplotment: 'lwo Kmds of Ruin
< 69 >

Germany will indeed involve the reemergence of a Central Europe-

already in atatu na8Cendi; and the reconstruction of Central Europe
will all but certainly restore independence to Europe as a whole, in
the wider theater of the world, To have asserted these connections so
clearly on the eve of their historical realiza:tion was a not inconsider•
able achievement.
In 1989 Charles Maier described Hillgruber's emphasis on Ger-
many's mediating role between western and eastern Europe as ~the.
geopolitics of nostalgia."tll The phrase looks less appropriate now.
Maier's discussion of the problems of national identity raised in the
course of the German historians' debate nevertheless rem;lins the
most mteresting expl4;11;1tion of the issues at stake. Criticizin,g concep-
tions of the '1and of the middle," he argues that national fdentiiy
should in any case not be viewed simply as a deposit of successive
historical experiences. It ought perhaps to be rethought as something
closer to the old idea of national character-an idea especially strong,
he notes, in America, from the time of Cr~vecoeur onward: a character
in good part amenable to nonhlstorical,, quasi-anthropological analysis.
To this end M.uer invokes Levi-Strausss well-known scouting of any
special value in history."" The character or identity of an individual is,
of course, always something relatively plural and unstable-how much
more so is that of a nation ? But if the concept of a national identity is at
all negotiable, and its elements can be held to exceed the imprints of
historical time, what are the most plausible further constituents l'
Surely not the biological substrata of race detected by Gobineau nor
the involuntary uniformities of the human mind divined by Levl-
Strauss, but the coordinates of geographical space. These are durable
and material enough, in most cases, to possess an obvious specific effi-
cacy. The logic of Maier's argument paradoxically points back to the
very- thematic he initially discounts. German national identity, ifit ex•
ists, must in part be a function of German territorial position. It is
because the idea of the "land of the middle" cor:responds to certain
objective realities that it was a polemical mistake of the liberal left in
Germany to allow ronservatives to make it their own. There the
Greens showed better sense.

Scrutiny of Zweierlei Untergang reveals, then; a series ofcomplexities.

Hillgruber was a nationalist historian, but he was not an apologist of
national socialiSl'II. The device of coUatio does not in itself dictate a

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 Perry Anderson
< 64 >
diminution of the Final Solution. Nor does Hillgruber's treatment of
the destruction of European Jewry as such contribute to one. But any
Juxtaposition of Jewish and German fates demands an exceptional-
moral and empirical-delicacy that was beyond the compass of this
historian. In its absence, the laconic cannot but seem the l.nsensible.
For its part, colored by personal memory, H illgruber's obituary of the
German east is of divided -validity too-its counterfactual assessment
of the conspiracy of July 1944 groundless, its factual verdict on the
expulsions of 1945- 1947 well grounded. Finally, Hillgruber's projec-
tion of Central Europe as the common scene, and victim, of the trage-
dies he related signally fails to situate the Jews historically within it;
but, political In impulse, h is projection captures the current position
of the Germans, and some of the possible consequences of that posi-
tion, remarkably well. All of this, in its mixture of acuteness and ob -
tuseness, fallacies and foresights, is quite normal for a historian.
Abnormal, however, is the subject. lf we ask what are the limits of a
historical representation of Nazism and the Final Solution, through the
prism of Hillgruber's work the answer is surely thi.s , First, certain ab-
solute limits are set by the evidenc.e. Denial of the existence of
either-the regime or its crimes-ls plainly ruled out. No ·s uch issue
arises in this case. Counterfactuals are also subject to control by the
rules of evidence, which will eliminate some of them, as they do in this
case: narrative strateg,es, to be credible, always operate within exte-
rior limits of this kind . Second, however, such narrative strategies are
in tum subject to a dQuble interior limitation. On the one hand, cer•
tain kinds of evidence preclude certain sorts of emplotment- the Fi-
nal Solution cannot h~orically be written as romance or as comedy.
On the other hand, any generic emplotment has only a weak determi-
native power over the selection of evidence. Hillgruber could legiti•
mately d epict the end of East Prussra as tragic; that choice, however,
permitted b y the evidence, did not in itself dictate the series of partic-
ular empirical judgments that make up his account of it. There is a
large gap between genre and script. Other divergent, tragic accounts
could be written of the same events-and these would .n ot be aesthet-
ically incommensurable fortns, or so many 6ctions, but epistemolog(-
caUy discriminable attempts to reach the truth. The typical measure of
such discrimination is not the presence of suggestio fal.si, very rare in
modem historiography; but the degree of $11ppres8io oeri-that is,
representation omitted rather than misrepresentation committed. ln
 On Emplotment: 1wo /(jnd, of Ruin
< 65 >

history, as in the scien<:es, the depth of a truth is us-ua11y a function of

its width-how m-uch of the evidence it engages and explains,
Narratives, then, are never plenipotentiaries over the past. The
modem skepticism that would reduce history to rhetoric has a number
of sources. It would be a mistake to read these selectively-as if, for
example. one could trace in them principally a fascist ancestry or a
leftist progeny. That would be to satisfy oneself too ea.tjly. American
pragmatism, a liberal philosophy, was earlier and more inftuential than
Italian activism in diffusing the notion of what today are sometimes
called "'truth-effects." It was Claude Uvi-Stra11$s, on the moderate
right, who was the first theorist of the incommensurability of historica1
codes, each of them arbitrary in relation to the others,.., There is good
sense in Gramsoi's remark that in intellectual battles, the only lasting
victories are those won over the -adversary at his strongest. For those
who conceive representation as a responsibility, rather than a velleity
or (as in the successor doctrine of Michel Foucault) an impossibility,
the advice remains sound.

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 <4>

History, Counterhistory, and Narrati-ve

AMOS FUNKENSTEIN

Htstory and Narrative

It is one thing to call to mind the basically narrative character of history
writing as an antidote against the 'hypertrophy of analysis. "Historia
scribitur ad narrandum, non ad probandum," Burckbardt said in one
of his letters, quoting Quintilian, and added: "aber w-eon sie daoo
du~h ihre blosse Wahrheit der Darstellung beweist, so h~ sie um so
grosseren wert." 1
But it is another matter altogether to claim that there is nothing to
history but narrative; that history as res gestae collapses completely
into history as narratio rerum gestarum. Now, there is one sense In
which this claini is true-namely, in that the distinction between
events and the narrative reflecting them is an untenable distinction, or
at least not an absolute one. There is another sense in which this claim,
taken to the extreme, is preposterously false: namely, if we take it to
mean th.it there is no criterion by which to discern a true from a false
narrative, or a pre<:ise from a sloppy one; that only literary or socia1
categories are applicable in judging historical narratives. Hayden
White, whose work I admire, has more or less taken this position.• I
want'lO take some time, before introducing my theme proper, to argue
against it.
There is, indeed, -a sense. in which history, beginning even with per•
sonal history, is eo ipso narrative. My acting in the world-be it the
social world or the world of nature which always is "humanized
nature" 3-is the continuous plotting of a narrative. Acting in the world
involves and construes rl'!Y identity continuously, and my identity is a
narrative. In the very same sense in which telling my narrative is a
s~h act, my actions, my involvement with the world, are an act of
speech, a building up of a continuous story. "lch wiinschte ich ware
eine Beethove.nsche Symphonic oder sonst etwas, was geschrieben
< 66 >

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 History, Counteml.ttory, and Nai"ratioe
< 67 >
ist,~ said the young Rosenzweig in one of his letters; "das geschrieben
werden tut web."• It is this dialectic of memory and history, self-
identity and purposeful action, which Hegel had In mind in a famous
passage in his uPhilosophy of History,'' in which he•said that the word
hmory has both a subjective and ·an objective meaning. "J.t means both
the res gestae and the hiatoria rerom gestarom, and it is no coinci-
dence," because there is no history without historical mll'mory.
Are the narrativeswe tell-by word or a.ct-arbitrary? Neurologists
such as Oliver Sacks tell us that some patients with Korsakov disease
exhibit an uncanny fabulatory ingenuity. In rapid suocession, the pa-
tient changes identities from a butcher to a pastor to a scientist; every
identity is narrated with convincing details , a "thiclc description'' of
sorts.
But Mr. Thompson, o.nlyjust out of the hospital-his Korsakov had
exploded just three weeks before, when he developed a high fever,
raved, and ceased to recognize all his family- was still on the boil,
Wl!S still in an almost frenzied confabulatory delirium (of the sort
50metimes called "Korsakov psychosis;" though it ts not really a psy-
chosis at all), continually creating a world and self, to replace what
was continually forgotten and lost. Such a frenzy may call forth quite
brilliant powers of invention and fa.ncy-a veritable confabulatory
genius- for such a patient must literally make himself (and his
world) up every moment We have, each of us, a life-story, an inner
narrative-whose continuity, whose sense, is our live.s. It might be
said that each ofus con.s tructs and lives a "narrative," and that this
narrative is us, onr identities.•
You may object that Sacks's Mr. Thompson, like similar cases dis-
cussed by Luria, was de6cient precisely because he could not stick to
one narrative. If he. could have, who could have told whether it was
autbe11tic? Yet schi~phrenics often do stick to a fa4e identity. lt is false
because it does not alJow them an orientation within our world, or
even within theirs. Reality is absent both from the confabulated nar-
r,1.tive sequences of Korsakov patients and from the continuous false
identities of schizophrenics. In the 6rst case reality leads to indiffer-
ence (" equation), in the second to anxiety; in both it is a contrived,
false meaning imposed on the world. Narratives are historical in that
they are not arbitrary, inasmuch as they are true , t'hat is to say, histori,
cal. The "truth~ or a uthenticity of a historical narrative-if we strip off
the subjective categories and points of view of the narrator-is, like

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 Amos Funkenstein
< 68 >

the je ne ,gais quoi of eighteenth-century aesthetic theoreticians, or like

K;int's "intuition" (Aruchauung). evasive, incapable of isolation, yet
ever present, triggered-we do not know how-by "things in them-
selves" we cannot de6ne except to say that they-are, and are of neces-
sity. Troeltschstill spoke of the unoertilgbarerRutder Aruchaulichkeit
without which no historical narrative is authentic.• Beyond the modes
of narrative, the mythopoeic intensity of the narrator, the intervening
subconsciousness and superego, there is also that which can never be
isolated yet is all-pervasiv~ the constraints of reality,
At this point you may accuse me of confusing form with content.
Historical accounts do indeed choose a certaih mode of narrative-
romance, tragedy, comedy, satire-which is sustained by certain
tropes (metaphor, metoqomy; syoecdoobe, irony) that correspond to a
quatemity of ideological stands or of "world hypotheses t But all of
this, you will argue, has nothing to do with the quaestio facti-only
with the cate.gories by which we perceive and order the facts. For "un-
like literary fictions . . . , historical works are made up of events that
exist outside the consciousness of the writer."' This would be, on your
part, an illicit tum in the argument. Form and content, imposed cate-
gories and received facts, cannot easily~not at all-be separated.
White's Metahistory bas had such a wide echo precisely because our
choice of a "form of narrative" dictates the facts we select to fit into it.
Indeed, in a sense it creates the facts, Facts are not atomic entities out
the.r e which declare their own importance; such was the medieval view
of historical facts which, I will show, led to the conviction that the eye-
witness is the best historian, This naive view of historical facts was
replaced, starting in the seventeenth century, with the growing insight
that "facts· gain their meaning and even their very factuality from the
context in which they are embedded, -a context reconstructed solely by
the historian, whose narrative makes and shapes the fact. "Historical
events" have no unequivocal referent or denotatum-unlilce tables,
crocodiles, or even the number two (which refers to the set of all sets
of two numbers). Herein lies the core of the celebrated hermeneutical
circle ; The narrative does not simply "represent" facts, it participates
in their making. Its form matters.
Let me explicate what I mean by reality. I do not advocate naive
realism, nor a theory of truth as adequalto rei ad intellectum, "'The
real" is spoken of ih two contradictory yet complementary senses. In
one sense, real is that which escapes our control, which forces itself

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 History. Counterhistory, and Narrative
< 69 >

upoQ us whether or not we ·welcome it; in another, real is only that

which we make relevant, which we constroct. manipulate: verum et
factum convertunfur. It is this dual, dialectical nature of the real which
Fichte tried to capture and tame in his "original insight" into the na-
ture of the self-setting •1.~ What we call a "fact~ is. inasmuch as it is
independent of us, made by t1s-and first and foremost among these
facts is the self. Our memory, our narrative of the self (and hence of all
that is nonself) is•both given and constructed, both already constructed
and constructing. Its authenticity is not arbitrary, nor, does it reside lo
mere fonnal consistency or, alternately, in the mere natrative. Only
because I recognize the con.strain! of"reality" can I manipulate "it."
l do not think th11t the metahistorical debate between "realists" and
"narratologists • dilfers in principle from similar debates in philosophy
of science between "realists• and "conventionalists" (or instrumental-
ists) or, in general, from epistemological debates that intend to clarify
the constraints and the freedom of the interpreter of nature, of history,
of texts. it is wholesome to call into question the absolute dividing ilne
between "facts· and "hypotheses," "text" and "context," sef by positiv-
ists old and new. It is also wholesome to realize that this process does
not make facts into arbitrary fictions of the mind, even if you are an
instromentalist or a neo-Kantian.•
But rather than losing myself in epistemo.logical distiJJctions, let me
try to exemplify the issue by drawing your attention to a form of histor-
ical narrative (and, eo ipso, action) which is more often than not an
inauthentic narrative and a pernicious action , destructive and .self-
destructive. I shall call it, for the sake of brevity, the coonterhistory.•

Counterhistory: Ancient to Early Modem

Counterhistories form a specific genre of history written since an-
tiquity; it is curious that they have not sooner been identifled as s\Jcb
in treatises on historiogfl!.phy. Th.e ir function is polemical. Their
method consists -of the systematic exploitation of the. adversary's most
trusted sources against their grain-dae Geschichte gegen den Strich
kiimm4ln. 10 Their alm is the distortion of the adversary's .self-image, of
his identity; through the deconstruction of his memory.
A -counterhistory 1n this precise sense was once Manetho's hostile
account of Jewish history, based largely on an inverted reading of B1b-
lical ptisages: Manetho had, so to speak, turned the Bible on its

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 Amos Funkenstefn
< 70 >
head. 11 Does not the Bible admit that the people of Israel lived se-
cluded in the Egyptian province of Goshen, because "breaking bread
with them was an abomination in the eyes of Egyptians"? And that
Moses grew up an Egyptian nobleman: thaf a riffr.iff .(asaf11Uf>-a
"mixed multitude• (erev rav)-accompanied the Hebrews on the 8ight
out of Egypt; that they conquered O.maan by brute force, driving out
its Indigenous inhabitants? Indeed, the Bible admits that much, be-
cause-here begins Manetho's deoonstruction-the Hebrews started
as an Egyptian leper colony, secluded and despised, until they called
to their aid the (Semitic) tribe of the Hyksos, and established an abso-
lute reign of terror Oose-ph's?) for over a century. Eiq>elled l>Y Jachmes
I, the Hyk:sos, together with tho$e outcasts, were led by a renegade
Egyptian priest named Os,saersiph Ooseph? Moses? or both?). He gave
them a constitution that was, in all respects, a plagiarized, inverted
mirror image of Egyptian mores. 1J
The last point was one of the most repeated topol in the ancient anti-
Jewish polemics. The Jews in antiquity enjoyed religious and political
autonomy-to the point of exemption from the cult of dious Caesar-
because they ·were regarded and esteemed as an ancient people with
an old, venerable, home-grown constitution. The Romans did not seek
to destroy what was old and venerable: they loathed hom;ne., rerum
novarum cqpidi, Thi.s is why Jewish communities remained collegia
licita13 while Christianity, by its own admission not only Jewish .(which
was bad enough, though a tolerable evil) but on top of that Judaism
with a new dispensation, was persecuted. Manetho's propaganda was
the archetype of many similar claims that the Jews are neither a genu-
ine nation (gen.,) nor is their constitution original: "Moses . .. intro-
duced new Jaws contrary to those of the rest of mankind. Whatever is
sacred to us, is profane to them; and what they concede, we negate as
sacrilege.~ A millennium and a half later, John Spencer, whose De le-
gil,u., et moriblu /ud.tuort4m is often praised as a fust antecedent to a
modem, historical-<:<>mparative science of religion , still wlUlted to
show the same thing- th3t nothing in Jewish law is original, that all of
it is an inverted mirror image of Egyptian law;,. There was again,
among humanists and puritans. too much admiration for the ancient
res publica iudaeonnn, manifested by the proliferation of seven-
teenth-century treatises with this title.
B3Ck to Manetho's· counterhistory, which continues with its nana-
tive of the Hebrews· conquest of Canaan by force (again, an appropria-

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 Histort;, Counterhiatory, and Narrative
< 71 >

tion of the biblical narrative) and establishment there of a common-

wealth worthy of former lepers and outcasts, a constitution calculated
to perpetuate the law of their origin-a rebellious spirit nourished by
the hatred of the human race (misanthror,ia, odium humarai geraens).
Indeed, Manetho's description of the way in which outcasts preserve
their sense of value by constructing a (sometimes pathological) coun-
terideology; interpreting their discrimination as a sig11 of special cho-
senness, is strongly reminiscent of what some modem sooiologists of
knowledge describe as the fonnation of a • counteridentity.~ The hypo-
thetical case discussed by Berger and Luckmann is, by curious coinci-
dence, a leper colony. I&
Other examples of counterhlstory come to mind. That Roman his-
tory, read in malam partem, was not a story of justice and world pacifi-
cation, was a point not lost on Ro.man authors. They gew of aoct!sa-
tions that Romans •create a desert and call it peace" (,olitudinem
faciunt, pacem appellant). 16 Augustine's De Civitate Dei wove many
such traditions into a veritable counterhistory of Rome. Cicero had
once written his De Republica with the intent to show (against his bet.
ter knowledge) that the history of Rome is the history of the gradual
enfoldment of iustitia .. Augustine used the same and other Roman
sources to show, on the contrary, that it is the history of greed, of •lust
for power (lfbido dominandi). Lust fot power may be necessary if a
semblance of peace is to be established among humans post lap,um;
but it is neither Just nor ever stable. Remota iustitia, quid ,unt imperia
nisi magna latrocinia/lL7 Justice exists only in the Civita, Dei-both
the one in heaven and its projeoted counterpart on earth, the civit08
Viii peregrinaru in terns. There is no bridge or link between the latter
and the earthly city, the civitas terreneai there is only a coincidence of
important events in both (Abraham/Ninus= Nimrod; Jesus/Augustus),
which heightens the sense of contrast between them. Augustine, in
other words, not only wrote a counterhistory (in the sense of historia
reromgestarom): he also perceived the progress ( proces$Us) oftbe city
of Cod as a counterhist'ory (j,:i the seose of re, gestae) to the history of
the worldly city (civitllS terrena);' 9
A oounterhistory was also the seventh-oentury(?) Jewish "Narrative
of the History of Jesus" (Sefer Toldot Yeshu).'" Again, it employed the
sources of the adversary-in this case, the Gospels-in order to tum
Christian memory on its head. Jesus, it tells us, was the son of an illicit
affiiir. He became a magician, having acquired by ruse possession of

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 Amos Funkenstein
< 72 >
the explicit divine names (shem hameforosh); and thus -he turned into
a powerful seducer of 1he unlearned mult;itude (mem umediah). The
Jewish legal establishment (the Sanhedrin), at the end of its wits, knew
no better remedy than to have one of its own ranks volunteer to in61-
trate the heretical movement in disguise and destroy it. The name of
this hero was Judas Iscariot. The Gospels' heroes tum into villains, its
villains into heroes.
A later continuation of the Sefer Toldot Yuhu attends to the early
history of the Church. Again the Jewish establishment, it tells us, was
searching for a strategy to separate unequivocally Christians and Jews.
.A heroic rabbi, Petrus by name, volunteered to pretend to be a Chris-
tian. Once he became a leader, he persu!l<ied Christians that separa-
tion from Judaism was in the best interest of their new religion. It
seems that the fabulator confused the roles of Peter and PauL
There are counterimages, both ancient and modern , that avoid the
negative. In Herodotus' image of Egypt. everything is done the oppo-
site way from that among the Hellenes; Tacitus' image of the Germans
was written as a critique of his own society.., Neither seeks to destroy
the self-identity of its adversarial narrative. But Manetho, Augustine,
and the author of the Sefer Toldot Yeshu did. What was the methodical
rationale, the self-justi6cation, for such an inversion of the adversary's
account (evemo)?

Changes in Early Modern Times

Elsewhere I have tried to show in what sense the ancient or medieval
notion of"htstorical fact" differs from ours. The premodem perception
of historical fact was atomic: facts of history-such that are digna me-
moria-are immediately recognizable, distinct, and accessible to the
truthful eyewitness, without need of interpretation; wherefore the
eyewitness, if only truthful, is the best historian ("apud veteres nemo
conscribebat historiam nisi interfuisset et ea qtiae conscribenda sunt
vidisset," said lsidor of Seville)." .. Liter11r and "historical" meanings of
a text were synonymous to the medieval exegete, who recognized a
deeper sense only in the theological perspective (spirilualls inteUigen-
tia). u And since events digna memoria were evident and always re-
corded, world history is a continuous claim of eyewitness reports.%!
What if the eyewitness Hes? Why then, only then, it Is the officium
of the late r historian to debunk the narrative-indeed, to create a

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 History, Counterhlatoty, and Narrative
,; 73 >

counterhistory out of the- falsified narrative., guided by the assumption

that every good lie contains a germ of truth. Ancient and medieval
historiography-or rather, historical methodology-obeyed strictly
the principle of the excluded middle: .a story is either true or false;
tertium non datur: To say (as we do) that an accQunt, either of an eye-
witness or of a remote narrator, is subjectively true yet objectively dis-
torted, that everyone is a captive of his individual, lQCal. or temporal
"point of ,view• and preconception..-to say all that, as we do, is to
recognize that the "historical fact" is not at all self-evideJJt, that it needs
interpretation, that it obtains its meaning &om a context which the
historian, always caught in a herme,neutical circle, must reconstruct.
History has ceased, for us, to be a aimpln narratio geirtarom.· it has
become eo ipso interpretation subject to time, place, and the point of
view of the interpreter. Such has been the insight advanced by human-
ists since the sixteenth century, when it induced a veritable revolution
in philology, biblical studies, legal interpretation (the mos gallicua'f"
and., finally, historical studies proper.
The genre of countethistory that we have identified as a well•
defined, literary-polemical genre in antiquity and in the Middle Ages
likewise changed with the "historical revolution" of the sixteenth cen•
tury. It focused on an explicit reinterpretation, rather than an inverted
exploitation, of sources. Consider, for eJtample, the pietist Gottfried
Arnold's counterhistory of the Church, first published in 1698...
Protestant historiography was driven, from its beginning, toward
the construction of a counterhistory of the Church. It called to its aid
the new art of philological-historical critic'ism cultivated already by
generations of humanis.ts. Gottfried Arnold's history of Christilll!ity
was such a critical counterhistoty, eJtamining the soul"Ce-$ directly
r11ther thlUI, as in our earlier e11amples, referring to them obliquely and
surreptitiously. He called it -an Unpar-teyuche Kirchen und Ketzerge-
Khichte, but he is hardly impartial when it comes to deciding between
Church and .deviants. Paul's words, "Heresies are necessary~ (opertet
ut haereses es.se),"' acquired even in the Middle Ages historical-
providential connotations: heresies were seen as a providential chal-
lenge to which the Church. inspired by the Holy Spirit, answered by
the development of dogmas and rejuvenation through new orders.
Heresies, like Goethe's Mephisto, are • ein teil von jenem Ceist, der
stets das Bose will doch stets das Cute scludlt." Gottfried Arnold
tumed this evl!luation on its head, Sectarians and so-called heretics

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ll~I \/FR'ilTI
 J\mos Funkenstein
< 74 >

were the only historical vestiges of Christianity during the long night
of its decay, of the eclipS'e of truth. Examining the sources, he could
show that, whenever the corrupt establishment defined a movement
as heretical, it did so because it abhorred being reminded of the true,
spiritual, nondogmatic, and nonceremonial origins of Cbristianity, that
Ohristiantty was internal and apolitical by the very •scandalous" para-
digm of its founder. Arnold, theµ, went back od Jonte, both in the
historiographic and in the rel.igious sense of the word, and he meant
his "history" to be an incentive for all Christians to do the same. He
did not seek reason in history: rather, he put his trust in the continu-
ous, subterranean instances of true lnnerlichkeit, of defiance of the
world and its wisdom, which always was the trademark of martyrs and
sectarians alike. Jesus himself stood trial as a heretic, 18 The Htrue" sa-
cred history of Christianity was a secret private history-even after the
age of Luther. The public history of Christianity was, by contrast, a
secular history-a history of involvement with this world (aaei;ulum),
of entanglement with power and greed: hence, a history of a falsifica-
tion,

Counlf!rhisJory in Man;
Arnold expressed, as did most early Protestant thinkers, a disdain of
history, seen b11$ically a.s a history of human deprivation and error.
Still, his use of history is critical. Historical thought during the En-
lightenment was far more optimistic, but history still served basically
as a foundation of ahistorical argume.nts about human nature. With the
triumph of the historical dimension ·of discourse in the nineteenth cen-
tury came also a different mode of counterhistory, of which Marx is an
~cellent example.
Every aspect of Marx's· thinking and planning is dominated by the
now all-pervasive historical discourse. At the very core of his economic
theory lies the realization that the 1aws of the market" are historical,
rather th$!1 natural, laws, There exists no natural drive to barter in
humans, nor do commodities own a unature n dictating their (exchange)
value (the *fetishiz.ation of the ware''). Both reflect historical conditions
of social relations shaped by modes of production. If Hobbes changed
the course of modem political theory by systematically denaturalizin,g
the state-it is a human artifact, not a result of social inclinations-

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 Hl&tory, Counterhmory, and NarraJive
< 75 >

Marx did the same to the homo ecOflOIIUCtl$, except that his interpre•
talion presupposes a coherent historical narrative.
Marx's interpretation ofhistory is in a sense a protracted exercise in
counterhistory. Bourgeois historians (seen from the Marxist-even
&om Marx's-perspective) tell the history of modem times, since the
rise of the bourgeoisie, as a history of growing freedom, hum.an rights,
equality before the law. The driving force of this progress is the pursuit
of economic self-interest, whereby "private vices" generate of them-
selves "public virtues."• The French Revolution, with its declaration
of the droits de l'homme and equality before the law, legitimized the
achievements of the third estate; the modem national state is its fortu-
nate outcome. Standing above all parties and interest groups, the state
only watches that individual; healthy antagonisms do not grow out of
the rules of the game.:,o
But this "political emancipation," the liberal ideal of the bourgeoisie,
only appears to be also a human emancipation; in reality even the cel-
ebrated drolls humains epitomize the opposite. They guarantee the
maximal exploitation of the dispossessed, they strip the individual of
all bondages-feudal or corporative-so as to make him free to sell
hlmself, that is to say his labor, everywhere as a commodity in the
market. The modem state just appears to stand above the parties: in
reality; it ensures maximal ;mtagoni7.ation, the atomiution of society.
The civil society is indeed a society in which everything, including
human labor, has become a commodity obeying the "laws of the mar•
ket"; the logic of capitalism demands that this oommodity be there in
superabundance, forming "the reserve army of capital" out of these
atomized, seemingly free individual$. The social paradox latent in
every commodity-that if it purports to represent abstract labor, then
it capnot represent abstrac.t labor-beeomes transparent, explosively
so, when labor itself turns into a oommodity.31 "Private vices~ lead to
catastrophe rather than to a stable, uniform increas.e of wealth. The
dialecticofWesen and Erschel11ung, the theme of Hegel's Wesenslogik.
dominates Marx's analysis of the state, of commodity, of history.32 Es-
sence turns eo ipso into appearance, and vice versa. This saves Marx's
counterhistory from being merely the revision of history &om the
point of view of the oppressed, a revision worthy of utopian socialists.
Rather his is the account of the "slave~ inevitably becoming, through
bis labor, the true "master"-and of his revolutionizing history simply

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 Amos Funkenstein
< 76 >

by knowing it. Marx truly turned the bourgeois vision of state and his-
tory on its head-ot back on its.feet.

Nazism and Revisionism

Let me move to my last examples of countethistory, cum ira et cum
Btudio. All antisemitic ideologies since the end of the nineteenth cen•
tury have this in common, that they are directed less against tradt-
tional, orthodox Jews who can be recognized as Jews, and much more
against Jews who are well -acculturated and assimilated. Assuming, as
antisemitic ideologues do, that being Jewish is an unobliterable, indel-
ible, innate character, the assimilated Jew deceives, in the best case,
both himself and others; or, in the worst case, his assimilation is a c:on-
spiratorial pretense, whose purpose is to undermine the healthy tex-
ture. of society from within. Even extreme antisemites until the 1930s
did not go beyond the suggestion to undo the emancipation, to return
the Jews from the status of citizen to the former status of mere sub-
jects. This pro~ was thoroughly implemented during the first
seven years following the Nazi Machtergreifung in Germany.
But the National Socialist ideology contained the germ of a much
more ruthless • solution of the Jewish question." In its dramatic-
apocalyptic reading of world history, Jews were the hypostatized ne,ga-
tioo of sanity, creativity, health, and order, a secularized ailtichrist de-
scribed in hygienic-pseudobiological terms. If other "races," say the
Slavs (or, indeed, the Semites}, were subnuman (Untennenschen), the
Jews throughout history were unhuman (Unmenschen), 11 counter.rare
to the HerrenrtUse~ a vermin., a bacillus. To have exterminated them
would even be worthy of a German catastrophic defeat, Hitler said at
the end of the war.
Now, observe how this constructed counteridentity of Jews was
made into a reality in the concentration camps. The Jews, -themselves
lice in the Nazi terminology, had to be dellced (entlaust) entering the
camp, they were made into vermin, deprived of identity; dehumanized
even in their own eyes, and finally exterminated as lice. Symbolism
and reality become almost one, e~actly as in IC.a.fka's Metamorphosis,
Indeed, although many of IC.a.fka's texts deal with the dissolution of
identity, none addresses it so-explicitly as the Metamorphosis, in which
Gregor Samsa wakes up one day to find himself "ean riesen Ungezie•
fer.""" At first, his physical and mental behavior is still more human,

-•L~ 1131 I 1

11/,ll IFIJ' ~ ,JC ~41, t-ilr",f-' l•I

 H"tory, Counterh"tory, and Narrative
< 77 >

slowly, gradually, through a subtle interaction between his family and

himself, be acquires mote and more the mentality of a bug, and he
dies like one. At the end of the story we discover that, in .a sense, he
was always a bug, even before the narrative commenced: the family,
seemingl'y once dependent on him totally, gets along splendidly with-
out him . He always was superfluous; ubecoming'' a bug was no coinci-
dence after all, but rather the continuous tran.s lation of a symbol or
metaphor into reality.
Earlier we attended to the sense in which history (as res gestae) is
ipso facto narrative: namely, inasmuch as deeds. no less than words,
are the continuous construction of the self-identity of agents-be the
agents individuals or collectives.34 The systematic destruction of self-
identity of inmates in concentration camps was also the attempt to de-
stroy their narrative of themselves. Inasmuch as the history of a period
ultimately depends on the identity of its agents, the reconstruction of
a coherent narrative of the experience of the victims, individual and
collective, is an almost insurmountable task, much harder than the
refutation of the collective counterhistory that Nazi ideology tried to
reify.
An off.shoot of the Nazi counterhistory still lives in the various
apologetic•polemical exercises known as "revisionistR literature. It is a
name given (inte r alia) to a distinct group of writings-books, articles,
pamphlets-that deny the facticity of the Nazi genoeide of the Jews ....
Of the various examples of counterhistories, this denial is the most
recent .and vicious. The writings qualify as counterhistories· par excel-
lence, not only because the revisionists deny that the victim is a Vi<7
tim, but because most of them also accuse-explicitly or implicitly-
the victim of being the perpetrator, and this in two ways.
L Some authors, while denying the eXistence of exterm.i nation
camps, do not deny the existence of KZ camps: now in those, they say,
Jews (K.apos) did kill other Jews in large numbers. This is all there is to
the legend of mass killings. If there were any, they were perpetrated
by the Jews themselves (the assumption being that they were given
genuine autonomy). Of course there have also been accidental civilian
casu$lties-among Jews just as among every population, Why had the
Jews to be uconcentrated" to begin with? Because they declared war
on Germany (rather than vice versa), be it with the general economic
boycott of the thirties, be it in a letter of Weizmann of 1939 in which
he said that Jews are at war with Germany.

II~ I 11 I

11/,/i IFIJ' ~ ,)c f.'I, t-1' ,-, f l•I

 Amos Funlcenstein
< 78 >

2. The victims become perpetrators also ex post facto.: the legend of

genocide was a world conspiracy of Jews-some revisionists add-in
order to enable them to gain a state after the war. The world conspiracy
of Jews is a motif that has continued in anti-Jewish European litera-
ture, as I have shown elsewhere, since the twelfth century. Then and
there, J believe J have proven, Judaism lost the image it had hitherto
in Christian eyes of an anachronistic yet transparent reltgion-" nolu-
erunt ipsi Judaei mutan cum tempore"""~ and acquired, instead, the
image of a religion adhering to the Old Testament only seemingly,
while jn fact committed in secret to a new, satanic law ("pugnasti tanto
tempore diabolicis libris divinos libros"- Peter the Venerable). 07
Some added, a religion committed also to the shedding of Christian
blood-every year their rabbis convened in secret and chose another
community to shed Christian blood on Passover, for otherwise they
believed they would not be redeemed (Thomas of Monmouth}. 311 It is
one continuous tradition which leads from here to the Protocols of the
Elders of Zion; its latest version ts the revisionist account of the Jewish
anti-German character assassination-a spiritual genocide, as it were.
ffow does one deny a fact? By arguing it away. Argument (rather
than narrative) is the preferred discourse of revisionists. Two modes of
argument prevail in particular, and Pierre Vidal-Naquet has e xposed
them brilliantly. lt is e ither a reductio ad impossibile or an argument
from analogy. The KZ camps, we are told, could not have been death
camps; the alleged gassing chambers, for example, were so con-
structed that, had they contained poison gas, it would have poisoned
everything for miles around. Analogy is used, for example, when we
!ll'e admonished to remember that already once, during World War I,
rumors of German atrocities were cultivated which proved after the
war to have been widely exaggerated for propaganda purposes.
Almost every facet of this revisionist literature is present in another
recent brand of revisionist literature, the attempt to deny the genocide
of Armenians during World War l . It is hard (and redundant) to estab-
lis.h who influenced whom; minds intent at similar tasks argue alike.
Again we are told that at best there were a few local pogroms blown
out of proportion. the deportations were understandable jn view of
the Armenian insurrection at Van; besides, they were ordered for the
Armenians' own benefit. for they ·l ived along the exposed shores of
Syria. The myth of genocide is kept alive by hopes that it will prompt
the bad conscience of the nations of the world to grant indepertdence
to the Armenians; they evidently were encouraged by the success of

-1111131 Ill
r
11/,)! '"'I' ~ .JC fwllOilf;f'IJ
 History, Counterh1$tory, and Narrative
< 79 >

the Jews to tum their national catastrophe into an instrument to gain

independence. (It is this latter argument which George Steiner made
into a fictitious last speech of Hitler's in The Portage to St. Cristo~l
ofA.H.,"'
At one crucial point, the revisionists' counterhistories are prompted
and aided by a genuine paradox of the $ubject matter. Many of us say
that the Nazi crimes were "incomprehensible," that the sheer limitless
inventiveness in degradation of that regime defies aU of our historical
explanatory schemes: it certainly did not spring out of self-interest or
raison d'etat. 40 Precisely this incomprehensibility of the crimes makes
their denial into a much more rational account of~ possible world (bet-
ter than ours) in which people act out of rational, or at least predict-
able, motivations. Abet: die WirklJ.chkeit, die L,t nicht so.
Which brings us back to our Initial question-what makes one story
more "real'' than another? Oc, in another variation, what distinguishes
a legitimate revl$ion from a revisionist confabulation? Some counter-
histories-by no means all of them-present us with a limit case: &om
the limit case something may he learned for less clear-cut cases. They
are inauthentic, unreal, not because their authors lie conS<:iously-
this may or may not be the case-but rather because they are througb-
and-through derivative, altogether dependent in every detail on the
story they intend to overthrow, Reality is an elusive notion, perhaps
even a paradoxical one. No historiographical endeav.o r may presume
to "represent" reality-if by representation we mean a corresponding
system of things and their signs. Every narrative is, in its way, an ex-
ercise in "worldm;lking." But it is not arbitrary. If the narrative is lnle,
reality, whatever its definition, must "shine through it" like Heideg-
ger's being-and, like tlae latter, without ever appearing directly.
Nothing in the counterhistories of Manetho, of the Sefer Toldot Yeshu,
of the revisionists •shines through": everything in them is a reflexive
mirror image. (Augustine, Arnold, Matll'. are different. ) Closeness to
reality can be neither measured nor proven by a waterproofalgorithm.
It must be decided from case to case without universal criteria. Every-
thing in a nan-ative-fu.ctual content, form, images, language-may
serve as fndicators.

Moralite
This, then, is the final lesson I want to draw from our long preoccupa-
tion with counterhistories. ancient or modem. In their most vicious

II~ iel I I ~
r 11/,)! il'lj< ~ <_)C t,lfQt-llf;/,cf.J
 Amos Funkenstel.n
< 80 >

forms, they deprive the adversary of his positive identity, of his self-
image., and substitute for it a pejorative counterimage, But how could
we discriminate between a genuine narrative and a countemarrative
unless by a criterion outside the narrative? You are not an old nation
with ancient, venerable institutions, but rather lepers imitating our
institutions, said Manetho to the Jews; you and your history are not a
varadigm of justice and virtue, but rather of greed and libido domi-
nandi, said Augustine to the pagan Romans; you and the founders of
your religion were and are magicians, said the Jews to the Christians;
you are not :real Jews, said medieval Christians to the Jews; you are not
Christians, said Arnold to the Catholics; you are not the protagonists
of freedom, but of its opposite, of ~loitation and dehumanization,
said Marx to the liberals of his time; you are not human at all, said the
Nazi ideologues to the Jews, and tried as much as they could actually
to dehumanize them even in their own eyes before killing them. You
are not even victims of atrocities, say the revisionists to the Jews.
In both the case of some mental dise115es which I discwsed at the
beginning and the more vicious case of counterhistories, iaentities are
destroyed: but it may seem as if the schimphrenic, or the one who
suffers from Korsakov psychosis, has his own identity destroyed, while
in the case of counterhistories, personal or collective, it is the self-
identity of the other which is under attack. Yet both lose contact with
reality-both reveal 11Spects of that involuntary constraint which al-
lows effective manipulations ofour world: Because of that, every seri-
ous counterhistory that will try to become reality turns at the end to
destroy not only the identity of the other, hut also the self-identity of
the destroyer. And it is self-destructive of necessity, if only because the
forger of a counteridentity of the other renders his own identity depen-
dent on it. In this Kampf um Leben und Tod., both identities are inevi-
tably destroyed if the c:ounteridentity succeeds in its aim to destroy
th.e self-identity of the other. This self-destruction is no solace: because
while it is going on, the guilty and th.e unguilty alike suffer.
"To the threshold lies sin" (Gen. 4:7). In the beginning, Zionist ide-
ology labored hard to construct a new, positive Jewish self-image, to
restore a Jewish ~self, respect" (Pinsker) so as to achieve. "autoemanci-
pation:' It was a noble and timely endeavor, which at its worst could
be blamed for disregarding the fact that the land of lsrael was not
empty and barren, that it was already populated by indigenous Arabs.
By now, however, the collective self-identification of many Israelis-

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 HI.dory, Counterhistory, and NlllTIJtioe
< 81 >

not of all-is inextricably tied to a downright negation of the national

identity of the Palestinians. "There is no Palestinian nation," Golda
Meir once said. A standing poUtical argument has it that the Palestin-
ian-or even Arab-national-movements are not authentic, that they
are a mere mirtor image of the emergence of a Jewish national con-
sciousness and a reaction thereto; as if the genesis of a national identity
really matters. Another political argument has it that Arab immigration
to Palestine swelled only after the Zionist efforts made the land attrac-
tive. Depersonalization of the Palestinians, denial of their personal and
po)jtical self-identity, has become an oppressive poUtical reality. As a
Zionist and as a historian, I fear these develOpments and abhor their
consequences. By destroying the identity of the other we will destroy
our own. It need not happen: it is incumbent on us not to let it happen.

J11 1 1011 t 1

11/,/1 iFlj' ~ , cf,14, rl fl·l

 <5>

Just One Witness

CARLO GINZBURG

For Pri.mo Levi

On 16 May 1348, the Jewish community of La Baume, a small Prov-
en~ village, was exterminated. This event was only a link in a long
chain of violence which had started In southern France with the first
emption of the Black Death Just one month before. the hosfilities
against the Jews, who were widely believed to have spread the plague
by poisoning wells, fountains, and rivers, had first c,yst.ulized in Tou-
lon during Holy Week. The local ghetto had been assaulted; men,
women, and children had been killed. In the following weeks similar
violence had taken place in other Proven~ towns like Riez, Digne,
Manosque, and Forealquier. ln La Baume there were no survivors ex-
cept one-a man who ten days before had left for Avignon, summoned
by Queen Jeanne. He left a painful memory of the episode in a few
lines inscribed on a Torah, now preserved at the Oesterreichisohe Na-
tionalbibliothek in Vienna. In a very fine essay Joseph Shatz.miller has
succeeded, by combining a new reading of the lines inscribed on the
Torah with a docume-pt exqacted from a fiscal register, in identifying
the survivor's name: Dayas Quinoni.' ln 1349 Quinoni was settled in
Aix, where he received his Torah. We do not know whether he ever
came back to La Baume ~er the massacre.
Let us n.ow briefly discuss a different, though not unrelated, case.
The accusations that the Jews had spread the plague in 1348 closely
followed a pattern which had been established a geoe.ration befoce. ln
1321, during Holy Week, a rumor suddenly spread throughout France
and some neighboring regions (western Switzerland, northern Spain).
According to the ditferent versions, lepers, or lepers inspired by Jews,
or lepers inspired by Jews inspired by the Muslim .kings of Tunis and
Granada, had built up a conspiracy to poison sane Christians. The
Muslim kings were obviously out of reach, but for two years lepers and
< 82 >

_II~ I 11 ,
11/·/1 iFlj' ~ •)"'-''' ~H'ff•I
 Just One Witneu
< 83 >

Jews became the targets ofa series of violent acts performed by mobs
and by rellgious and political authorities as well. I have tned else-
where to disentangle this complex series of events.• Here I would like
to analyze a p;issage from a Latin chronicle written in the ~arly four-
teenth century by the so-called continuator of William of Nangis, an
anonymous monk who, like bis predecessor, lived in the abbey of
Saint-Denls.
After the discovery of the alleged conspiracy many Jews, mostly in
northern France, were killed. Near Vitry-le-Fr~is, the chronicler
says, approximately forty Jews were jailed in a tower. In order to avoid
being put to death by the Christians they decided, after some discus,
si<>n, to kill one anothe.r. The deed was performed by an old, highly
respected man, with the help of a young man. The older man then
asked the younger man to kill him. The young man reluctantly ac
cepted. But instead ofcommitting suicide, he grabbed some gold and
silver from the corpses on the ground. He then tried to escape from
the tower using a rope made of sheets tied together. But the rope was
not lon,g enough. The young man fell to the ground, breaking bis leg,
and was then put to death.~
The episode is not implausible. Itowever, it presents some undeni-
able affinities with two _passages from Flavius Josephus' Jeu>illh War: (l}
the hiding offorty peaple in a grotto near Jotapata, in Calilea, in c. E .
67, followed by the collective suacfde of all of them, with only two
exceptions-Josephus himself and a fellow soldier who accepted bis
proposal not to kill hii:n (111,8); 311d (2) the siege of Masada, the desper•
ate resistance of the Jews assembled within the fortress, followed by a
collective suicide with two exceptions, both women (Vil, 8-9).• How
should we interpret the analogies between Josephus' texts and the al-
ready mentioned passage in the chronicle written by the continuator
of William of Nangis? Should we assume a fiictual convergence or
rather the presence of a historiographical topoa (including, in this ver-
sion, an additional element-the allusion to Jewish greed)? We must
recall in this context that the latter suggestion has already been raised,
at least as a possibility, in order to explain Josephus' account of the
events of Masada.• Fla vius Jo$ephus· wofk; either in Creek or in the
famous Latin version prepared under Cassiod.orus' direction, was
widely circulated in the Middle Ages, e~pecially in northern France
and Flanders (as far as we can judge from the extant manuscripts).•
Although we know that Flavius Josephus was mandatory reading dur-

•L~lelu ~
111,11 "''I" ~ .JC t.11, o-Jlf,/'l•I
 Carlo Ginzburg
< 84 >

ing Lent at the monastery of Corbie around 1050, Josephus· works are
not included in a fourteenth-century list of readings for the monks of
Saint-Denis-among whom, as has been recalled before, was the con-
tinuator of William of Nangis.7 Moreover, we have no direct proof that
manuscripts of Josephus' Jewish War existed in the library of Saint,
Denis. a Still, they would have been easily available to the anonymous
chronicler. The Bibliotheque Nationale in Paris owns many of them,
including one (a twelfth-century copy) from the library ·of Saint-
Cermain-des-Pres. •We~ conclude that the continuator of William
of Nangis may have been familiar with Flavius Josephus· Jewish War
(or with the late fourth-century adaptation of it, known as ''Hegesip-
pus"). •0 This does not necessarily imply, however, that the collective
suicide near Vitry le-Fran~is never took place. More work is needed
0

on this issue, althollgh a clear-cut concl1.1sion is perhaps unattainable.

A multiple relationship connects these stories from a distant, half-

forgotten past to the topic of this book. A poignant aWl!J'eness of this
connection can be detected in Pierre Vidal-Naquet's decision to repub-
lish in the same volume (Les J1.1ifs, la memoire et le pri-sent, P!lris,
1981) his essay on "Flavius Josephus and Masada" and "A Paper Eich-
mann," a long piece op the so-called revisionist school which claims
that Nazi extermination camps were just a hoax. 11 I believe, however,
that the similarity of content-the persecution of Jews in the Middle
Ages, the ~termination of Jews in the twentieth century-is less im-
portant than the similarity of the theoretical issues involved in both
cases. Let me explain why.
The analogies between the two passages from Josephus, describing
the Jotapata and Masada episodes, include, in addition to the collec-
tive su.icide, the survival of two people: Josephus and his feUow soldier
in the first case, two women in the second, 12 We m11,y say that the sur-
vival of at least one person was logically required by the necessity tp
provide an account ofeach episode, but why two? I think that the well-
known rejection of a single witness in court, shared by the Jewish and
Latin juridical traditions, e~lams the choice of two witnesses. 13 Both
traditions were familiar, of course, to Flavius Josephus, a Jew who be-
came a Roman citizen. La!er on, Constantine, the Roman emperor,
made the exclusion ofa single witness a formal law, which was subse-
quently tncluded i'n the Justinian Code. 14 In the Middle Ages the im-

_II~ 101 I 1

llf./\ IFlj< - ,Jc t.li, t-Jll",/.cf.J

 /wt One Witness
< 85 >

plicit reference to Deuteronomy 19, verse 15 (Non stabit teati8 unus

contr-a aliquem) became teltia unm, teatis nullua (one witness, no wit·
ness): a maxim referred to, either implicitly or explicitly; in trials and
legal literature.••
Let us now imagine for a moment what would happen if such a cri-
terion werl' applied to the field of historical research. Our knowledge
of the events which took place in La Baume in May 1348, near Vitty-
le-Fnin~is sometime during the summer of 132) , and in the grotto
near Jotapata in July C.E, 67, is based, in each case, on a single, more
or less direct witness. That is, respectively, the person (identified as
Dayas Quinoni) who wrote the lines on the Torah now in the National-
bibliothek in Vienna; the continuator of William of Nangis; and Fla.vtus
Josephus. No sensible historian would dismiss this evidence as intrin-
sically unacceptable. According to normal historiographical practice,
the value of each document will be tested by way ofcomparison-that
is, by constructing a series including at least two documents. llut let
us assume for a moment that the continuator of W-tlliam of Nangis, in
his account of the coUective suicide near Vitry-le-Fran~is, was u-ierely
echoing Josephus' Jewish Wa,; Even if the supposed collective suicide
would 6nally evaporate as a fact, the account itself would still give us a
valuable piece of evidence about the reception of Josephus' work
(which is also, except for hard-nosed positivists, a ~fact") in early
fourteenth-century Ile-de-France.
Law and history, it seems, have different rules and different episte-
mological foundations, This is the reason why legal principles cannot
be safely transferred into historical research.•• Such a condus·ion
would contradict the close contiguity stressed by sixteenth-century
scholats lili:e Fran~is Baudouin, the legal historian who solemnly de-
clared that nistoricw studies must be p.laced upon a solid foundation
of Jaw, and jurisprudepce must be joined to history." 11 In a different
perspective, related to antiquarian research, the. Jesuit Henri Griffet,
in his Trait.I des differentes sortes de preuves qui seroent ii ttablir la
vente de fhutoire (Treatise on the various types of proofs by which it
'is possible to obtain historical truth) (l 769) compared the historian to a
judge in court, testing the reliability of different witnesses. 18
Such an analogy today has a definitely unfashionable ring. Many
contemporary historians would probably react with a certain embar-
rassment to the crucial word pnruoes (proofs). But some recent discus-

-•L~ielu 1
111,11 'F'I' n ,c t.!I, 1-11r,f-'1,1
 Carlo Ginzburg
< 86 >
sions show that the connection among proofs, truth, and history em-
phasized by Griffel cannot be easily dismissed.

J have already mentioned «A Paper Eichmann," the essay written by

Pierre Vidal-Naquet to refute the notorious thesis advanced by Robert
Faurisson and others, according to which Nui extermination camps
never existed. 10 The same essay has recently been republished in a
small volume, Les tUstUsiM de la mhnoire (The killer, of memory),
which Vidal-Naquet has dedicated to his mother, who died at Ausch-
witz in 1944. We can easily imagine the moral and political motives
which urged Vidal-Naquet to engage himself in a detailed discussion,
involving among other things a punctilious analysis of the evidence
(witnesses, technological possibilities, and so on) concerning the exis-
tence of gas chambers. Other, more theoretical implications have been
spelled out by Vidal-Naquet in a letter to Luce Giard, which was pub-
lished a few years 11go in a memorial for Michel de Certeau. Vidal-
Naquet writes that the collection of essays C:~criture de l'hlstoire (The
writing of history) published by de Certeav. in 1915 was an import:,lflt
book which contributed to the dismantling of the historians• proud in-
nocence. "Since tlien, we have become aware that-the historian wrl.tesi
that he produces space and time, being himself intrinsically embedded
into a specific space and time." But we should not dismiss, Vidal-
Naquet goes on, that old notion of "Feality." meaning "ptecisely what
happened," as evoked by Ranke one century ago.

I became very COOSC\OUS of all this when the affaire Faurisson-

which unfortunately is still going on-began. Faurisson's attitude is,
of ,;ourse, totally different from de Certeau's. The former i$ a crude
materialist, who. in the name of the most tangjble reality, transforms
everything he deats with- pain, death, the instru.ments of death-
into something unre3', De Ce.rteau was deeply affected by this per-
verse folly, end wrote me a letter about It . . . l was convinced that
there was an ongoing discourse on gas chambers; that everything
should necessarily go through to a discourse [men sentiment iJa/t
qu'.j[ yaoait un discours sur le., chambres agaz, que tout devalt ptU·
ser par le.dire] ; but beyond this, or before this, there was something
irreducible which, for better or worse, I would still call reality. With-
out this reality, how could we mal<e a difference between 6ction and
history?"'

-•L~I 111 I

llf./J IFlj' tl , c t.lh ~lf,ff•J

 Jun One Witnes.s
< 87 >
On this side of the ooe!lll tliis question about the difference between
fiction and history is·usually associated with (or elicited by) the work of
Hayden White. Notwithstanding the difference between White's and
de Certeau 's historiogrn.phical practice, some convergence between,
let us say, Metahisto"J (1973) and Cecriture de l'hlstoire (1975, but
including essays published some years earlier) is undeniable. I will try
to show, however, that White's contribution can be fully understood
only in the framework of his intellectual development.••

In 1959, introducing the American edition of Vallo storicisfno alla so-

ciologia (From historicism to sociology) by Carlo Antoni (one of Bene-
detto Croce's closest followers), Hayden White labeled Croce's youth-
ful essay La storia riluJtta sotto il concetto generale dell'orte (History
subsumed under a general concept" of the arts) as "revolutionary.''aa
The relevance of this essay, published by Croce in 1893 when he was
twenty-seven years old, had already been emphasized by Croce him•
self in his intellectual autobiography (Contnbuto oJlQ critita di me
stesso), as well as later on by R. G. Collingwood (The Idea of His-
to"J),"" Not surprisingly, the chapter on Croce in MetahistO"J includes
a detailed discussion of La storia riluJtta ... But White's appreciation of
this essay had become, after sixti:en years, remarkably colde,:;. l-le still
shared some relevant points, such as the sharp distinction between
historical research (regarded as merely propaedeutic work) and proper
history, and the identification between the latter and historical narra-
tive. But then he concluded:

It is difficult not to think of Croce's "revolution" in historical sen-

sibility as a retrogression, since its effect was to sever historiography
from any participation in the effort-just beginning to make some
headway as sociology at the time-to construct a general science of
.society. But It had even more deleterious implications for historians'
thioldng about the artistic side of th~ir work. For, while Croce was
corrfl(lt in his perception that art is a way of knowing the world, and
not merely a physical response to it or an Immediate experience of
it, his conception of art as literal representation of the re.ii effectively
isolated the historian as artist from the most re<.'Cnt-and increas-
ingly dominant-advances made in representing the different levels
of consciousness by the Symbolists \Uld Post-lmpressionisbi ~I over
Europe.""

-d1I I II 1

11/,/lllf'l'I~ <)Ct.lJ, t-iif,/-'l•I

 Carlo Ginzburg
< 88 >

This passage already points to some elements of Hayden White's

later work. Since Metahistory he has become less and less interested
in the construction of a "general science of society," and more and more
in "the artistic side of the historian's work," a shift not remote from
Croce's long battle against l)()Sitivism, which inspired, amon,g other
things, his scornful attitude toward social sciences. But by the time of
Metahistory Croce had already ceased to be the crucial in8uence he
had been in the early stages of White'.s intellectual career. Undoubt-
edly Croce still scored some very high points: on the one hand , he is
labeled "the most talented historian of all the philosophers of histol')'
of the century;" and on the other, his allegedly • ironical" attitude is
warmly praised in the very last page of the book.• But the global eval-
uation quoted above reveals also a significant disagreement with
Croce's theoretical perspective.
White's dissatisfaction with Croce's thought focuses, as we have
seen, on "bis concepti0n of art as a literal representation of the rear:
in other words, on his "realistic'' attitude.l7 Such a word, which in thfs
context has a cognitive, not purely aesthetic meaning, may sound a bit
paradoxical, when referring to a neoidealist philosopher like C-roce.
But Croce's idealism was rather peculiar~ a label like "critical positiv-
ism," suggested by one ofhis most intelligent critics, seems more ap-
propriate."" The most dennitely idealistic stage in Croce's thought was
related to the strong impact exerted on him, especially in the crucial
years 1897-1900, by Giovanni Gentile, who for two decades was his
closest intellectual associate."' In a note added to the second edition of
his Logica come scienza de[ concetto puro (1909) Croce provided a ret-
rospective reconstruction of his own intellectual development, starting
from La storia ndotta, in which he had put history within the large r
category of art, to the recent recognition, made under the impact of
Giovanni Gentile ("my deare$t friend . . . whose work had been so
in8uential on my own"), of the identity between history and philoso-
phy."° Some.years later, however, the intrinsic ambiguities of this iden-
tity (as well as, on a general level, of the alleged theoretical Conver-
gence between Croce and Gentile) fully emerged." Croce, by
interpreting philosophy ;i.s the "methodology of history," seemed to
dissolve the former within the latter, Gentile went in the opposite di-
rection. "Ideas without lacts,'"hewrote, "are empty; philosophy which
is not history is the vainest abstraction. But facts are simply the life of
the objective side of self-consciousness, outside which there is no real

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 Just One Witness
< 89 >

constructive thought.&He emphasized that historical facts (res gestae]

~are not presupposed by history [historia rerum gestarum)." He
strongly rejected, therefore, "the metaphysical theory of history (that
is, historicism) based directly on the. idea tb~t historical writing pre-
supposes historical fact, an idea as absurd as those of other metaphys-
ics, and pregnant with worse consequences~for no enemy is so danger-
ous as one who has managed to creep into your house and hide
there.'':ia
By identifying that unnamed "metaphysical theory of history" with
historicism Gentile was ·reacting to a polemical anti.fascist essay by
Croce, "Antisloricismo," which had just been published. 33 The thooret-
ical core of Gentile's essay went back to his Teoria generale ikllo rp1rito
come atto puro (1918), a response to Croce's Teoria e storla ikllti sto-
rlografia (1915)."' But by 1924 the philosophical dispute between the
two former friends had transformed itself into a bitter political and per-
sonal feud.
This apparent digression was required In order to make the follow-
ing points.
l. Hayden White's intellectual development can be underst;ood only
by taking into account his exposure, at an early stage of his career, to
Italian philosophical neoidealism. 30
2. White'.s "tropological" approach, suggested in Tropics of Di.'1-
oourse, his collection of essays first published in 1978, still showed the
impact of Croce's thought. "·Croce," he wrote in 1972, "moved from his
study of the epistemological bases of historical knowledge to a position
in which he sought to subsume history under a general concept of art.
His theory of art, in tum, was construed as a 'science of expression and
general linguistics' (the subtitle of bis Aesthetics). In bis analysis of the
bases of speech of all possible modes of comprehending re;\lity, he
came closest to grasping the essentially tropological nature ofinterpre-
t-ation in general. He was kept &om formulating this near perception,
most probably, by his own 'ironic' suspicion of system in any human
science."""
Such an approach starts with Croce but goes beyond him. When we
read that •·tropics is the process by which all discourse constitute, Imy
italics] the objects which it pretends only to describe realistically and
to analyze objectively" (a passage &om the introduction to Tropics of
DiJcoune [1978]), 37 we recognize the aforementioned criticism ad-
dressed to Croce's "realism.•

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 Carlo Giozburg
< 90 >

3. This subjectivist stand was emphasized by the encounter with the

work of Foucault. But it is significant that White tried to "decode~ Fou-
cault through Vico, the alleged founding father of Italian philosophical
neoidealism. 38 In fact, White's statement about discourse creating its
own objects seemi to be echoing-with a major difference to be dis-
cussed soon-C'roce's emphasis on expression and general linguistics
combined with Gentile's extreme subjectivism implying tbat historiog-
raphy (historia rerom gestarum) creates its own object: history (res
gestae). "Le fait n'a jamais qu'une existence linguistique": these words
by Barthes, used as a motto for The Content of the Form (1987), could
be ascribed to this imaginary combination of Croce and Gentile. Even
White's reading of Barthes in the early eighties (he was still barely
mentioned in Tropics of Discourse"') reinforced a preexisting pattern.

The most questionable element in this reconstruction is Gentile's role.

As far as I know, White has never discussed bis wr:itiogs or even men-
tioned. him (with one relevant exception, as we shall see). But familiar-
ity with Gentile's work can be safely assumed in a scholar who, through
Antoni, became deeply involved in the philosophical tradition initi-
ated by CFoce and Gentile. (On the other hand, a direct knowledge of
Gentile's work mu.st be ruled out for Barthes. The crucial role played
by Barthes in de Certeau's work can explain-but only in part-the
partial convergence between the latter and Hayden White.)
Gentile's close a.~sociation with fascism, through his life-nnd his vio-
lent death, has somewhat obscured, at least outside Italy, the first
stage of his philosophical career. l-lis adhesion to Hegelian idealism
came through an original reading of Marx!s early philosophical writings
(La filosofia di Marr, 1899)."' In his analysis of Marx's Theses on Feuer-
bach, Gentile interpreted Marxian praxis through Vico's famous dic-
tum oerom i~m factum, or rather through the idealistic interpreta-
tion or it. Praxis, therefore, was regarded as a concept implying the
identity between subject and object. insofar as the Spirit (the transcen-
dental subject) creates reality.•• Even Gentile's late statement on :h is-
toriography creating history was just a corollary of this principle. This
presentation of Marx as a fundamentally idealistic philosopher had a
lasting impact on !tali.an intellectual a11d political life. For instance,
there is no doubt that Antonio Gramsci, by usi11g in his Priso~ No~-
books an expression like "philosophy of praxis" instead of nistorical
materialism," was obviously trying to fool fascist c.-ensorship. But he

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 Just One Wilnei8
< 91 >

was also echoing the title of Gentile's second essay on Marx ("La filo-
sofia della praxis') as well as, more significantly, Gentile's emphasis on
praxis" as a concept which diminished (not to SllY rejected altogether)
materialism as a crucial element in Marxian thought. Echoes of Gen-
tile's interpretation of Marx have been detected in Gramsci'~ early
Idealistic Marxism... It has even been suggested that the welt-known
passage in Pmon Notebooks, on Gentile's philosophy's being closer
than Croce's to the futurist movement, implies a favorable evaluation
of Gentile: had not futurism been regarded by Gramsci in 1921 as a
revolutionary movement which had been able to respond to a need for
~new fonns of art, of philosophy, of behavior, of language"?<> A similar
closeness between Gentile's philosophy and futurism, as negative ex-
amples of "antihistoricism," was implicitly suggested by Croce in a
liberal-conservative antifascist perspective...
In light of a left-wing reading of Gentile's work (or at least of part of
it) the. quasi-Centilian flavor detectable in Hayden White's writings
since The Burden of History-his 1966 plea for a new historiography
written in a modernist .k ey-sounds less paradoxical. '" One can easily
unde rstand the Impact (as well as the intrinsic wealcness) of this. attack
launched against liberal and Marxist orthodoxies. In the late sixties and
early seventies subjectivism, even extreme subjectivism, had a deli•
nitely radical Oavor. But if one regarded desire as a left-wing slogan,
then reality (including the emphasis on "real facts~) would have looked
definitely right-wtng. Such a simplistic,not to Sily self-defeating, view
has been largely superseded-in the sense that attitudes implying a
basic Hight from reality are certainly not restricted today to some fac.
tions of the left. This fact should be taken into account by any attempt
to explain today's rather extraordinary appeal of skeptical ideologies,
even outside the academic wodd. ln the meantime Hayden White has
declared that he is "against revolutions, whether launched &om
•above• or 'below· in the social hierarchy." .. This statement was elic-
ited, he explains in a footnote, by the fact that "the relativism with
which I am usually charged is conceived by many theorists to imply
the kind of nihilism which invites revolutionary activism of a particu-
larly irresponsible sort. Ip my view, relativism is the moral equivalent
of epistemological slcel)ticism; moreover, I conceive relativism to be
the basis of social tolerance, not a license to •do as you pleas~• ""
Skepticism, relativism, tolerance: At first sight the distance be-
tween this self-presentation of White's thought and Gentile's theo.r eti-

-111 I 11 ~
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 Carlo Cintburg
< 92 >

cal perspective could not be wider. Gentile's attacks against ,positivist

historians ("Historical science, priding itself on the 'facts', the positive
and solid realities, which it contrasts with mere ideas or theories with·
out objective validity, is living in a childish world ofillusion")•8 have no
skeptical implications, insofar as the theoretical reality he was con•
cemed with implied one transcendental Spirit, not a multiplicity of
empirical subjects. Therefore he never was a relativist; on the con-
trary, he strongly advocated a religious, intransigent co01mitment in
both theoretical and political matters. 49 And of course he never theo-
rized tolerance, as his support of fascism-including squadri.tmo, the
most violent aspect of it-shows."" The notorious statement describing
the squadristi's blackjack as a '"moral force" comparable to preaching-
a remark made by Gentile during a speech for the 1924 electoral
campaign'1 -was consistent with his stnctly monistic theory; in a real-
ity created by Spirit there is no place for a real distinction between
facts and values.
These are not minor theoretical divergences. Any argument sug.
gesting a theoretfcal contiguity between Gentile's and White's per-
spectives must take these major differences into account. So we may
wonder on what ground does White stress, in his article "The Politios
of Historical Interpretation," that his own historical perspective shares
something with "the kind of perspective on hi.story . . . conventionally
associated with the ideologies of fascist regimes," whose "social and
political policies" he simultaneously rejects as ~undeniably horrible."

This contradiction, so clearly perceived, leads us to the mpral dilemma

involved in White's approach. "We must guard," he .says, "against a
sentimentalism that would lead us to write off such a conception of
history simply because it has been associated with fascist ideologies.
One mµ st fitce the fact that when It cotnes- to apprehending the histor•
ical record, there are no grounds to be round in the historical record
itself for preferring one way of construing its meaning over another."••
s.
No grounds? In fact, in discussing Faurisson inte rpretation of the e,r;-
termination of Jews, White does suggest a criterion according to which
we must judge the validity of different historical interpretations. Let
us follow his argument.
White's aforementioned statement is based (1) on the distinction
(better to say disjunction) between .. 'positive' historical inquiry" and
"proper history," that is, narrative, advocated by Croce in IA storia

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 )wt One Witness
< 93 >

ridotta; (2) on a skeptical i.nterpretation of this distinction, converging

in many ways with Gentile's transcendental subjectivisn1, Both ele-
ments can be detected in White's reaction to the refutation provided
by Vidal-Naquet •on the terrain of positive history," of Faurisson's
"lies" about the extermination of Jews. Faurisson's claim is as ''morally
offensive as intellectually bewildering"; but the notion of a "lie," insofar
as it implies co,ncepts like "reality" or "proof," is clearly a source of
embarrassment for White, as this remarkably twisted sentence shows:
"The distinction between a Jie and an error or a mistake in interpreta•
tion may be more difficult to draw with respect to historical events less
amply documented than the Holocaust." In fact, even in this latter case
White is unable to accept Vidal-Naquet's conclusion, suggesting that
there is a big difference "between an interpretation that would 'have
profoundly transformed the reality of the massacre' and one that would
not. The Israeli interpretation leaves the 'reality' of the events intact,
whereas the revisionist interpretation de-realizes it by redescriblng it
in such a way as to make it something other than what the victims know
the Holocaust to have been.""" The Zionist historical interpretation of
the Holocaust, Wh~te says. is not a contre-~ritt (as has been sug-
gested by V.idal-Naquet) but a truth: "its truth, as a historical interpre-
tation, consists precisely in its effectiveness [my italics] in justifying a
wide range of current Israeli political policies that, from the standpoint
of those who arti¢ulate ltiem, are crucial to the security and indeed the
very existence of the Jewish peovle:· In the same way, ''the effort of the
Palestinian people to mount a politically effective lmy italics] response
to Israeli policies entails the production of a similarly effective [my
italics] ideology, complete with an interpretation of their history ca-
pable 0£ endowiQg it with a meaning that it has hitherto lacked.""' We
can conclude thatifFaurisson's narrative were ever to prove effectioe,
it would be regarded by White as t·rue as well.
Is this conclusion the result of a tolerant attitude? As we have seen,
White argues that his skepticism and relativism can provide the epis-
temological and moral foundations for- tolerance. 05 But this claim is his-
torically and logically untenable. Historically, because tolerance has
been theorized by people who had strong theoretical and moral con-
victions (Voltaire's sentenc.-e ''I will fight in order to defend my oppo-
nent's freedom of speech" is typical). Logically, because absolute skep-
ticism would contradict itself if it were not extended also to tolerance
as a regulatiog principle. Moreover, when moral and theoretical differ-

1el 1 1
11 1
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 Carlo Ginzburg
< 94 >

ences are not ultimately related to truth, there fs nothing to tolerate.06

In fa.ct, White's argument connecting truth and effectiveness inevi-
tably reminds us not of tolerance but of its opposite-Gentile's evalu-
ation of a blackjack as a moral force. In the same es~y, as we have seen,
White invites us to consider without • sentimentalism" the association
between a conception of history which he has implicitly praised and
the "ideologies of fascist regimes.ff He calls this association ~conven-
tional." But the mention of Gentile's name (with Heidegger's) in this
context does not seem to be conventio,ial. 57

Since the late sixties the skeptical attitudes we are speaking abouthave
become more and more inftuential in the humanities and social sci-
ences. This pervasive diffusion is only partially related to theit alleged
novelty. Only eulogy could suggest to Pierre Vidal-Naquet that "since
then [the publication of Mic_hel de Certeau's C.:toritu.re de l'histoire in
1975) we have become aware that the historian writes; that he pro-
duces space and time, being himself intrinsically embedded in a spe-
cific space and time.· As Vidal-Naquet knows perfectly well, the same
point (leading sometimes to skeptical conclusions) was strongly em-
phasized, for instance, in a not particularly bold methodological 1961
essay by E. H. Carr (What Is Huton;P)-as well.as, at a much earlier
date, by Croce.
By looking at these issues in historical perspective, we can have a
better grasp of their theoretical implications. As a starting point I
would suggest a short piece written by Renato Serra in 1912 but pub-
lished only in 1927, after his untimely death (1915). The l)iece's title-
Partenw di un gruppo di soldati per la Libia (A soldiers' group leaving
for Libya)'8-give~ only a vague idea of its content. It starts with a
description, written in a dazzling experimental style reminiscent of
Boccioni's futurist paintings from the same era, of a .-ailway station full
of departing soldiers surrounded by a huge crowd;.. then there are
some antisocialist remarks; then a reftection on history and historical
writing, which ends abru{>tly in a solemn metaphysical tone, full of
Nietzschean echoes. This unfinished essay, which certainly deserves a
longer and deeper analysis, reftects the complex personality of a man
who, besides being the best Italian critic of his generation, was a per-
son of erudition with strong philosophical interests. In his correspon-
dence with Croce (to whom he was personally very close, without ever
being a. follower) he first explained the genesis of the pages we are

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 / wl One Witness
< 95 >

spealcing about."° They had been elicited by Storia, cronaca e false

stone (1912), an essay by Croce which later on was included, in a re-
vised form, in the latter's Teoria e 1toria deUa storiografia. Croce had
mentioned the gap, emphasized by Tolstoy in War and Peace, between
a real event, like a battle, and the &agrnentary and distorted recollec-
tions of it on which historical accounts are based. Tolstoy's view is well
known: the gap could be overcome only by collecting the memories of
every individual (even the humblest soldier) who had been ditectly·or-
inditectly involved in the battle. Croce dismissed this suggestion and
the agnosticism which it seemed to involve as absurd: "At every mo-
ment we know all the history we need," therefore the history we don't
know is Identical with the ''eternal ghost of the thing in itself." 61 Serra,
ironically defining himself as "a slave of the thing in itself," wrote to
C-roce that he felt much closer to Tolstoy; however, he added, "the
difficulties I am confronted with are-or at least seem to be-much
more-complicated."oa They were indeed.
There are some naive people, Serra observed, who believe that "a
document can express reality . . . But a document can express only
itself. . . A document is a fact. The battle is another fact (a myriad of
other facts), Those two entities cannot become a unity, They cannot be
identical, they cannot mirror each other . • . The individual who acts
is a fact . The indivldual who tells a story is another fad ... Every
testimony is only a testimony of itself; of its immediate context (mo-
menta), of its origin, of its putpose-that's all.'' 63
These were not reflections by a pure theoretician, Semi knew what
erudition was. His cutting criticism did not artificially oppose. historical
narratives to the stuff they are made of. He mentioned all kinds of
narrative: clumsy letters sent by soldiers to thefr families, newspaper
articles written to please a distant audience, reports of war actions
scribbled in ha.~te by a.n impatient captain, historians' l¥X)Ounts full of
superstitious deference toward all these documents. Serra was deeply
aware that these narratives, regardless of the directness of their char•
acter, have always a highly .problematic relationship with reality. But
reality ("the things iii themselves") exists."'
Serra e.xplicitly rejected simple positivist attitudes. 8ut his remarks
help us to reject also a perspective which piles up positivism and rela-
tivism: "'positive' historical inquiry·' based on a literal reading of the
evioence, on the one hand, and "historical narratives" based on figu-
rative_, uncomparable and unrefutable interpretations, on the other...

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 Carlo Clnzburg
< 96 >

ln fllCt, the narratives based on one Witness that are discussed earlier
in this chapter can be regarded as experimental cases which deny such
a clear-cut distinction: a different reading ofthe available evidence im-
mediately affects the resulting narrative. A similar although usually
less visible relationship can be assumed on a general level. An unlim-
ited slceptical attitude toward historical narratives is ,t herefore ground-
less.

On Auschwitz, Jean-Fran~is Lyotard has written:

Suppose that an earthquake destroys not only :Jives, buildings,
and objects but also the Instruments used to measure earthquakes,
directly and indirectly. The impossibility of quantitatively measutillg
it does not prohibit, but rather inspires in the minds of the survivors
the idea of 11 very great seismk force . . . With Auschwitz, some-
thing new has happened in history (which can only be a sign and not
a fact), which is that the facts, the testimonies which bore the traces
of here's and now's, the documents which indicated the sense or
senses of the facts, and the names, finally the possibility of various
kinds of phrases whose conjunction makes reality, all this has been
destroyed as much as possible. ls it up to ,t he histori.aJl ,to take into
account not only the damages, but also the wrong? Not only the re-
a!Jty, but also the meta-reality that is the destruction of rea!Jty? . , .
lts name marks the confines wherein historical knowledge sees its
competence impugned."'
Js this last rematk true? 1 am not fully convinced. Memory and the
destruction of memory we recurrent elements in history; UThe need to
tell our story to 'the rest,' to make 'the rest' participate in it," the late
Primo Levi wrote, "had taken on fot us., before our liberation and after,
the character of an immediate and violent impulse, to the point of com-
peting with our other elementary needs." 81 As Benveniste has shown,
among the Latin words which mean "witness~ there is m,:,erates-sur-
vivor.""

J11 1 1011 t 1

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 <6>

Of Plots, Witnesses, and Judgments

MARTIN JAY

Hayden White has so often scandalized his fellow historians that I hope
he will find it refreshing to be reproached for not being scandalous
enough in "Histori<:al Emp)otment and the Problem of Truth," That is,
in his anxiety to avoid inclusion in the ranks of those who argue for a
kind of relativistic uanything goes," which might provide ammunition
for revisionist skeptics about the existence of the Holocaust, he under-
cuts what is most powerful in his celebrated critique of naive historical
realism. His chapter offers two distinct and not fully integrated argu-
ments about the relation between the past and its representa.tion as
narrated history. The first will be well known to readers of his path-
breaking analyses of the forms of historical emplotment, Metahiatory,
TrCIJ)ics of Discourse, and The Content of the Form. The second, al-
though less famiUar, draws on his well-known injunction to jettison
realist modes of historical writing in favor of modernist alternatives, a
directive he made as early as his 1966 essay, "'The Burden of History."
Let me take the two argument~ in order.
White's contention that written history is inevitably beholden to fot-
maJ reconstructions that C11I)not be perfectly mapped onto the histori-
cal reality they purport to represent is based on a tripartite division of
the process of history writing. Although this is a division he construes
only to deny, lt remains operative In the position he defends, at least
in the initial portion of his chapter. First, he posits facts or events,
which he identifies with the "content# of history as it happened. These
are understood to be prelinguistic phenomena, which include, to re-
peat his list, wars, revolutions, earthquakes, and tidal waves. He then
suggests these become the stuff of stories, which a.re emplotted narra•
lions about their signi6cance. Finally, he suggests that Interpretations
about the meaning of these stories is a higher level of historical analy-
sis, at least for traditional historians.
White, of course, wants to subvert tradition by collapsing the sec-
< 97 >

1111131 II 1

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 Martin Jay
< 98 >

ond and third stages of the process into one, so that all stories are to be
understood as always already meaningful interpretations. Here I think
he has made a powerful and indisputable case. But oddly, he remains
unwilling to efface the boundary between the first category, the facts
or events of history, and the second, their narrative representation. He
does so, 1 think, for one basic reason. If the stuff of prenarrated history,
or at least a significant chunk of it, were to be acknowledged as no less
discursive and emplotted than the historian's reconstruction, then the
cry would arise for congruence between the two as the measure of
good or bad history. That is, if the content of history were experienced
by sufficiently laz-ge numbers ofthe participants at the time as formal
emplotments, then tbe historian might be expected only to reproduce
that ongjnal formed content, rather than imposing one of his or her
own on it. He or she would, in other wor<ls, be beholden to Oilthey's
unconvincing contention that history writing is the imaginative re-
experiencing (nacherleben) of the original actors' meaning-laden E.r-
lebnis. White, anxious to maintain the undecidability of naz-rative
reconstructions, thus attempts to build as firm a barrier as he can be-
tween the content a11d the form. Accordingly he claims that any given
set of events can be "emplotted" in a variety of ways, which is to say;
endowed with a variety of"meanings" or significance ... without vio-
lating the order of "facts" in any way whatsoever.
As a result of this distinction, White implicitly suggests another,
wbich his chapter never adequately develops: that is, the contrast be-
tween the "truth" of facts whose order cannot be violated, and the
"meaning" of their nar(ative/interpretative reconstruction. Here we
have the traditional opposition of mere chronicle and genuine history.
Occasionally, to be sure, he .seems to assume that the truth of facts and
the meanings of stories are synonymous-for instance, when he claims
that "stories, like factual statements, are linguistic entities." More typ-
ically- for example, when he writes that two different narratives may
represent the past ''with equal plausibility and without doing any vio-
lence to the factual record"- he keeps them apart. The latter assump-
tion , which undergirds the argument in the first part of the paper,
seems to me a failure of nerve and prevents White from being as scan-
dalous.as he might or indeed should be.
For the factual record is not, J want to argue, entirely prior to its
linguistic mediation, or indeed its figural signification. What distin -
guishes the events and facts that later historians reconstruct is pre-

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0
 Of Plots, Witne.raea, and Judgments
< 99 >

cisely their being often already inflected with narrative meaning for
those who initiate or suffer them in their own lives. It is for this reason
that White's list of nonlinguistic entities-wars, revolutions, earth-
quakes, and tidal waves-is problematic. For it puts in one pot phe-
nomena that are indeed linguistically charged and humanly meaning-
ful, wars and revolutions, with natural events, earthquakes and tidal
waves, that only become so if 'they impinge on human experience.
Wacs, after all, are normally declared by a performative speech act,
and revolutions 31'e at least in part deliberate challenges to the linguis-
tic order that sustains the old regime.
Th.ere is, in other wo,.ds, virtually no historic.al content that is lin-
guistic.ally unmediated and utterly bereft of meaning, waiting around
for the later historian lo emplot it in arbitrary ways. White himself, to
be sure, seems to.acknowledge this conclusion in bis critique of Berel
Lang's problematic distinction between literal events and figural
expressions. Bui be retreats from it in bis own evocation of the "same
set of events" that can be narrated or interpreted in different ways. In
so doing, he reinstates the untenable contrast between the truth of
nonnarrated events (the putative chroniclelike "content" of history)
and the meaning of their formal reconstruction that runs throughout
the first part of the paper.
There are, it seems to me, several ways out of this dilemma. First,
one might follow Nietzsche and boldly deny the very existence of an
ontologic.al realm of events or fu:ts prior to their reconstruction, thus
frankly embracing the radic.al relativism that haunts White's proj~
and which he wants to exorcise. Second, one might acknowledge the
existence of formed content in the narrations the historical actors or
victims themselves have produced, and use them as a check on the
11bsolute license of the his lorun to em plot the past in an entirely capri-
cious way, This alternative does not, however, mean arguing for a per-
fect: tit between the two, as Dilthey at times may have thought pos-
sible, nor does it even entail a harmonious fusion of hori2:ons in
Gadamer's sense between past and present. J t is rather an injunction
to taice seriously the found narrativeS'-not merely prelinguistic lacts
or events-that historians must themselves somehow fashion into one
of their own. J take Carlo•Ginzburg's stress on the importance of hon-
oring the testimony of witnes.ses, which may already be filtered
through preVious historiographical topoi, to reflect this alternative. Al-
though it bas problems of its own, which I will briefty ad(iress when l

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 Martin Jay
< 100 >

tum to his essay, it is at least a useful corrective to the radical Nietz-

schean collapse of object and subject of inquiry mto nothing but the
subject's projection.
In the second part of his chapter, however, White opts for a third
solution, which he derives from Lang's notion of intransitive writing
and identifies with the modernist attempt to go beyond the very di•
chotomy of subject and object, thus making an end-run around the
challenge of epistemology. Here he sheds his neo-ltalian idealist cap
and puts on one that he labels Derridean, but which sounds even more
characteristically ffeideggerian. That is, he posits a modemJsm i.n
which the external narrator describing events external to him or her is
replaced by a subjectless "middle voice" like the "erlebte Rede" of
some modernist fiction. Here the vision of pure immanence, a point of
indifference between polarities such as subject and object, is claimed
to be the way out of the dilemmas of representation that bedevil the
l'ealist project. No less overcome, at least implicitly, is the hegemony
of the ironic-mode of writing history, which White ever since Metahu-
tory has implored us to tr.inscend.
Putting aside the issue of how exclusively modernist this alternative
actually is- Flaubert, after all, got into trouble when he sought the
same effect in Madame Bovary-White is right to claim that one of the
most typical modernist dreams was fo 6nd a third way beyond the tired
dichotomies of the Cartesian, Kantian or positivist traditions. The
search for a pure linguisticality in Mallarme was matched by a similar
yean)ing for a pure visuality in the high modernist art celebrated by
Clement Greenberg. Philosophically, it was echoed in those attempts,
most notably Heidegger's and his phenomenological and poststructur-
alisl progeny, to alJow Being, the flesh of the world or diffiranoe. to
emerge from the rubble of epistemological dualisms and reveal itself
as their ground. ln alJ of these cases, realism is not so much abandoned
as redefined in terms of submission to an imperative that comes from
elsewhere. White's citation from Primo Levi makes this affiliation very
clear, as the atom of carbon somehow becomes ''ln charge of my writ-
ing, in a gigantic minuscule game which nobody has yet described.•
If indeed such a.n imperative compels us as historians to Write real-
istically, in the modernist sense of the term Sl.lggested by White, then
the dilemma of relativism can be overcome. And so too can the dichot-
omy between the truth of found content and the meaning of imposed
form. Writing intransitively, listening for the middle voice that speaks

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 Of Plot$, Witnesses, 11nd]udgments
< 101 >
through us, we c.an serve as the vessels of the historically real, just as
H.e idegger thought Dasein could act as the shepherd of a. Being that
unconceals itself to those who patiently wait for it to do so.
But, alas, there is precious little evidence to warrant such a conclu-
sion. First, the high modemist search for a third way beyond subject
and object, a linguistic or visual realm of purity in which reality will
shine forth, has itself come a cropper. lf postmodemism means any•
thing, it implies the abandonment of precisely the dream of submitting
to the exigencie$ Qf pure language or pure vision. Discourse and llgur•
ality, knowledge and power, the chiasmic intertwini11g of desire and ·its
objects-all this calls into question the possibility of a middle voice
that overcomes all dichotomies and , like Levi's atom of carbon, take.'!
charge of our writing.
But perhaps even more damaging is the admission that White him•
self both ma.kes and then attempts to withdraw: that the dream of this
new realism links cultural modernism and political totalitarianism in
an unexpected way. Although he wants to salvage his arg)Jment from
the negative aspersions ca.~t by Jameson's linkage of the two by claim•
ing that modernism was not an "expression" of fascism, but merely an
attempt to represent it, the s1,1spicion lingers trnit there is a disturbing
fit between a method that waits for realitr to manifest itself and the
authoritarianism of.a political ideology that also wants to close the gap
between subject and object by heeding the commands of a higher
truth.
No le$$ troubling are the implications of White's argument that the
overcoming of the distinction between active and passive voice in in·
transitive writing is appropriate for representing "modernist" events
like the Holocaust. For it is precisely the distinction between those
who acted and their victims that must be scrupulously retained in any
responsible account of the horror of those years-. Th11s, although I
would agree that older, more objectivist notions of realism are out•
moded, the alternative of writing in the ··middle voice" seems even
more deeply flawed.
The political uneasiness honestly evoked in Hayden White's es~y is
especially worthy of emphasis, because of the astonishing political
claims made in Carlo Ginzburg's critique in Chapter 5 of White's ear-
lier work. Shining through Croce's acknowledged in8uence on White,
he contends, is the figure of Giovanni Gentile, whose fascist politics
were intimately connected to his antihistoricist philosophy of pure ac•

111 I I Ill~
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 Martin Jay
< 102 >

lion. For Ginzburg, despite all the obvious differences, White's radical
subjectivism and skepticism about hi.storical truth echo Gentile's sinis-
ter position. Rather than le.a ding to tolerance, it betrays a ~it conces-
sion that might makes right, which in historical terms means accepting
l?aurlsson's version of the Holocaust if it ever becomes "effective.~
Thus White's warning to gu;l.l"d against a sentimental rejection of cer-
tain positions because of their adventitious association with fascism be-
comes for Ginzburg a self-serving excuse to avoid confronting the sin-
ister political implications ofWhite's own position.
These are very serious charges indeed and should be left to Hayden
White to address directly. In some ways his chapter has already pro-
vided a kind of an.swer in its implicit rejection of a voluntarist philoso-
phy of pure action, historiographical or political, and its tum toward
introlllsitive writing and the middle voice as an antidote. There is very
little Gentilean transcendental subjectivism in this alternative, al-
though as noted above, there may ironically be other links via lteideg-
ger with a problematic polftics. White loosely links Gentile and Hei-
degger in the passage Ginzburg cites, but I think the differences
between them are more important than the similarities. However, I do
not wish to be labor this poi.nt. l would rather focus on the alternative
presented in Carlo Ginzburg's chapter to the crisis of historical rela-
tivism.
Here, al.as, he gives us only fragmentary guidance. Rejecting Ly-
otard's contention that for phenomena like the Holocaust we have only
signs and no facts, he in.voices the example of Renato Serra, who be-
lieved that the things themselves stubbornly exist and are somehow
preserved in the memories of witnesses. Thus, he implies a certain
sympathy for Tolstoy's utopian project of collecting the memories of
everyone involved ,i n an event, testimonials which might provide the
only proof for a subsequent historical interpretation. Here the power
relationship between the form-giving historian in the present and the
residues of the past preserved by survivors is rendered more nearly in
balance than it is in the Gentilean historiography he attributes to
White.
As indicated earlier, I share Glnzburg's qualms about an artificial
opposition between historical narratives and the allegedly nonnarrativ-
i:z.ed stuff of which .t hey are made. l also would accept his contention
that mere effectiveness in terms of winning agreement is insufficient
as a criterion of truth or plausibility, especially if we have no further

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 Of Plots, Witnes.res, and ]udgmentR
< 103 >

criteria for deciding what constitutes a rational or irrational process of

achi,eving that llgl'eement. But 1 am uncertain about precisely how he
proposes to bridge the gap between the remembered or preserved
narratives of witnesses and the historical reconstructions we fashion
from them . For there are some obvious problems with the process as
he has left it.
First, the tantalizing issue of the legal demand for at least two wit-
nesses to establish proof is not really adequately dealt with in his ar-
gument. Historians can certainly get useful information about the past
from only one witness, but that information may be more about the
mindset of the witness than about the event itself. Just one witness
simply won't suffice as an antidote to a historian's emplotting the story
in other terms. What, after all, would the Holocaust be in our recon-
structions if the only witness were, say. Adolf Eichmann? Second,
even if we have a multiplicity of witnesses, there is always the problem
of how we make our way throu,gh conflicting testimony and with which
witnesses we choose to identify. From Ginzburg's account, I see no
way to reproach the notorious decision of Andreas Hillgruber to iden-
tify with the German Mwitnesses'' fighting on the Eastern front against
the Russ ians instead of with the Jewish M witnesses" whose agony was
prolonged by that fight,
Third and finally, there is a basic tiroblem with the assumption, ex-
pressed in Serra's Tolstoyan answer to Croce-which is also Ginzburg's
to White- that our macronarratives can be ideally con.s trued as the
sum total of all the micronarratives of the historical actors. As one of
the luclcy survivors of the Holocaust, Siegfried Kracauer, pointed out
long ago in his remarkable book History-The ~ t Things before the
~ . • it is impossible to go so smoothly from micro to macro levels of
interpretation. The historical universe, he pointed out, is heteroge-
neous, and no amount of accumulation of detail wtll provide guidance
for how the macro level could be constructed. No better example of
this caution can be given than the Holocaust itself, a post facto concep-
tual entity not in use at the time, which no one individual ever wit-
nes,ed and whose truth or meaning, however we fashion the relation
between those two very different concepts, cannot be proved by
stitching together all of the jndividual testimonies.
Although I have insufficient space to develop my own alternative
solution to those proposed b y White and Ginzburg, let me suggest a
few indications of where I would begin. I would start by retaining the

_11 1 1el I ~

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 Martin Jay
< 104 >
tension between the two levels in White's argument instead of trying
to collapse them in the name of a middle way. But rather than charac-
terize the first level as nonnarrativized chronicle and the second as the
historian's formal imposition of plot and meaning, I would call them, at
least as an initial approximation, first and second order narratives. For
although not absolutely everything that historians fashion into their
own stories is already emplott.ed by the actors, enough is to make it
more than unformed raw material available as mere fodder for the his-
torian's imagination. There ,is instead a process of negotiation that goes
on between the two narrative orders, which prevents historical repre-
sentation &om being an utterly arbitrary concoction. Even when his-
torians as\ questions that seem far removed .from anyone's conscious
experience, probing, say, deep-seated structural transformations oc-
currin,g beneath the surface of specific events, there are always narra-
tivized records that bear on the plausibility of the answers. they give.
The telos of the process of negot1ation is not, however, ·perfect con-
gruence between the two narratives, that of the actors and that of the
historian, for such a goal is impossible to obtain. No uniform meaping
can be assumed to have existed for all the participants in historical
events, even in the most ba.rmonious society, let alone one in which
the conflicts were as radical as in Nazi Germany. In addition, the nar-
rative expectations of historians will he shaped by later outcomes,
which no protagonist in the events themselves can \now. Thus, even if
we identify with one group in the p11St, such as the victims of the Holo-
caust, our narrative reconstruction of their experience and the mean-
ing they gjve to it will always be incongruent, which is' why the testi-
mony of witnesses, although necessary, cannot be sufficient to provide
guidance for our historical accounts.
The negotiation between the two narrative orders may be especially
complicated in the case of the Holocaust, where post facto reconstruc-
tion cannot .begin to do justice, in both epistemological and ethical
senses, to the events it emplots. For there will always be an unavoid-
able tension between the first order narratives of the victims, which
must approach a kind of incoherence because of the fundamental un-
intelligibility of what happened to them, and the second order narra-
tive of the historian t;rying noneth.eless lo make sense out of their ·ex-
perience and the hidden structures underlying it.• Jndeed, it is
perhaps for this reason that J:layden White's call for a modernist histo-
riography sensitive to the flaws in realistic representation can be

111113111 ~
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 OJPlots, Wltnuses, and Judgments
< 10.S >

granted a certain amount of power. Or r11ther, it can if it is under-stood

in the terms of his argument before the uintransitive writing" move jn
his present paper, for such a modernism would foreground the tension
between the historian's reconstruction and what is bemg recon-
structed, rather than smooth it over in the name of an impersonal
middle voice. In so doing it woold paradoxically twknowledge the lim-
itations on the historian's capacity to refashion the past on his or her
own terms, thus avoiding the Gentilean subjectivism Ginzburg finds
so troubling in White's work.
Another consideration also militates against the unfettered freedom
of historians to narrativize arbitrarily, and this concerns the community
of others that reads and judges their work. Historical accounts are,
after all. only as persuasive as they are deemed to be by those who
read them. In this sense another negotiation can be said to take place
besides that between first-order narratives (or their imperfectly narra-
tivizable surrogates) and second-order reconstructions. This is the
never-ending negotiation that we might call the art of historical judg-
ment exercised in communal terms. • History" in this sense is not a
single historian emplotting the pa.~t. but rather the institution of his•
torians, now more often credentialed than not, trying to convince each
other about the plausibility of their reconstructions. It is not so much
the subjective imposition of meaning, but rather the inter-subjective
judgment of meanings that matters.
In the struggle to win assent for one Interpretation or another, his•
torians both adduce evidence-the testimony ofGinzburg's witnesses,
first-order 11arratives., and other residues of the past-and pattern that
evidence into second-order stories. The relationship between the two
can be assumed to be more or less harmonious or, as l have argued in
the case of Holocaust victims' e.xperience, in some tension, but in both
cases what gains common, if not universal, acceptance depends on the
intersubjective judgment of the community rather than on any congru-
ence with the "truth" of what really happened. That this judgment is
more than the mere •effectiveness" against which Ginzhurg prudently
warns is likely 1f we take seriously the arguments for communicative
reason made by theorists like Karl-Otto Apel and Jiirgen Habermas.
Although this is not the place to rehearse those argµments in full. it
may be useful to recall some of their main features, Contrary to think•
ers such as Nietzsche or F.oucault, who want to reduce knowledge to a
function of power, or to those such as Wittgenstein and Winch, who

-•L~I Ill~
11/,/l""IJ'I~ <]<t.llt ~H,/'f•I
 Martin Jay
< 106 >

want fo tum reason into an expression of a local language game, Apel

and Habertnas are concerned with the -ways i:n which rational criteria
ofjudgment transcend their conte~tu.al origins, That is, by raising dis-
cursive claims for truth and rightness, anyone who enters a critical
discussion tacitly presupposes the power of the better argument rather
than coercion or authority as the ground for conviction. The criterion
of effectiveness is thus not merely winning assent by any means po$·
sible, but rather winning it by redeeming validity claims through pro-
cedures that satisfy conditions of rationality.
Although a cultural relativist will always reply that those conditions
are different in dilferent contexts, Apel and Habennas have, l think,
been able to show that rational arguments are also able to transcend
their original point of origin and bri_dge the gap between cultu.res.
Whether or not one llCCepts the more strongly transcendental version
of this claim held by Apel. who posits a spec.ies-wide competence to
reason, even in a weaker form, it· suggests that there exist discursive
communities, sharing standards and procedures of communicative ra-
tionality, that are mote inclusive than the communities fro.m. which
their members come, To use Alvin Gouldner's terminology, the "com-
munity of critical discourse~ extends beyond any one local group
trapped in its own local language game. People in Los Angeles a~ well
as in Frankfurt possess a similar competence to argue about Apel and
Habermas' position, even though they may not come from precisely
the same cultural background.
Similarly, historians all over the world have been able to engage in a
debate about the Hiatorikerstreit, introducing criteria of logic, evi-
dence, and interpretation that are not completely specific to their con-
texts. Although it would be foolish to assume that the uncoerced con-
sensus of opinion, which is the telos of the discursive process, can be
more than a regulative ideal never to be fully realized, it is still the
case that scholars striving to convince ea.ch other live by it. However
complicated the process may be made by the interference of nondis-
cursive elements, however inconclusive the outcome always is, the
professional institutionalization of communicative rationality means
that ;,effectiveness" can be more than merely a neutral description of
what the majority beHeves is true or right. It may, to be sure, some~
times be little more than that, but there is no reason to despair of a
more compelling alternative. Indeed, otherwise the entire raison
d'etre of scholarly discourse is undone.

-d1I I II 1

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 Of Plots, Witnuae.t, and}udgrntnts
< 107 >
'Oiere are two 611al ooncluslons to be dr.iwn from all this. First, the
Holocaust like all other bistorical phenomena can never be made ab-
solutely safe from either oblivion or distortion. No memory can ever
sutvive the death of its original holder without the collective will to
keep it alive, No story can permanently resist being refashioned or
even forgotten. But if this conclusion may be troubling, its corollary
should be a bit more encouraging. For what it suggests is that the task
of maintaining historical memory is an ongomg collective or at least
intersu\>jective project So )oflg as an institutional hamework, how-
ever imperfect, exists for critically judging our reconstructions, no
individual historian can impose bis or her will on the past. Single his-
torians, like s1ngle witnesses, gain credibility through a process of cor-
roboration. H witnessing history and writing it are never perfectly con-
gruous, the same must be said of writing and judging historical
accounts. Acknowledging the give-and-take among all of these mo-
ments prevents us from succumbing to the opposing temptations of
thinking history is mimetic reproduction and thinking it is subjective
imposition. Recognizing that there is no way to overcome the tensions,
keeping them ap,lft provides a no less salutary Warning again.s t the
search for an intran$itive mode of writing, in which something power-
ful but unde6ned guides·our tremulous band.

J11 1 1011 t 1

11/•/1 iFlj' ~ , cf.14, rl fl·l

 <7>

Representing the Holocaust:

Reflections on the Historians' Debate

DOMINICK Lt\CAPRA

The Historlkerstreit .9.r Cennan hi_stori~ns'_debate erupted in the sum-

mer of 1986. -It was occasioned by an article·published ih1;1 frank~ in
furter Allgemeine ~itu,ig_?)_' th~ -~~st~ri!_n_~!flS~ l'J.q!~~-' Its promotron
to the status of a heated pubfic controversy if not a cause ctlebre was

---
-- -
provoked by two articles in Die 7.eit by Jiirg~n .H.al>ennas,.' As Habe__r-
· - -- -··
mas recogni:red, the Historikerstreit evoked many ba,sic issues.ran_&i:!lg
-
~!.11 the-·- .
nature of historical understanding to the .self-oonceP.tioi:i_.of
thJ Federal Republic of Germ~}';_ Whatever t_h~ir pe_rsqnal mqtives or
agendas, tlie: views of revisionist historians were, for Habermas. symp-
tomatic o-f a neonationalist resurgence that was most prominent on the
part of conservative forces that wante~ to rewrite the Nazi past in order
4··--
to p rovide a "positive" or affirmative German identity in the pres~.
This large r con.text oT the debate ·among historians provided the crucial
code or subtext for arguments that might otherwise seem to be purely
methodological and ru:n-of-the-mlil.
The Historlkerstreit should not be conflated with the issue of "his-
toricization" (Historisierong) in general. But a close examination of the
historians' debate does help to accentuate the question of precisely
how "historicization" takes place and the functions it fulfills in specific
contexts. The neoconservative idea that history as a secular surrogate
for religion provides satisfying meaning (Slnnstiftung) for those who -
have been uprooted by modernizing processes serves to divert atte""n-
tion not only from negative aspects of the past but from modem j>roh-
lems that are not totally dissociated from earlier difficulties and dilem-
mas. As Nietzsche saw long ago, history as a surrogate for religion IS
cleariy ideological in its dubiously providential role as provider of un-
earned, compensatory meaning.
In his 1988 book. Charles Maier formulates a prevalent conception
< 108 >

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 Representing the Holoc.lJU$t
< 109 >
of the more specificaliy historiographical issues in the H i&toriker•
streit-a conception with which Maier basically agrees:
Toe central issue has been whether Nazi cr(mes were. unique, a leg-
llCY of evil i11 a class by themselves, irreparably burdening any~-
cept of Cerman nationhood, or whether they are comparable to
oilier national atrocities, especially Stalinist terror. Uniqueness, it
has been pointed out, should not be-so important an issue: the kilHng
remains horrendous whether or not other regimes commitiea mass
n1urcler. Cof!1parability can~ot r!lal)y exculpate. In fact. however,
as
uniqueness is tigJltly perceived a crucial issue. If Auschwitz is
admittedly dreadful, but dreadful as only one specimen of geno-
cide-as the so-called revisionists have Implied- then Germany can
still aspire to reclaim a national acceptance that no one denies to
perpe~tors of other mas~res, such as Soviet Russia.. But .if the
F!nal Solution remwns noncomparable-as the opposing historians
have insisted-the past may never b.e "worked through; the future
never normalized, and German nationhood may remain forever
tainted, like some well forever poisoned.3
Maier's insightful and balanced account provides an excellent place
to begi11 aqy contemporary discussion of the lltstorikentreit. It is
noteworthy that Maier invokes the binary opposjtion between7lie
----- + •• • ....

unique
~ - and. the comP'.irable (or the ge.nera!)-one of the oldest s~h
-
oppositions in historical thought. Yet this opposition takes on a spe-
ci.6c-~beii de~t~ble-significance inthe-contextoftii~ Historiker-

.._ __
sti=eU..Maier's initial paragraph ha; a manif~stiy-~n~dictory struc-
ture: uniqueness not the issue;- uniqueness
.. is. --· is the issue. I. think this
· -· ., - •- -,-
contradiction is not debilitating, but the aporia it conceals must be
subjected to further analysis. For it f!lay indicate that the po!!!! is both
to de~~£Lthe b.!l!~ opposition and to see precisely how it func-
tions historically and ideologically. Seeing how tbe opposition-fuii~
tions is necessary in the analysis of how uniqueness and compara~_il.!!r
are coded in a historically and ideologically specific.situ~li~. Decon-
struct!ng the opposition is necessary in the attempt to elaborate a dif-
ferent way of posing the problem and even of defining the "central"
issue.
I would like to argue that one crucial-perhaps the crucial-histor-
ical issue is whether (and how) the Holocaust< 1s attended to o.r.
wheth~r_§_t_t~!)tion is diverted from it in a manner that decreases
chances that it wi11 be worked through to any concelvable extent. The
--- .. - - - --

•L~U311 ~
11/,/1 ll'ij< ~ QC t.11, tjlf,(' l •I
 Dominick LaCapra
< 110 >
attempt to provide a historical acoou.nt of the Holocaust Olfers a limit-
ing case of~.£rtl.li.(~ -~lconfronts historfuns in ge.neral. 1nis problem
is perliaps best fonnulate~f inpsychoanalyfic ·tenns:l..ow should one
negotiate transferential relations to the object of study whereby pro-
cesses active in that object are repeated with more or less significant
variations in the account of the histori3ni"' The K9)oc;a~~-.tpr_esents the
______
historian with transference in the most traumatic fonn ___...
·- · conceivable- ___
buTiii ·a-ronn ffiat ·wi1Tvary witli7lie anTerence in subject position of
the analyst. Wliether the historian ·or analyst is a survivor, arelative of
survivots, a former Nazi, a former collaborator, a relative of former
Nazis or co)laborators, a younger Jew or Gennan dis~ced from more
immediate contact with survival, participation, or collaboration, or a
relative "outsiderff to these problems will malce a dilference even in
the meaning of statements that may be formally identical. Certain
statements or even entire orientations may seem appropriate for some-
one in a given subject po$ition but not in others. (It wo11ld, for elt•
ample, be ridiculous if I tried to assume the voice of Elie Wiesel or of
Saul Friedlander. There is a sense in which I have no right to th6$e
voices. There is also a sense in which. experiencing a lack of a viable
voice, I am constrained to resort to quotation and commentary more
often than 1 otherwise might be.) Th.us although any historian ~u§J_be
"inve~te.~I" in a distinctjve .W!r_in the events ofth~ .Hc:>!~~st, not all
investments (or cathexes) are the-sarrie and not all statements, rhet<>-
. . _ ,..
_ .. • + - - - ·-.- - ~ - -

rics, or ofi_entations are equally available tq different ,historians.

How la:nguageis used is thus critical for the way in ~hich a transfer-
ential relation is negotiated. It is also dec(sive in determining the man-
ner in which subjeot•tJOSitions are defined and redefined. Certain
voices would seem unavailable for certain historians and more possible
for others. But no historian should be content with a conventional
voice that levels or routinizes problems that malce particular demands
and pose special challenges. I do not think that conventional tech-
niques, which in certain respects are necessary, are ever sufficiellt, and
to some extent, the•study of the Holocaust may help us to reconsider
the requirements of historiography in general. Conventional tech-
niques are particularly inadequate with respect to e~ents that -~e in-
deed Timiting. With respect to these events language may break down,
anTthe most appropriate form of representation may be minimalist
Still, I would.contend that it is more possible to indicate whath-as not
worked than to legislate what approach must be talcen in trying to

-•L~I llll I

11/,/l''f'l'I~ <)~t.11, t-ilf,(' l•I

 Representing the Holocawt
< 111 >

write or speak about the Holocaust. In addition, silence here is not

identical with simple muteness, and the way language breaks down
is itself a s'ignificant and even telling process. In any event, the lan-
guage user-including the historian-is under special constraints and
obligations which he or she avoids through a reliance on standard op-
erating procedures. Positivism in general may be seen as an abuse of
scientific method through an autonomization of the constative or
empirical•analytic dimension of discourse in a way· that denies the
problem of tra.nsference. (Indeed one way to define positivism ls as a
denial of transference.> Nowher-e more than with reference to the
Holocaust do positivism and standard techniques of narrowly
empirical•analytic inquiry seem wanting. How historians should use
language with reference to the subject positions that they occupy and
are attempting to forge is a pressing issue with no prefabricated or pat
solutions; it cannot be obviated through a reversion to .t ype, To make
this point is not to deny an important role for objeotivity. Objectivity
does, however, become a more difficult and problematic undertaking
redefined in terms of the attempt to counteract modes of projection,
self-indulgence, and narrow partisanship in an exchange with the past.
(Rere one has the possibility of a "postdeconstructivett notion of objec-
tivity that resists absoluti1.ation or foundational status hut has its valid
uses in conjunction with the socially sensitive, psychoanalytically in-
formed concept of subject positions.)
In view of what I have been arguing, ther.e is a sense in which the
Nazi crimes are both l.lnique and comparable-. They are unique not
a
only in th~ they nave distinctive effect on people who have a specific
"lived" relation to them and occupy different subject positions: they
ore also unique in that they are so eittreme that they seem unclassifi-
able and threaten or tempt one with silence. But they will be com-
pared to other events insofar as comparison is essential for any attempt
to understand. The,ptoblero_i! h2w this process of comparison takes
Jilitce aod the fii~ctjons jt serves. To. see the Holocaust in terms of
transference is to some-extent to make it comparable, but the value of
the concept of transference is to enable one to stress the differences 1n
traumatizing potential of events and to situate the Holocaust as a lim-
iting case that tests llJld 1J1ay even vnsettle categories and cowpansons.
When employed in a certain fashion, comparisons may serve mani-
festly levelling functions.
I would propose that the greatest danger at the present time (at least

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 Dominick LaQipra
< lli. >

in the conte,ct of the historians' debate) is that certain comparisons may

function as meohanisms of denial that do not enable one to "work
throughb problems. Indeed they may misleadingly con8ate normality
with a levelling normalization. The seemingly balanced account of an
unbalanced situation-particuJarly the appeal to comparisons that
even-handedly show the distribution of hon-or in history-may well
be coded in a specific manner as mechanisms of denial that seek nor-
malization and a ..positive" identity through an avoidance or disavowal
of the critical and self-critical requirements of both historical under-
standing and anything approximating "normality." The emphasis upon
uniqueness has the virtue of opposing normalization and may be con-
textually effective as a limited strategy of reversal. But it may also be
conducive to "acting out" problems r,1ther than working the.m through.
With respect to any extremely traumatic situation-and clearly with
respect to the HolQCaust-some "acting out" may be unavoid,ible ;ind
even necessary. ln fact critiques of "acting ol.lt" -critiques that may at
times have a partial validity (notably when they address the problem
of the self-legitimating or self-righteous use of the Holocaust as "sym •
bolic capital")-may themselves function to reinforce tendencies to-
ward denial. Still, a historical and critical account should attempt to
provide a measure of distance toward events that is required in order
to hold a degree ofobjectivity and self-critical perspective.•
Qoe cri•igal , ole of comparisons in history is to bring out not only
similarities but significant di.lierences. Comparisons that accentuate
only similarity are ipso facto dubious. Despite certain of his disagree-
lllents with ffabemias, Eberhard Jackel has offered a succinct and jus-
tifiably oft-quoted statement of the manner in which the Holocaust was
unique in this sense: ''The Nazi extermination of the Jews was unique
because never before bad a state, under the responsible authority of
its leade.r, decided and announced that a specific group of human
beings, including the old, the women, the children, and the infants,
would be killed to the very last one, and implemented this decision
with all the means at its disposal."• Jaokel here underscores the signif-
icance of official, political antisemitism involving a systematic, state•
sponsored policy of extermination directed against an entire people for
the express scapegoating purpose of eliminating a putative source of
poJlution.
In the course of my discussion, [ shall try to give more substanl.-e to
the schema I have suggested. I sbould like to begin with a brief discus-

-111113111 ~
I l/ /I
0
'"'I" ~ ,JC t.11, 1-jl(,(-'f•I
 Representing the Holocaust
< 113 >

sion of two foremost revisionist historians: Ernst Nolte and Andreas

Hillgruber. (I shall not address complicafio•ns introduced by the con-
sideration of other revisionists such as Michael Stunner.)
The larger philosophical premise of Nolte 's analysis is his peculiar
concept of transcendence, by whrch he me;ms the radical emancipa-
tion of the individual from tradition. The transcendent individual
becomes atomized and deracinated and requires history as the re-
placement of lost uadition, partlcularlr lost religious tradition. Tue
daunting task facing the historian in Germany is to furnish a binding
answer to anomie through a conception of tradition that ,may be taken
up and affirmed by the individual in quest of roots and a feelil\8 of
being at home in the world. The comparative method is one key means
of ma.king one's nation more available as an object of sustaini11g com-
mitment and a bulwark Jlgainst communist threats to the West.
Through rhetorical questions, Nolte takes comparison in the du-
biously met.aphysical (perhllps magical) direction of ma.king Nazi
crimes derivative or mimetic of a more basic original, and he even
suggests thllt they were preemptive with respect to the archetypical
Bolshevik menace. He thereby resuscitates the hackneyed apologetic
claim that at least the Nazis opposed the Bolsheviks and thereby de-
fended the interests of Western civilization. In Nolte's "Vergangen-
heit": "Did the National Socialists, did Hitler carry out an 'Asiatic' ac-
tion perhaps only, because they regarded th.emselves and theit kmd as
potential or real victims of an 'Asiatic' action? Was not the Gulag Archi-
pelago more original (urspriinglicher] than Auschwitz? Was .not the
'class murder' of the Bolsheviks the logical and factual prlus of the 'ra-
cial murder' of the National Socialists? Was it not a scientific mistake to
focus on the latter and neglect the former, although a causal nexus is
probable?"
Thus, for Nolte, the Gulag may hllve "caused" Auschwitz: the Nazis
did it because the Russians did it first, and the Nazis were afraid that
the Russians would do it to them. The identification of the Holocaust
as an "Asiatic" action performs the astonishing feat of projecting guilt
away from the Germans in aQ act of racial slander that is particularly
offensive in view of its context, The concluding invocation to science is
a sheer propaganda ploy in fhe attempt to lend credibility to an out-
landisbly speculative and implausible causal imputation; it too is remi-
niscent of Nazi tactics. With consummate insensitivity, Nolte also as•
setts that the "Final Solution• was .itself not substantively diffjlrent

-11111311 I

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 Dominick LaCapra
< 114 >

from other pogroms of mass annihilation "but for the sole exception of
the technical procedure of gassing." In an earlier essay, Nolte even
went to the absurd extreme of suggesting that the "Final Solution"
could be understood as a preemptive strike against the Jews them-
selves and that it was prompted by Chaim Weizmann's "official decla-
ration in the fi-r st days of September 1939, -according to which Jews in
the whole world would fight on the side of England."•
Nolte is non,etheles.s to the point in warning against indiscriminate
conceptions of German "guilt" that unconsciously replicate the kind of
thinking by which the Nazis convinced themselves of the "guilt" of the
Jews. Nor would one want to deny the prevalence of atrocity in the
twentieth century. But Nolte insists on this prevalence not so much to
emphasize its importance as to mitigate if not evade that·of specifically
Nazi behavior. In light of his premise (or fixation) whereby commu-
nism is the ultimate cause of all modern evil, Nolte's argument takes
on a circular, .p aranoid structure which makes it impermeable to coun-
terevidence. His argument also has the earmark of uncontrolled trans-
ference in its uncritical repetition offeatures of his object of study.
Habennas himself recognized that one could not simply amalgamate
the views of Nolte and Andreas Hillgruber. In the two essays he pub-
lished together in book form in. 1986, however, Hillgruber did to some
extent relativize the Holocaust, especially through comparisons, for
example, with Stalin's "extermination and resettlement practices [Aw-
rottunga- und Um.fiBdlungapraktiken).''•The ill-chosen subtitleofHill-
gruber's book is itself telltale in its opposition of"the shattering of the
German Re.ich'' and "the end of European Jewry." Both the euphe-
qiiam of ''.tb-~.imi' {ill_contrast to t1\e dec,dedly en,pbatic ~ering")
and the impersonali . of" "_ atin parallelism with the
Reicli attest to a process of normalization and ro~tinization.
Hillgruber traces the roots of antisemitism in Germany, and he
notes (p. 96) the priority of the destruction of the Jews in Nazi policy
even in the later portion of the war. He even at one point (p. 98) refers
to the historical uniqueness of events (histomche Einmaligkeit du
Vorgangs). But he insists that, while others went along and might even
be culpable ln their indifference, the "Final Solution" was Hitler's dis-
tinctive venture. Indeed, within the compass of -a relatively short es-
say, Hillgruber devotes a disproportionate amount of space to the
question of Hitler's role in the "Final Solution." Hillgruber moreover
argues that the Allies were not moved by Nazi crimes but prompted

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 Repruenting the Holocawt
< 115 >

by. ~er P<?litics and ,misl~!!Y.,a_c~d~~in!&.~ <Jf P_f!:1~_:'ian militarism

in their presumably longstanding ambition to dismember Cerman-y
aiicfaeitroj1~-hJ:ml~d. Pru~sia~'i ri.this ~ense,. Gennaiiy victim- was
i.tea.Theevents OD the ~astem.lront during the 6nal- phase of the war
were themselves aspects of a, normal struggle for dominance and of a
heroic yet desperate attempt to save as much of German culture and
as many German lives as possible from the atrocity-mongering Russian
army. For Hillgruber, the historian must empathize with the Germans
in the east, notably including German soldiers fighting against over-
whelming odds 01) the ea.stem front-soldiers who were victims in
their own right as fighters for a cause that had been sacriflced to power
politics. Hillgruber's plea for empathy is remarkably one-sided, espe,
cially in view of the .fact that the continuance of the war on the eastern
front prolonged the operation of the death camps. It is facilitated by
the genera1izing-aod essentializing nature of his ~ u'!!_ of .ili.~plight
of- Germ.an
..,.--:-7"-soldiers
__....._.__., and.- at least
= c.. -·-·-- .. . in. . . . _.this
_ book-the
' - - -.. - limitations of his
, #-- ... •• -

inquiry. into_t~~-d~e~ CJf the. mtllt¥Y) . £2'!!P!.i2 i9: i.n Nazi l!()licy llJ!,d
--···-
tlree itent of ~h~ r 9~!1ti:ocities.!'Y!n~tJ~th R~s~ian soldiers ai:idS!"'
vilians
----:·-· on the-
- .....eastern--·-
.,__ . . .
front. Making a distorted use of a distinction
drawn by Mu Weber, H;Jlgruber also contrasts what he sees as the
commendably realistic ethic of individual responsibility upheld by
German party, state, and military leaders in the east with the unrealis-
tic ethic of inner conviction that motivated those who plotted agalnst
Hitler's life.
I h,lve treated llill,gnaber's acoount selectively by singling out some
of its features without addressing the important rhetorical issue of the
way in which they are embedded in the erudite and at times intricate
analysis of a historian with a strong and solid professional reputation.
It is nonetheless important to recognize that Hillgruber's account is at
times questionable even though, when compared to Nolte's, it is ap-
parently more historical, less philosophical, more securely authorized
by previous publications, and hence more professionally reputable.
(Most historians would probably agree with Habermas in thinking that
Nolte 's .status is not enhanced by the fact that be was Heidegger's stu-
dent.) hideed, at least for certain audiences, llillgrubec's approach
may be more effective than Nolte's in legitimating a more guarded and
sophisticated relativization. In fact it is·very tempting to be taken in by
Hillgruber and to begin playing hfs game. In understanding Hillgrub-
er's role in the historians' debate, at is, however, insufficient to isolate

- 11 111311 I

11/,/1 IFIJ' ~ , c fwll, ~lfO/'I•)

 Dominick LaCapra
< 116 >

and evaluate the truth value of his claims one by one; it 1s necessary
also to analyze how these claims function in his account. Otherwise
one runs the risk of displacing normalization onto one's understanding
of Hillgruher's text and perhaps uninte11tion$lly participating in a
larger process of relativi.zation.
Nolte's conception of transcendence is in certain respects the pho-
tographic negative of the notion of emancipation and Enlightenment
of which Jurgen Hahermas ha:s made himself the champion.•• At times
Hahennas' own self-image and his understanding of the tradition of
critical rationality he wishes to defend induce him to caricature more
substantial questioners of that tradition (such as Jacques Derrida,
whom Hahermas often interprets misleadingly as a mere mystical an-
archistic opponent of reason); they also lead him to make allowance in
his own approach only for rather reduce<! variants of notions that dis-
orient rationality without simply denying it (such as Freud's notion of
the unconscious). But Habennas' intervention in the Historilr.entreit
enabled him to put his best foot forward and even to elaborate in more
telling fashion certain of his basic arguments.
In one of his interventions, Habermas puts furth a striking fonnula-
tion of the relationship between-collective responsibility and the pub-
lic role of memory:
There is the obligation we in Germany have-even if no one else is
prepared to take it upon themselves any longer-to keep alive the
memory of the suffering of those murdered at the hands of Cennans,
and we must· keep lhis memory alive quite openly and not just in our
own minds. These dead have above all a claim to the weak anamnes-
tic power ofa solidarity which those born later can now only practice
through the medium of memory which is always being renewed,
which may often be desperate. but which is at any rate active and
ciroolating. If we disregard this Benjaminian legacy, Jewish fellow
citizens and certainly the sons, the daughters and the grandchildren
of the murdered victims would no longer be able 10 breathe in our
country. (°'Concerning the Public Use of History,· p. 44)
Habermas also argues·for a critical rather than a blind appropriation
of traditions-a critical appropriation that would validate only tradi-
tions that "stand up to the suspicious gaze ma.de wi.s e by the moral
catastrophe" (p. 44). Instead ofa particularistic nationalism,, Hahermas
calls for a "postconventional ldentityM based on universal nonns and a
constitutional patriotism. In the mselves these ideals may seem rather

111113111 ~
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 Representing the Ifolocoual
< 117 >

ill.{!fl:ecti'{!Ll!!!.! loverly indebted to the absJr:act aspirations of the En-

lightenment and German idealism. But the passages l have q;;oted
incticaTu'lliatthe larger proJectmay be to join these idei!ls to the selec-
tive appropriation of traditions, including those of the Enlightenment,
that in their own way also .c any historical sedimentation and concrete
commitments. In another intervention in the debate-an address de-
livered in Denmark-Habermas inquires further into the compl.ex
transformations of embeddedness in a traditional life-world. \\1iile ~
sistin-&..on a cor_n_plementary rather__~~n an a!½_a_!o_gi~re~~t!Q'l b e ~
individual aod oollecti~. identity, he stresses the postconventional im-
plications of Kie~d's notion of a conversionilke existeiitialclioice
that con~cigush 3!14 ~~e~22~sihlt·_~raii~ro_ims --?.~~ ·~~ iifu~G:to~ -- This
m
ob!>ice p_ut~ tb~ individ~!. th_1: e.~h_icaL~~il:!_o_'! .~[~!'. ~~it~..<!.~@!!$
"!.~at shpuld be considered essential and worth passing on in his or her
p@!t, '(he co1,1nteipart in the life of a people ·would be the decision,
conscious of the am.bivalence[~ e~rr..!,~a_<!_i~o~_th~~..Rubli~ly.~~-d crit-
ically determin~53bicli tracli~~s.Er:.~pec_fs of ti:aditions one wants \o
continue and which one does not. 11 The reference to Kierkegaard
might itself be read to indicate that, with .respect to the tense conjunc-
tion of universalizing constitutional principles and more specific-to
some extent nonreBective-bonds, there is II need for continual re-
thinking and renegotiation rather than speculative synthesis of Aufhe-
bung.
One obvious problem is the use made of any notion of unquestioned
or nonreflective attachments as well as the manner in which it interacts
with a critical approach to problems. Indeed, an)' justifiable sense of
ret ponsibility for tl.ie ~~~o~~-'!_O_t r_e~ . on· p:i;_iive a~ptan~ of a
b~r4en; it woulf,I !~Uite~ th _a_~()~re_fl~".!ive invo!veme~.t i!l. ~ ~!Jar~¥
history, ~nd a critical and se:lf-critioal atten1pt to come to terms with/"
that history. In this se;se, there i s siili mu~h of valu~ in Habennai
earlier critique of the lcind of uncritical, customary identity that seeks
an affitmative conception of the past and a self-confirming normaliza-
tion or national identity even at the price of denial and distortion. Con-
trasting the following questions with the earlier quoted questions rhe-
torically raised by Ernst Nolte enhances their power:
Can one assume the legal succession ofthe Gerrnan 1'eich, Cslll one
continue the traditions of German culture without also assuming his-
torical liability for the form of existence in which Auschwitz '"(85 pos-
sible? ls it possible to remain liable for the context in whioh such

111 I I II 1

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 Dominiclc LaCapra
< 118 >
crimes had their origins and with which one's existence is inter-
woven, in any way other than through the soUdarity of the memoty
of that which cannot be made gooc:I, in a.riy ·way other than throu.gh
a re8ective and keenly scrutinizing attitude towards one's own
identity-creating traditions? Is it not possible to say in geoe,al terms:
the less communaliiy such a life-context allowed internally and the
more it maintained itself by usurping and destroying the lives of
others, the greater then is the burden of reconciliatio.o, task of
mourning, and the self~ritical scrutiny of subsequent generations.
Moreover, doesn't this very sentence forbid us to use levelling com•
parisons to minimize the non-transferability of the shared responsi-
bility imposed on us? This is the question concerning the singularity
of Nui cri!lles, iConceroiog the Publi.c Use of History," p. 47)
Hahe'!.11~- ~~ _!IO_simple <li~pot~my_~tween _111_e_mgry and history,
and ~ncept otcon~e'!.f!.o[!31.id~ntity I~ mor.e p "°-ljing th~ a stereo-
t>'Ei_cal idea of "mythiqil memory" at times tendenti.Ql!W.!!_pposed to
•authentic~ history. (Indeed, as we shall see, those who put Tortli this-
ide'a ~f ioythical·memory only to reject it are themselves at times close
to a con.ventional identity, at least in their conception of "authentic"
historiography. ) It would be mistaken, moreover, to identify Haber-
mas' specific and limited notions of historical uability and solidarity of
memory With an indiscriminate conception of German guilt that is Vis-
ited on each and every German as irrational fate or pathogenic stain ,
even though those "born later" may at times feel unjustifiably guilty
about the past.
Yet Habermas himself lends too much credence to the standard op-
position between the citizen and the expert, ana he is thus un-a 6)e to
era&iraie a cgnception of the vali y mixed or hybridiiea role of the
' hi!!Qrjan.ooth ,!$ a pcofe&&iOAal iebolac and a< a critical intellectual en-
gaged in dialogic e xchange with a past that he or she attempts to recoil',
stitute as ~scient'ifically" as possible. Habennas is led to make an argu-
ment that underwrites a very· conventional identity for the his torian
and that -s eems particularly inappropriate for a field that is.not formal•
ized but instead remains in many significant ways very close -to public
discourse in its own protocols of explanatfon and interpretation:

We are addressing the dispute about the right answer from the per-
spective of the first person. One should not confuse this arena, in
which it is not possible to be a disinterested party, with discussions
between scientists who, In the course of their work, must adopt the

-1111131 II 1

~
• 111,11 /Flj' • C t.11, tjl(,/-'f•I
 Repruenting the Holocauat
< 119 >
perspective of the third person. The political culture of the Federal
Republic is without doubt affected by the comparative work.of his-
torians· and other academics within the humanities; but it was only
through the sluice gates of publishers and the m115s media that the
results of academic work, with its return to the perspective of the
participants, reached the. public channels for the appropriation of
traditions. Only in this context can accounts l,e. squared by uslng
comparisons. The pompout outrage over an alleged mixing of poli-
tics and scien.c e shwits the issue onto a completely wrong traok.
(Ibid.)

Habermas is of course well advised in noting his lack of special ex-

pertise in the historiogxaphy of the Nazi period and in taking exception
to the reaction of certain members of the, historical profession to his
articles. But he concede$ too much to those historians who took offense
at his intervention rather than seeing it as a stimulus to public dis-
course and a prod for them to -assume certain responsibilities not ex-
cluded by professional expertise but, on the contrary, demanded by it.
One may even raise the question of whether Hahennas' own general
conception of thedivision "of mooe::ri\·socli!jy il;!J'!_~atlier neat spheres
or areas obviates critical thought about the more diffi~ult-11,roblem of
- - - ... . · -- • - -- · - - • • ----- - · - ++ ~ - ·· - ··- + ~ + ·-. - - ~ . . . . ._ _

th_e nat_u_re of v;tlid ~'Qmhjnatjons or hyb~dizations of roles in different

6.~lds such as J1Jstory. p~ilo~op_hy, li~t!'?l!Y ci:itici_sm_. theory; ~na -~oc~al
aLlimes ev~_n jo_p .m~_~sm.
There are othet questionable aspects of Hahermas' argument, in-
cluding a tendency to conffate or at least implicitly to correlate a nor-
mative conception of Western democratic values with the existing
Western political alliance. Moreover, In view of his defense of moder-
nity as an uncompleted project of enlightenment, Habermas has stra-
tegic as well as more deepseated philosophical reasons for not placing
too much emphasis on the ambivalence of Western traditions and the
possibly dubious role of a critique of revisionism in lessening aware-
ness; of the implication of other Western countries in massively de-
structive or even genocidal processes. Given the history of the United
States, this danger is clear and present for an American, and identifi-
cation with Babenrtas' position may he facilitated by the narcissistic
and self-justili.catory gains it brings. It would nonetheless be a mist.ike
simply to process all of Habermas' arguments in the historians' .debate
in terms of a preset conception of his politics or philosophy. Such a
response to Hahetmas is itself rather leveling and leads one to miss or

-1111131 Ill
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 Dominick LaCapra
< 12() >

underplay significant, contextually important features of his jnterven-

tions, not least of which was his role in triggering the historians' debate
itself.
Not addressed in Habennas' critique but bearing on the question of
at least limited relations between the Historikmtreit and the general
issue of historicization (Historisierung) of the Holocaust is the repre-
sentation of the Nazi period in and through the social hlstory of every-
day life (Alltagsgeschichte). Here the exchange of letters between
Martin Broszat and Saul Friedlander is particularly illuminating.'*
8ro57.at is upset_!>y _t.!!eJ!IC..tthat~ for! ~onit_time after the war, Ger-
manswereaole"io write German history only by way of extreme ais-
taii.1:1ng:; ·3!·~ they we.re treating the history._QfAfu.r_!!ign people. "We
wrote about this history only in the t!ii~ -~~son, and not.in the first
persori plural; ·we were no longer able to feel that this history was
somehow dealing with oursel;es~ and w~~ ur thing'" (p. 100). For
Broszat "bistoritiz,ation~ contril>utes to lifting this barrier by putting
Gennans in touch with their past, 4-s Friedlander notes, however, the
problem is the relation between intention and result. Broszat con-
strues historici:r.ation in tenns of the insertion of the Nazis into the
larger context of everyday life, which at times went on relatively undis-
turbed by what was happening in the concentration and de;ith camps.
For Friedlander, both leveling comparisons and the integration of
events into everyday life may induce "some kind of overall relativjza.
tion of the moral problems specifically raised by Nazism" (p. 104). '" He
elaborates his point .in this manner:

For the historian, the widening and nuancing of the picture [i]s of
the essence, But the "historicl.z.ationn ... oould mean not so much a
widening of the picture, as a shift of focm, From that perspective,
the insistence on Alltag or on long-range social trend~ could indeed
strongly relativize what I still consider as the decis1ve hisloriog,aph-
ical approach to that period, an approach which considers these
twelve years as a definable historical unit dominated, first of ;ill, by
the "primacy of politics.'' (p. 104)

Friedlander would seem to allow for an Alltagtgeschichte that would

widen the picture without shifting the focus, perhaps one that would
stress the tense imd complex int~raction between the role of everyday
life and that of larger issues that are ofcrucial concern to Friedlander. ••
Still, Friedlander's notion of the primacy of politics includes the cen-

_d~I Ill~
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 Representing the Holocaust
< 121 >"
trality of Auschwitz-and everything it stands for-in focusing one's
picture of the Third Reich. Here I would note that centeril\g in this
case need not be conceived as a mete metaphysical residue; it may be
understood as a functional necessity that is most responsibly under-
talcen when it is self-consetous and ori'tically related to an explicit eval-
uation of priorities in the representation of historical events. Indeed a
central focus is least subject to control when its role and determinants
are not posed as an explicit problem and thereby problematized. Any
central :lix;us cannot, however, be essentialized or presented as eter-
nal., and the open question is whether and how an account may be .,
justifiably decentered insofar as Auschwitz is indeed "worked through·
in an acceptable manner-a question that may arise more for future
than present generations. At present it may be enough to observe that
Auschwitz as a central focus need not serve to provide the false comfort
and unearned security that critics of"centering" contest.
That Broszat's defense ofAlltagsgeachichte may indeed involve a du-
bious shift of focus and even possibly apologetic tendencies is indicated
by other features of his argument. For example, he relies on a contrast
between mythical memol'}' and scientific history, He asserts that the
former is not "simply the negative opposite pole to scholarship and
scientific method" (p. 101). But he wants to keep the two dear, dis-
tinct, and sharply separated, and the very terms he employs convey a
negative connotation with respect to what he terms mythical. He also
relegates the mythical to Jews with special needs in representation that
are nonetheless beyond the bounds of "authentic" historiography:
"Precisely when confronted with the inexpressible events of the Holo-
caust, many Jews have indeed come to regard as indispensable a ritu-
alized, almost historical theological remembrance, interwoven with
other elements of Jewish fundamental world-h.istorical experience,
alongside the mere dry historical reconstruction of facts-because the
incommensurability of Auschwitz cannot be dealt with in any other
way" (ibid.). 1 shall later touch on the manner rn which Broszat's con-
cerns may be related to the problem of "acting-out~ in contrast to
"working-through.tt But l have already intimated that acting-out is
probably unavoidable with respect to extremely traumatizing events,
and one has to be especially careful about possible functions of any
seeming critique of it. Indeed those who criticize it may combine de,
nial with their own form of acting-out. In any case, it is not helpful to
oppose "dry historical reconstruction of facts," to writualized, almost

111113111 ~
llf./1 il'ij< ~ <JC t.11, cjlt-·/'I I
 Dominiclc LaCapra
< 122 >
theological remembrance," fgr ! uch ~ -O£P.O~a.ts in displaced
form the seemingly averted c;>rux>~it:ion,_ e histo and mythical
rt- al~so- avo-ids- t~ ~cial ptoblem of the demands p a,ce
m_e _m_o_ry-."""'cc
0

uponlne'fifsto~cai ~s~_of_la~~age i!I_att_~n)ptingtoaoomnt fo; phE:-

nomena such as Auschwitz, and ii facilitates a return
+ - .., _ _ ., - ···"to
~- • ---=~- ~if
-conventional
- • + • • -

n~t narrowly positlvistj~ h_i~!.Qd.Qg!_ip__!!y. I have already argued that the

basic problem is best posed in terms of transference and the need to
work through rather than deny it or act it out This problem in differ-
ent ways confronts not only Jews but those in various suGjootpositions,
incluarng ~er.~ ~.!";' ~ d itts
arg_uabl~ ti_iat;;~;i_JJ i:iti~izii.d aspeyts of
language ·may be essential to processes of mourning that are bound up
witn working;through transference i~-rertai; - cas~s. This issue should
not~ prejudged, and th~ precise' manner in which historiography is
or is not compatible with ritualiied use$ of 181J_guage is certainly intri-
cate and controversial. Neither should the issue be foroolosed -through
overly simple oppositions between history and "mythical memory" or
between dry reconstruction of facts and ritualizatlon.
The questionable nature of Brosut's argument is even more pro-
nounced when he appeals to the experience of people living under the
'nlird Reich. In a crucial passage, Broszat asserts that
the liquidation of the Jews was only feasible during the period of
time in which it actually was can:ied out specifically because that
liquidation was not in the limelight of events, but rather could
largely be concealed and kept quiet. Such,concealment was possible
because this destruction involved a minority which even .many years
before had been systematically removed from the field of vision of
the surrounding non-Jewish world as a result of social ghettofzation.
The ease with which the centrality of the "Final Solution.. was car-
ried out became a possibility because the f.lte of the Jews constituted
a little-noticed mattet of sooondary importaoce for the majority
of Cermans during -the war; and because for the allied enemies o"f
Cermany, it was 10:ewise only one among a multitude of _problems
they had to deal with during the war, and by no means the most impor-
tant one,
It is evident that the role of Auschwitz in the original historical
context of action is one that is significantly different from its subse-
quent importance in terms of later historical perspective. The Ger-
man historian too will certainly accept that Auschwitz-due to its
singular significance-functions tn retrospection as the central event
of the Nazi period. Yet qua scientist and scholar, he cannot readtl'y

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 Repruenting the Holocaust
< 123 >
aocept that Auschwitz aho be made, after the fact, into the cardinal
point, the hinge on which the entire factual complex of historical
events of the Nazi period turns, He cannot .simply accept without
further ado that this entire complex of history be moved into the
shadow of Auschwitz-yes, that Ausc,hwitz even be made into the
decisive measuring-rod for the historical perception of this .period.
(pp. 102-103)
Once again the structure of contradiction is apparent: Auschwitz is/
is not the central event/cardinal point of the Nazi period. Here one
may observe that even if one accepts all factual elements of Broszat's
account as accurate, his atg\lment may still be seen as faulty. The
historian should certainly note whatever corresponds to the e~ri-
ence of the time, although the ()()nstruction of thii experience may be
more difficult than Broszat's account intimates. But this e~rience
does not simply dictate the perspective of the historian. The centrality
of focus may be determined by a priority in values even if this priority
is not shared by participants or, more precisely, by participants exer-
cising-eQr more or less actively accepting-hegemony. (With respect
to Jews and other oppressed groups such as gypsies and homosexuals
living under the Nazi regime, it would be a euphemistic understate-
ment to speak of the centrality" of Auschwitz.) But even if the Nazi
ff

period does indeed move under the .shadow of Auschwitz, this does
not mean, as Broszat later intimates, that one must ''force totally under
[Auschwitz's] usurped domination those non-NatioQal Socialist Ger-
man traditions which extended into the Nazj period and, due to their
being 'appropriated' by the regime, to a certain extent.themselves fell
prey to National Socialism" (p. 103). Instead the problem would be to
determine how-and precisely to what ex:tent~such traditions fell
prey to, or even facilitated the emergence of, National Socialism, and
the attempt to extricate them from their Nazi u.s es and abu$Cs would
require, as Habermas has intimated, an explicit reckoning with the
ways they were or were not involved in Auschwitz.
In his response to Broszat, Saul Friedlander provides grounds to
question the factual premises as well as the formal argumentation of
Brosi.at's account. Relying on such rectlnt studies as Ian Kershaw's re-
vised English edition of The ~Hitler Myth": Image and Reality in the
Thir.d Reich"' and H. and S. Obemaus' "Schreiben, wie ea wirklwh
war{" Aufzeichnungen Karl Duerkefaeldem aus den Jahren 1933-
1945, 16 Friedlander stat~s:

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 Dominick LaCapra
< 124 >
1n short, although the destruction of the Jews may have been a minor
point in the perceptions and policies of the Allies during the war, it
seems, more and more, that it loomed as a hidden but perceived fact
in many German minds during the war itself.
U my point is correct, it bas considerable Importance in relation
to the core thesis of [Broszat's) "Plea." Indeed, normal life with the
knowledge of ongoing massive crimes committed by one's own na-
tion and one's own society is not so normal au\er all. (p. 108)
Friedlander's comment of course raises tne issue of suppression and
repression versus simple ignorance. Its force is heightened by another
set of observations he makes;
Nobody denies the ~banality of evit.at many levels within this anni-
hilation process, but it possibly is not the only explanation at all
levels.
In my opinion, part of the leadership and part of the followers,
too, had the feeling of accomplishing something truly, historically,
metahistorically exceptional . .. Himmler's Posen speech [was] the
expression of a Rawch, the feeling of an almost superhuman enter-
prise, That is why I would tend to consider some important aspects
of the Nazi movement in terms of "political rel(gion" in .the sense
used by Eric Voegelin, Norman Cohn, Karl Dietrich Bracher, James
Rhodes , Uriel Tu.I and many others. (p. 109)17

Broszat himself touches upon suppression with respect not to Ger-

mans under the Third Reich but to,historians, and his,comment brings
out some of the dubioµs pos$ibilities of the critique of acting-out:

As 1 see it, the danger of suppressing the period consists not only in
the customazy practice of forgetting, but rather, in this insiance-
almost in paradoxical fashion-likewise in the fact that one is too
overly ''concerned,'' for didactic reasons, about this cbapteF in his-
tory . . . The gigantic dfctatorial and criminal dimension of the Nazi
period also harbors within it the danger that the authenticity of this
segment of history niay end up being buried beneath monumental
sites for the Resistance-and indeed perhaps also beneath memori-
als for the Holocaust. (p. 118)
The reminder that the Holocaust may serve as "symbolic capital" or
as a pretext for self-serving monumentalization is apposite. Still, the
very concept of "authenticity" is of questionable usefulness, particu-
larly when it is employed as- a misleading synonym for accurate recoo-

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 Repre&enting the Holocaust
< 125 >
struction. And one may well resist the degeneration of concern or even
commitment into propaganda and partisan advocacy but nonetheless
insist that there are vaJid didactic purposes in hjstoriography. espe•
cially for those who are teachers as well as scholars, There is aJso a
problem in the appeal to normalized methods or balanced accounts in
the representation of rather abnormal and unbalanced phenomena
that make distinctive demands upon the historian. But the most basic
point is that the critique of acting-out may, if undertaken in a certain
wa,y, facilitate denial or even the inclination to blame the victim. In•
deed it may not be entirely beside the point to observe that a concern
for memorials as necessary acts of memory is quite understandable in
light of the fact that the Na:zis wanted the destruction of Jews to be
totaJ and to include their elimination from•memory itself at least ih the
foroi of Jewish self-representation. (Jn this speci6c context, a Jewish
public act of memory might function as an act of resistance,) Hitler
planned to substitute Nazi memories of Jews for Jewish ones through
monuments that commemorated hts acts of destruction and oblivion.'·•
The project of total mastery of the past was a.goal of the Nazis, and one
should not in general confuse either dubious monumentalization or
the project of total Bwaltigung with legitimate forms of memory,
overcoming, and working-through.
Throughout this text,, I have been insisting that a crucial issue raised
by the Historikerstreit is how precisely the emphasis on uniqueness ot
comparability functions m the historian's own context. 1 have aJso sug-
gested that this issue can be illuminated through a judicious, nonre-
ductive use of certain psychoanalytic concepts-a use attuned to the
relationship between psychoanalysis and soclopolitical issues, I would
like to conclude with a few brief and inadequate statements about the
general requirements of al) attempt to work through problems rather
than to deny or .ict them out,
Working-through requires the recognition that we are involved in
tTansferential relations to the past in ways that vary according to the
subject positions we find ourselves in, rework, and invent. It also in-
volves the attempt to counteract the.projective reprocessing of the past
through which we deny certain of its features and act out our own de-
sires for self-confirming or identity-forming meaning. By contrast,
working-through is bound up with the role of problematic but signin•
cant distinctions, including the distinction between accurate recon•
struction of the past and committed exchange with it. These distinc-

-11111311 ~
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 Dqminick LaCa.pra
< 126 >

tions should neither be reified into bmary oppositions and separate

spheres nor collapsed into an indiscriminate will to rewrite the past.
In addition, working-through relies on a certain use of memory and
judgment-a use that involves the critique of ideology, prominently
including the critique of the scapegoat mechanism that had a histori-
cally specific and not simply arbitrary or abstract role in the Nazi treat-
ment of the Jews. What is not con&onted critically does not diS$J>pear;
it tends to return !IS the repressed.'"
How language is used is a crucial consideration in working-through
problems, and the historiographical use of language confronts specific
difficulties and challel)ges in the face of limiting cases that may reduce
one to silence. Auschwitz as reality and as metonym is the extreme
limiting case th.at threatens classifications, categories, and compari-
sons. It may reduce one to silence. Silence that is 11ot a sign of utter
defeat, however, is i~elf a potentially ritual -attitude; but in this sense
it is a silence suroenu intricately bound up witb certain uses of lan-
guage.
1he attempt to come to terms with extremely traumatizing events
involves the work of mourning."° This work encompasses a relation
between language and silence that is in some sense ritualized. Certain
rituals teach us that this work does not exclude forms of humor, and
gallows humor has been an important response to extreme situations
on the part of victims themselves. Needless to say, the employment of
humor is one of the most delicate and complicated issues in the light
(or darkness) of certain events.
Historical unders~ding is not furthered by routine oppositions be-
tween ~scientific~ history and its stereotypical if not scapegoated
~other," which often appears in the form of myth, ritual, or memory.
Such oppositions serve prima.rily as mechanisms of defense and denial
that ~ignal overreaction to the possibility of acting-out-overreaction
prompting a confinement of historiography to self-defeating pos1tivis-
tic protocols that may stimulate a return of the repressed in relatively
uncontrolled and uncritical forms. ln cases.of extreme trauma, certain
kinds of acting-out may not be entirely overcome, and working-
through may itself require the recognition of loss that cannot be made
good, sc.ars that will not disappear and even wounds that will not heal.
The problem facing historians-a problem that is itself inffected by the
otber subject positions occupied by given historians-is how to artic-
ulate the relation between the requirements of scientific el(J)ertise and

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 Representing the Holocaust
< 127 >
the less easily definable demands placed on the use of language by the
difficult attempt to work through transferential relations in a dialogue
with the past having implications for the present and ·future. This dia-
logue is not purely personal or psychologjcal. One of its vital aspects is
the exploration of how different approaches relate to the generation of
viable institutions of both discourse and socw life that effectively resist
the recurrence of anything comparable to the Nazi regime. More gen-
erally, in the dialogic dimension of historical study one seeks not ab-
stracted meaning but meaningful guides to thought and practice, and
one seeks them not in a hypostatized past or in some teleological mas-
ter code but in and through one·s very exchange with the past. But to
be critical and self-oritical, this undertaking must be sensitive to the
problem of the possibilities and limits of meaning, including the threat
of finding oneself at the point of irrecoverable loss and empty silence.
The quest for a "positive" identity or for normalization through denial
provides only illusory meanmg and does not further die emergence of
an Acceptable future. A reckoning with the past in keeping with dem-
·ocrafio values requires the ability-or at least the attempt~to read
scars and to affirm only what deserves affirmation as one turns the
lamp of critical rellection on oneself and one's own.

J11 1 1011 t 1

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 <8>

Historical Understanding and

Counterrationality: The Judenrat
as Epistemological Vantage

DAN DINER

The difficulty inherent in describing National Socialism-or, more

precisely, in describin,g and presenting the mass extermination in his-
toriographic terms-is an expression of the inconceivability, the basic
unimaginability of the event itself. Such an observation might sound
trivial if the problem of describability and representation did not entail
an epistemologically guided question-one that is directly bound up
with the entire complex of the. comprehensibility of the National So-
cialist phenomenon. Moreover, the recent debate between the late
Martin Broszat and Saul Friedlander on the historization of that in-
criminated era has demonstrated just how narrow the boundaries in-
deed are of a mode of descnbability aimed at achieving historiogtaph-
ical understanding, Ver$tehen. • In that debate it became cle.ir that
there must be a considerable theoretical effort prior to any attempt at
historization of National Socialism-an analytical endeavor that would
have to ,lead to prehistoriographical clarifications.
A decade ago George Kren and Leon Rappaport termed National
Socialism and its core event, the mass eJttermination, a "historical cri-
sis" and pointed out that "in more formal tenns, the historical crisis
involves events that shatter the credibility of pre-existing epistemolo-
gies."• Using concrete metaphor, they symbolized the annulment of
c1,1stomary approaches of knowing and description evoked by the
event., noting that "one cannot measure pain with a ruler, or the tem-
perature of a blast furnace with a fever thermometer.'' 3 Such a critique
of traditional historiogtaphic approaches in respect to the mass exter-
mination thus broaches a basic question, one that is anterior to all de-
scription and pertains to the comprehensibility, the amenability to Ver-
stehen, of soci.al and political processes or events. According lo JCreo
and Rappaport, one should assume that the phenomenon of the "Final
< 128 >

-•L~I 111 I

111,11 'F'I' n , c "'I• ti<r",/' l•I

 JI Lrtorical Understandfng and Counterrationality
< 129 >

Solution• transcends tradition.al patterns of historical understanding.

In order to specify more precisely the epistemological mutation of the
subject, it is necessary to recall conceptions of historical understanding
regilrded as. valid and accepted in previous historiography.
Beginning with Droysen, if not sooner, research in the historical
sciences has proceeded on the assumption that a Veratehen-oriented
reconstruction of a historical-and thus social-context is possible
only under one. condition: namely, when that reconstruction can be
subjectively meaningful for the observer.• Seen &om this perspective,
a historical event is understandable in the sense of an empathetic teex·
perienclng and consequent concrete comprehension (NachvoUziehen)
only if the observer or the reconstructing histo:rian can rely on what is
familiar- to him &om his own previous experience for support in his
attempt to comprehend the respective situation. Moreover, in his
project of experientialry based understanding, he must also obey the
dictates of reason.s
Tiiis notion of understanding as a process in whioh conclusions are
drawn about an Internal motive &om external manifestations is based
on the assumption that the person investigating history proceeds in the
same way as one who makes history.• Or to formulate it in term$ that
seem less tautological: that both historical reconstruction and the ac•
tion of the historical subject are guided in a similar fashion by reason.'
In short, it is assumed that the anticipated logical connection between
explanans and explanandum.is present and operative in the process of
understanding.8 From this pers.pective, the subjective meaningfulness
of the intertemporal di$1ogue between present and pMt is based on an
intersubjeotively generalitable, and thus objective, medium of com-
munication-namely, that of rational discourse.• Consequently, what
we are attempting to discover in the historical object by means of an
approach aimed at Verstehen. guided by rationality, is always and only
its interpretable core, that. is, what is accessible lo reason and a,me-
nable to experiential comprehension. That is also the case when histo-
nans find themselves confronted with a subject that appears lo them
to be irrational .1°
Despite all protestations to the contrary-namely, that they are
faced with an incomprehensible set of events-historians agproach
National Socialism and the mass extermination on the basis of a key
assumption: that these phenomena are nonetheless amenable toa pro-
~s of comprehension guided by criteria of rationality. That supposi-

•L~ 101 II~

11/,/1 ll'ij< ~ <JC t,lf tjlG-/'l•I
 Dan Diner
< 130 >

lion is present, for example, when they note an extreme disparity be-
tween ends and means-a relation generally assumed to be socially
operative-such as the interlinkage between conduct of the war and
the mass extennination. That covert hypothesis regarding the ultimate
rationality of conduct also guides the approach to the ideologically mo-
tivated aims of the Nazis themselves. By dint of the fact that they sur-
pass the power of imagination of the rationlll personality, those aims
are consequently classified as "irrlttional." Such a label indicates that
the historian disqualifies this behavior as basically incomprehensi-
ble-when Judged, of course, in terms, of customary and accepted cri-
teria of rationality.

Yet this commonly advanced characterization of Nazi behavior as irra-

tional is far from being nonproblematicaL since it raises two epistemi-
cally relevant consequences for historiography worth further eicamina-
tion. Thus, the popularly held view that Nazi behavior and action can
be grasped Qnly in terms of irrationality serves as an impediment to
analysis: it blocks any further intention that is oriented toward criteria
of rationality in understanding phenomena and at least aspires to com-
prehend the nature of what remains past understanding. A priori, Ver-
stehen would necessarily lapse and be impossible given such a previ-
ously decided and agreed-upon supposition: if one argues that the
actions of the Nazis, aimed purely at destruction, constitute a complei!:
of events that can only be evaluated as irrational by definition, then
such a structure of events is, fundamentally and by its nature, not ame•
nable to rational' understanding and insight.
Moreover, classifying National Socialist behavior bent upon destruc•
tion as irrational cootains a second salient and epi.slemically relevant
dimension: a view·oentered on the irrationality of Nazi conduct implies
the presence of a highly parti.cularistic perspective, one ,guided by a
specific collective experience. Such a perspective leads to a vantage
that is bobbled by its subjectivity and has a fundamentally detrimental
impact on any attempts ,at -understanding. Because if one explores the
accepted denotative meaning of the presumed irrationality of National
Socialist action, culminating in annihilation, it is evident that "irratio-
nal" in everyday linguistic usage means to signuy just this: that the
Nazis did not act in an adequate manner-which is to say, that their
CQoduct was not in keeping with a rational pursuit of their own inter-
ests. This implies, quite intuitively and pretheoretically, that their

111 I I II 1

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 Historical Untkratandlng and Counterrotionallty
< 131 >

behavior caused intolerable injury and harm to the collective whose

leadership they commandeered and whose fate they bad been pre-
sumptuous enough to try to control-namely, the Getman people.
Thus, the notion of the irrationality of National Socialist action-with
its apogee in the mass extermination-would, from this vantage, be
viewed as an expression of some particularistic German perception. 11
The particularistic character of the notion of the irrationality of Na-
tional S()Cialist action becomes clearer via a shift in perspective. If.we
cross over to view events from the aiigle of the victims, the notion of
the irrational dimension of the mass extermination emerges as a kind
of mocking e11phemism within the total context of Nazi policy toward
the Jews-as if, for example, one could classify such anti-Jewish mea-
sures as mass expulsion, graded below the critical threshold of the MFi-
nal Solution" and evaluated in terms of it, as being "rational" events by
contrast. Those .ictions .m ay appear positive or "reasonable" when
judged from the standpoint of traditional antisemites, but that cer-
tainly does not render them rational.
Nonetheless, owing to the sheer weight and mass of the extermina-
tion, all National Socialist measures anterior to this event would., In
the eyes of the victims of those measures, seem to cl.um, almost by
default, the attribute of rationality: Indeed, it is arguable that such a
classificatory label could be regarded as part of a quite specific experi-
ential perspective, namely that of the victims. This vantage, in tum,
might derive from a dimension of Jewish historical consciousness: in
the life-world of the victims, the measures antecedent to the mass ex-
termination may well have appeared to Jews as being reminiscent ofa
familiar complex of antisemitic traditions-that is, seemingly they
conformed with the practices of a traditional, virulent form of anti-
Jewish enmity. And in point of fact, to the extent that they could be
presupposed as being already familiar phenomena, appeating as a kind
of historical repetition, those measures could even possess a certain
element of calculability and predictability in their presumed famili-
arity.
Thus, such measures, contrasted with the enormity of the mass ex-
termination, may well have appeared rational to anyone who was a
potenti!il victim of that collective death verdict-because beyond the
boundaries of the unimaginable, everything somehow seems ".rational"
by desperate comparison. Significantly, both Hannah Arend! and the
sociologist Norbert Elias, motivated by a biographical.existential con-

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 Dan Diner
< 132 >

cem , commented on the "Final Solution'.' along these line,. Elias even
ascribed a"stro ng e lement of realism and rationality" to those Jewish
policies of the Nazis that stopped short of extermination.,. Hannah Ar-
endt, in focusing on deeds that tax all conceivable limits of common
reason-acts neither ''committed due to passion nor for one's own
advantage" 1•-claimed that the antisemitic suppression and expulsion
of the Jews was an "atrocious 14nd criminal act, yet one that was com-
pletely rational and purposeful (zweckrationalJ." ••
The existential experience of the victims does not readily allow for
the transposition of their specific, historically subjective classification
of the events onto a more general plane. It would constitute an embar-
rassing .inomaly if, in fact. per$ons belonging to the collective impli-
cated in the crimes were to classify those anti-Jewish measures that
were anterior to, and thus seemingly in contrast with, the ,mass exter-
mination as being ratfonal. R.$ther, the proper task of the historians
here is to attempt to arrive at a departiculari:z.ed, universally accept-
able classification of the mass extermination, and to develop an ade-
quate definition of what rational can mean in this context. That defini-
tion is a net-essary prerequisite to evolve meaningful categories of
understanding for a universally valid historiographic reconstruction of
events.
if one proceeds in terms of concepts ,based on decision theory-that
is, on the basis of an assessment of the character of social relations in
intersubjective communication-George Shackle's observation that
"rationality means something only for the outside observer" ls useful
as a point of departure in trying to characterize the content of rational-
ity of any ,1ct. ts What Shackle means to state is that it is impossible to
determine the rational content of actions from the intei:nal perspective
of the actor. Rather, it can only be assessed by those who evaluate the
action from the outside, according to the yardstick of.their own action.
In regard to the historical subject at h and, such a proviso on the proper
vanta.ge for pr-obing the meaning of the term rational is interpretable
as follows; the content of rationality in National Socialjst action, includ-
ing the mass extermination, cannot be meaningfully judged and eval-
uated by the Nazis themselves. On the eontrary: that rational content
can only be assessed by those who stand outside, or, even better. by
those who have been directly exposed to the events and were at their
mercy.
After all. an internal National Socialist perspective on the Nazis' own
actions could e>.isily arrive at the conolU5ion that they acted quite ra-

1111131 llt-'!'i
r 11/,/1 l ►P.S ~ vc t.lf, tjl,,/-'f•l
 Historical Understanding and Colsnlerrationality
< 133 >

tionally, that is, in accordance with their own criteria, objectives, and
so on. In a seeming paradoK, the particularistic perspective of action
and reaction of the victims of systematic annihilation becomes a cogni•
tively universal coign from which to view the event as such and to
assess its rational content. This is a vantage point also taken up-in-
deed, specifically so-by reconstructing historians guided by their in-
tention, in terms ofhistoriographical Verstehen , to understand.
Thus, both the rational content and the historical comprehensibility
of the mass extermination can be determined and judged. utilizin.g a
~cularistic tool: the perception and form of behavior of the victims.
To that extent, the existentially sharpened perspective of the victims
a.~sumes something like the importance of a practical epistemological
vantage, a kind of observation point for reconstructing historians in
their efforts to arrive at an understanding of events. It is hypothesized
that such a vantage can enable tJS ,1dequately to characterize the Na•
tional Socialist system confronting its victims as being neither rational
nor irrational, but rather counterratwnal.

lo ortler to explicate National Socialist behavior aimed at annihilation

as counterrational; it is necessary to illustrate that behavior in terms of
a concrete, historically existent object. The experiential context that
lends itself to a presentation of the problem of rationality is a situation
of diagnostic radicality: namely, that in which the organs of what the
Nazis termed Jewish "self.administration• in the·ghettos, the so-called
Jewish Councils (or Jucknriite), found themselves entangled. Isaiah
Trunk., the .distinguished historian of the Jucknriite in occupied Poland
and the western Soviet Union,•• refer,s in a somewhat lesser-known
article to the exceptional epistemic value of the situation in which the
Jewish Councils found themselves·- a situation, I would contend, from
which one can effectively perceive the couoterratiooal effect of N;i.-
tional Socialist behavior. In his analysis, Tronk points out that the situ•
ation of the Jews irr the ghettos differed from all other situations in
which Nazi victims were trapped. The ghettos, h~ states, "were the
only places where the tragic endeavors for survival and adjustment
could manifest themselves.~ 17 Thus, the significance of the ghetto lay
in the fact that the Jews, confined there in a condition cb;i.ractemed by
seeming, albeit specious, self-dete.rmination, were able to contem•
plate options for action and thus to ,effect upon their own situation vis-
A-vis the Nazis. They were allowed just enough social normality and
the semblance of political will so as to nurture the illusion that they

,
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 Dan Diner
< 134 >

could act in furtherance of their own survival. Such a dilemma-ridden

boundary 1;1xperience could crystallize and evolve only in this sort of
opaque state of affairs, strung between total subjugation and a modi-
cum 0£ self-activity and self-organization.
That boundary experience is what marks the situation of the Juden-
riite in a historical sense. Only in such a condition of apparent or gen-
uine indecision regarding their ultimate fate were the victims still
given sufficient socially maneuverable time to a...--t. This leeway permit-
ted them to perceive .t heir predicament and their relation toward their
hangmen during the respite betwe.e n the verdict of collective death
and its postponed execution. In this respect, their situation differed
fundamentally from that of victims confined in the concentration
camps, especially the extermination camps. In those camps, the indi-
vidual, due to the absolute loss of all will, had no options for action
whatsoever, and thus no dilemmatic altematives.
As a result of the genuine or presttmed alternatives for action upon
which the Jewish Councils were repeatedly called to deal with anew,
they found it constantly necessary, fn the interest of the Jews who had
entrusted themselves to. their care, and in the interest of their own
survival, to anticipate Nazi behavior, in order to try to e)(ert a moder-
ating in8uence on Nazi actions by means of anticipatory action; this
could be termed a preemptive attempt to M think the Nazis.~
Such real historical positioning brings the situation of the Jewish
Council. to a characteristic perception that takes on a key epistemic
importance. Based on this importance, it is possible, according to
George Shackle, to determine what can be evaluated as rational and
how far Nazi behavior followed criteria of rationality as viewed from
the vantage of action theory. To that extent, the experience of the ]u-
denrate, which found themselves in the absolute and extreme situa-
tion of a historical boundary experience, can also function something
like a universal cognitive prism, especially for the reconstructing his-
torian. As such a cognitive prism, it can Ukewise serve as a historio-
graphical tool, helping to lead to an analytical approach that annuls or
suspends, as it were, those rational criteria of understanding on which
the later historical reconstruction of a social reality customarily tries to
base itself, founded on the logical connection between erplanans and
explana'!'lum,

The behavior of the Nazis, seemin,gly counterr.itional for the con-

sciousness of the victims, can be usefully explicated utilizing a key no--

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 Hutomal Uruhrstanding and Counurrationaltty
< 135 >
tion: the concept of labor within the ghettos. 11 In this conQection,
there are, historically speaking, three different meanings of l.abc>r in-
volved here. First of all, there is labor in its immediate role as a prac-
tical activity aimed at survival and based on material reproduction. As
a result o£ ghettoization, the Jews had been tom from the social conteid
that had previously functioned to guarantee their livelihood and ma-
terial existence. They had been pauperized by expropriation measures
and the loss of their jobs to such an extent that they were left with no
other choice: the only potential employers who could offer them work
under the exceptional conditions of domination and servitude that h.id
evolved were the Nazis themselves.
In addition to the role of work as the only value that Jews could
exchange for food, it had another meaning and function bound up with
the role of the Judenriite: that is, to provide the Germans in an orga-
nized manner with Jewish labor via the councils. In Lodz or Warsaw,'"
fur e~ple, the councils wished to "rationalizew the N.ws, which
meant attempting to rende_r amenable to calculation the arbitrary and
unpredictable beh.ivior of the Nazis toward the Jewish population.
One principal aim was to try to exercise a mitigating inftuence on the
extremely cruel practice of snatching up Jews on the street and then
deporting them to toil at low-skill joos as forced laborers, The orga-
nized labor services offered by the councils were intended to help
make such practices more transparent and to regulate and curtail
them. This had suggested itself as a viable option, since activities in
the sphere of production were involved. In turn, such jobs presup-
posed certain skills and a more complex social context. Work was thus
utilized as a means ofrationalization and a medium of social communi-
cation, as it were, in the hope to "civilize" the Nazis by means of the
obligations and ties this relation engendered. Such a strategy of sur-
vival was based on an assumption relevant for societal communication
and preshaped by soci;ll fonns of exchange, a notion of behavioral tee•
iprocity that one's opponent \IVOuld find cause, merely as a result of the
behavior demonstrated toward him, to assume an equivalent attitude.
To that extent, the Judenrli.te acted in acoordance with the following
socially self-evident stipulation: an organization of human cooperative
endeavor and a self-rationalizing structure of interreferential behav-
ioral modes was possible only if they made use of an roemal fact..,
And work was such an external, self-objectifying fact.
The social trust placed by the Jewish Councils in the act of exchange,
toward which they were constrained for lack of any alternative, would

II~iel lllo'!"!
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 D~ Diner
< 136 >

later develop into a trap. Initially they had offered their labor at their
own initiative. but soon thereafter it was demanded by the Nazis
themselves. An addition$) thitd meaning of labor is involved here, a
function labor assumed as a result of knowledge, or at least premoni-
tion, of the possible ultimate aims of deportation. In view of the stupi-
cionS' or certainty ilbout Nazi designs to liql!ldate the ghettos, the Jew-
ish Councils no longer tried only to ~rationalize• the Nazis in a
communication-reJevant sense by means of work; rather, they also
made a partiaular attempt to postpone the death verdict via the use of
the value-creating function of human labor power, using worlc as a
means of forestalling. The rational antictpatory supposition operative
here can be summed up as follows: it was to the obvious benefit of the
Nazis-indeed, in their own best interest, at least in the light of the
ongoing war effort-to give priority to the e,cploitation of Jewish labor
power over the ideologically motivated death verdict. Such priority
would be based, it was reasoned, on considerations of 11dvantage for
the Nazis and their own self-preservation.
Proceeding &o.m fonns of everyday social behavior guided by ration-
ality, the strategy of • rescl!e through 1.aborN pursued by the Jewish
Councils appeared to be well-founded to some degree, Thus, the
economization that took place suggested to the Jews that an economic
relationship was now the predominant one. At least, the everywhere
valid form of economy, Visible for all to see, had awakened the impres-
sion that a logic was operative here that was similar to or a close ana-
logue of, social normality. It was in keeping with traditional social re-
ality to behave toward that logic in an equivalent fashion.
The very f onn of work demanded from the Jews-productivity, ef-
fectiveness, and efficiency-indicated this logic. 11 It was thus unavoid-
able that the form of labor necessarily generated a blinding effect,
masking from its intended victims the design to push ahead with anni-
hllation-an intention that, on top of everything else, had been kept
relatively concealed &om its targeted victims. Faced with such forms,
individuals who qave been socialized on the basis of criteria of ra~ion-
ality will assume intuitively, in an almost Pavlovian sense, that their
opponent's behavior is in fact rational and purposive, guided by mate-
rial interests. And they will make this assumption even under condi-
tions of being subjected by force and compulsion to the will of that
opponent; indeed, they will especially adhere to this assumption
under such specific conditions of constraint. Compulsion does not

-•L~I 111 I
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 Historical U-&tand1t1g and Counterrationality
< 137;,
deny the traditional meaning and purpose of labor as such but only
negates the voluntary quality with which it otherwise is exchanged.
The economic content of forced labor indicated by the fonn of work
thus becomes a confirmation of pursuit of interests and ultimately of
societal rationality. Indeed, it is possible to contend that in its evident
external effect, the fonn of labor symbolizes a kind of materialized ra-
tionality.
In the light of the labor demanded of them by the Nazis, the Jewish
Councils, despite all signals to the contrary, were only able, when it
came to the relevance for action, to conclude that the Nazis were ·p re-
sumably guided by utilitarian motives and d1us by a more broadly op-
erative civilWng logic of homo oeconomictu. Moreover, there was a
rationality deriving from this logic,22 especially since the system of ac-
tion of homo oec,;momicus was not simply oriented toward maximizing
utility and minimizing costs, but rather proceeded on the supposition
quite generally that acting subjects were indeed reasonable. Homo
oeconcmicu:s transposes, the maxims of reason of economic life to the
sphere of social action in general.23 To that extent, such behavior could
be regarded as being founded on utilitarian ethics, especially since
economically based decisions are also viewed as correct in an ethical
sense..-
No matter how narrow and constricted the arena left by the Nazis
for free decision and in which the Jewish Councils believed they were
acting, the form of economic utility calculation predominant therein
suggested a high degree of socially grounded ,suppositions about ra-
tionality, especially since the criteria of economizing occur ilnmedi•
ately to the mind of a person faced with a decision ..,. Inherently, the
mere form of calculation of economic utility contains a high degree of
assumed ~tiona}ity. Consequently, every t}ieory of decision mal.ciog
that regards itself as rational is based on calculations of utility-espe-
cially since no human activity is accorded greater rationality than the
elfort to engage in gainful pursuits. If contrafactual informational input
is received by a person faced with the cqnstant necessity to make de-
cisions, the information ;1ceorded a greater degree of probability is that
which appears to be in keeping wit-h the utilitarian charaoter of the
form of economy.
Only that infonnation is permitted to enter consciousness that
pojnts to an alternative re]e.v ant for action. When, for example, Jewish
skilled workers in Czestochowa received word about the deportation

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 Dan Diner
< 138 >
of similarly qualified workers in Warsaw, they failed to draw any con-
clusions from this about their own possible fate. The ell'ect of a lived
and immediate, utilitarian, action-relevant manner of thinking in-
debted to economic r,ltionality was fat more important than the me-
diated negation of such rationality that had been reported to them ...
Due to its power of total refutation, news about the annihilation of
others was blocked out: It could not, must not be heeded in any way
that might have an impact on consciousness and reality. The principle
of rationality; materialized in the form of labor, and the associated op-
tions for pen::eiving reality remain.e d dominant. In an insightful re-
mark, Uriel Tai has formulated a terse imperative to express the justi-
fication for being and existence by means of work bound up with the
principle of survival and the strategy of the Jewish Councils: "I act
economically, ergo I exist."n
It appem that the Judenr<ite had no option except to anticipate the
Nazis economically and to utilize the associated rationality, given the
pervasive presence of universally traditional, longstanding forms of
utilitarian thought and action. These are forms that have been inter-
nalized to a considerable degree as a result of socialization and are
patterned in terms of economic categories. Based on the situation and
its internal pereeption, this choice constituted an impressive and quite
plausible attempt to draw conclusions from the means-namely, la-
bor- about the ends-namely; the production of value. In this way,
the councils fell victim to a fundamental and yet necessary mispercep-
tion, because the form of labor was not supposed to Wc;e on ;my $JJ8·
temic meaning for the Nazis, In the final analysis, it remained external
to their real intention: annihilation.
Yet here too, on the basis of a generally valid relation between
means and ends, the behavior of the Judenr<ite possessed a high de-
gree of supposed rationality, since it is not only the ends that follow a
value determination, but the means as well, In respect to value scales,
means cannot be indill'erent or neutral. 18 The form of the means alone
makes that impossible as an option. From the perspective of ethical
action, the determination of value thus refers to the entire sequence of
an eve!lt, the comprehensive whole of the ends-means complex, and
not just to its anticipated final result, Consequently, the Juiknrate had
virtually no other choice than constantly to cherish and rekindle the
hope that labor would somehow lose 1ts exceptional character and be
transformed, after all, into a life-sustaining regularity, a normal rou•

•L~ 1131 II 1
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 Historical Understanding and Counterrationality
< 139 >

tine. Or, viewed differently, that the form (labor) would finally shift
from its meaning as a mere means to encompass the ends as well, thus
ultimately negating annihilation in its own nature as negation of any
rational pursuit of interests.
In retrospect, howe"'er. ii would appear that the Judenriite, faced
with the National Socialist intention to destroy the Jews, tried to de-
fend themselves against the Nazis by using forms of thaught and action
that were unsuitable-inappropriate, because they were indebted to
criteria of rationa1ity. But this is really onJy the retrospective impres-
sion. Labor as the materialized form of communicative social rational•
ity was not isolated in this context, but rather interlinked with a key
strategic aspect that concerned the Jucknriite: protraction, forestall-
ing, the struggle for ''time."
Labor thus stands for the materialiution of concretized rationality,
in the specific historical case for the form of thought and action of the
Judenra~. oriented toward presumably utilitarian motives on the part
of the Germans, and later functioning as a psychological denial filter to
block out the ever more obvious and constrictive hopelessness of the
victims. In contrast, the category of time here represents ·a strategic
element to which everything else is subordinate. The Judenriite tried
to gain more time, ·or to protract the period of~borrowed time~ allotted
them by ,t he Nazis, by expending their sole asset; the. physical labor
power at their disposal. In the early phase the councils hoped that by
the ploy of gaining time, some miracle might occur: later they har-
bored illusory hopes that the front would soon be approaching or that,
for whatever reason, there would be some saving shift in German pol-
icy. Yet the struggle to gain time by expenditure of labor was bound up
with a further element; the actual dimension of terror as a reversal of
the formal-ethical proportionality of ends and means. The strategy
aimed at gaining precious time made it necessary for the Judenrate to
make decisions in keeping with the logic of utilitarian considerations.
However, the original rational aspect of that forestalling logic-
namely, the intention to ward off the worst by means of the lesser
evil-successively shifted and was ultimately reversed.
One sees here the ultimate consequence of the process of forced
self-selection, designed to be implemented by the Jucknriite them-
selves: a prQgtam of _participatory self-destruction by means of self-
preservation, Because the Nazis continued to remain the masters of
time-due, for example, to the fact that the front was not approaching

111 I I II ,
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 Dan Diner
< 1-40 ;,,

with expected rapidity-the process of weighing options, a process

that earlier had appeared justified in tenns of an ethics of ends and
means, now shifted to its diametrical opposite. The small nu!l)bers of
those fated to die as a result of the sell-selection repeatedly forced on
the Judenriite by the Nazis had, in the course of events, long since
become multitudes. The upshot of this was that the councils, bereft of
any other alternative, directed the reversal of values engendered by
the Nazis-the value-ethics of ends and means, and th.e associated.
generally effective assumptions of rationality-against themselves,
and against the Jewish communities in the ghettos entrusted to their
care.
The Judenriite were subservient to a reality in which the rationality
0£ action aimed at self-preservation was transformed to self-destrucl;ion
as a result of that reversal. Such a reversal, because it became a reality,
is not only a part of Jewish experience but can be regarded as the prac-
tical negation of the basic assumptions of the dvillzing power of ra-
tional judgment as such. Seen in this analytical light, the mass exter-
mination is not "irtational"; rather, because of the negation of rational
judgment, it is imbued with a decidedly counterrational meaning per-
ceived via the corresponding perspective of the victims. That perspec-
tive was experienced existentially by the Judenriite, and can be cogni-
tively comprehended in reconstruction by others: it therefore is in
keeping with universally valid forms of thought and action.
The behavior of the Nans, perceived as counterrational &om the
perspective of the Judenriite, permits an assessment of the eittent to
which the rupture of forms of thought, action, and communication on
which civilizing discourse is founded can also infect historiography, the
domain of activity generally dependent on historical reconstruction.
The behavior that appears counterrational when refracted through the
prism of the perspective of the Judenrlite necessarily extends into the
sphere of historiogi:aphy via the logical connection between explanans
and erplanandum. Historians, guided by an intention to understand
that is beholden to rationa,I forms of thought, will find themselves
largely thwarted in that goal and approach in their search for the sup-
posedly rational stnict\lre of Nazi behavior-rational at least in the
sense of the Nazis' own self-preservation, Such a negatively thwarted
intention to comprehend leads to a retreat: in reaction, historians may
flee into a realm of e;,(J)lanation where they divest themselves of all
criteria for comprehensibility and thus for rational understanding.

1111131 I 1

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 Historical Under&tandlng and Counterratwnality
< 141 >
They also find it necessary to rationalize Nazi behavior tautologically
as irrational: that is-, by viewing it n1ore generally as a direct product of
Nail irrational ideology and by adopting llnalistic patterns of Interpre-
tation.
By contrast, a historiographical perspective that appropriates the
experiential view of the Judenriite Will proceed aloog a quite di.lferent
path, Such a vantage can open up diverse and varied insights highly
relevant for strategies of researoh. For the simple reason alone that the
Jud.enriite found it necessary~for purposes of forestallment and sur-
vival-to anticipate Nazi behavior, they had good cause to explore the
Nazi bureaucracy in thought and deed. The objective W!IS to fathom its
internal decision-making structures, deeply fissured by competition
and rivalries over power and authority. Indeed, it was perceived as
necessary by e.ach Judenrat to penetrate as "participant players," so to
speak, into the bureaucratic-administrative apparatus they were con-
fronted with. That process can be comprehended in several concrete
cases by examining the strategic deliberations and actions of theJuden-
riite in Lodz, Vilna, and Bialystok.""
The strategy of trying to inftuence the Nazi bureaucratic apparatus
by offering genuine or presumed support to various factional interests
seemingly more concerned with exploiting Jewish ghetto Jabor than
with immediate annihilation makes theJudenratin a double sense an
epistemologically relevant indicator for assessing the adequacy of a
given theoretical-methodological approach. Thus, perceptions taking
the Judenrat as point of departure reveal j ust how closely the structur-
alist historiographical paradigm of National Socialism models reality.
On the other hand, the practical failure of}udenrat strategy in the light
of the u'ltimate implementation of annihilation reftects a salient fact:
despite the chaos of confticting authorities and powers-or perhaps
precisely because of this confusing administrative welter-the designs
of the Nazis to destroy the Jews were ultimately carried through.
Be that as it may; via 'the perspective of the Jud.enrat~an institution
set up by the Nazis and active under its supervision and at its bidding,
though simultaneously a Jewish institution centere<I on objectives of
survival running counter to Nazi will-it is possible to arrive at the
conclusion that if rationality was involved here at all, it could be
termed "fractured." The a,ssociated historiographical appl'04Ch fol-
lowed in reconstruction of events is analogous to that of rational admin-
istrative behavior. This is the case because historians, in reconstruct-

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 Dan Diner
< 142 >

ing an event or process like that of the ma.5$ extermination-an action

carried out by a bureaucratic stateappantus-make use in their anal-
ysis almost intuitively, so to speak, ofprecisely the corresponding logic
of bureaucratic, administrative action. But they must recognize that
such an assumed rationality is negated, fractured by the reality the
Nazis created. 00
The consequences of the mediating, methodologically fertile signif-
icance-of the Judenrat for historiographical VerJtehen-the abiding in-
tention of.the historian to fathom the National Socialist period and its
core event, the mass extermination-should now be evident. The
demolition of action-guiding assumptions of rationality that are gener-
ally considered universally valid, transforming them into thej_r de•
structive opposites, also has a direct impact on the approach of the
historian, necessarily so. That approach is guided by the desire lo com-
-prehend and is therefore traditionally indebted to criteria of rational-
ity. Thus, the very subject matter acts to cancel, to deactivate the con-
nections among an assumption of rationality, the ability lo understand,
and meaningful reconstruction,
To that extent, the endeavor to describe National Socialism and the
mass extermination requires what can be termed a Mnegative cognition
ofhistory~-since historians must first become aware of the cancella-
tion of assumptions of rationality in historical reconstru.ction before
they can venture to engage in the enterprise of bistorization, Or, to
phrase it differently: due to the loss of its imaginability, ii is necessary
first to think Auschwitz before it can be written about historically.
Translated by Bill Templer

J11 1 1011 t 1

ll/ /t lFIJ' ~ , cf.14, rl

0
fl-I
 <9>

History beyond the Pleasure Principle:

Some Thoughts on the Representation
of Trauma

ERlC L. SANTNER

l find it increasingly difficult to reflect on the theoretical and ethical

limits to historical and artistic representations of Nazism and the "Final
Solution" without also thinking about recent events in Central Europe
and, above all, about the unification of the two Germanys. If the sto-
ries one tells about the past (and, more specifically, about how one
came to be who one is or thinks one is) are at some leve1 determined
by the present social, psychological, and political needs of the teller
and bis or her audience, then the radical developments that have iaJcen
place in Europe over the last several years cannot help but powerfully
inffuence the repertoire of available representations of the events and
phenomena that are our concern here. You will recall Elie Wiesel's
concerns regarding the place of a particular date, 9 November, in the
historical imagination of contemporary German society. 1 The date of
the leristallnacht as we_ll as of the fi.r st breach in the Berlin Wall, fifty-
one years later, had apparently become a site of struggle between com-
peting narratives.• The story of the destruction of European Jewry,
which entered a new stage with the Knstallnacht pogroms, was being
displaced--or at least this was Wiesel's worry-by a rather different
narrative, the story of the German struggle against, and ultimate
triumph over, Marxism-Leninism. In a sense, Wiesel's question was
this: Would the shattered glass of 1938 be,buried and, as it were, meta-
morphosed under the sheer weight of all that crumbling concrete of
November 1989?
Those familiar with the W!!st German political and cultural scene of
the 1970s and 1980s will recognize in the struggle over the narrative
inscription of this particular date the contours of a process that has
increasingly come to occupy the German historical imagination and
political unconscious over the last decade or so. 3 This process might be
< 143 >

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 ~ric L. Santner
< 1~ >

described as a series of mnemonic readjustments and rearrangements,

enacted in the framework of public rituals, narratives, and various
other modes of cultural production, whereby dates, events, names,
concepts, locations, institutions-, and historical agents are made newly
available for libidinal investments.•
The most notorio{ls public ritual in thi.s regard was, perhaps, the
ceremony of reconciliation staged ,at Bitburg in May 1985, the subtext
of which seemed to involve not only the sentimental equalization of all
victims of the war but, more insidiously, a repositioning of the SS
within a narrative of the long "Western" struggle against Bolshevism.
In the course of the following two years, this general tendency and
direction of mnemonic readjustment became the central issue in the
Historiker,dreit, a discursive event which has not ceased to have re-
percussions for the way one thinks about recent German history and,
perhaps more important, the way one thinks about the ambiguous and
often dubious- role of the historian in the process of national identity
formation. The details of this debate are well known and I will not
rehearse them again here. I would simply like to note how a certain
➔ "narrative fetishism" bas figured in this controversy.
,-... By narrative fetishism J mean the construction and deployment of a
I
narrative consciously or unconsciously designed to eiq>ungethe traces
of the trauma or loss that called that narrative into being in the first
elas The use of narrative as fetish may be contrasted with that rather
dilierent mode of symbolic behavior that Freud called Trauerarbeit or
e "work of mounting." Both narrative fetishism and mourning are f
eesponses to loss, to a past that refuses to go away due to its traumatic'
mpact. The work of mourning is a process of elaborating and integrat-
ing the reality of loss or traumatic shock by remembering and repeat-
ing it in symbolically and dialogically mediated doses; it is a process of
translating, troping, and figuring loss and, as Dominick LaCapta has
noted in his chaptei:, may encompass "a relation between language .and
silence that is in some sense ritualized." 5 ~arra~ fetishism. l!y con-
trast, is the way an inability or refusal to mourn emplots traumatic
evenis;·it rs ~strategy of undo_tng, in~~>.'! the need for mourning by
s i ~ g a condition of intactness, typically by situating the site and
origin of loss elsewhere. N~ative fe_tishis~.~ e~~s.<!!!~.fu>m the bur-
den of having to . reconstitute ones
-~===.c-- - self-i.<ltintit
.. under ~posttraumatic"
f,, -, ----
conditions·; ·in narrative felishfsm, the "post" is indefinit ed.
Here. of course, it might be said that it is unrealistic and may per-

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 History beyq"4 the Ple~re Pri,iciple
< 145 >
haps even represent a sort of categpry mistake to expect that historiog-
raphy could or should perform 'lrauerarbeit. Historians, after all,
strive for intellectual and not psychic mastery of events. In this context
I would recall LaCapra's deconstruction of this opposition between in-
tellectual and psychic mastery, cognitive and affective dimenstons of
representation, "scientific" and "mythicn or "rltualized" approaches to
the past, e As LaCapra's reading of the historians' debate suggests, one
might argue that because of the kinds and intensities of transferential
-- --
dynamics it calls forth, a tra,umatic event is by definition one that im-
- · · - ,,
plicate~ tJ.11:_h~toi:!_Bl!..~~labors of psychi£..mastery. Any historical ac-
count of such an event will, in other words, include, explicitly or im-
plicitly, an elaboration of what might be called the histori.an's own
context of survivorship. Such an elaboration will typically involve ef-
forts to differentiate and distance one's own moral, political, and psy-
chological dispositions.from those associated with the trdumatic event.
The affect, style, and velocity with which this worlc of differentiation is
undertaken is often an indication of the intensity of the transferential
relations that continue to bind one to the trauma. The transferential
dynamic will, moreover, vary radically according to the features of the
particular context of survivorship or, to cite LaCapra once more, ac-
cording to the particular subject position of the historian. The transfer-
ential relations of a non-Jewish German historian to Nazism and the
Final So.lution will differ enormously from those of an lsraeli historian
to the same events. And certainly not only the national and cultural
background but also the age of the historian, his or her temporal dis-
tance to the events in question, will play a significant role in the defi-
nition of the subject position.7 But central to any elaboration of survi•
vQrship is, I would argue, the work of mourning. As should be clear by
now. my P.rimary concern in the present conte,i:t is with the tasks and
burdens of mourning that continue to affiict and, as it were, interrupt
processes of identity formation in postwar Germany. In other words, I
am concerned here with the project and dilemma of elaborating a post-
Holocau.st German oatjOIJal and cultural ide_n.tity; Germans. are faced
with the paradoxical task of having to constitute their "Germanness" in
the awareness of the horrors generated by a previous production of
national and ·cultural identity.•
Perhaps Freud's most compelling characterization of the work of
mouming is his discusJion, in Beyond the Plea8U,-e Principle, of the
fortlda game that be had observed in the behavio.r of bis one-and-a-

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 Eric L. Santner
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half-year-old grandson. In thi.s game the child Js seen to master his
grief over separation &om the mother by staging his own performance
of disappearance and return with props that D. W. Winnicott would
call transitional objects. Bereft by the mother's absence, and more
generally by the dawning awareness that the interval between himself
and his mother opens up a whole range of unpredictable and poten-
tially treacherous·possibilities, he reenacts the opening of that abysmal
intetv.al within the controlled space of a ,primitive ritual. The child is
translatin_g, as it were, his fragmented narcissism (which m_ight other-
wise pose a psychotic risk- the risk of psycholQgical disintegration)
into the formalized rhythms of symbolic behavior; thanks to this pro-
cedure, he is able to administer in controlled doses the absence he is
mourning. The capacity to dose out and to represent absence by means
ofsubstitl,ltive Agures at a re move from what one might call their "tran-
scendental signifier," is what allows the child to avoid psychotic break-
down and transform his lost sense of omnipotence into a chastened
form of empowerment. The work of mourning performed in the fort/
da game has attracted so much attention in recent literary and critical
theory because it displays so clearly the way in which a human self
constitute.s itself out of the ruins-of its narcissism.•
The dosing out of a certain negative- a thanatotic-element as a
strategy of mastering a real and traumatic loss is a fundamentally ho-
meopathic procedure. In a homeopathic procedure the controlled in-
trod1.1ction of a negative element-a .symbolic or, in medJcal contexts,
real poison- helps to he$] a system infected by a similar poisonous
.substance. The poison becomes a cure by empowering the individual
to master the potentially traumatic effects of large doses of the mor-
phologically related poison. 10 In the fortlda game it is the rhythmlc
manipulation of signiAers and figures, objects and syllables instituting
an absence, that serves as the poison that Cllres , These signifiers are
controlled symbolic doses of absence and renunciation that help the
child to survive and (ideally) be empowered by the negativity of the
mother's absence.
To put these m~tters in a somewhat different light, one might say
that the work of mourning is the way human bein,g1 restore the regime
of the pleasure principle in the wake of trauma or loss. I call your atten-
tion to Freud's remarks in Beyond the Plecuure Principle, shortly fol-
lowing his discussion of the fortlda game, regarding the behavior of
Unfallmeurotiker, individuals who have experienced and then re-

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 Hi8tory beyond the f'leQfflre Principle
< 147 >

pressed some trauma but return to it over and over again in their
dreams. Concerning this oneiric repetition compulsion, Freud says
the following;
We may assume . . . that dreams are here helping to carry out an-
other task, which must be accomplished before the dominance of the
pleasure principle can even begin. These dreams are endeavouring
to master the stimulus retrospectively, by developing the anxiety
whose omission was the cause of the traumatic neurosis. They thus
afford us a view of a function of the mental apparatus which, though
it d~ not contradict the pleasure principle, is nevertheless inde•
pendent of it and seems to be more primitive than the purpose of
gaming pleasure and avoiding uopleasure. 11
Given the homologies Freud underlined between the sympt(>ms of the
trauma victim and the symbolic behavior of the child at play, one m.ay
conclude that these other, more primitive psychic tasks are the tasks of
mourning that serve to constitute the self and that must, at some level,
be reiterated with all later experiences of loss or traumatic shock
(Freud was thinking here of the- great number of traum11tized soldien
returning &om World War I),11 Both the child trying to master his
separateness &om the mother and the trauma victim returning, in
dream, to the site of shock are locked in a repetition compubion: an
effort to recuperate, in the controlled context of symbolic behavior, the
Angstbereittcliaft or readiness to feel anxiety, absent during the initial
shock or loss, It was Freud's thought that the absence of appropriate
affect-anxiety-rather th.an loss per se is what leads to traumatiza-
tioo. Until such anxiety has been recuperated and worked through,
the loss will continue to represent a past that refuses to go away. At the
end of this process of psychic mastery, the ego becomes, as Freud says
elsewhere, "free and uninhibited" and open to new Ubldinal invest-
ments, that is, open to object relations under the regime of the plea-
sure principle. Fetishism, as I am using the term here, is, by conti:ast,
a strategy whereby one seeks voluntaristically to reinstate the pleasure
principle without addressing and working through those other tasks
which, as Freud insists, "must be accomplished before the dominance
of the pleasure principle can even begin." Far from providing Ii sym•
bollc space for the recuperation of anxiety, narrative fetishism directly
or indirectly offers reassurances that there was no need for anxiety in
the first place.
When Ernst Nolte asks-to return now to the context of the histot-

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 Eric L. Santner
< 148 >
ians' debate-whether it is "not likely that the Nazis and Hitler com-
mitted this 'Asiatic' deed [the "Final Solution~] because they saw
themselves and others like them as potentaal or real victims of an
'Asiatic' deed [the gulag),"'3 he is, so to speak, inviting hi~ readers to
locate themselves in a place-call it simply somewhere to the west of
Asia-where they can feel morally and psychologically unthreatened
by the traumas and losses-what I am calling the psychotic risk-sig-
nified by Nazism and the "Final Solution.'' Acrording to Nolte, in this
magical zone to the west of Asia, the regime of the pleasure principle
was never in any danger.
A similar fetishistic use of narrative may be found, I think, in other
contributions to the historians' debate. In his Zweierlei Unterg11ng, for
example, Andreas Hiltgruber more or less programmatically sets out
to restore his German audience's capacity libidinally to cathect and
unproblematically to i.denijfy with the defenders of Germany's eastern
territories d.uring the period of their collapse, even though these "val-
iant" efforts to hold back the anticipated reprisals of the Red Army-
efforts evoked with considerable narrative pleasure-allowed for the
machinery of the death camps to continue unabated. 14 As Saul Fried-
lander has iloted of Hillgruber's fetishistic re.inscription of the Wehr-
macht and the events of 1944-45;
In the new representation, the Wehrmacht becomes the heroic de-
fender of the victims threatened by the Soviet onslaught. The crimes
of the Wehrmacht are not denied by Hillgruber, although he prefers
to speak of the "revenge orgy" of the Red Army. Whereas this re-
venge orgy is described with considerable pathos . • , its origin, the
tens of millions of dead left by the Wehrmacht in the wake of its
onslaughts on Germany's neighbors-particolarly on the Soviet
Union-does not seem to reenter the picture with any forceful-
ness·. ''
But even in morally and historiographicaUy far more responsible ef-
forts to hisloricize Nazism and the wFinal Solution," one may discover
an inclination to reinvoke prematurely a condition of normalcy, that is,
a condition in which the normal functioning of the pleasure principle
ha$ not been significantly disrupted and exposed to psychotic risk.
Arguing bis case several years ago for more vigorous, plastic, and
ri<!hly colored narrative strategies of historicizing National Socialism,
Martin Broszat bemoaned the fact that when historians tum to this
period of history their capacity fur empathic interpretation and what

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 History beyond the Pleasure Principle
< 149 >
he called the "pleasure in historical narration" [die Lwt am geschkht-
lichen Erziihlen] appears to be blocked.•• Bros:r.at's plea for historiciza-
tion was thus, among other things, a plea for a certain primacy of the
pleasure principle in historical narration even, paradoxically, when it
comes to narrating events the traumatic impact of which would seem
to call the normal functioning ofthat principle into question. Friedlan-
der"s critique of Broszat's appeal to narrative pleasure will be familiar
to those who have followed the theoretical debates on the problem of
representation with regard to Nazism and the "Final Solution." The
gist of this critique, as l unde rstand it, is the claim that the events in
question~Nazism and the "Final Solution"-mark a shattering of the
regime of normal social and psychological functioning and therewith a
crossing over into a realm of psychotic e.Jeperien<.-e that may be inacces-
sible to empathic interpretation, that may not be redeemable within
an economy of narrative pleasure. iv
Finally, I would like to discuss very briefly the dynamics of narrative
fetfshism as it functions in a realm of cultu ral production where narra-
tive and visual pleasure freeh, intenniogle. namely film .•• I take my
~xample from Edgar Reitz's hugely successful film Heimat, which was
rst broadcast on German television in the fall of 1984. (Reitz ts cur-
rently involved in the postproduction .of a sequel to H eimat.) This 6lm
is important for all kinds·of reasons I cannot go into he re.'" In the pres-
ent conte.Jet, however, it ls especially inte resting to note that.one of the
effects of the film~whether this was intentional one can only sur-
mise--.:has been to make the word "He imat" newly available for libidi-
nal inve'stment in Germany, if only as the elegiac token of something
- -··-
lost, Not unlike the case of a particqlar date discussed earlier, the word
"Hein1af' become.s, in and th rough Reitz's 61m, ?, site of competing
narratives, A word-one might say a "mytheme"-that has figured
prominently in the story of the social marginalization and eventual de.
struction of European Jewry, js, as It were, r~\Ulied within a new
ideolo 'cal and narl'ative ensemble in which Germans can see and
cat.beet themselves as here victim, .as the dispossessed.
This reoccupation of" Heimat" takes on further resonance when one
recalls that Reitz made his as a kind of counter6lm to the American

t
television production Ho~c~tist. H is ~wn film was intended, i~ large
part, as a strategy of reclaiming memones-and, perhaps mQre 1mpor-
tllnt, the pleasure in their narration-that Germ.a ns have been forced
to renounce under the sway of the American culture industry in gen-

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 Eric L Santner
< 150 >

era! and media events like Holocaun in particular. (Reitz polemically

refers to the aesthetics embodied by Holocaiut ~ the ~real terror" of
the twentieth century,}IIO German.s have, Reitz claims, abandoned their
unique, regionally inflected.experiences and memories, because they
have been morally terrorired by spectacles like Holocatut. 11 Reitz's
own wotk of resjst,ance_to this "terror" iherefore lies in the salYaging of
~•~experie~. local ~9ry, local memorj~s:
There 3.fe thousands of stories among our people that are worth
being Rimed, that are based on irritatingly detailed experiences
which apparently do not contribute to judging or explaining history,
but whose.sum total would actually HU this gap. We mustn't let our-
selves be prevented from taking out personal lives seriously . . . Au-
thors all over the world are trying to take possession of their own
history and thert!with of the history of the group to which the5' be-
long. But they often 6nd that their own history is tom out of their
hands. The•most serious act of expropriation occurs when a person is
deprived of his or her own history. With Holocaust, the Americans
have taken away our history...
With Heimat, the pleasure in the historical narration of twentieth•
century German history is taken back and reinstated with a vengeance.
But as numerous critics have noted, Reitz's restoration of narrative and
visual pleasure would seem to proceed along the route of the fetish,
that is, at the price of disavowing the trauma signified b>' th~"Final
Solution." Here it is important to keep in mind that one can aclcnowl-
edge the fact of an evenf, that is, that it happened, and yet continue to
disavow the traumatizing impact-of the same event.
The scene that perhaps be~ illustrates .~ fetishistic aspect of
Rei ti's particular deployment of narrative and Visual p!eyure comes in
~ r st episode of the film. This scene prefigures, quite (l:Plifkably,
.!be s~n!,ti<t.eyoked by Elie \YI~ regarding November 9, It ls 1923;
Eduard and Pauline make an afternoon excursion to Simmem, the
largest town near Schabhech. Pauline wanders off alone and finds her-
,-
self looking at the-window display of the town watchmaker and jeweler.
Sud'denly a group of young men run up behind her-including Ed-
uard, armed as usual with camera and tripod-and begin throwing
rocks at the window of the apartment above the watchmaker's shop
-,,.,her(!, ;u· we learn, a Jew-in this case also branded as a separ-atist-
resides, They are chased off by police, but the shards of fallen glass
have out Pauline's hand. Robert Krober, the watchmaker, signals her

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 Hi!Itory beyond the Pl.etUUre Principle
< 151 >

to come into the shop where he cleans her wound, thereby initiating
the love story of Pauline and Robert. Later on in the 61m.....,.it is 1933-
we hear that the now married Pauline and Robert are buying the Jew's
apartment. As 11.obert remarks, "The house belon~ to him and now he
wants to sell it . , . The Jews don't have it so easy anymore."
This small Kristallnacht sequence shows how the shards of the Jew's
shattered existence-we never see him in the Oesh-are immediately
absorbed into a sentimental story of love and courtship in the prov-
inces. Tho~_it is the.filmmaker \l.'.ho alerts us tgJ_ l \e_way§ in..~hich
eJ112.erience Janel,. oao:ati11e) '10nst_ruct themselves around such blind
seats~ Reitz refuses . tg_~l)ow such.potentially tr.1umatic moments to
drsi;upt the economy _of narrative and visual pleasure maintained
throughout his 6fteeo and a half hours of film. This consistency is
surely one of the reasons for the incredible success of the film. lleimat
offers its viewers the opportunity to witness a chronicle of ~entieth-
century Gennan history in which die Lust am geschichtlichen Enah-
len is never in any serious danger.
I have argued in these pages that Nazism and the "Final Solution"
need to be theorized under the sign of massive trauma, meaning that
these events must be confronted and analyzed in their capacity to en•
danger and overwhelm the composition and coherence of individual
and collective identities that enter into their deadly field of force. To
use, once more, metaphors suggested by Freud's discussion of trau-
matic neurosis, the events in question may represent for those whose
lives have been touched by them, even across the distance of one or
more generations, a degree of overstimulation to psychic structures
and economies such that normal psychic functioning (under the aus-
pices of the pleasure principle) may be interrupted and other, more
"primitive" tasks may take precedence. These are the tasks of repairing
what Freud referred to as the Rti:uchutz, the protective shield or
psychic skin that normally regulates the Oow of stimuli and information
across the boundaries of the self. To quote, once more , from Beyond
the Pleasure Principle, Freud's most ambitious effort to formulate a
tbeo,y of trauma:
We describe as "traumatic" any excitations from outside which are
powerful' enough to break through the protective shield [Reiz-
achutzJ. It seems to me that the concept of trauma. necessatily im•
plies a connection of this kind with a breach in an otherwise effica•
cious barrier against stimuli. Such an event as an atemal trauma is

•L~ I I II~
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 Eric L. Santner
< 152 >
bound to provoke a disturbance on a large scale In the functioning of
the organism's energy and to set in motion ever:y possible defense
measure, At the same time, the pleasur~ principle is for the moment
put out of action. There is no longer any possibility of preventing the
mental apparatus from being Rooded with large amounts of stimulus,
and another problem arises Instead- the problem of mastering the
·amounts of stimulus which have broken in and of binding them, in
the psychical sense, so that they can then be disposed of..,
Here it is most important to keep in mind the textual quality of this
Reizschutz, to remember that it is made from symbolic materials, that
it is a culturally constructed and maintained organization of individual
and group identities. As Robert Lifton has put it, Hin the case of severe
trauma we can say that there has been ·an important break in the life-
line that can leave one permanently engaged in either repair or the
acquisition of new twine. And here. we come to the survivor's overall
task, that of fonnu!Jition, evolvmg new inner forms that include the
tr,1.umatic event." ...
Both mourning and narrative fetishism as I .have defined these terms
are strategies whereby groups and individuals reconstruct their vitality
and identity in the wake of trauma. The crucial difference between the
two modes of repair has to do with the willingness or ~acity to in•
elude the traumatic.event in one's efforts to reformulate and reconsti-
tute identity.
There are a number ofpaths along which such an integration might
proceed. Important aspects of this work have, I would argue, figured
prominently in theoretical discourses of recent years-call them "post-
modern"-that have concerned themselves with the cultural construc-
tion and deployment of "difference~ in particular historical contexts.
These discourses have invited the citizens of Western industrial and
postindustrtal societies to acknowledge and work through fundamental
complicities between certain modes of identity formation and the vio•
lence and destruction perpetrated in emblematic fashion by German
fascism against Jews and other groups deemed to be thr~tening to the
composition and coherence of the German subject... Feminist cri-
tiqµe s, in particular, of the patriarchal subject and its various historical
institutions suggest that the tasks facing post•tlolocaust societies in
general, that is, societies willing to work through the traumatic impact
of Nazism and the "Final Solution," include that of a radical rethinking
and reformulation of the very notions of boundaries· and borderlines,

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 Hi.nory h61Jond the Pleasure Principle
< 153 >

of that "protective .shield" regulating e,ichange between the inside and

the outside of individuals and groups. The goal of such reformulations
is, as I see it, the development of a capacity to constitute boundaries
that can create a dynamic space of mutual recognition (between self
and other, indigenous and foreign); in the absence of such a capacity it
would seem that one is condemned to produce only rigid fortifications
that can secure little more than the inert space of a thoroughly homo-
geneous and ultimately paranoid "Hetmat.~•
To summarize: Io. talce seriously Nazism and the "Final Solution~ as
massive trauma means to shift one's theoretical, ethical, and political
attention to the psychic and social sites where individual and group
identities are constituted, destroyed, and reconstructed. This mode of
attention is one which, to paraphrase Freud, though it may not always
contradict the pleasure principle,, is nevertheless independent of it
and is addressed to issues that are more primitive than the purpose,
narrative or otherwise, of gaining pleasure and avoiding unpleasure, It
is fiirthennore a mode of attention ,that requires a capacity and willing-
ness to work through anxiety.
Let me conclude by returning very briefty to the possible inlluence
ofcontemporary political events on the ways that Nazism lllld the "Fi-
nal Solution'' may come to be represented both in popular and more
properly scientific historiographical discourses. 'l_!te~ are si~ that
the narratives being consh11cted ~~~nd th~.. ~l!a_Ese of Central and
Eastern European comni1,1riism and the un~C?.tiOI! 9f..th.e two , Ger-
manys will have a tendency t~ reduce the available moral, concegtual,
and psychic space with_i!!._which Nazi.sm and its crimes can still be
worked througl! ~ ~Ulll!1 that shook the.West at its vecy fo~1Adlltions.
All around one hears stories of triumph: of a vital and dynamic Western
economic and political culture over a moribund socialism somehow
considered to be "E$Stem," not to say "Asiatic." At some level, it is as if
events in Europe had opened the gates to ever more unconfticted "en-
actments" of the revisionist narratives constructed by Nolte and Hill-
gruber in the mid-eightie.~. It is difficult not to get the sense that the
crisis of socialism is being appropriated at the level of what might be
caltea the "i>2litical imagh11uy'~l? exorciz~ from the body of the W!(st-
from its patterns and projects of modernization-the violen~. de-
to
struction, and hnroao,svlfering that,~al,'.~ l;,~l\l!.IKed aiuf continu_e to
l belong to its history. In Germany. the velocity, affect, and style with
which unification has been undertaken suggest a manic element, not

11111311 ~
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 Eric L. Santner
< 154 >
unlike that which typified the work ofreconstructio_!l in the.early post-
.,/y war ~ears. This rnani~ element h~attached itself. as e_, , to illl?ges
~ and ideals of economic, technolo reaucratic n'UUtery.
I In a politi and cultural climate in which the operative metaphor
has been that of a powerful machine moving relentlessly forward-the
image of a train which has left the station and .cannot be halted or
slowed down has strangely, uncannily, come to dominate the public
discourse on unification-there is, perhaps, little reason to be ho,peful
that this crucial period of national reconstitution might become a real
opportunity for reflection: not only on the issues ·associated with the
breakdown of state socialism, which are indeed formidable, but also on
a wide range of moral, political, and psychological questions that have
not ceased to emanate from the traumas of Nazism and the "Final So-
lution."

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 < 10 >

Habermas, Enlightenment, and Antisemitism

VINCENT P. PECORA

The German Historlkerttreit is an argument which, in its most basic

political terms, Nietzsche could have subtitled. It is about the "Nutzen
uncl Nachteil," the advantage and the disadvantage, of history for
present-day life. Of course, 'immediately this approach may seem to
miss the mark. For surely, everyone on both sides, from Andreas Hill-
gruber to Jurgen Habermas, bas implicitly agreed that there are only
disadvantages in continuing to forget , to repress, or to renounce his-
tory altogether. Within Germany, Habermas has been an indispens-
able example of conscience and reffection, protesting eloquently
against the very possibility of a return to a pre-Na:zi German identity.
From his critical perspective. "the N~ period will be much les-s of an
obstacle. to us, the more calmly we are able to consider it as a !liter
through which the substance. of our culture must be passed, insofar as
this substance is adopted voluntarily and consciously." 1 The "normal-
iZing'' urge of a nationalist historiography, on the other hand, must be
rejected.
ln a deeper sense, however, even Habennas' eminently useful
words here show a strain that good intentions can·not fully outweigh,
for they are implicitly aimed at sublimating an "obstacle" which "his-
tory" bas thrown in the way. Even for Habermas, that is, the Nachteil
of history is obvious, however much it must be confronted calmly if a
rational social order is to be achieved. In what follows, I would like to
examine a few of the implications of this situation for the Western in-
tellectual-and here I include those inside and outside the German
debate-who struggles to confront the massive obstacles of modem
Western history from within the West and its self-proclaimed ~jtion
of enlightened thought. By reopening in the latter portion of this dis-
cussion certain issues addressed already by Theodpr Adorno and Max
Horkheimer in Dialectic of Enlightenment, I hope to raise fundamen-
tal questions about the nature of the contemporary debate over the
< l5.5 >

1111 11 ~
f
11/,)llll'ij'I~ <)~ t,I ~ t-JIG-/-'I•)
 Vincent P. Pecora
< 156 >

''singularity" of the "Final Solution," about the singular difficulty of the

Western intellectual in such debate, and about what is in danger of
being repressed concerning the West even as the necessary work of
historical retrieval goes on;

In the perhaps .inescapable contradictions lurking in Habennas' words,

the duphdty of Nietzsche's phrase returns. History is always, pace
Santayana, in some sense a disadvantage for the living, and especially
so in the context of any society which tries to build its monuments on
the bones and ashes of an implicit destiny which it believes it fulfiUs,
What Nazism mean.s for the contemporary period is, to some extent, a
deracination of that question about history's "value'' which Nietzsche
still thought he could address. To return to a tradition or an identity
before Nazism is out of the question (though this Sehnsucht is ob-
viously stiU alive and well on the German right), if only because such a
gesture actually repeats the nostalgic, selective, and dangerous histo-
riography of the National Socialism which is the very impetus behind
contemporary debate. But to stand up and be counted, on the other
hand, as one who acknowledges a destructive heritage, who returns in
calm yet critical consideration to the painful roots of a social identity
lost in repression and amnesia-<:an such an archaeology really be said
to yield only a "filter" through which the otherwise intact "substance"
of a culture can be passed, as if to purge that culture through tragic
understanding?
In the final lines of Walter Abish's novel How German 18 lt?/Wie
Deutsche 1st E&? the hero (born in 1945, and perhaps a bastard) wiU-
ingly undergoes hypnosis in order to "reexperience his childhood"-
in order, that is, both to exorcise his ghosts and to find a name to which
he can answer. In what can be read simultaneously as a test of the
elJectivity of the hypno$is and as a paradigmatic gesture or '8elf-
identification, allegiance, acknowledgment, oath-taking-all that
Louis Althusser would have defined as forms of interpellation ,of the
subject-the hero raises his right hand at the doctor's request. In this
case, however, the bypnosis which lifts repression is doomed to fail,
for the sign of its success would be precisely the sign-a salute-ofthe
false self-identi6cation that is to be lifted. "Js it possible for anyone in
Germany, nowadays, to raise his ,r ight hand, for whatever the reason.
and not be Hooded by the memory of a dream to end all dreams?"•
Abish"s final question, 1 would submit, lies at the heart of the current

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 flabermas, Enlightenment, and Antisemitism
< 157 >
struggle over memory in Germany today, and it profoundly compli•
cates Habermas' more sanguine metaphors of "filter" and ''sub-
stance"-unless, that is, one can imagine a filter that contaminates
even as it cleans.
To say this, of course, is to say that Habermas' call for a cultural
tradition and a history that are critically adopted ~voluntarily and con,
sciously" is simultaneously the only responsible political position to
adopt, and a Uberafs dream fraught with contradiction. Under present
conditions, the New Germany now emerging could not eitist if the "fil-
ter" Habermas imagines were actually to be used: it would soon be-
come impassable. Identities formed by continuous cultures which
have achieved a measure of real power -and authority in world history,
let alone the totalitarian status of the Third Reich, cannot be cleansed
in this fashion. American culture and American. identity, despite nu-
merous attempts at self-criticism, will never be able to filter intact the
substance of its culture through a historical • memory" which is in fact
completely dependent, first, on the conscious and voluntary eradica-
tion of a native Jndran population, and second, on the conscious and
voluntary eradication of that eradication. Cultural identity formed in
the crucible of political power is coDtaminated at its core, in its very
•su bstance...
I am of course aware that such sweeping statements merely reiter-
ate-like the mantra of the appropriately concerned historian-Wal-
ter Benjamin's famous aphorism: "There is no document of civilization
which is not at the same time a document of barbarism,":i Habermas
himself invokes the line in a recent essay on "1>0sttraditional identity,"
with the claim that Benj'amin was thinking of the "public use made of
history by national movements and nation states in the nineteenth
century"-an interpretation usefully directed at contemporary Ger-
man revisionism.• But l would like to think that the aphorism could
also be read so as to resonate beyond Habermas' narrowly drawn limits
of national self-reassurance. Habermas vigorously attacks any recla-
mation of the myth ofa specifically "German" identity-well and good.
But he then substitutes for it something which many in the world to-
day would find only marginally better-the myth of Western Man, of
a "Western civilization" from which "we Germans dissociated our-
selves.'' •
What do modernity, enlightenment, and the West mean in the con•
text of Habermas' response to the new German conservatism? Haber-

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 Vincent P. Pecora
< 158 >
mas himself elaborates two large sets of oppositions that bear on these
terms and that define his own position tow-Md them. First, he points
to a distinction between "cultural modernity" and "social modernity,''
between a secularized, rational ethico-political culture and the "eco-
nomic and administrative" rationalization of capitalist society,• In
broad terms, the "new conservatism" in Germany (and the United
States) favors the latter, and is radfcally opposed to the former. Haher-
mas, on the other hand, understands "cultural modernity" as being the.
basis for a life-world in which itidividual self-fulfllhnent and universal
ethics first become possible. As such, it is the crucial complement to
social modernity,' Second, and in parallel with the first opposition, Ha-
bermas draws a distinction between what might be called the idea of
Western enlightenment and the pragmatic benefits of enUghtened
Westem capitalism.• Again, the new conservatism la.vars the latter
without the former, whereas Habennas renounces the latter, or at least
subordinates it to the higher interests of the former.
One could hardly quarrel with Habermas' critique on its own terms.
His main point-that conservatives read contradictions in the eco-
nomic and administrative base of social modemity as if these were the
result of the destruction of a traditional ,ethos by a secularizing cultural
modernity, and thus "confuse cause and elfeot"9- has indeed been,
ever since Marx, a founding tenet of left-Uberal social criticism. But
something always re.mains masked by such neat formulations. As long
3.$. "cultural modernity" can be made identical to the idea of Western
enlightenment, and both made to signify o,ily obvious benefits like
~self-fulfillment" and ~universal ethics," with no remnant, then the
term simply becomes a predetermined code. But to what extent ts
"cultural modernity" or "Western enlightenmenC exhausted by this
code? Habermas' work has been uniformly silent on the obvious his-
torical la.ct that "enlightenment" and "modernity" almost always came
to the West at the expense of those colonized and exploited peoples
whose labor, land, resources, and markets stolced its "social rnoder•
nity," and whose ,presence has been more or less unifunnly ignored or
denied by the grand institutions of •cultural modernity" Habermas
¢hampions. Indeed, by always managing to stress the idea of modem ,
Western enlightenment-self-fulfillment and universal ethics-re-
gardless of its historical actuality, Haberrnas situates himself within a
long tradition of "enlightened" imperialist thought, it is, after all, pre-
cisely the idea of the West which Charlie Marlow thought he could
save at the end of Heart of Darktu1ss.

_11 1 1el11t 1
r 11/,/i iFlj' ~ , c1,,11, t-11(,f-'l•I
 Habermaa, ErJightenment, and Antisemit~ffll
< 159 >

And yet wherever one looks in the Historikerstreil, on the right and
on the left, one fs made queasy by the intimation that, for its partici•
pants, what is finally at stake is once again nothing less than the fate of
Western civilization. Has not the "rest" of the world already learned to
fear for its very epstence whenever .it gets wind of"Westem" intellec-
tuals beginning to argue once again about how best to define the West?
'nie Third Reich itself made use of a lively Ostfor-Ychung industry in
academia-akin to other "orientalist'' traditions-which arose during
the Weimar period in response to borders set at Versailles; which
helped authorize a quest for Lebensraum m the East; and which sur-
vived the war remarkably intact by adapting its rhetoric to serve anti•
Soviet Cold War policies in the West.••
At the end of a most persuasive essay, forged as a sharp polemic
against the mindlessness of Ernst Nolte's claim that National Socialism
came to commit "Asiatic" deeds because ofits justified fear of being a
victim of"Asiatic" deeds. Habermas writes, "The unreserved opening
of the Federal Republic to the political culture of the West is the great
intellectual achievement of the postwar period, of which my genera-
tion in particular could be proud." 11 Where, one might aslc, does Ha-
bermll$ really think Cerman •'political culturet at least &om the eigh-
teenth century on, has actually been ?11 Indeed, even as he cogently
attacks the right-wil'!g image of a proud German republic "firmly an-
chored in the Atlantic community of values," he cannot resist project-
ing the same image himself: "The only patriotism which does not alien-
ate us from the West is a constitutional patriotism." 13 Throughout
Habennas' much-needed replies lo the new conservative revisionism,
s uch disturbing strains can be heard, like Wagnerian motifs which stir
recollection but not recognition. What appears in the end to be at
stalce for Habermas is "our link with the West"-tbat is, Germany's
link with wcivilization" itself. Inevitably, such a conn~tion is threat-
ened by the obstruction called Auschwitz, To demonstrate that it de-
serves its hard-won status as a "Western," civilized nation, Germany
must, in Habermas' view, atone for its sins. Thus emerges Habermas'
call for a posttraditional'' identity located "in the untroubled con-
sciousness of a break With our disastrous traditions" and fur an "unre-
served openness to the political culture of the West." 14 But can this
convenient notion of a "Western" identity, supplanting a G-erman one,
really bear the weight Habermas loads onto it? Does not this seem-
ingly kcritical" transformation of traditional German identity in fact re-
quire nothing short of a massive repression of everything "·the West"

11 1 1 lllt'-1
I 1/,)l \/ f.il SI~ ()C t.1 J,)-11 ,-. /-di
 Vincent P. Pecora
< 160 >

has actually represented in the face of struggles for self-fulfillment and

universal justice around the globe, as opposed simply to what HllbeT•
mas wants "the West" -the Western idea-to mean ?
It is not simply that, in reaffirming the primacy of the "political cul-
ture of the West" and Germany's moral salvation within it., Habermas
inadvertently manages to re-demonize all that is non-Western. It is
also that such rhetoric subtly serves precisely to absolve the West from
its own obvious oomplicity, not only in Germany's Wl!I' crimes, but also
in the long narrative of Western imperial power. Which "political cul-
tures~ were responsible for turning away boatloads of Jewish refugees?
Which "political cultures'' found no great burden in knowingly coUab-
orating with genocidal po•licies? Which "political cultures" actively
supported a climate of antisemitism so stro11g that HJtler and his fol-
lowers felt certain "the West" would thank Germany for its troubles?
Of oourse, why should the complicity of the enlightened West in
Nazf crimes surprise any but the naive, when Western culture bas rou-
tinely sustained itself by destroying its others for so long? Which "po•
litical cultures'' were responsible for those noble works of man accom-
plished in the modem period in the African Congo, in Algeria, in
South Africa, in Egypt, in India, in China, in Southeast Asia, in Cen-
tral and South America? At such moments, Frantz Fanon~s strong
words are a necessary rein on the self-satisfied claims to "rationality"
by Western intellectuals.
Every time Western values are mentioned they produce tn the na•
tive a sort of stiffening or muscular lockjaw. During the period of
decolonization, the native's reason is 11ppealed to. He is offered defi-
nite values, he is told . . . that he must put his trust in qualities
which are well-tried, solid and highly esteemed. But it so happens
that when the native hears a speech about Western culture he pulls
ollt his knife-or at least makes sure it is within reach. The violence
with which the supremacy ofwhiie values is affirmed and the aggres-
siveness which has permeated the victory of these values over the
ways of life and of thought of the native mean that in revenge, the
native laughs in mockery when Western values -are mentioned in
front of him. 15
Through the idealization of"the West" that occurs with such disturbing
frequency in the Western media and in its "'critical" discourse, Fanon's
experience is systematically repressed.
I do not wish to be understood as lending the merest sliver of sup-

-•L~ielu 1

111,11 'F'I' n , c t.!I, 1-11r,/'f•I

 Habermas, Enlightenment, and Antisemitism
< 161 >
port to the .revisionism which seeks to "normalize" and "balance ac--
counts~ by recalling the barbarity of so much •non-German" culture.
What National Socialism called the "Final Solution" of the "Jewish
Questionn indeed possesses a horrific singularity; but it does so only in
the context of more or less continuous, increasingly systematic, "Wes~
ern" -and terrifyingly .Chmtian-traditions of religious, political,
economic, and cultur.J persecution of the Jews. In this sense, the at 4

tempt to eradicate the Jews is not some strange, irrational swerve away
from that benevolent practice Habennas calls "the political culture of
the West"- it has been lurking near its heart from the beginning.
Likewise, I do not wish to be understood as offering some wholesale or
sophomoric (or worse, neo-Heideggerian) denunciation of Enlighten-
ment notions of human reason, universalizing moral judgment, repre-
sentative government, technological progress, and so forth. But as
long as such positive galns are understood to have suddenly "hap-
pened" without recognizing their cost in the West's massive, centuries-
old, and increasingly effective persecution of its others-and the Jew
has been perhaps the oldest and most persistent "other" of the Chris-
tian West inside the West~even "enlightened~ attempts to discuss the
"Final Solution" will prove to be hopelessly tainted With a Eurocentric
megalomania. And finally, I do not wi.s h to be understood as implying
that those who have suffered unspeakable persecution are therefore
automatically immune from taking up the role of persecutor. The state
qf Israel, for all its ··western" traditions, has proven no more capable
of cleansing itself of the deepseated racism at its heart than has Europe
or Ame rica before It. Indeed, given its almost total oppression of an
indigenous Arab Palestinian population, Israel has demonstrated anew
just how e lusive the idea of enlightenment can be .
Weste rn political culture is in the forefront of Amo Mayers analysis
in Why Did the Heavens Not Darken? Although he retains his focus on
the "Jewish catastrophe• and on its specificity, Mayer nevertheless de-
mands that the eve nt be rigorously "historicized.,-whatever i ts na-
ture, the "Final Solution" needs to be understood "in history," and n ot
as a ·providentially ordained "Holocaust" which can be turned to sectar-
ian purposes, commemorated, re'ified, confined to a "prescriptive
'memory' unconducive to critical and contextual thinking" and "be-
yond historical reimagining." 16 Mayer thus emphasizes, correctly 1
tpink, the need fora "profane," secular historiography built on Enlight-
enment notions of "causality and 110Curacy.'' He counters the "central

II~ 101 I 1

llf./\ IFIJ" ~ ,JC t.11, t-ilf,(-'l•I

 Vincent P. Pecora
C 162 >

premise~ of prescriptive commemor<1tion-that the Nazi "victimiza-

tion of tbe Jews .. , is absolutely unprecedented, completely wi gf/-
neris"-with a notion of a political and ideological ··gencral,crisis" run-
ning from 1914 to 1945. 17
Mayer's notion of a modem general crisis depends on political insta-
bility and ideologjcal fanati(:ism. In fact, an irrationalist "causal nexus"
links the National Socialist "absolute war" against its Bolshevik ideo-
logjoal rivals wjth institutionalized antisemitism: the Judeocide oc-
curred when the first began to fail in 1941, and ideological fury turned
to the seoond. (Mayer even goes so far as to suggest that the mass
killings would not have occurred had Hider succeeded in Russia.)
Uriderlying such claims is the notion that the "mainspring" of all gen-
eral crises is unreason itself-neither technical or bureaucratic skill,
nor the latest instruments of violence, nor the power and competitive,.
ness of big business· were the driving forces beyond the "general crisis'·
of 1914-1945. A strange contradiction thus haunts Mayer's thesis of
ideological irrationality, and it is prompted by the speclficity of the
"Final Solution" itself. For although Mayer emphasizes the values of
enlightened, profane historiography and of historical precedent, he
also recognizes the need to describe the Judeocide in terms that will
differentiate it in meaningful ways-history does not simply repeat it•
self, after all. But what emerges at the hCl;lrt of this irra.tional thirty•
year epoch, what most distinguishes the Judeocide from all previous
and related atrocities, is nothing so much as a more efficient means-
ends rationality applied to the bµsi ness of m-ass murder. 18 In fact,
wherever Mayer pa11ses in his "seoond epoch of general crisis" to dis-
tinguish the Judeocide from the furious brutalities of previous crises.
he ends up invoicing the organized, planned, systematized, rationally
controlled nature of its destructive power. That is, at the center of this
thirty-year whirlwind of ideology and unreason are the more or less
calm,. dispassionate, and efficient workings of railway tfmetables and
the measurement of a crematorium's capacity.
What I want to suggest is that, for Mayer too, something about the
West, and about the "political culture" of its modernity, is at stake. This
likelihood is nowhere more evident than when he notes that, in the
very circles of hell, such as the L6dz Ghetto, chroniclers "unlike those
of earlier times" were l'ecording their observations "in the spirit of En-
lightenment history;" 18 What is _finally at stake for Mayer as a historian
is a Western tradition and a modernity the fates of which are ·curiously

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11/•/I /Flj< ~ , c t,11, 1-!lr",f'l•I

 Habennas, Enlightenment, and Antiserr&itism
< 163 >
intertwined for him with that of the Jews. What remains is a vertigi-
nous mlse en abt'me-a more or less ..nonnaf' history, interrupted by
periods of irrational crisis. at the heart of which one Sods unspeakable
yet quite systematized cruelty, in the midst of which chroniclers de-
vote themselves to the spirit of the Enlightenment. My point is simply
that, like Habennas, Mayer seems unable or unwilling to acknowledge
systematic and rationally planned barbarity as an intrinsic, ,ubiquitous
complement to "eulightened" Western traditions and, even more so,
to their modernity. In the same decades when the United States was
putting into practice a constitution which many consider the first true
political product of the Enlightenment, it was also systematieally erad-
icating a supposedly inferior native population in its search for Lebens•
raurn and calmly pursuing planned race slavery.
This point is absolutely crucial. If the specific and terrifying suffer•
ing endured by the victims of Nazi persecution is not mobilized to
remind the West of the barbarity folded l'n to even its most admirable
traditions, but instead serves to obscure it, and perhaps to foster sur-
reptitiously a smug sense of political complacency and assuredness,
then that suffering will end up serving barbaric purposes all over
again, What Mayer calls the Judeocideshould in no c-dSe be "nonnal-
izedu-but neither should anyone take false comfort in the possible
inference that all else in the enlightened West already is.

A rereading of Adorno, and Horkheimer's Dlakktik der Aufkwrong

(Dialectic of enlightenment), emphasizing their last chapter, "Ele-
ments of Antisemitism." might serve to counterbalance the apotheosis
of Western modernity that is evident throughout Habennas' later work
and implicit in much ofthe contemporary mscussioo of the "Final So-
lution," Tod~y it is of course quite fashionable to, dismiss Dlakktlk der
Aujkwrong as the site of the wrong turn in Fr.lllkfurt School critical
theory, an irrational swerve toward sweeping anthropological general-
ization, a sort of reverse Hegelianism, now linking reason and freedom
only by means of a duplicitous , rather than a progressive, dialectic. It
is a tum that has evoked hostility on many fronts, from the orthodox
Marxian left to positivist sociology."" In many ways Habermas has led
the attack." For him, Dlalektik der Aufklarung could be reduced to
the N ietzschean irony that implies a totalizing, self-destructive corrup-
tion of ,ul normative standards for critique, an abandonrne.nt of En-
lighte.nmeot ideals of science and morality, which leaves iq its wake

1111 llll-'!'i
llf./1 l ►P.Sj~ ()C t,11, tjl(,(-' f•)
 Vincent P. Pecora
< 164 >

only the theoretical abyss of unresolved antinomies, "performative

contradiction," and "determi11ate negatioo."u Given Habermas' devo-
tion to such norms and ideals, this critique- is to be expected. More
important, perhaps, one could not help but agree with much of his
response. After all, Adorno and Horkheimer themselves start from
Habermas' basic claim: "We have no doubt-and therein lies our peti·
tio principii-that social freedom ls inseparable from enlightened
thougbt." 23 This statement hardly implies an abandonment of the
ideals of Western reason,
Nevertheless, Adorno and Horkheimer articulate a challenge to the
perennial myopia of the Western intellectual that must not be forgot•
ten amid all the clamor of the Historilcerstreit,
Just as the Enlightenment expresses the actual movement of civil
society as a whole under the aspect of its idea embodied in persons
and institutions, so truth names not merely rational consciousness
but equally its actual form in reality ... Even the sincere reformer
who recommends innovation in hackneyed language, through his
adoption of polished modes of categorization and the bad philosophy
concealed therein, strengthens the power of what exists. which he
wishes to break . . . What ts at stake is not cultu.r e as value, as the
critics of civilization, Huxley, Jaspers, Ortega y Cassel and others,
have in mind, but rather that the Euligbtenm.e nt must refte(lt on
itself (that is, must recolle(!t itself: mws sich auf rich selbst besin-
nenJ, if men are not to be betrayed altogether. The. task is not the
conservation of the past, but rather the redemption of past hope."'
And what constitutes such self-consideration for Adorno and Horkhei•
mer? It is precisely the active recollection that "what men wish to learn
from nature is how to use it in order to dominate- it and other men
completely. Nothing else matters. Ruthlessly, in spite of itself, the En-
lightenment has burned out the last remnants of its own self-
consciousne55. Only thought that doe.s violence to itself is hard enough
to shatter myths.".., These are not, of course, easily "proven" observa-
tions. Nor, for that matter, are they particularly congenial to a Euro-
centric perspective whose power in world affairs is completely depen·
dent on its ability to calculate and control the force of nature, and of
human beings, better than any other. The point is that it is not only
Germany which represses its past. The "enlightened West" bas also
learned to forget those who have paid the price for its escape from the
bonds of mystified nature.

11.,,· .. Go 1gle .l1 I J!i ,11 lrlmi

UihVffiS111 !)F Mll"Hll'A>l
 ffabennas, Enlightenment, and Anti.remitism
< 16.5 >

To be sure, Habennas' point about the "'perfonnative contradic-

tions" around which such observations inevitably tun1-around which
Adomo's later work as a whole turns, many would say~ is weU taken.
For- it is with Dialektik der AujkliiN.Jrig that the later philosophical an•
tinomies of Adorno's Negative Dialectics first emerge in fuUy devel-
oped form. In the earlier text, the uleveling domination- of abstract
equivalence in capitalist modernity; and the need for shict calculability
and repetition in industrial production-issues already much elabo-
rated by Weber and Luk~. among others-are understood to be
inextricably tied to the larger process of enlightenment. For Adom.o
especially, such a pertpective demands a su.stained interrogation of
equivalence and the identitarian concept as such. "The concept, which
one would like to define as the sign-manifestation [Merkmals~nhett] of
whatever is seized under it, rather was from the beginning the product
of dialectical thinking, in which everything remains only what it is
while it also becomes what it is not."" Against Aristotelian logic-
though in many ways in pertect harmony with Marxian epistemol•
ogy-Adomo will press a dialectical insistence on the inescapability of
contradiction, even at the most basic conceptual levels. Thus. positiv-
ist science and rationality discover their efficacy only at those pOiots
where conceptual identity can be maintained. But such conceptual
identity is al] too readily fetishi7.ed at the level of the social ,reproduc-
tion of thought, and can thus be immediately turned to the service of
social domination.
In Negative Dialectics Adorno focuses on the "ontological need" re-
vealed by all conceptual fetishizatioQ. His goal is nothing other than
the disenchantment of that philosophical insistence on the rational
concept as objectively given. "A changed philosophy would have ...
to cease persuading others and itself that it has the infinite at its dis-
posal.n21 One can perhaps see how, in spite of the fact that Heidegger
is the immediate and unmis,takahle target of Adomo's later philoso,
phy, .. Habennas would come to link Adomo's attack on id.entitarian
thinking with Derrida's "deconstruction" of phenomenology, and
through Derrida to a longer tradition of "'irrationalism• culminating in
Heidegger. But is Habermas not throwing out the baby with the bath-
water here? That is, Habertnas maintains too little distinction between
one perspective (Adomo's) that insists on recalling the *remnant" in,
evitahly left out, or behind, in al] achieved (and instrumentally neces•
sary) conceptual identify, and an.other (Derrida'.s, for example) which

JI I JU ,11 1ru11\
I N1Vft1$1o) C1F i\1101iGAN
 Vinoent P. Peoora
< 166 >

insists, in good Heideggerian fashion, on the value of playing the per-

petual beginner and whieh assumes as its raison d'~tre the endlessly
repeatable gesture of dismantling the very possibility-the ooncept
itself, one might say~ of all pretension to oonceptual ooherence. That
Rabermas finds little difference betweep these two approaches is what
allows him, I think, to make statements such as the following~ "Of
oourse it is not possible to characterize the history of the mentality of
the Federal Republic in a few sentences. What 1 want to emphasize is
this: If one disregards marginal groups, both of these ongoing contro-
versies [about external alliances and internal 'political culture'] were
conducted on the basis of a cho'ice in favor of the West that was not
seriously questioned,".,. Habermas may of oourse have in mind only
those "marginal groups" which renounce any claim to social justice
whatsoever. But is not modem political life precisely the oomplex im-
brication of "marginal groups" struggling to find a space, and a voice,
even within the "enlightened" culture.of the West? When America de-
fends Its borders against the flow of Mexicans searching for better oon-
ditions, it justifies itself On the grounds that only in this way can the
'"good life" of its existing citizenry-their "cultural modernity," one
might say-be preserved. But how much would be left out of such
conclusions, even ,i f they could be shown to be true? It is above all .it
such points thaf Habermas' fetishization of the West must be subjected
to dialectical questioning: something, or someone, is almost always
being excluded in the process.
I referred above to the special value of rereading Adorno and
Horkheimer's chapter on antisemitism for precisely such reasons. For
the Jews would surely rank high among all those groups systematically
marginalized throughout the long history of "the West." ln unmistak-
able ways, "Element~ of Antisemitism" is the essay toward which Di-
alektik der Aufldiirung as a whole has been directed, for antisemitism
forms a precise instance-perhaps the primary ediibit-of"the actual
return of enlightened civili:zation to barbarism.""" And yet, throughout
Habennas' summary and critique of Dialektik der Auflclarung and of
the theoretical swerve instantiated by it, there is. almost no mention of
antisemitism or of the Adomo/Horkheimer discussion ofit. In a chap-
ter of a book which purports to address the "philosophical discourse"
of modernity, there is only one men.lion of"EJements of Antisemitism,"
buried in a larger discussion of Bataille. The issue of ''mimesis" is
raised, but neither Jews nor antisemitism nor racis.m of any kind is ever
mentioned." Surely the omission is a curious one in a project dedi-

11.1,· " Go ,gle J, 1JU r1i 1run\

U~Jl\/ft1S1n DF 1\11011(.Jl.N
 Habermas, Enlightenment, and Antisemitism
< 167 >

cated to the efficacy of intersubjective rationality in the modem pe·

riod. It is as if the specific nature of the problem that the resurgence
and victory of barbaric raciallst dogma raises for Habennas' benignly
progressive history of rationalizing modernity has been conveniently
aitbrushed from memory.
By reintegrating the final chapter ofDialelctik der Aufklarung into
the trajectory of the work as a whole, I want to suggest the continuing
relevance of Adorno and Horkheimer·s interrogation ofthe relation be·
tween a Western "political culture" self-oonceived as enlightened mo-
dem1ty and a long, brutal history of the West's domination of its others.
That is, even though the term Imperialism is more or le$$ absent from
the text itself, my claim is that Adorno and Horkheimer's thesis of a
neurotic will within "enlightenment" toward the wholesale domination
of nature can best be understood as the elucidation of a knowledge/
power nexus central to imperialist relations. What Mayer calls the Ju-
deocide, then, would gain its specificity not only from its extraordinary
viciousness and systematicity but from the fact that it represents an
uncanny episode· in the enlightened West's need to define itself against
its others. It is precisely because the Jews, perhaps more than any
other people defined a priori as alien to the West and its traditions, are
understood to have infiltrated the culture of reference at its core, that
they represent the most destabilizing threat to their host culture. The
image of the Jew as a "parasite," which runs throughout National So-
ci'ali.st dogm.i, would be impossible without the Jews· characterization
as internalized aliens, as the enemy within. Their eradication must be
seen, then, as a project spawned not only by their relation to an exter-
nal threat to Western hegemony-as Bolshevism functions in Mayer's
account-but as their embodiment of the non-West within the West,
the internal difference that the West simultaneously most wishes to
disavow and can never manage to disavow fully. As lon_g as Cermany
could regard itself as the guardian of the West, the Jew wo11ld have a
privileged place as the ineluctable discrepancy at the heart of a West~
em-not just German-fantasy of cultural unity, continuity, singular-
ity, and identity. The Aryan racist had convinced himself that, beyond
the uniqueness of his own blood line, the fate of civili:zation itself in
the West rested on his shoulders. 1n a sense, the "singularity" of the
"Final Solution" becomes a revealing problem only to the e1tent that
it is understood to be inseparable from the West's own conception of
itselfas a singular and privileged culture of reference.
There are perhaps three ways in which "Elements of !,ntisemitism"

JIIJ!I ,11 I! Iii

U~J\Vffl:Sfi) OF MICHluAtJ
 Vincent P. Pecora
< 168 >

might still contribute to an important reexamination of how Western

civilization-including, without apology, its supposedly "modem~ and
"enlightened" phases-produces and reproduces a phantasm of supe-
riority over its others. First, antisemitism, especially in its modem
versions, reveals the inevitable link between a dominating culture and
its imaginary construction of those it comes to dominate. "In the image
of the Jews that the nationalists [Vol~chen) erect for the world, they
express their own essence. Theit craving is for ex.elusive possession,
appropriation, unlimited power, at any price. As masters, they deride
and crucify the Jews, who are burdened with their guilt for this, end-
lessly repeating a s;leruice the efficacy of which they cannot believe
in.":is The destructiop of the Jews thus becomes the figure par excel-
lence of "enlightened" culture's attempt to destroy the memory and
the guilt of the power to control which enlightened thought itself has
enabled. Like Kurtz, who cries, "Destroy the brutesl" in Conrad's
story, the Nazi hopes to eradicate the trace of.his own barbarity pro-
jected onto those be dominates.
Second, through their confinement to commerce and trade and
their banishment from productive forces and state authority, the Jews
become identified wi1h tb.e growth of capitaljsm in the. West. and spe-
cifically with the sphere of circulation, Indeed, Adorno and Horkhei-
mer seem to be imagining a series of equations based on their sense. of
the Jews as the mediating element between proquctjon and consump-
tion , Not only does the Jewish "middleman" become the object of the
resentment of those who suffer under capitalism and whose real op-
pressors are safely out of reach; moreover, the Jew, tied to bourgeois
merchandising and economic circulation, also becomes the image of
intellectual mediation, that is, of the re8ective mechanisms of con-
science. Like Hamlet, those who doubt and weigh reasons-who per-
ceive the contradiction where others see only identity, one might
say-become identified with hesitation and impotence, but also with
the dangerous, subversive power of the parasitical and "nonproduc-
tive'' modem thinker:"' In this way, the "Final Solution" of the "Jewish
problem~ is also (and quite ironically, given Habermas' anti-
Nietzscheanism) the desire to resolve, finally and forever, reason's age-
old tendency to turn on itself, to undo its own prerogatives and as.
suredness-to halt, one might say, the often debilitating self-doubt
that reftection and conscience fuster. The Jew becomes the very sym-
bol of the modem, self-conscious, angst-ridden intellectual-Freud is

JIIJ!i ,11 If 0\
U~hVii'tSfi) C,F MIC'·IIGAl I
 llabennas. Enlighte11ment, and Antlfflnstism
< 169 >

the model here-and for that very reason becomes an intolerable

threat to the untroubled link between power and knowledge which
"enlightenment" hopes to attain.
Finally, and perhaps most important, antisemitism throughout
Western history is the contradictory yet growing expression of enlight-
ened culture's fear of being seduced by, and adapting to, uncontrolled
nature- in sharp juxtaposition, that is, to the Nazi cult of a romanti-
cally heroized and contained nature. "[The Jews] had not extirpated
assimilation to nature, but sublimated [aufgehobenJ it iii clear duties
of ritual . . . So they are reputed to be left behind by civilization and
much too far ahead ofit,, similar and dissimilar, clever and stupid. They
are said to be guilty of that which they; as the first burghers, were the
first to break themselves of: the allure of nature, the pull toward animal
and earth, the service of images. Because they invented the concept of
kosher, ~y are persecuted as swine. The antisemites make them-
selves the executors ofthe Old Testament; they see to it that the Jews,
when they have eaten of the tree of knowledge, tum into dust.''"' The
partial accommodation with nature achieved by Jewish ritual, espe-
cially given the more rationalized forms of modem Christianity; be-
comes the object ofa profound ambivalence. It is simultaneously cov-
eted as an organic tie with the earliest forms of human relations, now
forbidden by self-tepressive ideals of morality and civilization, and
transformed into a monstrous pact with prehuman existence.
Indeed, I want to claim that the mechanism that Adorno and Hork.
heimer call "repressed mimesis" -the repression of the reproduction
of undominated nature-can help to illuminate not only the paradig-
matic contradictions of antisemitism, but also those of racialist dogma
in general within Westemlmperialism. Racism's hysteric relation to its
object simultaneously masks and reveals ~ repression of mimetic de-
sire. a repression which racfsm's victims always appear uncannily to
have avoided. Frantz Fanon quotes a mend who had been living in the
United States: NThe presence ofNegroes beside whites is in •
a way an
insurance policy on humanness. When whites feel that they have be-
come loo mechanized, they tum to men of color and ask them for a
little human su.stenance.'' 35 Edward Said, concentrating on the profes-
sional production of the discourse of orientalism, points out that the
Orient was simultaneously~overvalued for its pantheism, its spiritual-
ity, its stability, its longevity, lts primitivity, and so forth"; and then
suddenly devalued as "lamentably under-humanized, antidemocratic,

11,1,· .. Go ,gle JIIJ!I ,11 I! Iii

11N1VfH$1o) C1F MIQil(;All
 Vincent P. Pecora
< 170 >

backward. barbaric, and so forth.tt 36 One could also point to James Clif-
ford's discussion of a uroodernist primitivism,tt especially in Europe's
regard for "!'art negre": ine discovery of things 'nege' by the Euro-
pean avant-garde was mediated by an imaginary America, a land of
noble savages simultaneously st.mding for the past and future of hu-
manity-a perfect affinity of primitive and modem. For example, jazz
was associated with primal sources (wild, erotic passions) and with
technology (the mechanical rhythm of brushed drums, the gleaming
saxophone)." 07 And one could tum to Klaus Theweleit's analysis of the
roots of fascism in the ambivalences of male self-image and misogyny
in the Freikorps,"' In the texts of Europe's construction of its others-
in Hegel's Philosophy of History, in Balzac's Peau de chagrin, in Flau-
bert's Salammb6- and in the work of psychoanalysts of colonialism
like Fanon, one •finds further testimony to those paradoxes of re-
pressed mimesis expressed with such extraordinary Viciousness in the
modern and systematic antisemitism of the Third Reich.
Unless the internal relations between antisemitism and the long his-
tory of the West's exclusionary policies toward those it delines as alien
are kept in mind, a truly reflective and critical attitude toward those
events defined by the notion of a "'Final Solution" will be impossible.
It is not at all a question of forsaking·the imperatives of reason, of evi-
dence, of normative values, or of an ideal of enlightened thought and
behaVio.r-such a formulation would be a reductive deflection of that
critical spirit which is not satisfied to denounce certain mistakes or
..crises" while implicitly salvagfng the good intentions and beneficence
of the modem West's ~political culture.'' Habertnas is never more cor-
rect than when he upholds the imperatives of reasoned reilection in
the face of counterfactual, racist, or irrational impulses within his own
country. But aborting critical reflection where he does is the real "~r-
formative contradiction.. in Western thought

,11 11 lf!I\
.l1 I J!i
UihVit1$l1f !)F Mll"Hll ·A> I
 < 11 >

Between Image and Phrase:

Progressive History and the
"Final Solution" as Dispossession

SANDE COHEN

I am concerned with the event of extermination known as the "Final

Solution," especially with the cultural formation of this name and its
status as image and concept in the context of contemporary critical
thinking.
I believe it is worthwhile to pursue the sense of contemporary en-
lightenment whJch Habermas has attached to the "Final Solution" and
relate this conception to Lyolllrd's skepticism regarding the credibility
of enlightenment today. Elaborating on the different portions of the.
arguments, and how they engender cultural and intellectual positions
concerning the "Final Sok1tion," Will make it immediately apparent
that the view of language-as-representation is at stake. Lyotards argu-
ments propose the writing of the "Final Solution" as a challenge to
l.uiguage, cultural criticism, and historiography, whereas Habennas'
recent work on the "Final Solution~ stands for a Hegelian-Freudian
synthesis.

Habermas' Model
Historicism has been variously defined, but J suggest we consider it as
an attempt to achieve a cultural "timeless time." an image which holds
together categories such as origin and result. Historicism enables one
to "take account of the number of moves around the dial the hand has
made by the end of the period of observation," and renders an image
of an unavoidable presentation handed down by "history" which braids
past, present, and future ln the here and now. 1 One is at once anchored
to both a date and an image; one starts one's narration by setting the
clock.at a metaphoric midnight-time "counts'' because the historian
imputes this clock to the events recounted. (There are restorative
countings, apocalyptic ones, and so on.) As a cultural arrangement,
< 171 >

JIIJ!I ,11 I! 11)

u~J1Vft1$111 OF 1\111.'-lluAll
 Sande Cohen
< 172 >
hi.storicism is severely pressured when the idea of capital is exception•
ally dynamic, or when the economic genre itself becomes sublime,
that is, "a finality of antifinality and a pleasure of pain" (consumerism),
which produces fur many an unreal sense of"history. ••
In taking up the historians' debate , Habermas does not pursue Saul
Friedlander's call "[forl a new style . . . to be introduced for the pur-
pose of historical description . . . The duty of the historian may well
be to forgo the attempt to visualize, precisely so that he can fulfill his
task in terms of documentary precision and rendition of the events.• ,
On the contrary, Habermas does not waver in connecting historiciza•
lion and visuality, a mode of classical Gennan historiography in its con•
cem with national, monumental narrations. For Habermas, the visual
anchor between narrativity, the ~Final Solution," and the present is
secured in the following way;
Today the grandchildren of those who at the close of World War IT
. . . are already growing up. Memory . . . has not ·b ecome corre-
spondingly distantiated. Contemporary history remains fixated on
the period between 1933 and 1945. It does not move beyond the
horizon of its own life-history; it remains tied up in sensitivities and
reactions that . . . still always have the same point of departure, the
images of that unloading ramp at Auschwitz, This traumatic refusal
to pass away of a moral imperfect past tense that has bee11 burned
into our national history entered the comciousnus of the general
population only In the 1980s.• (my italics)
Time here '"does not move"; it is sutu.r ed to a present urgency, an
intense identity between past and pr-e sent. What happened then is
embedded in a continuity of not-.furgetting; the sense of "has been
burned," the "traumatic refusal.~ These luxurious synecdoches (pace
Hayden White) of pain have not blended with an ~objective past.'' Priv-
ileged is the psychologic.al dimension , designated as the "t.raumatic re-
fusal," the inability to engage with unacceptable images.• The "land•
ing-ramp'' at Auschwitz which "bums" is the result of the assertive
force of a statement which does not want to be challenged in the crea•
lion of a philosophy of history; it is the universality of inclusive tradi•
tion.t, e$tablished by the imposition of psychologically negative conti·
ouities on all levels of contemporary Ger'Jllan ,elation,s.
Past and memory are thus ·s econdary to psychological projections
which count in the present or hold accountable the writings of cultur-
ally engaged Cennan historians. The time~ntinuum .iccessed by psy-

.lliJ!i ,11 If 11)

U1hVEi'tS1,1 OF MII.HluA>l
 Between Image and Phrase
< 173 >
chological trauma is treated as·a universal and national fact, as the sub-
stance of psychological judgments. Jn Habermas' tenninology,
"national histories" are treated as unproblematical extensions of indi-
vidual feelings, and such psych<>logy legitimizes enlightened politics.
Entailed in Habermas' New Co11$eroatism is that there can be no really
enlightened society or nation until the melancholy of the survivors is
recognized a.~ determining that "the survival of all of us stand[s] under
the curse, in attenuated fonn, of having merely escaped . , . an inter-
subjective liability ... for distorted life circumstances."• This curse
renders identity negative at least and thereby olfS«ltS a society which
day by day becomes more fractured in terms of capitalist dyn$.mics.
Habennas seems unaware here that the philosophy of history is itself
an ..exceptional" relation of capitalist society. 1
This psychological result ("curse") makes up the substance of a new
historical consciousness of the "Final Solution," But it unfortunately
Involves regression to the level of an invoked organic form, here in the
shape of an unre8ective use of the term milieu: "Our own life is linked
to the life conteid in which Auschwitz was possible not by contingent
cireumstances hut intrinsicaUy. Our form of life is connected with that
of our parents and grandparents . . . through a historical milieu that
made .us what and who we are today. None of us can escape this milieu,
because our identities, both as individuals and as Germans, are indis-
solubly interwoven with it , .. We have to stand by our traditions,
then, if we do not want to disavow ourselves."* The "curse" which has
fallen on the "people' becomes the "milieu" of an identity which oc-
curred in the past but which must not be "disavowed"; the entity
named "German" must retain its particularity, no matter what. This
metapsychological curse may never be "reparable" but it can be
"treated," as tt were, by ~historical reflection."
The aim, the rehistoricization of public life, supposes an engage-
ment in colleotive "therapy" for a curse asserted as the form of German
cc;,llectivity. The treatment of this curse is one of the proper activities
for intellectuals and artists and for future intellectual-political involve-
ment, hence a (progressive) bureaucratization of a cultural problematic
(finding the proper ther.1pies).
There is thus an irreverswle demand made by Habennas, directed
against what Peter Sloterdijk has called the "radical ironization of eth-
ics and social convention . . . as if the general laws were only meant
for the stupid."9 That is, Habermas proposes the reinvention of a na-

J1 I J!I ,11 lrfm\

U~h\'fflS1n DF Mt011(ill.l·l
 Sande Cohen
< 174 >
tional life controlled by a•gaze educated by the moral catastrophe~ and
precluding the fnigmentation that Sloterdijlc says is irresistible. 10 In
place of ordinary nistory" it entails an extraordinary liability and a
psychologically based moral economy, a mixture of law and ethics by
which to dissolve a past which blocks "our path like a locked door."
Haberrnas has created a.cultural machine: it combines psychology with
a progressive political agenda anchored in Marx and Freud and re-
stricts the role of intellectuals to preparations for enlightenment,
wherein ''our cognitive meanings, moral el(pectations, subjective-
expressions and evaluations must relate to one another.• 11 In the face
of the shatterings performed by the "Final Solutionn on value, on
meaning, on law, the category of Intellectual is severed &om any pos-
sible antimodemity. One could read The New Conservatism as the
state-building exclusion of those who would disavow enlightenment.
Habennas imposes un.questi.oned notions of German identity like
"our national life" on every German, a contemporary version of the
burdened will:'" the past experienced as perpetual sadness. Present
Germans, of every generation it seems, have yet to "synthesize the
initially competing images of the good and th.e had parents into com-
plex images of the same person ~ . . The weak ego .acquires its strength
only through noriselective interaction with an ambivalent environ-
ment." 13 Or again~ "In adults the need to defuse the corresponding
cognitive dissonances is still alive." The projection of these needs, of-a
speculative faculty of psychic synthesis, necessitates a language which
can detect the satisfaction and frustration of needs. The reference- of
course is to the "'ideal speech situation," which would ensure the sur-
vival of what Habermas calls "the supply of motivation and meaning"'
to limit illicit power plays and "merge elemen'ts of public education,
social welfare, liberalized punishment, and therapy for mental ill-
ness.r 14 Thus the German dilemma of a "corrupted effective history''
requires the merging of critical therapy and its graftin_g to redemptive
reffection so as ''to reclaim encumbered traditions."•• The "'Final Solu-
tion" can now release a doubly critical usefulness for Germans and fur
everyone, It serves as the litm.us test of one's cu.treat "reflexive , scru-
tinizing attitude toward one's own identity-forming traditions" and it
thus de-problemati:zes contemporary relations, which cannot properly
be. taken up until the "Final Solution" is resolved by a historico-
therapeutic model.
To summarize: Historicism writes the meaning of the date and name

J1 I J!i ,11 lfllll\

U~hVit1$1,r C,F l'v\ll·HIGAN
 Between Image and Phrase
< 175 >

NFinal Solution," 1942- 1945. The result of the "Final Solution" is the
•curse" which does not end. TI1e ;'Final Solution" is at once the origin
of a contemporary burden of reconciliation-the clocked door'' be-
tween present and past-and the substance of a collective critical self-
examination mirrored i'n a universal uniqueness of Germany now: "No
one can take our place in the liability required of us." 18 Thus, the Ger-
mans receive the archaic Hegelian category of an u111Jcceptable id.en-
tity, where the cultural force of religion, philosophy, and sociology has
now gfven way to psychology.

Just as The New Conservati.ml asserts that there are no grounds fur
normalization of the "Final Solution," it emphasizes that there are no
convincing grounds for the formation of a postenlightenment social cri-
tique. As neoconservatism practices moral neutralization of the "Final
Solution," so too contemporary dissident critics are represented as re•
vealing an attitude of fundamentalism in not accepting the model of"a
society based on communication . , . limited to the formal aspects of
an undamaged subjectivity." 17
Habermas ties together the neoconservatives of historical normali-
zation and the postmodernist critique of the West. The repressive in-
tegration of the former (with its stress on normalization of tradition)
and the deconstructive pragmatism of the latter (its dystopian force)
ace linked by their rejection of modernity, by their having fallen into
"one-sided" perspectives. To Habermas, the neoconservative's reli-
ance on tradition and the postmodernist rejection of diagnostic think-
ing constantly press in on enlightenment. This Jµdgment repeats
Freud's gesture of calling psychoanalysis a discipline under attack. Ha-
bermas cannot lose in a politics based on psychological needs which no
•mere• critique of politics is allowed to affect
It is crucial to note that where the exception of the "Final Solution"
offered opportunities for cultural learning, contemporary capitalism ls
presented as virtually normal in terms of its determination of social
contradictions. Just as the memory of the "Final Solution" allows for no
break concerning "our more sinister traditions." 1• or negative conti-
nuity, there is no break from capitalism, which receives an affirmative
continuity: "reformed conditions of employment retain a position of
central importance." 19 Capitalism is acknowledged to be a source of
crisis, but in a telling phrase, Habermas says that the goal of capital-
ism-as of the welfare state- '.' is the establishment of forms of life ,that

11 ·1 rtl I J

U~)\'Jff,$111 (I• 1,HC.:·HuArJ

 Sande Cohen
-< 176 >
are structured in an egalitarian way and that at the same time open up
arenas for individual self-realization and spontaneity," a goal that saves
the possibility ofa finality in which "hope" is directive and willed, and
damns only the means of the "legal and administrative . . . practice of
normalization and surveillance."ill
The exceptionality of the "Final Solution" is anchored to the nonex-
ceptionality of capitalism. That capitalism should be given the capacity
to provide for "a higher level of re8ection," as IIabemias puts it in "The
New Obscurity," is disturbing. Why is capitalism-which makes
mincemeat of real argumentation by its homogenization of signi6ers,
not accomplished, for ~ample, by the media's excessive displacement
of analysis or the mai:ginali:zation of unfamiliar cultural and social
voices-rendered more critically?-• There are disjunctions between
capitalism and democracy that are not raised by Habermas. Why is the
economic mode so accepted in the first place? Why is criticism so often
an opposition by exclusion? Why is there so much repetition by the
same political players? What is not forgiven in the "historical" sphere
is barely criticized in terms of the sphere of living sociiu entangle-
ments. Habermas' interest in the cognitive control ofdissidence is om-
inous, since those who argue for any •nonniuiution·· of the .. Final So-
lution" are lumped with those who make up the new "antiproductivist
alliance." We are told that "the old and the young, women and the
unemployed, gays and the handicapped, believers and nonbelievers•
might reject a "productivist vision of progress that the legitimists [of
capital and the welfare state] share with the neoconservatives," 12 This
semiotic · machine" aims at cultural transcendence: the rationalization
of the irreversibility of the power of capitalism to clear away what Jim•
its it, The intellectuiu's role can only be that of smoothing the elfeots of
being reactive in the first place.
Finally, the pariulel between the "exceptionality" of the ''Final So-
lution" and the crisis of conteJl\POrary capitalism is that both have a
similar referent: learning, enlightenment, re8ection. Habermas' lan-
guage targets the category of the dissident-those who argue for the
normality of the "Final.Solution'' (neoconser:vatives) and those who ar-
gue for the impossibility of re8ection as adequate to contest capital (the
young conservatives, whom Habennas equates with postrnodemism).
The former do not aca:pt a "detached understanding [which] liberates
the power of reflective remembrance and thus extends the possibilities
for dealing autonomously with an ambivalent tradition,'' 13 whereas

.!!'1'111

I N1Vff>S11) ,· ~ Mtl'Hl(iAl•l
 Between Image 111"1 l'hr:au
< 177 >
those who reject liberation within cap;talism are.said to deny a "re8ec-
tion and steering" which means rejecting the new utopia ofcommuni-
cation-"the formal aspeets of an undamaged subjectivity," the "dem-
ocr;itic ge11eralization of interest positions and a universalist
justilication of norms." 14 The realized nihilism of capitalism is thus dis-
placed, just as speculative psychology presents every German for
whom the "Final Solution" was not an experience with a ••need'' to
reffect on it. Of course one wants to see a "sensitized" youth, but also
many dissident onesl
In sum, The New Conseroatism contributes to the debate on the
"Final Solution" by setting aside the repeated crises of modernity in-
sofar as they are not allowed to call enlightenment and critique into
question.'-' The image of the landing-ramp at Auschwitz carries an
enormous C\lltural-political agenda, but it does so through the lan-
guage of psychological historicism, which gives present-<iay progres-
sive audiences a stable cultural anchor.

Lyotaras Notion of Dispossession

The intellectual context for Lyotard'~ consider.ttioo of Dames and im-
ages attending to the "Final Solution" is writings where Western his-
toricism (Postmodern Condition) and philosophy (The Differ-end)
based upon a Hegel-Marx-Freud conjunction such as the acceptance
of speculative dialectics have been challenged by what G. Bennington
calls a Kantian move: language thought of and employed as "the origin"
of history and not a result of it .., Here it seems impossible fully to
reduce some modernist processes to the language games of critical
practice. Interpretation is challenged by Lyotard's version of pragma•
tism, which tries to listen to eventS", objects, and texts instead of inter-
preting them according to a preexisting script, Criticism and art-
making are linked by activating differences instead ofby synthesizing
consequences.
Viapos3esslon has a number of senses, but it commonly refers to
events which prevent consciousness from being the subject of tradi-
tions, disciplines, and interpretations. The disseizure through insight,
a person's refusal to agree with an oedipalizing evaluation, a painting's
ability to frustrate one's subjective expectations, the momentary ap-
pearance of the sublime. are ~amples of dispossession. An "it hap-
pens'' is momentarily unconnected to acts of thought, to what has "a).

J, 1111 ,11 1run\

U~hVEH$1,r !)F 1\11011(.AIJ
 Sande Cohen
< 178 >
ready been thought, written, painted in order to determine what
hasn't been." Dtspossession is antithetical to phenomenologies of
meaning, including the ascription of "formal commonalities that are
constitutive for reaching any understanding at all."n
Criticism is oftep the epitome of such possessive seizure, insofar as
it promises the form of answer for problematical phenomena. Unlike
sociological and historicizing criticism. ~dispossession'" opens onto
what "remains lo be determined, something that hasn't been deter-
mined before:·• One is not dealing with absence and nothingness in
which a relation is thought to lack meanings to be restored-as in
psychoanalysisllll-but with ~disarming all grasping intelligencen: a
~protection of the occurrence 'before' defending it, by illustration of
commentary" shifts cognition &om its fanatical dependency on repre-
sentations to experiences which may be without reason.:io Modernity
may itself be theorized as "dispossessive" insofar as more and more
segments ofit are "ruled"by aleatory factors.
~No consistent symbols'' is the way Lyotard pots it in considering
the systematic suspension of identification, including its negative va-
riety (for instance, Adamo's aesthetic theory with its notion of art as a
"'martyred witness~ to suffering).31 In arguments &om "Freud Accord-
ing to Cezanne," "dispossession" is aimed against the privileged repre-
sentation of tragedy, against the machinery for the elaboration of Oed-
ipus. Oedipallzed paintin~. for example, lodged in the space of a
"hallucinatory representation and d~ption" and subject to the truth
value of psychoanalytic statements, allow for an audience's desire to
achieve identification and the release of an "incitement premium.''
Such works are believed to raise "the barriers of repression," Dispos-
session, on the other hand, would construe painting, in this case, "to
be itself an object, to be no longer a message, threat, beseechment,
defense, exorcism, lesson or allusion in a symbolic relation, but rather
an absolute object, delivered of transferential relation, indifferent to
the order of relations, active only in the order of energies, in the si,
lence of the body . . . Both desire and the fascinated gaze- are
spumed." 311 Dispossession refe1s to practices wherein objects do not
symbolize: they do not connect desire and .history or desire and social-
ity, but instead allow for an exteriorization of force which sidesteps th.e
collective sociological ego."' Seurat's Grande Jatte as described by Tim
Clark is an instance where extre.mes of pleasure and pain suspend any
one interpretation to be everyone's narrative. When dispossession is

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lJ~hVEflSi'i) G>F 1½101iGAM
 Between Image and Phrase
< 179 >

active, according to Lyotard, it modernizes: any "Final Solution..

which presents itself as the way to achieve an artistic goal or social end
or verbal consensus is suspended.
In the matter of language, disposse55iOn is enacted as the "differ-
end," part of which is familiar in everyday life as the expression "per-
haps" which interrupts (and departs from) a conversation, and part of
which is revealed in epistemic uncertainty concerning what J. Tagg has
called "grounds of dispute" where consensus worsens our pragmatic
ability to think of interesting ideas. As the differend, dispossession will
be like the "unstable state and instant of language wherejn something
which must be able to•be put into phrases cannot yet be.""' Silence,
vague feelings, pausing, postponements, refusals to judge even the
most "obvious" of errors and faults, and constant delay in affixing
names situate ''phrasing" within a virtual bind of (I) the ~impossibility
0
of mclifference'' and (2) the absence of a universal genre of discourse
to regulate fevents]." 00 One is always making phrases which are incom-
plete; there is always surplus of content and form, constrained by ''the
social," but it is capitalism which is not bound by phrases. For Lyotard,
nothing could be more "dispossessive" than capitalism's reduction of
other modes of becoming, the binding of language to eco.nomy and not
to an expansion of things to say.
The concept of dispossession as diJferend implies that the "Final So-
lution" cannot be entirely cognized by phrases, a point that is exploited
by "revisionists" such as Faurisson, who deny its having taken place.
But the issue is less one of truth than one of th.e n.a ture of the wrong
and its silence. The most forceful problematic is whether the "Final
Solution~ can be ''phrased" in the register of a result of German or
Western history. Haberrnas· nonspeculative use of a speculative
model-"our sinister traditions"-encodes speculation through psy-
chology, which for Lyotard misses the point about the "Final Solution"
as a diJferend.:lll The coupling "speculation/result~ would anchor con-
sciousness in a .sooi;ll determination from which there would be no
more phrases: the criminal state, the terror of racism, satisfactions of
the psychological formation of modernity. In short, the notion of dis-
possession makes it more difficult for .my of us to stabilize the proper
names of the causality of the "Final Solution."
The Differend evades the overcoded Hegelian straitjacket of specu-
lative determinations. The incessant integration of negative universals
is set aside. Auschwitz "would be the proper name of a para-

'• I I ,11 I J

11~)1Vfi,$f1r I°" ltQ11GAH

 Sande Cohen
< 180 -,,
experience or even of a destruction of experience" rather than Haber-
mas' "pluperfect past that will not pass away.• The latter is based upon
a model of "continuities of German history," the "sinister traditions"
mentioned above."' For Lyotard, the "continuities" ofthe ''sinister" are
too remote from events, since the phrase structure of the death camps
annihilated the phrase we amidst the "solitude and silence" of the vic-
tims, The question is l)Ot whether a "sinister tradition" was "revived"
from the past (which was then never "past"), but how to express
"shame and anger over the explanations and interpretations-as so-
phisticated as they mlly be-by thinkers who cla,im t o have found
sense to this shit." 38 The conflict is between a historicization of the
"Final Solution" for the ·present and what can be,said now to 'resist such
historicization. What is called into question iS' the ability of llDY repre•
sentational system to erect what Karl .Bohrer has called a "falsely objec-
tified tradition" that blocks the articulation of a heterogenous past and
present.°"
Lyotard asks us to imagine that a cultural formula for 'i\uschwitz" as
thought by Nazi phrasing is like this: ..It is a norm decreed by y that it
is obligatory for :r to die," and that this death has no sociality left to it,
since it is not a question of there having been alternatives such as op-
tions, discussions, reasons, or even rationalizations; the formula mani-
fests an unmodalized "you must die,• which entails "your right to life is
not recognized" and because of this structure there is no after reason
to the event. The Nazis practiced a countersemiotic: their speaking,
phrasing, is not something we can restore in a form which answers·our
"why" questions, regiudless of survivors' 30d critics' "recountings of all
kinds.".., There having been no norm fulfilled or satisfied by the indi-
vidual deaths of the "Final Solution," their death destroyed even the
prover name of death: 1n thiS' sense, "Auschwitz is the forbiddance of
the beautiful death .. , The canonical fonnula of "Auschwitz' • . "
would be, if we focus on the SS as 1egislator': Thats/he die, I decree
it; or, if we focus on the deportee as the one 'obligated': That I die, s/he
decrees it. The authority of the SS comes-out of a we from which the
deportee is excepted once and for all: the race, which grants not only
the right to command, but also the right to live, that is, to place oneself
at the various instances of a phrase universe.""
No action by a Jew was even differentiating: they were caught by the
other's narration in a place within that narration which annulled exis-

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Ui)\Vff151,, C,F ~j11·Hll'A>l
 Between Image and Phrase
< 181 >
tence a priori, They were dead within the SS narrative; and the mur-
der committed by Nazi stories "dispossesses" our attempts at analyzing
Nazi psyche and cultm-e. ••
What happened to mal<e Auschwitz occur was thus dispossessed in
its very doing. Nazism shares this dangerous feature with other, even
progressive events of modernity-a genenill~d "dismantling of the
bastion of signi6cation,".,. There is no room here for a Habennasian
"history of the German People"; the event in question was itse1£acon-
junction between a n\Cist phrase regimen and an institutioJtalization of
the type SS. There are no continuous links to the present. Instead of
retainfng general terms like history, Lyotard's countermodel "dispos-
sesses'' positive and negative histories based on either the psychQlogi-
zation of"becoming-normal again" (Nolte and others) or on Habermas'
"exceptionalism," which relies on the psychology of debt and curse.
So the encoding of the "Final Solution" was itself a m.asterwotk of
death to language, Jews and others were not ordered to die according
to the "logic'·' of SS ·'discourse~ or because of something "in" German
history. They did not have the '"tight to life" in the first place, since the
racialist narrative was precisely that which decreed, "Death is legiti-
mate because one's life is illegitimate." In such thinking, serial num-
bers ~naturally'' replaced individual names, a "desire" which takes the
SS into a metaphysics: "This death must therefore be killed, and that
1s what is worse than death. For. if death can be exterminated, it is
because there is nothing to kill. Not even the name Jew.~... There is no
pseudolegitimation from the SS by which we can 11Ceess their "uncon-
scious," for there is no point at which Nazi and Jew intersect in a man-
ner that would establish figures of identity or even disidentity. As Ly-
otatd puts it: "Dispersion is at its height. My law kills them who have
no relevance to it. My death is due to their law, to which I owe noth-
ing. Delegitimation is complete."<$ Is the absolute reactivity of the vic-
tims at Auschwitz not modem?
Frighteningly dispersive, negative, and analytic-just as racist
thinking is intellectually anti-intellectual- the machine set in motion
by the Nazis engenders no room for critical thinkftig to come along and
make sense, The insistence upon memory and the cultural obligation
to transmit knowledge to uyouth" are only reactive formations for our•
selves. It becomes precisely impossible to deri.v e a generalization of
the effect which Freud called Nachtriiglichkeit, where a past has not

• 1 ·1 ,11 I I

u,HVEH,S1lr c,i::1vl11·~.,.HL-:.AIJ
 Sande Cohen
< 182 >
"passed" but continues to work within a future-present toward the pre-
sentation of a decisive "thats it." Given the "disposse$sion" which ob-
tains between the phrase universe of the Nazi and the,objectless non-
subjectivity of the Jew, •the only connection between them would be
that of myth (including psychoanalytic myth, which establishes nega-
tive "mirror:ing" or "disidentification" or psychosis between Nazi and
victim). The Nazi as the "'failed child" and the victim as the utrapped
infant" could only refer to our fantasy of symbolizing and appropri'ating
some cultural use-value for oursel'ves, whose narcissism lies in con-
tinuing to pretend that there is sense.
What sense of history is applicable then? The landing-ramp at
Auschwitz gives an image of the fright experienced by victims. The
power and horror of the image is such that it is directed at those•in the
present who would "forget." But from the perspective of ''disposses-
sion," Nazism does not signify or represent events reducible to a fa<>
tual consensus for cultural politics. This precludes any "general history
of Germany and Nazism," as Nazi murder was a superstition revealing
no ··unive rsal" whatsoever (not even one concem.ing mass psychology),
and its victims experienced nothing by wliich we, now, can narrate
what their deaths were" sacrifices for." Stripped of the positivity which
tesuJts from such extreme negativity, bereft of Hegelianism, Namm
reaches us in a manner that makes it impossible to be sure which con-
cepts really apply to those events. In such a fee.lingscape, instead of
postulating curses and landing-ramps and liabilities, it would be better
to maintain skepticism.

So where is the concrete linkage between present-day Germans and

the Aryan savage narrative? How is it possible that present-day Ger-
mans born after the collapse of Nazism and who,are not racist have to
come to terms with the supposed ''past that will not go away." as Ha-
bennas insists? Is it to be supposed that all Germans now, in practicing
''historical remembrance," are potential racists? And if that is so, if the
potentiality of racism is the referred yet exorcised part which actually
infonns Habermas' model of cultural cntici.sm, then why doesn't The
New Conservatism address that topic instead of putative ..universals"'
of Gennan history and culture?
In sum, Lyotard's workup of '"dispossession" makes it possible to
think of the "Final Solution" as an event that "devours names" instead
of providing materials fur historici.zing.

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Ui)\VfH~loT o~ r,111·Hll1AII
 Between Image and l'hra&e
< 183 >

Conclusion: Myth and Criticism

The savage narratives of Nazism are criticized by Habermas through
the evocation of their criminality, It is doubtful whether Nazism is re-
ducible to criminality, a category of law. It is wishful thinking to postu-
late law and its breaking as a foundation for understanding. Similarly,
law and concepts of criminality will not help us address the question,
why did the Americans drop two atomic bombs? Notions of criminality
are not the issue and in fact signify an agenda ofnostalgia-the crimi-
nal, aftet all, has been judged and society has, in that judgment, been
vindicated."" Nazism made law irrelevant; the Nazis showed law to be
an ambiguous formation within modernity. This implies that enlight-
enment after the fact can be inappropriate to what happened, as in the
delusion that names enunciated "after the fact" have value. They may
not. Habermas' landing, ramp at Auschwitz would culturally empower
an Everyone to possess the "Final Solution'' in a manner which renders
it no longer argumentative, since the image and name of the landing-
ramp operate a priori as object and limit on other images and, in fact,
govern the power to image.
What does the phrase German history mean? Or Gennan people?
Or German nation? It is highly implausible that these terms stand for
actualities other than formal <>"nes. Modem capitalism is fat too active
in the register of splitting apart and recombining such "wholes." The
reiteration of German smacks of a deictic mytheme, an overcoded cul•
tural wish-projection. Habermas would set aside the fulse "normaliza-
tion~ of the "Final Solution," but at the same this negation of the fulse
supposes the "true" belongs to a psychological "recognition"-which
supposes consensus" in the here and now by every "German." The
landing-ramp at Auschwitz would be an encapsulating image, But
there is no sense to the '"Final Solution" which "reflection" can take
hold of, apart from these overcharged psychologemes; if anything
needs to be explained, it is not the epideictics or display of the Aryan
"beautiful death" in which the Nazis projected making their name
something immortal (one dies in ordel' to have one's name live), but
the contemporary language game(s) of psychological histori~ism.
Put another way, in the word conflicts over the ~Final Solution,"
Habermas practices a dangerous game: he does not see that modem
capitalism may be "dispossessive" of the very "reason" he wants to esc
tablish. On the one hand, a le.rm such as Gennan or reflection or life-

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11~hVEH$111 CIF i\\11.Hl(iAl•l
 Sande Cohen
< 184 >

oonten is fntended to convey certain sooially and linguistically nega-

tive continuities when connected to the "exceptional" aspects- of the
"Final Solution" ("our sinister traditions"). These overcharged terms-
are also connected to an affirmative predicate-mourning, remem-
brance, and "detached philosophical thinldng"- an amalgam intended
to signify an enlightened perspective. There is thus a negative and
positive of"continuity." But this enlightenment turns out to be an affir-
mation of myth, where the \Vest is defined in empty terms and where
every cultural or political mo\>e which is not enlightened is negated.
The affirmative myth-judgment concerning the West as a model ofpos-
itivity obscures the counterjudgment that capitaHsm is not aligned,
safely, with "fundament;ll liberaliz.ation."
Because Rabermas does not consider capitalism to share the
semantic-real space of irrationality, he rejects the so-called young con~
servatives (postmodernists),as antirational and antimodern, and hence
approximate Nazis. It seems to me that if Habennas were to consider
capitalism within the semantic orb of criminal'ity he would wish to dis-
mantle the construction of the "Final Solution" as an event of both
"exceptionality" and "learning"-because to acknowledge the "civi-
lized nihilism" or the "acceptable criminality" of capitalism would
mean a nonmediated encounter with facts of the present.
As opposed to Habennas endeavors to salvage modernity-no mat-
ter how evil and oriminal-Lyotard's treatment of Nazi phrasing sug-
gests that the "Final Solution" is not intrinsically attached to any 'rus-
torical" mode of comprehensJoo. It is our Western narcissism which
conflates modernity and present, present -and "history." Dispossession
and the concept of the differend remind us tbat modernity is not itself
a necessarily "historical" phenomenon. An analysis of the ambiva-
lences and dangers built into modernity (for example, the Nnormal"
asociality of capitalism) might show that the '' Final Solution" pushed
its own dispossession beyond limit, beyond "speculative dialectics," by
its connection to a mythic narrative which, paradoxically, resulted in
~Silences, instead of a Resultat." The real fnght concerning modernity
is that it still expands in the political and social-economic spheres while
in the cultural and critical spheres it is trapped by premodern belief
formations.

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lJih\'Et1S1,1 OF i'v\11"HIL·A1 I
 < 12 >

Science, Modernity, and the "Final Solution"

MARIO BIAGIOLI

A number of publications in German and English have begun to fill a

conspicuous gap in the historiography of German medicine and life
sciences in the Nazi period, and recent debates on the use of scientific
data from Nazi ·experiments on camp prisoners have spread the discus-
sion among nonspecialists.'
Some narratives on Nazi medicine and life sciences offer well-
documented analyses not only of Nazi medical crimes-events that
began to emerge at the Nuremberg and Frankfurt trials~but also of
the role played by doctors as a professional body in the scientific justi-
6cation, development, and implementation of Nazi racial polioies from
the beginning of the Nazi regime until the so-called Final Solution.
However, most of these works tend (in various ways and to different
extents) to present Nazi scientific practices as a major anomaly within
the history ofscience.
Although the modalities of this bracketing vary in relation to the
historian's professional, national, ethnic, and political background,
they seem to share a common denominator in that they generally re-
flect an essentially positive view of science, one which stands in the
0
way of recognizing what some Nazi doctors did as $cience.• Such a
representation of science seems to reftect not only-appreciation of the
cognitive effectiveness of scientific method but also a belief in the sym-
biosis !>¢tween science and the values of modernity as e)(Jlressed in the
culture of Western democracy.
The belief in this symbiosis goes back to the Enlightenment and
reemerged very conspicuously during World War U when both science
and democracy were perceived by non -German analysts as being seri-
ously threatened. Writing in 1942, the American sociologist of science
Robert Merton presented a normative view of the social system of sci-
ence as a mirror image of a Western capitalistic democracy organized
around the. principle of a competitive &ee market.• In those years, the
< 185 >

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U~)\'Jf,0$111 !)F l\\ll"'-11(:.Al•l
 Mario Biagioli
< 186 >

nexus between ..good" society and "good" science was stres.~ed also by
two British Marxist scientists and historians of science, John Bern.ii in
1939 and Joseph Needham in 1941. • Although Bernal and Needham
probably would have disagreed with Merton on what a "good" society
should look like, they all shared the belief that the same rationality that
produced "good" science was that which produced politically just so-
cial structures.• With the partial exceptian of Bernal, these authors
also suggested that bad science (and the Nazi example must have been
in their minds) was the result of exteml\l influences rather than of dy-
namics inherent in science itself.~
As sbown by most interpretations of Nazi medicine written in the
1980s and by some hi.stories of Nazi physicists, authors who believe in
the symbiosis between the values of modernity and those of science
are caught in a bind . Admitting that Nazi science (including experi-
mentation on humans) was a fonn of science rather than its aberration
would automatically proliferate into a questioning of their beliefs not
only in science but also in modernity and its values.•
Because it is both about the Holocaust and about science. the his-
tory of the role of German life sciences in the Final Solution shares in
the thorny historiographical problems both of the Holocaust and of
science. As shown by the recent "historians' debate," Holocaust schol-
ars are struggling with the interpretive problems posed by an event
like the Final Solution, which took place within the framework of mo-
dernity and yet seemed to subvert all the values commonly associated
with that culture. On the othe~ hand, recent studies of science have
developed increasingly complex views of scientific change that are ex-
posing the, tensions in what was previously perceived as the unproble-
matic and mutually reinforcing link between the culture and historical
development of science and modernity. What follows is an attempt to
locate some of the problems of writing the history of Nazi science in
the concentr!ltion camps within the ptoblematic space framed by the
intersection of the post-Kuhnian deb.ate in science studies and the so-
called historians' debate.

Bracketing Nazi Science

Perhaps the most common bracketing device displayed by recent his-
tories-of Nazi medicine is the shift from talking about,5cience to talking
about scientists. As one can guess from the title, Michael Kater's very
recent Doctors under Hitler (like Beyerchen's older Scientists under

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I ~hVEt1$1Tr ()F r,111·'-hGAl•I
 Science. Motkrnity, and tM Final Solution
< 187 >
Hitler or Llft:on·s Nazi Doctors) is an exemplar of this type of historiog-
raphy. Kater does not claim to be a professional historian of science or
medicfne and; in fact, his other well-known book is a prosopographical
analysis of Nazi party leadership. Conseguently, Doctors unper Hitler
does not focus primarily on medical theories and practices of German
medicine during National Socialism but rather produces a very de-
tailed, biography-oriented, sociopolitical history of the medical profes-
sion under Nazi rule. Because of his ethical stance and his relative lack
of tnterest in the technical dimensions of the history of medicine, Ka-
ter believes that any assessment of the scientilic content of Nazi medi-
cine would be completely pointless: Mlt is my contention that these
ethical violations by themselves were sufficient to discount any nomi-
nal progress that might have been accomplished by the profession . • .
for ethics supersedes all considerations." 7
Both in the book and in articles, Kater states his view that Nazi med-
icine was not real medicine 'hut an incomprehensible perversion of it.•
In his most recent work, he suggests that Nazi medicine deviated from
proper medical practice because of its uncritical adoption of the
method of the physical sciences. According to Kater, this rnethodolog-
ical borrowing led to an extreme objectification of the patient and to
the alienation of the doctors from their commitment to healing. Even-
tually, these attitudes reacted in lethal ways with what he considers to
have been irrational notions about race that had been injected into the
medical students' curricula.•
Although Kater is well aware that a demonization of a few Nazi doc-
tors would actually prevent a fuller historical understanding of the
broader role of German physicians and medicine in the Final Solution,
his suggestions about how to achieve such an understanding are .still
based on a perception that what some Nazi doctors did was incommen-
surable with normal medical practice.•• By not questioning the very
complex relationship between healing practices and medica:I research,
or the processes through which notions that we now consider irrational
were once regarded as scientifically legitimate and to be incorporated
in medical curricula, Kater ends up in the paradoxical position of criti-
cizing the demon\:zation of Nazi doctors while, in practice, ruling out
the analyses that may have avoided it.

Benno Mil.ller-ffj)I is an $CCOmplisb~ Germ!U) geneticist trained after

World War II. Troubled by the silence his profession has systematically
maintained on physicians' involvement in the Nazi regime and in the

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U~hVit1$1,r (IF MIQil(iAN

 Mario Biagioli
< 188 >
Final Solution, Muller-Hill bas produced a short but powerful book
which p.resents a range of previously unpublished archival material
and concludes with a long series of probing interviews with a few for-
mer Nazi doctors or people close to them.
Muller-Hill's clear though somewhat unreftexive views on the his-
tory of the natural sciences are stated at the very beginning of the
book: "The history of the natural sciences has two themes, one, the
fonnation of their foundations-, ·and the other, Ill) account of their ef-
fects on society. Everyone who follows the calling of a natural scientist
experiences pleasure, when his work is done, in studying the unfold-
ing of knowledge in his science; it is a story both beautiful and true." 11
Committed, as Miiller-Hill is, to preserving the belief in the truth-
finding character of the discipline he bas successfully practiced for
years, he claims that science may influence society but excludes the
possibility that society may have any infiuenoe on science. Because of
this purity-preserving, one-way inOuence between science and society
he cannot, .I think, blame the horrors of Nazi science on the social
circumstances that may have corrupted it. Moreover, his belief in the
truth-producing character of genetics seems to prevent him from con•
sidering that genetics may have been directly qivolved in the devel-
opment of Nazi racial hygjene,
Consequently, he tries to argue that the culprit behind Nazi racial
hygiene is not the "natural" science of genetics but the Msoft" sciences
of anthropology (or human geneti.cs), psychiatry, and psychology
which., because of their scientific "immaturity," misused real genetics
in lethal ways: 'ln these sciences it is easy to think that only what is
new is true. But when I think today of the story of how genetics was
once put to use in anthropology and psychiatry, I see a wasteland of
desolation and destruction ... The recent history of these genetically
oriented human sciences in action is full ofchaos and crime as a night-
mare. 12'
1'

This strategy of disciplinary blame is played out throughout the

book: the "soft'' scien.ces are blamed for tbe disaster while the "natural"
science of genetics is barely mentioned and never in any accusato.ry
fashion . 13 Very similar views emerge also in one of his later articles: "It
seems to me most revealing that so many German professors of psy~
chiatry. anthropology or human genetics used their knowledge to have
their clients mutilated or killed by others in the name of science. This
aod the fact that they did not express remorse or guilt should have

J,, JU ,11 1run)

U~h\'EttSfi'I OF Ml ~>1n}Atl
 Science, Modernity, and the Final Solution
< 189 >

automatically made these sciences internationally suspect after the

'W!IJ'. Sciences or arts whose members 6nd it .that easy to maim and to
kill s hould be analysed very, very carefully for their content." "
Muller-Hill seems to think that the reason these ~soft" sciences con-
tributed to the Final Solution was because their practitioners were
anxiously trying to get the reoognition and power they could not gain
through the low scientific status of their discipline: "What kind of po-
sitl9n did anthropologists and. psychiatrists hold in National Socialist
society? They had no power. Yet as scientists, they he lped by justifying
robbery and murder. 'They g;ive a scientific gloss and tidiness to the
Nazi programme." 1• In other words, they sold their scientific soul to
the Nazis to fulfill their fru.strated scientific ambitions by othe r
means. 10 As Muller-Hill puts it, "Finally they were respected as the
experts they were to straighten out the problems of workers, soldiers,
and murderers alike," 17
H owever, Miiller-Hill's intricate attempt to save ''good" science
through the selective scapegoating of "bad" scientific disciplines runs
agrou.nd soon, In fact, the modem taxonomy ofscientific disciplines in
which he roots his strategy does not match the disciplinary scenario of
the Nazi period. l 8 Moreover, the involvement of geneticists in racial
hygiene was institutional !15 well as scientific. Most of the members of
the Beirat for Rassenhygiene-the first official German institution for
eugenics and racial hygiene-established by the Prussian Ministry of
Public Welfure as early as May 1920 were geneticists. And geneticists
were those who lobbied for an increasingly stronger relatienship be-
tween eugenics and social policies in the interwar period-contribut-
ing to setting the stage for the events that led to the Final Solution. ••

The bracketing of Nazi medicine one finds in Robert Jay Lillon's Naz.I
DQCton is less intricate than Muller-Hill's, but its methodological and
ethical consequences are more complex,., Lifton sees Nazi doctors as
having subverted medicine from a practice of healing (to which he
thinks doctors should be bound by the Hippocratic oath) tQ a science
of killing. Lifton's bracketing of Nazi medicine is global. Nazi medicine
was not just rorrupted: It was inverted. si
Dilferent from Kater and others who see Nazi medicine as plagued
by perversions beyond comprehension, Lifton's perception ofit as the
inversion of normal medicine allows him to keep ari ethical distance
between himself (a Jew and a healer) and the Nazi medical killers. At

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U~J\Vff<$111 DF MIQil(;Al·J
 Mario BiagioH
< 190 >

the same time, this view gives him a framework within which to study
the phenomenon of Nazi medicine. In .fact, a phenomenon that is the
opposite of the norm can be better grasped than a random aberration.
At the same time. seeing Nazi medicine as the opposite of what be
takes medicine (and bis own practice as a doctor) to be allows him to
have son1e sort of "inverted empathy'' that proves important to his
study.
It is not that Lifton becomes empathetic with the Nazi doctors he
studies,.. Rather, his "method of inversion" allows him not to feel "pol•
luted" by trying to figure out the thoughts and motives of a Mengele.
In fact, by representing them as being precisely the opposite of his
own, he rules out any possibility fur complicity. Yet, by "inverting" his
own thoughts, he also seems to gain some access to Mengele•s mental-
ity. Basically, Lifton perceives Auschwitz as a hospital upside down.
Let me give ao ex.unple of the workings of this method. ,At one point
Lifton writes that "Mengele was relentless in tracking down Gypsies,
especially children, who tried to escape their fate. Though the a~sump-
tion [for Mengele's research on Gypsies] was factually wrong, its
psychic truth lay in Mengele's inexorable commitment to the Nazi
principle of murdel"•selection."""
Lifton begins by stating that Mengele's research was unscientific-
and this would be where Kater and others who see Nazi medicine as
an incomprehensible -aberration would probably end their analyses.
However, he then takes a next step and talks about the "psychic truth"
of Mengele 's behavior, one that he does not relate to principles of eth-
ically and scientificaUy acceptable medicine but rather to a "negative
axiom;' that is, to the Nazi inversion of the Hippocratic oath into a
commitment to killing,
Not every sentence of the book reflects this "method of inversion."
Nevertheless, this overarching belief allows Lifton to go further than
most other historians of Nazi medicine. l-lis reftections on the psycho-
logical dimensions of the process of socializ.ation of the doctors in the
"Auschwitz system~ reflects a metliodological stance that gives visibil-
ity to the instihltionlll conditions that. triggered the inversioQ from
healers to killers ...
Although Lifton tends to be either critical or dismissive about the
cognitive relevance of the science produced by the Nazi doctors in the
camps, he does report tlie favorable comments on the soundness of
Mengele's scientific method he bas received during intendews with

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U~hVEH$1i) OF MICHIGArJ
 Scierice, Modernity, !Ind the Final Spl~twn
< 191 >
survivors like Doctor Teresa W. 15 For comparison, similar views on
Mengele expressed by his Jewish captive assistant Miklos Nyiszli
moved Bruno Bettelheim to warn the reader of their problematicity;
ln hi.s preface to Nyiszli's autobiography he writes, "How Pr. Nyiszli
fooled himselfcan be seen, for example, in his repeatedly referring to
his work as a doctor, though he worked as the asststant of a vicious
criminal. He speaks of the Institute for Race, Biological and Anthro-
pological Investigation as 'one of the most qualified medical centers of
the Third Reich' though it was devoted to proving falsehoods.""'
I believe that Litton's judgment on the scientific work conducted at
the institute of von Verschuer (Mengele's mentor and the recipient of
the human material resulting from his experiments at Auschwitz)
would not be different from Bettelheim's. However, Lifton-like any
psychiatrist who does not need to state continuously his/her distance
from the patient's delusions or dreams-would not feel compelled to
back away so explicitly from Nyiszli's beliefs. Litton's ~method of inver-
sion" grants him some ethical leeway for interpretation, 27
For all the interesting aspects of Lifton 's bracketing of Nazi science,
his approach rests, I think, on assumptions that are historically prob-
lematic. My perplenties are not. so much about bis almost exclusive
emphasis on the institutional-psychological processes through which
normal physicians were inverted into killers within and by the Ausch-
witz system (an approach that pays minim11l attentiop to the role that
received theories of r.icial hygiene may have played in this inversion).
What I find more problematic is the introduction of a historically un-
warranted inversion between healers and lcillers as a way of demarcat-
ing normal medicine from the practices of the Nazi doctors.
A number of social histories of ancient medicine have indicated that
the Hippocratic oath was not really a universal norm but an idealized,
self-legitimizing representation of an emerging profession."" Although
Lifton's endorsement of it as 1lll inviolable norm speaks to his credit as
a physician, the history of medicine indicates that the distinction be-
tween healers and killers is far &om being so clear-cut. I am not talking
about individual doctors that have killed patients because of incompe-
tence, but about the problematic yet inti.m ate relationship between
healing and the dangers inherent to research20 or to the social role of
medical institutions-a relationship that, as shown by recent histo-
riography of medicine, incorporates both healir)g and social control.
Consequently, Lifton's idealization of"normal" doctors and h.is rep-

JIIJ!I ,11 II !))

1l()\'Jffl511T C1F 1111!'Hl(:Al•l

 Mario Biagioli
< 192 >
resentation of Nazi doctors as their negative image works a bit as an
exorcism of the problematic aspects of"normal" medicine as displayed
by its history. At the Nuremberg trial, the defense lawyers for the Nazi
doctors were able to produce a list of fifty-three non-Nazi publications
reporting human experiments on convicts, immigrants, invalids, chil-
dren, soldiers, nurses, and sanitation employees.30 Seventy percent of
these articles did not mention the subjects' consent, and some of them
referred to experiments conducted in the United States at the begin-
ning of the century.3 '
Although the discourse of the Nuremberg defendants is very prob-
lematic in that it tries to present as unproblematic scientific practices
that do not need to be aooepted as such, it nevertheless e,q,oses the
myth of origins at the base ofl..ifton's views of medicine-a myth that
prevents "normal'' medical science from being seen a~ implicated in
the Final Solution.

Experimentation on humans in the concentration camps and the Nazi

doctors ro'le in the Final Solution are not the specific focus of Robert
Proctor's Rodal HygitJne, which instead is concerned with tracing the
pre-Nazi development of theories of racial hygiene and the successive
symbiosis between Nazi political culture and medicine.
A d.istinctive feature of Ptoctor's work (and one that I fully endorse)
is that it represents the disastrous results of Nazi racial hygiene as his-
torically exceptional but does not analyze the processes that led to
those results as if they were unique, (n his work, Nazi medicine is not
bracketed off from the history of science but is analyzed as an example
of how-in a certain sociohistorical context-the interaction between
science and power led (and therefore could still lea.d) to unprece-
dented crimes.
Although there are important overlaps between his book and both
Muller-Hill's and Xater's in terms of informati_on, the picture l)re-
sented here is ,n ot that of the "nazification" of German medicine, ge-
netics, psychiatry, and anthropology but that of a full interaction and
1J1Utual reinforcement between Nazi politics and German life sciences.
Proctor's narrative is neither about politics invading or perverting sci-
ence (as is the case with Kater and Beyerchen) nor-about a minority of
power-hungry and genetics-ignorant physicians, anthropologists, and
psychiatrists who fed the Nazis with racial myths in exchange for polit-
,cat recognition and power (as Millier-Hill has it)."" Instead, Proctor

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 Science, Modernity, and the Final Solution
< 193 >

suggests that the doctors were not nazi.6ed more than the Nazis were
medicalized, and that this symbiosis was co-orchestrated by the top
professionals in the medical sciences.:i.,
By tracing the development and increasing popularity of theories of
racial hygiene among German life scientists since the end of the nine-
teenth century, Proctor indicates that science set the stage for the Fi-
nal Solution well befo~ the arrival of National Socialism.34 When the
Nazis took over, the preexisting scientific discourse allowed the doc-
tors to become the priests of the cult of the German bl'ood as well as its
medical keepers and the extenninators of its potential polluters. The
symbiosis between Nazi politics and medicine seems to be rooted in
the fact that they shared the same race.-based "ontology." Race was the
"natural" subject matter of medical science as well as the "natur!ll"
foundation for the German nation.:i.,
However, Proctor does not present the collapse of the spheres of
politics and science in Nazi Germany as implying that science and pol-
itics are always the same thing. His analysis suggests tha~ the lethal
symbiosis between science and politics that happened once in Ger-
many ll1lder specific cultural and historical circumstances may or may
not happen again depending on the structures of democratic manage-
ment of science that are developed. In short, there are no safeguards
in the scientific method or in scientific ethics to prevent such interplay
from happening again.
Proctor does not present specific methodological parameters for
sorting good from bad ~ence. However, his.analysis suggests that the
least problematic option would be to make sure that each social con-
stituency is democratically represented among scientific pr.ictition-
ers. 38 Ifone cannot define generally valid methodological rules to keep
racist ideas out of science, at least one should make sure that people
from social groups that may be affected by such views can be in posi-
tions to argue against them in the scientific arena."'
With, the April 1933. Law for the Restoration of Civjl Service, which
excluded Jewish physicians from civil service in universities and health
insurance companies, the Nazis (with the support of German doctors
much eager to take over the jobs of the many Jewish practitioners)
excluded from German medicine and science those who could have
exposed its racist theories with scienti6c arguments. In a sense, Jews
and other minorities became disempowered victims by being excluded
from the scientific criticism of theories about them.

J, 1 JU ,,1 1run)
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 Mari.o 8iagioli
< 194 >
To Pro<:to~, I think, camp science was bad science not because it
represented an inverted image of normal science and healing medi-
cine, hut because it was a crime against humanity. As a result, Proctor
does not focus-as Lifton does-on the Auschwitz microcosm to study
the specific institutional and psychological processes that allowed for
the inversion of physicians from healers to killers. To him, the key to
u_nderstanding the role of the. IJfe sciences in the Final Solution (and to
prevent it from happening again) is not so much in tl1e reconstruction
of what happened in the minds of the Nazi doctors operating in the
camps or in the psychiatric hospitals, hut in the fine mechanisms
through which an accepted and respected scientific discourse allowed
for the representation of certain ethnic and social groups as inferior
and through which it legitimtted (and was legitimized by) the culture
of national socialism.

The Problems of "Normality" and "Exceptionality"

This brief survey seems to indicate the presence of certain homologies
between the positions tJ1at have emerged from the debate over the
history of Nazi science and those that have characterize.cl the histori-
ans' debate. More specifically, the works of Kater, Muller-Hill, and
Lifton could he seen as representing Nazi science as something excep-
tional or, at least, nonnormal. Proctor's approach, instead, may be per-
ceived as arguing for the ''normality" of the processes by which the
discourse of racial hygiene became involved in the Final Solution. Be-
cause the debate ovet ~normality" and~e~ceptionality" is central to the
curTent discussions on the historical interpretation of the Final Solu-
tion, let me discuss and compare the meaning of these categories in
recent science studies and in the historians' debate. .
Since Thomas Kuhn's work, the field of history and philosophy of
science has seen a steady increase in works that question representa-
tion.s of science as either a perfectly transparent and normal process
structured ·by unproblematic rules or as a heroic quest for knowledge
sometimes achieved through exceptional.leaps of scientific genius. For
instance, representations of science as a progressive, cumul;ltive, and
continuous enterprise and of scientific discoveries as "facts" routinely
arrived at by scientists have been shown to be based on a fetishization
of"facts~ which renders invisible the complex processes through which
facts are perceived and certified. Similarly, the notion of scientific ge-

'n ·1 .-.I I
11N1Vft1$fi) <'" ,111·HluA1l
 Science, Modernity, and tM Final Solution
< 195 '>
nius is no longer viewed as an adequate interpretive category but as an
opaque concept invoked in place of a careful empirical study of the
none,iceptional processes that make scientific change possible,
Together with the questioning of both the reifled normality of scien-
tific progress and mythical exoeptionality of scientific genius, recent
analyses have also begun tc:> perceive power as no longer external to
science. Although there is considerable disagreement on the extent to
which power is involved in the process of scientific production, histor-
ians, sociologists, and philosophers of science are paying increasing
attention to the me<:hanisms through which science and power inter-
act, modify, and legitimize each other.
The picture of science produced by post-Kuhnian science studies is
that not of a m.ethodologically or oonceptu.ally unifled enterprise but of
one that develops through a variety ofoontext-specifio negotiations. In
a sense, this approach does not find exceptionality in science because
no rigid norms are assumed about what science should concern or
about how scientists should behave. This outlook does not mean that
this historiographical approach denies the rationality of the scientific
enterprise. It simply denies that the philosophers' reason should be
used as an a priori, ·•master" category by which to.assess (and normal·
ize) the behavior and choices of the sdentists under study. Paraphras-
ing Pierre Bourdieu, this approach may be called ~fieldwork philoso-
p hy.
.. ,.
Similarly, the distinction between common-sense knowledge and
science is not placed within the distinction between opinion and truth
but ooncem.s ways common $ense h3s beell transformed Inti;> scientific
thinking through speciflc educational, experimental, ;uid institutional
practices. In a sense, the post-Kuhnian project could be seen as the
continuation of what Jack Goody outlined in his Domesticlzation of the
Savage Mind-an analysis of the way literacy mediated the transition
from so-called primitive mentalities to more recent forms of thinking.""
As a result, the symbiosis between science and modernity is no longer
perceived as a "natural" fact, but as a historically produced and mu-
tually legitimizing representation of the development of both science
and modernity.
But the understanding .of the "nonnality" of science sought by re-
cent science studie.~ is not the "normality" that some participants in the
historians' debate have predicated of the Final Solution. In fact, a).
though science is being increasingly studied in its local expressions and

,,.,, , Go gle 1
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U1hVEf1S1,1 C,F M11·HIGAN
 Mario Biagioli
<- 196 >

~normar everyday practices, the result is not a norm~ng study.

Here, contextualization does not mean "reduction to the context," be-
cause context is not treated as an absolute frame of reference for the
evaluation of historical events" contained~ by it. In a sense_, the context
itself is reinterpreted while interpreting the event that took place in it,
Contrary to the type of historicism expounded by Nolte, the. aim of this
approach to the study of scientific change is to show how a specific
context and specific scientific-norms -and ethos were constructed ...
From this point of view, the conflation of "analogy" and "explana•
0
tion, or the use of context as a reservoir of analogies through which to
normalize a given event, is a category mistake. To say, as Nolte does,
that the horrors of the Final Solution are comparable to those ofother
ma.~sacres is a tendentious misuse of the explanatory features of anal,
ogy. 41 What is particularly problematic in Nolte•s position is not the use
of analogy per se, but the fact that he "naturalizes" his terms of com•
parison. His "explanation" rests on the tacit assumption that we should
take for granted the massacres of modem history and that we should
treat them as "facts" and employ them in explaining "similar" events,
Consequently, he does not use analogy as a tool for a dialogical inter•
pretation of an event and its context, hut as a device by w~ich two
explanaoda (Stalin's and Hitler's massacres) are magically transformed
into "normal facts."u In Nolte's hands, analogy becomes a cover-up
device rather than a tool for "working-through.''
However; the critique of normal123tion outlined here does notimply
an endorsement of unqualified uses of the category of"exceptionality"
in historical interpretations. Although I endorse Ha berm as· expose of
the neoconservative agenda of recent German historiogr;iphical revi-
sionism, I cannot agree with his representation of the exceptionality of
Auschwitz as a ne<.>essary component of the response to the recent re,,
emergence of conservative and nationalistic tendencies in Germany. 43
By stressing the exceptionality of the Final Solution, Habermas may
be in fact doing more than just responding to the neoconservative
agenda of Nolte and his cohorts. To Habermas, Auschwitz is· not only
an ~ceptional crime but also a devastatlng anomaly to his modernistic
philosophical agenda based on the discourse of Enlightenment fation•
ality. If we keep this perspective in mind, Habermas' emphatic daims
of the exceptionality of the Holocaust can be also perceived as a sort of
politico-philosophical exorcism,.. In a sense, the strong negative reac•
tion provoked by the extremity of Nolte's claims may have helped the

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UihVii'IS1,1 OF MIQiluA!J
 Science, Modernity, and the Final Solution
< 197 >
perception of llabermas' emphasis on th.e exceptionality of the Final
Solution as a politically correct move while hiding its exorcistic dimen-
sions.
Following very diffetent political agendas, Nolte and Habennas as-
sess the normality or exceptionality of the Holocaust within the frame-
work offered by the discourse of modernity. To Nolte, the Holocaust is
not e~ceptional because it shares in the genealogy of other massacres
of modem history, Habermas, instead, stresses the exceptionality of
Auschwitz bec.-ause he cannot 6t it into his view·of modernity rooted in
a mythical representation of the discourse of the Enlightenment. In
short, notions ofunonnaHty" and "exceptlonality" as introduced in the
historians· debate belong to a historiographical discourse that (in very
different ways and with very different goals) tries to legitimize views of
the present and of modernity. Some of these considerations can be
transferred to the analysis of recent representations of Nazi science.
The braclceting of Nazi science found In the works of Kater, Lifton,
and (to a lesser extent) Muller-Hill share in Haberrnas' attempt to pre•
vent Enlightenment rationality and modernity from being perceived
as involved in the Final Solution... But there are also views of Nazi
science that share in the .methodology (though not in the political
agenda) ofNolte's interpretation of the Final Solution, These positions
are not present 1n the literature on Nazi scienc.-e discussed above but
have emerged in debates on the ethics of using data coming from the
Nazi hypothennia experimeJJts,"'
According to these views, science is a value-free enterprise. As a
result, the data one obtains during a research planned and executed
according to the standard scientific method llfe "facts" whose episte-
mological status cannot be questioned on ethical grounds. The analogy
with Nolte is that this position presents the fact-producing features of
scienti6.c method as a given in the same way that Nolte talces moder-
nity and capitalism as facts (in the sense of something "natural") that,
consequently, cannot be guestionec;I. Th~ homology is nor accidental
but reftects a specific strategy that tries to defend the SYfllbiosis be-
tween science and modernity by making it unfalsifiable.
In this case, the relationship between science and modernity is not
the idylJic type produced by Lifton and Kater (who reify the Hippo-
cratic oath into some sort of social contract) or by Habermas' utopian
vision of a society operating around the principles ofNcommunicative
action.ff Science and its method are here presented as something that

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JI! JU ,1111 n\
I N1Vft1$11) C1F M1Q11(;AN
 Mario Biagioli
< 198 >
is neutral, value-free, and cognitively effective rather than as the ear-
ner of "good" values. In this case, the symbiosis between science and
the culture of modernity develops from the representation of science
as being value-free, rational, -and objective. This is done by presenting
science as "n.atu.ral" and therefore ..good" by virtue ofbeing natural. In
tum, the "naturalness" of science is supposed to warrant the inb.erent
"naturalness" of modernity-a culture represented as having devel-
oped from that type of"natural" reasoning. Consequently, science and
modernity are represented as sharing in the good value of being value-
free. The oxymoron is, I think, telling.
From the representation of science as a value•free enterprise, It fol-
lows that if science fall$ into the wrong hands, then it may produce
disasters. But such disastrous results are nevertheless scientilic and, as
such, do not refute the epistemological status of science. Similarly,
Nolte presents capitalism and modernity as a given, an axiom of civi-
lized life, something that is historically produced and yet "~tural."
Like science, the Jogic of capitalism and modernity have proven very
effective-in this case by bringing about major social, cultural,. and
economic changes, But, precisely because of their being "value-free;
the dynamics of modernity can lead to tragedy once they fall into the
hands of people like Hitler or Stalin. Consequently, Nolte does not
present these tr.lgedies as something leading to the questioning of the
status of modernity, but rather as very sad "facts." To him, the "epoch
of fascism" is an unfortunate and yet unsurprising consequence of the
industrial revolution.•7
Paradoxically, the crimes of Nazi science end up "proving" the ~ob-
jectivity" of science because they indicate that, unfortunately, scien-
tilic method-precisely because it is .. neutral~-works also in the
hands of criminals. Similarly, in Nolte's narrative, the Final Solution
and Stalin's massacres "proveh that the dynamics of modernity are
valu.e -hee (and therefore "natural"); they also prove that the tragedies
of modernity are "normal," in the sense both that they could (and did)
happen and that-by happening-they confirm that the dynamics of
modernity are value-free. In the case both of Nolte and of those who
argue for the cognitive "normality" of Nazi science, what could have
been read as a devastating critique of received representations of mo-
demjty and science (and of their symbiosis) is turned into a confirma-
tion of those represe!ltations-one that .is particularly powerful pre•
cisely because it acknowledges (while normalizing) the possibility of
"things taking a sad tum."

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UN\VfH$1,r l)F ~111·'·1iuA>l
 Science, Modernity, and the Final Solution
< 199 >

Th.rough this brief comparison of the use of the terms exceptwnaltty

and nonnality in the historians' debate and in narratives about Nazi
science, I have indicated the ways modernistic agendas have framed
their meaning. Despite apparently radical differences, the view of sci-
ence as inherently good (and thus of Nazi science as nonscience) and
that of science as neutral (and thus of Nazi science as the historical
proof of science's being value-free) belong to the same discourse and
share in the same attempt to defend (in very different ways) the sym-
biosis between science and modernity. The belief in this symbiosis en-
tails a very high risk because it can be maintained only by trivializing
or denying visibility to the processes through which science became
(and could again become) involved in events like the Final Solution.
Instead of arguing about the inherent neutrality or goodness of sci-
ence and about the no11Dality or exceptionality of Nazi science, I will
try to break away from this modernistic framework and, by using some
of the approaches developed by late twentieth-century science stud-
ies, look at science as a process. In fact. views of science as eithe r neu-
tral or good reflect a similar essential assumption: science is a ~thing"
that has the essential quality of being either good or neutral. Instead,
I want to propose a few examples that present science as an actlYit;y, ~ ·
son1ething that is produced and that has been (and still is) produced in
very different ways in different contexts.

Buchenwald's Division for Typhus and Virus Research

Ludwik Fleck's 193.5 G~nesis and Development of a Scientific Fact is
probably the most important historiogr11phical ancestor of the new sci-
ence studies methodologies sketched earlier in this chapter and one
that info11Ded Kuhn's influential Structure of Scientific Revolutions...
In 1946, Fleck published "Problems of the Science of Science," a
short pieoe that presented an -analysis of the scientific practices of the
-Division for Typhus and Virus Research" at Buchenwald-a labora-
tory with which Fleck was associated as a captive collaborator from
December 1943 to spring 1945. •• The medical crimes committed on
Buchenwald's Block 46 by Ding-Schuler-the director of the research
laboratory at Btock 50 with which Fleck was associated-were judged
at the Nuremberg Trials."' In his study ofDing-Schuler's research prtr
gram, Fleck does not fucus on the experiments on humans but rather
ou the intemal dynamics of the research laboratory,
Fleck's interest in these prooesses is connected to his theory about

, Go ,gle
 Mario Biagioli
< 200 >
the ways scientific consensus is developed in interacting groups of
scientific practitioners. To him, science is not a truth-producing enter-
prise, but one in which-because of a very specific sociologjcal and
institutional context-scientists "tune• their beliefs to those of their
eolleagues who share a similar "thought style." What distinguishes
such a system of scientific beliefs from other forms of coherent beliefs
is the quantity of"links" established among the objects studied by that
group-what Fleck calls a "'thought collective." Very schematically,
what distinguishes a scientific from a nonscientific world view is not its
coherence (for both can be equally coherent) but rather its "tight-
n.ess•- the density of the relations (what Fleck calls active and passive
links) it weaves around and between the objects ·i t tries to know,
Fleck presents 'the "Division for Typhus and Virus Research" as an
example of what happens when the sociological mechanisms respon-
sible for the production of what he calls "the- haonony of illusions~ op-
erate among people who do not share the same thought style, that is,
among people who have not been socialized in the same scientific spe-
cialization and have not, for instance, learned to see the things they
are supposed to see in preparations under the microscope. Although
several of the captive participants in the Buchenwald research group
had a medical background, they were not specialists in se.rology. In
fact, none of the Buclieowald researohers had ever seen the germ of
typhus (Rickettsia prowazecki) but relied on current scientific text•
books to learn how to see and manipulate it to produce vaccines,
The result was that, also ,u nder the pressure of the boss Ding-
Schuler, the members of the group managed to "see" (in good faith)
Rickettsias in preparations that contained other germs but not these.
The resear<;hers then developed a sophisticated system of beliefs
which managed to explain the various anomalies that kept emerging.•1
Following this much,welcome ..discovery," a scientific routine of vac-
cine production was coherently developed around these "findings,"
which were also quickly sent outside the camp to internationally
known German specialists who pnused the results. When preparations
with real Rickett$Ul$ finally arrived at the Division for Typhus and Vi-
rus Research from an outside microbiological laboratory and the re-
searchers saw the real thing, they did not explicitly acknowledge the
fictional character of the con.struction they had so cohel'ent1y devel-
oped, but found a way to integrate the new evidence with the old be-
liefs.isa

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 Science, Mockmlty, and the Final Solution
< 201 >

To Fleclc, this was not an instance of ''bad" science but an example

that showed the process through which a scientific theory (one that no
longer- llts the current "thought style" of the discipline) was con-
structed.~ In a sense, the science produced witrup Ding-Schuler's pro-
gram was an example of anachronistic science-one that may have
been produced in another time, when the "thought style" of typhus
research was different. In fact, although the scientific activity of the
Division for 'fyphus and Virus Research did not become a success
story, Fleck presents it as a picture of standard dynamics in a scientific
community, dynamics that, ifoperating in a "current" scientific setting,
would have produced "current" science.
What is important in Fleck's example rs that it does not assume any
fixed nonn by which the science of Ding-Schuler's group should be
assessed. Although the context in which it developed had much to do
with the anachronistic features of the science produced at the Division
of'fyphus Research, such an effect was not that of a corruption.

The Camps and the Discor.,rse of Racial Hygiene

To understand something about the mechanisms through which a
given scientific view of culture and race was legitimized and contrib-
uted to the development of concentration camps and, eventually, to
the Final Solution (which in tum provided the setting for camp sci-
ence) we may tum to tbe interaction between the discourse of racial
hygiene and the institution of the concentration camp-an institution
which objectified the prisoners and represented as scientific the norms
that regulated life and death in the camps.""
This hypothesis is somewhat informed by an essay by Adi Ophir in
which he approaches the Holocaust as an exceptional event but indi-
cates its origin in an exceptional combination of normal processes."
Although the Foucaultian agenda of his essay is never made e~licit,
its foci (the relationship between discourse and the technologies of
power, discipline, and surveillance) can easily be traced back to Fou-
cault's analyses of some of the institutions of modernity: the peniten-
tiary, the clinic, the asylum,
In fact, Ophir stresses. the necessity to "understand the technology
of power and the modes of'excluding· discourse which made the Holo-
caust possible: the discourse which made it possible to exclude a group
of people from within the borders of the human race, and the technol,

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U1hVEf1S1,1 !)F il'\11.HiGAl•l
 Mario Biagioli
< 20'l >
ogy which made it possible to massively deport them to their deaths."•
Although the aim of0prur·s piece is not that of providing a full-ftedged
plan for this analysis, it is safe to assume that racial hygiene was part of
ti)at discourse, that the conoentratioo camp was the !nstitutioo that
embodied it, and that that institution and discomse tended lo legiti-
mize each other.
For instance, the extenninations of entire blocb in the camps were
presented as medical actions rselections") aimed at preventing the
spread of diseases which Nazi theories of racial hygiene linked to the
genetic makeup ofnon-Aryans. This process confirmed both the stjen-
ti6c soundness of the decision to exterminate (or~disinfect") a block or
a group of people.and the theories of racial hygiene that linked diseases
to the genetic makeup of certain "inferior" races.
Similarly. while sending hundreds of thou.sands of Jews to the gas
chambers as a routine extermination of individuals whose lives had
been :represented as not worth living by received theories of racial hy-
giene, Mengele was using Auschwitz as a scientific institution which
otfered exceptional possibilities to study usually rare individuals.
These studies on twins and the handicapped were then used to confirm
a discourse of racial hygiene which lent sdenti6c legitimation to the
institution .o f the concentration camp and to the genocide to which that
institution had been dedicated.
These loops of mutual legitimation among discourse, institutions,
and power remind one of the structurally similar patterns Foucault
discusses in the case of the hospital and the penitentwy. These analo-
gies suggest that the context in which experiments on humans were
carried out was not simply an institution of social control and extermi-
nation that happened to employ many doctors. This suggestion is sup-
ported by the evidence uncovered by recent studies suggesting that
the symbiosis between the discourse of racial hygiene, the medicaliza-
tion of the Final Solution, the institution of the concentration camps,
and the development of e~perimentation on humans was too,tight and
elfeetive to be considered accidental. Although not all experimenta-
tions or medicalized selections in the camps were leading directly to a
confirmation of beliefs in racial hygiene, we find a. range of remarks
indicating that the camps became quickly perceived as laboratories of-
fering unique opportunities.
Programs of experimentation on prisoners were not usually pushed
from above b ut developed from below by doctors who had pen:eived

11 ·l rtl I I

UdWEH,S1lr oi:: 7\'hO·liGA: I

 Science. Modernity. and the·Final Solution
< 203 >

the exceptional experimental possibilities offered by the camps. For

instance, on 15 May 1941, Dr. Rascher wrote Himmler that during a
medical course on the effects of high-altitude ftying, •considerable Te-
gret was expressed that no experiments on human beings have so far
been possible for us because such experiments are very dangerous and
nobody is volunteering. J therefore put the serious question: is there
any possibility that two or three professional criminals can be made
available for these experiments?" 57 Rascher was -soon informed "that
prisoners will. of course, be gladly made available for the high-flight
Tesearches.....
Rascher was not alone in perceiving the camps as sources ofan un-
limited number of~experimental subjects." At the Nuremberg 'Jnals,
the defense argued th.at prisoners had been experimented upon not
only because of the dangerous nature of these tests, but mostly be-
cause prisoners provided a perfectly normalized experimental popula-
tion: they all shared the same accommodation, diet, hours of sleep,
and clothing.5 The exceptional features of the camp system in terms
of medical research were also noticed by some of the prisoner doctors.
For instance, Dr. Nyiszli remarked that both because Qf the concentra-
tion of people and because of the extremely -poor sanitary conditions,
diseases like gas gangrene were easily found and "most promising"
remedies bad been developed. 90 AJso, he remarked that the camp "of-
fered vast possibilities for research, Jlrst in the Geld of forensic medi-
cine, because of the high suicide rate, and also in the field of pathology,
because of the relatively high percentage of dwarfs, giants and other
abnormal types of human beings. The abundance-unequaled else-
where in the world-of corpses, and the fact that one could dispose of
them freely for purposes of research, opened even wider horizons. • 1
Llfton's work indicates the pervasive role of physicians in the camp
system: they were in charge of the selection of incoming prisoners at
the ramp, of the routine selections of "sicklyr or "infectiou~" inmates,
and of pouring Zyklon-B Teagent in the chambers. He also shoWs that
camp hospitals were death rows, that Red Cross vans were usually em-
ployed to take the prisoners to the "disinfection.. chambers, and that
the can,s ofZyklon-B gas (stored in the camp's pharmacy together with
the phenol used for lethal injections) were usually brought there in
Red Cross ambulances.
By loo(cjng at Lillon's evidence through eyes informed by Proctor's
analysis of the discourse of racial hygiene and by Ophir's proposal, one

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 Mario Bfagioll
< 204 >

may disagree with Luton's conclusion that • real" medicine was not im,
plicated in the Final Solution and that Auschwitz was only a travesty of
a medical institution. Instead, one may begin to see Au.schwitz not
only as a slave labor camp for l. G, Farben and an extermination cen-
ter, but also as a medical research institution which both embedded
and helped to confirm Nazi theories of racial hygiene. What is most
striking is that these dilferent functions went hand in hand,
It is in 'the context of these processes of mutual legitimation of the
institution of the concentration camp and the discourse of Nazi racial
hygiene that we may consider some of the representations of Men-
gele's work as a researcher. For instance. his captive assistant, Dr. Ny~
iszli, has exposed Mengele's cruelty but has not dismissed his scientific
methodology. Nyiszli's diary is full of oscillations between a view of
Mengele's research as pseud'o-sci.ence and a respect for Mengele's
careful scientific method, bordering on fanatical precision.81 In a few·
isolated cases, it seems that Nyiszli even became involved with Men-
gele's research enough to share in some of his excitement about discov-
eries in the peculiarities of twins."'
Similarly, when interviewed by Lifton, Dr. Teresa W. expressed her
.inability to put together the picture of the Mengele who ,sent thou-
sands of people to the gas chambers everyday (besides those he killed
for his scientific experiments) and that of the Mengele whose scientific
method she considered "more or less standard for the time, the norm
for anthropological work"; she "recognized it as the same approach she
had been trained in at her Polish university under a distinguished an-
thropologist with German pre-Nazi academic connections.'''" On a dif.
ferent occasion, Teresa W. confirmed her views on Mengele as some-
body having a genuine scientific background and "absolutely capable
of doing serious ;1nd appropriate scientific work" although she detected
in him the same fanaticism for accuracy that Nyiszli had also noticed.""
I am not presenting-the views of Nyiszli or Teresa W on the scien-
tific soundness of Mengele's method as final. The very few prisoners
who managed to survlve Mengele-some of whom had a medical
background-expressed much different views of his science.• How-
ever, the limited evidence we have &om Drs. Teresa W., Nyiszli, and
Abraham (Mengele's captive radiologist) makes it possible, I think, to
question the usual dismissal of Mengele's scientific credentials. Ob-
viously, I am not doing so to reevaluate Mel)gele, but to point at the
dangerous naivete of the historiography that tries to prevent science

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 Science, Modernity, and the Final Solutwn
< 20.5 >

from being implicated in the Final Solution by claiming that Nazi doc.
tor$ were ju$t ignorant, fraudulent, or methodologically incompetent
scientists.91
I find Teresa W.'s remarks unusually significant. They indicate that
certain anthropological methodologies that before World War U were
considered scientifically legitimate also outside of Gennany (including
one that she said stressed "the biological foundation of the social
environment"'•) could lead to .disaster. In particular, l think we should
try to understand what prevented her from seeing that the. anthropo-
logical theories and methods in which she was trained and continued
to believe even while in Auschwitz were actually much implicated in
the culture that had sent her to the camp.,.. l am not saying that Dr.
Teresa W was naive in not realizing the complicity of the science she
was practicing in the culture that managed to represent her as some-
body whose life was not worth living. Her _perceptions cannot be dis-
missed as short•sighted but may be read, instead, as the ~ natural"
result of social processes of legitimation of scientific discourse-pro-
cesses that keep playing a crucial role in today's culture.

Although this sketch is very far from being a full-Hedged approach to

the science produced in the camps, it suggests that the processes
(though not the ,r esults) of Nazi science were not exceptional. As I have
argued in much of this chapter, they were neither nonnal (in N·olte's
sense) nor exceptional (jn Habertnas'). They were certainly problem-
atic, as problematic as are the nonns (and the agenda behind them) by
which many of the received views of Nazi science are trying to argue
for the normality or exceptionality of Nazi science. Such a taxonomical
exercise will -not solve our problem, which is to understand how sci-
ence bec'.une (and.could again beoon1e) implicated in a tragedy such as
the Final Solution.

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 < 13 >

Holocaust and the End of History:

Postmodern Historiography in Cinema

ANTON KAES

In 1984, in his essay "Of an Apocalyptic Tone Recently Adopted in

Philosophy,~ Jacques Derrida parodied the proliferatin_g chseoursethat
takes it upon itself to proclaim the end, specifically the end ofhistory,
ff

the end of the class struggle , the end of philosophy, the death of God,
the end of religions, the end of Christianity and morals, the end of the
subject, the end of man, the end of the West, the end of Oedipus,
the end o( the earth, Apocalypse Now . . . also the end of literature,
the end of painting, art as a thing of the past, the end of the past, the
end of psychoanalysis, the end of the university, the end of phallo-
centrism and the phallogocentrism and I don't know what else." 1
In this amusing inventory of odds and ends, Derrida alludes to a
quiescent mood of post-histoire that has characterized Western Eul"O'
pean politics and culture since the 1970s. Following the exhaustion of
the·utopian impulses and revolutionary energies of the tumultuous six-
ties, a period of political inertia and Enduitstimmun.g set in until it
was ruptured by the events in Eastern Europe in the late eighties. At
the same time, in the United States, Francis Fukuyama, deputy dtrec-
tor of the state department's policy planning staff and former analyst at
the RAND Corporation, published a much-discussed article entitled
"The End of History?w in which he argued that with the. demise of
communism the ideological struggle between East and West had come
to an end and no further evolution of bu.man thought was to be ex-
pected.• Whatever the merits of such post-Hegelian and pseudo--
Hegelian speculations, the very emergence of a new American dis-
course that predicts (and deplores) a uni versa.I posthistorical boredom
for lack of ideol'ogical conflict should give us pause to think. In West
Germany, similar debates about post-histoire have a different origin
dating back to the apocalyptic finale of the Hitler regime. In 1945,
history had indeed ended for more than fifty million victims of World
< 206 >

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 ffolocaust and the End Qf History
< 2IJ7 >

War II, among them six million killed in an industrial genocide. That
something had oome to an end was recognized by calling 1945 Stunde
Null, as if hislory oould ever begin at point zero. Post-hiltoire in Ger-
many always means history after the apocalypse, in the face of Hitler
and Auschwitz.
Theodor W Adorno's often cited remark lru!t no poem can be writ-
ten in innocence after Auschwitz implies the same poat-histoire senti-
ment: kAfter Auschwitz," he writes in his Negative Dialectics, kthere is
no word .. . not even a theological one, that has any rights unles$ it
under:went a transfonnation." 3 Following Adorno, Jean-Fran,;ois Ly-
otard in his book The Differend also sees Auschwitz as an endpoint of
the historical process as well as of rational reason. Seen from today, he
argues, it is as if one sensed that some grel!t disaste.r had struck, a
disaster so massive and at the same time so distant and foreign that no
one can adequately articulate it: MSuppose that an earthquake destroys
not only lives, buildings, and objects but also the instruments used to
measure earthquakes directly and indirectly. The impossibility of
quantitatively measuring it does not prohibit, but rather inspires in the
minds o{ the survivors th.e idea of a very great seismic force. The
scholar claims to know nothing about it, but the common person has a
complex feeling, the olie aroused by the negative presentation of the
indeterminate."•
The silence, Lyotard continues, that the crime of Auschwitz im-
poses upon the historian is a sign for the common person, indicating
Mthat something ... cannot be phrased rn the accepted idioms." 5 Sim-
ilarly, in his book- The Writing of the Disaster. Maurice Blanchot con-
stitutes Auschwitz as an unrepresentable event which has nevertheless
left its impressions and traces on every sector of the political and cul-
tural life, reminiscent of the devastations of an earthquake long ago.•
The insistence on the impossibility of adequately comprehending
and describing the Final Solution has by now become a topos of HoJo-
caust research.' As Saul Friedlander recently pointed out, 8 how can
something that at least on the face of it lacks instrumental rationality
6nd a rational el[planation? How can this historical occunence, which
is less understood the more we know about it , be represented in the
mass media of today's entertainment industry? We have become
rightly skeptical about realistic reconstructions of conc.entration camp
scenes as depicted in the American television mini-series Howcaust-
one of the most popular and commercially successful Hollywood prod-

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 Anton Kaes
< 208 >
ucts, which was sold to fifty countries including West Germany, where
,its reception nearly caused a mass hysteria in 1978.9 We also have be-
come perturbed by the unabashed commercial eitploitatlon and trivial-
ization of human suffering as exemplified in such television specials as
Playing for Time and War and Remembrance, or in such films as So-
phie's Choice and Enemie-T-A Love Story-films in which the Holo-
caust serves more often than not as a mere backdrop to melodramatic
private affairs.•• And. finally. we have come to question films made in
the strictly documentary style, such as Joachim C. Fest's highly suc-
cessful documentary of 1977, Hitler-A Career; which, by drawing only
on original footage. repn>duces precisely those images that the Nazis
employed in their skillful manipulation of film as an instrument of
propaganda. What is sorely lacking {with few exceptions-Claude
Lanzmann's semi-documentary Shoah is one of them) are films that
deal wilh Nazism and the Holocaust in ways that challenge the nar-
rowly circumscribed Hollywood conventions of storytelling and not
Qnly re8ect self-critically on the limits and impasses of film but also
utilize its specific potential in the representation of the past,
What Lyotard demands of the historian of Auschwitz, namely to
lend an ear ~t0c what is not presentable under the. rules of knowl-
edge," 11 may well be ,the real domain of the filmmaker; it may, in fact,
be expressi ble only in such a syncretistic medium as film , which
makes use of theater, literature, painting, photography, and so on. It is
the filmmake.r (as visual artist) who can transcend the unites of knowl-
edge," that is, the documentary evidence, the facts and figures which
the Nazis tried to conceal and to destroy. It is the filmmaker who can
shed light on the social imagination, perverse as it may be, that under·
lies the unspeakable deeds. It is the filmmaker who can translate the
fears and feelings, the hopes and delusions and sulfering of the victims,
all unrecorded and undocumented, into pre-verbal images and
thereby trigger memories, associations, and emotions that precede the
kind of rational reasoning and logical-linear discourse needed in histo-
riographical writing. If it is agreed that the cataclysmic mass- destruc-
tion that occurred a half-century ago defies not only historical desoril)•
tion and quantitative determination but also rational explanation and
linguistic articulation, then a new self-re8exive way of encoding his-
tory is called for.
I believe that Hans-Jurgen Syberberg's controversial seven-hour
film of 1978, self-consciously entitled Hitler-A Film from Germany,

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 Holocaust and the End of Hutory
< 209 >
represents one of the few attempts to come to terms with the Nazi
phenomenon in a way that challenges 8oUywood story-telling and,
above all, utilizes the specific potential of film in the representation of
the past. Internationally more acclaimed than other films of the New
German Cinema, and more widely discussed abroad than lite~
works from West Germany; Syberberg's Hitler film has elicited strong
reactions for and against its revolutionary postmodernist form as well
as its neot:onservative ideology. The main objections to the film (partic-
ularly among German intellectuals) were its emphasis on the irratio-
nal, mythical, and apocalyptic dimension of German history; its Wag-
nerian excess; its pastiche presentation; and its highly ambivalent
explor-ation of the mesmerizing power of fascism . Syberberg's Hitler
film - celebrated by critics in the United States and in France: Susan
Sontag praised the symbolist and neosurrealist visual effects and
placed Syberberg as avant-garde filmmake r in the tradition of Celine,
Proust, and Joyce.,. French critics hailed the film as an expression of
the romantic, tom, irrational-in short, Faustian-German nature; it
was even seen in its ambition and S'oope as a sequel to faun; "Faust,
Part 111." 13 Scholars such as Philippe Lacoue-Labarthe and Jean-Luc
Nancy acknowledge their indebtedness to Syberberg's film 1n their
most -recent essay on ''lbe Nazi Myth." which deals with the role of
aesthetics in fascist politics.,.
In the following I will use Syberberg's Hitler film as a vantage point
to bring into focus four concerns that seem central for a postmodern
historiography on film (the kind of historiography that probes most
radically the limits of representation): the rejection of narrativity, the
speculartzation of his too,, the proliferation of perspective·s, and the af-
firmation of nostalgia;

The Rejectwn of Narrativity

Highly self-aware of the conditions of the possibility of historical rep-
resentation on 61m, Syberberg's 'Hitler 61m does not naively attempt
to -reconstruct the Nazi period or the life and times of Hitler. 1t has
virtually no visual ,documentary footage, no authentic interviews, no
location shots, no sustained linear narrative. The entire film is based
on simulation and re-creation: it takes place in a studio on a sound
stage, using the artificiality of the setting and the theatricality of the
presentation as devices· to counter any similarity to the conventional•

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'I ,111
c,, r,hQ11uA!l
 Anton Kaes
< 210 >
ized images that have come to signify Nazism in popular entertainment
films. Syberberg's Hitler film openly acknowledges its own status as a
constnlct, as a perform$11ce, as a history horror picture show that has
its own-aesthetic logic and is independent of any outside referent.
"No human story wili be shown," says the master of cere monies,
standing in a circus ring, at the beginning of the Hitler film, ubut the
history ofhumanity. No disaster film, but disaste r as a film. Apoca-
lypse, flood, and cosmic death" (p. 41). ,. H istory in this film is ~pro-
duced" and exhlbited in the form ofa circus show; it appears as a revue
consisting of a large number of self-contained sketches and tableaux.
Syberberg is inte re.~ted less in constructing history as a story with
cause and effect (thereby i'mplying a logical development that can be
"understood") than in presenting conste.llations and associations that
surprise and shock the audience. His radicaUy contrived and artificial
mode of presentation also attacks all those allegedly authentic, in ac-
tual fact hopelessly platitudinous reconstructions of the past in 'Vhioh
images shot by the Nazis themselves are recycled. Syberherg's film
destroys direct referential illusion. What reality, after all, should the
film mirror? Past realit:y is absent and not repeatable; it cannot be vis-
ited like a foreign country, A deep gulf seP.3Tates history as experience
&om its re-presentation. What is presented can never be identical with
the presentation itself.
Syberberg favors a self-reflexive play with images and linguistic
signs that refer to history in associations that 11re not bound by time
and place. Various temporal layers are i.n terlocked through blat;lnt
anachronisms, radically undermining the illusion of continuity and
linear development in narrated history. Historical time Is stopped and
recombiped ~rding to principles that derive not &om chronology
but &om the power of association. Visual and aural leitmotifs recur
throughout the film, often as only one layer of several on the sound-
track ot in the image construction. Syberberg's complex sound-image
collages neutrali:ze the linear progress of time and bring history to a
standstill. Instead of the "horizontal" development of a story, we have
a vertical structure in which various levels of meaning and association
coexist and resonate on many levels and in many voices.
Everything the camera registers takes place on a studio stage. which
is hermetically sealed off &om the outer world. Ttme becomes spatial,
a dense web of quotations and references &om literature, theater, mu •
sic, and film. This radical intertextuality also has far-reaching conse-

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lJ~hVit1$1i) C,F Mll"'·ll(iA>·l

 Holocaust and the End of History
< 211 >
quences for Syberberg·s treatinent of historical ,material. Past events
and characters, cut loose from their original contexts, become quota-
ble set pieces in an aesthetic structure that follows its own laws. A
closer look at one sequence in the first part of the film may illustrate
how Syberberg transforms history into a gigantic sign system.
Against the backdrop of a soundstage cluttered with cardboard fig-
ures of the Germ.an Expressionist cinema, Muspilli, an apocalyptic
poem from the ninth century, ,is read off-screen-'·The mountains
bum, the trees- vanish from the earth, the rivers run dry, the moon
falls, and finally the entire earth burns"- and, simultaneously. in orig-
inal sound, a Hitler speech of 1932 is heard-.. We have a goal and we
will advocate it fanatically and relentlessly until the grave" (p. 40). The
mythical prophecy of the end of the world in the ninth century is asso-
ciatively related fo Hitler's expression of a collective death wish. Such
a double coding of old and new, of mythical and documentary, cannot
be interpreted in a conventionally hermeneutic sense. These multilay-
ered collages contain no transparent messages, but rather impressions
and possibilities; no images ofan independent reality, but articulations
of autonQmous artificial worlds; no straightforward stories, bot intri-
cate constellations and meandering paths of associations that do not
converge in one point. In a review of the Hitler film the French film
critic Christian Zimmer wrote: "No events are incapable of being re-
told, but there are cases where narration betrays reality and the mem-
ory of those who lived through what they themselves called ·unspeak-
able: In such cases, the only legitimate and faithful truth is the scream
... Narrative always involves a little of the hopes of the historian: ls
not narrative an explanation and a rationalii.ation of the unthinkable?
ls it not a standardization of insanity? Does not narrative always ex-
cuse?"••

The Speculanzation of History

Syberberg's translation of historical reality into a self-sufficient cosmos
of signs, intertexts, quotations, allusions, memories, and associations
gives hi.m the freedom to encode Gennan history in a variety of spec•
ular forms: as circus spectacle and horror cabinet; as puppet theater,
cabaret, and side show; as tribunal; and as allegorical, baroque theCJ•
trom mundi. The central project of.the film is not the representation
of Hitler himself but the representation of the various ways in which

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U~JIVEttS>i) OF 1½1011(ill.l·l
 Anton Kaes
< 212 >
Hitler has been represented. Syberberg's interest lies in the possibili-
ties of presenting a figure which , he fee ls, "essentially cannot be rep-
resented realistically;" 17 not in the least because today the historical
subject Hitler has dissolved into a plurality of images. Instead of re-
ducing the phenomenon Hitler to one image, Syberbetg proliferates
images. Thus we are confronted, at the very beginning of the film,
with the different roles Hitler plays in the popular·imagination: Hitler
as Charlie Chaplin in a -scene from Chaplin's The Great Dictator; as
house painter, as raving maniac, and so on, and finally as the compul-
sive sex, killer from Fritz Lang's M, who recites his famous defense
before invisible judges: "But who will believe me, who, who knows
what compels mel I have to, I don't want to, I, I have to, I don't want,
I have to, I can't help myself. l can't he lp myself. I have to, I have to
do it, but nobody will believe me. I can't help it, I , I ..... (p. 61). The
monologue, spoken with self-lacerating theatricality by an Austrian ac-
tor wearing an SA uniform, is superimposed over a recording from
Berlin of 1939, in which masses break out into "Sieg Heil, Sieg Heil"
<1t Hitler's appearance. As the murderer is still whimpering "l can't
help it, 1, l .. . ," we hear the original soundtrack of an SA song.
It is left to the viewer what exactly to make of the connections be-
tween the paranoid child murderer from Lang's 1931 film and the Hit-
ler of 1939, between the criminal's blubbering about innocence and
the intoxicated masses whose collective madness expresses· itself in
their enthusiastic "Sieg Heil!" The hysteria of the people and the
shocking wretchedness of the captured criminal are related to each
other ln a montage, but for what purpose? Is Hitle r to be el!culpated
as a victim of his drives? Are we to place the blame on the masses who
shou ted for a "Fuhrer"? Or is the hysteria of this scene supposed to
evoke the atmosphere of the era? Syberberg offers no single interpre-
tation but instead constructs spectacles that allow several readings si-
multaneously. In one interview he said, .. For some Ritle.F was a god of
light, for others a jack-in-the-box and carpet chewer. Both interpreta-
tions receive the same weight and are juxtaposed with each other in
various fonns."18
Hitler served the Germans as a screen onto which they could pro-
ject all their wishes, anxieties, and hopes. He appears as the goal of
the Germans' "most secret yearnings," as the object of their suppressed
desire for subjugation and the executor of everything they longed for

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UiJIVffl51,, OF 1\111.HIL·A> I
 Holocaust ancl the End of Hi$tory
< 213 >
collectively. That is the point of the film's central monologue, spoken
by an actor imitating Hitler's voice and gestures, who, in a hallucina-
tory image, emerges from Richard Wagner's open grave. Hitler, rising
from the dead, sits In judgment over the living. To the utter conster-
nation of the audience, Hitler says in his monologue, "After all, there
was no one else who would, who could take over my desired role. And
so they called upon me . . . f gave them what they put into me, what
they wanted to hear, wanted to do, things they were afraid to do. I
made and commanded for them, for it ·was all for them, not for me . . .
I was and am the e nd of your most secret wishes, the legend and reality
of your dreams, so we have to get through. Finally. The time of the
end? Nightmares? Not by a long shot" (pp, 127-129).
Faced with such a spectacle, the viewer feels helplessly ambivalent,
spellbound on the one hand by its visual power and excessive camp
eccentticity but shocked on the other hand by the audacity that uses
such consciously naive stage magic, in a manner verging on the bur-
lesque and shamelessly mix1ng the sublime with the ridiculous. And
Hitler's politically provocative speech of self-defense, which the spec-
tator instinctively feels challenged to refute, is made unreal by its con-
text, the overly obvious theatrical play. ln the staging of such scenes
Syberberg does not hesitate to use (in the tradition of Robert Wilson)
images of striking simplicity and childlike naivete, a technique that
results , as a critic once put it, in the ''paradox of highly reffective infan,
tility." lO
Transforming the Nazi phenomenon into a gigantic spectacle opens
Syberberg up to the criticism of the aestheticization of politics, which
for Walter Benjamin was the ultimate strategy of fascism.eo .For ex-
ample, in a scene such as the one just described, the spectator is most
likely too enchanted or bewildered to put up much resistance against
the 6.lm's seductive pull. All the Brechtian distancing devices that are
put in the fihn as safeguards break down in the face of the genuinely
cinematic pleasure of looking. Still, fascism is unthinkable without ae.s•
thetics. Hitler and Goebbels, both failed artists, reformulated the po-
litical itself as a work of art and had the burning desire to be the crea-
tors of a new Germany as a GesamtkuMtwerk. Syberberg's film brings
the aesthetic dimension of Nazism to the fore and alludes mo.re than
once to the. underlying affinities between cinema and fascfsm : both
rely on spectacle.

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UiJ1Vff1S1,, OF M11·HniA> I
 Anton Kaes
< 214 >

The Proliferation of Perspectives

1n order to evoke the "Hitler in us'' (one of the subtexts of the 6Jm),
Syberberg tries to level the distance between ourselves and the histor-
ical person; he achieves this by introducing the figure of Karl-Wilhelm
Krause, Hitler's conscientious and pedantic servant from 1934 on.
Krause's memories, recited drily into the camera for an entire gnieling
half~hour, give an unusual view of Hitler as private person. The metic-
u.lous notation of the course of a day, which to Krause was the same,
day in, day out, shows Hitler from a pedestrian perspective that allows
the temporal distance between him and the viewer to disappear for
moments at a time. For instance. Krause describes the breakfast ritual:
"The breakfast always consisted of the same th(ngs. Two cups of mouth-
warm whole milk, as many as ten pieces of Leibniz zwieback cookies,
and then a third to a half ofa bar of bittersweet chocolate broken into
small pieces ... For his bath he used pine-needle tablets" (p. 143). In
the dull spectacle of our-everyday lives, the film seems to st1ggest, we
are all identical. l.n the cycle of daily routines there is no change from
yesterday to today; once again history seems to evaporate in a timeless
11resent. Precisely.through his commonplace daily life, his.quaint little
idiosyncrasies, his ludicrous likes and dislikes-'lsn't it possible for
the Fuhrer of the German people to get a pair of decent socks?" Krause
reports llitler to have said one day-and through his dependence on
moods and emotions, Hitler becomes "one of us." With an obsessive
precision of language and a frighteningly Oat voice, the servant also
descnbes Christmas Eve 1937, when he and Hitler wrapped presents
and drove incognito in a taxi through the streets of Munich. In the
film's pastiche style the private Christmas spirit of the petit bourgeois
from Braunau is juxtaposed with the political situation at Christmas
1942: the soundtrack that accompanies the servant's nostalgic descrip-
tion of 1937 features the famous radio broadcast on December 24,
1942, wh1cb brought together German soldiers from all fronts across
the globe. Sentimentality and expansionism, peaceful Christmas
whimsy and imperfalist war, Cemutlichkeit and terror blend into one.
Jo the film•, the radio broadcast is superimposed over Krause's mon-
ologt1e; he continues spealting, but the radJo broadcast ultimately
drowns him out. Associative links are suggested between the unbro-
ken loyalty of the servant to his Fuhrer and the fate of millions of Ger-
man soldiers who died at the front out ofl.oy$1ty to· Germany; also be-

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U~h\'EttSfi'I OF Mr''11GA!J
 Holocawt and the End of History
< 215 >
tween the administrative tone in which Krause talks about the human
and banal side of Hitler and the rational bureaucratic ingenuity that
was required to send three hundred thousand soldiers to Stalingrad
and transport millions of Jews across Europe to the conQentration
camps ln the east. (Lanzmann's film Shoah is similarly concerned with
the sheer logistics and technicalities of efficiently murdering thou -
sands of human beings a day.)
"The quality ofSyberberg's film,~said Michel Foucault in his review
of the }litler film, "consists in its statement that horror is banal, that
banality in itself has dimensions of horror, that horror and banality are
reversible.h" Not only the madness and Rausch of antisemitic fervor
but also the natTow bureaucratic diligence of an ordinary person like
Krause was necessary to organize the assembly-line mass murders ef.
fectively and in an administratively "correcth way. The end of the
scene, however, in Stalingrad, suggests a different, more ambivalent
reading. Heavy snow starts falling down, gradually covering Krause,
who is quite obviously standing in the middle of a studio. Krause's face
finally freezes, an emblematic embodiment of the trapped and freez-
ing German army outside of Stalingrad. The Germans appear as vic-
tims of their high conception of duty: like Krause, they obey the
Fuhrer to the end.
A further layer of associations is added to this scene through a musi-
cal collage that combines march music and motifs from Wagner's
Rienzi, Hitler's favorite opera. The vertical structure of this .scene is a
product of the layering of various linguistic, musical, and visual codes.
Its simultaneous effects can only be approximated in a nonsl)<ltial me-
dium like writing or speaking. Private and political, fictional and au-
thentic, trivial and wotldbistorical matters are intertwined.and evoked
at the same time. And ,the ensuing scene, added through an abrupt
cut, relativizes everything again: the closeup of the valet's head, cov-
ered with ice and snow, and the radio broadcast from Moscow in Feb-
11.lar}' 1943 announcing the defeat at Stalil'\grad are followed by a pro-
jection (a still) of William Blake's "Shrine of the Imagination," and
Andre Heller instructing us (in a sudden cut to another scene) that
"Astronomers at the University of California, Berkeley, b,ave discov-
ered the farthest known galaxy. This tremendous structure of over a
trillion suns is more than eight billion light.years away. The light now
reaching us from there was sent out at a time when our sun and its
planetary system did not even exist" (p. 56). This unexpected shift of

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U~hVff<Sfi) l)F il'\IQilGAtJ
 Anton Kaes
< 216 >
perspective from Hitler's private life and German history to the history
of the cosmos- seems extremely problematic, for it relativizes every•
thing, suggesting that from the perspective ofa billion light-years away
aU world events, mcluding the Final Solution, seem completely incon-
sequential and trivial.
Even this .(certainly most dubious) "cosmic" model only approxi-
mates what Syberberg calls ~the whole." He is obsessed by the insight
that Hitlerism cannot be explained by a single thesis, not by one story
but by many. He circumnavigates his theme with a postmodern prolif-
eration of different voices, actions, recorded memories, quotations
&om povels, pQems, military reports, autobiographies, speeches,
songs, pictures, melodies: all of them ways of approaching the secret
center called Adolf Hftler, a subject that becomes concrete and com-
prehensible only in the distorting mirror ofothers, a hollow center that
is filled to the degree that we project ourselves into it.
A similarly complex and problematic collage can be found in the
representation of the Final Solution in the third part of the Sim. Hein-
rich Himmle r, played by the s.wie actor who also impersonates Hitler,
is lying on a massage table and having his muscles loosened by his
masseur; be speaks about his childhood dreams, his recently acquired
Buddhist beliefs in nonviole nce, and in the sam.e tone of voice about
his higher (and basically unpleasant) "duty" to murder millions of Jews.
While he speaks, SS soldiers and concentration camp guards appear
on the back projection scr,een to be marching toward the camera, one
by one, like phantoms from another world, while an off-screen voice
reads from eyewitness accounts of unspeakable crimes against women
and children committed in the concentration camp as well as from of-
6oial Nazi propaganda speeches justifying the genocide (pp. 163-189).
There are .also snippets intercut (in original sound) from the speech
that a shaken Hitler de'livered after the failure of the Staufenberg as-
sassination plot in 1944. Himmler at the same time gushes forth about
his plans to introduce a law for the protection of animals as soon as the
war is over. "l was extraordinarily interested to hear recently," be
muses, -that when the Buddhist moo.ks walk through the town in the
evening, they carry a little bell in orde[ to m.ake the forest creatures
that they might crush underfoot move aside, so that they may suffer no
harm" (p. 175f),
Himmler's infamous speech to the SS in Posen in 1943, which ex,
presses his admiration for those who remained ''decent" while facing a

J11111,,11r n\
U~JIVfflS111 OF MICHIGAN
 Holoca1111t and the End of History
< 217 >
mountin,g heap of corpses, is repeated twice. Only a few still pictures
of concentration camp victims are shown as baokdrops to the repelling
visages of SS soldien who extol Germanic virtues which for them in-
clude the heroic determination to remain unIPoved by the suffering
caused by the industrial-style mass killing that the Fuhrer has ordered.
To have cold-blooded mass murder presented by SS soldiers as a chal-
lenging task and a selftess, sacrifice surely creates in the spectator a
critical distance that exposes in one Hash the whole cruel and perverse
absurdity of such reasoning.
Still, the construction of such a scene abounds with incongruities,
tensions, contradictions, ambivalences, and .sudden, troubling shifts of
sympathy: Himmler's grotesque concern for the protection of helpless
animals is juxtaposed against his ruthless extermination policies vis-a-
vi.s helpless Jews, while he himself, lying half-naked and squirming
under the hands of his masseur, is shown as vulnerable. Is the pathol-
ogized image of Himmler in this scene meant to humanize him or to
demonstrate the utterly schizophrenic project of the Final Sob;ation, in
which family fathers were also mass murderers? Are we to associate (as
consciously or unconsciously suggested on the soundtrack) the failed
plot against Hitler with the stepped-up mass murder in the concentra-
tion camps? So many questions su,ggest an equal number of ways to
read a scene like this, which refuses to reduce the contradictions to a
single narrative. The film's-postmodernist multiple .coding and the con-
stantly shifting position of the author/filrnmaker as bricoleur require
an audience ready and willing to enter the slippery realm of textuality
(any recourse to statements by the filmmaker that would constrain the
potential meaning of the film does injustice to the textual multivalence
of the film's collage principle). Not surprisingly. the proliferation, dis-
junction, and layering of con8icting sounds and images jn a sujet like
Nazism and the Final Solution pose a danger. The sheer number of
con8icting angles (including always the angle of the Nazi perpetrator)
from which each event is simultaneously viewed leads ineiorably to
ambivalences that do not preclude readings of the film ($uch as the
Germ.ans in the role of victims, nostalgia for a H eimat and a sense of
lost grandeur, and so on) that are clearly revisionist in their implica-
tion. The radical (Nie~chean, ruhilist?) pluralism of postmodern aes-
thetics which characterizes this film also embraces conservative, some-
times provocatively reactionary and revisionist motifs and arguments,
allusions and references, either expressed in the (often sarcastic) v9ice-

JIIJ!i ,11 If 0\
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 Anton Kaes
< 218 >

over or evoked by the music of Richard Wagner who, in Syberberg's

eyes, had cast a spell over LudWig U, the rom$iltic 8avarian ICing, as
well as over Hitler. The burden is placed on the spectator to engage in
a dialogue with the 61m and create his or her own version of the Nazi
story, which the film lays out ill all its dalliltibg complexity.

The Affirmation of Nostalgia

.
Syberberg's stylistic strategies of proliferation.juxtaposition, pastiche,
contradiction, and intertextuality demonstrate his affinity with a poet-
.ics of postmodernism,u. while his apocalyptic world view, his cuJtural
pessimism, and his static view of history place him ifi the philosophical
tradition of what has become known as post-histoire. Postmodernist
aesthetics and the tradition ofpost-hi&wire are related: the ease with
which a postmodernist artist like Syberberg uses the past as • material"
that can be quoted at will is based on the .b elief that history and prog-
ress have reached their limit and have come to a standstill; the present
i.s itself oo more than an assemblage of quotations from the past. In the
epoch of the post-hiatoire, originality and innovation mean recycling
and pastiche, In trus sense postmodernism and post-histoire are in-
deed kindred concepts, with post-histoire being the larger term e11-
compassing postmodernist strategies and styles. But while postmod-
ernism has engendered a critical debate that is still growing by leaps
and bounds, the term post-hL,toire, coined not accidentally in the re-
storative Adenauer period and revived in the 1970s, has gone almost
unnoticed in this country.
As early as 1952 the German sociologist Arnold Cehlen adopted the
eypressio.fl post-histoire from the writings of Paul de Man's uncle,
Hendrik de Man, a Belgian socialist thinker who later became a Nazi
collaborator. He first used the term to designate an epoch character-
ized by a state of stability and rigidity, devoid of utopian ideas, change,
or development. 13 In 1961, in an article appropriately entitled "Uber
kulturelle Kristallisation" (On cultural orystalli:r.atiqn), Cehlen wrote,
~1 am predicting that the history of•ideas has come to an end and that
we h11ve arrived at the epoch of post,h#toire, so that now the advice
Gottfried Benn gave the individual, 'Make do with what you have,' is
valid for humanity as a whole. In the 11ge in which the earth has be-
come optically and informationally sul"\ieyable, when no event of im-
portance can happen unnoticed, there are no more surprises." 14

.lllJ!I ,1i !!Un\

UihVff'tS1,, G>F 1\111.Hll'A>l
 Holocaust and the End of History
< 219 >

Syberberg takes up this motifof crystallization and glacial rigidity in

his fiim about Hitler, and it 1s no accident that metaphors of coldness,
ice, and ossification recur in much of contemporary Genn.a n literature
(most prominently in Enzensberger's long poem Der Untergang ckr
ntanlc). In the Hitler film the stage·itself appears as an emblem of the
frozen wo.rld. Since, in the philosophy of pQst-histoire, the future has
no further prospects and history seems to have come to a halt, there is
no longer any existing foree that could function like a magnet to pull
the fragments of the past into a meaningful (that is, rumative) order.
The fragments remain fragments; they lie scattered around on Syber-
berg's stage, dead and without context. The ~spatialization~ of time to
a confined area in which disconnected fragments &om many historical
eras are strewn about-the bits and piec;es after the catastrophe, as it
were-corresponds exactly to the idea ofan eternal present expressed
by adherents of post-histoire. Syberberg's Hitler has no forward move-
ment; it evokes instead elegiac memories of past glories, nostalgia, and
a sense of waiting for the apocalypse. .,
This stasis becomes most obvious in the numerous monologues that
A!idre Heller cames on in a mock discussion with a puppet that has
Hitler's features, At one point the Hitler puppet is addressed with,
~You occupied everything and corrupted it with your actions,-every-
thing, honor, loyalty. country life, hard work, movies, dignity, father-
land, pride, faith, You are the executor ofWestern civilization . • . the
plague of our century. The words 'magic' and 'myth' and 'serving' and
'ruling,' 'Fuhrer,' 'authority,' are ruined, are gone, exiled to eternal
time. ,.\nd we are finished. Nothing more will grow here. An entire
nation stopped existing" (p. 242).
In this lament, Gennany~its myths, its history, and its identity-
is irretrievably lost, What remains, according to Syberberg, is a land
without a national identity, full of neurotic uncertainties about its own
dreams, desires, and myths that define and sustain identity. The act of
l'f!Ourning here turps toward Germany itself as Syberberg vainly at-
tempts to deliver German culture from its fascist past. His film ends
with the chorus UOde to Joy,~ from Beethoven's Ninth Symphony play-
ing behind a visionary tableau dominated by the black stone from Diir•
er's famous engraving, "Melancolia," controversially pointing the way
from mourning to "salvation" and "healing:,"
Where no development or change is considered possible, the future
vanishes, At the end of history, the artist works in an eternal process of

- , Go ,gle J1 I J!I ,11 lrfm)

Ufh\'EH51l1 LJF i\HI-HO.;A) I
1
 Anton Kaes
< 220 >

recycling what is at hand. What John Barth argued as early as 196.5 in

one of the first manifestoes of postmodern literature, T1ie Literature of
Exhaustion, informs Syberberg's representation of German history:
Everything has been said, originality is strictly confined to the recom-
bination of fragments from the past. The entirety of Western culture is
now available, a quarry to which one goes to pick out quotations. Tilis
is how Syberberg expressed it in 1981; "Now the world is divided up,
relinquished to history and the traditions of culture, the source of our
works. Huge mines of the old cultures for quotations, which build up
by layers to new cultures. Everything we show or speak has been used
before, been touched, and only a rearrangement of the systems and
fragments produces, if it functions, something new . .. Today's my,
tholc;1gie$ of the wandering Odysseus are constructed of quotations
from the discipline of our history, and the fear of today's Penelope
threatens to create chaos on the horizon of our inner landscapes as a
foreboding about the future-the end of all bistory.'' 16
Toe end of Germany is evoked by the pervasive mythologizing of
death throughout the .film: the original recordings of the National So-
cialist funeral service for the victims of Hitler's putsch on November 9,
1923, are used regularly as a leitmotif on the soundtrack, and in a film
clip from Christmas 1944, Goebbels says. "Forward over graves! Toe
dead are more powerful armies than we on the land, than we on
the sea. They stride ahead of us." Sybe.r berg intensifies and totalizes
the mysterious collective death wish, characteristic-of the National So-
cialist ideology, into a global longing for the end of the world that can
only be grasped through myth. All crimes against humanity, including
the extermination of the Indians, which incidentally the film also men-
tions, and the annihilation of the Jews, -are mere ,symptoms for the fatal
disease of the moribund West. Even before the titles appear on the
screen, the film announces its position in a voice-over: "Dances of
death, dialogues of the dead, conversations in the kingdo,n of the
dead, a hundred years,later, a thousand years, millions. Passions, ora-
torios • .. leftovers of a lost civilization and of a lost life, our Europe
before the collapse. Farewell to the West. Sub specie aeternitatis and
everything on film, our new chance. The story of the death of the old
light in which we lived, and of our culture, a remote singing" (p. 32).
Toe cultural pessimism of such passages allows the concrete guilt of
the Germans to dissolve in the general malaise of post-histoire. Against
the horizon of the apocalypse and of eternity ("sub specie aeternita-

11 ·1 rtl I
I Nl'Jff;Sl'i) I°~ 1t1·'·HGA1·I
 Holocaust and the End of History
< 221 >

tis.'), "rational" distinctions between perpetrators and victims, be-

tween violence and Sliff'ering lose their meaning and even their justifi-
cation. The specificity of the Final Solution is thus conveniently
submerged in the problem of universal evil-an evil that for Syber-
berg is as much .i.ssoci\lted with the curse of moc:himity as it is with the
Nazi genocide.
Seen from this perspective, Claude Lanzmann's 1985 documentary
'film Shoah offers the necessary corrective to Syberbergs lilm by draw-
ing a sharp line between Nazi crin1inals and their victims.111 Based on
interviews with survivors and witnesses, former concentration camp
guards and Nazi officials, and bystanders of varying degrees of com-
plicity, the nine-and-one-half-hour documentary on the Final Solution
evokes the past not through an illusionist ~authentic" reconstruction
but through the survivors' individual memories of the period. Lanz.
mann does not show any of the we11-lmown and by now codified docu-
mentary concentration camp footage but focuses instead solely on the
power (and failings) of personal memory and the (admittedly often
staged) imrnediaoy of onil history. He is en.gaged in Spuren8tlche
(search for traces): in detective and ~econstructive work undertaken in
the hope of recovering and recording the traces of the distant disaster.
It is as if the disaster itself resisted representation; it is gi'a$ped only
afterwards by studying, as it were,. the aftershocks.
As early as 1979 Lanzmann outlined his project for Shoah: MA film
devoted to the Holocaust can only be a counte-r-myth, that is, an inves•
tigation into the presentness of the Holocaust, an investiption into a
past whose wounds are .so fresh and so keenly inscribed in conscious-
ness that they are present in a haunting timelessness."• Thus Lanz-
mann's work throws Syberberg's project in relief: although both film-
makers believe in the presence of the past (which explains, on the
formal level, their shared disregard for chronological narratives and
their sense ofpost.histoire, of"timelessness"), ultimately their projects
differ radically. Lanzmann sets ou.t to prove irrefutably and with an
enormous.array of witnesses the existence of concentration camps; the
film focuses almost excfusively on the annihilation process. Syberber:g
(not unlike Anselm Kiefer), on the other hand, stages the myths of the
Nazi past-not to glorify them, but to find some redemptive way back
to the spiritual Heimat of the Germans, which he believes has been
lost to both fasoism and postwar materialism. His undertaking is com-
pletely paradoltical: i.rrationalism, which the Hitler movement had ap-

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11~hVEH$111 nF MIQ-il(ill.l·l
 Anton Kaes
< 222 >

propriated and exploited, is to be wrested away from its National So-

cialist associations by means of a film that celebrates irrationalism as
the essence of German identity: The attitude necessary for this task
simultaneously constructs and deconstructs, enchants and disillusions,
hypnotiies and alienates: hence the contradictory union of stylistic
models from Brecht and Wagner, and the vacillation between fascina-
tion and criticism in the presentation of Hitler and Nazism.
Syberberg places himself in the long tradition of German writers
and artists-Lessing, Goethe, Holderlin, Nietzsche, Wagner, Tuc.hol-
sky-who designed an imaginary, excessively idealized Germany in
order to compare it with the unbearable real Germany which now-
after Hitler and Auschwitz-lives in a period of -post-hisroire, only a
shadow of its former self. It would be worth speculating whether the
obsessive preoa:upation with the apocalypse and the imaginary antici-
pation of the end of the world in the 1970s and 1980s does not express
Germany·s subconscious wish to eradicate its traumatic past once and
for all. The longing for the apocalypse and the end of history may be
provoked by the utopian hope to begin once more, to create a pure
moment of origin that is not contaminated by history.

,11 11 lf!I\
.l1 I J!i
UihVit1$l1f !)F MII.Hll ·A> I
 < 14 >

Whose Story Is It, Anyway?

Ideology and Psychology in the Representation
of the Shoah in Israeli Literature

YAEL S. FELDMAN

Reviewing a translated collection of Israeli fiction entitled Facing the

Holoca14st, Alan Berger concludes by referring to the "role of Holo-
caust fiction in a land where it may vroperly be thought of as a national
literature."• This is a misconception, however. [ would even say that
Facing the Forem, A. B. Yehoshua's novella of the early 1960s, in
which the protagonist, an alienated Israeli "anti-hero," discovers the
ruins of an Arab v illage beneath the "national" forest he is supposed to
guard, is much more representative of what is felt in Israel as national
literature. Or perhaps I should say "what bas been felt"; for as was
pointed out in 1988 by Saul Friedlander, "For years one had the im-
pression . . . that the events of the Shoah were disappearing from Is-
raeu memory. Now, strangely enough, over the last two or three years,
this past has come back into Israeli consciousness in the most vivid
way, as it has almost everywhere else." s
What is in effect striking is the extent to which Israeli culture, par-
ticularly in its e.a rlier phases, attempted to assimilate the eq,erience of
the Shoah to its overall Zionist perspective. Speaking here as an Israeli
l can,attest, not without mixed feelings, to the success of these efforts.
For my generation grew up under the soothing images of heroic parti-
5a11s, not under the sign of "the other planet." Katzetnik's mythicized
chronicles of that planet (Beit Haboobot [DoUhouse], Salamandra,
etc.) were there in the background, an isolated terrain within nascent
Israeli literature, while, centerstage was occupied (and quite literally
so) by sohool plays about the Warsaw uprising or the heroic mission of
Hanna Senesh. For us, Yom hashooh vehagvurah (Day of Holocaust
and Heroism) was not "Martyrs dayt as my current Israeli calendar
translates it, but rather a celebration of resistance and national pride,
a prolegon1enon to the [sraeli Day of Independence.
< 223 >

11.1, , Go ,gle J1 I J!I ,11 !rfJn)

UN Vft1S111 l)F M11·Hll·A1J
 Yael S. Feldman
< 224 .,.

So this was the first story we were told-in -public ceremonies, in

school anthologies, in radio programs-and it was clearly exhilarating
despite its tragic dimensions. It told of the victory of the spirit; it wa.s
easy to identify with; it was {>rotective. Endowing loss and death with
meaning, with a purpose, this story made our world a good place to
grow up in.
And of course it was totally Hebraic. E.veryone in this story spoke
Hebrew! the ghetto mother singing a lullaby in the shadow of Ponar,
the leaders of the Jewish resistance, and even the Polish underground.
I must admit that even today I find it difficult to separate the emotional
sediments of these early representations from the sonorous Hebrew in
which they were encoded. Yes, the language was the message. It was
our story; another link in the Hebrew-Israeli self,representation, em-
plotted in a tale of a goal-oriented, victorious struggle.
There are hardly any written 58mples of this story in the translated
anthology that Berger was reviewing, nor in any other anthology. They
are found primarily in popular and didactic literature. Curiously, and
perhaps predictably, the canon of Israeli Shoah literature begins with
!:lie breakdown of that rust story. 3 This breakdown takes place almost
simultaneously in poetry and in drama, with fiction following suit
nearly a decade later. Simultaneity does not mean similarity. however.
Whereas Uri Zvi Greenberg's monumental poetic elegy, Rehooot Han-
ahar (Streets of the River, 1951), is a complex eX{>ression of protest,
moumfng, and painful acceptance,• Israeli drama in this period is
conflict-ridden, illustrating the tension between the Sabra, or native
Israeli, and the Holocau.st survivor.
Composed mostly by Israelis who did not ezperienc.e the Holocaust
directly, these plays are all set in post-Holocaust Israel (or Europe, in
one case), dramatizing the encounter between the "Israeli" and the
"Jew" in all its alienation and lack of empathy, Although stereotypical
Sabra perceptions ·are often the butt of the playwright's censure, one
cannot escape the impression that once more, this is the Sabra's story
rather than the survivor's; that what is at stake is the pre~ervation of
the difference Israelis have carved for themselves out of Jewish history
and identity. Compared to what is considered "Holocaust drama" in
the United States and in Europe, these plays can hardly be classified
as such.• In fact, not until the eighties is there any attempt at docu~
mentary theater, a genre so popular in the West. In general, it is not
the experience of the victim that is at the oore of the drama, but rather

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 Whose Story ls It, Anyway?
< 225 >

the Israeli's difficulty in coming to te.n ns with and validating the ''oth-
erness• of that experience.
This paradigm changed in the early eighties, in the dramatic pro-
ductions of Hanoch Levin and Joshua Sobol. I have llfglled elsewhere
that, their differences notwithstanding, both playwright$ approach the
source of violence itself, attempting to capture the relationship be-
tween victim and aggressor in all its gruesome implications.• By so
doing. they suggest new perceptions of"the other" as being both exter•
nal and internal to Israeli consciousness. While this process is rather
obvious in Sobol's 1984 Ghetto (which I shall discuss), Levin conducts
his inquiry in his 1981 play Yisurei 'lyov (The Pamon of Job) vJa a
displacement to the Jol>-Jesus story. Only bis rich system of contem-
porary allusions reveals that he too struggles with the impact of the
Holocaust; In contrast to Sobol, he transposes his anxieties to a more
abstract level of discourse, dramatizin.g the post-Holocaust polemics
over the death of God, the banality of evil, and the possibility of the
tragic. Despite this divergence, however, the two playwrights share a
position unprecedented in Hebrew drama. Both dare to imagine the
trauma itself; both present on stage victims experiencing the horror
and the suffering, as well as the excruciating process of making moral
choices; and, finally, both exemplify a psychological shift in the Israeli
attitude to the Holocau$t victim, from an external "other,• one invok-
ing shame and guilt and therefore to be defended against, to a subject
in his or her own right, one whose experience can be internalized and
even identified with.
My observation seems to concur, then , with the general revival of
interest described by Friedlander in his statement quoted above: "The
whole issue is coming back. But this time, l would say, it is coming
back in a more mature society, one that has perhaps less self-assurance
but more self-reJlectiveness. There is no attempt to hide the Shoah;
, .. there is no attempt, as far as I know, to identify it as part of a great
historical interpretation. There is the facing of the catastrophe as such,
not in search of something, nor even for coherence, but as a means of
rediscovering the past" ("Roundtable,~ p. 289).
"Facing the catastrophe as such" may readily accommodate my own
claim of treating the victim "as a subject in bis own right." Yet my. anal-
ysis of these plays, Ghetto in particular, does not allow for such an
overall interpretation. On the contrary, it clearly demonstrates to what
extent Sobol's selection of his "historical" materials is filtered through

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U1hVEf1S1,1 !)F il'\10111:;All
 Yael S. Feldman
< 226 >

the powerful prism of the contemporary ideological crisis; how the i_de-
ological confticts of his reconstructed Vilna ghetto closely (in fact, too
closely) resemble those of Israel during the Lebanon war (1982-1984):
and how this ostensibly documentary play draws lts dramatic coher-
ence from the all-too-familiar binary oppositiQns promoted by (Labor)
Zionism: Yahne versus Jerusalem; diaspora versu& Zion; Yiddish versus
Hebrew; Talmud versus Bible: and-last but not lea.~t-(Jewish) spir-
ituality, identified with vitality and survival, versus (Gennan, but also
Zionist and Israeli) recourse to force and aggression, identified as the
death instinct.
That last dichotomy unravels Sobors technique but also eicposes the
limits of his ~new" represe11tation: unable altogether to deconstruct the
old oppositions, he simply inverts their markers, glorifying everything
that has been traditionally marked as negative (all first tenns in the
above pairs) and debunking the previously valorized values. The result
is an ostensible dramatization of a psychological mechanism ('identifi-
cation with the agg:ressori that is in fact dominated by the very ideol-
ogy against which it rebels. As such, Ghetto highlights a literary trend
that has recently taken hold of Israeli fiction as well-the appropria-
tion of psychoanalysis for the critique of ideology ("Zionism on the lit-
erary couch," as I have elsewhere labeled it). It is my contention, how-
ever, that"despite its apparent proliferation, Freudianism is used only
as a metaphor; in the final analysis, it is ideology rather than individual
psychology that is the primary force behind these literary representa-
tions.7
The same holds true for the use of.the Holocaust in this literature.
Again, Ghetto is typical of a certain literary fascination with the theme
of the Shoah which is a far cry from -a disinterested • rediscovery of the
past." The ideological motivation of this literature, as in Sobol's case, is
quite transparent-a response to a political constellation that has used
and misused the Holocaust for- its own purpose$;• in the case of many
less known, younger writers, however, the psychological motivation
seems paramount, at least at first glance: their noveb may be read as a
literary "worlcing-through'' of the traumatic experience of the "second
generation,~ the Israeli-born children of survivors, who only toward
the end of the twentieth century have matured enough to identify with
the hitherto untold past of their parents. 0 In fact, the therapeutic im·
plications of this litetahlre have been recognized by the Israeli psy-
chologist Dina Wardi, who in her book Nos'ei Hahotam (Memorial

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< 227 >

Candles) Oerusalem: Keter, 1990) quotes fictional characters as lavishly

as she does her patients, all children of survivors, horn and raised in
Israel. If the family dyn,amics described by Wardi are representative,
then her findings seem to contradict earlier, more positive evaluations,
propagated since the early seventies by the late Israeli psychoanalyst
Hillel Klein and his colleagues. Viewed from this book's pe~ctive,
Klein's optimism about the effect of Israeli culture and identity, and
particularly about the power of the collective (the kibbutz) on the pro-
cess ofadaptation and integration of Holocaust survivors, seems just as
"slanted" by Zionist ideology as the fictional worlds created by the
writers of his generation.
It is interesting to note, however, that none of the young writers
who have tried to escape these very constraints (Oded Peleg, Navah
Semel, Lily Perry-Amitai, Dorit Peleg, Yaakov Bochen, ltamar Levi,
to name just a few) has been received so well by the literary main•
stream as David Grossman, who has consciously tried to undermine
them from within (more about him below). However, even in this lit•
erature one can detect the impact of a contemporary ideological cri-
sis-the breakdown of the Zionist codes that emplotted earlier repre•
sentations of the Holocaust. It was this breakdown, and the loss of the
adolescentlike grandiose self accompanying it, that destabilized the
old arch-opposition between "Jew" and "Israeli" and made possible a
new pOsition of empathy toward "the other," toward the Jew within the
lsr.ieli. 10
What 1 would like to suggest, then, is that Israeli literature may
serve as an important test case in the current debate on the limits of
representation. For it sharpens and brings to focus-and perhaps to
its- own epistemological limits-the problematic dichotomy between
historical and fictional truth. Indeed, we have learned enough about
the uncanny power of narrativization (literary or other), emplotment,
closure, and finally IAAguage itself, with all its fig\ll'lll udistortions," to
know that the hope to face "the thing in itself' may be only wishful
thinking. u We also know, however, that nowhere else is this fssue so
paradox-ridden as in the case of the Holocaust. ln an intellectual cli-
mate th.a t has practically erased the word truth from its dictionary, how
are we even to express, let alone satisfy, our thirst to know what
"really" happened and how it was possible? And in a philosophical dis•
course that insists on the necessarily llgurative status of language, and
hence of any human communication, how are we to come to terms

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 Yael S. Feldman
< 228 >
with our natural abhorrence at what we perceive as an illegitimate,
even immoral, metirphorization of this unique catastrophe?
These questions become painfully relevant in the division between
survivors' and bystanders' (or second generation's) literatures, with all
the ethical implications and hermeneutical risks that this division en-
tails. As many discussions of the issue have made clear, the opposition
between documentary realism and mediated recollection, raw testi-
mony and literary construction, is not so final after all.•• As Irving
Howe says, "We are trapped. Our need for testimony that will forever
place the Holocaust squarely within history requires that we respond
to voice, nuance, personality. Our desire to see the Holocaust in
weightier terms than the merely aesthetic lures us into a shy recogni-
tion of the moral reverberations of the aesthetic. This does not make
us happy, but the only alternative Is the silence we all remember, now
and then, to pralse," 13
Implied in Howe's wry comment is not only the irony of so much
talk about silence (pace Adorno and Steiner}, but also the acceptance
of the difference, of the moral imperative. of the paradoxical limits
involved in writing and reading "aesthetically" about the Holocaust.
And if this is true for works by suTVivors and eyewitnesses-who are,
mainly, Howe's subject-it is much mote so for long.distance observ-
ers and second- or third-generation writers. It is here that the ethical
limits of representation are most acutely felt; and it ls against literary
works of this kind that most of the criticism bas been raised. The
heated debates that accompanied such diverse literary appropriations
of the Holocaust as Sylvia Plath's Ariel poems, "Daddy" and "Lady
C.av>n1s'' ('I may be a bit of a Jew"); D. M. Thomas' White Hotel; Wil-
liam Styron's Sophie's Choice; and, in rm.el, protest poetry written
during the Lebanon war and its aftermath, are all expressions of a
deepseated ambivalence: Somehow the rules of the hermeneutic game
do not seem to apply here. There is a dillerence here that iill (or most)
of us sense, but are hardly able to mak.e sense of.
This problematic difference is also behind the extreme position that
decrees silence (pace Elie Wiesel) on whoever was not th.ere (with the
same success, one may add, as had Adamo's famous dictum). Yet it is
precisely in this "forbidden• realm that Israeli writers are to be lo-
cated. For most of lsra.eli Shoah literatu re, not only now-which i.s
rather understandable-but from its very inception, is the work of
writers who never experienced the terrorsofthe Holocaust firsthand.

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This stiitement may come as a SUIJlrise. One may think immediately

of Aharon Appelfeld, a survivor whose 6otion has been generously
translated into English. But Appelfeld is not representative of Israeli
literature at large, ln fact, he is die only survivor who actually "made
the Hebrew canon" as a novelist. (The situation is quite dilferent
among Yiddfsh writers ·in Israel, for obvious reasons.)
The extent to which Israeli Shoah literature in Hebrew is not iden-
tified with first-hand testimony, with survivors' narratives, can 'be mea-
sured by the share they are allotted by literary critic Gershon Shalced
in his afterword to the collection Facing the Holocaust mentioned
above: out of fifteen printed pages only the last section, less than a
page and a half in length, is devoted to "the writers who ace survivors."
Omitting Katzetnik (Yehiel Oinur) altogether, Shaked starts by stating
the group's "difference" in that they write., "not SUIJlrisingly, shorter
works-stories and novellas, They attempt to view the experience
from a narrow angle of vision, to present testimony about what hap-
peJted to them and to their protagonists, not to resolve histo.rical issues
and not to embody history in a symbol that c:;,omprebends the entire
experience" (emphasis mine). " I believe the flnal two negative clauses
speak for themselves. Although not openly judged, the otherness of
the survivors' testimonial is :measured against a tacit norm: the native•
Israeli Shoah narrative to which most of the afterword is dedicated.
This norm turns out to be, in its general lines, the one identified by
many commentators (Ezyalii, Roskies, Min~, Needler, Young) and
theorized by Yosef Yerushalmi in Zakhor•• as the typical Jewish/He-
braic response to catastrophe: mythization; collectivization; ritualiza.-
tion; ill short, all processes that would embed the particular within the
general and surrender the individual to the community~thereby en-
dowing the narrative with a meaningful, life-affirming closure.
That this stoclc-in-trade reaction could be re~ily ad;q,ted to Zionist
perspectives is quite clear. By the sixties, when Appelfeld began pub-
lishing., Hebrew fiction had caught up with the theater: in the wake of
the Eichmann trial, it produced a variety of narratives that touched, in
differing degrees of depth and engagement, upon the subject of the
Holocaust. As in the case of the theater, very little attempt at docu-
mentary fiction is In evidence. 16 In the main, this is th.e literature of
bystanders, whose imaginative energy is unavoidably directed else-
where.
Some of these novels continue the thematic conflict elaborated ear-

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 Yael S, FeldmM
< 230 >

lier OP the stage-the native Israeli's identity crisis when facing, for
the first time, the typical diaspora "Jew" he was raised to reject. 17 Oth-
ers fashion large epic structures, apparently trusting the expl_anatory
powers of historical emplotment. The scnpt here is a more sophisti-
cated version of my childhood heroic dramas, with a closure that ex-
poses the authors' Zionist world view despite the ostensibly epic nar-
rative voice) • More personal, although no less embroiled in historical
symbolization, are some fictional autobiographies that are structured
around a journey to Europe, in search of a pre•Holocaust childhood.
This time the conflict is internalized, and the symbolic or actual jour-
ney helps to heal the i'otrapsychic split between Jew and Israeli. The
fact that these fictional introspections have a cathartic closure, back in
Israel,. is a sign of their adherence to the same narrative paradigm we
are tracing here. 1•
rt is not difficult to imagine how different Appelfeld's early short
stories sounded against the background ofthis literature. In their short
format, their sparse language, their lack of closure, and their refusal to
be emplotted by the grand historical schemes of either the Jewish-
Hebraic tradition or Zionist redemption,., they indeed introduced an-
other script, "a new artis.t ic coae," as Israeli' author A. 8 . Yehosbua bas
put it.
The point I want to make, however, is that it was not his originall.y
"alienated"' Shoah narrative that gained Appelfeld access to the canon;
despite the stylistic and thematic continuities, Appelfeld of the seven-
ties and eighties is quite different from the early Appelfeld. And I am
not talking about linguistic growth and artistic maturity, which are of
course factors as well; I am talking about a shift in the implied authorial
stance of his narratives, beginning with Ke'ishon Ha'ayin (Uke the
Apple of the Eye, 1972), Biuknheim, 'Ir Nofesh (Badenheim, 1972,
1974), and Tor Hapela'ot (The Age. of Wontkrs, 1978). (The last two
were, not accidentally, his first novellas to be translated into English in
1980 and 1981, respectively.)
My claim is that in ,t hese nanatives ~ppelfe]d gave up his initially
bewildered, uncomprehending wtake" on his experiences in the Shoah
and its aftermath, and imperceptibly entered the old/new paradigm of
the Jewish ttaqition. Alan Mintz may be right in placing the early Ap-
pelfeld outside of this tradition, but less so in his interpretation of the
author's later move."' Appelfeld's journey to his pre-Holocaust auimi-
lated childhood is not a nostalgic, approving return; it is a critical look

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 Whou Story ls U, Anyway?
< 23l >

back, full of apprehension and disapproval. 1rus posture is possible

(and makes sense) only from within the Jewish tradition. Moreover, his
famous avoidance of direct representation of the Holocaust itself may
be attributable not only to ethical inhibitions, as Howe would have it;•
it may be his way to avoid the structural difficulty that such a represen-
tation of necessity entails. For it is not only the events of the war itself
th11t are missing in Appelfeld's work. Even the postwar fate of survivors
in Israel-a source of numerous narratives in his early tales-plays a
smaller role in his recent work.
Th11t theme culmiollted in his first novel, Ha'or Vehakootonet (The
Skin and the Gown, 1971), ~ch traces the failed attempts Qftwo sur-
vivors who had been separated by the war to recreate their life to-
gether in Jerusalem. Their story ends in divorce, sickness and the In-
timation of death; "All night he was walking as if after a funeral. A
journey in which first awareness slowly penetrated, like hard drops of
poison . . . It dawned on him that this was death. First the body dies
and then the soul evaporates until it is winged away by tfie morning
breeze upon the earliest blush of dawn" (p. 166; my translation). Re-
cently, however, only one of his works, H akootonet Vehapaasim (The
Gown and the Stripes, 1983) reverberates with similar echoes.13 It
would seem that the later Appelfeld prefers the one portion of the
story that lends itself to some •sense,~ that is amenable to a narrative
closure, as gniesome as that may be. This is not the cathartic, life.
affirming Zionist closure of his Israeli peers; and, paradoxically, it is
not textually represented in his story. It ls the unrepresentable extra-
teirtual hoTTOr that represents-in its absence-the historically un-
avoidable closure of the assimilated culture of his childhood.
This is particularly true for several novels that could be defined as
"group portraits~ (Bade'!hefm, 1972; Hametzudah [The ltetreat], 1982;
Ritzpat Ha'e.th [Tongue of Fire], 1988), all set in Europe on the brink
of the catastrophe. They dramatize different aspects of Jewish assimi-
lation: its latent self-hatred; its refu~ to face facts; the blow it received
when confronted by open antisemitism. This theme is also centr.il to
the author's 4 fiunily portraits" (Uke the Apple of the Eye, 1971; The
,Age of Wonders, 1978), ,w here it is played out against other options of
Jewish existence. The struggle between these options is at the core of
two of his latest novels, Be'et Ube'orl(Jh 'Ahat (The Healer, 1985) and
To the Land ofthe Cattails (1986), each featuring a family split between
the allure of gentile culture and the almost mystical attr.wtion of the

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 Yael S. Feldman
< 232 >

old tradition. Although in The Healer the conflict ends with a stale-
mate. the journey to the "land of the cattails" has a chilling double
closure: The spiritual awakening (first of the mother and, at the very
end, also of her son, the scion of a gentile) is perforce entwined with a
physical annihilation. Toni brings her son back to her Jewish home-
town only to be swallowed by the maelstrom: ·1t was an old locomo-
tive, drawing two old cars-the local, apparently. It went from station
to station, scrupulously gathering up the remainder.• ,.
Can we call the author of this unredeemed emplotment an outsider
to the Hebraic tradition? Only if we read the letter, not the spirit.
Appelfeld's Hebrew may indeed be "thin," devoid of traditional allu-
sions and inherited literary formulas, but his goal is traditional enough:
"From now on I am writing stories whose theme is-Jewuh destiny,"
said Appelfeld in a press interview in 1975. "I am writing now about
the· historical Jew, the way he was in the diaspora. I want to show that
what happened in the war was a process that had been fermenting for
a long time, so I trace the footsteps that led to what i.s called Shoah. I
tk, not like the word '$hoah': Shoah it a sudden event, wheretU what
happened had had Us own preambles" {my translation; emphasis
added). 115 We have come full circle, then, not only to the Jewish tradi-
tion, which Appelfeld has adopted in Israel, following the teaching of
the late literary critic Dov Sadan• but to Zionist rhetoric as well.
And here we run into the most fascinating paradox in a writer who is
known for his love of paradoxes:,rr"Let the assimilators admit their er-
ror," screams one of the survivors in the 1980 novel Michvat Ha'or
(Searing Light).• •If not for the assimilators, if not for the apostates
. . . we would have looked differe nt today." And when reminded that
"they are gone, they are gone. What do you want from them, they
were aU burnt up," all he can do is whimper, WLet them admit their
guilt, let them admit it in public.''• Framed this way, in the hysterical
diatribe of au enraged refugee (who turns out to be the past profes-
sional rival of the young namtor's father, and a Zionist), Zionist ideol-
ogy sounds Uttle more than cliohe and thin propaganda, This whole
novel in fact reads as a ferocious parody of the Zionist enterprise of re-
education, of the ,attempt to ~baptize" the s1,1rvivors as ·new Jews."00 It
Is a perfect mirror image of the earlfer literary portrayals of the identity
crisis of the native Israeli upon his first ronfrontation with the Jew from
•over there"; except that here the perspective is reversed and we wit-
ness the young survivor desperately clutching to a shattered identity,

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 Whose Story 11 Tl, An,!IWOyi'
< 233 >

a trace of the self he might have been, even as he feigns (or, in some
cases, refuses) to adopt a new one. That the carrier of this struggle is
language itself is only natural. As Sidra Ezrahi has shown, it is the
refugees' private "war of languages" that dramatizes the antagonism
"between the privacy of biography and the tyranny of collective exis-
tence."••
Yet there is a darker underside to Appelfeld's "search for a
. .
language""" in this novel. For while parodying Zionist rhetoric, his nar-
rator fashions bis own perception of the events by using the well-
defined and abused lexi<.'On of the ''Final Solution": "transports,"
"guards," "parasites," "insects." This does not make for easy reading, at
least not for a reader of my background, It becomes extremely difficult
when at certain moments the distinction between Zionist and Nazi
rhetoric is blurted (as in the repetition of the phrase "Work is good.
Work purifies"-pp. 43, 121, and 124, or in the constant talk about the
survivors· deformities 11nd blemishes (moomim, pegamun) that need
"correction''). 1f this sounds too harsh and unbecoming of the Appel-
feld you may know, consider, for example, the chilling closure of the
novel, in my translation: "The truck arrived late at night. The driver
came out of the cabin and angrily called out: 'Where are they. Where.'
The irritated call forced us out of our sleep all at once. The driver
pulled the stubborn catch and the door fell with a bang. And as it is in
sleep, there was no need for words. Bodies rolled into the box one after
another.
..
Could this nightmare be the protagonist's description of his con-
scription into the Israeli army shortly after arriving in Palestine? And
if so, what is the onto}ogical status of this representation: as a genuine
subjective memory of the narrator who, being a refugee, had no other
language in which .t o•process his new e~riences?-or as a deliberate
choice of encoding by the extrateictual implied author?
Whatever the answer, the implications are heavy. And if Appelfeld
may not have been aware of them at the time {1980), he must have
become so a few years later, when ib the wake of the Lebanon war the
identification of Zionism with Nazism became commonplace among
writers on the political left. (This linkage is best exemplified by Sobol's
t,ise of "the identification with the aggressorr as a ploy in the dramatic
argument of his play Ghetto, 1984, discussed above.) That Searing
Light might be retrospectively absorbed by this new metaphor was
probably not a welcome possibility for the author. And although this

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 Yael S. Feldman
<. 234 >

novel undoubtedly stands not only outside but in opposition to the

Zionist script of history and the Holocaust, 1 doubt that this holds true
foT Appelfeld's oeuvre as a whol.e. For as much as be may rebel against
the yoke of the collective, and as much as he may see himself as the
spokesperson for the suppressed individual, he also admits that along
the way of personal introspection the writer finds •not only himself but
the scattered soul ofhis people as well."""
This insight is clearly borne out by his subsequent work, in which
he seems to have left behind his experiential indictment of early Zion-
ist practice. whiJe adopting its overall historical perspective. So far,
Se4ring Light stands alone in his oeuvre, an expression of unredeemed
pain, perhaps an exercise in a personal working-through ofl<>ng-buried
conflicts. It has not been translated, and I doubt that it Will be in the
near future. (Rumor has it that the author forbade any transl.alion of
this work.) But it bas no doubt cleared the way for Appelfeld's search
for "Jewish destiny." Th.it this destiny is conceptualized by him in
terms of Zionism according to Dov Sadan should come as no surprise:
after aU, it was Sadan who offered a literary scheme in which the op-
position of Jew versus Israeli would collapse. Reapproprialing "the tl)-
tality of Jewish experience," Appelfeld can now reclaim a Jewish iden-
tity that he had never had, in person, while turning against the
assimil.ated culture of his youth along with its njstorical precedents and
analogues. 34
What this analysis suggests, then, is that in some sense even Appel-
feld, the representative of Holocaust survivors among Hebrew novel-
ists, has been coopted by the governing norm of the Israeli represen-
tation of the Shoah; and that despite his personal grudge, rooted in the
psychological experiences of his youth, he is ideologically anchored
within the Zionist camp and its collective, "clo$ural" interpretation of
history. Once again, psychology is subsumed by ideology. and the per•
sonal by the communal (albeit in a diametrically opposite direction
from Sobol and his followers). One may even specUlate that it was pre-
cisely this ideological-communal anchor that enabled Appelfeld to re-
linquish his initial post- Holocaust chaos and enter his current authorial
(and authoritative) position.
We have to tum elsewhere, then, in our search for a break in the
paradigm. Paradoxically, we find it among native novelists who, so far
as I know, had no personal or even direct familial expe.r ience of the
Shoah, but who are known for their clearly expressed ideological posi-

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 Whoae Story I, 11, Anyway?
< 235 >

tions-somewtiere to the left of the Israeli political consensus of the

1970s and 1980s. Since the correlation between the positrons of these
novelists and their literary representations of the Holocaust is less
transpll.fent than in the case of the theater (S.obol), a detailed demon-
stration of it will necessitate a separate analysis. Let me therefore. just
sketch out here the general lines of the new script in which they recast
the Shoah, alluding to some of its ideological implications.
Yoram Kaniuk's Adam Ben. Ke.lev (literally, "A human son of dog," but
translated as Adam Resunuted) has come to figure as a major Shoah
novel in every summary of the subject. Yet very little attention was
given to it when it W<!,S published in 1969.0$ kaniuk was the first writer
who dared pit the survivor's pathology against the Israeli consensus of
psychological normalcy: Mental pathology is almost legifimired here-
a rather subversive gesture, even as a metaphor, for Israel of the late
sixties. Kaniuk was also the first native Israeli to adopt the point of
view of the survivor as an individual, without imposing on his story any
collective or historical interpretive scheme. Redemptive clo,s ure is sat-
irized in the plot several times over (the stroog Cbristological allusions
not excluded), and the role of the·sane community is only marginal to
that of the asylum-both the locus of the plot and the story's major
symbol.
The Hebrew title, when understood in all its diverse punning,
should hint at the • carnivalesque" quality of this novel, a sort of"Holo-
caust laughter" that the late Terrence Des Pres has recommended.311
Realism is undermined, here by a.great measure of fantasy: the protag-
onist is endowed wtth supernatural skills of entertainment that saved
his life in the concentration camp but were powerless to save his fam-
ily-hence the guilt and self~punishment he "insanely" imposes on
himself, and of which he wi.11 not let go.
' this should sound somewhat familiar to those who may not have
All
read Kaniuk's novel but have read Grossman 's 1986 novel 'Ayen 'Erech
. (See Under:
'Ahavah . Love). Nearly two decades
. separate the two nov-
els, yet the latter would be inconceivable without the former. 37 GrQss-
man gives up the asylum symbolis-m, but retains almost everything
else-the camivalesque humor, the fanta.~y. the validation of pathol-
ogy as •artistic creation,~ the supernatural powers of the survivor; his
powerlessness to save others, the less-than-diabolic Nazi officer, and,
finally, the belief that wth in human love is the only possible redemp-
tion.

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 Yael S. Feldman
< 236 >

All this being said, we should give Grossman his due: He takes sev-
eral giant steps beyond the "story" bequeathed to him by Kaniuk; and
each of these steps have helped him "deconstruct," so to speak, the
Hebraic-Zionist model with all its implications. What he e nds up with
is a sprawling postmodernist text, unique. in Hebrew literature at
large, in which several genres of Shoah literature commingle and in-
teract; the stories of I'unit>ers concentrationnaire; of resistance in the
ghetto, though totally different from that with which we are familiar;
of survivors in Israel1and Rnally, of the second generation's struggle to
come to terms with the silences and denials of their par<ents.
It is within this last story that Grossman frames all the other narra-
tives, and it is precisely this frame that aroused both admiration and
criticism, not to mention a lot of confusion. Momik, his second-
generation protagonist, whose traumatic childhood in the shadow of
-the land of over there" has won the hearts of most readers, grows up
to become a writer who tries to redeem the worst of all worlds by the
power of his narrative art. This is an ironic reversal of the processes of
public ritualization which have become the major channel through
which young Israelis could learn about the Shoah. By emplotting this
longjoumey Jnto the heart of the death camps as an intensely pet$0nal.
odyssey, triggered by a writer's block and traced to the particular pa-
thology of (single) children of survivors, Grossman has attempted to
release the S·b oah &om the shackles of the collective and reclaim it as a
subjective experience. Predictably, it is this very twist that many read-
ers have found difficult to digest, both in Israel and in America. Accus-
ing the author of self-centeredness, they read his interpretation as a
trivialization, as a personalized emplotment which is too narrow for a
cataclysm of such immense proportions. Yet individualism is only the
obverse of universalism, and personal psychology only a foil in the en-
counter with collective ideology (a technique Grossman had elabo-
rated tlumiatically in his 6fst novel, Hiyooch Hagedi [The Smile of the
Lamb, 19831).
Emphasizing the universal rather than tlie national, making re-
demption a relentless process rather than a historical or narrative clo-
sure (the .novel does not end optimistically, despite its insistence on
the presence of gQOd even at the heart of evil), the author $Uggests a
new set of attitudes that transform and transcend the old oppositions.
His choice of Bruno Schultz, the epitome of assimilation, as his protag-
onist's literary ideal and source of inspiration is no accident. Through

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 Whose Story ls lt, Anyway?
< 237 >
him Grossman offers a canonic analogue of the message developed in
the noncanonic (and therefore subject to disregard) children's stories
of Momik's • grandfather," Anshel Wasserm.an. Momik's infatuation
with Schultz is presented .as a mature version of his childhood fascina-
tiO!l with his grandfather'$ naive, old.fashioned stpries. In his long in•
terior monologue (ostensibly addressed to the She-Ocean) he moves,
in a kind of free association (presumably "changing the subject," p.
101), &om his rendition of Bnino Schultz's life story to his disoovery of
Wasserman's place in the literary canon. In a critical article about
"early-twentieth-<.-entury children's magazines in.Poland," Momik finds
that" 'opinion is divided' on the quali~ and importance of his (Wasser-
man's} writing. The critic further remarks-not without a hint of re-
proach-that my grandfather was one of the few Hebrew authors
'writing at a time of national and linguistic revival . . . to deal chiefly
with universal themes, scarcely touching on the issue of Jewish nation-
alism, indeed, ignoring it altogether. Thfs may account for his favor
with the children_ of the world and his attiµnment of a popular succe$S
beyond the reacb of more masterful Hebrew writers imbued with a
sense of Zionist mission.' "38
Is this straightforward reporting or parodic portrayal?- Does one
have to be intimately familiar with the intemal' feuds of modem Jewish
culture to sense the grinning irony of the implied author? Possibly.
Grossman, however, does not leave us in doubt about Momik's posi-
tio11: "I was furious at this pompous ass of a 'critic'; you don't judge a
man like Anshel Wasserman according to the commonplaces of literary
analysis. Couldn't he see that?""" Momik's fury marks the national He-
brew critic's opmion as negative, thereby guiding the uninitiated
reader towards a "correct" evaluation of its contents. But his fury is
misguided, of course. For beneath "the commonplaces of literary anal-
ysis" lurk the commonplaces· of ideological biases, this time in the g.u-b
of"nationalism" versus "universalism." It is this opposition that is the
covert target of the implied author, and it is its subtle debunking that
was a welcome change for some readers and a source of discontent for
others.
That a major parameter of this change is a position of empathy to-
ward any "other#-victim or aggressor, Jew or Geptile-even to the
eittent of identi6cation and immersion in his mental world, should
come 8$ no surprise: after all, Crossman was also the first Israeli to
imagine &om within the psychological world of another victim-the

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U~hVit1$1,r C,F Mll''·IIGAl'l

 Yael S. Feldman
< 238 >
eccentric Palestinian of The Smile ofthe Lamb (1983). And it is perhaps
no accident that a similar move cha.raoterizes also Kaniuk and Sobol,
both of whom tried to represent the other in bis or her subject posi-
tion, in the novel 'Aralli Too (A Good Arab, 1984) and the play Hapa-
l,estinayit (The. Paleninian, 1985; titled in English Shooting Magda),
respectively.
We have come full circle then to the opening of my essay: "Facing
the Holocaust" and "Facing the Forests" finally do meet. In 1988 Ger-
shon Shaked lamented the fact that Hebrew literature still ~lacks a
plausible and necessary linking between the two core-experiences
(Shoah and Restitution) that history has proven reali2llble despjte their
incomprehensibility."~ He was talking about the literature of the older
generation, those writers who either experienced or witnessed the
Shoah in their Ufetlme. Paradoxically, it is only now, with the $#!Cond.
generation, that such a link is being formed-though not in the way
Shaked had anticipated.•• And as If to add confusion to paradox, the
novel that has actually put the •·second generation" on the map was not
written by a ohild of survivors, With an uncanny intuition, Grossman
has tapped a new creative source while it was still in the making. See
Under; Love crystallizes in a subtle and sophisticated fashion ,psycho-
logical and ideological shifts that are being expressed more crudely
el's ewhere in contemporary drama and documentary cinema (" Because
ofThat Warl and in the fiction of the second generation. Although the
range of these shifts is rather broad, they share one common feature-
a rejection of the collective model of representation that they inherited
from their parents and cultural mentors.
Rather than finding the • necessary link" that this model aspires to,
contemporary writers seek a close subjective encounter with the ex-
periences that the ideo]ogy of that model of necessity suppressed. That
they thereby undermine the historical closure assumed by that model
is only too obvious. And it is precisely this disruption that brings us
back to the source ofthe new developments: the extreme ideological
polarization that governs the contemporary political scene in Israel.
When the choice is limited to that between the victim or the victim-
iZer, the oppressed or the oppressor, each of these tends to function as
a "reaction formation," an automatic psychological mechanism that de-
prives the Individual of his potentiality for freedom of choice and in-
dependent judgment. In response to this danger, Israeli writers now
turp. to the core experiences of their eostence and reshape them in

JIIJ!I ,11 !!Uni

11N1Vftt:S11) nF MII-HiGAN
 Whose Stcry Ir It, AnywayP
< 239 >

their own image. That by so doing they challenge and transform the
limits of one model of representation is no doubt true. But that at the
same time they unavoidably create a new set of limits is also true-a
fact that in itself should have. pragmatic, as well as philosophical, im-
plications.

.l1 I J!i ,11 11 lf!I\

urnVEf1$1,, !)F Mll"Hll·AI I
 < 15 >

Translating Paul Celan's "Todesfuge":

Rhythm and Repetition as Metaphor

JOHN FELSTINER

' AsPaultoCelan's
the Thythm, as to the effects and the after-effects of rhythm in
"Todesfuge," consider for a moment that sioee the 1950s,
1

German high-schoolers have sometimes engaged with this poem by

rendering it vocally, not only in unison but as part-song. Let them be- •
forehand study fugues with their music instructor, one ped11gogical
journal suggests, then in German class students can each adopt a motif
or voice to perform Celan's poem, so as (our journal says) "to make the
polyphony audible." 1
' One can perhaps imllgine how this might sound, but can hardly
imagine, even with the most well-meaning teacher and sympathetic
teenagers, what real effect such a performance might have-what
mindfulness those nervously rehe;u-sed and recited lines might gener-
ate. They aim "to make the polyphony audible," but what about that
unresolvable dissonance the art ofa fugue makes with Nazi genocide?
A closer look at the teachers' journal doesn't ebcjt much hope. A dozen
meticulous paragraphs analyze the contrapuntal elements in 'Todes-
fuge,- but not one sentence recognizes that the poem's very form, the
rhythm and repetition so amenable to pei;4gogic technique, may it-
self-in miming German musical mastery-indict the nation that or-
chestrated mass murder.
What then did it take to evoke such an utte-rance as "Todesfuge,''
Celan's first published poem?* Some decades of Roumanian fascist
antisemitism, let's say, behind the July 1941 irruption ,of an S,S. Ein-
satzkommando into Czemowitz, Bukovina, the plundering and burn-
ing and slaughter, the ghetto, the overnight deportation of Paul Celan's
parents to Transnistria, the news of their brutal murder there when he
was twenty-one, the year and a half be spent at forced labor, then in

._The complete iext and,tnn!lation of '"fodesfuge" apt:,ear at the end of this oluapter.

<. 240 >

J1 I J!i ,11 If !l)

UihVit1S1,1 C,F 1\\11.HIGA>l
 TramlaHng Paul Ce/an', "Todeefuge"
< 241 >

1944 the personal and newspaper accounts of Jews returning (or not
returning) from Nati camps.3 It took all this, and at bottom it took a
stroke of verbal nerve, to prompt the plural pronoun wir (we) in "To-
desfuge'"s opening lines:
Sehr.cane Mikh der Friihe wil' trinkl?fl sie abends
wir trinken .fie mittags und morgeM wir trinken sui nachts
wir trinkep und trinken
Blade milk of daybrealc we drink it at evening
we drink it at midday and morning we drink it at night
we drink and we drink
Above all, the immediacy of"Todesfuge," its compelling because com-
pelled monologue driven as if by unremitting duress, has made two
generations of readers assent to this poem's authenticity. So much so,
in fact, that the catalogue for a recent exhibition of Anselm Kiefer's
paintings, which embody lines from "Todesfuge,~ states that Celan's
poem ~was written in a concentration camp," and a New York Times
article repeats that misinfoTTJ1ation. • But in fact he composed the poem
in Czemowltz in late 1944, not long after Soviet troops reoccupied
Bukovina. If .._Todesfuge" spealcs as if immediately from a Nazi camp
where the speaker rs present, that owes to this lyric's decisive present•
ment of firsthand witness, its first-person, on-the-spot, unstopping
present tense-wir trinken und trinken.
To speak of rhythm and repetition as metaphor in Celan's 'Todes-
fuge," and in a translation of 'Todesfuge," calls forth the question of
music-the prosodic music of the verse itself as well as the music we
are told of within the verse: that ls, the cadence running or rising and
falling and now and then ruptured, the allite~tion and ·rare rhyme, the
refrains or recurrent motifs, and the coda, as well as the whistling we
hear about, the playing and dancing and singing, the fiddles and the
fugue named in CeIan's title. Strictly speaking, the poem's various mo-
tifs do not proceed fugally; but are more loosely permuted. Yet in cou-
pling "fugue" to Mdeath," thJS title drastically travesties everyone's par-
agon Meister aus Deuuchland, Bach, with his Kuri8t tkt FtAge (Art of
the Fugue). 'The title also sets this poem within. although desperately
against the grain of, a profound tradition in German culture: the asso-
ciation of music with death, as in Wagner's Uebestod. Schubert's Erl,
kiinig, and Bach's Komm swser Tod, "Spielt swser den Tod," says the
"master" in Celan's "Todesfuge," "play death more sweetly."

J, 1JU ,11 1run)

U/)\Vff151,, !)F 1\111.Hll ·,->.1 I
 John Felstiner
< 242 >
Let us bring the question of music to OOllf on this lyric written not
so much after ·as about (and reputedly even in) Auschwitz., and soon
enough you will hear Theodor Adamo's much touted dictum, Noch
AuschWltz ein Gedicht zu schreiben ist barbl)ruch (After Auschwitz.,
to write a poem is barbaric).$ Adomo's stricture has to do with the
pleasures of representation, questioning whether and how to re-
present aesthetically the Nazi ,genocide, how to make present again
the human experience of it, lf one way is throu_gb rhythm and repeti-
tion as metaphor, the.n we should first bring into question the matter
of metaphor itself.
"What shall I bike to witness for thee? what shall I liken to thee; 0
daughter of Jerusalem? what shall I equal to thee, that I may comfort
theer This question, this outcry from Lamentations (2:13) seemingly
casts in doubt the potency of metapbor--offigurative ilulguage; which
is the stulf of poetry-to represent, much less to heal, utter duress.
Yet that very personification of the solitary city, who is "become as a
widow" and "weepeth sore in the night," sits at the source and origin of
Judaic lamentation. "Todesfuge" enters into this tradition, taking Shu-
lamith's "-ashen hair" to witness for Jewish afRiction.
"The prophets used much by metaphors / to set forth truth." says
John Bunyan's apologia. "Truth" is not advanced much these days as a
literary desideratum, but Paul Celan was never too fastidious to speak
about truth in conne<:tion with poetry. Just after the war, for instance,
a friend wondered how Ce)Jm could go on writing poems in the Wt·
guage that fashioned Endlosung ("Final Solution") and judenrein
CJew-free"), slogans meant to obliterate such things as his poetry. After
all, his Roumanian was near-native, his French perfe<:tly fluent. Celan
answered., -only in the mother tongue can one speak his own truth; in
a foreign tongue the poet lies."• And gradually, Lbelieve, it came home
to him that truths of the European Jewish catastrophe could be articu-
lated only in German, precisely because-notalthough-the ml!.rder-
ers spoke it.
This realiution dawns in "Todesfuge,~ which absorbs into its verse
the tokens of destruction-a rod, a bullet-and uncannily cites the
perpetrator's words, ~your golden hair Marguerite" from the comman-
dant's letter home, embedding those words within the poem"s own
verse rhythm. But as the postwar, West German public absorbed and
assimilated Celan's Jewish elegy, his unintended gift to Vergangen-
heitsbewiiltigung (mastery of the past), he became acutely sensitive to

!! · I '1 I I
U~J\Vffl:Sfi) (j< r,1t1·H;(:.AN
 Tran.dating Paul Celan's ''TocUJ,fuge"
< 243 >

the deceiving pleasures ofTepresentation, the deflecting effect of met•

aphot.
Celan 's title itself creates the poem's elemental metaphor, and re•
sists a single or simple rendering. 7 It can sound like a surrealist geni•
tive, as for example "eyelids of night" might point to something beyond
our reality. But "Fugue of Death;' a correct translation, loses the Ger-
man genitive Todesfuge' s compactness-the compact, as it were, be-
tween death and music, rupture and or3er, the word"s two sides. Yet
"Deathfugue" does not present the idea of belonging, of a train of
events belonging to death. Possibly a difficult single word, "Deaths-
fugue," coins a strange enough equivalent?
Celan's opening, Schwarz.e Milch der Fruhe, also becomes the re-
frain of "Todesfuge"-a refrain so catching that young Germans to
whom I mention Paul Celan come up with "Schwarze Milch" before
remembering the title. Beginning with the metaphor "black milk• im•
plicitly announces that not description but only metaphor; the 6gUre
of speech that asserts something contrary to fact, can convey what
must incredibly be known: And "black milk" forms an extreme, even
the paradigm of oxymoron, a bittersweet that nullifies the maternal
nourishment essential to humankind. Incidentally, Bruno Bettelheirn
has read schwaru Milch as "the image of a mother destroying her in•
fant." 8 But this perhaps characteristically blames just the wrong party.
I think Celan, whom the wrenching loss of his adored mother trauma-
tized incurably. would have winced at this twist of his metaphor.
As it happens , Celan suffered acutely from a controversy over the
inventiveness of schwaru Milch. Yvan Goll's widow accu__sed him of
having plagiarized her husband, and the German press helped publi-
cize this groundless, drawn-out charge.° Celan, she said, had bor-
rowed from this quattain by Coll: Noua buoom le lait noi,; "We drink
the black milk / Of the cow Misery / When they butcher our broth-
ers / In slaughte rhouses." But these lines appeared in Ne.w York in
1942; ifs highly unlikely that by 1944 Celan, in Roumanian labor
camps and Soviet-occupied Czemowitz, could have known them. Be-
sides, several other Jewish poets &om Czemowin used metaphors
similar tQ "black milkt all of which might have some remoter origin. 10
Schwaru Milch could readily have been distilled from chapter four of
Lamentations- ~Her princes were . . . whiter than milk . . . Their
visage is darker than black"-or could arise quite independently, for
that matter,

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U1hVEf1S111 !)F 1\111.Hll'A>l
 John Felstiner
< 244 >
The point here is that a plagiarism charge not only impugns original-
ity, it also exacerbates the q uestion of metaphorical truth, seeming to
vitiate the truth-claim of an image such as black milk. Doubtless Celan
felt attacked on both counts, originality and veracity, two not uncom-
panionable qualities. At bottom be saw the plagiarism campaign,
picked up in Germany, as a willingness to efface. the past by blaming
its victim. "Hitlerism reborn," he said, accuses him of "duping the so
good people of Germany by . . . depicting in such a tragic way the
1.egend of my wen ts murdered by the Nazis," 11 ln underlining "leg-
end," a term Claire Goll had used about Celan's writings, he marks
how a poets witness to the "Final Solution" can be dismissed as fiction.
Celan was always wary of q uestions about literary provenimce, par-
ticularly those directed at him from Germany. In 1959 be responded
to the classical philologist Walter Jens about allusions to Democritus
and Dante; then in 11)61, at the height of the plagwism affair, Jens
must have queried him again about some other sources. •• Celan re-
plied with a kind of thin-ice politeness. About his poem "In Gestalt
ei11es Ebers'' (In the form of a boar) he writes, "Well now I've asked
myself where I might have gotten my boar. Boars, dear Walter Jens, -
such things do exist [das gibt es. eben) ."
In this letter the poet also responds to a question about literary
precedents for his astonishillg motif from "Todesfuge"; u>ir schaufeln
ein Grab in den Luften da liegt man nicht eng (we shovel a grave in the
air there you won't lie too cramped). Celan most revealingly says: "The
'grave in the air'-my dear Walter Jens, in this poem. God knows , it is
neither borrowing nor metaphor [wei&s Gott weder Entlehnung rwch
Metapher]." "God knows," indeed! We ourselves cannot know, and
might well adopt Celan's deploring, imploring phrase, "neither bor-
rowing nor metaphor," as a touchstone in testing the limits ofrepresen-
tation.
At least two Jewish survivoTS' bave known well enough what "a grave
in the air" had to do with. Jean Am6ry said in 19'76 that German anti-
semitism is ~playing with the fire that dug a grave in the air for so
many." 13 And when Primo Levi, who shared a block at Auschwitz with
Am~ry; invents the partisans' anthem for his 1982 novel If Not Now,
When?, they sing that their slaughtered brothers ''have dug them-
selves a grave in the air.r 1• 1 asked Levi how consciously he had used
the image from "Todesfuge." lie said that Yes, he stole it, but that
~stealth" (his English word) was a form of homage-a particular horn-

1,.,.... co ,gle .lllJ!I ,11 If I\

U~hllff1:S1il !)f M11·'-IIUA> I
 Translating Paul Celans "T<Xksfuge"
< 245 >

age, I would add, because it credits CeJan's words on Yiddish lips,

indeed on the Yiddish lips of resistance fighters.
After all, ein Grab in den Luften moves as metaphor beyond meta-
phor, In asserting what is not the case, it identifies a new datum. The
Ea.~t European Luftme~h. who cunningly lived on air, at last has "a
grave in the air," has literally expired into the air over the chimneys.
And the striking conjunction of"grave· and "air" also insi.sts that count-
less Jews got no proper grave. So when even Rolf Hochhuth, wonder-
ing how to portray the horror of Auschwitz, remarks that "Todesfuge"'s
"masterly" metaphors actually screen olf reality, one might ask who is
really being screened off.•• And what if "black milk" is in faot no meta-
phor at all, but the very term camp inmates used to describe a liquid
they were given? If so, schwarz.e MiUJh shows that in Nazi0 ridden Eu-
rope, the real overtook the surreal, brute fact outfaced imagination.
"Did you do this?" a Gestapo officer once asked Picasso in his Paris
studio, gesturing at Guemica, and the painter replied, "No ... you
did." 1•
Fearing that "Todesfuge" could sound outlandish, its first publisher,
in Bucharest in 1947, felt the need to precede it with a note .assuring
his readership that "the poem ... is ha.~ on a real fact" : in Maidanek
and elsewhere, he says., "some of the condemned were forced to sing
sad music while others dug graves." 11 This perhaps naive-sounding as-
surance does not necessarily relegate Celan~ poem to the status,of ar-
tifact. Maybe the magazine's readers needed some such orientation
because in 1947, when "Todesfu.ge" appeared, Roumania was going
Soviet; the same issue included. a long and doubtless hearte ning poem
called "The Tractor." What's more, in this first publication Celan's title
was not "Todesfuge" but "Todestango" (Tango of death)-alf the more
Teason for readers to suspect svelte rhythms giving the lie to graves
and smoke.
Here too fact intervenes, documenting not so much "Todesfuge" as
the destruct:4ve scheme this poem bodies forth. At the Janowska camp
in Lemberg, an S.S. lie1Jtenant made Jewish fiddlers play a new piece
called "Death Tango" during camp functions.•• And at Maidanek-this
from a 1944 pamphlet that Moscow circulated in many languages-
prisoners marched to the crematorium in columns five abreast; uScores
of loudspeakers began to emit the deafening strains of the foxtrot and
the tango. And they blared all the morning, all day, all the evening,
and all nightt •~

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Ui)\Vff15111 C,F 1\111.Hll · A>)
 John Felstiner
< 246 >
Suppose that Paul Celan in Soviet-occupied Czemowitz saw this
1944 account of the music blaring all morning, all day. all evening, all
night. Then shortly afterwards he wrote: .. Black milk of daybreak we
drink it at evening / we drink it at midday and morning we drink it at
night." Or even suppose that Celan wrote "Todesfuge" while actually
fn a camp. These assumptions only begin to touch the poem's authen-
ticity. For a gap still exists between reported fact and cadenced verse.
In spl!,rking that gap, the poem reveals not fact but psychic actuality-
an actuality about which Celan after 1945 stayed eloquently tacit.
M What the life of a Jew was during the war years,'' he wrote once, "l
need not mention.""" Or else be simply called those yeats das was ge-
schah (that which happened), or he resorted to necessary paradox, de-
claring himself (in Germany after the war) one who mit seinem Dasein
t ur Sprache geht, wirlclichkeit$W!Jnd und Wirkllchlceit mchend (goes
with his very being to language. stricken by and seeking reality) (GW.
m. 1'86).
What kind of hold, then, has Celan's "Todesfuge" on the Wirkllch-
keu, the "reality" that both hurt and drew him ? Or rather, what reality
do his lines open up, open toward? Certainly the poem contains tokens
enough of a murderous world: commandant, hounds, shovels, graves,
smoke. This unioen, coricentrationnaire, however; inheres essentially
in the rhythm and repetitions of"Todesfuge~ (which are, for better or
worse, what induce German teachers to have it performed). l ts
rhythms, beneath everything else, make this lyric irrefutable. As the
only poem Celan ever wrote with no punctuation whatsoever, it finds
a beat by the first line-
wir trinken sie abends
_ I - 11 - I -
we- drink it at evening
-and keeps finding that rising-falling through to the end. Something
enthralling about the rhythm makes. 1t germane to this poem and no
less so to any translation, if a listener is to sense the coercion locked
within the allure of enthrallment. And Celan recited. "Todesfuge" re-
le ntlessly, with no release of tempo or tension, iterating and reiterating
a few turns of speech, voicing endless atttition. u
Endless attrition: he re we perceive the poem's elemental signifying
gesture, a timing of day-in, day-out fatality, eternal recurrence under
what Nietzsche would call its "most d readful" aspect; "wir trinken und

- , Go ,glc 11 ·l rtl I I

UihVEf'IS1,r (I~ Mt011uA!J

 TraMlating Paul Celani "Todesfuge"
< 247 >
trinken.nu But if this poem managed no more than a compulsive repe-
tition, that could only bring the trauma back, representing it help-
lessly. Instead, the plural voice stops saying ·we drink it" and ad-
dresses the "black milk" directly: wlr tnnken dlch (we drink you-or
"we drink thee," I'm tempted to say, matching the intimate German
dich with a form that English has lost except in biblical idiom). For
these speakers to confront the poem's dominant figure of "black
milk" -is it the gas itself?-seems an act of rhetorical resistance·, al-
most outfacing the metaphor's objective authority.
Similarly, rather than succumb to the "master~ narrative of the Meu-
ler aw Deutschland, whose epistolary utterance-"your golden hair
Marguerite"-is heard in every stanza, some other voice interrupts
with "your ashen hair Shulamith,- This cannot be the commandant's
but must be an alternative voice; that is, helpless repetition transforms
momentarily into memorial litany.
What it feels like to hear Fawt's tragic heroine Margarete maudlinly
invoked on S.S. lips is probably best attested by native Germans who
grew up revering Goethe as the quintessential Enlightenment spirit,
But does a rendering of Margarete as "Marguerite" deftect that irony?
To my ear the French name, gath!lring gorgeous overtones from Gou-
nod's and Berlio£s operas-, emphasizes a deeper irony, that of the mu-
sic counterpointing 'iodesfuge"'s deathliness. And ''Margueriteh even
adds a bitter bilingual rhyme with the Hebrew "Shulamith."
As pertinent as the presence in 1'odesfuge" of Goethe through his
Margarete, I think, is the more favorably charged presence of Hein•
rich Heine, like Celan a German-speaking Jewish poet exiled in Paris
with complexly ambJvale11t feelings towaJd Germany. When the com-
mandant in Celan's poem writes home to his beloved dein goldenes
Haar Margarete, he is tritely emulating Heine's most famous song to
the Lorelei, the siren who "combs her golden hair." But whe.reas that
type of allusion in Eliot's Waste LAnd would have mainly an ironic,
undercutting effect, here such an emulation must strike us as pro-
foundly sickening, given the fact that Nazi cultural commissars offi-
cially declared Heine's poems to be Manonymous" folksong, Celan was
well aware of this literary purging, and came -at times to identify him-
self with Heine."'
Sometimes in "Todesfuge" the cadence alone can subvers.ively sum-
mon another text or historical moment, enlisting them within its own
design. Listening to C¢lan's poem, we might well have in our ears

•• ·1 rtl I
U~hVEf'l$fi) Ci~ 7,ltl-'·IIGAl'l
 John Felstlner
< 248 >

another well-known lyric by Heine, "The Silesian Weavers" {1844).

whose angry suffering stanz.a.s directed l!gainst the vicious Vaterland
now come to have a familiar refrain:
We're busy weaving day and night-
Old Cermany, we weave your shroud,
We weave the threefold cune in it,
We're weaving, we're weaving!
Wir weben, wir weben! From a century later, we hear the sound and
cadence of wlr trinken und trinken, in "Todesfuge.b Heine's speakers-
were weaving the doom of their oppressors, though the actual Silesian
weavers were brutally supp.res-sed, not far from Oswiecim. Celm's
speakers must passively drink their own doom.
For these reasons and others, it matters to keep the beat. Wir trin-
ken und tnnken: by line three, the poem's shorte$t verse, this rhythm
has taken hold, and ought to hold in translation as well_;"we're drink-
ing and drinking." Although that sounds too vulgar for Celan's phrase,
some such rollicking beat may call up a waltz-like sens;ltion or, even
more ironically, may bring out a sardonic hint in •oeathsfugue" ofwell-
loved German drinking songs-of the Munich beer-hall. let's- say,
where Nazism arose: wir trinken und tnnken-you CaJl see the torsos-
swaying md hear the tankards clanking. Or else this hectic rhythm-
spielt weiter zum Tanz auf (play on for the dmcing}-can evoke the
traditional medieval Cerman emblem, the Totentan,z or dance of
death, danse macabre-and all right then, say grateful source-
spotters, so that's all it is, the old Totentanz!
You may hear as well, tn the opentng verses of"Todesfuge," another;
distantly familiar biblical rhythm, which I have come t.o recognize
through translating. Schwarze Milch der Fruhe wir trinken rie abend.s:
I would lilce to say "Black milk of daybreak we drink it at dusk," so as to
let alliteration impont an inescapable dire recurrence. But i.nstead of
"dusk," "evening" for abends at the end of the line not only keeps Ce-
Ian's metric, it also leads to umom1ng" in tlte next line, -morgen.s. Now
turn back behind trus poem and recall Martin Luther's Genesis, Da
ward aus Abend und Morgen der erste Tag, or the Buber-Rosenzweig
versfun, Abend ward und Morgen ward: Ein Tag ('There was evening
and there was morning: one day). To call up this deeply recessed bib-
lical rhythm, Vay'.hi ereo l'A!/'hi baker yam echad, gives Celan:s poem
unlimited reach. And for a translator to say "evening," with the King

• 1• ·1 ,11 I I

U~hVEi'l$fi) (I< 7dti"HIGAN

 Trarulattng Paul Celani "Todufuge"
< 249 >
James version, rather than ''dusk," sustains a radical parody, a counter-
mand of Creation- though not so radical a parody, of course, as a He-
brew translation of the poem would present,
Celan 's poem makes us think again about the limits of representa-
tion. The rhythmic reiteration in lines such as wir tnnken dich abends
und morgens wir trlnken und trinken, where meter incessantly metes
out a wretched daily Tation; the overtones of beer hall and death dance
whose mutual discrepancy only makes them more pertinent; the ca-
dence of biblical Creation drawn into a kind of morning roU call that
nullifies the founding myth- all this lyric activity drives deeper than
any reportorial, documentary, or even testimonial task. ln other
words, where representation has its limits, presentation with such ter-
ri.lying resonances does not,
Nothing like these resonances was audible. I suspect, when in 1952
Paul Celan first visited postwar Germany, for a Group 47 meeting. He
read "Todesfuget which was then virtually unknown, and witnesse.s
differ somewhat as to how the reading went. He recited rapidly, with
pathos, and had "an almost hypnotic etfect," one person says, u but
another recalls that some writers went around • sarcastically $C311ning:
'Schwarze Milch der Friihe .. : " Reports speak of Celan's " pot&ie
pure,'' call him - ununderstandable," "'n ot engage." Evidently his pa•
thos and "visionary articulation" went over poorly, yet German radio
wanted to broadcast him and a publisher signed him up. Later that
year Celans first book came out in Germany, and "Todesfuge" began
its career as a caU8e ~ltbre, practically a national obsession.
One or two early responses met the poem head-on, but most, be-
guiled by its music, stuck to the label of potsie pure. A 1953 reviewer
Uked "Toderluge'·' for its "enchantment," its "removal of everythillg
concrete, absorptive rhythm , romanticizing metaphor, lyrical· al-
chemy," and "Zen Buddhist satori-experience.""' And Hans Egon Hol-
thusen, in the inffuential monthly Merkur, praised Celan for "master-
ing" (yes, bewal«gen) unimaginable ho.r rors "with a few simple
paradoxes"; for usinging one of the most ghastly and significant events
in recent history ... so that it escapes history's bloody chamber of
horrors to rise into the ether of pure poetry,"• Singing?-well, yes and
no. But rising info the ether?·That was the Jews this poem gives voice
to, never the poem itsel£
In Paris, where be eked out a living !IS a teacher aqd translator, Ce-
Ian watched woundedly the German appropriation of his poems.

JIIJ!i ,11 I! Iii

11~)1','fi,$111 C1F Mll"Hl(iAl•l
 John Felstiner
<:; 250 .,.

Sometime during the late 1950s he made the extraordinary recording

of "Todesfuge" we now have, but he never recorded it again. And be
would not permit the poem to be anthologized in collections that in-
cluded authors sympathetic to Nazism during the war. In 1958, accept-
ing the Bremen prize., he told his German audience that as a Gennan-
speaking Jew from eastern Europe, the only thing he had not lost was
his mother tongµe. ~But it had to pass," he said, "through its own an-
swerlessnesses, pass through frightful muting. pass through the thou-
sand darknesses of deathbringing speech~ (GW, III, 186). And in case
that insistent phrasing was not engagi enough, he added: "A poem is
not time.less . . . it seeks to reach through time-through it, OQt above
and beyond it."
Just then, Celan was also composing "Engfuhrung," a long poem,
difficult to access, whose title, meaning a fugal stretto, suggests that in
some sense it might supplant the "Todesfuge":
AsCM.
Asche, &che.
Nacht.
Nacht-und-Nacht. (CW. I, 199)

Here t he ashes and night from "Todesfuge ~ are rid of cadence and met-
aphor. Later in 1958. Celan spoke pointedly about German poetry's
need to set aside "the 'melodiousness' that more or less untroubled still
trips tunefully alongside what is most frightful" (GW, lli, 167). And
that year too, he wrote to a Sympathetic German doctof8) student:
"What counts for me is truth, not euphony."~ So much concern for the
historical implication as against the lyric freedom of German poetry
must bespeak an anxiety that 1odesfuge" was corning to serve as an
instrument of alibi, of ureparation" - was even lapsing into invidious
parallel with the orchestra at Auschwitz that doubtless gave S.S. offi-
cers a pleasurable diversion.
Then in 1960 came the plagiarism charge, followed by Celan's most
Jewishly steeped poems. Meanwhile Adorno, in a 1962 radio talk that
be also published in 196.5, repeated his notorious sentence, "After
Auschwitz, to write a poem is barbaric;• and explained it: "Through
the aesthetic principle of stylization . . . -an unimaginable fate still
seems as if it had some meaning; it becomes transfigured, with some-
thing of the horror removed.''.. Although Adorno probably did not
have Celan in mind, others applied his stricture to ~odesfuge.~ Worst
 Translaling Paul Celan's "Todesfege"
< 251 >

of all, a 196.5 article in Merkur, the journal that regµlarly housed Ador•
no's thoughts on music and literaturtt questioned "Todesfuge" and its
motifs, "all of them thoroughly composed in an elegant score-didn't
that show fur too much pleasure in art, in art making 'beauty' from
despairr 119
Bitterly, in letters and conversation, Celan rejected the suggestioo
(from Germany!) that a poet whose parents perished brutally at Nazi
hands and who himself barely survived forced labor might batten on
that history."" Indeed such a poet knows that wbeti the common lan-
guage has bad to "pass through . , . that which happened," as Celan
said, then mw happening must pass through poems to actuate con-
sciousness and conscience. Meanwhile his voicing of the German lan-
guage was unquestionably changing, was estranging that language-
the "true- I stammered mouth" (CW, II, 42), as he p11t it in 1964, was
turning more oblique, staccato, enigmatic. He reportedly told some-
one: "I don't music::alite anymore, as at the time of the much-touted
'Todesfuge; which by now has been threshed out in many a text-
book."31 Yet of course the poem had its own momentum . .A friend has
shown me her high-school reader ftom the 1960s, with the word Pak-
tylus carefuJJy penciled in above "Todesfuge." Maybe the Huent meter
was easier to teach th11n the abysmal irony. And since 1966, at least
seven German composers have set the poem for different vocal and
instrumental combinations.,.
The question persists, then: Does "Todesfuge" read too we.II, accede
too easily, too m1,1siClllly? Certainly not, in my experience, especially
with listeners hearing Celan's voice for the first time. Even those who
do not understand German find his caustic enunciation and intensified
tempo stunning rather than pleasing. Likewise for those listeners, a
verse translation must seek some equivalent to the German, with its
movement of controlled violence. English, a cognate language, can
with $0me effort almost ritually approach this equivalence. For ex-
ample, line four, wir schaufeln ein Grab in den Luften da liegt rraan
nlcht eng, translates as "we shovel a grave in the air there you won't lie
too cramped.'' That monosyllable eng, which Celan pronounced engk,
means "narrow" or "tight," but "cramped" voices the harshness and
avoids a rhyme with '"night" in this poem where such rhyme would
prettify.
The poem's longest line, later in stanza one, can also be mimed
closely in translation; er schreibt es und tritt var das Haus und es

J1 I J!I ,11 lrtm\

Ll~H VEt1$1i) G>F l'v\1011 (ill.I·)
 John Felstiner
< 252 >
bUtun die Sterne er pfeift $eine Ruden herbei becomes *he writes it
and steps out of doors and the stars are all sparkling he :whistles his
hounds to come dose.~ Then in the next line, er pfeift seine Jud.en
hervor liust schaufeln ein Crab in der- Er-de (he whis~es his Jews into
·rows has them shovel a grave in the ground), the slant-rhyme ''close"
with ~rows" echoes Celan's abrasion of Ruden (hounds) against Jud.en
(Jews)-a dissonance worth preserving foF its re minder ,t hat the S.S.
sometimes called their Jews "dogs" and their German shepherds
. men.
.,
Now why, after all, try to cleave faithfully to the syllabic and accen-
tual measure of the original? Just because, I want to say-because here
where Paul Celan's German language needed an incantatory impetus
to speak out from the "thousand darknesses of deathbringing speech,"
anything less than ritual observance would deflect that impetu.s.
Toward the end of'Todesfuge," by the time it has evolved a time
span of its own, rhythm and repetition have taken on thematic, sys-
temic force. They permit no alternative-. there is no esc.iping them,
and that is precisely !heir metaphoric burden. After complex overlap-
ping and counterpoint, the fugue's accumulations intensify in stanza
four, most strikingly with a phrase that occurs here three times lU!d has
become the tagline for 'Todesfuge":
der Tod i8t ein Mei8ter al.IS Deutschland sein Au,ge ist blau
er trifft dich mit bleierner Kugel er trifft dich genau
Clearly the poet had to stay in step; in this poem's only change from an
early version, what had been Aug now reads Auge. And clearly a mock-
balladic rhyme juts out ironically here:
this Death is a master from Deutschland his eye it is blue
he shoots you with shot made of lead shoots you level and true
The folkloric purity of that icy nordic eye seems to call for a folksy
idiom and a hackneyed rhyme in translation. By the same token. I've
kept Deut,c'hland intact throughout my version, Its two syllables grip
the rhythm better than "Germany," and anyway, the name's been made
lcnown everywhere-Deut.,chland, Deutschland, uber allesl Celan
used it only this once in his poetry and never .igain.
Something new is borne in on me here with the way Deutschland
recurs, untranslated . Once havlng rendered this whole phrase, MDe;ith
is a master &om Deutschland," the next time it occurs I've already got

J, 1111 ,11 1run\

U~hVEf'l$1,r !)F 1\111.Hl(iAl·l
 Translating Paul Celani "Todeefuge=
< 253 ;>

my tr;uJslation, and then the next and the next. There's no need, no
use in thinking anymore-and that very realization, that translator's
sense of inexorable repetitiveness, itself enacts something inexorable:
quotidian annihilation.
Then I wonder; given a "fugue of death"- this poem's musical
logic-why not drive the catchphrase home as Celan does? Why not
render it back to the German tongue? So the second time around 1 say
"Death is.-_ master aus Deut1chlana; then, "Death is ein Mei#er aw
Deut&chlana; and finally, "der Tnd i&t ein Mei&ter Ot.1$ Deut&chland."
By thus veering around to its original, my version gets a•· ring of truth,
so to speak, a tangential identity with verse written by Paul Celiui-
who said, after all, that "in a foreign tongue the poet Ues." To sustain
the exemplary force of this poem "after Auschwitz," maybe we must
again hear it in the mother tongue become a mother's murderers'
tongue. Meanwhile American ears may perhaps feel a strangeness of
German, a salutary darkness, even an impinging or overcoming.
At last, through another veering or reversion, MDeathsfugue" comes
to an end, as does "Todcs6,.ge," when the twin motifs that have shad-
owed each other throughout this poem finally join-
dein goldenu Haar Margarete
dein a&chenes, Haar Sulamlth
-in a chord that makes discord, a close with no closure, be<:ause the
German and Jewish ideals will not coexist. ln Its own sense, this poem
radically tests the limits of representation, for the termination of"To-
desfuge" shows up the murderous euphemism of extermination. When
lll'iY poem ends, of course, it has come to its limit of representation.
'Todesfuge" comes to that limit with a vengeance, so to speak. The
rhythmically synonymous evocations of Margarete and Shulamith-
dein gou/Jmes Haar; dein aschenu Haar-threaten to obliterate both
figures mutually; unless some remnant letter or spirit may survive.
Whether, in ultimately reverting to Celan's mother tongue, my ver-
sion acts somehow as restitution, restoring to the poet what was mis-
appropriated, I ~noot say. Evidently this poem keeps its representa-
tive status in Germany. On the fiftieth anniversary of Kristallnacht, an
actress recited "Todesfuge" in the Bundestag.33 Composers have set it,
a German-Jewish dance troupe performs it in repertory, and West Ger-
man television has broadcast a documentary on the uFinal Solution"
entitled ~Der Tod ist ein Meister aus Deutschland:"' 'The lines invok,

J1 I J!i ,11 II Oni

U~hVEH$1i) OF Mll"'-lll;A> I
 John Felstiner
< 254. >

ing Margarete and Shulamith figure starkly on several major canvases

by Anselm Kiefer, which do not coopt them. And maybe this lyric says
more to German high-schoolers since 1970, when Celan drowned him-
self in the Seine.
Later that year, as it happens, another pedagogical journal took up
"Todesfuge," divining reconciliation in the closing couplet, a ~loving
meeting" between Mar.g arete and Shulamith, and even "furgjve-
nes,s.""" But bow shall Faust's Gretchen, the eternal feminine, join the
Song of Song's "black but comely" maiden Shulamith, a figure of long-
ing and return from ewe, in German-Jewish symbiosis? At best that is
wishful thinking; at worst. a willful imperviousness to the double
b light or curse this poem's closing couplet may be pronouncing. And
forgiveness is precluded by Paul Celan 's recorded voice (if by nothing
else) when just before the end of its vehement utterance, it breaks and
catches on the "a" of ascheneS', Shulamith 's "ashen" hair, in almost a
glottal stop, dein-aschenea Haar Sulamith.
With that break, Celan's fugue runs its course. And by running out
on Shulamith, it enacts an ultimate metaphor. For this word resounds
strangely in the German lexicon, as in the English. Being Hebrew, it
forgoes, it preempts both languages. Being a name and a term that
occurs once only in the Bible, it admits no translation. Within the
shadow of aschenes, Paul Celan's "Todesfuge" still ends purely, by
doing what Nazism attempted to forbid: naming the other. Archaic,
inalienable, truly Shularmth has the last word, not to mention the si-
lence resounding after.

, jl I • I ,ti I+
llr,I 1/ff,~fTV l F ~h : I · ,,I
 Todesfuge

Schwarze Milch der Friihe wir trinken sie abends

wir trinken sie mittags und morgens wir trinken sie nachts
wir trinken u.nd trinken
wir schaufeln ein Grab in den Lii.ften da liegt man ntcbr eng
Ein Mann wohnt im Haus der spielt mit den Schlangen der
schreibt
der schreibt wenn es- dunkelt nacb Deutschland dein goldenes
Haar ,Margarete
er schre-ibt es und tritt vor das Haus und es blitz.en die Sterne er
pfeift seine Ruden herbei
er pfeift seine Juden hervor lasst schaufeln ein Grab in der Erde
er be6.ehlt uns spielt auf nun Zl!m Tanx
Schwarze Milch der Fruhe wir trinken dich nachts
wir trinken dich morgens 1,1nd mitta.gs wir trinken dich abends
wir trinken und trinken
Ein Mann wohnt im 8aus der spielt mit den Schlangen der
schreibt
der schreibt wenn es dunkelt nach Deutschland dein goldenes
Haar Margarete
Dein asthenes Haar Sulamith wir scbaufeln ein Grab in ,den
Lii.ften da liegt man nicht eng
Er·ruft stecht liefer ins Erdreich ihr einen ihr andem singet und
spielt
er greift nach dem Eisen i m Gurt er schwingts seine Augen sind
blau
stecht liefer die Spaten 1hr einen ihr andem spielt welter zum Tunz
auf
Schwarze Milch der Fruhe wir trinken dich nachts
wi'r trinken dich mittags und morgens wir mnken dich aoends
wir trinken und trinken
ein Mann wohnt im Haus dein goldenes Haar Margarete
deln aschenes Haar Sulamith er spielt mit den Schlangen
Er ruft spielt sill3er den Tod der Tod ist ein Meister aus
Deutschland
er ruft streicht dunkler die Geigen dann steigt iht als Rauch in die
Luft
dann habt ihr ein Grab in den Wolken da liegt man nicht eng
Schwarze Milch der Friihe wir trinken dich nachts
wir irinken dich mittags der Tod ist ein Meister aus Deutschland
wir trinken dich abends und morgens wiJ" trinken und trinken
der Tod ist ein Meister aus Deutschland sein Auge ist blau
er triffi dich mit bleiemer Kugel er triffi dich genau
ein Mann wohnt im Haus deln goldenes Haar Margarete
er hetzt seine Ruden auf uns er scbenkt uns ein Grab in der Luft
er spielt mit den Schlangen und triumet der Tod ist eih Meister
aus Deutschland
dein goldenes Haar Marg;1rete
dein aschenes Haar Sulamlth

, jl I • I ,ti I+
llr,I 1/f!,~fj")' l F ~h : I · ,,I
 Deathsfugue

Black millc of daybreak we drink it at evening

we drink it at midday and morning we drink it at night
we drink and we drink
we shovel a grave in the air there you won't lie too cramped
A man lives in the house he plays with his vipers he writes
be writes when it grows dark to Deutschland your golden hair
Marguerite
he writes it and steps out of dpors and the stars are all sparkling he
·whistles his hounds to come close
he whistles his Jews into rows has them shovel a grave in the
iµ-ound
he orders us strike up and play for the dance,
Black milk of daybreak we drink you at night
we drink you at morning and midday we drink you at eveni,ng
we drink and we drink
A man lives in the house he plays with his vipers he writes
he writes when it grows dark to Deutscbland your golden hair
Marguerite
your ashen hair Shulamith we shovel a grave•In the air there you
won't lie too cramped
He shouts jah the earth deeper you there you others sing up and
play
he iµ-abs for the rod in his belt he swings it his eyes are blue
jab your spades deeper you there you others play on for the
dancing
Black milk of daybreak we drink you at night
we drink you at midday and morning we drink you at evening,
we drink and we drink
a man lives in the-house your goldenes Haar Marguerite
your aschenes Haar Shula!llith he plays with his vipers
He shouts play death more sweetly Death is a master from
Deutschland
he s.houts scrape your strings darker you 'II rise then in smoke to
the sky
you'll have a grave then in the clouds there you won't lie too
cramped

,,,,, , •Go ,glc llf,11,/FA':,r.'I l F Mh : I • ,I

Black milk of daybreak we drink you at night
we drink you at midday Death is a master aus Deutschland
we drink you at evenin,g and morning we drink and we drink
this Death is ein Meister aus Deutschland his eye it is blue
he shoots you with shot made of lead shoots you level and true
a man lives in the house your go)denes Haar Margarete
he looses his hounds on us grants w; a gJ'llVe in the air
he plays with his viper:s and daydreams der Tod ist ein Meiste r aus
Deutschland
dein goldenes Haar Mtrgarete
dein aschenes Haar Sulamith

Paul Celan, 1944-45

traru. John Felstiner

, jl I • I ,ti I+
llr,I 1/f!,~fj")' l F ~h : I · ,,I
 < 16 >
"The Grave in the Air'': Unbound Metaphors
in Post-Holocaust Poetry

S1DRA DEKOVEN EZRAHI

In 1969, in what was to be one of his.last major ventures before suicide,

Paul Celan visited Israel and addressed the Hebrew Writets' Associa•
lion. He spolce about the greening of the land and of the language:
"Here," he said, "in yo1,1r outer and inner landscape, I find much of the
compulsion toward truth, much of the self-evidence; much of the
world-open uniqueness of great poetry." 1 The world-embracing possi-
bility that emanates from a reclaimed landscape, the self-evidence that
allows public surfaces to.spealc, are remarkable concessions to the idea
of repatriation on the part of this poet of private depths and unhin.ged
languages. In that address, in tha.t visit, and in the Hebrew words scat-
tered throughout the poetry of his last years, he entered tentatively
into ;i cultural space in which his own "Jewish loneliness"• might have
found a different resolution.
But what becomes increasingly evident with time is the extent lo
which Celan and the Hebrew writers he was addressing remain
etnbedded in two distinct universes of discourse. Within the global
conversation among Jewish writers or between Jewish writers and
their audiences, they represent radically different cultural options and
forms of authorizing the past. The critical questions over aesthetic
boundaries that were inaugurated by Theodor Adorno and have in-
formed most readings of post-Holocaust poetry in America and Europe
are rarely invoked in discussions of the Holocaust in Israel. As I will
argue below, challenges to the adequacy or authenticity of poetic lan-
guage, debates over its mimetic function and moral .constraints, are
negligible in the presence of a consensual historical narrative and a
preexistent poetic vocabulary of catastrophe and martyrdom such as
one finds in Hebrew culture, On the other hand, no consideration of
the poetry of Paul Celan is possible, it seems, without reference to
Adomo's dictum that "to write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric.~•
< 2.59 >

, JI I , I ,ti I♦

lll,11/fA!',l"iY l FMh :I • •I
 Sidra DeKoven Ezt"..ihi
< 260 >
Said to have been originally occasioned by a reading of CeIan's ~To-
desfuge," Adamo's statement has become explicitly linked with that
poem so that the two are as intertwlned ·as a talmudic commentary and
its biblical source. Ra.rely, however, does one find any acknowiedg-
ment of the complexity of Adomo's position within the context of his
philosophy of aesthetics or the dynamics of his own re-readings of Ce-
lan. Ra.rely is it acknowledged that Adorno returned to "Auschwitz"
again and a,gain , refining and restating and qualifying his original state-
ment in subsequent essays, probing but never quite resolving the con-
tradictions that most of his readers tend to ignore altogether, that •the
abundance of real suffering tolerates no forgetting . . . [that) this suf-
fering . . . demands the continued exis{\lnce of art [even as) . . , it
prohibits it. ft is now virtually in art alone that suffering can still find
ils own voice, consolation, without immediately being betrayed by it.
The most important artists of the age have realized this."• As Adomo's
dictum has been appropriated unteftectively since his death in 1969 by
the very "culture industry" he so vigorouszy attacked in his lifetime,
one is tempted to ask how, within the terms of his own critical theory,
distinctions might be drawn between "barbarity," which is by defini-
tion outside the civilized discourse, and liminality, which is not?
When examined more closely, the critical norms that have their ori-
gins in (mis-)readings of Adorno relate not only to the so-called barbar-
ity or betrayal but to a widespread if unarticulated sense of the propri•
ety of the symbolic language that faces Auschwitz. Since the "scorched
earth~ which is the locus of this language cannot generate a natural
audience Cot it, the issue of naturalization becomes crucial, Where, in
our symbolic geography; do we locate Auschwitz or the Warsaw
Ghetto: In Poland? In Nazi-occupied Europe? In the vast resonant
spaces of Jewish memory? Or as the metonymic limit of Western civi-
lization? The disruption between this place and its signs is _greater than
the common disjunctions between referents !Uld their signiners-and
the controversy over nominative and metaphoric language settles in
that great divide. rs Celan's wgrave in the airn an open space with DO
boundaries? Or do certain images belong to specific symbolic worlds
from which they are detached at considerable peril to both writer ~d
reader? Are there Holocaust symbols or lopoi so overdetermined that
they cannot enter other existential universes without being either dis~
ruptive or presumptuous-violating an unspoken principle of incom-
meosurability (the Nazi as proto~ of Sylvia Plath's "Daddy~; Ausch-

·Go ,gll· llf,11/FA':,f'i"Y l F Mh ti ,,I

 "The Grave in the Air'"
< 261 >
witz as William Styron's analogue of the American South; Babi Yar as
D. M. Thomas's configuration of Freudian-or Jungian-space; Rai-
ner Werner Fassbinder'$ "Hitlet" as a blinding white emanation).~ Or
is that which takes MAuschwitz" as its sign in fact so underdetennined,
in Lyotard's terms so «dissip,tted," by the premise ofextermination that
it elides into a phraseless spacer>e lt may be not only tbe limits of rep-
resentation that are being probed here but the limits of metavhor:
There is no easy critical approach to the widely shared perception of
a decorum that renders specific poetic acts illegitimate or recalcitrant
in specific contexts and attempts to limit the polysemous potential of
certain symbolic vocabularies. That such a discussion often degeqer-
ates into competing claims for mood Bl!thority or for the guardianship
of memory may be a function not only of the ethical dimension, which
has become an aolmowledged aspect of the enterprise of remember-
ing, but also of a displaced poetic language that, like the survivors
themselves, may move randomly from one cultural realm to another
seeking a home. Images that are so decontextualized as to be consid-
ered illegitimate may in certain instances be acts of cultural disruption
in the most radical poetic sense: ungrounded and migrant, they may
be disruptive without being constitutive of alternative worlds. Even-
or especially-in the wake of catastrophe, a ''redemptive aesthetic"
emerges along with public acts of commemoration to create soterio-
logical possibilities.
With reference to the idealizing function of art, Leo Bersani has
written, "A crucial assumption in the culture of redemption is that a
certain type of repetition of experience in art repairs inherently dam-
aged or valueless experience . . . The catastrophes of history matter
much less if they are somehow compensated for in art, and art itself
gets reduced to a kind of superior patching function, is enslaved to
those very materials to which it presum.i.bly imparts value; the re•
demptive aesthetic asks us to consider art as a correction of life." 7 Yet
cultures that attempt to appropriate the dislocated languages of the
exiles may never succeed in domesticating the fragments of their bro-
ken worlds or in defending against the acidity of an irredeemable Vi•
sion-a vision which not only resists corrective ideali.zin,g but posi-
tively exemplifies, through a series of defamiliariring procedures, the
lrretrievability and irreparability of the loss.
Perhaps the only version of utopianism that is compatible with the
most unregenerate responses to cataclysm is that reformulated by
 Sidra DeKoven E:uahi
< 262 >

Adorno in the postwar years. Resisting the totalizing philosophies that

lead to fascism while affirming the potential of the most radical art
forms to provide a "prefiguration of reconciled life" by which to mea-
sure Oawed realities,• Adorno manages to Tescue some of the utopian
longings from the devastation of the war and of a failed Marxist ortho-
doxy: "The only philosophy which can be responsibly practised in face
of despair is the attempt to contemplate all things as they would pre-
sent themselves &om the $tandpoint of redemption . . . Perspectives
must be fashioned that displace and estrange the world, reveal it to be,
with its rifts and crevices, as indigent and distorted as it will appear
one day in the messianic light.''•
Probably the most striking example of a displaced or estranged im-
age in post-Holocaust poetry is the "black milk" which opens Celan's
"Todesfuge" and provides its incantatory·refrain. The "black milk" has
become as much an icon of the Holocaust as the photograph of the little
boy with his hands raised in the Warsaw Ghetto. But the, o,tymoron,
no less palp.tble lJl our imagination for being an "impossible" image, is
not only the rhetorical correlative of liminal reality; as the trope of
ultimate contradiction that does not correct but defies the laws of both
experience and logic, it relinquishes its compensatory function. 1bat
is, wb.at may be so disruptive in such imagery is not its aesthetic prop-
- erties per se but its defiance of a "redemptive aesthetic." Celan's
poems, in Adomo's reading, "emulate a language that lies below the
helpless prattle of human beings-even below the level of organized
life as such . . . Celan tTanslates into linguistic terms what happens to
landscapes when they become more and more abstnict." 1°
Yet the public status of'Todesfuge" would seem to belie its presum-
ably subversive impact. The recitation of the poem in the Bundestag
in 1988 to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of Kristallnacht, its
frequent quotation in 6lm, in art, in dance, in music suggest that it has
actually become a part of the official ritual of remembrance in Ger-
many. lt would appeat, then, that the black milk and the ghetto ohild
have become, in equal measure, constitutive te,tts in the regenerative
semantic of thefr respective cultures. •t But consider further. This
JX>em, which has become a litmus test of the public attempt to come to
terms with or to "master" the past-the Vergangenheitabewdltigung-
yet remains somehow extraneous to the cultural conversations taking
place in Germany. Why, one might ask, is the poem read so consist-

lll,11/fAS,l"iY L F Mh ti ,,I
 "The Crave in the Air"
<C 263 >

eµtly as poiaie puf'e? And why, if It has becoQle a canonical text, bas it
lent itself to charges of plagiarism? The accusation, launched by Yvan
Goll's widow, that Celan borrowed his black milk from her husband's
poetry is in itself less significant-poets with Celan's visibility are not
infrequently beset by claims that would impugn their originality-
than the receptivity of sectors of the German public to such insinua-
tions and the defensiveness of Celan's own response. u There is an im-
plicit connection, I would submit, between the dislocation of the text
and both its legitimating function and its provisional legitimacy within
the society.
One point of departure for probing these questions could be a com-
parison of the textbook "misreadingsu of"Todesfuge" in Germany with
the simple intertextual acts practiced by such writers as Jean ,Amery
and Primo Levi. !Jlusions to the "grave in the air"' In an es511y by
Amery and in a novel and a poem by Levi-and Levi's disanning ad-
mission, when asked how conscious his borrowing had been, that his
stealth" lsic] was not really plagiary but nomage· 1~~illustrate not
only the fine line between plagiary and allusion or quotation but the
status of survivors such as Amery and Levi !IS a n.a tu~ primary reading
community fur Celan's poem. 1ne searoh for such a community is the
compelling force that shapes the writing of every displaced writer.
Levi struggled to overcome his own M Jewish loneliness" by re-
grounding himself not only in his native tongue and native soil, but
also in the positivistic principle of the transparent or correlative status
of language vis-a-vis experience. The clarity of language relates here to
the attempt to "objectify" experience a., a property of culture, to rescue
it from the irredeemably unique and therefore incommunicable. In
Levi's view. the urge to communicate, the mandate of lucidity; and the
subordination of language to the writer's "message" are betrayed in
Celan's-more obscure verses:
If {Celan's writing] Is a message., it gets lost in the 'background
noise': it is not a communication·,. it is not a language, !)rat most it is
a dark ·and truncated language precisely like that of a person who "is
about to die and is alone. as we all will be at the point of death. But
since we the living are not alone, we must not write as if we were
alone. As long as we live we have a responsibility. We must answer
li>r what we write, word by word, and make sure that every word
reaches its target . . . [Celan"s] destiny (as a suicide! makes one think

, • • • I ,ti I♦

Lll,11/f!,f,l"iY l F Mh : I • •I
 Sidra DeKoven Ez.rahi
< 264 >

about the obscurity of [his] poetry ·as a pre-suicide, a not-wanling-to-

be, a Bight from the world, ofwhich the intentional death was the
crown."
The life urge is equated here with responsibility (that is, lucidity or
communicability) and the death wish with inaooessibility. Yet what
Levi is in fact demonstrating in his encounte r with Celan's text, and in
his special 'access to that text, i.s its existential, and not only or primar-
ily its hermeneutic impact. ("I believe that Celan the poet should be
meditated upon and pitied rather than imitated.")10 Even when Levi
takes issue with Celan's more opaque poetry, he identifies himself as
the very reader whom Celan is seeking: Celan's writing, he admits, is
"truly . . . a reflection of the obscurity of his late and his generation,
and it grows ever denser around the reader, gripping him as in an ice-
cold iron vise." 16 So stricken, Levi reveals himself to be the worthy if
reluctant recipient of the kind of literary assault defined by Kafka as
piercing the "frozen sea within us." 17

Levi's response to Ce.Ian dr.unatizes the perceived links between the

survivors personal, existential strategies and his authorial choices.
Whether or not we regard Levi's own suicide in 1987 as a sign of his
failure to find in the Italian language and soil adequate reflections of
the precarious relations between the inner and outer landscapes of bis
imagination, we know from his very first book how desperate was his
search for a language and an audience. 14 If we read his own death back
into his life retrospectively, as he bids us do With Celan, his equation
of life and "responsibility" renders his suicide, no matter what the cir-
cumstances that might have induced it, AA admission of the failure to
meet that responsibility.•• Celan may be seen, then, as truly Levi's
poetic foil, reflecting the attempt to integrate life with the inherent
irre$potl$ibilUy of a poetry surviving in a world whose symbolic geog-
raphy has been convulsed; constituting a place "where all tropes and
metaphors want to be led ad absurdum.""" Levi's insistence on the
writer as witness and communicator, like the definition of the .a rtist as
builder of alternative worlds, retains some coherent vision or blueprint
of the social order and a mandated relationship between history and
art; it places the self in a specific, delineated position at a controlled
distance from both that which has been survived and the tribunal to
which the testimony is being addressed.
The image of a tribunal can be carried further. Read as evidence,

·Go ,gll· , JI I , I ,ti

lll,11/fA!',l"iY l FMh :I
!♦

• •I
 "The Gra!M! in the Air''
< 265 >

this literature, its writers, and its readers seem to resemble nothing so
much as presences in a judidal court. Even as Celan"s allusions and
citations penetrate into the deepest )ayers of several centuries of Ger•
man literature and reach across several languages, he is also held to
another accounting-one which relates to the representational or his-
torical status of his poetry. In delineating audiences, conversations,
and the very nature of the communicative act, the postmodemist dis-
course has signjflcan.tly redefined, in ways we have already alluded to,
the role of citation and quotation (plagiary's legitimate siblings). 11 Yet
debates over those "Holocaust texts indicted for having transgressed
ft

the limits tend to presume a unique deoorum or protocol in regard to

embedded citation or documentation. Consider, for example, the con•
troversy that ensued over D, M. 'i'bomas's alleged plagiarism of the
Babi Yar sequence in The White Hotel. far more memorable than the
novel itself was Thomas's defense of his literary practice of borrowing
passages from Anatoli Kuznetsov's novel, Babi Ya,; in order to let his-
tory speak, uomediated by the imagination, as it were. The fact that
be lifted those passages from the English translation ofa RtU.rian doc-
umentary fWfJel with its own complicated publishing history82- not to
mention the highly interventionist act of pinioning his heroine through
the -genitals in order to confer symbolic coherence at the moment of
death- all ,this only undersoores the tension between the urgency of
the truth claim and the dislocation of the frames of language and expe•
rience without which it cannot be upheld.
Needless to say, the charges of plagiary directed at D. M. Thomas
are ofa different order from those sulfered by Celan and only serve to
underscore the differential weight of survivors as authenticating pres-
ences in the culture. Thomas's authority is, admittedly, located in his-
tori.cal documents or texts with a "documentary~ valence; Celan's lies
within his own person. And yet the Weight of the ~tten historical
record, of recorded facts that would be admissible in some hypotheti-
cal court of law, often turns even the most abstract poetry into testi-
mony. Rather than simply dismissing as in-elevant the accusations ctf
plagiarism that were directed at "Todesfuge," John Felstiner presents
in his discussions of the poem a series of counterarguments, among
them one based on,a ldµd of circumstantial evidence! he suggests that
"'black milk' may have been no metaphor at all but the very tenn camp
inmates i;ised to describe a liquid they were given"- and he cites Ce•
lar\'s declaration that "what counts for me is truth, not euphony.ff 03 Ce-
 Sidra DeKoven Ezrahi
< 266 >

Jan's own insistence on the veracity of the image or of the poem as a

whole reffecfs more than the defensive posture of a poet vis-A-vis per,-
ceived misreadings of his work. just as the critical interest in his ongo-
ing response reffects more than questions of intentionality, It is the
survivor's unmediated access to experience, the ,survivor as ultimate
reference, rather than the •correct•, interpretation of the poem, that is
being affirmed here as part of a struggle over the poem's cultural sta-
tus, We shQuld hardly be surprised, given the stakes, to discover that
in 1988, forty-foiu- years after its composition, 'Todesfuge" was mis-
taken for an artifact, a •document" from the camps, in the catalogue of
the Anselm Kiefer exhibit in Philadelphia and in a New York Times
article. That sort of answer to the charge of pla_giaiism does not really
challenge the terms of the discourse. Those texts, no matter how
highly craft:ed, which appear to be "stolen" (or found) claim a valence
that is essentially historical and documentary; in themselves they pro-
vide-or constitute-the citatio.n or quotation that establishes authen-
ticity. Their authorizing presence gives the ultimate lie to the charge
of excessive aestheticization. Salient and indigestible, they remain ap-
propriated but not fully naturalized into the conversation of the cul-
tures in which they appear.
This may be even more perceptible iil the realm of the visual arts.
In discussing the two emblematic 6gures in •Todesfuge," Felstiner
claims that the images of Shulamith and Margarete were not "coopted·"
in the Kiefer paintings that bear their names." A close examination
reveals the extent to which they do stand out as both text and image in
these paintings, not fully quoted or absorbed into the canvas. Nazism,
which in Lyotard's terms marks the end of the moral struggle, in that
the subject-or the subject's right to "phrase"-has been effaced and
reciprocity preempted,1$ allows Shulamith and Margarete to survive
in the imagination as remainders of a mutual recognition that has be-
come an annihilation of one by the other. In one of Kiefer's canvases
entitled "Dein goldenes Haar, Margarethe" (1981), the hair could be
the meto nymic expression of that process of remaindering. Margarete's
hair, straw embossed on an oil and emulsion painting of SCQrcbed
6elds, still retains its integral place in the rural landscape, whereas
Shulamith's-a black curve that echoes the shape ofMar~ete's-is a
sign of ruination and blight. As in many of Kiefer's other paintings, the
text ("dein ...") overlays and literallzes the nonliteral, non6,gurative
painting and 6xes the metaphoric 6eld. The presence of figures in

llf,11/FA':,f'i"Y l F Mh ti
 "The Gr(lve In the Air"
< 'JR,7 >
mourning or of memorial candles in other paintings in the Shulamith/
Margarete series-"Dem llSChenes Hl\llr, Sulamith" (1981), "Marga-
rethe" (1981), !Uld "Sulamith" (1983)-as well as the commemorative,
ritualistic performance.s of "Todesfuge" throughout Germany suggest
that there is nothing left to cw.
Other Kiefer paintings which engage the Nazi past, such as the pho-
tographic series "Occul)lltions• (1969) or the paintings "To the Un-
known Painter" (1980-1983) are far more ambiguous, leaving more
room for interpretation, for the unresolved moral struggle, evoking as
well as ironizing the heroic, mythic unages of the past. Unlike the "Oc-
cupations" series-in which the painter appearing in various "Sieg
Heil" poses activates his audience to a wide range of possible, and very
oontradictory, responses to the invoked past, &om celebration to
revulsion 16-the Shulamith/Margarete series implies a kind of self-
limiting or self-chastlz(ng in regard to the images and line~ from "To.
desfuge" that re.main superimposed on the canvas-both as material
and as text-suggesting the extent to which Celan's text remains su-
perimposed upon German culture and resistant to being coopted into
a more open, organic, intertextual dynamic. We confront once again
the .issue of the "propriety" as well as the overdetermined quality of
certain tropes, their resistance to the ironizing or decontextuahzing
efforts of the artist and the complex cultural responses to them.
Actually, as has been amply documented in sll.)djes of the reception
of the poem., while the substance remains re<:alcitrant, the metrical
and musical forms of"Todesfuge" have been absorbed into an ongoing
discourse on aesthetic forms in Germany. Celan himself is reported
to have shared the perception that the focus on fonn may have
preempted an assimilation of the poem's content; ironically, however,
this admission also serves to support the argument attributed to
Adorno that the more poetically crafted a text, the more inherently
estranged from the reality it is meant to represent. While most readers
continued to treat "Todesfuge" itself with deference, it became the
prooftext for the danger that form would betr.1y content, that any de-
viation from the strict historical account is a potential denial of its on-
tology. RolfHochhuth, in his stage directions for Act V ofThe Deputy.
asserts that although in "Todesfuge'' the Mgassing ·o[ Jews is entirely
translllted into metaphors: it is a masterly" poem; nevertheless, it
k

cannot serve as a model for imaginative interpretation of that period,

..for despite the tremendous force of suggestion emanating from sound

· Go ,glc
 Sidra DeKoven E:zrahi
< 268 >
and sense, metaphors still screen the infernal cynicism of what really
took place~a reality so enormous and grotesque that even today
[1963] . . . the impression of unreality it produces conspires with our
natural strong tendency to treat the matter as a legend, as an incred-
ible apocalyptic fable.''•1
II can be argued, perhaps, that at some subliminal level the Ger-
mans have come to know the, poem the way a people knows its an-
thems and its liturgies1 learning the words at such an early age and on
such ceremonial occasions that it has become an incantational proce•
dure rather than an attended text. Tbe "performative" function of"To-
desfuge"-what it d~s as distinguished from what it more strictly
means-reftects the specific nature of the dialogue between this exiled
writer and the culture he is addressing. What has been understood as
a formidable denial of the oontents of the poem may also be, for two
generations of Germans at least, a partic.ular form of knowing. We may
he perceiving here a subtle reversal in the relations between aesthetic
form and moral content. Rather than betraying the historical matter or
obscuring its moral import, the aesthetic or rih.ialistic dimension may
actually be the only1>0ssible conduit to what cannot be faced without
I mediation.
I
Beyond the impact of "Todesfuge," the fact that the insularity or in-
communicability of Celan'.s matute verses has so absorbed the critical
agenda could be a response not only to their inherent obscurity but
also to their restless presence .in the culture. The presumed impene-
trability of neologisms and "herme.tl,t verses provides a defense
against texts whlch are footloose, uncontained. It is in this sense per-
haps that Celan's poetry beoomes truly "barbaric," that the poet him -
self remains the original "barbarian" as foreigner or outlander-the
one outside the community of selves, the one who in Germany most
embodies an elfaced otherness or nonidentity.
Although Celan himself insisted that he was "ganz und gar nicht
hermetisch" (absolutely not hermetic),.a we can liod. in this characteri-
zation more than a defensive strategy of reading; much of this poetry
does appear uncontained 10 that itis self-contained, poss1bly even en-
closing within itself the conversation usually transacted between text
and reader, In the poem "In Eins," four languages-German, Hebrew,
French, and Spanish-populate the lirst four lines: "Dreizehnter Fe-
her. Im Herzmund / erwachtes Schibboleth. Mit dir, / Peuple / de
Paris. No pasaran.~• Jacques Derrida finds in this and related poems a

·Go ,glc , JI I • I ,ti I♦

 "The Grave in the Air"
< 269 .>
Nmultiplicity and migration of languages . .. within the uniqueness of
the poetic inscription.""" The poem is bound by no single linguistic
code or convention, place or situati.on.., Evan Watkin constructs a
Ncounter-theory of lyric . .. at the point of missed connections be-
tween poet-self and audience ... That would mean ... [that one
could] offer Celan's lyrics, hi$ peculiarly social languages, as a not quite
familiar but still responsive audie.nce . , . an audience who does listen,
the multiple languages which crowd bis poems· a moment of expect-
ancy."31
For most of Celan's German readers, only one of these languages
remains truly inscrutable: the Hebrew words scattered throughout,
Like the small empty niches on the doorposts of formerly Jewish
homes all over Eastern and Central Europe, Celan's Hebrew is a
marker not only of the absent (and therefore indecipherable) Jewish
culture but also of the absent re~er. ll,ecovering its status here as the
language of origins, the primordial language, it remains uncorrupted,
untried. 313 Translators and theoreticians have grappled with the un-
translatability of Celan's foreign phrases; unique even within the po-
lyphony of his verses, the Hebrew words from a scriptural or liturgical
vocabulary remain as salient and unassimi1ated in his poetry as his
poems are in German culture. The Hebrew words persist, then, unex-
amined, maintaining the status of a document, a relic, a ritual-or an
incomplete metnory.
It can be argued, further, that it is not only the languages which
constitute multiple interlocutors within the poem but the addressed
others ("mit dir, / peuple de Paris') who render Celan's poetry auton-
omous as an act that incorporates its own recipient. What is the status
of the "you" (du) so often summoned in Celan's verses? Although a
number of the later poems, especially, appear to be firmly located in
the conventional lyrical address to a specific beloved, the less focused
dialogicaJ guest is thwarted in some of those texts in which it is most
explicitly invoked. "The poem becomes conversation-often desper-
ate conversation,~ Gelan declared in his ''Meridian" speech; "only the
space of this conversation can establish what is addressed, can gather
it into a 'you' a.round the naming and speaking 1:•~ Jt is this ar., poetica
that infurms the reading not only of his poetry but of his much-
interpreted prose parable uConversation in the Mountain" (Gespriich
im Gebirg). The journey, which is both a parody and a recuperation of
the romantic quest, begins, according to Stliphane Moses, as a search

t 11 I I llf,11/FA':,r.'I 1..F Mh +I Ci< ,I

 Sidra DeKoven Ettahi
< 270 >

for a true dialogic mode consistent with a Judeo-Gennan vemlM;Olar

and philosophy. But as the voice in the mountain echoes back -upon
i.tself. it becomes a kind ofinterior dialogue "of a single voice divided,"
and the search for otherness (alterite) issues in a nostalgic gesture- an
"encounter with an other who has not come. Because in the absence of
a You it is not given •to the I to speak 'with the mouth and the tongue,'
[this] . . . discourse can be compared, at its limit, to the language of
the stone, 'who addresses no one.' "as This failed dialogic, this desper•
ate search for the other that becomes a kind of self-proliferation, can
be related to the yearning of the exile to return to some native ground.
some original landscape in which he could be repatriated;.. yet the
passage transpires within a primordial mountainous landsc;ape so ge-
neric, so nonspeciJlc and elemental, that it becomes the ground of
legend ...,

The Bukovina region of Ru mania was native ground to three German-

speaking Jews who survived the war to become major writers else,
where: Paul Celan, Dan Pag:is, and Aharon Appelfeld. The 6rst re-
mained lost at sea, as it were, or stranded on a desert island, positing
his poetry as a message sent out in a bottle""-p<>tentially consequen-
tial but hardly hopeful of destination; the latter two washed ashore, in
Palestine, on a language and a clearly-defined audience engaged in a
collective act of repatriation.
In "ConveJ'$3tion in the Mountain," Cebm recapitulates not only the
legendary landscape but the conventional rhetoric of the wandering
Jew: "One evening, when the sun had set and not only the sun, the
Jew- Jew and son of a Jew- went off, left his house and went.off ...
went @der clouds, went in the shadow, his own and not his own-
because the Jew, you know, what does he have that is really his own
. . .''"' The other two writer.$ &om Bukovina struggle with the allure-
and the claustrophobia-of homecoming."" Pagis in particular invites
the ldnd of comparison with Celan that would illuminate the prove-
n.nice of each discourse, its poetic, existential, and cultur31 bounda-
ries. There are striking similarities in their poetry that can be distin-
guished primarily, I believe, by the presumed presence or.absence of
a targeted reader and a specific gravitational force. Celan's neologisms
are radical acts performed on the most primary le,cemes of language;
Pag:is's assaults are performed within the larger unit of the social syn-
tax. Whether we read Cebm's last verses as "hermetic~ in the sense of
 "TM Grave In the Air"
< 271 -,.

self-contained, autonomous, as the incorporation of text and audi~

ence-protected by a thick shield from the slings and lln'ows of outra-
geous readings-or a.i a gradual withdrawal into a private, iinpene•
trable and indecipherable universe, to which sl,licide was a logical
sequel, his self-inflicted death becomes the ultimate inscription of the
Jate of the survivor•wri_ter with a phantom audience.
Since the language ofdiscourse fs Hebrew, there is no area in Pagis's
linguistic universe comparable to the sacred space inhabited by the
Hebrew woTds in Celan's-no une~ined, opaque or totemic im-
ages. UnliJc-e Celans, Pagis's personal exile is embedded within the
noisy semantic of a collective homecoming." The conversation is en-
tirely a social one between reader and text, which presupposes a
"storytelling circle." There are no lyrical subjects ot objects, no signif•
icant addresses to an other within the poems themselves (the "you"
who appears in an occasional poem tends to be an impersonal pro-
nominal stand-in for both the integrity of the self and a significant
other),.. no real search for the dialogic moment-but there is, on the
other hand, an implied reader as recipient of what becomes at times
an urgent message. The appeal to an extratextual reader presupposes
natural intralinguistic act<; practiced by a living community. Pagis's
"Written in Pencil in the Sealed Railway-Car" ("Katuv b'iparon baka-
ron hehatum") is one of the shortest poems in modem Hebrew; it is
also, possibly, the most resonant, as canonic in its status in the
Hebrew-speaking community as "Todesfuge• is in the German.,

here in this carload

.i am eve
with abel my son
if you see my other son
cain son of man
tell him that i41

The "you" addressed here is in second person plural r ·im tiru . . .

tagidu .. ."), encompassing the grammatic potential of both male and
female witnesses (whioh a second-person singular construct in the
gender-tagged Hebrew would not have been able to accommodate).
The reader summoned to perform a speech act ("'tell him that i") is
absolutely necessary to complete this most ··uonhennetic" of poems.
Although it poses as a "found" text, naming its place of composition.

llf,11/FA':,fi"Y l F Mh +I Cit J
 Sidra DeKoven Ezrahr
< 272 >
suspended, in its lack of closure, as an interrupted inscription, this
poem does not perfonn either an authenticating or a delegitimating
role in the culture analogous to,other ~found" or v stolen" texts we have
considered. It is, rather, the transmission of an unspoken but intuited
message, paideia as a primary communal act, that is invoked here. I
have suggested that within the realm of Hebrew literature some of the
primary critical questions change. Whereas "!"-witness accounts have
acquired over the years a narrow privilege in a comm\lllity in which
the historical tenns of e11istence compete with and are subsumed into
the mythical constructs of collective· memory, there has been essen-
tially no ongoing argument over symbolic language as a betrayal of the
ground of historical memory comparable to the controversy that has
fooused on "Tode~ge." The collective narrative with its implicit moral
consensus relieves the Hebrew writ.e r ofany historiographical respon-
sibility, thereby conferring a kind of.autonomy on the tropic discourse.
Pagis writes against this backdrop of an eicplicitly referential, se-
quential, and coherent histoire. One c.ui argue that because the Holo-
caust narrative has itself become a convention, confonning more or
less to contours drawn by writers like Primo Levi, both Pagis and Ce 0

Ian defamiliarize it in ways that retain the shock of unformulaic events.

Both poets speak in codes, burying the referential layer deep within
the poetic texture. But an essential difference lies in the status of the
"master narrative" as primary reference for the Israeli writer. A critic
like Berel Lang may be overlooking that difference when he claims
that the poetry of Celan demonstrates the terms of a conflict that ap-
pears also in the pOetry of (Js,..eli poets) Avraham Sutzkever, Abba
Kovner. and Dan Pagis: "On the one hand, it seems evident that e ven
ff in the reading of his poems all knowledge of Celan 's biography were
put to one side, bis imaginative power and the coercive horror of bis
subject would be reco.g nizeci On the other hand, it is far &om certain
that if the poems were read under a 'veil of ignorance' apart from his
biography .readers would associate the poems with the subject of the
Nazi genocide, or· (more strongly-) that they would require this associa-
tion in order to experience the force of the poems."~ Lang then brings
Celan's •Aspen free" as evidence that "poetic reference to specific his-
torical settings becomes increasingly attenuated as the te11t is more
fully realized poeti<!llily":
Aspen tree your leaves glance white into the dark.
M)" mother·~ hair was never white.

llf,11,/FA':,r.'I l F Mh : I • •I
 "The Crave mthe Air"
< 273 >
Dandelion, so gree11 is the Ukraine.
My yellow-haired mother did not come home.
Ila.in cloud, above the well do you hover?
My quiet mother weeps for everyone.
Round sta{, you wind the golden loop.
My mother's heart was ripped by lead.
Oaken door, who lifted you off your hinges?
My gentle mother cannot return."'
CeIan provides beret Lang argues, "only two indefinite clues concern•
ing the circu.mstances of the death of the mother of the eerson in
whose voice the poem is expressed: the reader learns that she was shot
und that thas occurred in the Ukraine.".., Yet this poem is actually far
more confessional and less opaque than Pagis 's "Written in Pencil . . ."
Like "Aspen Tree," Pagis's poetn h;15 only two circumstantial markers
that locate it historically: "sealed railway-car" and "carload" (karon ha-
tum, mishloah)-and even these are not exclusive or unambiguous
historical references.
Even if we accept the extreme tenns of Lang's argument. namely,
that "dooumentary and historical writings about the genocide have
been more adequate and more compelling-.in sum, more valuable-
than the imaginative writings about that subject," •1 we would have to
r-ecognize that the contextual distance between the two poets from Bu-
kovina actually alters the terms of the discourse. It is, simply, impos·
sible for Pagis's primary audience to read his verse under a 'veil of
ignorance.' If we credit the "poetic tendency to dehistoricize even its
own quite explicit referencet 48 we might ask, in the name of what?
The issue in this context is certainly not the dariger of a postmodernist
reading of reality as construct in the fare of the moral urgency of rep•
resentation.
The Yidd.ish poetry of Avraham Sutzkever, whom Lang cites along
with Celan, Pagis, and Xovner as embodying the paradox that the
more fully realized a poem is the greater the gap between it and an
authentic, historical referent, may actually be one of the best examples
of the inherently or potentially Judie function of the Holocaust writer
in Israel. In many of Sut7.kever's ghetto poems the creative act is in•
voked as compensatory; the artist appears as empowered to provide
both representation of and symbolic reparation for history's horrors ...,
By signing virtually all of these poems with the date and place of (pre•
su,med) composition ("Vilna Ghetto, January 17, 1942,~ "Vilna Ghetto,
 Sidra DeKoven E.zrahi
< 274 >
July 28, 1943j, he endows these verses with a kind of documentary.
evidentiary status that has the effect of relea.sing the imagination from
the constraints of history.6'l Sutzkever's confident manipulation of the
historical material both during and after the war and bis personal ~
etic language, which is almost entirely devoid of archetypes from the
public lexicon of responses to catastrophe, reflect not only his status as
a survivor, but also his clear definition of his audience and of the chang-
ing exigencies of the regenerating Jewish community. Sutzkever's abil-
ity to address both the dead (within the confines of a poem) and the
living (in an implicit space beyond)"• presumes a continuum along
which each has an assigned place, whereas the rudderless poetry of
Celan is as unmoored and as inexorably present as the souls of the
unburied dead: the dating of Sutzkever's ghetto poems renders them
utterly past, while Celan 's "Todesfuge" is set loose under the aspect of
an eternal present Cwe drink and we drink").

It is, therefore, not over the relative jurisdiction of referential and

symbolic languages that the discussion of legitimacy takes place in Is-
rael; .rather, it is between innocent and subversive appropriations of
the ~ master narrative,~" Wljereas ironic appropriations of the philo-
sophical and literary premises of Jewish survival ate built ii\to the dia-
lectics of the lamentation tradition, a few contemporary writers have
so assaulted the iconic configurations as to challenge the narrative in
its most strategic places. In fiction, Yoram Kaniuk was one of the earli-
est and Dav1d Grossman one of the most recent writers to have co-
opted the consensual symbols of the Holocaust and the Zionist story of
collective regeneration into a radical parody of the paradigm of secular
redemption ...
Through a series of temporal disjunctions, the poetry of Dan Pagis
undermines the ideological, theological oontin1,1um that brings the past
into a meaningful present. Tnrough a series of spatial disruptions, the
diffused $elf, whose most oommon element in a Pa_gis poem is air and
whose most common thrust is centrifugal, enacts, in a way, the afterlife
of one consigned to a "grave in the air"; yet unlike Celan's speaker, his
response is not only (or even primarily) to the claustrophobia and con-
finement of the concentration camp hut to the groundedness, the grav-
itational force of the collective homecoming."" Through jW1taposition
or substitution that presupposes a semantic of destruction and regen-
eration, Pagis re<:$$ts the vocabulary of roattyr:doro. lo the- poem
I
'-..

llf,11/FA':,r.'I l F Mh +I Ci~ J
 "The Grave In the Air"
< 275 >
"Written in Pencil ..." as' elsewhere, he replaces the archetypal vie•
tim, Isaac, with a compo$i(e figure, :,. fraternity of murder, Cain and
Abel. The universal resonance of this poem only enhances its impact
in the interpretive, ·•covenantal" community to which it is primarily
addressed. Unlike the coupling of Margarete and Shulamith in Celan's
"Todesfuge," in which, as we have seen. the presence of the one in
effect annihilates the other, or in Kiefer's paintings, where they are
fixed in memorial space-that is, cultural space devoid of significant
moral tension- the brothers in the Cain and Abel poems remain
moral alternatives; although invoJcing a history of Jewish martyrdom io
which the identity of the Jew as victim is clear and absolute, they ad•
dress a society in which the intimation of a possible interchange of
identities (in one poem "Cain dreams that he is Abel""') suggests an
ongoing moral struggle. It should come -as no surprise, then, that Pag-
1s·s poems are not read on memorial occasions, that they have not been
granted a static, ceremonial presence within the culture.
Elsewhere, 1 have traced the attempt of Aharon Appelfeld and other
survivor-writers to find a space for private memory vis-il.-vis the collec-
tive remembering.... Here I would like to stress that, under the press
of circumstances, most of the Hebrew writers, especially the
native sons and daughters., are actually becoming more and more en•
gaged with the "master narrative," which, in tum, is being transformed
into a discourse on power and powerlessness, on victims and victimiz•
ers, which evolves in Israel as an ongoing response to the challenges of
political sovereignty and collective power.

It may be that George Steiner, consistent with his lifelong argument

for the JeWish text as homeland and the Jew as housed in many lan-
guages, overstates the purgative force in Celan's writing. In After Ba-
bel. he claims that Celan wrote Gennan as if it were a foreign language:
-All of Celan"s own poetry is translated into German ... It becomes a
'meta-language' cleansed of historical political dirt and thus, alone, us-
able by a profoundly Jewish voice after the Holocaust.... One can ar•
gue, of course, as Amy Colin has, that the "historical political dirt" is
never fully eradicated, that the·poet "intends to make readers aware"
of just those absences within his language .117 But just who are these
readers? The survivorl, I b.$ve suggested, fonn an inclusive and safe
category of readers across all cultures and languages, But their mediat-
ing presence notwithstanding, the exiled German writer has no more

·Go ,glc , JI I •

lll,l \/fA~riY
I ,ti
l
I♦

F Mh ti Ci ,I
 Sidra l:>eKoven Ezrahi
< 276 >

"chosen" them than the Hebrew audience he addressed in 1969. The

open borders of his reading community may correspond to the degree
of insularity in his language. There is one anecdote that illustrates the
profound distinction between readers carefully sought and those hap-
hazardly found. Edmond Jabes is reported to have discovered Celan
returning the manuscript of The Book ofQuestions to Jabes's mailbox,
stating that the publication of such an unabashed treatment of Jewish
themes would only briog new disasters upon them all. "The poet's fear
that directness rendered bis utterance ephemeral may have found its
psychic counterpart in the troubled survivor's fear of renewed perse,
cution and reprisal," writes Katharine Washburn in her introduction to
a collection of Celans last poems.M That is, at some level, the more
social or accessible the language to a continually sought but ever elu-
sive reading community, the more possibly consequential in ways the
poet is powerless to determine or control. In conclusion, Washburn
writes: "Aµticipating a future in which ... 'Auschwitz' . . . would .. .
tum into threadbare metai;>hor, the coiner of words looked not only at
the debasement of the currency which preceded him, but foresaw that
which lay ahead. He has given us instead a host of invulnerable
signs."$ These signs signify a withdrawal into a private space that, far
from bei.og pre-suicidal, may be a form of inviolability or even immor-
': tality. Whereas the reader of Pag/s"s poetry tears otf the public masks
one by one, until the hollow contours of the skull appear where the
self might have been, the reader of Celan's poetry constructs a profile
O\Jt of the irreducible sounds that never quite enter public speech. The
more personal or idiosyncratic the inscription, then, the more immune
it is meant to be to both the debasement of metaphor and its reiflcatfon
in history. Ultimately; the grave in the air is the locus of a poetry which
L hovers over the earth, refusing re-creation.

, jl I • I ,ti I+
llr,I 1/f!,~fj")' l F ~h : I · ,,I
 < 17 >

The Dialectics of Unspeakability:

Language, Silence, and the Narratives
of Desubjectification

PETERHAIDU

For Paul Hajdu,

17 October 1907-16 March 1944
A historian addresses the work of other historians and their relation to
the event. The major theoretical issues that attend the question of
Holocaust historiography arise: the exceptlonality of the event, Its rep-
reseotability, its (un)speakability, indeed, its very (in)oomprehensi-
bility. 11iat discussion i.s in the fofm of a preliminary draft, and bears
across the cover sheet the words:
Preliminary draft.
Not to be re1;>roduced or quoted in any form.
11ie formula is conventional enough. Given the importance of the
topic, the solicitation of collegial reactions prior to the final draft for
which one takes responsibility is admirable. Nevertheless, these nor-
mal professional considerations constitute an interdiction which pro-
duces the following situation: a scholar addresses an intellectual prob-
lem deployed by a colleague, without being able to cite thatc."<>lleague's
formulations. This inconclusive discourse perforce refers to an absent
text which cannot be presentified. The historian's text, in ,t um, 'Cites
another text as potential document, and discusses its incomprehensi-
bility, its unsayability. 1 In tum, that other text itself represents (in the
sense of'"makes the case for') the urgent need to curtail discourse, to
impose silence, about its own topic, the extermination of the Jews.
DisCO\ll'Se QQ silence, a specific silence in an extraordi:i)ary historical
situation, entails the issues of signification i;>ut forward by contempo-
rary theory. Such a discourse, however, is a situated one, caught at a
particular historical moment: the Busli supplement to the Reagan im-
< 277 >
 Peter Haidu
< 'l,78 >
perium. If it was important to Derrida, speaking in a different context
about similar i.sstleS, to watd olf any _possible confuslon between his
discotlrse and dialectics./ it is essential to assert the necessity of dialec-
tics in the present discourse, asserting both the discursive strategy of
heuristic assertions, whlch later may be withdrawn or modified, and
the comple,x interdependence of langtiage and what it seek$ to repre•
sent, always elusively; the domain of the real, postulated by langtiage
as its other. Only so can l hope to respond to "the obligatfon to thln"'at
the same time dialecticaliy and undialecticaliy." •

Silence is the antiworld of speech, and at least as polyvalent, constitu-

tive, and fragile . The necessary refuge of the poet, the theologian, and
the intellectual., it is equally the instrument of the bureaucrat, the
demagogue, and the dictator. Silence can be the marker of courage and
heroism or the cover of cowardice and self-interest; sometimes, it is
the road sign of an impossible turning. Silence resembles words also in
that each production of silence must be judged in its own contexts. in
its own situations of enunciation. Silence can be a mere absence of
~e<:h; at other times, it ts both the negation of speech and a produc-
tion of meaning. At times, it has to be overcome, and for the same
reasons the effort is made to index a "beyond" of langtiage in full rec-
ognition of the fact that language is not to be transcended: silence is
one of the ways in which we make sense of the world, and as such, it is
one of the di.fftrends over which we struggle,
But silence is enfolded in its opposite, in language. As such, silence
is siml!ltaneously the contrary of. langµage, its contradiction. and an
integral part of language. Silence, in this sense, is the ne<:essary dis-
crepancy of language with itself, its constitutive alter:ity.
This discrepancy takes many forms. Theology-negative theol-
ogy-long ago recognized language as inherently inadequate to the
task of representing a divinity defined as alterity, as fundamentally
other than the human-speaking s-ubje<:t, lt h;is beefl the challenge of
negative theology, starting with belief, to deploy modes of discourse
that acknowledge divinity without presentifying it.
The traditional disciplines of language have amply recognized the
ioteniependence of the said and the unsaid. Structures like elision,
irony in its multiple fonns, apostrophe, apophasis, and praeterition not
only recognize the existence of the unsaid but define linguistic struc-
tures of representation which ground the said in the unsaid, making

I ,ti ! ♦ Cl

·Go ,glc
,jll,

lll,11/f!,5,ITY l f' Mh ti Ci ,I
 The ~ of Un.,pea/c,Jbllity

< 279 ;,
the unsaid the essential element of discourse. The semantic content of
these rhetorical forms of structured silence was traditionally !imitable;
contemporary theory speculates about mote fundamental linguistic in-
stabilities which might preclude the !imitative determination of both
spoken and unspoken meanings.
The writer's thirst for "specificity"-wbich certainly includes the
historian's desire to "get it right"-runs into the paradoldcal function -
ing of his medium. The language employed to construct contemporary
experiences is always already inscribed with past experiences, and
cannot help but introduce elements of meaning that are of.question-
able relevance to the topic at band. The debate about the name to be
used to designate the event with which we are concerned is an ex-
treme example. Final Solution implies the Jews as a social, political.
ethical problem that, having festered in European culture and civili-
zation for centuries, is finally to be resolved: we know the shape of
resolution. Holocmut represents not only disaster and catastrophe,
but functionali7.es them as a burnt.offering, a sacrifice willingly offered
divinity, a divinity apparently hungry and thirsty for the blood of in-
nocents, a sacrifice which, properly enacted, might allow the victims
the possibility of an eventual redemption. Is Shoah an alternative? At
least one Hol~st authority gives Shoah the purely secular meaning
ofdisaster or catastrophe, but the Biblical references cited ·suggest oth-
erwise: a number of those texts indicate that the disaster is sent by
God.• My own solution is to speakof ~the Event": the theoretical im-
plications of this choice will become clear later.
The naming of an event bears with it implications of various kinds:
narratological, theological, historical, political, rhetorical, and philo-
sophical. Naming.s imply narratives and vice versa. The name, in the
fonn of a noun, is the sl,lbstantivation of an implicit nauative, and the
verb is the narrativization of a noun, What is true of individual words
is even more true of efforts at recounting events, whether the account
is fictional or historical. "Point of view~ theory was developed to ac-
count for the highly differentiated apprehensions of fiction.al narrative
events as perceived by different characters. It is not only fiction that is
concemed with point of vie~ however. Raul Hilberg, emphatic about
the rules that would protect the nonfictional historiography of the
Event, note$ the difference of opinion as to whetheT the story should
be told from the point ofview of the victims or of the pe1petrators.• A
postQiodem &agmentation may be posited which would present alter•

llf,ll\lf!1':,r.'I l F Mh ti 0 ... ,I
 PeterJlaidu
< 280 >

native utakes~ on events, such as dedicating one part of a book to the

point of view of the perpetrators and another to that of the victims.•
This structure is fundamental in documentaries whose intemews p.ro-
vide alternative reports on the events narrated.
Before alluding to the how of historical writing, Raul Hilberg dis-
CU$Ses the what of the telling. All narrative is u polemical," that is, rep-
resenting the conflict of adversaries and lheir values systems. Hilberg
is concerned with the incomplete and unbalanced character- of his
sources. German sources reveal the bureaucratic complexity of the
process of extermination, but they deal with people only in the aggre-
g3te. The situation is reversed in the Jewish sources, which tell of par-
ticular experiences, but without grasping the larger process in which
they were involved. Furthermore, the very number of survivors' tes-
timonies is a historiographical problem. At last count, there were eigh-
teen thousand such accounts, but that count was taken in the late
1950s. 1 The documentary mass is staggering. It presents the historian
with a triple task: selecting the material, ordering it, and choosing the
level of abstraction at which the story or stories are to be told. Can
such choices avoid perspectivism?
This brief, empirical survey of the practice and the reffections of
practicing historians rejoins the formulations of theory. The ordering
of historical m.aterial itselfis already a construction which implies shap-
ings, perspectives, values, and textual morphologies.8 These are, in
one aspect, the technical problems of the historian's science and the
rhetorical techniques of the historian's craft, but their implications
transcend these instrumental considerations. That there is no value-
free social science is an ancient discovery; but there is no wlue-free
narrative or historiography either. These issues grow out of what may
be called a "constructiVisf historiography, one which conceives of his-
tory as a form of writing, hence as informed by the same structures as
all forms of writing. But this constructivist historiography must be jux,
taposed to a critlque, not of the forms of textualization made available
by language, but of language itself as well as its representational poten•
tlals.
Deconstruction has made a strong case of linguistic instability as an
iJi.h erent characteristic of language, incorporating an endlessly regres-
sive system of self-referentiality, whose representalionlll claims and
assumptions are contradicted or undermined by the actual and fre-
quently contradictory functioning of the linguistic structures de-

llf,11/FA':,f'i"Y l F Mh : I • •I
 The Diakctlcs of U,111peakabll,ty
< 281 >

ployed. The iss-ue is not accidental traps on the way to ~ a t e rep-

resentation, traps into which we may fall as the result of bad habits,
faulty training, and inadequate methodologies. Nor is the issue
whether language is to be used as an irresponsible game, In disregard
of the serious matters of life, death. and history. It is rathef the ineluct-
able structures and risks inherent in the representational process, in-
cluding history as well as fiction, historical discourse as well as any
other form of discourse. These structures and risks would appear to be
the inherent cost of any and all representation, including all uses of
language, including that fonn of representation we label ·'thoqght":
they may be ubiquitous out of a necessity inherent to the processes
they constitute.
These considerations identify a crucial aporia. History shares certain
characteristics with fiction. not as an :lecidental weakness, but as the-
unavoidable price of being constituted as textualized thought.and re-
search. This conclusion runs directly counter to, and is absolutely un~
acceptable to, the sacred horror with which we cannot help but view
the Event.- There is a radical contradiction between what. I will call a
secular textual theory, along with its information of historiography, and
an ethical and religious approach to the Event which addresses it with
the requisite sense of responsibility toward the dead, their suffering,
and the piety appropriate to the Event.

It is perhaps in the thought of Emmanuel Levinas that we find the

most profoundly insistent example of the unity of ethics and religion:
religion is the name given to the bond that is established between self
and other, without constituting a totality.• Sucb a unity, adhering to the
Jewish tradition itself, was elaborated after and perhaps partly in re-
sponse to the Event. Levinas is to be taken literally when he places
the Event in the center of"the scattered elements of his biography" as
both presentiment and memory of the N.izi horror. 10 The res'u)ting
work is irreducible: it transforms the Jewish tradition into a radical
challenge to Western ethical thought. Nevertheless, it is not a betrayal
of that thought to see Levinas' work as a profound condemnation of the
torment of the Jews in the camps-to whom Levinas refers as the Mar-
tyrs-and as a searching work of intelligence elaborated as a desired
obstacle to recurrence.
In spite of accusations that Levinas' work slights history, his ethics is
inew-icably bo1,1nd.wjth history, and i.n exceedingly complex ways: it i.s
 Peter Haidu
< 282 >

simultaneously an escape from history, a response to history, and in the

deepest sense an element of history itself.' 1 World War 11 cedes us as
primal narrative the face-to-face encounter of the guard. in a camp,
with a victim. The fundamental ethical situation is that of the confron-
tation with the visage of the other, and the selfs response to the other's
"helpless eyes, absolutely deprived of protection," the veyes without
defense." That visage Levi.J)as argues as being intelligible before the
etfe<:ts of culture and. history; hence the response to it is universally
obligatory. The presence o[ the other's vis~e requires a response to
the other's immediacy as such, something possible only to an ego
which has made itself vulnerable to the other, vulnerable to the point
where it cannot escape the other's "nalced neediness, the destitution
inscribed upon his visage, his visage as a destitution which assigns .re-
sponsibility to me." u The responsibility assigned by this encounter-
the itaUcs are Levinas' own-is an "unlunited responsibility."" It is a
conception of the other's presence as an imperious call to seI{-
abnegation in response to helplessness and need, a radical ethical im-
perative far less measured, far more imperious than the Kantian. Can
a sharper contrast be envisaged to the behavior of perse<:utors of the
Jews in the camps? Can a more ironclad guarantee of nonrecurrence
be imagined, were this ethic univetsally adopted?
That last phrase poses the inevitable political question to ethics. The
survival of groups in a multicultural world is a political question. How-
ever admirable in its challenge to moral somnolence, an ethic which
can neither hope for general 11doption nor meet the actual conditions
of contemporary life hovers close to remaining the condemnatory lux-
ury of survivor guilt. A world in which the face of ellperience is nor-
mally mediated,..-by linguistic structures and their ideological con-
tent; by social welfare organization.s, whether governmental or private;
by the representations of television as entertainment or news, or the
representations of television cameras built into "smart" bombs, in
which the face-to-face encounter with the victim is never even pos-
sible-such a world escapes the Levina.sian namttive of encounter
with the other's visage.
There is also a question both philosophical and ethical. No encoun-
ter between self and other is ahistorical. Immediacy per se does not
walk up to us. Immediacy per se is an allegorical Bgure, reductively
abstracted from real encounters. The narrative of"immediaoy" avoids
the recognition of the other in the concreteness of the other's social,

llf,11/FA':,f'i'Y l F Mil +I Ci ,,I

 The Dialectic& of Unspealwbility
< 283 >

cultural, and historical alterity. As l..evinas himself has acknowledged,

the ethics of Totality and Infinity fllll in the effort at a heteronomy
respectful of the other in the other's own terms." The encounter that
needs to be staged is the full one, in which the other comes garbed in
yarmulke, Bedouin robes, Levi.s, or a business suit, in the blac.k or the
brown or the yellow of the other's skin, in the discrepancies between
the other's language and our own. It is not phenomenological reduc-
tions that are constituted as subjects, victimized, or desubjectified: it
is individuals and collectivities in the concrete habits of their cultures
and social formations.
The call for recognition of and integral respect for the other cannot
be gainsaid. It is precisely the urgency of that eth1cal claim which im-
poses the requirement for mediated forms of knowledge, the search
for historical understanding, the effort to transcend cultural bounda-
ries, as 1ncorpor.ited in the formalisms of the disciplines we inherit as
historical creatures, as well as the social formalJsms of governmental
agencies. Hunger, as Levinas argues, is a phenomenon fur ethical
judgment and choice, So are torture and death. Hunger, torture, and
death, if they implicate individuals in ethical judgments, are also social
phenomena, with economic, political, and ideolo.gical aspects, parts of
history folded into each other- The arguments as to the relative priori-
ties of the different categories are perhaps of lesser importance to the
victims than to academics who study them. Ethical judgment in partic-
ular is a luxury of the survivors, not of.the victims, who perhaps would
have asked lar Jess than moral impeccability: survival does not require
such high moral standards.
It is in any case my 'h ope and my expectation that Levinas would
ruscwm any appropriation that employs his ethics to argue a moral
condemnation addressed to the past and that at the same time disre-
gards the presen.t visage of the other. i\n ethic that works only fOT the
satisfactions of moral superiority vis-a-vis the monsters of the past,
without accepting concrete responsibility for the other who Is present
at our doorstep, seems tome a parody ofLevinas' ethical thought.

The reference to negative theology, at the beginning of my remarks,

was not accidental. The impossibility that attends the representations
•
of the Event, as well as its designation as a unique event with a special
status of"exceptionality," looks very much like the initial stage of an
institutionalization of the divine. A5 such, it will be a divinity unlike
 Peter Haidu
< 284 >

that which we inherit as Jews, as Christians, or as atheists. The un-

speakabillty of the Event, the horror which comes upon the historian
as h{s gaze fues on the documents of his research, enters into a tradi-
tion of the ineffability which attends appearances of the divine. The
topos of ineffability is associated both with the experience of horror
and with that of the sublime. What I wish to designate, however, pre-
cedes that distinction: the irruptions into human life of the divine as
that which is awesome, that which strikes us with terror, inexplicable
because of the unpredictability of its violence as well as the force of
that violence. Divinity, here, might be the name given that violence
Walter Benjamin considered constitutive. 16 It is a concept of divinity
that precedes the moralization of divinity under the aegis of monothe-
ism; lt is a concept of divinity, I take it, that is pre-Judaic, intractable
in moral terms, in which divinity bypasses human understanding, not
necessarily as desirable perfection, but equally as an object of pro-
found repugnance. It is a concept of divinity which culture and civili-
ution, as we know them, hold at bay, rendering it also Nunspeakable."
Let this incipient sacraliution of the Event hang fire for a bit: I will
return to it, turning now to a central hbtorical text. It is a speech of
Heinrich Himmler, delivered at Posen on 3 October 1943, to high-
ranking officers who were his immediate subordinates in the SS. •• In
this speech, Himmler addresses the lieutenant generals who were his
adjuvants. He speaks .sometimes as a leader, sometimes as a teacher.
sometimes as a bureaucrat: he is his interlocutors' destinator. 17 If there
are references to the German natioQ, the welfare of its people, its fu.
ture, and its needs, what is most immediately in the forefront of his
concerns a.re the strength, the importance, and the welfare of his par-
ticular institution. He addresses his subordinates about their missions,
past, present. and future; about the qualicy, morale, and morals of
their troops; about the obstacles they face , both from external-enemies
of Germany ind within the German polity. It is in a section with the
subheading ~Die Judenevakuierung" that the text enters a semantic
domain cha111cterized by 11 rhetoric of ambiguity, the use of euphe-
mism, periphrasis, and all sorts of double-coding. 18 ft is a text whose
language is particularly unstable.
The text• bears markers of an awareness of its own extraordinary na-
ture, It takes note of its own situation of enunciation; it is entirely self-
conscious as utterance. The leader of the SS addresses his immediate
subordinates, those who in tum lead the elite forces that actually carry

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 The Dialeatica of Unspukability
<O 285 >

out the missions set for them, He will address topics that are usually
left unspoken. He stresses his present openness on these topics by
repetition, using that rhetorical stress to lead to paradoll stated in the
form of paranomasia (the play on meaning usin_g different forms- of the
same word). He will be, for once (einmal), entirely open (ga'nz ojfen),
and the matter will be discussed frankly: ~und trotzdem werden wir in
der Offentlichkeit nie dariiber reden" (in spite of the present ~open•
ness," never will we s ~ of this in Qopenness," that (s, in more public
circumstances). The norms, on this topic, are those of unspealcability:
the present openness is an anomalous transgression of those norms. In
the context of the elite membership present on the particular occasion,
this extraordinary verbalimtion can-for once-be afforded.
The rhetoric presupposes a prior code of stlence as a shued assump-
tion between the speaker and his audienoe: a semiotic code, effective
in real communication. During the purge of the SA in 1934, the SS
murdered the rival organization"s top officers and men. Hunmler ap•
peals to the same Takt (deliCll<!y of feeling) which he and his subordi·
nates have exercised regarding that event of 1934: never discussing it,
never .speaking of it. The event caused its participants to shudder (es
hat jeden geschaudert)-the-shudder of horror-but all were clear in
their readiness to do it again, if so ordered. One distinction between
the present elite and the outsiders excluded from that elite corps (the
general, indeterminate, Impersonal man, but also dte braoen achtzig
millionen Deutschen) js that the members of the elite recognize the
n~ssity of apophasis, of not speaking, of silencing certain matters,
while the popular mass vo.ices its concerns all too readily. Another dis-
tinction is that all GermJns agree on the necessity of the extermination
of the Jews in general, but not ali are capable of acting according to the
logic of the principle: each one comes forward with a favorite Jew, an
exception to the general rule~ ein pnma Jude-who is to be spued.
Without naming it, the text recognizes the humart propensity to iden•
tify with another human being, and to protect the ,other. This behav-
ioral potential is said to characterize the Genrian polity in general:
what is its status in the elite?
It is at this point that the leader appeals to the kind of experience
that binds him and his subordinates in a collectivity driven by faith and
a sense of mission. lt is the appeal of a leader to military men, involang
the necessary sacrifice they all make to higher ideals. He and they
have been hardened by the experience of seeing "a hundred corpses

·Go ,glc ltNII/FRSfi"Y 1)F Mh ti Ci ,I

 Peter Haidu
< 286 >

lie side by side, or five hundred, or a thousand, To have endured this

... and in spite of that, to have remained decent" (und dabei ...
amtandig geblieben zu ~cin), that is what has made them hard. This
"hardness" is a quality to be desired, conjoined with • decency," both
being retained or achieved in spite of the si.ght of corpses of mass mur-
der. No mention is made of the possible narrative role the individual
subject might have played, as an agent, in producing the scene before
his eyes. He. is represented only in a passive and cognitive role: any
potential narrative is elided. The other rhetorical technlque to be
noted is the assertion, as an assumption, of what would normally be
questioned as the result of the information given: the assertion of"de-
cency." The ~hardness" attained is the subjectivity of an elite, even
Withfn the general German population, constructed in sp~e of, on top
of, the kind of reaction decried among die braven achtzig millionen
Deutschen. The reaction of identification with another suffering being
is a potential that is presupposed by the discourse as a danger, a pos-
sible obstacle to the development of that "hardness." It is a character-
istic of the oulgw, which must be overcome by the elite, an elite
which, nevertheless and in spite ofeverything, remains anstiindig.
Addressing the issue of the event and its representation, the leader
turns to oxymotonic mysticism, to the paranomasiac parado)Cicalify
that language allows, to the linguistic transcendence of ordinary moral
and referential limits, as he posits an extraordinary theory of apophatic
historiography. The extermination of the Jews, the goal to be effec-
tuated, is to be ein niemals geschriebenes und niemals zu .,chreibendes
Ruhmeablatt U11$eter. Geschichte: a never-written and never-to-be-
written page of glory in SS history. Never mind that Ruhm (glory,
honor; fame, renown) presuppose.~ public knowledge, and that public
knowledge is exactly what is to be prevented by the fact that never is
this claim to glory to be written and thereby known: it is the rhetorical
coincidentia vppositorum that is postulated as the (non)representation
of the action of the SS, that will produce their glory and their fame.
The paradox of glory built on silence depends on the-rule of apophasis,
the unspeakability of what the SS is being exhorted to do.
This goal is a demanding one. One of the traditional rewards of mil-
itary .action, the glory that implies admiration and more concrete re-
wards, is being denied the military. What will make men act with such
selflessness, such self-sacrifice? It is~ as usual-"morality~ that is in-
voked for the most immoral acts: it is a moral right (das moralische
 The Dial.ectics ofUn4peafrability
< 287 >

B,echt), a duty towards the people (die Pjlicht gegenulJer Ufl8erem

Volk), to kill a people that had wanted to kill the enunciatory "us" (das
UM umbringen wollte). The totalizing structure of the text shows that
Himmler's speech here is geared to making a moral point: in spite 0£
its strilcing linguistic rhetoric, killing the Jews is incidental, in the The-
torical structure of the speech, to a more encompassing issue, the mo-
rality of the SS. We have the right to kill the Jews, he says, "'but we do
not have the right to enrich ourselves with so much as 11 fur, a watch, a
mark, or a cigarette or anything else"' in performing that duty. Th.e
A1Urottung des judischen Volkes is a duty, an order (ein Befehl), one
might say a responsibility. Pilfering the corpses, however, -is.forbidden:
to give in to the temptation would be equivalent to being infected by
the germ to be exterminated. 1•
The basic legitimizing principle (G rundsatz) had been enunciated
earlier, in the context, not of Jews, but of "alien peoples" (Jremtk
Volker) in general. Himmler warns against thinking that other peoples
can share the spiritual qualities of the German people: ~our inoffensive
soul and feeling, our good nature, our idealism" (umere ganz harmlose
Seel.e . .. unsere Cutmutigkeit, ufl8eren ldealismus).'0 The ethical im-
peratives to be enunciated have. a restricted field of application, but
within that Seid, they can be considered absolute. One basic principle
had to. be absolute for SS men: they bad to be "honest, decent, loyal,
and comradely to members of our blood . • . and to nobody elsew (ehr-
lich, anstandig, treu, und kameradschaftlich zu Angehorigen Un$eres
eigenen Blutes ... und zu somt niemondem). Honor is entirely an in-
group concept, and its extension to the rest of the world is expressly
denied. As a re.suit, other peoples are literally worthless, without
value: "Whether ten thousand Russian females drop from exhaustion
while building an anti•tank- ditch interests me only insofar as the anti-
tank ditch gets finished for Germany's sake .. . It is a crime against
our own blood to worry abo1,1t them and give them ideas .that will make
it still harder for our sons and grandsons to cope with them . . . Our
concern, our duty is to our people and our blood ... Toward anything
else we can be indifferent. J wish the SS to take this attitude in con-
fronting the problem ofall alien, non-Germanic peoples, especially the
Russians. All else is just soap bubbles, is a fraud against our own na-
tion" (Seifen.tchaum, Betrug an un.serem elgenen Volk).
Sentimentality; morality, and ethical imperatives are not merely the
personal qualities required by the millennial socius. These formula-
 Peter H~du
< 288 >
tions are not merely general recommendations of a leader to his sub-
ordil)ates. They are orders, and or:ders are sacred (heilig): "Orders
must be sacred, When generals obey, armies obey automatically. This
sacredness of orders [d1e&>e Heiligkeit des Befehls] applies the more,
the larger our territory grows." The duty to exterminate the Jews is one
of these orders, falling into the category of the sacred.
The discourse of extermination, from the broad historical dimension
of its beginning to its contorted invocation ofapophasis and its unques-
tioning assertion of the right and duty to eradicate those it identifies as
suhhum!Ul enemies, is cast in f.uniliar tones: it is the familiar register
of self-righteous moralism, deploying the language of responsibility for
the welfare of an institution shared with the interlocutors and pro-
pounding the vision of a future polity to be served with self-sacrifice
and devotion. It is a historical vision of the past, of present necessity
and future service, legitimated in terms of recognizable values: hon-
esty, decency, loyalty, solidarity, idealism, and so on.
Himmler, a patriotic idealist sincerely exhorting his subordinates? A
hypocritical bureaucrat whose pretentious moralizing is obviously self-
legitimating? Or is the silence a required part of a strategy which in-
cludes the refusal, by both Hitler and Himmler, to Issue written orders
for extermination, In spite of bureaucratic norms ofJustificatory paper-
worlc-a strategy to elude judgment on the basis of documentary evi-
dence? Was an eventual accounting foreseen, such as developed in the
Nuremberg trials?· Or was it a strategy to avoid a negative reaction
from within their own polity?
These questions and hypotheses are all valid and are not mutually
exclusive, but they ace beside the point. The state of Himmler's soul,
the woddngs of his mind, are equally accessible (nothing unusual in
any of the possibilities mentioned), indeterminable. (as questions of in-
tentionality usually are), and profoundly indifferent. So. finally, is the
expression of moral outrage at the appropriation of morality and ideal-
ism in the service of extermination, Neither individual empathy with
the monsters ofextennination, in some act of historical Ver.ttehen, nor
ritualistic condemnation provides the understanding that performs the
necessary transgression of sacral apophasis. The force of outrage must
be appropriated by the forging -of tools of comprehension of the rela•
tion of the discourse of extermination to the enacted narrative history
of extermination.
The concept of ideology allows for the presence of contradictions,

·Go ,glc
 The Dialectics of Un,pealcability
< 289 >

such as that which displays thousands ofgenocid.$1ly murdered victims

and claims "decency" as.self-evident for the agents of their extermina-
tion. At a different level, the components of the Nazi belief system-
antisemitism, social Darwinism, the geopolitics of eastern expansion,
and anti-Ma.i:xism-formed a "s)lllcretic ideology" of particularly weak
linkages.11 Ideology is not merely the self-interested re1>resentation of
false consciousness, however. It is polymorphous, polyvalen~•. and
ubiquitous. Furthermore, ideology plays an essential role in constitut-
ing subjectivity, endoWing the individual with the possibility ofsocial
action within the institutions and normative parameters of a given so-
ciety.iii' A generalized value system within a society, or a plurality of
such value systems, ideology informs the discourses and actions of
~ents and representatives of various kinds, including administrators
and soldiers. In the narrative of history, taking on the role of destina-
tor, Himmler formulates the final goal, its instrumental means, and the
ideology to knit those ends and means together to the concrete agents,
assigned to specific tasks. Both means and ideology meet the obstacle
already noted, the human propensity to identify with others, called
upity" by Rousseau.,i.,
Himmler's is a practical, pragmatic concern and reveals a full con-
sciousness of its enormity. The physical and mental tortures inflicted
on the victims of the Nazi extermination processes were not without
effects upon their perpetrators, Some may have found gratification in
the Rausch of repeated extermination, indulging a "compelling lust .for
killing on an immense scale:~ particularly when combined with the
"seething resentment fraught with avenging violence" of the Nazi re-
gime:"' for those so inclined, the camps gave ample opportunity for
uacting out" the most inhumane components of humanity. But al-
though occasions for sadism were frequent in the camps, one historian
concludes that there were few sadists... _Rather, the major problem
faced by Hlmmler aod others was the effect of the ex.tennination pro-
cess on the morale of 1:he "normal human beings," the "respectable
fathers of families," the•"ordinary law-abiding citizens~ who earned out
the cooL rational process of extermination as "cleanly" as possible:
"The system and the rhythlll of mass extermination were ditected not
by sadists .•. {but by) w9rthy family men brought up in the belief that
anti-Semitism w.&S a form of pest control, harnessed into an impersonal
mechanical system working witb the precision of militarized industry
and relieving the individual of any sense of personal responsibility."17

·Go ,glc llf,11/FA':,f'i"Y l F Mh : I • •I

 Peter Haidu
< 290 >

The same individuals C()uld have been both the ordinary, everyday
fathers of families, bureaucratic automata to whom others' lives meant
no more than the pieces of paper that sealed their torture, starvation,
and gassing, and the bloodthirsty fanatics of the Rausch. This double
conclusion is not at all impossible-there is ample evidence for each
of the traits cited-but it requires a radically different view of hu,nao
subjectivity than is usual in history or fiction: it would have to be a
particularly postmodern and poststructuralist view of the subject to
incorporate such aporetic narrative potentials.• It might operate a rad-
ical scission between the individual as characterired by a stable set of
semantic traits ontologically categorized i.n clinical or sociologi¢al cat•
egories, and the actions attributable to that individual. The unity and
self-identity of subjectivity would be put into question, as would the
related issue of narrative and historical probability, what the French
tradition calls the oraisemblable: that which has the appearance of
truth.
Such scissions may be lived in a lighthearted manner, as when tra•
ditional forms of_morality or politics are overthrown for new freedoms .
But for some individual agents of the narrative of extermination, the
process in which they participated proved a heavy burden. Highly ed-
ucated and sophisticated, frequently drawn from intellectual profes-
sions such as academics, government officials, lawyers, even a priest
and an opera singer, 19 the mid-level commanders were subject to in-
creasing strains. As repugnant as their complaints are to read now, they
experience<l exhaustion, asked for transfers, avoided returning to duty
after leaves, experienced nervous breakdowns, and even committed
suicidC:'. 30 Himmler himself was notoriously unable to stomach tbe
sigbt of the actual extermination process.31
The administrative problem produced different, even contradictory
solutions. On the one hand, a strategy was devised which attempted to
elude guilt: the individual in an Einsatzgruppe was to have no contact
with his victims, was to identify with a unit acting as such, and only on
orders from a superior officer. On the other hand, another strategy
posited collective blood guilt as the social cement that would bind the
members of a unit together in comradeship and the "cam~derie of
guilt." 31 Both solutions point to the same problem: the potential of a
moral reaction of identification with the victims on the part of tbe per-
tietrators of extermination. It was these agents of extermination whose
subjectivity had to be constructed in such a way as to enable them to

llf,I I/F!1~riY l F Mh ti ,,I

 The Dialectics of Un.tpealcability
< 291 >
cany out their-"sacred" orders. It was their subjectivity that bad to be
shaped.
This is the delicate narrative, administrative, and political point at
which much Nazi ideology and practice was aimed: the constitution of
active subjects to carry out the prescribed programs of a particular ide-
ology. Tb.e enactment of this program, however, also required the con-
stitution ofan appropriate victim. Terence De.s Pres has described the
·excremental assault" upon the inmates of the camps, the systematic
assault upon their dignity and their self-identity as subjects. The ne-
gation of their subjectivity had to be internalized by the victims so as
to be inscribed on their faces and in their bearing, marking them as
subhuman and therefore fit for extermination. This systematic assault
made their mass murder possible for those charged with their exter-
mination. Asked why the incessant humiliation and cruelty, since all
the victims were marked for extermination in any case, the Treblinka
rommander answered: "To condition those who actually had to carry
out the policies . . . to make it possible for them to do what they did.na.1
The desubjecti6cation of the victim was a programmed precondition
for his or her vict:imiutfon, a precondition enabling the perpetrator's
enactment of the narrative program of extermination.
Exclusive stress on the uniqueness of the Event, combined with its
sacralization, results in its disconnectedness from history. The evolu-
tion of a cult of r~membraoce into a sectarian exclusionary ritual
''(separates) the Jewish catastrophe from its secular historical set-
ting."'34 The Event"s uniqueness is reified: it is ronceived as entirely mi
generis and unprecedented, decontextualized, it therefore must es-
cape historical comprehension. The stress on uniqueness leads, in in•
eluctable logic, to radical incomprehensibility. Worse, such a historical
hapax also leads to dismissal of the event as irrelevant: if it is entirely
unique and disconnected from human historicity, wh;it can be its "rel-
evance" for the perplexed, en.gaged in making hi$torical or moral
choices?""
~ty primary reason for avoiding this conclusion, or the profoundly
religious silence. to which it could lead, is a political one (conceiving of
•politics• in this case in its broadest possible sense), in which it is
equated with collective survival, Admitting "the mrsterious quality
. . . [of) every historic-al event," I would nevertheless insist on the ne•
cessity of pursuing the ideational conat,,18, the drive to understand, not
for pure jptellectualityof"research." but precisely because of the (par-

·Go ,glr , JI I •

lll,11/fA~riY
I ,ti
l
I♦

F Mh ti Ci ,I
 Fetet Haidu
< 292 >

tiaJ) equation of power and knowledge. If the question of relevance is

raised by one Holocaust historian, another (Bauer) complains of the
~w:k of reali7.11tjon of tbe here and now of the Holocaust, of its being a
phenomenon, not of the past but of the present." It is our self.
consciousness as extrusions of a specific history, living permanently on
the edge of multiple destructions, that forces us to recognize our par-
ticipation in the same genea!Qgy as the Event: -n.e first thing to re-
member is that the Holocaust was an actual occurrence i.n our century.
It was not the product of an inexplicable fate or of supernatural inter•
vention, but one logical possible outcome of European history." 36 We
are also •one logical possible outcome of European history": that dual-
ity is simultaneously the bane of our terror-laden awareness and the
twisted skein our cognitive conatu.Y follows as we desperately hang on
to its burning knots.
In the discourse that is HU11mler's, we can recognize modes of dis-
course that are all too u.ncomfortably familiar. What the historian sees
lo the discourse of the other, and what freezes him in terror, is not a
cognition of alterity: it is the recognition of tbe already known. Even
when the discourse deploys the linguistic structures from the most ex-
alted reaches of human poetry and spirituality, these structures are
familiar ones. What is so unacceptable is not anything that is readily
dismissible as pure alterity, a discourse emanating from an instance
and in forms that are radically different from those we know. This oth-
erness was the problem of n~tive theology: it is not ours. On the
contrary, Himmler's discourse is unhetmlich because it reproduces,
with all nuances and paradoxes in place, the discourses we know as the
discourses of poetry and policy, of idealism and religion, of administra-
tion and 'bureaucracy. 31 Taken •straight" or as parody, however, the dis-
cursive strategies that weave tbefr tuaura in the texts of extermination
are the ordinary furnishings of our institutional, intellectual and aes-
thetic lives. What is horrifying, what is monstrous, in this discourse, is
not strangeness or alterity: its unspe~ility derives from the recog-
nition of our own modes of discourse, and of the subjectivitieS' which,
if they are not actually our own, are entirely within the grasp of our
imaginations.
With one difference: the effects we know this diswurse to have had,
effects that are not accountable as linguistic, discursive, or theoretical.
We cannot think of the Event without discourse11nd its textualizations;
ft is CQnstituted in our minds and mour discourses by other represen-

llr,I 1/FA':,r.v l F Mh ti Ci ,I
 The Dialectics of UR6JH1akabfl,ty
< 293 >
tations, both narrative and discursive, including the postwar doc-
umentaries whose ima,ges etched themselves into our adolescent
memories, including the videotapes of survivors, including all the dis-
courses and texts of the historians. But the Event is more than lan-
guage, text, and discourse, We can very readily question the use of the
common noun, capitalized as I have used it, to simultaneously ac-
knowledge and avoid the more frequently used term.s .i n a periphrasis
that is yet another form of apophas;s. Ifs very visibility, I hope, will
acknowledge the problematic of which it is the locus: what is an event,
what is the event, is it a single event; how can one abstract from the
enormous multipl1city of actions the notion of a single event; how can
the evenemential, in its nonlinguistic aspect, make its way into lan-
guage and representation? Such are the inevitable and proper ques-
tions of theory and history both, and it is necessary they be asked ,
above all in connection with the Event. The very reason they must be
asked and pursued as theoretical questions, however, is the nontheo-
retical and nonlinguistic mass that eludes intellectual grasp and verbal
circumscription: something happened about which we can never know
enough, about which we always already know far too much, that re-
mains equally insistent and absent in the nightmare language ofhistot-
ical reality.
Himmler's text parodies the rationality, the morality, the earnest-
ness of our own subjectivity and reduces its universalizing assump-
tions, inherited from the Enlightenment, to· the absolutistic hypostasis
of tribal blood identity; That reduction was the ideological sine qua non
for the extermination of the Jews. As a result, something other than a
very large number of Jews was destroyed during the long sequences
that led from the ghettos to the trains and into the gas chambers, The
Nazi policies, as enacted in the narratives of our historians, also suc-
ceeded in killing off a certain kind of subjectivity. Its destruction, in-
strumental in the process of the physical extermination remains as the
end result of that process. Both the diaspora and Israel are forced to
develop new subjectivities; efforts whose results do not always meet
our hopes. What strikes the reader with horror at the reading of
Himmler's speech is that the very qualities we admire and defend,
with which we inculcate our children as qualities of a desired subjec-
tivity, are qualities claimed by his discourse as leading to the Event
and to the destruction of that subjectivity. The reconstruction and the
variabilities of subjectivity are the inevitable aftermaths of the Event.

·Go ,glc ltNII/FRSr;;, (IF Mil +I Ci ,J

 Peter Haidu
< 294 >

The process of extermination, to a degree that must remain impre-

cise, resulted from the language of silence on which Himmler insisted
and which he and Hitler practiced. It is this narrative connection, this
sequential linkage of the speech of silence and the Event, that renders
impermissible the erasure, the cancellation, the bracketing of the nar•
rative that history performs with the silences of its agents upon the
bodies of its victims. We cannot know the narrative directly, nor can
we know it totally: even the direct survivors can. know only one part of
what a historian will constitute as the Event, and as we have seen, filly
historian will be exceedingly conscious of the Event as a construct of
the process of writing history. Our grasp of the Event must inevitably
be mediated by representations, with theit baggage of indeterminacy.
But this is a context in which theory is forced to reckon with refer-
ence-as unsatisfactory as contemporary accounts of reference may
be-as a necessary function of language and all forms of representa-
tion. There are other arguments for reference: this is the argument of
an ethics and a politics of history.

An admittedly atavistic reason to hesitate at the notion of "unspeaka-

bility" is that it constitutes an acceptance, after the fact ~d after the
deaths, of the unspeakability argued by Himmler. lt produces our-
selves as the continuing agents ofHimmler's narrative program ofsi-
lence. There ls another way of conceiving the issue of unspeakability,
however, which may be more promising. fur the future. If lam correct,
and the unhtimlich qualityofHitnmler's speech derives from conjoin-
Ing our r.ecog!lition of his discourse as similar to our own38 with the
terror that strikes us in the realization of what that discourse led t-0 in
the narrative of history, then its "unspeakability" is less an inherent
quality of the text thl!ll a product of our cog!litive relation to the Event
and to its texts. It is an effect of our own location in the genealogy that
constructs both our subjectivity and that which produced the Event.
It is as inheritors of that genealogy, it is because of our stake and our
identity l"ooted in that genealogy, that we free-z:e in horror at simulta-
neously recognizing in Himmler's discourse the foundations and the
destruction of our own subjectivity.
As repugnant as the idea may be, the reaction of unspeakability ·be-
tokens the fact that we are the product of the same genealogy as the
perpetrators of the Event and their discourse. We share the same cul-
ture, within certain limitations;, we share similar ideological systems,

, JI I • I ,ti I♦
 The Dialectics of Unrpe4kabillty
< 295 >

as well as t he same modes of discourse as the perpetrators and, it must

be added, as their victims. Apophasis is a reaction of our historians, of
our readers, of our congeners in the skein of a specific culture and
history. Would a reading of the historical record of the programmed
extermination of the Jews by a hi.storian whose specific subjectivity was
not implicated in the Event produce th~ same sense of ~unspealcabil-
ity"? Indeed, would the event strike-that historian with the same sense
of... exceptionalityn?
Ot would that historian recognize its specificity, as an event which
could not have occurred without the bureaucratic structures that are
typical of its historical period, which c;ould not have.claimed its relative
efficacy without the easily reproducible technologies available in the
mid-twentieth century, but which otherwise beats marked resem-
blances to other events, in other cultures, events which mark the sud-
den escalation of ordinary human violence and cruelty to extraordinary
levels? This potential of human culture was conjoined for the first time
With the military, technological, and bureaucratic systems required by
the numbers implicit in this program of exteroiination. That particular
exceptionality may well be a momentary temporal accident; but as
these military, technological, and bureaucratic systems-the everyday
components of our social lives-are spread throughout the world, as
part of the culture we export for our- cultural' and historical others to
imitate and adapt, they will also be taking in a deadly potential. The
universalization of Western culture, which proceeds by the extermi-
nation of subjected cultures, implants the possibility of repeating its
own patterns. of extermination. The universalizati9n of Western cul-
ture is hardly an unmixed blessing. "Never again" is a slogan that trans-
lates our hopeful reaction to the Event rather than a political judg-
ment. Cynthia Ozick has pointed out that the historical facticity of the
Event cannot be assumed to imply the unlikeliness of its recurrence:
on the contrary, the fact that it happened more likely implies repeti-
tion. 30
The arguments regarding the uniqueness of the Event are well
known a.nd will not be rehearsed here. But is uniqueness a unique
quality? Historiography argues that every event is di.ll'erent, and hence
uniq11e. A historical event, though we speak of it in the singular, con•
sists of a configuration of traits which together make up the event's
uniqueness. Its components, however, could not be recognize<l were
they not available in the r-emaining repertoire of human existence, It
 Peter Haidu
< 296 >

is the particular configuration of the event that endows it with unargu-

able uniqueness. Whether the uniqueness of the Event is located in
the number of victims. in the methodological ambition oftotallzation,
in the bureaucratization of the process, the individual traits are, in
strict logical terms, comparable to other human experiences. Such
comparison does not have the effect ofreducing all the events consid-
ered to the same level; on the contrary, the comparison leads to recog-
nition of specificity. The Jewish case was-unquestionably unique, and
denying the fact is to mystify history, but vto declal'e [on the other
hand) that there are no parallels, and that the whole phenomenon is
inexplicable, is equally a mystification." 40
Among the traits of the comparable catastrophes is the desubjectm-
cation of the victims, both the killed and the survivors. Death in battle
or resistllnce can signify the sacriflce of the individu!ll for the sake of
the survival of a collective subjectivity: it is an affirmation ofsubjectiv-
ity, even in the death of the subject. Death as the victim of an at-
tempted collective extermination signifies the contrary: the radical de-
subjectification of the individulll as part of the collective from which
individulll subjectivity derives. This phenomenon is not unique to any
collective ant,l its members: it is potentially universal. The interdepen-
dence of individual and collective subjectivity is a condition of human
sooial life.

Let me suggest another, final direction, which will not only elude clo-
sure but actively seek an opening. Jt is an opening that is grounded in
the freedom of the subject and the necessity of its employment. It is
an effort to conclude with an ethical and political opening to others
which will seek, not to redeem the dead by asserting their death pos-
sessed an inherent redemptive significance-a golll I find frightful and
repugnant-but to endow their death and their torture with the ret-
rospective meaning It is in ow power to give. It is an effort to make
present action the interpretant (to use C. S. Pierce's term) of the Mar-
tyrs' torture. One finds in Mi.drash thefollpwing from lW>bi Yohanan:;
Every distress that Israel and the nations of the world share is a
distress indeed.
Every distress that is Israel's alone
is no distress.••
The ~le, applied as inexorable Law, would be too harsh: the distress
particular to Israel and the djaspora is a distress indeed, But the dirw-
tion, toward continuity and interdependence, is the right one,

1, ,, •• Go ,glc
 The Dialect~ ofUMpealcabillty
<, 2'iY7 >

In the wake of World War II, and largely as a result of it, Jews in the
United States gained access·to the professions in a sudden and brilliant
social sut'Cess, Having just won the equality promised its subjects by
the state, a generation of young Jews, impelled by the ethical and po-
litical passion for justice that was their inheritance, embraced the
struggles of others for emancipation. The moving celebrations of the
Passover known as the Freedom Sedel"S during the sixties were a point
of suture between religion and history, when Jews placed themselves
in the forefront of the .struggles of others for the freedom and rights
they themselves had just won as full subjects of the state. At those
.seders were Jewish students and faculty, of course, but also large num-
bers of blacks, Porto Riqueiios, and all those ready to recognize the
concrete historical symbolism of the ritual event-its general emanci•
patory significance as well as its immediate political insertion. The role
of Jews In the struggles of the sixties was an extraordinary and gener-
ous extension of a concrete historical experience, as a minority rising
from subservience and oppression, to others still suffering as victims.
Those victims were the poor and the black in our own society; they
were also the foreign victims of our own warfare in distant lands. It was
in recognition, not of the same subjectivity; but of the same subjection
to unjustly exercised power and its effects of desubjectilication, that
Jews made common cause with those in yet more Immediately dis-
tressful situations than their own. This recognition was based on an
understanding of the continuity which link,s one form of desubjecti6-
cation to another, without negating or ignoring the specificities of
those forms,
Comparable desubjectifications continue in today's world. Their vic-
tims include the legions of d.esaparecuu,s, targets of South American
death squads; South African blacks; the subject population of Cam-
bodia, victimized by its own government. But they do not occur only
in foreign lands and distant continents. They include, in. our own
streets and cities, the homeless, the more hidden victims of AIDS,
and-still today-the blacks and the hispanics, increasingly silenced
and isolated in their ghettos. The category also includes, as painful as
it is to hear it said, the Palestinians under Israeli occupation. These are
all persons whose subjection to the state has not brought them the
active subjectivity implied by that subjection, the ability to act ~rd-
ing to the values of the inculcating ideology that creates subjectivity.
None of these suffers as the equivalent of European Jewry targeted
for- Nazi destruction. None is the victim of a totalizing genocidal pro•

t,,, 11 •• Go ,glc liNII/FRSri'Y 1)F Mh ti Ci ,I

 Peter Haidu
< 298 >

gram of extermination. All, however, share the inscription of desubjec-

tification. We react to their increasing numbers with increasing indif-
ference, Our indifference, Our 11bility to live in silent contiguity to
their deprivation, is not unlike that of a German population that wel-
comed the deniability made possible by the official policy of apopbasis.
One of the parameters that determined Jewish survivability during the
war was the attitude of non-Jewish neighbors, which could be life-
saving. Tn the absence of such protection, the Jews were left to the
mercies of the SS and their collaborators. Accordfr1g to one historian,
the "central historical problem ... boils down to a moral challenge:
were the Gentiles their Jewjsh brothers' keepers?"., lsolating the Jews
was one goal of antisemitic propaganda, and it was largely effective.
''The majority of the population evinced an attitude of indifference
which, in the circumstances, meant abandonment of the bunted Jews
and noncooperation in their rescue." ., Rather than any active hostility
toward Jews by the general population, what _permitted the SS to be so
effective was a general attitude of "apathy. indifference, discomfurt at
the thought of what was happening to the Jews," as well as fear of the
authorities ... Deniability has been erected into an operational theory
by our own government, in a kind of political apophasis, and is not
unknown in the practice of our population. It is a willful silence that
refuses the universalism of our own ideology and the subjectivity it
founds. It is a willful sil.ence that may constitute the pre-condition for
fur worse eventualities and their attendant narratives. It has done so in
the past.
Without impairing the continued constitutive role of the Event for
those directly implicated in its horror, the extension of its implications
to the analogous experiences of other groups On the face of the earth
will be the form of universalism that Judaism can hope to regain. It is
only as the exploration of the specificity of one historical experience is
e,ctended to the analogous experiences of cultural and historical oth-
ers, in full recognition of the differences between the e,cperiences in
question, that the universalism will be enacted that was the basis of
the historic liberation of the Jews after the political emancipation of the
subjects of nation-states in the eighteenth century. That genealogical
adherence legitimizes our righteous anger at those persons, traits, and
institutions which were the conditions of possibility of the Event, in-
cluding the silences that have attended the Event before, during, and

I♦
l IJil I ·Go .glc , JI I •

lll,11/f!,f,l"iY
I ,ti
l F Mh : I • ,I
 The Dialecticll of UMp1UJkability
< 299 >

since the process of extermination and including the continuing pro-

cesses of desubjectification in our own society. That genealogy also
alerts us to the continuing danger to speci6city and difference posed
bY, the very universalism that is also the neces$ary condition of eman•
cipation.

1J!l 11 ,1! l•u111

llNIVFA:.r.·1 [IF Mt, +I Ci ,,I
 < 18 >

The Representation of Limits

BEREL LANG

The reference to the "limits of representation" in the title of this vol-

ume might seem to imply that limits themselves are not representa-
tions. Since the question confronted in the title asks whether or where
limits occur beyond which representations of the ~Final Solution" can-
not or should not go, the limits referred to would not at the same time
be themselves within the area "represented." And indeed, the issue
tendentiously raised in this way is one of substance as well as logic. By
definition, there will be a difference between a representation and its
object unrepresented, with the former adding to or .Itering the other,
In this sense, the opposite of representational is not abstract (applied,
for example, to nonrepresentational painting) but literal- the object
as it is before or apart from being re-presented.
There is, furthermore, a tacit preposition attached to the concept of
representation and its exemplifications, Representations are charac-
teristically representations as, with the implication 1n that locution of
other possible "representations as." So, for example, the French Rev-
olution could be "represented as" or "represented as not" haying been
a true class struggle-with no option foreither, however, of escaping
the qualifying preposition. One might think here of a space that ob-
trudes between an object or event and its representation, allowing,
indeed requiring choices among the alternatives for which the space
provides a means. Any representation, then, in addition to its manifest
content, represents the exclusion of others. The latter appear not as a
uniform phantom class, moreover, but with differing degrees of indi-
viduation which underscore the common la.ctor of choice represented.
No single representation, in effect, without the possibility of another.
This native pluralism in the concept of representation suggests an
antagonism between it and the concept of limits-s.ince the common
function of limits, one supposes, is not to multiply alternatives but to
< 300 >

, JI I • I ,ti I♦

Lll,11/f!,!',l"iY l F Mh ti ,,I
 The Representation of Umiu
< 301 >

restrict them. in effect, to say "No." Indeed, the tension between rep-
resentation apd limits comes to light in the status of the limiting term
No itself-as, for example, in the grammatical question of what "part
of speech• that term is. Typically, the so-called parts of speech are
understood representationally-verbs as representing actions, nouns
as representing objects, and so on. But prima faoie there seems no
corresponding group-likeness with which the term No can be asso-
ciated. The dictionary, with customary assurance, identifies it as an
adverb; that is, as a representation of "how" events occur., But even
this authority does not quite dispel the sense that the limit asserted in
a Rat denial requires a category that is aJso flat or one-dimensional-so
single-minded that it may not, strictly speaking, be ·a part of speech or
representational at all.
Yet it is al.s o evident that few limits do say "No" unequivocally. More
often what they exclude is already present or implied in the saying
itself. For most limits that are asserted, other possibilities can be read-
ily imagined; for many of these, the alternate limits ate not only Imag-
ined but actual. Limits are. asserted, in other words, in the presence of
transgression , after (if not exactly because) violation has occurred. In
fi!.ct, the representation of limits, the form that limits talce and the func-
tion they have, is usefully understood at its origins in relation to the
phenomenon of transgression-and this relation is then pertinent, in
certain respects crucial, for characterizing the limits that apply to his·-
torical and literary acrounts of the "Final Solution,~ the representa-
ti9ns to be considered here.
One formal consideration may be brought up about both the: 1imits
of representation" and (in my reversal of that phrase) the "representa-
tion of limits." In each, limit~ are referred to -as if given-as though,
notwithstanding disagreements about what or where they occur, there
could be no .question that they ~ist. But this apparent implication
might be understood more immediately as no more than a manner of
speaking, in the way that religion or morality have af times been pos-
ited only to tum out' in discussion to be large-scale fictions . Viewed
from this perspective, the concept of' phenom.enon of limits would be
recognizable as a representation of something else, perhaps of a psy-
chological or biological impulse for boundaries and taboos, perhaps of
an intrinsic incompleteness in ali systematic structures. Those two
"deep'' versions of limits are neatly joined, as it happens, in Maty

llf,11/FA':,r.'I 1..F Mh : I , ,I
 Berel Lang
< 302 >

Douglas' description of the recurrence in cultural structures of the

phenomenon of pollution. "Where there is dirt, there is system," her
epigram on this goes. '"Primitives and modems, we are all subject to
the same rules." 1
Even this general claim, however, would not explain. the specific
forms that limits take or the processes that lead to them in the space of
the imagination. ln that space, the possibility that limits are no more
than artifacts, freely chosen, perhaps self-consuming-in effect that
for the imagination there are no limits-is proposed as a condition (if
not exactly a limiting one). Thus, for example, Leonardo, in a well-
known passage from his Treatise on Painting, offers advice to the aspir-
ing artist: "You should look at certain walls stained with damp, or at
stones of uneven color . . . You will be able to see in these the likeness
of divine landscapes, adorned with mountains, ruins, rocks, woods,
great plains, hills and valleys in great variety; and then again you will
see these battles and strange figures in violent action, expressions of
faces and clothes .. . In such walls the same things happen as in the
sound of bells in whose stroke you may find every named word which
you can imagine." 2
Leonardo then goes on to caution the.artist about the practical labor
that remains efter he. "sees" the landscapes or faces in the stained walls
and colored rocks. But the representations identified by Leonardo
themselves serve as an image of representational freedom. When walls
and stones yield the variety he details, there can hardly be limits on
whatever mor.e might be discerned there: anything, we infer, can
come to represent anything else, and oonversely, 1u1.y represe ntation
can have anything else as its object or source.
The extreme possibilities, then, are marked. On the one hand, lim,
its exist because they must: human culture orconsciousness cannot do
without them. On the other hand, limits (at least the limits of repre•
sentatiun) are at most conventional and thus open to continuing, even
limitless variation because they cannot be more than that: any spectfic
representation, if not the act itself, is in these terms unnatural. The
general force claimed by these contradictory statements s1.1ggests that
their own status is a priori and thus beyond argument altogether. What
is clearly not beyond discussion, however, is the fact that most repre-
sentations of limits stand between those extremes. The examination of
limits in this middle ground may be informative about the, extremes as
well; even without this benefit, however. such scrutiny will disclose the

I laill •' Go ,glc , JI I • I ,ti

lll,l \/fA~riY l F Mh : I
I♦

• •I
 The R~resentation of Umits
< 303 >

role of limits in practice- the _point at which the representation oflirn-

,its begins to shape the limits of representation.

Transgression and Representation

1 refer to this unlikely conjunction nonetheless in a strong sense:
transgression as .a condltkrn for representation. Once again, the phe-
nomenon of artistic representation illustrates the claim, in WolfBin's
assertion of the limits that circumscribe the development of artistic
style: •Not everything is possible," he writes about that history, •at
every time~ 3-in effect denying the artist at a particular time at least
some of what either later or earlier are indeed artistic options. It
should be noted that these limits posited by Wolfllin constrain not only
what at a given moment can be painted but, because of what the act of
painting entails, also what the artist can 1magioe. There could be no
representation of the limit that acts here because to imagine its term.s
would be already to transgress them; for the artist to conceive what be
cannot do-to imagine what it is he cannot imagine-would already
be to do the artist's work. Even the characteristic estrangemen~ or de-
familiarization found ill art by the Russian formalists would not violate
this further, nonrepresentational limit; those terms are themselves,
after all, literary counterparts of transgression or violation.• In such
formulations, the relation between transgression and representation is
posed negatively. There is no possibility of arriving at a represe.ntation
of the. limit without transgressing it; yet the limit is i_ndeed posited-
thus, however, without representation.
It might be objected that this eKample depends heavily on one, dis-
puted view of art history; but the same negative argument for the re-
lation between transgression and representation appear.s n(> less em-
phatically in the Aristotelian "law" of contradiction. In Aristotle's own
terms at least, the claim that .something cannot both be and not be
itself in 't he same respect at the same- time cannot be meaningfully
denied (or violated) without presuppositig that very assertion. The
limit posed; in other words, cannot be transgressed; to do so, as Aris-
totle concludes, would occur not humanly but in the life of a vege-
table.6 Jo this example as in the 6rst one, then, transgression is not
only impossible mfact, but unimaginable-incapable of representa-
tion because of the implicit e1:clusion of alternatives. The .issertioo of

llf,ll\lf!1'::,r.'I l F Mh t i Ci ,I
 Berel Lang
< 304 >

the limit here is thus not representational but literal or iconic, pointing
(at most) only to itself.
The form of the relation thus asserted in the definition of limits be-
tween transgression and representation is not the only one that the
relation can take; three alternate forms reflect other permutations in
the two variables involved. As the transgression of its limits is judged
in the first example as both impossible in fact and unimaginable,
transgression can otherwise be seen as.
imaginable but impossible;
unim~nable but possible;
imaginable and possible.
Like the original conception, the ftrst and second of these alternate
conceptions are only indirect.ly pertinent here, although they too
underscore the relation claimed between transgression and represen-
tation. The first combination referred to is exemplified in physical lim-
its-in the law of the conservation of energy, for example, or in the
limit defined by the speed of light, Such limits assert the physical im-
possibility of transgression-but the limits pose no barrier (even, I
assume, for those who fully understand their grounds) to imagining
such violation-the existence., for example, of a particle that moves at
187,000 miles rather than 186,000 per second (insof;lr as that ca.n be
imagined). Bu.t here as in the original version of the relation between
transgression and representation, no special constraints are implied for
historical representations: physical li'mits that apply generally would
also hold, we assume, both fo.r past events and their present represen-
tations. And although it i.s l)OSSible to write about (hence, to imagine)
a historical event in terms that viotate reoognized physical limits, noth~
ing more than that would need to be known to discredit the account:
anachronisms (for example) not only do not but cannot represent the
past,
The second alternative relation cited between transgression and
representation may seem puzzUn.g or even self.contradictory: how can
the transgression of a limitbe possible and yet unimaginable? The con-
junction here appears to strain intelligibility-but it is exactly this
combination of features that Kant finds to characterize the sublime. In
that conception, the.recognition of a transcendence which, because of
its limitlessness, cannot be represented impels the experience, distln•
guishing i.t from th.e more conventional (limited) aesthetic judgment

, JI I • I ,ti I♦

lll,11/f!,!',l"i'I l F Mh :I • ,I
 The Rep,-uentation of Umiu
< 30.5 >
with which Kant contrasts it.• So, in his example, the limitlessness of
the power and expanse of the ocean cannot itself be represented- but
the viewer's recognition of that limitlesmess attests to his capacity for
going beyond his own li.mits. A relation is thus c.laimed between the
possible and the unimaginable, with the transgression of limits once
again at the basis of their definition.
To be sure, for Kant and the tradition following him the "fact" of the
sublime exalts the human subject, with mar.ii implications proportion-
ately elevated and with little suggestion of anything analogous eniailed
in acts of moral enormity. Yet Kant's conception of "radical evil" (as in
Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals) approximates an inversion
of the sublime that, joined to the historical evidence, might indeed
characterize the Nazi genocide-as moved by an impulse not only to
transgress limits but to deny that such limits apply at all. Transgression
"downward" would, in these terms, be a counterpart to the ~upward"
movement of the sublime.
This versio.n of the relation between transgression and representa-
tion would itself he dependent, however, on the final ~temative
cited-s ince it Is here, in the transgression of limits as both possible
and imaginable that the conception of limits as moral are first defined.
The reason for loc.1ting moral limits under this heading should be read-
ily evident: historically as well as psychologically, the representation of
those limits assumes not only the possibility but the actuality of
transgression. The possibility of transgression is presupposed if the
limits are to be at all relevant-since without that possibility (reflected
in the role attached by moral deliberation to free will), adherence to a
limit could have no moral weight. (Without that possibility; the con-
ception of a limit would be a parody-like drawing a bull's-eye on a
target after an arrow had hit it. ) The actuality of transgression is pre-
supposed in identifying the specific point at which a limit is- set. That
the determination of this point is often a matter of convention does not
mean that it is: arbitrarily chosen; on even a restrained view of the
functional strategies of culture, limits would hardly be asserted unless
the practice prohibited bad occurred in fact. So, for eUmple\ Braudel,
the historian of everyday life-, traces the spread in the Arab world
of the dangerous new substance, coffee, and deduces one- particular
tum of that history: "(We know that) it had reached Me<.'Cll by 1511
since In that year its consumption was forbidden there.n 71\-ansgression
figures here as a condition for the representation of limits, a condition

lll,11/f!,!',ITY l f' Mh ti Ci ,I
 BerelLang
< 306 >

which for Braudel is doubled in its occurrence: once in Mecca, as the

prohibition was formulated, and once in Paris, as the historian re-
hearsed .i t. First, then, for limits, and secondly for the history of limits.

A Moral Radical of Historical Representation

To ask about the limits that apply to representations of the "Final So-
lution" is minimally to refer to that event in historical terms. It is clear
that those terms, too, have in some sense to be imagined; indeed, the
challenge to conceptualiiation and to language in the Nazi genocide is
undeniable, for its agents no less than for those who reflect on it (con-
sider only the complex although brief history of the term genocide).•
But it is unlikely that we would be inquiring now about the limits of
representation in respect to the #Final Solution" if its representations
were taken to be only fictions , however demotic. The schema that has
been outlined, of limits as reflecting the relation between transgres-
sion and representation, thus impels the question as to which, among
the four versions just discussed, would serve as a basis for the limits of
historical representation.
( have already suggested that the first of them, where transgression
11ffirms or presupposes the limit transgressed, would not apply to his-
torical representation mote than to any other: logic, in this appear-
ance, is historically indifferent. Nor, for most historical claims,
whether at the level of chronicle or at that of interpretation, would
alternative versions or even thefr contradiction be precluded by limits
of physical impossibility (except insofar as history in general is sub-
jected to a metaphysical decree of determinism). No physical necessity
blocks the reflection that Caesar might not have crossed the Rubicon,
and a historical narrative which took that possibility seriously might
nonetheless illuminate the accepted account. For reasons already
given, moreover, the category of the subllme, viewed either straight-
on or inverted-transgression as possible but beyond representa-
tion-would be applicable to historical assertion only insofar as au-
thentic limits had first been defined that the "'historical sublime~ might
then challenge.
If limits apply to historical representation, they will appear first,
then, in the final alternative cited, where transgression is both imag-
inable and possible. The example cited of this relation was the repre-
sentation of moral, not Qf historiwl, limits; that the latter comes under

•Go ,gll· llf,11/FA':,ri'Y l F Mh +l,Ci ,I

 The Representation of Umits
<. 3'1'l >

the same category does not imply an intrinsic connection between

them, though that connection may exist. In fact, it is on the basis of
that connection that the applicability of limits to representations of the
"Final Solution comes most clearly into view.
ft

There are two levels at which the connection of moral to' historical
representation can be made evident. The 6rst of these is at the level of
historical chronicle, which l take to be foundational for historiography.
The assertion-or its denial-that oo 20 January 1942 certain mem-
bers of the Nazi hierarchy, meeting at \¼mnsee, discussed the terms-
and the term itself- of the "Final Solution• is separable from the
causal or other interpretive acoounts that might elaborate it To be
sure, the criteria to which even this assertion answers presuppose a
conception of evidence and to that extent also of interpretation; such
presuppositions ~ pertinent also in explaining why certain events
rather than others are selectively cited. But what is validated or re-
jected in the form of chronicle does not, it seems to me, require con-
textualization or a narrative account that goes beyond its own grounds.
In this sense, the chronicle remains systematically a point zero in his-
toriography, with disagreement about any of its assertions capable in
principle of adjudication in terms of the chronicle itself.•
I recognize the danger of positing this (or any other) foundation for
a form of discourse. It is evid.e nt, moreover, that the chronicle itself is
a literary genre, that it assumes certain conventions which ll{e them•
selves representations; like facts in scientific discourse, the chronicle
in historiography reflects a process of abstraction . .But to admit these
qualifications, even to concede that the citing of particular items in a
chronicle may have moral or other suasive origins does not mean that
no substantive differences distinguish those items in thi8 appearance
&om their nonhistorical counterparts, If historical representations are
to be at all distinguishable from those of fiction, the difference will be
located here at the level of chronicle-if only f aute de mieur. ('lne
specific fictioJllll analogue-and dilferentia-to the temporal refer-
ences of chronicle i s an atemporal constant; "Once upon -a time • ..")
Even at the leve.l of chronicle, to ~ sure, assertions made within the
chronicle's limits can be challenged. But the issue in these cases is, jt
seems to me, of a different order from that raised at a second-for
eumple, narrative-level of historical statement for which the cita-
tions of chronicle are only a starting point. Even consensus at the level
of chronicle leaves the way open to divergence at the levels beyond it.

·Go ,glc
 Berel Lang
<. 308 >
The foundational role thus -ascribed to chronicle appears with un-
usual force in representations of the ·Final Solution" because of the
specific way those representations build on the ab,ence of certain de-
tails of chronicle-an absence which, incorporated, leads to significant
differences in the second-level or narrative accounts of that event. l
refer most immediately here to the absence of (or at least the failure so
fur to locate) a specific "Ffihrer order·• that, then recorded as an item
of c'hronicle, would serve as a basis for representing historically, at a
second level, the causal development of the "Final Solution." To a con-
siderable-extent, the reaction against the standard intentional accounts
of the "Final Solution" originates here-contesting the intentionaHst
willingness not only to posit an overall shape for intention (where in-
tentions are concerned, this must always be posited); but also to as-
sume, even before that shape, the particular act that suoh a large-scale
intention presupposes-namely, the written or oral order given by
Hitler. In a formal or systematic sense, then, the absence of the latter
has served as a condition for the functionalist ·accounts that still .pose
the weightiest alternative to intentionalist representations. lt might be
possible, even with the disrovery of a "Hitler order," to adhere still to
the functionalist representation of the "Final So.lution" as an incremen-
tal proces~ contributed to by independent, sometimes competing
forces within the Nazi hierarchy-but obviously the representation
would then be more difficult to defend. 10
Much can be said, of course, about varlous aspects of these two con-
flicting second-level accounts, but for the moment I focus only on one,
albeit a large issue in the dispute between them: tbe queStion, namely,
of how (or whether) responsibility is to be ascribed for the "Final Solu-
tion"-with the consequences that conflicting answers to this have not
only for the historiography of that event, but also for history m the
present (that is, the way historY is now inoorporated). It is clear that
differences on this issue have significant moral and social conse-
quences. Are such differences in ronsequence-preaent history-per-
tinent to the way that the history of the past is or should be written'?
There can be little doubt that they do affect the writing of history; and
in referring to what I call a "moral radical of historical representation,"
I mean to suggest that there is a basis for this connection in the ele-
ments of historical representation itself, in the general relation in-
volved there between fact and value.
The claim made in the formula I propose for the radical of historical
 The Reprenntation of Limits.
< 309 >

representation holds that the differences among variant historical ac-

counts of the "same" event include a factor based on the moral conse-
quences of the respective accounts. The formula thus asserts that the
risk or burden of evidence incurred in choosing among alternative his-
torical representations increases-first-in proportion to the distance
between the alternative chosen and those rejected; and secondly, with
that distance multiplied by a moral weight assigned to the com.moo
issue at stake between them. In its mathematical form this would be
R = (A 1 - A.) X W How the "weight" (of W) is determined is not
itself part ofthe formula, although it emerges as a function of the moral
community in which the judgment is made.
An application of the radical of historical representation is indicated
in the "distance'' that separates the intentionalist and functionalist ac-
counts. The disagreement between those accounts does not occur at
the level of chronicle: the functionalist position need not and in gen-
eral does not entail a denial that genocide or at least mass murder was
an outcome of Nazi acts, however uncoordinated or collectively unin-
tended those acts alleg~ly were. The dilferences between the two
versions occur then, even in explaining the apparent absence of the
Fiihrer order, at the second level of interpretation. It is likewise at the
second level that the differences in consequen<.-e of the two confticting
accounts-the differences articulated in the radical of historical repre-
sentation-become pertinent.
There can be no doubt that whatever else is involved, a strong moral
tension has underlain the differences at issue in the intentlonalist and
functionalist accounts, even in aspects that do not bear directly on the
is$\!es of intention or responsibility. In terms of the radical of represen•
tation, this tension is not adventitious but substantive.
This distinction is not to say that the moral weight of issues on which
the second-level accounts disagree-like the question of responsibil-
ity-by itself should determine what then ·e merges as the content of
historical representation. But it does me.an that the decisions incorpo-
rated in such representation also include decisions on the moral impli-
cations of the elements that comprise the representation. This factor,
the historian's moral iisk, i$ then, willingly or not, an ingredient in the
representation and also in the limits by which the representatjon is
subsequently to be measured.
The differences that appear under such analysis in the • nest" of rep~
resentations of the "Final Solution" come most blatantly to view, of

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course, in the revisionist alternative that denies not only .intentionality,

but the phenomenon of genocide or mass murder in the Nazi period.
In terms of the radical ofhistorical representation, the distance among
the alternative representations increases from a starting point in inten-
tionalism to that point defined by the differences between intentional-
ism and functionalism, and then increases sh9fJ,>IY when the question
in historical representation is not whether mass murder occurred by
des·ign but whether it occurred at all. Here, even more strongly, it is
evident that the representational differences involve more than simply
a determination of "matters of fact," The conseq1:1ences of being :right
or wrong about the matters of fact in the conflicting accounts have a
moral weight that marks the representation "chosen" by the bistorian
from the nest of possibilities. The difference here lies between there
being a "Final Solution" or not; and what turns on that difference is an
element in the histori.cal representation itself.
To be sure, even a large increase in risk as determined by the radical
of representation does not mean that a limit of representation hB$ been
transgressed, But it \!oes suggest how (and that) su.ch a limit would
emerge, and it indicates also what the terms of transgression would be.
Indeed,, as the distance in consequence among the alternatives posed
increases, a representation that does not incorporate recognition of
this fact-not simply by describing the difference, but by basing the
proportions of the representation on it-seems already to violate a
two-fold limit: a formal Hmit of material difference (by treating 1111 pos-
sibilities of chronicle as equal); and, in failing to recognize the specific
character of the "Final Solution," il substantive limit ba.s ed on individ-
ual moral weight.

Representation and the Moral Community

The question remains to be addressed of how the moral weight
claimed for matters of fact in the radical of historical representation is
to be determined, and I refer here to only one of a number of factors
that would be involved (and even that, largely by example): namely,
the role of moral community. By this reference, J mean that the moral
weight ascribed to an issue analyzed in terms of the radical will reflect
the context of social identity in wbich the historical representation is
addressed-in the present, that is, rather than in the past repFe-
sented. In one sense, this claim may seem too obvious to need saying:

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we speak always in the here and now. Just so, for example, it is the
UFinal Solution" for which the limits of representation are probed in
this volume, not another of the many instances of moral enormity to
which the same question might have been directed. Few of the authors
who write here, moreover, would be in doubt about our own reasons
for acknowledging this distinction.
Yet there would also almost certainly be agreement-as against this
aclcnowledgment-that the moral quality ofan act ought to be Judged
apart from any particular historical or social context. The distance
separating the present from the age of the C11e$.U-S hardly alters the
evildoing of a Caligula or a Nero, Nor is there a plausible way morally
of distinguishing among like instan<.-es of wrongdoing, even murder
and even (or perhaps especially) in terms of numbers. Yet just as it is
undeniable that the effect on us of what happens in the lives or deaths
of relatives and friends diffeJ"S from the effect of what happens to
"strangers," so too, events embedded in social identity reflect that
identity as a factor in the significance associated with them.
It might be objected that even if the latter claim is true psychologi•
cally and historically, the analogy is morally wantingi the weight at-
tached to a wrong should not, it seems, depend on the time or location
in which the wrong is committed or on the particular persons or groups
affected by it. This tension between the universal and the particular in
moral judgment cannot be considered here except insofar as it bears
on the radical of historical representation; but there, it seems to me,
the claim for the particularity of moral judgment is compelling. The
instances ofhistorlcal representation judged in that formula are indi-
vido.tl events; no less necessarily, the weights attached to them reflect
the same particularity,
That there is no algorithm which would enable us to determine the
weight assigned to every possible event itself suggests that the deter•
mination here will be contextual. ~d the context most directly perti·
nent to its formation is, it seems to me, provided by the notion of a
moral community-the interwoven dependencies and claims which,
ill-defined as their boundaries are, are distinguishable from the con•
ception (indeed from the possibility) o£ a universal moral language, Ol'I
the one hand, or a private moral language, on the other, The vagaries
and so the dangers in relying on this contextual ground are evident-
but they are no larger, I think it can be shown, than what is entailed
by their alternatives.

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Let me cite two examples of what I mean here, the first of them with
special relevance to this volume since Saul Friedlander has a part in it.
In the question period after a lecture that he delivered at a conference
(also bearing on the "Final Solution'') at Northwestern University, the
first question directed to Friedlander came from a member of the au-
dience who was identified as Arthur Butz, a faculty member at North-
western. Since the Friedlander lecture was not restricted to confer-
ence registrants, Butz clearly had the right to be present~ in the order
of the meeting, he atguably had a right to be recognized by the cluur
and to ask questions. What he did not have a right to-or obversely,
what the speaker was not oblig;ited to provide-was a response to his
question, even to the relatively straigbtfurward one that be asked. And
in decimng-not to respond to the author of The Hoox of the Twentieth
Century-consciously overriding the academy's commitment to open
discussion-Friedlander was, it seems to me, asserting a twofold limit:
in one aspect, on the moral possibilities of historical representation,
'IIJ)d in a sewnd aspect, on the extent of the moral community that is
itself a part of that representatio11 and &om which, on this matter at
least, Friedlander judged Butz to have separated himsel£ (I should
emphasize that this is my own gloss on the exchange, not Saul Fried-
lander's. )
Obviously, the assertion of either aspect of this limit involves the
risk of a slippery slope-and a more immediate challenge of justifying
even the one step down it. But a premise of Friedlander's refusal to
respond to Butz was, I take it, that there is a still larger risk and chal-
lenge on the other side: in the assumptions that que$tions are detach-
.able from those who raise them; that questioners are themselves sepa-
rable from the contexts in which they spe-.ik; and most fundamentally,
that historical representations have no intrinsic or necessary moral
standing. .lt seems to me that all three of these claims are rightfully
disputed, not uniquely in their bearing on accounts of the "Final Solu-
tion ,~ but certainly and markedly there-a crux that then becomes it-
self a ground for the representation of limits.
A second example'is provided by a statement published by a group
of thirty-four French historians in Le ~Qruu (21 Febrll.$J"}',1979), in the
context of the then strengthening denial in France of the means-and
so by implication, the occurrence-of the "Final Solution'': "Everyone
is free to interpret a phenomenon like the Hitlenan genocide accord-

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 The Representation of Limit!
< 313 >
ing to his·philosophy , . , Everyone i.s free to apply to it one or another
means of explication; everyone is free, up to the limit, to imagine or
dream that these monstrous facts did not take place. They unfortu-
nately did take place, and no one can deny their existence without
outrage to the troth .. , This is the obligatory starting point of any
historical inquiry on the subject . .. It is Impossible to have a debate
on the existence of the gas chambers.n
It is clear that the limit thus asserted is not drawn around anything
like a ~simplen matter of fact-for on that basis, to deny the existence
of the gas chambers would be no more excluded from discussion or
representation than any other denial. What is being asserted, I take it,
is a moral presence for matters of fact-and thus a quite different ac-
count of what facts are, here or el,sewhere.
Again, the menace of the slippery slope threatens here; even for this
one step, there is the neressity of defending it, given the frequency
with which piety finds itself turned into moralism. It is not unreason-
able, 11t any rate, to ask at a th.e oretical levei whether a claim of the sort
made by the French historians could ever be legitimate. For analysis
that takes as a premise what has come to be known as the naturalistic
fallacy, with the sharp line drawn there between fact and value, the
answer to this question would obviously be "No": facts immaculately
conceived could only be immaculately judged, But if one rejects that
premise-on the grounds, for one thing, that the moral weight of a fact
may be as much an ingredient in it as any other of its features, then not
only is it _possible that li'mits such as the one asserted by the thirty-four
historians should be sustamed, but there would be something implau-
sible, even contradictory, if at some point it were not. One could imag-
ine here a Kafkaesque tale in which the e.xistence of a limit was pro-
claimed but its exact prohibition was left unstated. The antihero of the
tale is troubled, even obsessed by this absence; he grows old, then,
beset by pro8igaoy and angst in equal measures: try as he will, even
his largest excesses fail to bring him into contact with the limit, to dis-
close what it is. He has not, he feels at the end, led afull ')ife.
The c ~ that such representations of limits are -w arranted in gen-
eral does not, to be sure, justify any particular assertion of them; the
indistinctness of practical in contrast to theoretical judgment applies
here as well. for worse as for better. But here also the n1dical of histor,
ical representation provides the basis for a useful distinction-al-

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though l recognize that as it bears- on the issue of the MFinal Solution,"

that formula may seem to hold a telescope to something that is all too
plainly in sight.

Art within the Limits of History

Earlier, I referred to a statement by Leonardo concerned with artistic
or pictorial rather than historical representation. For Leonardo, the
~walls stiuned witb damp, or stones of uneven color" were accidental,
incentives to the power of invention which, once evoked, might then
proceed on its own. Insofar as limits of representation applied bere at
all, they would be limit~ of the artist's imagination, not constraints im-
posed by the walls or stones themselves. The fact that what the artist
Msaw" could only equivocally be said to be representations of the walls
or stones would be more than outweighed, one infers, by the limitless-
ness of their possibilities: anything imaginable could be represented
here.
This ideal of artistic representation as boundless in princil)le recurs
in post-Renaissance conceptions of art and aesthetics-at an extreme
in romantic accountJ of genius and originality, but persistent alS<J in
later, less dramatic formulations which in other respects oppose the
romantic emphasis on individ\lalism (including, of course, the corpo-
rate individual). So, for examl'le, Salman Rushdie, confronted by un-
usually harsh claims for the limits of representation, reiterates even
then his opposing view of literature as "the one place in any society
where . . . we can heat the voices talk about everything in every pos-
sible way." 11
lt should be evident that the question of censorship can be sepa-
rated from the question of whether there exist limits of artistic repre-
sentation related to limits of historical representation like those I bave
proposed. For here again the i$Sue is not one of an intrinsic or neces-
sary boundary, since, as 1 have suggested, for the imagination to for-
m11late a limit (to imagine what could not be imagined) would already
be to exceed it. The question is then not what can or cannot be im~-
ined, but whether limits apply to the forms that imagined representa-
tions do take.
ln this connection, imaginative writing about the "Final Solution d

shares cerµin constraints With imaginative accounts of any historical

subject. Where history figures in artistic representation, the details of

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 The Repreae"tation of Limits
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historical chronicle have a role that would be absent or much reduced

in representations where specific historical events have no part. To be
sure, the line between what is and what is not historical fiction (in this
instance, what is often referred to as .Holocaust writing) will alrraost
certainly remain unclear. So, for example, in Saul Bellow's novel Mr.
Sammler's Planet, Sammler-the reader learns piecemeal-had
fought as a partisan in the European destruction; but this literary fact
is quite off-center from the primary representation of the novel set in
the turmoil and uncertainty of New York middle-class and intellectual
life in the late 1960s. Or in a more distinc.tive (because less serious)
example: selleral p11ges in a mystery novel by R. D . Rosen, Strike
Three You're Dead, depict an encounter between the detective-hero
of the mystery and a tailor who is a concentration camp survivo.r , where
this fact about the latter's biography, although given in some detail, is
unrelated to the book's mystery, The encounter ·amounts, in elfect, to
a citation rather than a ,representation of the "Final Solution."
At issue here is the more general problem for aesthetics of h<>w an
artistic or literary work's representation-what it is "about~-is d,eter-
mined. But because specific judgments of this issue can be disputed
does not imply that the general problem is irresolvable. For many texts
that involve the ~Final Solution," the problem is not to determine
whether that event is their subject but to assess its "representation as"
their subject-especially as they reach or pass its representative lim-
its, I would argue in respect to literary representation that the force of
the historical limits that apply 1s compounded as the constraints (and
so, risks) on historical representation are joined by constrl!ints that
hold specifically for artistic representation.
The effect of this compounding of limits is noticeable even at the
first, "chronicled" levels of literary and historical fact. The writer may
imagine, as George Steiner does in The Portage to Sa11 Cristobal of
A. H. , that Hitler ha<isurvived the war, later to emerge from hiding in
South America-or, as Philip Roth does in The Ghost Writer, that
Anne Frank, having somehow escaped Bergen-Belsen, would then
reappear as an aspiring young writer in wintry New England. But
these imagined representations depend for their effects on straight-
foJ'Wllfdly historical premises which the texts assume are known to the
reader~namely, that the imagined possibilities are at once fictional
and false: they might have been the case, but they were not.
ln this way (and obviously there are other, more extensive and im-
 Beret Lang
< 316 >

portantexamples), the limits of historical representation-a fortiori for

representation beyond the level of chronicle-apply also to historical
fiction,. with the added burden now of taking account of what is en•
tailed in designedly figurative or tropic representation. About this
question, ooly a few rudimentary wotds. Whatever else it does, figu-
rative discourse and the elaboration of figurative space obtrudes the
author's voice and a range of imaginative turns and decisions on the
literary subject, irrespective of that subject's character and irrespec•
live of-indeed defying-the "facts" of that subject which might oth•
erwise have spoken for themselves and which, at the very least, do not
depend on the author's voice for their existence. The claim is entailed
in imaginative representation that the facts de not speak for them•
selves, that figurative condensation and displacement and the autho-
rial presence these articulate will tum or supplement the historical
subject (whatever it is) in a way that represents the subject more corn•
pelling)y or effectively-in the end, more truly-than would be the
case without them.
It seems to me important to recognite that there are possible sub·
jects of artistic representation which challenge this premise.; and that
imagine~ representations of the "Final Solution" provide one such in·
stance-not in the sense that the challenge there is insuperable, but
that it is unavoidable, and that it bas both unusual force and an upusual
form. The denial of individuality and personhood in the act of geno-
cide; the abstract bureaucracy that empowered the ''Final Solution,"
moved by an almost indistinguishable combination of corporate and
individual wiU and blindness to evil, constitute a subject that in its
elements seems at odds with the insl!lation of figurative discourse and
the individuation of character and motivation that literary "making"
tends to impose on its subjects. With this, a risk is added to the already
severe one chanced in the decisions of historical representation-a
risk that would hold even fur subjects less heavily we~ted morally
than the "Final Solution" but that, with that weight, becomes itself a
substantive part of the representation.,.
Adorno's assertion .o f the barbarism-not the impossibility, but the
barbarism-of writing lyric poetry after Ausc;hwitz (a fo.rtiori, about
Auschwitz)-is one formulation of this representational limit and
ought, in its premises at least, to be taken seriously in the judgment of
all imaginative writing about the "Final Solution." Admittedly, even if
Adomo's claim were a.ccepted e.t face value (be himself subsequently

I♦
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 The Representation of Limits
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qualified it), ' 3 a justification might be argued for the barbarism be

warns against as a defense against still greater barbarism-against de-
nial, for example, or against forgetfulness. On this basis, in fact, it
could be held that even certafu common misrepresentations of the "Fi-
nal Solution" in imaginative writing-representations that seek the ef-
fects of melodrama or sentimentality or prurience-may nonetheless
be warranted as within the limits; such writing, too, it could be main-
blined, serves a purpose in caJUng attention to the historical occur-
rence itself. In this sense, llll unusual plea might be entered, based on
an unusual subject, also for admittedly barbaric-cad" or "false•-
writing.
Not even this justi6catioll, however, would override what seems to
me the most general limit of representation-the limit agllinst which
all representation, and all other representational limits, wiU in the end
be measured and which applies to writing about the ''Final Solution·
only mote obviously than it does to other writing. This is the limit, and
thus the alternative, of silence-and I do not m~ here a silence in-
tended to express the impossibility, the intrinsic inadequacy of all rep-
resentation of the "Final Solution" (as suggested at various times by
writers as diverse as George Steiner and Elie Wiesel). It seems to me
that sufficient evidence, both theoretical and in fact, argues against any
such claim-as much, at all events, as it argues against the unintelligi-
bility of evil in any of its appearances. I mean rather a silence that
emerges as a limit _precisely because of the ponibility of r~presentation
and the risks which that possibility entails. In these terms, silence is a
limit for particular representations as it happens, not intrinsically for
representation as such. It seems harsh enough. after all, to say of any
particular representation that, in companson to its voice, silence
would have been more aocurate or truthful.

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 < 19 >

The Book of the Destruction

GEOFFREY H , HARTl\fAN

The point was not, of course, to produce the biggest and saddest
coffee-table book ever. Would it, in any case, have been a book? It is
said that a museum, -filled with replicas of the vanished life, especially
the burnt and plundered t·e mples, also exhibited a Scroll of Fire. Our
sages of blessed memory and fertile wlt pondered whether that scroll
was really a book, and if so what kind of fire had inscribed it. One of
them said in the name of a man ~from Czernowttz" that it was written
in black fire on black milk. Another claimed that it was written with
dying embers that could only be seen at nlght.
Asche,
Asche, Asche.
Nacht.
Nacht-und-Nacht.
Reh Jabes, son of Jabes, said that the Scroll of Fire was that pillar by
which the Blessed and Merciful One redeems the impurity of the night
every single dawn. It burned without smoke and turned mourning into
morning. But Abel, Kajis, and lsh-Chanit sajd that in those days his-
tory returned and everything was seen again, illumined by a strange
cold flame. The pagans Mozart, Napoleon, and Van Gogh, as well as a
certain Nazarene, returned that way. Going from light to heavy, even
the }iaman of that time, may !us n,ime and Image be erased, would
have come back like a vampire whose coffin can never be secured,
however many curses nail it shut. Reh Idel taught there was such a
bookjn a form beyond letters; witness the remez ln Samuel and Joshua
to a missing sefer hayashar: There surely existed a Book of the De-
struction but it was not meant to be found, And to what may this be
compared? To a king who made himself sick reading and reading, and
decreed that there be no more accounts of the destruction. He ap-
pointed seventy elders to draft a single volume, a $ejer hashc,ah that
< 318 >

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 The Book of the Dutruction
< 319 >

would be consecrated in a great convocation and recited to the people.

After a year and a day the elders came and said to him , 0 King, whose
mercy .is like the rays of the setting sun, we cannot do what you have
commanded, You yourself must gather it together. in your wisdom and
strength. For we are inspired only by fear and awe, that bring discord
rather than unity. The dead cannot praise, but in this matter the living
cannot praise either. Such a book would need six hundred thousand
margjns, one for each soul at Sinai. if the Covenant is to 'hold in the
face of the slaughter. The king answered, like the Holy One that sits
and roars when he remembers his children in distress among the na-
tions: You have endured only two watches of the night, CQme l;>ack
when you have sat all three. He also said, Names IUld Testimonies,
Testimonies and Names: not praise, not blame, not commentary. In a
year and a day the elders appeared once more at-the foot of the, throne,
fearful as a woman on the birthing-stool, and said, 0 King, whose
mercy et cetera, we cannot do as you have decreed. For the names and
testimonies stretch to the very end of the world. and whenever we
choose one rather than another, or tell the thousands as a single tale,
there is pain as well as satisfaction. Silence is better: 0 let not the
Accuser snuff the smell of mortal change. Have you not taught us,
through the hand of your servant, in the Pirkei Hayim Nizokaim: to
wrest pleasure from pain is forbidden, or to throw fodder to Gath and
Ashkelon.

My latter-day parable is meant to he more than an expression of read-

e r's insomnia. ft is hard to give up the idea that a Ylzkor or memorial
book will emerge with something of biblical strength, one that could
be read and understood by all. The very idea of such a book, at the
same time, might produce a deceptive sense of totality, throwing into
the shadows, even into oblivion, stories , details and unexpected points
of view that keep the intellect active and the memory digging. Every
ambitious writer, nevertheless, projects a work of that kind, or a poet-
ics leading to it-though the idea of the Great Book is Teceding, and
with it that of a canonical work about the Shoah,
We have been asked to probe the limits of representation of an event
that is dilferent in kind or de gree from other catastrophic turns of his-
tory. I want to insert this topic into the field of literary studies, The
question of the limits of representation hliS been important to poetics.
The genera dicendi·determined the level of style and prescribed what

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 Geoffrey H. Hartman
< 32.0 >
was 6tting for each literary kind. Voltaire objected to the phrase the
"blanket" of the dark in Shakespeare's Macbeth as too low an expres-
sion for tragedy. In French neoclassicism, which promoted. such limits
rigorously, it was as if everything were potentially to be shown at court,
in the king's presence. That decorum prevailed as an ideal. Before pur-
suing a line of inquiry that might seem archaic, let me say a few words
about what has happened to the limits of literary representation in the
modem era.
Contemporary literature and art have almost total freedom of
expression. When rules or norms enter, they do so mainly as a foil, in
order to be breached. My 6rst thought, therefore, IS that even in the
case of the Shoah there are no limits of representation, only limits of
conceptuali.zation, Though our technical Cl\pacity for depicting the -ex-
tremest event is in place, it has outstripped the possibility of thinking
conceptually or in terms of decorum about those representations, de-
spite the growth of a literary and cultural criticism that wishes to over-
come the intelligibility gap. Critkal thought is somewhat desperate
these days because the representations have multiplied and increas-
ingly assume the force of fact. We are made to run after images (or
between them, like the hero of the film Enemies: A uwe Story), im-
ages whose aim seems to be a humiliation of the mind in favor of mega-
reality or megafantasy.
Technique and the increasing gap between representation and con-
ceptualization are of special relevance to the Shoah. Claude Lanzmann
repeats Primo Levi's story of an SS man's welcome to KZ prisonersa
''Hier ist lcein Warum" ('There is no Why here") , Lanzmann himself
will not probe the Why in his 61m, only and relentlessly the How-
the how of technique, how exactly it was done, how many were pro-
cessed, how long it took. Or, what did you know, hear, see, do? His
questions avojd the one question that haunts us: Why?•
Perhaps the SS man was merely varroting what he had heard di-
rected at himself durin,g his own training. But he had also been com-
pensated for the dismissal of all undisciplined and idle thoughts. For
him a new motivation was provided by the Weltanschautir)g or- master
narrative Hitler promulgated as fundame.ntal; whereas for the victim
this same world view totally negated his human status and the right to
live. Even the right to die ln a human W11y: Jews were exterminated
like dangerous or diseased animals. One difficulty in interpreting what
happened may be related to the.expulsion of the Why, whi<:h we might

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 Tlwi Boole of the Destruction
< 321 >

be willing, pediaps were willing, to relinquish, but cannot do so after

this action of the murderers.
In every realistic depiction of the Shoah, the more it tries to be a
raw repr~sentation, th.e more the Why rises up like an unsweet savor.
We describe but cannot explain what happened. Could "unrealistic"
depictions, then, alleviate the disparity? Is it a certain type of mimesis
that troubles us, so that-a more abstract or mythical art m(ght escape
our discontent-those works, precisely, whose artifice we most ad-
mire, or which seem to embody a..-eftection Oil representational limits?
I could mention Celan, Appelfeld, Fink, Pagis. Grossmann, Ozick,
Louis Malle: their art makes us feel there is something that cannot be
presented, or-to quote Jean-Fran~is Lyotard's de6.nition of the
1Dodem project-their technique "presents the fact that the unrepre-
sentable exists."• The works I have mentioned release us from the pre-
sumption that realism can be absolute.
Yet Lyotard goes further. He does not view the gap between repre-
sentation and the unpresentable as a defect but as a value. To hanno-
nize them is to transgress a limit. He turns Kant's analytic of the sub-
lime in a new direction. Kant linked the emotion of the sublime to a
dynamlc conHict be~een the faculty that conceives and the faculty
thiit "presents~, whereas feelings of beauty arise when an object gives
pleasure without our having a conceptual understanding of that plea-
sure, so that we fall back on "taste" to validate. it, sublime feelings arise
when we conceive, for example, of the absolutely simple or the infi-
nitely great, without being able to find an object or sense-presentation
to malce them rationally communicable, In the sublime there is at most
a "negative presentation," as in Malevich's "white" squares or what is
hinted at by the Bible's commandment against graven images. An aes-
thetics of the sublime, therefore, "will enable us to see only by making
it impossible to see; it will please only by causing pain." The postmQd•
em differs from the modem not essentially but by projeoting "the un-
presentable in presentation itself . . . [it] searches for new presenta-
tions, not in order to enjoy them but in order to Impart a stronger
sense of the unpresentable." According to Lyotard, this brings art and
philosophy closer, for it. is the busines,5 of both "not to sqpply reality
but to invent allusions to the conceivable which cannot be presented"
(The Postmodern Condition , pp. 79ff).
l want to read Lyotard's emphasis on unrepresentable reality ill the
specifying context of the Holocaust. He hilS tlie courage to !ittempt a

, JI I • I ,ti I♦

lll,11/f!,!',l"iY l F Mh H Ci ,I
 Geoffi-ey H, Hartman
< 322 >

post-HolQCaU$t aesthetics. Usually the aesthetic as a dime nsion of cul-

ture is first to be targeted in moments of crisis or catastrophe: Adomo's
"to·write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric" has become notorious. Yet
here the aesthetic is saved as an aesthetics-of the sublime. The mental
blockage characteristic of the Kantian sublime is now said to arise not
from a sense of nature"s greatness or the idea of an absolute magnitude
but from what Saul Friedlander has called the "modes of domination
and terror at (the Holocaust's] very core."• The.s e modes baffle the
mind, not so much as historical realities, for the Final Solution, hor-
rendous as it is, is comparable at that level to other large-scale massa-
cres. It is when domination and terror become absolutes, that is, when
they are ideolcgized and totaliud, that we cannot discover in ourse lves
a possible scenario to explain what happened. We want to say, "It is
inconceivab]e," yet we know it was conceived and acted upon system-
atically. We contin ue to harbor, therefore, a sense of improbability, not
because there Is any d oubt whatsoever about the Shoah as fact but
because what was lived through, or what we have learned about , can-
not be a part of us: the mi.Jld rejects it, casts it out-or it c.lSts oot the
mind. We are forced to admit that something in human behavior is
alien to us, yet that it could be species-related. As Habermas has writ-
ten, "A deep stratum of solidarity between all that bears a human coun-
tenance was touched."• I will return later to that "human counte-
nance."
The Kantian sublime has a second movement, in which the blocked
reason rebounds, and even feels uplift. That would seem impossible
here. This trauma, even when experienced indirectly, requires a
lengthy process of s ilence, mourning and recuperation. Shoshana Fel-
man describes that process as an "impossible witnessing," and Eric
Santner as a disruption of the economy of narrative pleasure. Any ela-
tion, then , can only be a nervous reflex: the head still smiling, fot the
fraction of a moment, after it has been cut off. Yet I will argue. at some
risk, that Lyotards work in this area, as well as our own worlt as histor-
ians, witnesses, writers, is itself eine Art Sahadensabwic.klung: the un•
doing of a blockage, a necessary intellectual response, more like the
upbeat movement in the dialectic of the sublime than a nervous tic.
Ly,otards subject, even when his focus is on art, is really political
anthropology: the nature of man as political animal and specifically, in
the light of the Shoah. the nature of consent. The issue of consent
becomes c.rucial afte~ the Hitler era because our bafflement centers

I 11 11 ·Go ,glc
 The Book of the Destruction
< 323 >

not only on the crimin;il actions of the regime but also on the deceptive
consent of the bystanders (a similar kind of consent was overtu.m ed
almost fifty years later in eastem Europe), the loyal or statutory con-
sent of the perpetrators (which the courts and research such as Chris-
topher Browning's have probed),• and a disabling of the consenting
faculty in the victims, the substitution of automatism for autonomy.
Lyotard extends to political theory l(.uit's remarks on the possibUity,of
aesthetic judgment by drawing from the analytic of the sublime a dif-
f trend (between what is conceivable and what is presentable) that al-
ways challenges unanimity; or the 'harmony achieved by eliminating
dissent. He adopts, at the same time, Kant's refusal to sideline the
issue of taste and art, since a consensus about the aesthetic does not lie
beyond or below rational judgment. If the diwourse of reason can be
maintained in matters of art, there is-precisely through heedmg the
example of art-a hope, for such discourse in politics too. 6
Yet faith in a consensus achieved by reasoning together is modified
by Lyotard's. awareness of the limits of reason, an awareness made
acute by history itself, where that reason-bureaucratized, instru-
mentalized-has turned into amoral technology and raison d'etat. No
wonder he~ attracted, like the F ~ r t school. to the Kllntiao mode
of critique rather than to Hegel's totalizing schema. He understands
that in the past, and catastrophically in the Tecent past of the Nazi era,
the price exacted for political stability and apparent consensus has
been too high. The price was coercion and terror, iµid the result uni•
funnity.
There are many unusual things about Lyotard's post-Holocaust aes•
thetics. Not least among them is that the representational limits of
_postmodern art tum out to be the limits of reason in Kant's aesthetic
judgment. We breathe a double sigh of relief: art is reasonable (11ot
irrational, myth-mongering, obscurantist), and art contributes by its
peculiar sublimity or diff~nmd. to an appropriate political philosophy
after the Holocaust. It haunts us, it does- not Jeave our mind, that after
the Shoah we need a representation of the "human countenanceH that
will remove the distortion that countenance has suffe.red and will
strengthen its glance. This retrieved humanism is also the high argu-
ment of Emmanuel Levinas.

Though such words as high and wblime have become difficult to use
("No word intoned from on high,HAdorno wrote, •·not even a theologi-

I tl 1 I I ·Go ,glc
 Geoffrey H. Hartman
< (124 >

cal one, exists rightfully after Auschwitz without a transformation"),

the terror of the Shoah required a response which we cannot but de-
pict as heroic. Acts of resistance, whatever their motive, are destined
to be part of a monumental narrative. We understand them philosoph-
ically as a withholding of consent, as a rejection of the legitimating
master narrative of the persecutors. After the fact. then, it is appro-
priate to ask whether that refusal was based on a narrative-of its own,
that is, a self-presentation or collective vision that was not fully articu-
lated, but could have been deeply engrained as an ethos. If there was
such a narrative, it is an obligation to represent it and keep it from
disappearing into a vague sublimity. We need it to shore up our own
resolve.
Yet the very fact of its appearing to be heroic given these circum-
stances, rather than ordinary as it might be jn the conduct of daily life,
makes us consider the conditions of its possibility. If we recall the Nazi
"Rausch and Rhetoric," we quickly come to the conclusion that a
counter•elation would be compromised from the outset. The retrieved
narrative cannot be ordinary yet also cannot be sublime in the nazmed
sense. It is here that an extracanonical representation emerges, sus-
pended between history and memory, suspended also between litera-
ture and documentary, whose subject is consistently the daily response
to terror, and which provides the lineaments of that sublime ye t ordi-
nary story that is a necessity and not an indulgence if we .still believe
in educating the imagination. I refer to the genre, or rather the collec-
tive archive, of survivor testimonies, and I want to say somethmg
about its value.
For the survivors of the Holocaust, simply to tell their story is a
restitution, however inadequate. Ordering one's life retrospectively
brmgs some mastery. and so relief, to the unmastered portion. Yet that
_factor is less crucial than something that goes back to the special natute
r·
of their agony. In the camps they were systematically deprived of fore•
sight! though they saw all too forcefully what was before their eyes,
their ability to disoom a normal pattern that could eventually .be ex-
pressed in the form of a story was disrupted or disabled. Few could
hope to make sense of the events, could hope to hope, could link what
they bad learned in the past to what now befell them. The -promise of
extending experience from past to future via the coherence of the sto-
ries we tell each other, stories that gather as a tradition~ that promue

llf,I I/F!1~f'iY l F Mh ti ,•I

 The Boole of the Destruction
< 325 >

was shatterect To remember forward-to transmit a personal story to _J

children and grandchildren and all who should hear it-affirms a de-
segregation and the survivors' reentry into the human family. The
story that links us to their past also links them to our future.
Whether survivor testimonies, especially the less rehearsed, oral
lcind, create a new text~a narrative representation significantly differ-
ent-cannot be considered here at length. Lawrence Langer explores
that aspect in Holccaust Ttstir(l(my; The RulllS of Merri,oty,1 and his
book involves the legitimacy of oral documentation as a whole, what
sort of value it has as an acrount of those events. But we do know of
shifts .i n the form of representation over the course of time. One such
shift, described by Hayden White, takes us from annals to chronicles;
another, less centered on chronology and more on character, bas given
dreams a language and created a new representation of reality on the
basis of Freud. Thus the coherence of many novels, films, and biogra-
phies depends today on the explanatory power of dream and flashback.
With or without recorded dreams, individual life is often construed
like a Freudian dream, Do survivor testimonies signal another shift in
the history of representation? If so, have previous shifts been triggered
by collective traumatic experiences? How should we classify survivor
narratives: what lcind of text are we faced with 'i"
Such questions m11y sound overly scholarly, but their aim is respect
for these doouments, The memoirs of survivors are sometimes so vivid
in their focus on detail, so condensed and overdetermined in their
idiom, and so apocalyptic in their imagery, that whether or not we
accept them as history they cast a shadow on all previc;,us fiction that
claims to depict human existence in extremis. Video testimonies are,
in addition, counterclnematic: a talking head, another talking head, a
few awkward questions by an interviewer, are all that appears on
screen, No theatricality or stage-managed illusions. Humiliating pic-
tures shot for propaganda purposes by the killers are replaced by oral
"photographs" told from the survivors' point of view. They constitute a
roll-call of voices and dispef the anonymity of victimage.
The difficulty of seeing these accounts as representations comes
only from the fact that they do not, like historical discourse, make the
real desirable (if only as an object of knowledge), or the desirable real,
in the manner of fictions. What is real here is not desirable; indeed, it
is so repugnant that it may affect the will to live on. And what is desir-

·Go ,glc
 Geoffi-ey H. Hartman
< 326 >

-able was once, in the camps, so removed from actuality that even now,
recalled in the space ofmemory, it reveals an -attaint that phantomizes
the survivors' life and speech.

My long excursus, I am not ashamed to admit, is to assure survivor

testimony a place in the Book of the Destruction. But I have not for-
gotten the question of limits as it affects.art-after the Holocaust. Even
if, like Lyotard, we save aesthetics, and even if we avoid, in art oT the
discursive genres, a false sublimity, what limits representation of the
Shoah is already expressed in survivor testimony as,a sense of unreality
that affects their past and present life. This question of"reality" is cen-
tral, and the multiplication of facts in historical discourse or the sheer
rate of publication of Holocaust-related films and books will not of itself
contribute to belief or to quality of assent. lt is not the disbelief of the
revisionists alone that should concern us but also a limit of sensibility
which surfaces here, and which the archaic rules of poetics 1 men-
tioned at the start have tried to respect.
Lyotard's phrase about "the conceivable which cannot be pre-
sented" should lead to the question: "Cannot be presented to whom?"
In the aftermath of the Shoah silence about the audience is not just a
refusal to overspecify. Let us complete his phrase to Tead "which can-
\ not be presented to a society that .considers itself civilized."' As Ignacy
Schipper WTote from Maidanek: "Nobody will-want to believe us, be-
I cause our disaster is the disaster of the entire civilized world."
- Schipper's statement goes beyond acknowledging that we don't like
to hear bad news about ourselves. It suggests a disbeHef that is
strangely symmetrical with Jewish disbelief of the good news that con-
verted Christ's death into a redemptive event. It is now the Christian
and "civili:ced" world that seems to adopt and even mock the Jews'
prior disbelief; this turnabout makes Faurisson's proclamation of the
"good news" that the gas chambers never existed all the more obscene.
( But the Holocaust threatens a secular as well as a religious gospel, faith
in reason and progress as well as Christianity: It points, in that sense
and that5ense only, to a religiou.s upheaval. It challenges the credibil-
• ity of redemptive thinking,
- So threatening was the Shoah that disbelief, as I have mentioned,
touched the survivors themselves and added to the silence of the
world, When speech returns, two phrases stand out iii their testimony:
"I 1Nas there" and "I could not believe what my eyes had seen." The
 The Book of the Destruction
< 327 >

second phrase ls not purely rhetorical. Appelfeld writes, "Everything

that happened was so gigantic, so inconceh<11ble, that the witness even
seemed like a fabricator to himself."• The nature of what was eJperi-
enced and could scarcely be believed needs our attention; ii: has. a sim-
ilarity to what transpires in Shakespeare's Trollus when he sees before
his eye.~ Cressida's. infidelity and is tempted to renounce bis eyes
rather·than give her up. Such trauma leads to a splitting of the image
which is like a splitting of identity: we too could say, of our tainted
civilization, "This is, and is not, Cressid."
Through film, moreover, one of the high points of technological
achievement, the eyes have found a dominant form of representation,
and this only increases the conflict between what was seen and what is
believable. The thought of.a limit to representation comes here from
the very fact that through technical progress it is possible to provide a
mimesis of everything, however extreme. The momentum of film, in
fact. goes toward that e,ctreme, as if the eyes had compulsively to test
their own reality. This complicates Holocaust representation in the fol-
lowing manner.
Previously in civilized society, the limits of representation were
linked to social decorum and to the limitations ofa particular art me-
dium. So Lessing's Laocoon argued that the distortion inflicted by pain
on the human form was presentable in the temporal medium of poetry
without transgressing art's law of beauty but not in the spatially static
medium of statuary and painting. The thought here is not a $qUea.mish
one but eJpresses rather a sense of the vulnerability-of civilized life, as
if that sense were tied to a canon ofphysical beauty or, more precisely,
as if the slightest sign of creatureliness, visible pain, and mortality
could puncture-unless framed in the right manner-a dearly
ac:hieved complacency. The highest kind of art may "invent allusions"
to our damaged life, to our mortality and persistent creaturely condi-
tion, but it may not present them as such. Voltaire's comment on
Shakespeare's breaches of style points to the danger of a breach in con•
sciousness itself, to a sense of the cosmetic rathe r than constitutive-
presence of what passes for civilization. Jt is possible to say, smugly,
that all this neoclassical fuss reflects the density of a defensive psychic
structure, and that we no longer avert our eyes that way: But this
would be to ignore our persistent avertedness, even before the Shoah
occurred. The neoclassical rules are gone; but their "alienation effect"
may have been more realistic than we knew in their estimate of what
 Geoffrey H . Hartman
< 328 >
\
will move rather than overwhelm or incite disbelief. We rediscover
here Aristotle's criterion of probability. That the truth can offend prob-
ability Is the dilemma of the artist who must follow truth without re-
nouncin_g art.
L
It is not frivolous, the.refore, to ask for a rethinking of poetics after
the Shoah. Although Aristotle's treatise is but a series of notes, .one
senses in the importance it assigns to tragedy a shift of representational
modes obscure in origin yet involving a di.lferent balance of human and
divine, of human agency and a Diopysian sensibility. l t is this shift
Nietzsche reconstructs in The Birth of Tra,,edy. Are we living through
another shift of this kind, and is it related to the Shoah?
These questions could be considered premature, and they require
i_n any case a new Aristotle. l can but offer sketchy notes of my own.
CQnceming the continuing relevance of tragedy as a genre, Isaac
Deutscher expresses his conviction in "The Jewish Tragedy and the
H istorian" that the passing of time will not lessen our sense of having
been confronted by "a huge and ominous mystery of the degeneration
of the human character," one- to "forever baffle and terrify mankind."
Yet Deutscher allows that "a modem Aeschylus and Sophocles" might
cope with it, •on a level di.lferent from that of historical Interpretation
and explanation.'' 10
Toe odds against this rebirth of tr;igedy are formidable, however,
unless an older, pre-Enlightenment attitude returns. Deutscher, res-
olutely atheistic, won't look in that direction; he covers himself against
the imputation of a return to myth or religion by ch005ing two of the
greatest of ancient artists, who somehow transcend the issue of reli-
gious belief. Yet a host of queStions remain. Did Aeschylus and Soph-
ocles owe their ability to. produce tragedies-so powerful that we con-
tinue to read and perform them two and II half millennia later-to their
art or to their myths:? Can we even distinguish between their art and
their religious beliefs? Further, if we manage to isolate what enabled
them to represent catastrophe, is their method transferable to the
Holocaust era? 1n brief, is it a new or an older type-of tragic art we are
seelting?
We cannot wait on mystery to resolve mystery. Even should genius
arise, it is unlikely to yield the secret of its art. Moreover, the- relation
of art to audience, which made those ancient tragedies effective public
testimony-a contract, as it were, with the collective memory-that
relation has changed. The religious matrix, which embedded the

llr,I \/FA':,r.v l F Mh ti Ci ,I
 The Book of the Denruction
,c; 329 >
Greek tragedies and gave them exposure, no longer prevaili. And for
any emerging art I do not discern a contemporary audience strong or
constant enough to maintain a similar relation. For by pluralizing the
curriculum and opening the canon, we have intensified the problem of
consensus. Should a great work arise it could not be transmitted with-
out a religious or parareligious reception.
Though I respect Deutscher and the way he has put the question,
he is more ra.dic;al about the limits of hiStorical discourse than he is
about art. The issue of whether tragedy can be an adequate interpre-
tation of the events of the Shoah, or whether, to go beyond Deutscher,
-the worst returns to laughter" in some new, as yet unrealized, forQl
closer to the grotesque11-these are by no means idle questions, yet
they do not go to the heart of the matter. Beyond genre, I have sug- · "{
gested, the very rule of probability has suffered a shock, a rule that
cannot be relinquished without giving up art's crucial link to verisimil-
itude: to a mimetic and narratable dimension.
What threatens the mimetic is, to put it bluntly, the infinity of evil
glimpsed by our generation, perhaps beyond other generations.
Though the Shoah proved finite, and the thousand-year Reich lasted
hut a dozen years, a limit was dissolved and an abyss reopened. How
do we find a bridge over that abyss , a representation more firm than
Apollonian form or neoolassieal rules? Is there, for example, a "plau•
sible narrative representation'" of that evil, in art or historical emplot-
ment?1• Should we tum to the leprous itch, the epidemic of figures, -1
the disorderly excess of signifier over signified in Shakespeare's cami-
valesque drama of errors, or to the opposite strictness of Greek hemi•
stichs in dialogue, verging on the disclosure of unspeakable truth? Or
is the mad, postmodern perspectivism of Syberberg the best we
can do?
The trouble with infinity of any kind is that it dwarfs response and
disables human agency. We feel compelled to demonize it, to divest
the monster of human aspect and motivation, to create the stereotype
of an evil empire. We romance ourselves into a psychically secure irod
ideologically upright posture; simplifying the representation of evil
and the entire is5ue of mimesis. Whai: is required, however, is a world /
that still has enough plausibility to represent what was almost de-
stroyed: the trustworthiness of appearances, a consistency between
the Mhuman fonn_ divine" and what goes on within it, shielded from
the eye.

llf,11/FA'>r.'I l F Mh : I • •I
 Geoffrey lJ. fJartman
< 330 ,.

The hurt inflicted on appearances'-----On a (harmonious) correspon-

dence between outer and inner-is so acute that it leads to a stutter in
the representational f1101.1lties. That stutter in verbal form is akin to
poetry like Celan 's, and in visual form it distorts, or simply divorces,
features that once were kind. When Wordsworth as a young man hears
for the first time the Mvoice of Woman utter blasphemy" (that is, a pros-
titute cursing), his reaction describes an ominous breach in the idea of
the human, one that opens the possibility of deceptive look-alikes and,
since the human form is not radically affected, drives a wedge between
outward appearance and inner reality. It is as ifthe baffled eyes, unable
lo read the soul from a physical surface, were forced to invent an anti-
race or dark double:

I shuddered, for a barrier seemed at once

Thrown in, that from humanity divorced
Humanity, splitting the race of man
ln twain , yet leaving the same outward Form.
(1850 Prelude, 7.388-391)
Thi.~ troubled, ambivalent moment could breed either a deep compas-
, - sion or a demonization of the other r;we. If the sense of evil _g ets the
upper hand,. scapegoating becomes inevitable as a way of marking the
evil. o£making its hidden presence biological and photogenic. The cor-
respondence between inside and outside is saved, but a group is ritu-
ally eJJcluded from the h1,IJDan community to bear the stigma of wha.t is
[_ ev1Th
·1anddnow ~ar~edlyfinthhurnJan. b th N . ti f
· e emon1zation o _e ews y e az1s was a represent.a on o
this kind. Nazi propa.ganda seized on Wagner's characterization of the
Jew as a "plastic demon of decadence." The demon is a shape-shifter,
cold, vicious:, unchangeable inside, yet on the outside able to mimic
(assimilate) any national character or cultured facade-. An entire subin-
dustry invaded German education to aid a differentiation that would
not have beep necessary if Jews bad the gross features which began to
caricature them. The notorious children's book The Poisonous Mmh-
room was based on this same need to identify the ''plastic demon~ or
deceptive look-alike. In short, the designation Jew allowed a demon-
izing solution to the dile.m ma of distinguishing appearance from "real-
ity" when an overpowering sense of the indistinguishable presence of
evil rendered useless ordinary skills of telling good &om evil, or what

1 , ,, , • Go ,gll· llf,1 1/FA'>r.'I l F Mh ti

 The Book of the Dutruction
< 331 >

was trustworthy from what was treacherous. The SS became "blade

runners," and turned into the very androids from which they thought
tney were saving mankind.
lf I stress visual representations it is because they environ us, and
because the critic's search must be to separate kitsch from an authentic
imagination of evil in the wake. of the Shoah. The proliferdtion in sci-
ence 6ction of a manichean war against uncanny robotic enemies that
no lc;,nger wear uniforms but have the metamoiphic power to infiltrate
as look•alikes may e,cpress in new coloration a very ancient fear. The
challenge to visual representation, as J have said., does not rome in the
6rst place from lack of technique-we are still in the cinematic age and
rarely talk about the limits of 6Jm-but comes principally from a doubt
about the ethics of a certain kind of mimesis, or supermimesis. Just as
the historical imagination often substitutes the violence of detail for
the violence of violence, so the visual and cinematic imagination tends
to save mimesis from a purely "negative presentation" by grotesquing
what it touches, or surfeiting our need for clear aQd distinct identities.
Hesiod said that the fear of the gods was alleviated by giving them 7
distinct shapes: so too our fear of the evil in human beings is alleviated
by marking them like Cain. though not for their protection. Lyotard
and also Wallace Stevens would like to believe that art makes things a
little harder to see, yet the present1 popular e,q>loitation of Holocaust
themes suggests instead a repetition of the imaginative and ethical er-
ror that defamed the vfctims.

I began with the statement that there Q{e no limits to representation,

only limits to conceptualization, to the intelligibility of the Shoah. Yet
when we turned specifically to art a further limit did appear: as the
e,cperienee of evil explodes into a sense of the infinite presence of evil,
a precarious element ente.r s the very act of representation. The mate-
rial overwhelms art; the rule of probability suffers a shook, Let us say,
simply, the human countenance is obscured. What is presented be-
comes an offense, an aggression, and may arouse such strong defenses
that-in a profound way-we do not believe that what we are made to
feel and see is part of reality, Even our insistence on the exceptionality
of the Shoah may become an isolating maneuver rather than purely
and strongly an acknowledgment. Moreover, popular representations
emerge that are uncomfortably close to fantasies that may have played

, JI I • I ,ti I♦

lll,11/f!,f,l"iY l F Mh :I • ,I
 Geoffrey H. Hartman
< 332 >

1 their part in the genocide. Thus the problem of limits changes. 1-t is
not so much the Sniteness of intellect as the Sniteness of human em-
l. pathy that comes i nto view.
Those limits of empathy are al~ys being extended by art yet
watched over by the rules of art. In classical tragedy, what Aristotle
called to pathos, a scene of killing, wounding, and utmost suffering,
was usually recited rather than shown. Survivor narratives are recita-
tions of this kind and are far more bearable-despite the extremity of
their pathos-than a modem sensationalism often bloodier than Jaco-
bean tragedies or the terrible scene in Lear where Gloucester's eyes
,a re tom out. Even a nonviolent representation, such as Cordelia's
death, could be so painful as to have, Dr. Johnson approve changing the
ending and having Cordelia revive,
In this testing of the limits of our sensibility Claude Lanzmann's 61m
is a powerful exhibit. Shoah blanches all other Holocaust depictions.
It is an epic intervention that creates a rupture on the plan.e of con-
sciousness like that of Auschwitz on the plane ofhistory; By the author-
ity of his art-the 61m is a judgment on previous art, as well as a doc-
umentary-Lanzmann places one issue at the center and marginal.izes
everything else, evel) the individual survivors and perpetrators who
are made to talk, This singleminded concentration unifies the film but
violates the privacy of those interviewed and exhausts the spectators.
Primo Levi has written about the "incurable nature of the offense, that
spreads like a contagion," affecting.a ll who come in contact, victims, as
well as victirnJzers-and in Shoah it affects the artist too. The offense
in question is not Lanzmann's direction, the obsessive honesty and
ruthless irony that override every ordinary notion of decorum. For if
the choice is between a precision that is traumatic and an imprecision
that is obfusca.ting, then the choice must be for precision. the offense
.lies rather in the fact that the fl.Im, by a violence of its own, forcu an
-act of recall, of anamnesis, from victim and victimizer alike, and fo:rces
it, in tum, on the spectator.
The interview genre, of course, as well as the recitational character
of survivor testimopy and L$nZil)ann 's refu$al to use archival footage,
spare us from having to watch t-0 pathos itself. There is an inbuilt and
essential indirectness, despite which a question of limits arises. Is it
not too much to have the narrative of extermination placed before our
eyes so confrontationally and exclusively? The 6lmmalcer has no inter-
est in other aspects of the witness's life story. What is the purpose,

llf,11/FA':,r.'I l F Mh +I Ci< ,,I

 The Boole ofthe Dutructfon.
< 333 >
then, of this massive film? The virulent stupidity of those who deny
that death camps existed does not justify a production they would re-
ject as they do all other evidence. Nor can the primary purpose be to
instruct and move those who have remauned ignorant: th.at goal would
not have demanded such an outlay of spirit.
What then is Lanzmann's purpose? Though his 61m is a significant
historical representation, it does not supply reality so much as it sup-
plfes art. The subject is hell itself: a state of victimage that befote the
Shoah had only been ~tasized but that (as both Hannah Arendt and
George Steiner have remarked) then became totally real through the
Shoah. And if that is the case, it is not crucial that this hell was "Made
in Germany" and a product of Nazi ideology. Rather, jt is important
historically, but it is not what makes the film an authentic epic. The
artistic purpose, which cannot for once be distinguished &om the his-
torical, is that reality has displaced fantasy; and this fact, at once ter-
rible and incredible, means that myth and 6ctlon may now have to be
devalued to playthings, discarded in the light of their grim fulfillment.
The rupture, then, involves story as well as history: the story of hell,
of its representations. The u npresentable has been presented. Before
Auschwitz we were children 10 our imagination of evil; after Auschwitz
we are no longer children.
This l'epresentational shift is like a fall : "We cannot not know," Ter-
rence Des Pres wrote. The genocide makes us irreversibly aware of
worldwide political torment. ""Now a wretchedness of global extent has
come into view; the spectacle of man-created suffering is known, ob-
served W:th such constancy that a.t1ew shape of knowing invades the
·mind." Des Pres claims not that the world has changed bt1t that we
have changed as knowers, because of this ··shift in the means of repre-
sentation." 13
Yet in such a world the problem of being a child, or more precisely,
of remembering that childhood ei,:ists, remains. Holocaust mus.eum.s
which try to educate visitors, leading them &om relative ignorance to
knowledge, must take that problem Into account: they may not be-
come, whatever the enormity of the destruction, a chamber ofbon'Qrs.
Lanzmann, as epic artist, has elided the entire issve of pedagogy and
audience accommodation: he assaults the averted or childlike in us.
Helen K. says in a Yale testimony, ··1 cannot believe what my eyes have
seen," at the point when she describes children lining up to be gassed;
Ms·uch little children." 1• Irving Greenberg asks whether we can still ut-

·Go ,glc
 0rl Jff n.l frcm
UNIVERSn OF MIL:HIGAr,J
 Notes

Introduction
Epigraph: Etty Rillesum, Letterafrom Wemrbork (New York. 1986), p.
142.
1. See Saul Friedlander, llejlectioM of Naz.llm: An F.uay on Kit.fah and
Deatfi {New York, 1984).
2. Jiirgen Habennas, Eine Art Schadensabwicklung (Frankfurt.ani.Main,
1987), p , 163, I n English in The New Consen:atinnt Cultural Criticism
and the Histonaru' Debate (Cambridge, Mass., 1989).
3. Jean•Fran~is I.Jyotard, The Differend: Phroaea in Dii,pute (Minneapolis,
1988), pp. 56-57.
4. David CaroU, Foreword to Jean-Fran~is Lyotard, Heidegger and "the
Jews" (Minneapolis, 1990), p" ll.
5. On Hayden White's closeness to a postmodern view of'bistory see in par-
ticular F. R+ Ankers mit, "Historiography and P05tmodemism; Hi6tory
and Theory, 28, no. 2 (1989), as well as the e nsuing debate in Hutory and
Theory.~. no. 3 (1990).
6. Hayden White, The Content of the Form: Narratioe Ducourae and llu,
torical llepresentati()n .( Baltimore, 1987), p. 74.
7- Andreas Hillgruber, Zweierki Untergang: Die 1.erachlagung du
Deutschen Reiches und do& Ende des eut"opiiisthen Judentums (Berlin,
1986).
8. Anselm Kiefot's paintings have sometimes raised issues similar to those
evolced concerning Syberberg's film. Although the approach is almost
similar, the ultimate. effect of Kiefer's paintin~. ii seems lo me, is con-
trary to Syberberg's Hitler. It would be worthwhile to identify the ,m inute
shifts of emphasis which create this difference. On related aspects of Kie-
fer's painti.ngs, see Andreas Huyssen, "Anselm Kiefer: The Terror of His-
tory, the Temptation of Myth,· October, 48 (Spring 1989).
9. Hans Jurgen Syberberg, Vom Vngluck und Gluck der Kunst In Deutu:h-
land nach dem letiten Kriege (M unioli, 1990).
10. For an analysis of the aesthetic displacement technique, see in particular
Gertl'\ld Koch, "The Aesthetic Transformation of the Image of the Un•
imaginable: Notes on Claude Lanzmann's Shoah," October. 48 (Spring
1989).
11. Claude Lanzmann, Shoah (New York, 1985). p. 6. I am using Shoshana
Felman's excerpting of Srebnik's words. See Shoshana Felman, "In an Era
of Testimonyr Claude Lanzma.on 's Shooh," Yale French Stu.dles, Novem-
ber 1991, p. 61 .

< 337 >

llf,I I/F!1~f'i'Y l F Mh : I • ,I
 Notes to Pages 19- 27
< 338 >
12. Primo Levi, Suroiool In Auschwitz {New York, 1961), pp. 5-6, 11iis ex-
cerpt is quoted by Carlo Ginzburg, in chapter 5 of this•volume.
13. Felman. "In an Era of Testimony." p. 41,
14. Avraham Tory, Suroloing the Holocaun: The Kotino Ghetto Diary {Cam-
bridge, Mass, , 1990), p. 67.

l. German Memory, Judicial Interrogation , and

Historical Reconstruction
1. This aL-rount is drawn from my OrdinanJ Men: Reserve Police 8(Jttalton
101 and the Final Solution In Poland (New Yorlc: Aaron Asher Books,
Harper-Collins, 1992).
2. The afternoon before. when Trapp had informed the officers of this ass(gn•
ment, one man had indicated that, as a reserve lieutenant aQd Hamburg
businessman, he could not participate in such an action in which defense•
less women and children were shot, He asked for a different task and was
assigned to guard the work Jews to be taken to Lublin.
3. Most frnpo,rtant is Michael Marrus, The flo/ooau# i11 History (Hanover,
N.R., 1987).
~- Raul Hilberg, TheDestroctionoftheEuropean]ews(Chicago, 1961). HiJ.
berg was still working bas'ically from the same document base of captured
German records.
5. Tim Mason, "l11tention and Eitplanation: A Current Controversy about
the lnterpretation of National Socja)ism,'" Der Fuhrerstaatc Mythos und
llealltiit, ed. Gerhard Hirschfeld and Lothar Kettenacker (Stuttgart,
1981), pp. 21- 40; Christopher R, Browning. fQteful Months, Esl(JJJ8 on
the Emergence of the Final Solution (New Yorlc, 1985), pp. S-38; Saul
Friedlander, "From Anti-Semitism to Extermination: A Historiographical
Study of Nazi Policies toward the Jews and an Essay in Interpretation,•
Yad Vashem Studies, 16 (1984), 1-50.
6. Rich&J'd Evans, "Perspectives on the West German Hiswnkentreit,"
Journal of Modern History, 59 (December 1987), 785. Evans concludes:
"'The whole debate ultimately has little to offer anyone with a serious
scholarly intere<.t in the Germi\11 past. It brings no new facts to light; it
embodies no new research; it makes no new contribution to historical
understanding; it poses no new questions which might slimulate future
work."
7. Charles Maier, The Unmasterable Past: Histonj, Holocaugt, and German
Nationalism (Ca mbridge. Ml\Ss,, 1988).
8. In addition to E:ichmann. there was most notoriously Franz; Stangl, com-
mandant of Treblinka in Gitta Sereny's Into That·Darkness: Fram Mercy

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I 'I Fil' -, • ~ '•I" ;-l••"·b/,J
 Notes to Pages 29.-34
< 339 >
l(#Jing to Mus Murder /London, 1974). Othe.r case studies have locwed
on various professional groups, for example, Robert Lifton, The Nazi Doc--
tor, : Medical Kflllng and the Paycholog,J of Genocide (New York, 19116};
and Christopher R. Browning, The Firial Solution and the German For-
eign Office (New York, 1978).
9. Petet Novick, That Noble Dreqm: The "Obfectwitfl Question" and the
American Ristoneal Profesrion (New York, 1988).
10. l:layden White, "'The Value of Namitivity in the _Representation of Real-
ity," The Content of the Form (Baltimore, 1987), pp. 14. 20-25.
11. The following is based on the arguments developed by Oouglu Christie,
counsel for the defendant Ernst Zundel, a neo-Nazi publisher, in two
trials in Toronto, Canada. in 1985' and 1988, Raul Hllberg served as the
Crown ·s expert witness at the first trial: I did the same at the second.
12, A related argument, dealing with documentary evidence rather tha,o post-
war testimony, was made by Robert Faurisson, a deactivated professor of
literature at the University of Lyons. During each trial he was in constant
attendance as an adviser to Christie and was certllied as an e~pert witness
In "text criticism." Invoking the authority of recent theories of literary
criticism. he claimed that the meaning of such terms found in Nazi docu-
ments as re,ettlement and 11pecwl treatment could not be established by
historical context. Since their meaning was indeterminate, an interpreta-
tion taking such terms literally and not ,-s official euphemisms or <.'O<:le
words for murder was quite valid. For Fautisson, of course, such literal
interpretation also corresponded to objective historical truth. Neither he
nor Christie has shied from working both sides of the objectivist•relativist
fence.
J3, Hayden White, "The Politics of Historical l nte!l)reta,ti9n," The Content of
the Form , pp. 76-82.
14. Arno Mayer, Why Did the Heaflefls Not Darkeni'The "Final Solution" in
Hi8tory (New York, 19!!8), p , 365,
15, In addition to the works by Srowning and Friedlander cited in n. -3, see
the eicellent recent work by Philippe Burtin, Hitler et ~8 Juifa: Genese
cfun gtnoclde (Paris, 1989). Also Martin Bros:r.at, "Hitler und die Genesis
der 'Endlosung.' Aus Anlass der Thesen von David lrving," Vlerteljahrs-
hefte for Zeitge8chichte. 25. no, I( (October 1977), 739-775; and Hans
Mommsen, "Die Realisierung des Utopischen, Die 'Endlosung der
Judeo&age' im 'Dritteo Reich,'" Geschlchte und Guelhchoft, 9, no. 3
(1983), 381-420
16. Leonidas HiU, "The Trial of Ernst Zundel: Revisionism and the Law in
Canada.," Smwn Wie,e,u1',Jl Center Annual, 6 (1989), 165-219. For a re-
view of German law and Holocaust denial, see Eric Stein, "History

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 Notes to Pages 36- 42
< 340 ,.

against Free Speech: The New German Law against the 'Auschwitz'~aod
other-'Lles,'" Michigan I.Aw Review, 85, no. 2 (November 1986), 277-
323,
17. Bruno Bettelheim, "Their Specialty Was Murdert New York Timu B.ook
Review, 15 October 1986, t,. 62.
18. I am reminded by a 1X>lleague .that shortly before hls death at the hands of
the Nazis, Marc llloch wrote, "When all is sajd and done, a single word,
'understanding,' is the beacon light of our studies." TM Hlatorian'8 Craft
(New York, 1964), p. 143.
19. Saul Friedlander, "The 'Final Solution': On the Unease in Historical In-
terpretation," LesaoM QM Leg~"' TM Meaning of tM Holoco.mt ln a
Changing World, ed. Peter Hayes (Evanston, Ill., 1991).

z. Historical Emplotment and the Problem of Truth

1. Historical discours~ consist also, obviously, of explanation.$ cast in the
form of arguments more or less formaliz.able. 1 do not address the issue of
the relation between explanations cast in the mode of fnrmal arguments
and what I would call the • expllllllltlon-elfects" produced by the narrativi-
zation of·e vents. 1t is the felicitous combination of arguments with narra-
tive representations which accounts for the appeal of a specifically "histor-
ical' representation of reality. But the precise nature of the. relaiion
between arguments and narrativizations in histories is unclear,
2: I have bi mind here the laroical vers.ion of the events of 1848-.1851 in
France comj><)Sed by Marx in open competition with the tragic and comic
versions nf those same evenb set forth by Hugo and Proudhon respec-
tively.
3. Unless, that is, we are p repared to entertain the idea that any ,given body
of facts is lnlloitely vario~ly interpret.Ible and that one aim ofbistorical
ducourse is to multiply the number of interpretations we have of any
given set of evenb rather than to work toward the production of a "best"
interpretation. Cf, work by Paul Veyne, C, Behan McCullagh, Peter
Munz, and F. R. Ankersmit.
4. Saul l'riedland'er, Refkts du Na%Ul'M (Paris: Seuil, 1982). pp. 7611'.
'5. Art Spiegelman, Mawr A Suroioor', Tale (New York: Pantheon Books,
1986).
6. Berlin, Siedler, 1986, p. 64.
7. Thus tlillgruber writes: "Das sind Dlmensionen, die ins Anthropolo-
gisohe, ins Sozialpsychologiscbe und ins lndividualpsychologiscbe gehen
und die Fragee'fner moglichen Wiederholung unter ander-em ideolo-
gischen Vor:zeichen In tatsidilich oder vermeintlich wiederum extremen
Situationen und ICon.stellationen aulwerfen. Das gebt uber jenes Wacb-

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I ''I Fil' T'I • ~ '•I" ;.i,,·-0.1,1
 Note/I to Page, 42--47
< 341 >
halten der Erinnerung an der Millionen der Opfer hinaqs 1 das dem 1-lis•
toriker aufgegeben isl. Denn hier win:I ein zenlnl.les Problem der Ge-
genwart und der Zulrunft beriihrt und die Aufgabe des Historikers
tnnszendiert, Hier geht es um elne fundamentale Herausforderung an
jederma:nn."lbid., pp. 98-99.
1/. Most of the relevant documents can be found in " /;liatoril,emrelt"; Die
Dokumentation tier Kontrover,e um die Einz;gartigkeit tier natioflauo-
;ialim.,chen Judenoernlchtung (Municb: Piper, 1989). See also "Special
Issue on tbe Hfrtorili;eratreit," Nt1W German Crlliqtui, 44 (SpnnwSummer
1988).
9. The plot type is a crucial element in the constitution ofwluit Balchtin calls
the •chronotQpe,• a $0Clally structured domain of the natural world that
defines tbe horizon of possible events, actions, agents, agencies, soCial
roles, and so forth of all imaginative 6ctions-and all real stories, too. A
dominant plot type determines the classes of things perceivable, the
modes of their relationships, the periodicities of their development, and
the possible meanings they can reveal. Every generic plot type presup-
poses a chronotope, and every cbronotope presumes a limited number of
the lands of stories that can be told about events bappeping within its
horizon.
10. George Steiner, quoted in Berel Lang, Act and Idea in the Ntw Genocidt
(Chicago: Unlversity of.Chicago Press, 1990), p. 151.
l 1. Alice Eckhardt and A. R. Eckhardt, "Studying the Holocaust's Impact To-
day: Some Dilemmas of Language and Method," in Echoes from the Holo•
cal.I.ft, Philosophical Reflection., on a Dark Thne, ed. Alan Rosenberg and
Gerald E . Myers (Philadelt,hia: Temple University Press, 1969), p. 439.
12. Lang, Act and ldea, p. 160.
13. Ibid. , p. 43.
-14. Ibid., pp. 144- 145.
15. Ibid., p . 146.
16. Ibid., pp. 146-147.
17. lbid., pp. 157-158.
18. Ibid.• pp. 158-159.
19. Ibid., l'· 156,
20. Cf. Edith Milton, 'The Dangers of Memory," New York Times }look Re-
view, 28 January 1990, p. 27, for some perspicuous comments on the ef-
forts of younger writers who, lacking any direct experience o( the Holo-
caust, nonetheless attempt to make it •personal." This is a review of
Testimony: Contemporary Writers Make. the Holocaust Personal, ed. Da-
vid Rosenberg (New York: umes Books, 1990). Milton remarks on the
•obvious paradox at the heart of any anthology that offers to recollect gen-
ocide in tranquility." She goes on to praise only those essay. which, "far

1.111'1.-II .• I
I I I II
I 'I f'l' Tl , ~ '•I◄• 7" ·"/·I
 Notes to Pages 48-50
< 342 >

from pretending to come to grips with the Holocaust, . . . emplwize

their authors' necessary aloofness. Indeed." she says, "since subjectivity
and obliqueness are the only approaches possible." the best essays in the
collection are those wbich "make a virtue of being subjective and
oblique."
21. Lang, Act and Idea, p. xii.
22. Ibid .. p. xiii.
23. As in, for example, such "performative" actions as th05e of promising or
swearing an oath. In actions such as these in which the agenl seems to act
upon itself. the 1.1se of the middle voice permits avoidance of the notion
that the subject ls split in two, that is, into an agent who administers the
oath and a patient who "takes" it. Thus, Attic Greek expresses the aclion
of composing an oath In the active voice (/.ogou pojejn) and that of swearing
an oath, not in the passive, but in the middle voice (logou pclesthai).
Barthe$ gives the example of thuein, to olfer a sacrillce for another (a.c-
tive), versus thuesthai, to offer a sacrifice for oneself (middle). Roland
Barthes, "To Write: An Intransitive Verb?" in The Rustle of Language,
trans, Richard f{oWll(d (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989),
p. 18.
24, ibid., p. 19.
2.5. J. Derrida, "D.ilferance," in Speech and Phenomena and Other Es•ays on
Husserl's theory of Signs, .ttans. David B. Allison (Evanston, fll. : North•
western University J'ress, 1973), p. 130.
26. Cf. Saul Friedlander's introduction to Gerald Fleming, Hitler and the ,F i-
nal Solution (Berkeley: University of California Press; 1984), where he
writes: "On the limited tevel of the analyri.s of Nazi policies, an anawer to
the debate between the various groups appear., to be pos.rible. On the
level of global interpretation, however, the real &fficu#iu remain. The
historian who is not encumbered with ideological or conceptual blinkers
e.asily recognizes that it is Nazi anti-Semitism and the anti-Jewish policy
of the Third Reich that gives Nuism its sul geM'18 chan,cter. By virtue of
this fact, inquiries into the nature of N ~ take on a new dimension that
renders it unclasaifiable . . . lf [however] one admits that the Jewish
problem was at the center, was the very essence of the system, many
[studies of the Final Solution) lose their coherence, and historiography la
confronted with an enigma that defies no"""1 interpretan~ categorlu
. . . We know in detail what occurred, we know the sequence of the
events and their probable interaction, but the. profoond dynamJcs of the
phenomena escapes us• (my itallcs).
'1:J. Erich Auerbach, M1;neri$: The Representation of Rr.ality In We.ttern Ut-
erature, trans, Willard 'trask (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1953), p. 49L

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11•1 Fil' - • ~ '•I◄• ;-1,,·-•1-1
 Notes to Page., 51-58
< 343 >
28. Ibid., pp. 534~539.
29. 1lds is the view held by Fre<lno Jameson and most explicitly argued in
Fable8 of Aggreuion: Wyndham lew4s, lhe Modemut as Fascist (Berke-
ley: University of California Press, 1979). lt ls a commonplace of leftist
interpretations of modernism.

3. On Emplotment
I. Andre.115 Hlllgruber, Zweierlei Untergang: Ow unchlagung de,
Deul1chen Retches und das Ende du europolachen Judentum.t (Berlin,
1986). The origfnal version of the first essay~ published in 1985t that of
the second essay was written in 1984.
2. Quintilian, Jnstjtutio Oratori4, 5·, 11.23, 8.3:77.
3. flayden White, Metahlatory: The Hl8torical Imagination in Nineteenth-
Century Europe (Baltimore, 1973), p. 427: "A given historian will be in-
clined to choose one or another of the different modes of explanation, on
the level of argument, emplotment, or ideological implication, in re-
sponse to the imperatives of the trope wbiab imorms the lingu\lltic proto-
col he ha5' used to prefigure the field of historical occurrence singled out
by him for investig)l,tion."
4. Hlllgruber, Zweierlti Untergang, p. 64.
5. Hayden White, "Narrativity in the Representation of Reality," The Con-
tent of the Flinn (Baltimore, 1987), pp. 21-25.
6. Hillgru·ber, Zweierlei Untergang, p. 98 ( 'blstorucbe Einmaligkeit1,
7. See his fundamental essay, "Die 'Endl&ung' und das deutscheOstimper-
ium als Xernstuck des rassenideologischen Programms des Nazionalso-
ziallsmll.$,~ in Deutache Croumacht und WeltpolJtlk (Dusseldorf. 1977),
pp. 2.58-261.
8, Hlllgruber, Z ~ Unll!rgang, pp. 81- 83; <;;erman9 and the TIIJO
World Wan (Cambridge, Mass.• 1981), pp. 41-44.
9. Hillgruber, Zweierlei Vntergang, p. 98.
10. Hillgruber, Deuuthe G~llfl1IJCht ·und. Weltpo(itik, p, 270,
11. Hillgruber, Zweierlei Untergang, p. 9.
12. Ibid.
13. Ibid,. p, o1;
14. Ibid., pp. 10, 73-74.
15. Ibid. , pp. j!J-25. Note the subject specification: "Dtes is das geraffi zu-
samme11gefasste und mit einigen deutlichen Ahenten vetsehene Ge-
schehen des Zusammenbruchs im Osten 1944/1945,, wle ea fie/, a,u
deut&cher Sicht dantellt" (p. 42).
16·. See the commentaries of each in Hans-Ulrich Wehler, Ent.torgung der

1.11 /'I r-11 ♦• 1

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I 'I Fil' ,., • ~ '•I•• ,1,,·-0.1-1
 Noles to Pages 59-63
< 344 >
deutschen Vergangenheit? (Munieh, 1988), pp. 49-53; Charles Majer,
The Unm48tertible Pa,t (Cambridge, Mass., 1989), pp. 21-23.
17: See in particular Wehler, Ent.torgung de.- deuuchm Vergangenlitit?, pp.
51-58.
18. Richard £vans, In Hitler's Shadow: Wut German Hi.!1oriana and the At-
tempt to Eicape the Nazi PMt (London, 1989), pp. 99, 95.
19. The ethnic composition of Poland's eastern kre'!f, In whicn U.krainians and
Belorussians formed a large majority, may now he beyond detailed recon-
struction. Of a total population in these regions ofsome thirteen million
in 1939, the Russians depor1ed east over a million Poles, of whom large
numbers perished, and after the war some two million made their way
west.
20. Evans is mistaken in asserting, · ttillgrubet's account [of the political
background to the expulsions I is contradicted by recent research both in
its detail and In its oven.ll thrust" (In Hitler', Shadow, p. 95). The most
scholarly recent work on the origins of the Oder-Neisse. Line, Sanh Ter-
rys study of Sikorski's wartime ll!JJIS and their prewar ba,;kground, Po-
land's Place in Europe (Princeton, 1983), makes it clear that Polish anneir-
ation of East Prussia, Pomerania, and Silesia was an objective entertained
by the exile government without reference to the kruy; and that Church-
ill, within a few- moriths of signit1g the Atlantic Charier, was assuring the
exil.e govemment .that princlpJes of self-determin!ilion WO\lld not stand in
the way of measurestn break the power of Prussia (pp. 3-10, 272-286). It
should be said that Hillgruber's account is not directed only at foceign
powers: it does not spare the rulers of Germany either, from the Second
Reich through Weimar to the Third, whom he charges with an increasing
disregard for the safety of the inhabitants of the German East (Zw«ierlei
Untergang, p. 69).
21. There is a curious lexical echo in the closing lines of the two most famous
poems inspired by the events de$Cribed in Z~rlei U11tergang, Celan's
Todesfuge and Solzhenitsyn's Pnu,lde Nochi. The blue eyes of Der Tod i.st
ei.n Meister aus Deut8chland Bein auge i.91 blau are.those of a camp guard.
seen by their Jewish vlctilll$; of , bkd,w..ri11irru gunami/neprillfJChno
blizlco ,bliz,;as' those of~ peasant girl, seen by the Russian soldier who
has forced her.
22. Zw«ierlei Untergan:g, pp. 72-74.
23. Jurgen Habennas, "Eirie Ar1 Schadensabwicklung;" in "Histo~treit,"
ed. E, R, Piper (Munich, 1987), p. 76; WehJer, Enuorgung de.-deuw:hen
Vergangenheit? p. 210.
.24. "Filr die Forschung gibt es kein Frageverbot," "Hi.storllcer,treit," pp.
240- .241.
25. Maier, The, Unm,uterable Pllll, p. 23.

1.11 l'I .-11 .• 1

 Note, to Pagu 63-69
,; 345 >
26. Ibid .• pp. 151-156.
27, "What make$ history PQSsib!e is that a sul,...set of events is fo11nd, for a
given period, to have approximately the same signilicance for a contingent
of individuals . . . The dates appropriate to each class are irrational in
relation to all those of other classes . . • History Is therefore never history,
but history-for;" The Savage Mind (London, 1966), pp. 2ff7, 2.60.

4. History; Counterhi$tory, and Nanative

Acknowledgments: t wish to thank Ketth Baker, Saul Frledl,nder, and
Sabine MacConnack for their comments, ,criticisms, and valuable sugges-
tions.
1. Jakob Burckhardt. Briefe, ed. Max Burckhard!, 5 vols. (Wiesbaden,
1960), JV, 130.
2. I( was not as yet the argument of Hayden White's M!?lahlalory: The Hu-
torical Imagination In Nineteenth-Century Europe (Baltimore: Johns
Hopkins University Press, 1973); see below n . 7.
3. Karl Marii, "ECQDomic and Philosophlo Manuscripts of 1844," in Wrtttng,
of the Young Man: on Philo,ophy and Soci4lty, ed. lllld trans. Lloyd D.
Easton and Kurt H. Guddat (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1967), p.
33.5.
4. Franz Rosenzweig, Briefe, ed. Edith Rosenzweig (Berlin: Schocken Ver-
lag, 1935), p. 19.
5. Oliver Sacks, The Man Who Mutook HIB Wife for a Hat and Other Clini-
cal Tales (New York: Summit Boob, 1970), p. 110; and the literature
quoted theretn (Luria). On other eplstemolo_gical lessons of neurology see
my forthcoming article "Motion, Similitude and Schernalism: Kant and
the Neoplatonic Tradition."
6. Ernst Troeltsch, Der HiBtorl..tmu., und mne Probleme (I'ubingen, 1922),
p. 36; Friedrich Meinecke, "Klassizismus, Romantitismus und histo-
risches Denken Im 18, Jabrhundert: io Wtrle, IV, ed. Eberhard Kessel
(Stuttgart: K. F. Koehler Verlag, 1965), p. 264.
7. White, Metahiatory, p. 2, n. 5. White later al,o found ibis pos'ition unten-
idtle. An even more fundamental quatemll)' th1111 the -tropes" is the qua-
temity of logical connectives "and"(/\) •or" (V) "if . .. then"(:>) "if and
only if' (++). Why not characterize the modes ot historical category for-
mation as such that gjve weight to synchrony ('aod"), argument ('or"),
causality i if then"), contextuality ("iii)? 1 raise this possibility to show
that of quatemtties there is no end, though l do not doubt their heuristic
value.
8. See my article 'The Persecution. of Absolutes: On the Kantian and Neo-
Kantian Theories of Science,'' The .KtJleido,cope of Science: The Israel

1.11/'ldl .• I

I ''I Fil' Tl • ~ '•I◄• 7<1"·•/·I

 Notes to Pages 69-71
< 346 >

Colloquium for the Hi.story and Philosophy of SoitncB, J (1986), 329-348.

Many of the fundamental insights of Ludwilc Fleck or Karl Popper owe
their origins to the neo-Kantian heritage.
9. The term wa.1 used by David Biale, Kabba/a and Counterhutory (Cam-
bridge, Mass., Harvard UniverJ.ity Pres.s, 1979); and in an article of mlne,
"Anti-Jewish Propapnda: Pagan, Medieval and Modem: Jerwalem
Quarlef'ly, 19 (Spring 1981), 56-72.
10. lo Benjamin's felicitous phrase. Walter Benjamin, IUl.lminationi,, ed ,
Hannah Arendt, trans. ftarry '.Zohn (New York: Schocken Books, 1969), p.
ID ( 'Theses on the Philosophy of History" VII).
11. Manetho, Aeg!IJ!lillca, Fragment 54 (&om Josephus, Contra Apionnu, I,
sec. 26-31, sec. 221-287) (Cambridge, Mass.: Loeb Classical Library,
HMO), pp. 119-147, pp, 62-86 (Manetho), pp. 389-416 (Aplon), Also in
Menachem Stem, Gre11k and Roman Author1t on Jews and Jtulaum,, l (Je-
rusalem: Israel Academy of Sciences, 1976).
12. [bid. Cf, Tacitus, Histonae, V, 4, ed, Kenneth WeUesley (feubner Pub-
lishing House): "Moyses quo sibi in posterum gentem firmaret, nouos ri-
tus contrariosque ceteris mortalibus indidit. Profana illic omnia quae
apud nos sacra, rursum concessa apud illos quae nobis incesta.• Cf. Jo,,
chanan Levy. Studies In Jewish Helleninn (Jerusalem: Mossad Bialik,
1960) (in Hebrew), pp. 60-196.
13. Rellgio liclta was never a legal term; it was first used by TertuUian. But
Jewish religious rights were tolerated, whetbe.r by virtue of their being a
IIOtio (laos) or a permitted collegi.um. Cf. Theodor Mommsen, Hinoriache
l.eitschrcift, 64 (1800), 389-419; TertuUian, ApologeticlU, ed. Jean-Pierte
Waltzing (Louvain, 1910), p. 125 (and the editor's comment); Jean Juster,
Les Julf, MM [empire Romain (Paris: P. Geuthner, 1914). l , 413-4.M
(denies that syn11gogues were collegia).
14. John Spencer, De legibua et moribw Judaeon,m (Cambridge, 1685), !Qr
example, p . 223. Cf. Julius Guttmann, "John Spencer's Erldarung der bib-
listhen Gesetu in ihrer Be:tiehung zu Maimonides,- in Fest»krift i anled-
in_g af Professor Dal}id Simonsen 70-drige f()(ldael&t)ag {Copenhagen,
1923), pp. 258-276; Shmuel Ettinger, "Jews and Judaism as Seen by Eng-
lish Delsts of the Eighteenth Century," Zion, .29 (1964). 182.
15. Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann, The Social Construction of &-
ality (Garden City, N. Y. :•Irvington Publishers, 1980), pp. 166- 167.
16. 'llM:1tus, Agricola, 30. See Harold Fuchs, Der gebtjge Wukrstawl gegen
Rom b1 der antlken Welt (Berlin: Wide Groyler, 1964, reprint).
17. Augustine, De Cl°'tate Dei, 11, 21; I V, 4. Corpw Chmtlarwn,m, Series
Latina, 47, 52.
18. See Amos Funkenstein, Heilap/an und naturllche Entwicklung (Munich:
Nymphenburger Verlagshandlung, 1965), pp. 43-50; morebrielly: jdem,

1.111'1.-II .• I
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 Notes to Pages 71-73
< 347 >

Theology and the ScienNfic lmaginallon from the Muldk Ages lo tTie Set.i•
mteerith Century (Princeton: Princeton University Pre$S, 1986), pp.
2/i6-261; :against, for example, Alois Wachtel, Beitriige zur Geschichts,
theologie des Aureliu, Augwtinw (Bonn: L. Roebncheid, 1960). On Au-
gustme's sources see Heinrich Scholz. Glaube und U11gloube In der Welt-
geachichte: ein Kommentar zu Augunln':t De cioltate Del (Lelp:tig; J. C.
Hinrichs, 1911).
19. It was edited by Samuel Kraus, D113 Leben Jesu nach fodisahen Quellen
(Berlin: S. Calvary; 1902). Cf. Joseph Dan, Hiuipur ha'ivri biymt haben-
ayfm. (Jerusalem, 1974), pp, 122-I3i. Morton Smith, ]118U1t the Magician
(San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1978), elaborat.e s one of the narrative's
main themes. ln a way he, too, has written a oounterhistory (t.o all L,eben
]em verswns of modem Protestant theology), It is worthwhile to note, in
passing, the difference between this or similar references to Jesus in the
orthodox Jewish literature and the treatment of Jesus in the postemand-
patory climate of OC'Culturation., say in the nineteenth-century Wiuen-
1chaft des Judentums. 11ie orthodox, traditional account agrees with
Christians in the question of fact. but differs &om Christianity in the eval-
uation: true, we killed Jesus, but he deserved it as a heretic and a magi-
cian. Nineteenth-century Jewish historiHAS or theologians-say Geige.r or
Baeok-disap-ee about the facts: Jesus was a good Jew {a Pharisee to
boot!), and we could not have killed him. But they agree in his evaluation
with liberal Protestant theologlanst he was the embodiment of ethics.
20. Herodotus, Histone,, U, 34-35.
21. Funkenstein, H~lan (n, 18 above), pp. 70~77.
.22, Isidor Hlspalensis Episoopi, Etymologiae live origenes li.bri XX, ed.
W. M. Lindsay (London: Oxford University Press, I.st ed. 1911, reprint
1957), I, sec. 41. J. See Isidor Hispalensi.S Eptscopl. De ordlne creatura•
rum, Migne, Patrologla latina, 83, 939-940: "historialiter facta sunt, et
intellectualiter Ecclesiae myslerja per hoc deslgnantur. •
~ - "Erit enim continua mundi historia: libri prophelici, Herodotus, 11iucy-
dides, Xenophon, Diodorus de Philippa, Alexandro et successoribus
, . .": Phll!pp Melanchton, Opera Omnia, ed. Carlos G. Bretschneider,
Halle\S (1844), XJI, 714.
24, 11iat history is rewritten anew every period &om its unique Guichtakrm
was lint claimed by Gattener, Chbd.enius, and others in the eighteenth
century! Reinhart Koselleck, Verga11gene Zulcunft: Zur S~tik ge-
µ:hl.chtll.cher Ztiten (Frankfurt am M.ain: Suhrkamp, 1979), pp. 176-2°'1;
Peter Reill, The Gennan Enlightenment, and the Rise of Historici8m
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1975), pp. 125-126. Leibniz,
we remember, spoke of each monad ·as representing a unique "point of
view" of the whole world in which it is embedded.

1.111'1.-II .• I
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 Notes to Pages13-75
< 348 >
25. John Greville Agard Pocock, 'The Ancient Constitution and the Feudal
Law: A Study of English Hi.ttorical Thought in the Seventeenth Century
(Cambridge; Cambridge University Press, !_957), cnap, 1,: Donald R. Kel-
ley. Foundations of Modem Historical Rea.wning: Language, Law, and
Hi/ltory in the French Renaissance (New York: Columbia University
Press, 1970), pp. 19-50; Jerry H. Bentley, Humani.,ts and the Holy Writ:
Neo-Testament Scholanhlp,ln the Renaluance.(Princetoo: Princeton Uni·
ver:sity Press, 1983).
26. The best study is still that of Erich Seeberg. Gottfried Arnold: Die Wis-
sensthaft und die Myatilr seiner Zeit (19'23; reprint Darmstadt: Wissen-
schaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1964). See also Bi.ale, Gershom Scholem!
Kabba/a and Counterhinory (Scholem and Arnold) (Cambridge, Mass. :
Harvard University Press. 1979).
27. Herbert Grundmann. "Opertet ut haereses esse: Das Problem der Ketz-
erei im Spiegel der MitteWterlichen l3ibelexegese," in Archiv fii.r Kultur-
geschichte, 45 (1963), 129-164.
28. Gottfried Arnold, Unparleyuche Kirchen- u,id Kn.er Historle (Schafthao-
sen, 1740). 1, sec. 9. 24; af. Seeberg, CotifriedArno/d, pp. 24. 224, 219-
221.
29. On the origin and various fortunes of Mandeville's phrase see Walter
Euchner, Egdilmwa und Cemeinwohl: Studien zur Geschichte der bur-
gerllchen Phllosophle (Frankfurt am Main, 1973); and my Theolagy and
the Sc:lentific Imagination, pp. 202-205.
30. Karl Marx, "Zur Judenfrage,• in Karl Marx, Fritdrich Engels: Werke (BCT'-
lin: Dietz, 1956), I, 247-377. See also my article "The Political Theory of
Jewish Emancipation from MendelssoJm to Herzl," Jahrbuch de& lnslitutf
fur deutsche Geschichte, 3 (1980), 13-28, esp. 2.3-25.
31, Karl Marx, Da8 Kapilal (Hamburg: Meissner, 1890-1894), 1, 1. It is a
variant (Marx would say; a conoreti:zation or a turning-on-its-feet) of the
idealistic formula for the identity cum diJl'erence of the l and the non-I,
A = B, identity and dilference in the We•en.s Logik. "The metaphorical"
character of the commodity, to which White, Metahinory (see n. 32).
draws attention, has its origin here.
32. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Wilt,emchaft der Logilc (Nuremberg,
Johann Leonhard Schrag, 1812-16}. lbe most lucid explication of its
moves was given by Dieter Henrich, "Hegels Logik der Reflexion,• in
Hegel im Konte:rt (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1971), pp. 95-156. I
hope to develop this interpretation of Marx further at a later date. See
also White, Metaht4fory, pp. 285~. which shows in fact this dialectic
(but Without reference to Hegel's Wuens Logtlc or Rejlerrpru Logik). The
only mistake of this chapter is the assumption that "socially necessary time
of labor measures value of usage. The latter has no measure, "Als Ce-

1.111'1.-II .• I
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 Notes to Pages 16-80
< 349 >
brauchswerte slnd Waren vor allem versch iedener QuaJjtilt, als Tausch-
werte konnen sie nur verscliiedener Quanliliit sein, enthalten also kein
Atom Gehrauchswert" (M~, Vaa Kapito(, 1, 1).
33. Fran:t Kafka, "Oie Vel'WllJldlung." in Kafka., Erzahlungen, ed. Brigitte
Flach (Bonn: Bouvier, 1967).
34. For a minimal construction of the meaning of collective memory see Amos
Funkensteln, "Collective Memory and Historical Consciousness,~ Hu-
tory and Memory, 1 (1989), 5-26.
3.5. The following relies on Pierre Vidal-Naquet, "'Theses on Revisionism," in
Unanawend Questions: Naz.i Gennany and the Genocide of the Jews, ed.
Fran~is Furet (New York: Schooken Boo.ks, 1989), pp. 304-320.
36. Amos Funkensteill, "Changes in the Patterns of.Ch ristian Anti-Jewish Pc>-
lemics in the Twell\h Ce,,tury," Ziofi, 23 (1968), 126-145. That such a
change occurred in the way I sketched it there was the starting point of
Jeremy Cohen, The Frlar.t-and the Jews:The Evolution of Medier,a}, Antl-
Judatnn (I thaca, Cornell University Press, 1982). He disagrees with me.
however, about the <b\te: sees no traces of this ehange, as I did, in Peter
the Venerable or his times, and places the transformation of attitudes In
the thirteenth century (Raymundus Martini). I do not find this part of the
argument convincing.
37. Petrus Venerabilis, Troctatq& adver$1'$ Judaeorom lnveter(Jt.am duriliem,
Y, Migne, l'atrologla latina, 189, cols. 602, quotation: cols. 648-649. See
o . 36. This type of argument-at times the rationale for burning Jewish
postbiblical literature--conti.nues through the seventeenth and etgh-
teenth centuries. Johann Wagenseil's Tello lgnea sat,mi, was its most il'l-
ffuential early modem example.
38. Thomas of M onmouth, De vita el passwne SlltlCti Wilht.lmi Martyris Nor-
U!lcenais, JJ, 9, ed. Augustus Jessopp and Montague Rhodes James (Cam-
bridge, 1896), p . 93: "l{eferebat quidem in antiquis patrum nostrum scrlp-
!is hebrei ludaeos sloe saoguinis humani elfusione nee libertatem adipisci
nee ad patrios ,6 nes quandoque regredJ: On the Protocolu see Nonnan
Cohn, Hl$toire d'un mylhe, la con.tpirot lonjuioe et lu protocoles du
Sages de Slon (Pans: Callimard, 1967).
39. George Steiner, The Portage to St. Cri6tobal of A. H. (New York; Sim on
~ Sch uster, 1982). Of him we may say, with the medieval Archipoeta,
"Quaero mihi similis I et adjungor pravis."
40. I have argued ag;unst the "incomprehensibility~ In "Theo.logical Interpre-
tations of the Holocaust," in Unamwered Quutions (see n. 3.5), pp. 273-
303, esp. 302-303.
-41. Hegel, Phiinomenologle des Griste.s, ed. Johannes Hofmeuter (Hamb urg:
Felix Melner, 1952), pp. 14.1-150. The significance of these famous pages
ls, among other thin~. that they are the first philo,ophu;al treatment or

1.111'1.-II .• I
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 Notes to Pagu 82-84
< 350 >
self-consciousness llS a through-and-through Jocial phenomenon. The "I,·
or the mm ru cogitans, of Descartes, was not only a substance, bot also a
looely one; its self-evidence needed no other self; rts ideas were innate.
Kant's "transcendental unity of the apperception"-the "I" that "a.ccom-
panies all of my representlitions"-though not a mbatance anymore
(Kant's position was very simibu to Ryle's), was still a lonely affair. Hegel
was the first to argue that self-consciousness, by -definition, needs for its
own constitution another self-consciousness to ·recognize· (anerkennen)
it. It identifies ttielf through the other.

5. Just One Witness

Acktiowledgment: Many thanks to Nadine Tanio for her stylistic revision.
l. See J. Shatzmiller, "Les Juifs de Provence pendant la Peste Noire," Riroue
du etudujulve1, 13-1 (1914), 457-480, esp. 469-412.
2. See Storto iw~r,aa. Una iuclfra~ del sabba (Tuon: Einaudi, 1989),
pp. 5~.
3. See Bouquet:, Recuell dea hiatoriens du Gaules et de la Franu (Paris,
1840), XX, 629-630,
4. See Josephus, The Jeu>i4h War, trans, C. A. Williamson, rev. E. M.
Sm'11wood (J{annondsworth; Penguin Books, 1985). A .subtle analysis of
the parallels between the two passages has been given by P. Vidal,
Naguet, "Flavius Joseyhe et Ma,ada," in u,
Juift, la mbnoire, le p~aenl
(Pans: Maspero, 1981), pp. 43 tf.
5. Cf. Vidal-Naquet, "Flavfus )osephe," P'P· 53 ff.
6, See The Latin )oseph,,s, ed. F. Blatt (Aarhus: Univer-Sitetsforlaget, 1958),
1, 15-16. See also G. N. Deutsch, /corwgraphle et iUtutration de Flaoiw
]01rphe au temp.• ile,)ean Fouquet (Leiden: Brill, 1986), p. lti (map).
1- See P. Schmi~ "Les 1.ectures de table i l'abbaye de Saint-Deni$ 1 la fin
du Moyen Age," Biroue bmithctine, 42 (1930), 163-167; A. Wilmart, "Le
couvent et la biblioth~que de Cluny vers le milieu du Xie si~cle," Revut
Mabillon, 11 (1921), 89-124, esp, 93, 113.
8. See 0. Nebbiai-Da11a Guarda, La bibllotheque de.l'.abbaye de Saint-Denu
en France du I Xe au XVllle mcle (Paris: Editions du CNRS, 1985), on a
reque-St sent from Reichenau to Saint-Denis in order to get a copy of Jo-
sephus' Antlquitatts Judaicae (p. 61; see also ibid., p, 294),
9. B. N. Lat. 12511; of. The Latin/0$eJlhm, p. 50.
H). Hege&ippl qm dicuntur hutonarum W,ri V. ed. V. U-Ssa11i (Cor,,ua Scnp-
torom Eccleriasticorum La!inorum, 66), Vindobonae, 1932, 1960, pref.
K. Mras +,n Masada'.s siege see 5, nos. 52-53, 407-417). The 8,bliothequ&
Nat:ionale in Paris owns twelve manuscripts of"Hegesippus," written be-

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I 'I Fil' -, ' ~ '•I" ;-1,1-bM
 Note, w Page, 84-86
< 351 >

tween the tenth and the fifteenth centuries: see Deutsch , lconographie,,
t>· 15.
11. A translation of the latter essay has been published as "A Paj)er Eich-
mann?" (note the addition of a question mark to the original French title),
IJemocracy, April 1981, pp. 67-9.5.
12. Maria Daralo's suggestion, mentioned by P, Vi<W-Naquet (Les Juifa-, p.
59, n, 48), that in the former case the parallel should be referred to the
woman who denounced Josephus and bis fellows seems to me less con-
vincing.
13. See H . Van Vliet, No Single Te.ttimony, Studia Tbeologi<;a Rheno-
Traiectina, 4 (Utrecht, 1958). See also, &om a general (that rs; logical)
point of view, Vi<W-Naquet, Lu Juifa-, p. 51. "More than one witness is
necessary, because, so long as one affirms and another denies, nothing is
proved, and the right which everyone hl!S of betng held innocent prec
vails,'' Beccaria wrote 1n 1764 in Dei delitll e delle pene (trans. J. A. Far-
ter, London, 1880, pp. 139- 140: ed. F. Ve.n turi [Turin, 1970J, pp. 3l-32).
Today, at the very moment I am writing (l! May 1990), a totally O()IIOSite
attitude prevails in Italian courts.
14. C( Van Vliet, No Single Temmony, p. lL
15, Cf A. Llbois, "A propos des modes de preuve et .plus s~ialement de la
preuve par t~moins dans la juridictioo de Uau au XVe sikte," in Hom-
mage au Profeueur Paul BO'llfflfant (1899-1965) (Brussels, 1965), pp.
532-546, esp. 539-M2.
16. On this topic see the rather cursory remarks of P. Peeters, "Les aphor-
ismes du droit dans la critique historique," Acadhnie lloyok de Belgique,
Bulletin de la cltuse de, lettres, 32 (1946), 82 Ir. (pp. 95-96 On testi8 unus,
testu nullus).
17. F. Baudouin, De in.rtitutione hutoriae univenae et ejtu cumjun.rpn,den.
lia. conjunctione, prolegomenon libn.11, quoted by D. R. jCeU!ly, f'oun-
dationa of Modern Historical Scholarship (New York: Columbia Univ!lr•
sity Press, 1970), esp. p. 116.
18. I consulted the second edition (Li~ge, 1770). 11ie unporou,ce of thi, trea•
tise was peroeptiv!lly stressed by A, Johnson. The Historian and Hmori-
cal i:vidence (New York, 1934; 1st ed. 1926), p . 114, who called it "the
most signincant book on method after Mabillon's D, ,-e dlplomatica." See
also A. Momigliano, Andent History and the Antiquarian (Contnbuto alla:
stotia degli studi classici. Rome: Edizioni di storia e letteratura. 1979),
p. 81.
19. See R. Faurisson, Memoire en defense. Contre cetlt qui m'accusenl de
falsifier rhutoire. La question dea chllml,r111 d g/Jc;:, preface- by Noam
Choms\-y (Paris: La Vieille Taupe, 1980).

1.111'1.-II .• I
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 NoteJ to Pagu 86- 89
< 352 >
20. Mit!hel de Certeau, under the direction of L. Giard (Paris: Centre
Georges Pompidou, 1987), pp. 71-72. From Vidal-Naquet's letter we also
learn that hJs debate with de Certeau was ignited again by their involve-
111ent in the pub'lic discussion of Fran~is Harlog's thesis, published later
on as Le mlroir d'Herodote (J'aris: Gallimard. 1980). On some impli<:a-
tions of this work see my _postscript to the Italian translation of Natalie
Davis, 'fhe Return of Marlin Gu111T11 (Prooe e pombilita', i.n Il ntomo di
Mortin .Guerre. Turin, Einaudl, 1984, pp, 143-145).
21. The fu11owing pages are based on White's previously published work. Bis•
chapter in this volume suggests a miider (although soq,ewhat self-
contradictory) form of skepticism.
22. See C. Antoni, From Hf.ttoncl.rm to Sociology (Detroit: Wayne State Uni-
versity l'ress, 19.59), tnuu'1ator's preface r on History and Historicismi ,
pp. xxv~xxvi.; see also the review by B. Mazlish in Hutory and theory, l
(1960), 219-227.
23. See B. Croce, Contributo olla crltica di me neuo (Bari: Lateru, 1926),
pp. 32-33; R. C. Collingwood, The Idea of Hmo,y (Oxford: Oxford Uni-
versity Press, 1956), pp. 911{.
24. See IL Wnite, Metahistory: The Hi.rwrical Imagination in Nineteenth-
Century Europe (Baltimore: Johns HO{)kins University Pr-ess, 1973), pp.
281-288; B. Croce, Pr/ml 1IOggl (Bari: Laterza. 1927: second edition), pp.
3-41.
25. See Whit&, Metahiatory, p. 385.
26. Ibid., pp. 378, 434.
27. l b-id,, p . 407.
28. E. Coloftli. t;e&tetica di Benedetto Croce. Studio critko (MIian, 1934).
29. See C. Gentile, Lettere a Benedetto Croce, ed. S. Giannantoni, 1 (Flor-
ence: Saosoni, 1972); B. Croce, l.ettere a Giovanni Gentile, ed. A. Croce
(Milan, Mondad'ori, 1981).
30. See B. Croce, Loglca come sclenr.o del concetto .puro (Bari: Laten.a,
1971), pp. 193- 195. See also G . Gentile, Frammenti di critka letteraria
(l..anciano: Carabba, 1921), pp. 379 ff (review of B. Croce, II concetto della
atoria nelle aue relazlonl col ooncetto dellarte, 1897).
31. Here·I am developing some perceptive remarks made by·Fiero Cobetti tn
"Cattaneo,- in P. Gobettl, Senti. Btoricl, letterarl e jilmofici (T11rin: Ei-
·n.a.udi, 1969), p. 199; originally published in "L'Crdine Nuovo," 1922,
32. See G. Gentile, 'The Transcending of Time in History'' 'in Philowphy and
History. Essa!/, Pre,ented to Er.mt Cauirer; ed. R. Klibansky and H. J.
Paton (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1936), pp, 91-105, esp, 95, 1()0.
'Thirty years earlier Antonio Labriola, in a letter to Croce, had described
the relationship between Croce and Gentile in curiously similar terms (A.
Labriola, Lettere a Benedetto Croce, 1885- 1904 [Naples; nella sede

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I ''I ~I' ' T'I. ~ '•I" 7" ·" /·I

 Notu to Pogea 89-90
< 353 >

dell'lstituto, 1975), p. 376 [2 Januuy HIM): "io non capisco perche' ii

Gentile, cbe inveisce per 600 in isti)e lenatico contro il reomondo, non si
dia proprio all'opera benigna (aveodo ii di.avolo dentro casa) di convertire
inoanzitutto te"). On Gentile's allusion to Croce, see note 33.
33. See G. Gentile, "JI superamento del tempo oella storia," in Memorie ital-
ione e problemi de/la filosofia e de/la. mto (Rome, 1936), p. 308: "la meta-
llsica storica (o storicismo) . .."; the essay had been previously published
in "Rendiconti della it Ae<:ademia ruwonale dei Uncei," classe di scienze
morali, ser. 6, 11 (1935), 752---769. The words in parentheses, "(that Is,
historicism)," which are missing in the aforementioned English transla-
tion (Philosophy and Hinory; the editors' preface is dated February 1936)
were presumably added after the appear.wee of Croce's essay "Aotistori•
cismo,~ first delivered at Oxford i.n 1930, but published only lo UlllmJ
~ (Bari: Laterza, 193.5), pp. 246-258. Gentile delivered his lecture at
the Accaden1ia dei Liocei on 17' November 1935; he sent back the cor-
rected proofs on 2 April 1936 (sec Rendlconti cit., pp. 152, 769). For
Croce's reaction to the essays collected in Philosophy and History see La
,toria CQl!l6 penl!l,ero e come a~ne (Bart; Laterza, 1943 [19.38]), pp. 319~
327 (the entire section is· missing from the English translation, History a,
the Story of Uberly [London, 1941)); on page 322 there is a polemical
allusion to Gentile ("uoa torbida tendeoza misticheggiante ...'). See also
In the same volume the pages on "Historiogr,1phy as Liberation from HJs.
tory~ (J:liatQry, pp. ~-45 = LA noria cit., pp. 30-32), "We are products
of the past and we live immersed ill the past, which encompasses us etc."
In his much more Tadical and consistent idealism Gentile had emphasized
that past, and time as well, are purely abst.r act notions·, which are over-
come in concrete spiritual life (The Tramcendlng of Time, pp. 95-97).
The relevance of Gentile's ll mperamenlo del ~ nella noria has been
emphasized by C . Garboli, Scritti seroi/i (Turin, 1989), p. 20,5,
34. See G. Centile, Teoria getu1role dello BTJirito ~ atto p"ro (2nd rev. enl.
ed. , Pisa. 1918), pp. 50-52.
35. I am not suggesting here a simple, unilinear causal relationship. White
has undoubtedly reacted to Italian oeoidealism thro11gh a distinctly Amer•
lc3o 61te.r. But even White's pragmatism, implicitly pointed out by Peny
Anderson at the end of his chapter, wa.1 presumallly reinforced by \he
well-known pragmatist strain (through Giovanni Vailati's medlabon) de-
tectable in Croce's work, particularly in his Logic.
36. See H . White, "Interpretation in History" (1972-1973), in Tropic, ofDiit-
~r•e (Baltimore; John~ Hopkins University Press, 1978), p. 75.
37. Ibid .• p. 2.
38. "Foucault Decoded" (1973), in ibid. , p. 254.
39. The index h3s only one entry under his name: but soo also p. 24, o. 2,

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I 'I Fil' -, • ~ '•I" 7" ·" /·I
 Not& to Pages 90-92
< ~ >
where Bartbes is listed with other scholan worldng on rhetorics, such as
Kenneth Burke, Genette, E:co, Todorov.
40. G. Gentile, "La 61oso6a della praxis," in Lafilosofia di Mon:. Studi critici
(Pisa, 1899), pp. 51-157 (the book was dedicated to Croce).
41. Ibid .• pp. 62-63.
42. See G, Bergami, 11 glovane c.-om,cl ell mor.mmo, 1911- 1918 (Milan:
Fcltrinelli, 1977); A. Del Noce, ll Meidio della rlvolu:tione (Milan: Rus-
coni, 1978).
43. See S. Natoli, Giovanni Gennie filowfo europeo (furin: Bollati-
Boringhieri, 1989), pp. 94ff. (rather super6cial). For Gramsa's judgment
on futurism see Socio{imw e f,;,&(;larno . Z:Ordine N= 1919-1922 (Turin:
Einaudi, 1966), p. 22.
44. See 8. Croce, Antistoricismo, in Ultlmi saggi, pp. 246-258.
45. See Tropjc8. pp. 27-80.
46. See H . White, The Content <if the Form (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Uni-
versity Press, 1987), p. 63.
47. Ibid•• p. 227 n . 12..
48. G. Gentile, The Tran..,cending-ofTime, p . 99.
49. Cf, G, Gentile, "Caratteri reUgiosi dellil presente lotta politica," tn Che
cosa e' il ftUcumo . Duaor-li e po/emkhe (Florence: Vallecclii, 1-924
[1925]), pp. 143-151.
50. Cf. the seotion entitled "La violenz.a fascista" in ibid. , pp. 29-32..
SJ. "State and individual ... are one and the same; and the ·a rt of governing
is the art of reconciling and i.dentifying these two terms so that the mau-
mum of liberty agrees with the maximum of public order . . . For always
the maximum of liberty agrees with the maximum of public force of the
state. Which force? Distinctions in this Held are dear to those who do not
we lcome this concept of force, which is nevertheless essential to th.estate,
and hence to liberty. And they distinguish moral from material force, the
force of law freely voted and accepted from the furce of violence which is
rigidly opposed to the will of the citi2.en. Ingenuous distinctions, if made
,n good faith! Every force is a moral .furce. for it ts always an expression of
will; and whatever be the argument used= preaching or black-jadcing-
its efficacy can be none other than its ability 6nally to receive the inner
support of a man and to persuade him to agree." I quote from the transla-
tion provi3ed by H , W. Schneide, in Making the-Fiucf.tt State (New York:
Oxforil U11iversity Press, 1928, p. 347). l'he speech , delivered in Palermo
on 31 March 1924, )Nl1S 6rst published in journals such as La nuooa poli-
tica llberole, n, 2 (April 1924). In republishing it one year later, after the
Matteotti crisis and Its violent solutJon, Gentile, who had been dubbed
"the blackjack philosopher; added a visibly embanassed footnote in

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11•1 Fil' T'I • ~ '•I" 'i" · 0 1·1
 Notu to Pagu 9ll-.96
< 35.5 >
which he made a distinction between private fort-e and state fort-e (the
latter having been talcen over, in a situation of vacancy, by the ,quadrlnt');
see G. Gentile, "II fascismo e la Sicilia," in Che w,a e' ilfucimw, pp. 50-
51. Ted and footnote are strangely confused in H . W. Sohneidei's trans-
lation. Gentile's argument was not particularly origilllll: see. for Instance
B. ·Mussolini, Forza e COMefllO, in "GerarcbiA," 1923 (= Opera omnia, ed.
E . and D. Susmel, XIX, Florence: La Fenice, 1956, pp. 191>-196; the
article was translated by Schneider, Mak;ng the FtUCist State, pp. 341-
342).
52. "The Politics of Historical Interpretation" (1982), in The Content of the
Form, pp. 74- 75.
53. Ibid., p. 77. Italics are missing in the French text.
54. Ibid., p. 80, My italics.
55. lbrd., p, 227 n. 12.
56. On this latter point I am indebted to Stefano Lev·1 Della Turre for som e
e nlightening remarks.
57. See H. White, The Content of the Fonn, p . 74.
58. See R. Serra, Scritti letterari, morali e politici, ed. .M. lsnenghi (Turin:
Einaudi, 1974), pp. 278-288. A reading of this essay similar to the one 1
am suggesting here has been proposed by C . Gvboli. Falbala.s (Milan:
Carr.anti, 1-990).
59, Cf. (but not exclusively) the well-knowµ, t{ittico Cll addli (~/lj che
oonno, etc.) (1911), now at the. Metropolitan Museum in New York.
60. Cf. R. Serra. Epiatolarlo, ed. L . Ambrosini, G. De Robertis, A. Grilli
(Florence: Le Monnier, 1953), pp. 454ff.
61 . Cf. B. Croce, teoria e noria tklla storlografia (Bari: Latena, 1927), pp.
44-45.
62. Cf. R. Serra, Eputolario, p. 459 (November 11, 1912). 'l1ie divergence
with Croce bas been emphasized by E. Garin, "Serra e Croce." in Scritti
in onore ell Renato Serra peril cinquantenario tklla morte (Florence: Le
Monnier, 1974), pp. 85-88.
63. Cf. R. Serra, Scritti letter-an, p. 286.
64. Ibid. , p. 287.
65. See Hayden White's passage quoted above-as well as his chapter.
66. Cf. J. -F. Lyotard, The Differend: Phnues in Dirpute (Minneapolis: Uni-
versity of Minnesota Press, 1988; Paris, 1983), pp. 55-57.
67, P. Levi, Su,vlool In Asuchwltz, trans. S. Woolf (New Yori(; Collfer Books,
1961), pp. 5-6 (= Se quuto e' un uomo [Turin : Einaudi, 1958), pp. 9-10).
68. Cf. E. Benveniste, lndiJ•European Language and Society (London: Fa-
ber, 1973 [1969]), pp. 522f[ (the difference between felt.ii and ropentes
is discussed on p. 526).

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< 356 ;>

6. Of Plots, Witnesses, and Judgments

l . Siegfried Kracauer, History, The Last Things before the Ltut (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1969).
2. Perhaps the issue concerns the contradiction between two types of expe-
rience, which in German is expressed in the distinction between the raw
shocks of Er/ebnis and the meaningful coherence of Erfahn.ing. Whereas
the victims eitperie'nced their fate largely in the former sense, historians
tend to interpret it in the latter. Another way to mllile this point is to say
that while the disaster of the Exodus from Egypt could be turned by the
Jews into Haggadic lnith, that ofthe Rolocaust cannot For more on the
implications of the split in experien.ce and the Holocaus1·. see my "Song$
of Experience: Re8ections on the Debate over Alltag$geschichte,• Sal-
magundi, 81 (Winter 1989), 29-41.

7. Representing Ille Holocaust

1, Ernst Nolte, • ver:gangenheit, die nicht vcrgehen will; Frankfurler AU-
gemeine Zeitung, 6 June 1986. References to this article as "Vergangen-
heit'' will be included in the text. Contributions to the Historilierstreit
have been colle.:ted in Emst Reinhard Piper, ed. , "Htstorikernreit~, Die
Dok,,.nenlatWn der Kontr.uverse um dJe Einzlgarlig/celt der nationaUo-
ziali.stischen Judenvernichtung (.Munich: Piper Verlag, 1987). See also the
special issue ofthe New Gennan Critique, 44 (Spring/Summer 1988).
2. Jurgen Habermas, "Eine A.rt Schadensabw:icklung; Die apologetischen
Tendenzen in ·d er Jeutschen 1.eitgeschichtsschreihung," Die Zeit, 11 July
1986: trans. Jeremy Leaman in New Gennan Critique, 44 (1988), 25-39,
as "A Kind of Settlement of Damages (Apologetic Tendencies)," "Vom ·of•
fentlichen Gebraucb der Hislorie; Die Zeit, 7 November 1986; trans. Jer•
emy Leaman in New Guman Crltl.q uB, 4:4 (1988). 40-50. as "Concerning
the Public Use of History." References will be to ihe English translations.
and page numbers will be included in the text.
3. Charles Maier, The Unmasterable Past (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Uni-
versity Press. 1988), p. J. See also Rich.ard J, Evaru· well-informed and
lucid account, In Hitler's Shadow: West German Hi.storlans and the At-
tempt to Escape the Nazi Past (New York: Pantheon Books, 1989), which
appe11red after this text was largely completed. Evans' book is perhaps
best read as a complement to Maier:S, for it 6Us in background that
Maier's more pointed and conceptualized analysis often takes for granted,
and it devotes relatively littl.e ·a ttention to facets of the llutorikenlreit
(such as Habermas' role) that Maier elaborates. E;vans, however, ofien

1.dl'lr-11 .• I
I I 1•11
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 Notes to Pages 109-110
< 357 >

seems to proceed on the as.sumption that an argument may be effectively

countered by adducing and evaluating the evidence germane to its dis-
arele claims. This approach, while obviously necessary, is not sufficient to
address less ,rational aspects of certain "argt1ments• that are focused on In
my analysis .
4. The term H00CIW$t ls of course problematic. But one is in an area where
there are no easy, uninvolved, or purely objective choices. Perhaps it is
t,est not to become fixated on any one term but to use various terms with
a continual fnd.icatlon of their liml~tions. ln addressing limiting.phenom-
ena, one Inevitably risks repeating the tendency to veer in the directions
of either saa:ificial elevation or bU.rei1ucttatic reduction. Nonetheless,
there are, I think, at least three reasons for using the term Holocawt even
if one Is aware of Its problematic nature and resists giving it a privileged
status: (1) Given the unavailability of innocent terms, Holocaiut may be
one of the better choices in an impossible, tension-ridden linguistic Geld.
There is even the possibility that resorting to terms like annll\llatwn- or
final aolulion will inadvertently repeat Nazi terminology, Holoca~ '5
both less bureaucratic and less banal than some of the alteniatives. (2) The
tenn for v11Jio1.1s reasons has had a role in the discourse of the victims·
themselves, and there are ritual and ethical gro1.1nds for honoring their
choice. (3) The rather prevalent use of the term, including its use by non-
victims, has to some extent routinized it and helped to counteract its sac-
rificial conllotations without entirely reducing it to clich~, although one
mu.st beware of its role in what Alvin H. Rosenfeld has termed •a pornog-
raphy of the Holocaust," promoted especially by pop1.1larization and com-
mercialit.ation in the mass media. See "Another Revisionism: Popular
Culture 11nd the Changing Image of the Holocaust" in Bitburg in Moral
and Political Perr,,ectioe, ed. Geoffrey Hartman (Bloomingtont Indiana
Univer$ity Press, 1986), pp. 90-102. See also Saul Friedlander, lujkc-
tion11 ofNazimt: An Esst1v on KU,ch and Death, trans, Thomas Weyr (New
Yorlc: Harper &: Row, 1984).
5, A fruitful beginning in ~dressing this problem is made by Theodor W.
Adorno in "What Does Coming to Terms with [Aufarbeitung] the Past
Me11nr trans. Tunothy Bahti and Geoffrey Bartman in Bitburg in Moral
and Political Perq,ective, ed. Hartman , pp, 114-129. As Adorno notes,
•Enlightenmenl about what happened In the past must work, above all,
against a forgetfulness that too easily goes along with and justi6es what is
forgotten· (p. 125). It should be noted that the concept of transference
employed ip my argument is not based on a simple analogy with the ana-
lytic situation but on the much stronger claim that the bltter i5 a oon-
densed version of a general transfere'lltial prl>ce$s characterizing relation-

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 Notes to l'agu 112-120
< 358 >
ships-a prQ<;eSs of which the Oedipal situatio11 is 011e vllriant. On these
issues see my ~Psychoanalysis a11d History" !11 Soundings in CriNcal
Theory (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1989), pp. 30-66.
6. "Working through" is a translation of Freud"s term durcharbeiten. "De•
nial" or disavowal (Verleugnung) is of course meant here not in its ordinary
sense but in its psychoanalytic sense. which may involve 'intricate and
subtle modes of evasion, often through relatively complex. (if11t times par-
a11oid and circular) modes of argumentation. (The more sophisticated
modes of revisionism do not simply deny the edstence of gas chambers,)
In ~.acting-out: the pt15t is compulsively repe11ted as If it were fully pre•
sent, resistances are not confronted, and memory 115 well as judgment is
undercut. The therapeutic goal is to further the movement from denial
and "acting-out" to "workmg-through"-a recurrently renewed and easily
lmpaired movement that may 11ever be to!Jllly or defi11itively accom-
plished.
7. Eberhard Jackel, "Die elende Praxis der Untersteller" in DieZeit, 12 Sep-
tember 1986.
8. Ernst Nolte, "Between Myth and Revisionism? The lhird Reich in the
Perspective of the 1980s" in A~cta of the Third Reich, ed. H . W. Koch
(London, Macmillan, 1985), p. 27.
9. Andre115 Hillgruber, Zwderlei Untergang: Die Zenchlagung da
D~uchen Reiches und ~ Eride de8 eur01>4ischen Jutkntu!N ( Berlin;
Siedler, 1986), p. 67.,
10. Bitburg forms part of the larger context in which the HiltorilcerBtmt must
be seen. In the article he wrote on Bltburg, Habermas pre6gured some
of the points he would make In the 5111vo that opened the HlstorilcerBtreit.
See "Oie Entsorgu11g der Vergangenheit: Ein lculturpolitlsches Pam-
phlet." Die Zeit, 24 (May 198.5); trans. Thomas Levin 115 "Defusing the
Past: A Politico-Cultural Tract" fn Bltburg in Moral and Political l'trspec-
tive, ed . Hartman, pp. 43-51.
11. Jurgen Babermas, "Ceschichtsbewusstsein und postttaditionale ldenti•
tl!t: Dte Westorientierung c:le.r Bundesrepubll.k: in Eme Art Schaden.rab•
wlcklung. Kleine polltiache Saliriften Vl (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrlcamp,
1967). All. of Habermas' writings on the Hilltorilcerttreit may also be found
in The New Conseroatmn: Cultural Crlticmn and the HistoriaM' Debate,
ed. and trans. Shierry Weber Nicholsen, intro. Richard Wolin (Cam-
bridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1989).
12. Martin Broszat, "A Controversy about the flistoricimtion of National So-
cialism" in New German Critique, 44 (1988), 85-126. My discussion of
Broszat does not imply that one may assimilate his views to those of Nolte
or even Hillgruber. Nor do I address the problem .of Broszat's own histor-
ical writing and research in his other publications. My analysis is ad-

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 Notes to l'age, 120-125
< 359 >
dressed to certain aspects ofBroszat's exchange with Friedlander in which
the revisionist possibilities of a certain approach to social history are at
issue, I nonetheless think 11 is misleading to go beyond the point of nee,
essary distinction and to dissociate or detach the •theoretical and meth-
odologi® problems" of nistoriciution" (Hlltoruierung), as expou.nded
by Broszat, from the •polemics" of the Hmorikeratreit, as Ian Kenhaw
attempts to do (The Nazi DlctaJor•hip: Problema and l'er-,,etttvea of In-
terpretation, 2nd ed., London: Edward Arnold, 1969, p. 150), This ges-
ture ·:rescues" all of social history and Alltag$geachichte at the risk of ob-
scuring or downplaying the crucial issues of precuely how they are
undertaken and the con textual functions they may be argued to serve.
13. It Is noteworthy that Adorno asserts that ~for countless people itwasn't all
that bad under ~ism. rerror's sharp edge was directed only llg)Wlst a
few relatively well..de6ned groups.• But he insists that a focus on this side
of everyday life aggravates the • diminished faculty of memory" and fur.
then resistance to working through the problems posed by other aspects
of the Nazi regime. See "What Does Coming to Tenns with the Past
Mean?" pp. 120-121.
14. The contribution of Christopher Browning to this collection (Chapter 1)
attempts to investigate this complex interaction.
15, Oxford; Oxford Unfversity Press, 1967.
16. Hanover, 1985.
17. I-Jere it may be useful to quote the most notorious passage of l:limmler's
1943 Posen speech lo members of the SS: "The Jewish people must be
exterminated,' say all party comrades, 'obviously, our party progr.unme
contains exclusion of the Jews, extermination. and we'll do it.' And then
they all come, those honest eighty million Germans, and each and every
Qne has his one deceni Jew: Obviously, the other Jews are all swine, but
this one is lirst class. Of all who talk like this not a single one has looked
on, has endured it. Most of you, in contrast, well know what it means
when a ·h undred corpses Jie there together, 6ve hundred, a thousand, To
have endured thb and- apart from a few e1ceptions of human weak-
ness-tQ have remained decent, this is what has made us hard. This is a
glorious page in our history which has never. been written and will never
be written." Quoted in Emil L. F ackenhelm, "Concerning Authentic and
Unauthentic Responses lo the Holocaust" 1[6rst pub. 1975] in The Naz.I
Holocatut, ed. Michael R. Marro$, I (London: Meckler. 1989), p. 11. One
may observe that Hilnmler's incredible conception of-decency" is itself
made possible by an abusive notion of the division of life into discrete
spheres.
18. On these problems, see James E . Yo1,1ng. "Memory and Monument;· In
Bitburg in Moral and Political Perrpeatioe, ed. Hartman, pp. 103-113.

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 Note.J to Poges 126-129
< 360 ;,,

19. There is a tragic sense in which Hitler, while losing the war, won the
Holocaust-at le-.&St with respect to western and central European Jews.
There are only 30,000 to60,000 Jews in West Germany and 4,000 to6,000
in East Germany. Although one should not underestimate the actual
threat lo remaining Jews, one of the more bizarre aspects of recent events
in certain regions of Europe is antisemitism in the relative absence ofreal
referents. One may perhaps call this phenomenon imaginary or fetishized
antisemitism. lt reveals in a heightened and almost clinical manner the
role of the imaginary in antisemitism more generally-a rQle that can of
course be attended by very real dfects.
20. The problem of the work of mourning receives excellent treatment in Eric
Santner's Straiuled Obfectr. Mournmg, Memory, 11nd Film In Ponwor
Gennan11 {Ithaca: Cornell University l'ress, 1990). Unfortunately, the
book appeared too late for me to make fuller use ofit in this chapter.

8. Historical Understanding and Countemitionahty

1. Martin Broszat, Saul Friedlander, "Dokumentatlon: 'Ein Briefwechsel
um die llistorisierung des Nationalsozia.lismus,'" Vlerte/jalare,hefte for
Zeitgeschichte, 36 (1988). 3.39-372; English translati!>n: "A Controversy
about the Histori:r.alion of National Socialitm.~ Ya.d V1Uhet11 Studiu, 19
(1988), 1-48.
2. George M. Kren, Leon Rappaport, The Holocatul and the Cri:su of Hu-
man Behavior (New York: Hol'm es lie Meier, 1980), p. 128.
3. Ibid., p. 12.
4. Johann Gustav Dl'Oysen, Gn'lndnu d.er HutonJc (Munich: Oldenbourg,
1960; 1st ed., 1868), p. 9 .
5. Wilhelm Dilthey, Der Aufbau d.er guchichtlichen Well in den Geule.n.oi,-
&eruchoften (1910/1927), 7: "Gesammeite Schriften" (Stuttgart: B. G.
Teubner, 1958), p. 148: G6rard Gsfgen, Theorle d.er wlrtschaftlichen
Entsoheidung: U11ter,uchung :zur Logilc und iikOIIOffllschen Bed.eutung <let
rotioMlen ll!!nd.elns (Tilbingen; Mohr, Siebeak, 1963), p. 54.
6. Ibid. , p. 278; see also JCarl,Otto Apel, Die Erklaren-Vernehen-
Kontrooerae in tr11nund.ent4lpragmati&cher Sicht (Franlcfurt am Main:
Suhrkamp, 1979), p. 15.
7. Apel, Dfe Erklaren-Ventehen-Kontroverse, p. 26.
8. William H . Dray, "Oberlegungen wr hlstorischen Erkliruog von Hand-
lungen., • in Methodologuche Probleme d.er Sozialwissemch4ften, ed. Karl
Acham (Darmstadti W(ssenschaAliche Buchgesellschaft, 1918), pp. 151-
185; here, p. 158.
9. Apel, Die Erlcliirung-Ver.stehen-Kontroverre., p. 26.
JO. Gafgen, Theone d.er wirtschaftlichen Entacheidung, p. 24.

1.111'1.-II .• I
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 Note8 to Pagu 131-137
< 361 >
1 l. On the particularistic experiential context of methodological approaches
to National Socialism, see my essay "Historical Experience and Cogni-
tion: Perspectives on National Soclalism," ffjstory ond MtmwnJ, 2, no. 1
(1990), 84-110.
12. Norbert Elias, "Der Zusammenbruoh der Zivillsation," iQ Studlen tlw
die Deuucflt,n (Fnuikfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1989), pp. 391-516: here,
p. 397.
13. Hannah Arendt, "Die vollendete Sinnloslgkeit." in NO'-h Awchw.n (Ber•
lin : Triarnat, 1989), .I'· 29.
14. Ibid., p. 11. In the English version oC the article, "Social Science Tech-
niques and the Study of Concentrati.on Camps" (Jewlah Social Studiea, 12
[1950], 49-84), the term is simply ratioflal rather than the more exact
equivalent of the German zw,clcrotionol.
15. George L. S. Shackle, 'Tune and Thought." Bri«.th Journal for the Philos-
"f)hlJ of S ~ , 9 (1959), 290.
16. lsa.iah 'lhink, Jwk,irot; The Jewuh Coul1Clu In Eo8tem Europe under
Nozi,Occupotion (New York, Basic Books, 1977 [19721).
17. Isaiah Trunk, "The Judenrat and Jewish ResponseSc (Discussion): in The
Holocawt 08 ffjstorlcol E,:periena, ed. Yehuda Bauer and Nathan Roten,
streicb (London: Holmes &- Meier, 1981), pp. 223-271; here, p. 268.
18, Yisrael Gutman. "The Concept of Labor In Judenrat Policy,· In Patterns
ofJewish Leoduship in Nazi Euro'fJ#' 1933/45. Proceedings of the Third
Yad Vashem International Historical Conference, Jerusalem, April 4-7,
1977, ed. Yisrael Gutman and Cynthia J. Haft Oerusalem: Yad Vashem,
1979), pp. 151-180.
19. ibid.• p. 156.
20. See Arnold Gehlen, "Probleme einer soziologjschen Handlungslehre," in
Sozwlcgie und Leben: l>le ,oziolcguche Dimennon der Fochwiaaet1J1chof'
ten, ed, Frank Altheim et al, (Tubingen, 1952), pp. 28-62; here, p. 33.
2I. i'. H , Knight, The Ethic8 of Competition ond Other Essays (1935; re-
printed Salem, N. H.: Ayer, 1955), p. 74: "Efficfency is a value cat~ory:
22. Otto v. Zwiedineck-Sudenhorst, "De r Begrifl' homo oewnomicus und
sein Lehrwert," Jahrbucher f/lr NoHonolokotwtnie und Stotistilc, 140
(1934), 5)3-532; here, p. 521.
23. Kllfl Acham, "Ober einig.e Rationalititskonzeptionen in den Sozialwissen-
schaften, • in llationahtiif: Philowphische Beitriige, ed. Herbert Schn.ii-
delbach (Frankfurt am Main : Suhrbmp, 1984). pp. 32-69; here, p. 34.
See also C. Hartflel, Wirl,choftliche und aoziole Ratioflalit.dt: Unter•
,uchungen .wm Menschenbad in Okonomie und Soziologie (Stuttgiirl:
Enke, 1968).
U. "Economic rationality is at the same time a concrete and universal de-
scriptive principle and a normative princlpli:: See Paul D!esing. "The

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 Note, to l'agea 137-144
< 362 >

Nature and Umitalions of Economic RaliOllality," Ethic&, 61 (1950'51),

12---26; here, p. 13. The author to go furthest is probably John Rawls in his
TheonJ ofJwttc. (Cambridge., Mass. c Harvard Univenily Pres~. 1971), in
which utility calculations serve as a basis for morality (p. 25). Cifgen.
Theorle cl.er wiruchaftlichan f:nt1clieilw11g, notes lh.t modem decision
theory has led to a resurrection of utilitarianism: "Economics then be-
comes ii formal ethics, as in Bentham .. ." (p. 7).
25. Glifgen, ibid., p. 89.
26. Raul Hilberg, ""The Ghetto as a Form of Government: An Analysis of Isa-
iah Trunk's Judenrat,• in The HQlocau,t a.i Hi#M'ical E:q,eriel&U, ed.
Bauer and Rotenstreich, pp. 15.5-171: here, p. 165.
27. Uriel Tai, "Discussion," ibid., p. 237.
28. Gunnar Myrdal, "Das Zweck-Mittel-Oenken in der Nationalokonomie,"
Zeiuchnft for Natwnaliikorwmie, 4 (1933), 305-329; here, p. 310.
29. Trunk.Judenrat, p. 410.
30. On the opposit.e elfect of rational bureaucratic behavior in the N'azi sys-
tem, see Dieter Rebentisch, Fllhrentaat -und Verwaltu,_g Im Zu!eiten
Weltlcrleg (Stuttgart: Steiner, 1989), pp. 54/J ff.

9. History beyond the Pleasure Principle

1. Elie Wiesel, "l Fear What Lies beyond the Wall," New York nmu, 17
Nov,;mber 1989, Op-Ed. For a $erles of Cer:man resPQnses to Wiesel's
remarks, see Die Zeit, 22 December 1989, p. 12.
2. Even before 1008, 9 November was, of course, already overdetermined
by historical events an Germany: 9 November 1918 was the date of the
official beginning of the Weimar R.e public; 9 November 1923 was the date
of Hitler's tailed Put,ch (the Kriatallnacht pogl'Oms were linlced to Nazi
commemorations of the latter event).
3. The place of traumatic dates in the historical. imagination and the textual
and poetical procedures by which their Inscription ls lacilil!lted or blocked
are .a mong the central themes of Paul Celan's Buchner Pri:r.e address,
"Der Meridian.• There Celan wonders, thinking no doubt of the date of
the Wannsee Conference, "Perhaps one might venture to say that every
poem is inscribed with Its 'Janua,y 20'? Perhaps what is new about poems
l"ritten today is precisely this; that here more than ever the e.ffQrt is-made
to remain mindful of ~uch dates?" luugBWdhlte Gedichte: Zw,ri Red.en
(Frankfurt am Main: Suhrlcamp, 1968), p . 142.
4. In this context l am rem.inded of Andre Heller's final monologue In Hans-
Jiirgen Syberberg's Our Hitler, fn which Heller, spealcing to a puppet of
Hitler, lists some of the things oo longer available to lil>idlnal iovestment
in postwar Germany: "You took away our sunsets, sunsets by Caspar Da-
vfd Friedrich. You are to blame that we can no longer look at a. Seid of

•.d/'lr-11 .,1 I
I I i 11 I .,, EP.' ~, ,)~ ,,,,, ;-1,,--b/,J
 Notes to Pagu J,U....146
< 363 >
gral.n without thtnlcing of_you. You made old Germany kitSQby with your·
simplifying works and peasant pictures. And you are to blame that we
have losi the pride o{ restaurants [Stolz der Ga.rthawer], that-people are
driven into fast-food places fur fear they might s!111 love their work and
something other than money, the harmlessly hannful, the only thing you
left them with, since you occupied everything else and corrupted it with
your actions, everything, honor, loyalty, country life, hard work, movies,
dignity; Fatherland, pride, faith ... The ~rd.• 'mllgic' and 'myth' and
·serving' and 'ru]fng; 'Fuhrer,' 'authority,' are ruined. are gone, euled to
eternal time.~ Hans-Jurgen Syberberg, Hitler, A Film from Germany,
trans. Joachim Neugroschel (New Yoric: Fa.mu; Straus and Giroux, 1982),
p. 242.
5. Dominick LaCapra, "Representing the l'lolocaust: Rellections on the His-
torums· Debate," Chapter 1 ii) this volume.
6. Ibid.
7. Thus, for eDmple, Saul Friedlander has stressed the fact that a majority
of the participants lo the Hlstorlkemreit are members of the "HJ-
Geoeration,· that is, the generation that would have passed through the
formative experience of the Hider Youth. See the published correspon-
dence between Friedlander and Martin Broszat, "Um die 'Historisierung
des Nationalsozialismus,' " Vierteljoh~hefte for Zeltgeschtchte (April
1988), pp. 339-372; an English tialnslatton of the cortespooden_ce may be
found in New German Critique 44 (Spring/Summer 1988), 85-126, ~ -
PP· 366-67. In this context Helmut Kohl's now infamous declaration of
the "grace of late birth" may be seen as an attempt not simply to deny
guilt for tbe crimes of N"azism, which is understandable, but also to dis-
avow any transferential ,elations to these events and the responsibilities
that such relations bring.
8. For a more thorough discussion of issues of mourning In postwar Ger-
many, see Alexander and Margarete MitscherlJch, The Inability ID
M1>11m: Principles of CollecUoe Behavior, trans. Beverley R. Placzek
(New Vorlc: Grove Press, 1975), and E ric- L . Santoer, Stranded Objects:
Mourning, MBfllOry, and Film in Postwar Gennony (Ithaca: Cornell Uni-
versity Press, 1990).
9. This characterization of the f ortlda game is, admittedly, something of a
negative caricature of a primal scene ofcoming to terms with dilference.
Sepanulon and the entrance into the order oflanguage and culture can be
and, perhaps, more often than n ot is a proces.s -'CCOmpanied by great joy
and exuberance, meaning that in a "good enough" holding environment,
to use Winnicott's pbrl)Se, the psychic ris~s and conB.icts assoc~ted with
earty e ncounters with dilference and non•attunement can be contained
and transformed into positive achievements.
10. Samuel Hahnemann's Organon i1Br rotloMllen Hellkumle, flrst published

1..>11 /'I .-1 I .•'"'I

U'I' EP.'.;, T'I ,)~ 14◄• 'i" ·"1·1
 Notes to Pages 147-149
< 364 >

'in 1810, is still the oomerstone of homeopathic medical.ptactioe. We read

there, for ell8Jnple: "It follows . .. that subsbnces become remedies and
are able to destroy disease only by arousing certain manifestations and
symptoms, i.e. particular artificial disease oonditions, which are capable
of eliminating and destroying the symptoms that already exist, i.e. the
natural disease being treated" (Organon of Medicine.. trans. Jost Kilnzli,
Alain Naude, Peter Pendleton, Lo.s Angeles: J, P. Tarcher, 1982, p. 24),
And further: The homeopathic therapy ~uses in appropriate dosage
against the totality of:symptom& of a natural disease a medicine capable of
producing, in the healthy, symptoms as similar as possible" (p. 70).
11. Sigmund Freud, Beyond the Pleasure Principle, in The Standard Edition
of the Cornplete Psychological Works, ed. James Stracbey (London: Ho-
garth Press, 1953-1974), XVIII, 32.
12. Sigmund Freud, "Mourning and Melancholia," in Standard Edition, XIV,
245. The most comprehensive st1.1dy of the effects of m!l!iSive tnuma on
individuals and communities is Robert Jay Lifton, The Broken Connec,-
tion; On Death and the Continuity of Li.fe (New Yoi¼: Simon. and Schus-
ter, 1979). Regarding the relation,of early childhood experiences of loss to
later experiences of loss or l:r.luma, Lifton notes: ~e survivor is one who
bas come UltO contaet with dealh in some bodily or psyohic fashion and
has retnained alive ... The death imprint consists of the radical intrusion
of an i~ge-feeling of threat or end to life. lbal: intrusion may be 1udde1;1,
as 10 war experience and various forms of accidents, or it may take shape
more gradually over time. Of great importance is the degree of unaccept-
ab.ility of death contained in the image,-of prematurity, grotesqueness,
and absurdity. To be erperienced, the death imprinf must call forth prior
i1nagery either of actual death or of death equiwuents. In.thai sense every
death encounter i, itulf a reactivation of earlier 'st4rv/vau' • (p. 169; my
emphasis).
13. Ernst Nolte, "Verg!IJlgenheit die nicht vergehen will• Frankfurter Allgi:,
meine l.eitung, 6 June 1986.
14. Andreas Hillgrubec, Zweierlei Untergang: Die l.ersclilagung dh
Deutschen Relches und dos Entk de, europa/fchen /WU1""rn& (Berlin:
Siedler, 1986).
15. Saul Friedlander, "•Historical Writing and the Memory of the Holocaust.~
in Writing and the HoloclJIJ6t., ed. Berel Lang (New York: Holmes- and
Meier, 1988), pp. 74-75.
16, Martin Broszat; "Plidoyer fur eine lflstorisierung des Natlo1131so~alis•
mus," Merkur, 39 (May 198.5), 375.
17. See once more the published correspondence between Friedlander and
Broszat, "Um die 'Historisierung des Nationalsoz:lalismus: " In his second
letter, Friedlander refers to a remark of Jurgen Habermas that seems to

1.111'1.-II .• I

I 'I ~I' ' Tl , ~ '•I◄• 7" ·"/·I

 NotB& to Pages 149- 152
< 36.5 >
identify what I have bee n characterizing as the psychotic layer of these
events: "Somethin_g took place [in Auschwitz] which up until that time no
one had even thought might be possible. A deq> stratum of solidarity
between all that bears a human countenance was touched he.re .. .
Auschwitz has alt.e red the conditions for the continuity of historical life
col'lnection.s-not only in Gennany" Oiirgen Habennas, EIM Art Schad-
ensabwicklung, Franl<furt am Matn; Suhrkamp, 1987, p. 163). As Chris•
topher Browning's excellent essay (Chapte r 1 in this volume) on the writ-
ing ofperpetrator history indicates, empathy and even a certain degre« Qf
narrative pleasure can be useful for the task of retrieving important details
of the experiential history of participants in the mass murder. But as ·the
conclusion of Browning's p11per suggests, even for the members of Re-
serve l?olice Battalion 101, the immediate subject of h is study, there
reached a point at which horror and revulsion ceased and the· killing be-
came acceptable. There, however, Browning's story ends. And there,
perhaps, the sort of namtive representation Browning is interested in
finds its limits, despite appeals to the "all too human." Empathy. in other
words, was able to guide Browning's narrative project as long as a certllin
degree .of moral aoil psychic resistance to the killing on the part of the
perpetrators was still accessible to the historian. Where the residues of
such resistance have been sufficie ntly repressed or elrminated , e mpathy
wou.ld seem to find its limits.
18. The following ,r emarks have been ,informed in part by a reading of feminist
analyses of 'l'oyeurism and fetishism in narrative cinema. See, for ex-
ample, Laura Mulvey's by now canonical es:,ay, "Vi5uaJ Pleasure and Nar-
rative Cinema," in Film Thtt,ry and Criticl.nn: Introductory Reading.,,
ed. Gerald Mast and Marshall Cohen (New York; Oxford University
Press, 198.5), pp. 803-816.
19. For more comprehensive d iscussions of the film, see my Stranded Objects
and Anton ICaes, From Hitler to " Hef1114t ~, The R.et1.1m of HIJrlory a,s Film
(Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1989).
20. Edgar Reitz, Li£be zum Kino: Utopien und Oeclanlcen .wm Autorenfilm,
1962-1983 (Cologne: Verlag K6ln 78, 1984), p. 141.
21. For a critique of the use of.narrative and visual pleasure ln Holocaust, see
Elie Wiesel's remarks on the film in the New York Times, 16 April 1978.
For a discussion of the-aesthetics and politics of empathy-issues central
to the old Erpressiontmuu-Debatte-in the context of the West German
reception of Holocaust, see New German Critiq1,e, 19 (Winter 1980), as
well as Kaes's From Hitler to "Heflll4t."
22. lleiu., Liebe zum Kino, p. 102.
23. Freud, Beyond the PleQ,1Ure.Principle, pp. 29...JO.
24. Lifton. The Broken Connection, p. 176.

I I I II
 NQtes to Pages 152-158
< 366 >
25. The work of Michel Foucaul~ bas been particularly helpful in illuminating
such complicsties. As Adi Ophir bas argued , very much in the spirit of
Foucault, our ability to tn.ily enact the mourning worlc for "1\d integration
of the .. Final Solutionn depeJ!ds on 9ur capacicy to •owledge and e.x-
plain "those modes of discourse which e.xpelled the Jews &om the domain
of humanity, the technologies of power aetivated to implement the ideo-
logical -Statements, and the erotica of power used to guarantee complete
eitecution of the mission, until the last moment, until the final breath."
Ophir's remar~s on tl!e mode of identity Fo.rmation that played so crucial a
role in the "successes" of German fascism are especially relevant in the
present context: "First of all ... :reference to .another which serves as the
borderline, as the archetype of negation; a package of'excluding' opposi•
tions WTapped in the same fundamental distinction and drawn after It:
superior-inferior, authentk-inauthentie; holy-profane, pure-impure ,
healthy-sick, livfng-dead; a systematic application of the conceptual bor-
derline (Aryan-non-Aryan) over geographic space (and also historical
time: before and after the Jewish pollutio.n, before and after the Gennan
revolution); the revealed'and concealed mechanisms fur encouraging, dis-
tributing and imposing the ·eicluding' modes of discourse, its intern.al
organization and principles of the hierareh contained within it, the steri-
lizing of channels of debate and blocking of the possibilities of disagree-
ment and d.evian.ce" (Adi Ophir, •on Sanctifying the Holocaust! An Anti-
Theological Treatise," in Tiklcun, 2 (1981), 63; 64-65).
26. 1n this regard see especially Klaus-Theweleit, Mdnntrphant08ien (1977;
Refnbek: Rowohlt. 1989), and Jessica Benjamin, The Bond, of Lcwe: P&y-
choanalym, Femlnl.tm, and the Problem of Dmnlhaticn (New York: Pan-
theon, \988).

10. Habennas, Enlightenment, and Antisemitism

1. Jiirgen Habennas, "Concerning the Public Use of History," New Gennan
Critique, 44 (1988), 4/,; iirst published in Die 1,eil, 1 November 1986.
2. Walter Abish, How Germon I, lti'IWie Deutsche lat &i' (New Yor~ New
Directions, 1980), p. 252.
3, Walter Benjamin. llluminationa, trans, Harry Zohn (New York: Sdtocken
Books. 1978), p. 256.
4, Jurgen J-1.abermas, The New Co~,,,attm,; ed. and trans. Shi~rry Weber
Nicholsen (<Ambridge, Mass. : MIT Press, 1989), pp. 252-253.
5. Ibid., p. 250.
6. (bjd., pp. 26-27.
1. Ibid., pp. 29-31.
8, Jbid .. pp. 37-45.

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11•1 Fil' Tl. ~ '•I◄• ;-1••·•,·1
 Note, to Pqge, 158-164
< 367 >
9. lbid .• p. 44.
10. See Michael Burleigh, Gennanr,, Turns Eaatwarcl.r1A Study of"Oatfor-
4ahung• In the Third Reich (Cambridge: Cambridge Univer,ity Press,
1988).
11. Jilrgen Habenoas, "A Kind of Settlement of Damages (Apologetic Ten,
dencies)," New German Critique 44 (1988), 39; 6nt published in Die Zeit,
11 July 1986.
12. Useful alternatives to Habermas' more straightforward belief in the Ger-
man Sonden.oeg and in Germany's detachment from the West until HMS
can be found In Bllrgenum im 19.Johrhundert, Deutschland 1m euro-
piiuahen Vergleich, ed. Jiirgen KQCka, 3 vols. {Munich: DTV, 1988). That
liberal, parliamentary government was weak in Germany by comparison
to England, that the German bourgeoisie was far more authoritarian in its
development than the Ftencb-none of this can be denied. But can Ger-
many's pre-Nazi development~.y and cultu,ally-re'ally be as
neatly detached from that of "the West" as Habennas wants his contem-
porary readers to believe? And how should one evaluate the motives be,
bind such an argument?
13. Habennas, "'A Kind of Settlement of Damages," pp. 21, 39.
14. Habenoas, The Ntw Conseroatiim, p. 251 ..
15. Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth, trans, Constance Farrington
(New York: Grove Press,. 1963), p. 43.
16. Amo Mayer, WJa!I Did the He1JtJen, Not Darken? (New York: Pantheo11
Books, 1988), pp. 16- 17.
17. Ibid., p . 18.
llf See ibid., pp. 14, 15, 31,
19. Ibid., p. 11.
20. For a positivist critique, see Axel van den Berg, "Critical Theory: Is- There
Still Hoper Amerlcan]ovrnal o/Sociolcgy, 86, no. 3 (1960), 449-478.
21. See Jurgen Habermas, "The Entwinement of Myth and Enlightenment:
Re-Reading Dialectic of Enlightenment," New. Gerri,an Critique, 2.6
(1982), 13-30; The Theory/ of Communicatiw Action, trans. Thomas
McCarthy (Boston: Beacon Press, 1984), I, 339-399; and The Philosophi-
ca.l Diacourge of Modernity, trans. Frederick lAwrence (Cambridge.
Mass.: MIT Press, 1987).
22. See, for example, Habennas, "The Enfwjnement of Myth and Enlight-
enment," pp. 28-29.
23. Theodor Adorno and Max Hotl<helmer-, Dialektik der Aujklilrong. Ges.
ammelte .Schriften, 3 (Franlcfurt am Main: Subrkamp, 1981). p. 13; see
also Dialectic of Enlightenment, trans. John Cumming (New York: Con-
tinuum, 1912), p . liil. Subsequent quotations from this work are my
translations from the Suhrkamp edition.

I I I II
 Natea ta Pages 164- 172
< 368 >

24, Ibid., pp, 14- 15,

2.5. Ibid., p . 20.
26. Ibid., p. 32.
27. Theodor Adorno, Negative DialutlCI, trans, E, B. Ashton (New York:
Continuum, 1983), p. 13.
28. See especially Adorno, Negatioe Dialectica, pp. 61-131 ; and Theodor
Adorno, The Jargon of Authen·ndty, trans. Knut Tarnowski and Frederic
Will (Evanston, IU.: Northwestern University, 1973).
29, Haberma.s, The Ne,,,, Conaeroalilm, p. 265.
30. Adorno and Horkheimer, Diahktilc der Aufkliirung, p. 17.
31. To summarize the Adorno-Horkheimer argument, Habenn.as in fact
quotes from Horkheimer:S Eclip,e of .Reason., not Dlalektlk der Auftlii-
rung. See Haherma.s, Phaoao;,hlcaJ Ducou= a/Modernity, p. 219.
32. Adorno and Horkheimer, Dialektilc der Aujkliirung, p . 192.
33. lbid., pp. 198-200, 231.
34. Ibid., p. 211.
35. Frantz Fanon, Black Skin, White Masks, trans, Charles Lam Markmann
(New York: Grove Press, 1967), p. 129.
36. Edward Said. Orientalisin (New York: Vintage, 1979), p. 150.
37. James Clifford, The Predicament of Culture (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard
University Press, 1988), p. l98n7.
38. Klaus Theweleit, Mak Fantasies, 2 vols., tnms. Erica Carter and Chris
Turner (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1989).

11. Between Image and Phrase

1. J. F .
Lyotard, Peregrinations! Law, Fonn, Et>ent (New York: Columbia
University Press, 1988), p. 23.
2. These remarks are drawn from J. F. Lyotards The Differ-end, -trans, G.
V.rui Oen Abheele (Minneapoliss University of Minnesota Press, 1988), p.
169.
3. Martin Broszat and Saul Friedlander, "A Controversy about the Histori-
cization of National Socialism," New Gernuin Critique, 44 (SpnnwSum-
mer 1988), 124.
4. Jurgen Habermas, the New Conseroalinrn Cultural Critioiam and lhe
.Hi.ttoriaru' Debate, ed. and trans. Shierry Nicholsen (Cambridge, Mass.:
MIT ~ress, 1989), pp. 229- 230.
5. As Uerrida remarks in "White Mythology," the semantic effector Haber-
roas' phrase "burned tnto our national history" supposes the acceptabk
repreuion of the meblphorical sense of that "landing ramp." One is deal-
ing with significations where "language is to be Siled, achieved, actual-

1.d/'1.-11 .• I
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11'1 Fil' - • ~ '•I•• ;-1,,.4;.i
 Notes to Pages 173-178
< 369 ,.

ized, to the point of erasing it.self, without 1111y possible play, before \he
(thought) thing whkh ts properly ma.nifested in the truth."
6. Habenna.s, The New Comeniotl.tm, p. 2.52.
7. Ibid.
8. Ibid. , p. 233.
9. Peter Sloterdijk. "Cynicism-The 'Jwilight of False Consciousness," New
German Critique (Fl!II 1984), 191.
10. Habennas, The New Comeroatum, p. 235.
11. See the remarks in Habermas' "Modernity-An Incomplete Project" in
The Anti•Ae.tthe«c, ed. H. Foster (Port Tawnsend: Bay Press, 1983), p .
11.
1.2. See C. Dele11ze, Nietuche and l'hikuophr, (New York; Columbi:a Univer-
sity Press, 1983), p. 73.
13. Habermas, The New ComtnJatiam, p. 235.
14. See the remarks by J, Habenna.s, Communwation and the Evolution of
Society (Boston: Beacon Press, 1979), p. 166, and Theory of Communica•
nve Actiorl (Boston: Beacqn Press, 19S4), pp. 307-308.
15. Habennas, The New Conseroatl.ffn, p . 236.
16. Ibid., p. 237.
17, fbJd., pp. 43, ~
18. Ibid., p. 193.
19. Ibid., p. 54.
20. Ibid., pp. 58-59.
21. See Julia Kristeva, La MJOlution cw langage vaetlque (Paris: Seuil, 1974),
"Prolegomenon."
22. Habermas, The New Conseroatiam, p. 62,
23. Jbid .. p . 225.
24. Ibid., pp. 64, 69.
2.5. These remarks are based upon some suggestions by Deleuze and Cuattari
from their Thoiuand Plateatu (Minnesota: University of M.innesot.a Press,
1967), pp, 229-232,
26. G. Bennington and R. Young, "Introduction: Posing the Question," in
PcMI-St~uroll.tm and the Question of Hutory, ed. D. Attridge, C. Ben-
nington, and R. Young (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987),
p. 9.
27. J. Habermas, The T)aeo,y of Communicative ActiQn, trans. T, McCarthy
(Boston: Beacon Press, HIM), I, 136.
28. J. F . Lyotud, '"The Sublime and the Avant•Garde," Arlforum (April
1!184), 37. One might-compare this sense of the sublime with Deleuze and
Guattari's notion of a "line of Sight," in particular the latter's statements
that such lines are "deterriiorializing." that they are becomings which can
both ·cross the waJr in •getting out of the black holes" and also be .t he

1.11 l'I .-11 .• I

I I I II
11•1 Fil' T'I • ~ '•I" ;1,,·.4;.1
 Notes to Pages 178-180
< 370 >
potential "microfascism• of "turning to destruction, .holition pure and
simple, the passion of abolition." Deleuze and Guattarl, A Thotuand Pla-
teau,, pp. 2291[
29. An emmple of this formulation is R, Krauss's rewriting art history accord-
ing to an uncritical reception of I acanian psychoanalysis. lo asserting tb:at
the historicism of Ernst Gombrich relied on the optk.al aod geometral
model of an ~essentially mimetic account of art's ambitions, of the artist's
enduring struggle to replicate fur others the optically registered pano•
rama of what he sees; Krauss Invokes the L&canlan • counterschema• of
modem painting's being about the. metaphysical "desiring subject [who]
bas a horror of seriality, of replication, of substitution, of the copy.· lt is as
if one goes from the smoothing/integration of the sublime in GQmbrich to
the equally absorptive negative" of the-"ser!ality of the object," a replace-
,m ent which does away with painting as an object's capacity to elicit in a
viewer an effect which is not "historical." In other words, the "is it hap-
pening?· is crushed by the elimination of what Lyotard calls the possible
"discrepancy between thought and the reel world." See Jt ICll!uss, "The
Future of an Illusion: in The Future of Uterary Theory, ed. R. Cohen
(New York: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1989}, p. 288; and Lyotard, "The
Sublime and the Avant-Garde," p. 38.
30. Lyotard, "The Sublime and the Avant-Garde." p. 40.
3L S.ee J. F. Lyotar<I, "P1esenting the Unpresen_table: The SuhliJJ1e." Art-
forum (April 1982), 67.
32. J. F. Lyotard, De$ dt,positifs pulnonneu (Paris: Union Generale, 10-18,
1973), p. 88.
33. For a brilliant .analysis of this concept, see the essay eited earlier by
Charles Levin.
34. Lyotard, The Differend, p. 13.
35. Ibid., p . xii. See, in this context, the a.pocalyptic scenario of Baudrillard,
particularly the Idea that this none;ristence of affirmative or p(l$itive cul-
tural universals has been inverted fo the benefit of the negative: "We are
in a state of excess . .. whicn incessantly develops without being mea-
sured against its own objectives • , . Impacts multiplying as the causes
disintegrate.~Jean llaudrillard, ""The Anorexic Ruins," in !.ooking Back-on
the tnd of the World (New York: Semiotexte, 1989), p. 28.
36. Lyotard, The Differend, p. 89.
37. Ibid., p. 97; Habennas, The New Coruen,ati.tm, p. 193.
38. Lyotard, The Differend, p. 98.
39. learl Bohrer, 'The Three Cultures;' in Obaeroations on "The Spiritual
Slt1UJtlon of the Age," ed. Jurgen Habennas (Cambridge, .Mass. : MIT
Press, 1985), p . 154.
40. Lyotatd, The Dfjferend, p. 100.

1.11 l'I .-11 .• 1

 Notes to Pages 180-185
< 371 >

41. Ibid. , p . 101.

42. J. 'P. Faye's Langa.ge, totalUafre, (Paris: Hermann. 1972) Is exemplary on
this line of thought.
4,3. J, F. Lyotard, Driftworka (New York: Semiotexte, 1984), p. 36.
«. Lyotard, The Dljferend, p. 101.
45. Ibid.
46, S11cb judgme!Jls continue the practice of fnoculatiQn, as Barthes pel'$ua-
sively argued in Mv,hologiu, which here amou nts to evading what is not
reducible to law.

12. Science, Modernity, and the "Final Solution"

Acknowledgments: My thanks to Joel Bt aslow, Arthur Caplan, Sande
Cohen, Saul Friedlander, WulfKansteiner, Michael Kater, Tom Laq11eur,
Kristie Macrakis, Benno Miiller-Hill, Robert Proctor, Randy Stam, and
Norton Wise for having read and criticized versions of this paper. Special
thanks to Nancy Salzer for the many discussions that helpe<l tbe writing
of this piece. all ·along.
1. On the possible reasons for this gap see Michael K. Kater, "The Burden
of the Past: Problems of a Modem Hlstori~phy of Physicians and Med-
icine in Nazi Germany," Gernian Studiea Reou!w, JO (1987), 31-56; Robert
N. Proctor, Racial Hygiene (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University
Press, 1989), pp, 309-.110, Ben no Muller-Hill. Munkrow Science (Ox-
ford : Oxford University Press, 1988), p. 98. For a review of recent Ger-
man literature on the topic see Thomas W. Maretzlci, "The Documenta-
tion of Nazi Medicine by German Medical Sociologists: A Review
Article." Social Science, and Medicine, 29 (1989), 1319-.12. On the con•
ference on the use ofdata from Nazl hypothermia e,i:penments, see Isabel
Wilkerson, "Nazi Scienti.sts and Ethics of Today," New York Tinin, Sun-
day, 21 May 1989, p. 17. The proceedings of the conference will appear as
Monstrow Medicine, a volume edited by Artliur Caplan for Oxford Uni-
versity Press,
2, Robert K, Merton, "Sd ence tn the Social Order." Philosophy of Science,
5 (1938), reprinted,hi the Somology of Science: Theoretical and Empirical
lnVfl#lgationa (Chica(«): University of Chicago Press, J973), pp, 254- 266.
The relationsh ip between science and democratic order and values in
Merton's work- is at the center of David Hollinger's ''The Defense of De-
mocracy and Robert K. Merton's Forrnulation of the Scientuic Ethos.,"
Knowledge and Society, 4 (1983), 1-45. On the same topic, see also Ever•
ett Mendelsohn, "Robert K, Merton: Th.e Celebration and Defense of Sci-
ence,~ Scisna in Contm, 3 (1989). 282-291.

1.dl'lr-11 .• 1

I 'I ~I' t -, • ~ '•I•• ;-1,,·-•1-1

 Notu to Pages 186-189
< 372 >
3. J. D. Bernal, "Science aod Fascism," 10 Social Function ofScfence (Cam-
bridge, Mass ., MIT Press, 1964), pp. 210-221; Joseph Needham, The
Nazi Attack on International Sclence (Cambridge, 1941). Slightly more
skeptical views on the re~tion.ship between democ:racy and science are
presented by Leo Alexander, "Medical Seience under Dicblorsh{p," New
Englandjournal of Medicine, 241 (1949}, 39-47. 5,:e also Proctor, RacW
Hygiene, pp. 3~6, 338-339, and his "Nazi Biomedical Technologies," in
Ufewor/4 and Technology, ed. Timothy Casey and Lester Embree (Wash-
ington, O.C.; Uni11ersity Press of America. 1989), .p p. 17-19.
4. Bernal, "Science and Fascism," pp. 212-213.
5. A perceptive critique. of this view is presented in Peter Weingart, · sci•
ence Abused?-Challeng1ng -a Legend," paper presented to the Bar-
Billel Colloquium for the History, Philosophy, -and Sociology of Science,
Tel Aviv. 5 March 1990.
6. Alan D. Beyerchen, Sciential8 unile.r Hitler (New Haven: Yale University
Press, 1977). More complex Views on the interaction between the physi-
cists and the Nazls are presented in John L. Heilbron , The DilemmM of
an Upright Man (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986), and in
Mark Walker, German Natlo,ial Socialiam and the Qwist for Nu,;lear
Power, 1939-1949 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989).
7. Michael H. Kater, Docto~ under Hitler (Chapel Hill: University of North
Carolina Press. 1989), p. 240.
8. Kater, "The Burden of the Past; pp. 32-33.
9. Kater, Doctors under Hitler, pp. 222-240.
10. Kater's review of Muller-Hill, Murderow, Scienoo, in Isis, 80 (1989), 722-
723.
11. Muller- Hill, Murderou.J Science, p. 3,
12. Ibid.
13. A homologous strategy can be detected also in a later article by Muller-
Hill, "Genetics after Auschwitz,· Holocaust and Genocide Studies, 2
(1987), 3-20. On p. 5, he describes Eugene Fisher-who was elected
p resident of the .International Genetics Con,g ress in 1928--as "transgress-
iog from science into polltics,"
14. Muller-Hill, "Genetics after Auschwitz," p. 11. Actually, he questions the
scientific legitimacy of psychiatry to the point of posing the question: "ls
the psychiatric view of mankind possibly a view permeated and ob5<l1.lred
by destructive drives·? ", "Genetics after Auschwitz," p. 12.
15. MOiier-Hiii, Murderous Science, pp. 50, 75.
16, For instance, Miiller-Hill links the psychiatrists' success in getting their
(in bis eyes quite illegitimate) profession recognittd as an acade.mic disci-
pline in 1941 to the i,revious ·success• of the euthanasia progr.un, Muller-
H.ill. "Genetics after Auschwiiz," p. 12.
17. Ibid. , p. 13.

1.11 l'I .-11 .• I

11'1 Fil',.,' ~ '•I" ;-l••·bf,J
 Notes to Pages 189-192
< 373 >

18. "lp much of the scientific output of Weimar biologists, as well as in their
social. perceptions, genetics was indistinguishable from scientific e ugen.-
ics, Any demarcation that was to be t11.~e was not between genetics and
eugenics. but among the dill'erent factions of eugenicists." Paul We ind-
ling, · weimar Eugenics: The Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology,
Human He redity and Eugenics in Social Context." i:\nnals of Science, 42
(1985). 307.
19. Weindling, "Weimar Eugenics," pp. 304-'311. I am referring to Weind-
ling's evidence, not to his argument, which in fact tries to argue that there
was a discontinuity between Weimar and Nazi eugenics and that Weimar
euge nics should not be seen as a c;iuse of the Final Solution,
20. Robert Jay Lifton, The Nazi Doctor, (New York: Basic Books, 1986).
21. Lifton re-presents this basic thesis unchanged in The Genocidal Mentallly
(New York: Basic Books, 1990), a book coauthored with Eric Marlrusen ,
which proposes a comparative analysis of Nazi and nuclear Holocaust
mentalities. See, in particular, pp. 103-106. 161-166.
22. Lifton, Nazi Doctors, p. lL
23. Ibid., p. 345.
24. "At the heart [ofLifton's world is the transformation of the physician-of
the medical enterprise itself-from healer to killer• (ibid. , p. 5). The con•
cem for the institutional aJJd psychological dynamics that bring this inver-
.sion.11bout are also analyzed in Lifton's Gewcidal Mentality. esp. pp. 98-
191.
25, Ufton. Na;./ f),;,ctors, pp. 356-359.
26. Bettelheim in Miklos Nyuzli, Awchwltz: A Doctor'• EfieU)ltness Account
(New Yorlc Fell, 1960), p. xvi.
27. The dill'e rences between Bettelheim's and Lifton's views on Nazi science
are spelled out in Bettelheim's review of The Naz.i Doctors, 'Their Spe•
cialty was Murder." New York T&rwia &v"'1n of Book&, 15 October 1986,
I?· 62,
28. Hippocratic Writings, ed. Geoffi-ey E . fl Lloyd (Harmondswortb, M id,
dlese~: Penguin, 1978). p, 20.
29. For examples of this problem in contemporary medical research, see
Henry K. Beecher, "Ethics and Clini.c al Research." New England Journal
of Medicine, 274 (1966), 13.54-60.
30. Alexander Mitscherlich and Fred Mielke, The Death DoctorB (London:
Elek, 1962), pp. 322-330. Some of this literature Is reproduced in Nurem-
berg Military Tribunals, Trial., of War Criminals before the Nuremberg
Military Tribunal& under Control Council Law No. 10 (Wa,hlngton, D.C ,:
U.S. Government Printing Office, n. d.) (hereafter referred to as N'f), ll,
95-110.
3 1, Mttscl,e rlich and Mielke, The Death Doctors, pp. 326-327, The case.s
most freg.u ently cited by the defense we re those of eight hundred inmates

IJ!I /'I .-1 I .•"I

I I i 11
U'I E~::. Tl • ~ '•I•• ;1,,·.01,1
 Notes lo Pages 192-196
< 374 >
of the lllinois State Penii:entiar.y, the New Jersey Stllte Reformatory, aod
a Georgia penitentiary used as ''voluntary• experiment.al subjects in re-
search programs on malaria (one of them directed by the University of
Chicago): and the study on pellagra conducted in 1915 by Dr, Goldberger
on twelve ·condemned volunteers• of a Mississippi jail (Mitscherlich and
Mielke. The Death Doc!ors, pp. 41-47, 346-347; NT, 11. 9.5). Beecher's
"Ethics and Clinical Research" updates this scenario by presenting a sur•
Vey of twenty-two recent medical-case studies published in American aca-
demic joumah and I>~ on unethically CQndu,,ted research,
32. Proctor, Racial Hygiene, -pp. 3-5, 34---35, 38,-39, 284.
33. Ibid. , pp. 30, 38, 45, 47. 2'¥7.
34. On this process, .re.e aho Sheila Faith Weiss, "The lw,e. Hygiene ~ove•
ment in Cennany, • Orirls, second series, 3 (1987), 193-236.
35. PrQCtor. Racial /Jyginui, pp. 292-293.
36. The terms democracy and democratic are so connoted that 59me qualili.
cation is probably needed in order not to reproduce some of the many
mythologies attached to them, I use t hese terms In a quite narrow sense:
to indicate access to arenas where science and policies about science are
negotiated. I am not suggesting that a scien\illc community in which ail
social constituencies were democratically represented would develop a
"rational d ialogue· by which •consensus'.' about what ..,good" science_ is and
about how it could be .p roduced and used couJd be established. I am
simply suggesting that failure to establish this basic level of ~ss would
be likely to lead to dangerous scenarios.
37, Proctor, Racial Hygiene, pp. 62-6.l.
38. Pierre Bourdieu, Choses dites (Paris: Minuit, l.987), p. 32.
39. Jack Coody, The 1)()1)VaticwJtwn qf the Savage Mind (Cambridge, Cam-
bridge University Press, 1977).
40. 11tls is a view of history of science (and of history) which ad.m itt that,
eventually, the present is the historian's only term of reference. However.
this limitation does not itnply that the present is either a "fact" or the
~necessary" result of historical dynamics. The present (or any other histor•
ical scenario) is a problematic arti&ct-one that has to be interpreted in
the process of interpreting the event that happens in it.
41. Ernst Nolte, •Between Myth and Revisionism? 'Tlte Third Reich in the
Perspective of the 1980s," in Alf)ect1 of the Third Reich, ed. H. W Koch
(Loodon; Macmillan, 1985), pp. 17-38, esp. pp. 36-38.
42. On the problems of the use of analogy in interpreting the Final Solution ,
see Charles S. Maler, The Unm.a.sterable Pan (Cambridge, Mass.: Har-
vard University Press, 1988). pp. 66-99.
43. JOrgen Rabermas, The New Con.,ervatum (Cambridge, Mass., MIT
P ress, 1989), esp. pp. .209-267.

1.11 /'I r-11 ♦• I

I !I'll
I .,,~Fil' ,., • ~ ,,,,, ;-i,,·-0.1-1
 Note• t-0 Pagu 196-201
< 375 >

44. On some 9f the possible links between the discourse of modernity and the
F inal Solution see Berel Lang, Act and Idea in the Nazi Genocide (Chi-
cago: University ofChJca.go Press, 1990), pp. 165-206.
45. Muller:-liill's strategy is somewhat different from that of Kater and Lifton.
Probably because of his being trafned in and practicing a "bard" science
like molecular biology rather than medicine (the type of sci_ence practiced
ot discussed by Lifton and Kater), Mullet-Hill seems to assume that good,
pure, "hard" science (like geuetics) should not produce vlllues at all.
46. On this debate, see Arthur Caplan, Morutrou• Medlclne, and Isabel Wilk-
erson., ''Nazi Scientists and Ethics ofToday, • New York Tamea, Sunday, 21
May 1989, p. 17.
47. Nolte, "Between Myth and Revisionism?" pp. 34,-J6.
48. Ludwik F leck, Genul.t and Development of a Scientific Fact (Chialgo:
University of Chicago Press, 1979). Important similarities between
Fleck's and Kuhn's work are acknowledged by Kuhn in the preface to
Strwture, On Fleclc's life and publications. see Thomas Schnelle, "Micnr
biology and Philosophy of Science, Lwow, and the German Holocaust:
Stations of ll Life-Ludwilc Fleck, 1896-1961: in Cognition and Fact:
Maeerial, on Ludwilc Fleck, ed. Robert S. Cohen and Thomau Schnelle
(Boston: Reidel, 1986), pp. 3...J6.
49, J.,udwik Fleck, "Problems of the Science of Science: translated and re-
printed in Cohen and Schnelle., CognUion and Fact. pp, 113-127. Special
thanks to Simon Schalfer for having mentioned, photocopied, and sent me
this article .
50. NT, I, 508- 631; Mitscherlich and Mielke, The tJ,ath Doctora, pp. 117-
164; Eugene Kogon, The Theory and Practice of H, U(New York: Jl'an.ar,
Straus, n .d.), pp. 143-161.
SL Fleck, ''Problems of the Science of Science,~ pp. 118-120; Schnelle, "Mi-
crobiology and Philosophy of Science." pp. 26~7.
52. Fleck, "Problems of the Science of Scienre: pp. 120-121.
53. Ibid., pp. 121-127.
5". The term dw:ourae of1'ocial hygiene may seem problematlc because his•
toriography on the subject has indicated a range of discontlnuitle$ be-
tween early twentieth-century German eugenics and the racial liygiene
endorsed by the Nazis. However, my concern here is not to evaluate the
continuities and discontinuities at the level uf the protagonists' statements
about the social and human Implications of their theorie$, Rather than
looking at sbtements of Intent of the scientists who developed these thecr
ries, I am interested in focusing on the conceptual structure of theories of
racial hygiene-what Sheila Faith Weiss has called the "logic'' of eugen•
ics. Without claiming that there is something intrinsically H evil" about
bio)og,cal theories about race and disease, I want to stress lhllt there was

1.11 l'I .-11 .• 1

I ''I ~I' ' ,., • ~ '•I" 'i••·-•,•I

 Notes to Pag~ 201-205
< 376 >

(and ls) something about their conceptual structure that allowed fur the
interpretation and application of these theories in ways that may have
been very different &om those of the initial developers. On German eu-
genics see Sheila Faith Weiss·, "The Race Hygiene Movement in Ger-
many"; Peter Weingart, "German Eugenics between Science and Polf-
tlcs." Oriria, 5 (1989), 260-282; and Paul Weiodling, H,alJh, Race ond
Gennan Politic.s between Na&nal Unification ond Namm, 1870-1945
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989). The development of e1,1-
genics in EQgland 11nd the United States is J1Wterfully traced In Daniel J,
Kevles, In the Name of Eugffliu (New York: Knopf, 1985).
55. Adi Ophir, "On Sanctifying the Holocaust: Ao Anti-Theological Treatise,"
Tlkkun, 2, no, I (1987) 64,
56. Ibid., p. 65.
57. NT, 1, 142.-143.
58. Ibid., p. 143.
59. Mitscherlich and Mielke, The Death Doctors, pp. 328-329.
60. Nyis:d i, Aiuchwlu. p. 31.
61. Ibid., p. 56. Related considerations can be found also al pp. 10lnl06',
62. For a survey of Nyiszli's conllicting views on Nazi science and on Mengele
see Nylszli, Auschwitz, pp. 30--31, 33, 40, 56, 61 , 63, 97. 101-102, 104-,
109, 171, 181, 221.
()3. "I had the bodtes of a pair of fifteen-yea,-old twins•before me on the dis-
section table. I beg,.n a parallel and comparative dissection of the two
bodies. Nothing particularly noteworthy about the heads. 1ne next phase
wa.s the removal of the sternum , Here an extremely Interesting phenom-
e non appeared: a persi,tent thymus, that is, a thymus gland that contin-
ued to subsist ... The discovery of the thymus gland in the twin brothers
wa.s of considerable interest." After having made more findings in the con-
tinuation of the dissection, Nyiszli reports, "I committed these curious
observations to paper, in a much more precise and scientific manner th!ln
I have employed to describe them her¢, fur my dissection report. Later, I
spent a long aftemQOn in deep discussion with Dr. Mengele, trying to
clear up -a certain number of doubtful points." Nyiszli, Awchwitz, pp.
136- 137. Nyiszli's finding another "edremely interesting collection of
anomalies• is reported at p , 64. Similarly, Mengele's c.ptive radiologist;
Dr. Abraham, a!Jo referred to his "genuine passion for medical ques,
lions." Lifton, Naz:l Doctors, p. 366.
f,4.. Lifton, Nazi Doctors, p , 357.
M. Ibid .• p. 365.
66. Besides the evidence cited by Lifton, see Guella Perl, / Wa, o Dodor in
Auschwitz (New York: Amo, 1979), and Olga Lengyel, Five Chimney$,
The·Slory ofAuschu;;t-t (Chicago: Ziff-Davis, 1947).
67. I do not mean to Sj\y that no Nazi scienti.st was sloppy, incompetenl or

IJ!l/'lr-11 ., ..
I I I II
u•1~u:s -, ,)~ ,.,.. ;-1,,--b1,1
 Notes to Pages 205-206
< 37'/ >

fraudulent. For instance, a recent article by Robert Berger has indicated

that Rascher-the yo,mg doctor who directed the hypothermia and low-
pressure eiq,erlments at Daichau-was far from being a oonsclentious
scientist . Robert L. Berger, "Nazi Science-The Dachau Hypothermia
E;q,eriments,'' New England Journal of Medicine, 322, no. 20 (1990),
1435-40. 1ms type of judgment does not erase the fact that-despite his
sloppy methodology-Rascher developed methods of rescue based on
these eiq>erlments that. wheo diJOOVered' by the American troops In Ger-
many, were immediately adopted as the treatment for use by all American
Air-Sea Rescue Services still fighting in the Pacific (NT, II, 66). In short,
science does not always need to be canonically produced to be effective.
Although Berger's article. iS' well researched and .argued, it indicates .a
somewhat "e.1oroistic" agenda, that is, an attempt to show that 1he hypo•
thermia experiments :were •bad science" and that therefore there is no
need to engage in compleir and dl$turbing debates about the ethical prob-
lems connecled to the use of these data (p. 1435). The limitations of Ber-
ger's "·s cientilic ,fix" to a debat.e about ethics are spelled out in an editorial
in tne same issue of the New England Journal of Medici~ (Marci.a Angell,
"lhe Nazi Hypothermia Experiments and Unethical Research Today," pp.
1462-64).
68. Lifton, Nazi Doctor,, p. 357,
69. In connectiQn with thi5 issue, J find Primo Levi's discussion of the "gray
zone" particularly useful. In fact, it shows that the analysis of the comple,r
and disturbing dynamics between victims and culprits-dynamics that
contributed in important ways to the mainte'nance of the camp sydem-
does not subvert in any way the fundamental di5tinction between v(ctims
and culprits. Primo Levi, The DrOWMd and the Saved (New York: Vin•
tage, 1989), pp. 36- 69. l th'ink one oould adopt Levi's approach to study
victims wbo, like Nyiszli or Abrahlun, became reluctantly involved In
camp science or-as in the case of Teresa W.-were sympathetic to some
of the anthropological theories that were actually implicated in the Final
Solution, Also, a study co11ducted along these lines of Nazi doctors such
as Rose or Ernst B. , who were at some point reluctant participanb in
camp management or in experimentations on prisoners, may uncover Im•
portant aspects of the role of scie11ce in the Final Solution without blur-
ting 'the fundamental di5tinction between culprits and victims. (On Rose
Jee Mitscherlich and M.,elke, The De(lth Doctors, pp. 124-146; on Ernst
B. see Lifton., Nazi Doctor•. pp. 303-336.)

13. Holocaust and the End o f History

l . Jacques Derrida, "Of an Apocalyptic Tone Recently Adopted In Philoso-
phy," Orford Literary Review, 6, no. 2 (1984), 20lf.

1.11 l'I .-11 .• I

I I II
11'1 ~LIi' T'I • ~ '•I" 7o1·••l•J
 Note/I to Page& 206-209
< 378 >
2. Francis Fuk'lyama, 'The End of Hfstory?" Na#o,ial lnteren, Summer
1989, pp. 3-18; see also the responses to this article, ibid., pp. 19..JS.
3 . Theodor W. Adorno, Negative Dialectia (New York: Continuum, 1983),
p. 367.
4. Jean-Fran~is Lyolar<l, The Differend: Ph,-,uu In IX,pute, trans. Georges
Van Oen Abbeele (Minneapolis: University .of Minnesota Press, 1988), p.
56. See also his "Discussion, or Phrasing 'after Au.schwitz," reprinted in
The lyotard lleatkr, ed. Andrew Benjamin (Oxford: Basil Blackwell.
1989), pp. 360-392,
5. Ibid., pp. 561T.
6 , Maurice Blanchot, The Writing of the Diranu, tran,s. ,\nn Smock (Lin-
coln: University of Nebraska Press, 1986). See also George Steiner, "The
Long Llfe of Metaphor: An Approach to 'the Shoah," Encounter 68 (Feb-
ruary 1987), 55: "It may be that the Auschwitz-universe, for It was that,
precisely marks that realm of potential-now realimd-hu.man bestiality,
or rather, abandonment of the. human and regression to bestiality, which
both precedes language, as it does in the animal, and comes after language
as it does in death. Auschwitz would signify on a oollectlve, historical scale
the death of man as a rational, 'forward-dreaming' speech-orpnism . . .
The languages we 11re now speaking on this polluted and suicidal planet
are 'post-human.'"
7. See Sa.ul Friedlander, "The- 'Final Solu~n';. On the Unease In Hi.storical
Interpretation," Hinory and Memory 1, no. 2 (1989), 61-73; Arno Mayer,
Wh!I Did the ffeaoena Not Darken? The "Final Solution" in ffulonj (New
York: Pantheon, 1989), p. xv; Istvan Deak, "The Incomprehensible Holo-
caust," New York Reoiew of Book,. 28 September 1989; Judith MiUer,
One, b!I One, by One (New York: Simon and Schwier, 1990), pp. 9-12.
8. Friedlander, p. 66.
9. On the German reception of Holocawt, see Anton Kaes, From 'Httltr' to
'HfflTlllt'; The Return of Hilltory a, FUm (Cambridge, Mass,; Harvard
University Press, 1989).
10. For an overview and evaluation of films dealing with the Holocawt, see
llan Avfsar, Scnmmg the Holocawt: Cinema', Image• of the Unimagina-
ole (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1988); Judith E . Ooneson,
The Holocawt 1i1 Americ<in FU,n (Phil~elphia; Jewi$h Publication Soci-
ety, 1987); Annette Insdorf, Intklil,le Shadow.: Film and' the Holocawt
(New York: Random House, 1983).
11. Lyotard, The Differend, ,p. 57.
12. Susan Sontag, 'The Eye of the Storm," New YMk Reoiew of Booh. 21
February 1980,
13. See Jean, Pierre Faye, "Le troisi~me Faust," Le Montk, 22 July 1987.
14. Philippe Lacoue-Ubartbe and Jean-Luc Nancy, "The Nazi Myth," Criti-
cal Inquiry, 16 (Winier 1990), 291-31~ see also Lacoue-Labartbe, "The
 Note, to Page; 210-218
< 379 >

~estheti;lJltion of Politics," in Hl!idegger; Art and Politic1t: rhe Fictw"

of the Polffical. trans. Chris Turner (Oxford, Basil Blackwell, 1990), pp.
61-76.
15. The ~ge numbers in pu-entheses refer to the filmscript. Hans-JQrgen
Syberberg, llitler, a Film from Germany, trans. Joachim Neugroschel
(New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1982). A more detailed analysis of
Syberberg's canemacan be found In Kaes, From HUler to Hllimat, pp. 37-
72; -5a1)l Friedlander, Btjlecticru of Naz.um:. An Euay on KU,ch and
Vea.th (New Yorlc; Harper tic Row, 1984); Eric L. Santner, Stranded Ob-
jects: Mourning, MttmOnJ, and Film in Ponwar Germany (Ithaca: Cornell
University Press, 1990). pp. 103-149.
16. Christian ZJmmer. "Our H.itler," Teltu. 42·(Wlnter 1979-80). 150,
17. Quoted in Eva-Su:zanne Bayer, "Hitler in uns," Stuttgarter Zeitung, 15
April 1977.
18. Ibid.
19. Hans Thies Lehmann, "Robert Wilson, Szenograph." Merlcu,: 437 (July
\.98.5). 5.54.
20. On the politics of aesthetics and the aesthetics of politics under wclsm,
see·La.coue-Labarthe, Hl!idegger, Art and PolUicll, pp. 61-76.
21. Michel Foucault. "Les quatre oavalJ:en de l'Apocalypse et les vennisseaux
quotidiens: Entretien avec Michel Foucault," Cahien du cinema
(Febru-
ary 1980), 95ff. Hannah Arendt's account ofthe Eichmann tri.al, Eichmann
mJerwalem. (New York: VJdng, 1963) canies the subtitle "A Report on
the Banality of Evil." See ~ so Nathan 'Rotenstrelch, •can Evil Be Banal?"
Philosophiclll Forum, 16, nos. 1-2 (i984-85)1 50- 62,
22. There are many definitions of postmodernism today. I follow here the ·ac-
count of Linda .Hutcheon, A Poetics of Poatmockmism: Hiatory, Theory,
Fiction (New York,. Routledge. 1988): see also Wolfgang Welsch, Umere
pomnodeme Moderne (Weinheim: VCH, Acta Humaniora, 1988);
Hannes Bohringer, "Die Ruine in Posthistoire," Mer/cur. ~ (April 1982):
367-375. See also Christopher Sharrett's interview with Jtans-Jiirgen Sy-
berberg, "Sustaining Romanticism in a Postmodernist Cinema," Cineaste,
15 (1987) no. 3, 18- 20. The interview w-.s held after the New York pre•
miere of Syherberg's new Sim, Die Nacht, a six-hour peri'nrmance pi-
with one actress, Edith Clever, dealing with the eod of Ellr(lpean ~lture,
This film cames on iind radicali:zes the elegiac tone and antlmodemist
ideology of his Hitler film.
23. Arnold Cehlen, ¥Einblicke." in Gesa,ntOU$gabe, vol. 7 (Franlcfurt am
Main: Klostermann, 1978), pp, 19, 140. Hendrllc de Man, Vel"ll>OUU~
und KulturoerfoH: Elne Di4gnose unaerer Zeit (Berne: Francke, 1951),
pp. 135- 136.
24. Arnold Cehlen, Ober lculturelle Kristallisation," in Studier, zur Anthro-
pologie und So:tiologie (Darmstadt: Luchterhand, 1963), p. 323; reprinted

IJ!I /'I r-11 .•''°I

I , II
U'I ~t,::;, -1 ,)~ '•I•• .-i";f'M
 Notes to Pagu 219~224-
<: 380 >
in Wege aus der Modeme: Schlwselterte der Postmoderoe-Duku.srion,
ed, Wolfgang Welsch (Weioheim: VCH, Acta HumanlQnl, 1988), pp. 133-
143, See also Pet.e r Sloterdijk, "Nach der Geschichte," in Wege aw der
Modeme, pp. 262-273; Lutz Niethammer-, "After-thoughts oo Postbis-
toire, • History and Memory. 1 (Sprin(!;"Summer 1989), 27-53; Nietharn-
mer, Polthi.rloite: lit die Ceschl.chte zu Ende? (Reinbelc: Rowohlt. 1989).
Gian.ni Vattimo begins his essay, "The Eod of {lli)story,• Ghic_agl) Rev;iew
35 (1987) no • .4, pp. 20--30, with the following sentence1"Probably, one of
the most important points on which the descriptions of the postmodern
condition ~gree-no matter- how dUferent they .,-e from other points of
view=ts the consideration of postmodemity in terms of 'the end of his,
tory.'" See, further, Henry S. Kariel, "The Endgame of Postmodemism
within the Momentum of Modemity,• Future,; The Joornal of Forecast-
ing, Planning and Policy. 22 Oanuaty-February 1990); 91- 99.
25. On th<> discourse of the apocalypse, see the essays Ill V ~ of Apoca-
lY1'8e: End or Rebirth? ..d. Saul Friedlander et al. (New York, Holmes tic
Meier, 1985). See also Ulrich Horstmann's disturbing desire to have all of
manlcind eradicated in his semi-literary essay Da., Untler: Konturen elner
Phl.losophleder Menschenflucht (Berlin, Medusa, 1983).
26, Hans-Jurgen Syberberg, Die f reudlose Gueluchaft (Munich: Hanser,
1981). p . 83.
27. -See the published lilmscript. Claude Lanzmano, Shoah: An Oral History
of the Holocaiut (New York; Pantheon, 1985). See also Gertrud Koch,
'The Aesthetic transformation of the Image of the Onimaginable: Notes
Qn Claude Lanzmann's Shooh," Ociober, 48 (Spring 1989): 15-24; Steven
G. Kellman, ''Cinema of/as Atrocity: Shooh'$ Guilty Conscience; Gettys-
burg Review, I (Winter 1988): 22-31: Timothy Garton Ash, "The Life of
Death," Ne,p York Revlew 0/800"4, 19 December 1985.
28.. Claude Lanzmann , "From the Holocaust to the Holocau1tt," Telos, 42
(Winter 1979-80), 143.

14. Whose Story ls It, Anyway?

Research for this paper was made possible by an NEH fellowship for the
summer of 1-989.
1. Alan Berger in Shofar. 5, no, l (1986), 56.
2. Saul Friedlander, "Roundtable Discussion," in Writi11g and. the- Holo-
carut, ed. Berel Lang (New York: Holmes and Meier, 1988), p. 288.
3. No d!achrony is intended in this statement, The •different pandigms, or
"stones" as I call them here. coexist synchronically throughout the dilfer-
ent ·areas of the lsrael1cultural system.
4. U. Z. Grttnberg, Ri!lwoot Honahar: Sefer Ha'ilwt Vehakooh (Strem of

1.11/'ldl .• 1

I ''!'VI I ' -, • ~ "1◄• ;1,,-.4;.1

 Notea to Pages 224- 227
< 381 >

the ·River, T~ Boolt ofDirgea and Pawer), 2nd ed. Uerusalem: Scboclcen.
1954). For a description and analysis fn English, see Alan Mintz, Hurban,
RespoRSes to Catastr'OJ]he In Hebrew Liltrature (New York: Columbia
University Press, 1984), pp. 163-2.02, The subseque11t development of
the topic in Israeli poetry deserve., a separate discussion. The present text
is devoted to Israeli drama and 6'ction.
5. They are, however, so viewed in Israel, as evidenced by Ben-Ami Fein-
gold's recent monograph Hashoah Badrama Ela'iorit {the 'theme of the
Ho/.ocotUI in Hebrew Drama) (Tel Aviv: Haltibbu.tz Harneucluid, 1989),
The plays I refer to are Natan Sbaharn, Hethbon Hadaah (New Rec/toning,
1954); Leah Goldberg, Mal/wt Ha'armon (The Lady of the Castle, 195.5);
Ben-Zion Tomer, Yaldei Hotul (Children of the Shadow, 1962): Yehuda
Amichai,. Pa'amonlm Verakaoot (B,.lu and Train.t, 1962); Moshe Shamir,
Hoyore3h (The Heir, 1963); Aharon Megged, Ha'onah Habo'eret (The Hot
Sea.ron, 1967).
6. Yael S. Feldman, "Deconstrocting the Biblical Sources in Israeli Theater:
Ylsurei lyoo by Hanoch Levin," AJS R.eoiew. 12. no. 2 (1 987), 251-277;
and '"Jdenti6cation•with-the-Aggressor' or the 'Victim Complex'?-
fJolocaust and Ideology in Israeli Theater: Ghetto by Joshua Sobol,'' Mod-
em Judaism, 9, no. 2(1989), l6.5-178,
7. I develop these ideas in my forthcoming Freuduinism and Its Ducontent.t
In Hebreui L#erafqre, For part~ views of the m.a terial see !PY "Back to
Vienna: Zionism on the Literary Couch ;" in Virion Confront& Reality, ed.
David Sidorsky et al. (Rutherford, N.J .: Fairleigh Dickinson University
Press, 1989), pp, 310--335: and "Feminism under Siege: The Vicarious
$elves of Israeli Women Writers-." Proofterta, 10, no. 3 (1990), 493-.514'.
8. For other literary works in this vein see, in drama, Yossi Hadar's Bibof
(1987) and, in fiction, Omer Bartov's Takrit Geoool (Border Patrol, 1988)
and Karw Y0m (Surrogate Killen, 1989).
9. Constraints of ~pace do not allow a full disoussio11 of this group of writers,
most of whom begim publishing around 1985. The biological and psycho-
logical parameters of the creative surge of this group (for instance, the
aging of the parents who hitherto kept their reticence, and the maturing
into parenthood of. the "children" who are now able to better identify with
their own parents) deserve a separate discussion. (1 wish to thank writer
Nava Semel and psychologist E.,a Fogelman for generously sharing with
me theiJ' experience and erudition [as well as publications] in the litera-
ture and psychology (respectively) of the second generation. They sh.o uld
not be held responsible for any of my.conclusiont, which I am not at all
sure they share.)
10. See my "The 'Other Within' /n Contemporary Israeli Fiction." Middle
Eut Reoiew, 22., no. l {1989), 41--53.

1.111'1.-II .• I
I I I II
I ''I Fil' Tl • ~ '•I◄• 7••··•1•1
 Notes to Pagu 227-231
< 382 >

11. See on this point the debate atol.lled by Hayden White's metah/dorical
and historiographical arguments, throughout the preseol volume.
12. For pertinent statements see Saul Friedlander, Rejkctio:ru of Naz.Ism
(New Yorlc.: Haiper and Row, 1984); Writing and the Ho/.ocawt. ed. Berel
Lang (New York; Holmes and Meier, 1988)t James E. Young, Writing and
Rewriting the lfolocawt (Bloomingtoo: lodiana lJnivemty Press. 1988).
13. lrvir!g Howe, "Writing and the IJolocaust," io L.aog, Writif!g and the
Holocaust, p. 186.
14. Gershon Shaked, "Afterword; in Facing the Holocaust, p. 287.
15. See YosefH11yim Yerushalmi, l,a/thoT;JewWI HlltOf'IJ and Jewish Memory
(Seattle: Ooiversity of Washington Press, 1982); Sidra Dekoven Ezrahi,
BvWorda Alone: The Holocawt in Ut.irature (Chicago: University of Chi-
cago Press. 1980); David Boskies, Again.ff the A-pocalypse: Re,pome, to
Catastrophe in Modemjewt,h Culture(Carnbridge, Mass.: Harvard Uni•
versity Press, 1984); AlllJ! Mintz, Hur/xJn: Yougg, Writing and Rewiiti11g.
16. Cf. Hanna Yaoz, Haa.hoah Baaifroot Ha'iorit (The Holocawt in Hebrew
Uterature) (Tel Aviv: Eked, 1980), p. 61.
17. See for example Hanoch lJartov, l'itz'ei Bag.root (The Brigade), trans. Da-
vid Segal (New York: Holt, Rioehart and Winston, 1968).
18, See especially Naomi Frankel's trilogy Shaool Vei,ohanah (Saul and Jo-
hann(J) (Merhavia: Sifriyat Poal.im, 1956-1967), and Yonat and Alexander
S.ened's two-volume work Bein Hahal/tffl Vehametim (Beh/.le.e11 the Dead
and the Livt11g) (Tel Aviv; Hakibbutz H;uneucha,d, 1964).
19. See Yehuda Amichai, Lo Me'ach.thao, Lo Mi/con (Nol o/Thil Timi!, Not of
Thl.t P~e) {Jerusalem: Schockeo, 1963), and Dan Ben-Amotz, LWcor Ve•
lishkoah (To Remember and to ForgM) (Tel Aviv: Amikam, 1968). We will
finil no such catharsi~ in similar narratives that were written later by sur-
vivors themselves, for instance fb&Jnar Yaoz-Ke$t, Bahal{,n HabalJil Han-
1Mea' (Al the Window of the Mooing HOtM) (Tel Aviv: Eked, 1970); Aharon
Appelfeld, Tor Hapela'ot (Age of Wonder-..), trans . Dalya BUu (Boston:
David Godine, 1981); David Schutz, Ha'eaev Vehoh<il (The Grass and lhe
Sand) (Tel Aviv, Sifriyat Poalim. J977).
20. Cf. Gershon Shaked, "We Are Merely nred," Gal Haduh Barifrvot
Ha'ivrit (A New Wave in Hebrew Fiction) (Tel AviVt Sifriyat Poalim, 1971),
p. 164. The reference is to Appelfeld's early collecitioos of short stones,
few of whtch are famillar to the English reader; 'Aahan (Smoke) (Tel Aviv;
Marlcus, 1962); Bagai' Hapor,h (In the Fertik Valley) {Jerusalem:
Sch.ocken, 1964); and,Kefo.- 'al Ha'ardt. (Frost on the Land) (Ramat Gan:
Massada, 1965).
21. See Mintz, Hurban, p. 238.
22. See Howe, "Writing and the Holocaust.," p. 194.
 Notes to Pages 231- 235
< 383 >

23. Thi$ work was published In English translation as two separate nove lla.s,
'(zili: The Story ofa Ufe (1983) and The l mmqrtal Bartfw (1989),
24. Aharon Appelfeld. To the Land of the Cottoiu, trans. Jeffi-cy M . Green
(New York: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1986), p. 148.
25, Quoted in Yaoz, The Holocaurt, p. 192.
26. See Shmuel Shneider's inte rview with Appelfeld in Bttzaron, 4, nos. 13-
14 (Winter-Spring 1982), p . 11.
'J:'/. Apjletfeld's love for the paradoxical and the absurd, as spelled out in his
collection M081ot Begoof 111,hon (Ewzy,. in Flnt Peraon) (Jerusalem: Zi-
onist Library, 1979), bas triggered a crop of paradox-bunting articles; most
of them, however, (ollow his own cues without any attempt to penetrate
his literary defenses. See, for example, Nurit Govrin, 10 E-xpress the
Inexpressible: The l:folQCaust I..1terature <>f Aharon AppeJfeld," Remem-
bering/or the Future, 2 (Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1988), 1580-94.
28. In some sense Michoat Ha'or (Searing Light) (Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Ha-
meuchad, 1980) is a sequel to Tor Hopela'ot (The Age a/Wonder,), which
two yean earlier constituted the author's first a ttempt at "fictional autobi-
ography,• an ostensibly first-person m emoir of a childhood on the brink of
catastrophe. Although in Searing Light the confessional voice alternates
between first-person plural and first-person singular, ii is not difficult lo
ide ntify the "biographical" details that linl<; the na.rrators of the two novel-
la$; the latter, bQwever, records the protagonist's pon,cawtrophe mem-
oirs, highlighting the painful confrontation between.a group of young ref-
ugees and the machinery ofZionlst 'baptism· mthe land of Israel.
29. Appelfeld, Seantig Ught, p. 32 (my ttanslation).
30. Cf. Gershon $baked, ll'lU\Sport to Palestine," Gal ·~har G(li Bari/root
flo'ivnt (Wave after WatH! in Hebrew NarratitH! Fiction) (Jerusalem:
Keter, 1985), pp. 28-29.
31. Sld'r a Ezraht. ".Revisioning the Past: The Changing Legiicy of the Holo-
caust in Hebrew Llterature;• Salmagundi (Fall....Winte r 1985-86), p. 256.
32. Sidra Eznuu, "Aharon Appelfeld: The Search for a Language," Stuclfea in
Con temporaf'IJ Jewry, l (1984), 366-380,
'33. Appelfeld, El.talJ&, pp. 21, 90, and passim.
34. Appelfeld's forthcoming novel will be the firBt to take place significantly
before World War II . The change in setting (around the tum of the cen-
tury) does not imply a change in theme and authorial position, liowever.
The main character ls a Bukovintan apostate, whom the author calls Ti•
myon, namely "lost and forgotten" (a personal communication).
35. In her 1980 book Yaoz cites only six reviews of~dam Ben klev (Tel Aviv:
Amtlaun, 1969), all of them in the Uterary supplements of the daily press.
Later·references i nclude Mintz In Hurban (1984), Ezrahi in "Revisioning

1.11 l'I .-11 .• 1

I 'I ~I' ' -, • ~ '•I•• I" /11-1

 Notes to Page& /Z35-24l
< 384 >
the Past" (1985-86), and Shalcedin the afterword to Facing the Holocaust
(1985). For the English translation see Adam Rt-SUrrected, trans. Sey-
mour Simckes (New \'ork: Atheneum, 1911).
36. Terrenre Des Pres, "Holocaust Laughter?" in Writing a,id the Holocawt,
pp. 216~234.
37. David Grossman, 'Ayen 'E,-ech 'Ahavah (Set Un~,.! Love), !ran.s. Betsy
Rosenberg (New York; Fa,rar, Straus & Giroux, 1989). Only two of the
many reviews· of the novel mention (although from 9ill'erent perspe<:tiyes)
the ties between Kaniuk and Grossman: Ortzion 13artana. •An J.mpressive
but Limited Achievement," Dava,-(Masaa), 14, no. 3 (1986), ~ ; and Stan,
ley Nash. ibe Novels by Y. Karnak, 0 . Grossman and Lanzmann's
'Sboah."' Bat:taron, 9, nos. 3.5~ (1987), 66-69. Their qualified praise Is
representative of the reception of the novel by the critical establishment,
particularly in Israel. Curiously, ii' seems that Grossman had anticipated
this reception. in the ironic characterization of the • national Hebrew
critic,· as discussed below.
.38. Grossman, See U~r: Looe, -p. 102.
39. Ibid.
40. Genhon Shaked, 'Eln Malcom '.A her (No Other Place: On Uterature and
Society) (Tel Aviv; Haldbbutz ffameuchad, 1988), p. 113.
41. See his critique of Appelfeld's Searing Lighl in "Transport lo Palestine,·
p. -31; and of Saul Friedlander's When Memory Cornea in No Other Pla(;e,
pp. 56-66.

15. Translating Paul Celan's "Todesfuge"

lam grateful to Adam Goldgeier, Johnny Payne, Claudio Spies, and es-
pecially to Mary Lowenthal Febtlner for their help on this teit.
i. The poem (in German) appeared first in Paul Celao, Der Sand aus ~
Umen (Viennai A. Sex!, 1948); then In Celan, Mohn und Cedilchtnt.,
(Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlags Anstalt, 1952). lt now appears in Celan, Ge,,-
4mme/te Werke, ed. Beda Allemann and Stefan Reichert with Rudolf
Biicher (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1983). I, 41. This 6ve-volume edition ts
hereafter referred to as GW. and references to it In the text ate given hy
volume and page number.
2. Wolfgang Butzlaff; "'Zwei Bemiihungen um ein Gedicht, Paul Celans
T~afuge" (with Peter Seidensticker), Der Deutachunterricht, 3 (1960),
46.
3. Israel Chalfeo, Paul Celan: Elne Bi,og,-aphie ,elnerJugend (Frankfurt: Jn-
$el, 1979) remains the only booll-le.ngth biography; many articles a.nd
memoirs augment it. The only bool<-leogth critical study is Jerry Glenn,

1.111'1.-II .• I
I I I II
I 'I' Fil' -, • ~ ,4,, ;-1• ,-. 4;.i
 Not6$ to Pages 241-24S
< 385 >
Paul Ce/an (New York: Twayne, 1973). See ~ John Fels'tiner. r paul Ce-
Ian, The Strain of Jewishness," Commentary (April 1985), pp. 44-53, and
Felstiner, "Paul Celan·s 'Todesfuge,'" Holotawt and Genocide Studie,. 1,
no. 2 (1986), 249-264,
4. Marie Rosenthal, Anselm 1<teje,- (Philadelphia, 1987), p. 95; New York
Times Magazine, 16 October 1988, p. 49.
5. Theodor Adorno, "Kulturkritilc und Gesellschaft,• written in HM9, pub-
lished sln,gly in 1951, collected in Adorno., Pi"iimen (19.55), reprinted in
Adorno, Ge,ammelte S'chriften , vol. 10', ed, l\olfTiedemann (Franlcfurt:
Suhrkamp, 1974), 30.
6. Chalfen, Paul Ce/an, p. 148.
7. The word fugue derives from the Latinfuga, meaning "Bight"; and in psy-
chiatric terms, fugue denotes a pathological amnesiac condition..The verb
JugenJn German means to "join," "groove," "6t," in carpen\TY.
8. Bruno Bettelheim, Surviving and Other E11s~• (New York: Knop{. 1979),
pp. 98-99.
9. See Jol111 Felstiner, "Paul Celan's 'Todesfuge,'" note 26, pp, 262-263.
10. See Barbara Wiedemann-Wolf, Antsohel Paul-Paul Ce/an: Studlen u.m
Fruhwerk (Tubiogen: Niemeyer, 1985), pp. 79-87, and Chalfen, Paul Ce-
la11. P• 133.
I 1. Paul Celan, "Briefe an Alfred Margul-Sperber," Neve Literatur, 7 (1975),
ss.
12. Paul Celan's letter of 21 March 1959 in Deutsche Uteratu.t heute: Eine
AuuteUung, 1968 (Kuratorium unteilbares Deutschland, 1970); letter of
19 May 1961 in Wiedemann-Wolf. ,Ant,chel Paul p. 85.
13. Jean Amery, At the Mind', U,nlU: Contemplation, by a Survivor on
Auschwitz and Ju 11,ealitiu, tTllnS. Sidney Rosenfeld and Stella P. Rosen-
feld (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1980), p. x.
14. Primo Levi, If Not Now, When? trans. Willi.am Weaver (New York: Sum-
JDit, 1985). p . 168; lettt,!r Levi to Felstiqer, 14 June 1986,
15. Rolf Hochhuth, The Deputy, trans. Richard and, Clara Winston (New
York: Grove, 1964), p . 223.
16. Roland Penrose, f1C1J$IO; His Ufe a,adWork (Berkeley: University of Cali-
fornia Press, 1981), p. 333.
17. Celan's poem 6rstappeared ina Rouman.ian translation by Petre Solomon
in Contemporantd 32 (2 May 1947). See also Solomon, "Paul Celans Bu-
karester Aufenthalt," 'Zelt,chnft for Ktdturawtausch, 3 (1982)1 223.
18. Jewish Black !look Committee. The Black Book; The Naz, Crime Ag,umt
the Jewuh People (New York. 1946), pp. 308--309.
19. Constantine Simonov, The Lublin Erlennination Camp (MOSCl)w: For-
eign Languages Publlshing House, 1944), pp, 14, 16.

1.11 l'I .-11 .• 1

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I ''I Fil' T'I • ~ '•I•• :-i" · 0 1·1
 Note, to Page, 246-!?53
< 386 >

20. Paul Celan, autobiognlphical note, to Die Wandlung, 4, no. 3 (1949), p .

284.
21 . The only recording Celan made of "Todesfuge• is on "l..yrik der Zelt tr·
(Ffullingen: Neske, n.d .).
22.. Fried.rich Nietzsche, Will to .Power, p. 55.
23. Celan, "Briefe," p. 57.
24. Hans Werner Richter, "Wie entstand und was war die Gruppe 47?" in
Han, Werner lluihter und die Gruppe 47, ed. Hans A. Neunzig (Munich:
Nymphenburger, 1979), p. 112; Hans Weigel, In MfflWrlam (Vienna;
Sfyria, 1979), p. 36; Reinhard Lettau, ed., Die Gruppe 47 (Neuwied:
Luchterhand, 1967), p . 76; Rolf Schroers, Meine deut,che FrQge (Stott•
gartc Deutsche Verlags Anstalt, 1979), p , 140; Fried.helm Kroll, DiB
Gruppe 41 (Stuttgart: Metzler, 1917), p . 67.
25. Helmuth de Haas, in Die neue lilerariache Well (10 July 1953), 12; rpt. in
D tetlind Meinecke, Ober Paul Celan (Franlcfurt: Suhrlwnp, 1970).
26. Egon Holthusen, "Filnfjunge L)'ril,;er," Mer/cur, 74 (1954), 38.5--390.
.27. Jean Firges, "Spradie und Sein jp der Dichtung Paul Celans," Mutur•
,prache, 72 (1962), 266- 267.
28. Theodor Adorno, "Engagement," in Nolen z:ur Lilerolur; 2 (Franlcfurt:
Suhrlcamp, 1965), 125- 127,
29. Reinhard Baumgnt, "Un.mePschlJchkelt 'beschriebeP: Weltkrieg und Fa-
schismus in der Llteratur,~ Mer/cur; 202 (Jan. 196.5), 43, 48-49.
30, Li,tter to Robert Neumann, in 34 :r erm Liebe, ed. Robert Neumann
(Franlcfurt: Binneler tic Nike I, 1966), pp. 32-33; Celan, "Briefe,• p. 55.
31. Hugo Huppert, Sl11nen und Trachten; .-\nrnerkungen wr P~gje
(Halle: Mitteldeutscher, 1973), pp. 3l-32.
32. Hartmut Liiclc, "Die Komponisten und die Todesfuge: sieben Vertonun•
gen des Ced.lcbtes von Paul Celan: West Gecman Radio broadcast of 4
February 1983.
3.3. At this CQmmemorative event, a Bach Society chorus ~ b y singing the
first Yiddish Holocaust $Ong, "Undz:er Shtetl Brennt," by Mordechai Ge-
birtig. Then, after lda Ebre recited 'Todesfuge,• Philipp Jenninger gave
bis ill-fated, wOllld-be conoiliiitory speech on the "Fmal Solution," which
resulted in his having to relinquish his position. Stenographic report of
the Bundestag for 10 November 1988;· Die Zeit, 47 (18 November 198/J),
Pol.itilc, p. 7.
34. Jewish Ge nnan Dance Theater, "But What about the Holocaust?" During
tbe six-hour television series, broadcast in April and May of 1990, each
episode opens witb a full-screen image o{ ee1an·5 face, then pans over
death camps and monuments as his voice is heard reciting "Todesfuge• in
its entirety.

1.d/'lr-11 .• I
I I I II
I ''I Fil' -, • C '•I•• ;-1,,·.4;.1
 Notu to Pagea 254-261
< 387 >

35. Cooter Heinti-, "Paul Celans Todeefuge," Bliitter fur den Deut8chlehrer,
14 (1970), 109- 110.

16. "The Grave in the Air"

1. "Und ich linde bier, in dieser 4,usseren u nd inneren Landsch.ft, viel von
den Wahrheilszwlingen, der Selbstevldenz u nd der weltoll'ehen Einma•
Hgkeit grosser PoeJie." "Aosprache vor dem hebmschen schriftsteller•
verband," Tel Aviv, 14 October 1969, in Paul Cela11, Ge,ammelu Werke,
U.l (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrbmp, 1983), p. 203; Eng. trans., Rosmatie
Waldrop, Paul Ce/an; Colkcted Pro,e (New Yori<: Sheep Meadow Press,
1986), p . 57.
2. Ibid.
3. "Cultunl Criticism and Society," i11 Pnsnu. trans. S14muel and Shierry
Weber (London; Neville Spearman, 1967), p. 34..
4. The "'m ost impormnt artists of the age· include such modernists as Kalh,
Beckett, and Cetan, See Ernst Bloch, Georg Lulaks, Bertold Brecht,
Walter Benjamin, 'Theodor Adorno, Autheticu and Politlc8, trans. and ed.
Ronald Taylor, afterword by Fredric JameSQn (London: New Left: Books,
1977), p. 188; T. W. Adorno, Aesthetic Theory, trans. C. Lenhardt (Lon-
don: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1970), pp. 352-354, 443-444; T. W.
Adorno, Priml8, pp, 245-.271.
5. See Sylvia Plath's poems in Ariel, William Styron's Sophie's Chcice,
D. M . Thomas's White Hotel, .Fassbinder's Lill Marlene, and the <X>ntro-
venies, which attended their publication, over the displacement of im,
ages or figures relating to the Nazi genocide.
6. "The dilrerend is the unstabJe state and insl2nt of language wherein some-
thing which must be able to be put into phrases cannot yet be .. . The
silence that surrounds the phrase, Awthwitz wtU the e~ermlnation camp
ls ... the sign that something remains to be phrased which is not. some-
thing which is not determined . .. 'The indetermination of meanings left:
in abeyance (en sou.ffranee), the extermination of what wouJd allow them
to be determined, the shadow of negafiQn hollowing out reality to the
point of making it dissipate, in a word, the wrong done lo the victims that
condemns them to s.i lence-it is this . . . wh(oh calls upon unknown
phrases to link onto the name of A.wehwitz." Jean-Fran~is Lyotard, The
DifferentL Phnuu in Dispute, trans. Georges Van Den Abbeele, Theory
and Hartory of Literature, vol, 46 (Minne11polls; University of Minnesota
Press, 1988), pp. 13, 56-51. In suggesting incornmensurability, inatticu-
labjlity, or excess, the ·dissipation• that comes of extermination , the dilfe-

I I I II
 Noles to Pages 261-264
< 388 >

rend may actually feinfon.-e .t he idea of the propriety or the limits of sym-
bolic as well as referential language.
7. Leo Bersani, The Culture of Redemption (Cambridge, Mass.; Harvard
University Press, 1990), ,p p. 1-2.
8. Quoted by Richard Wolin in "Utopia, Mimesis, and Reconciliation: A Re-
de mptive Critiq11e of Adorno's Aesthetic Theory.• Repre~entations 32
(Fall 1990), 37.
9. T. \V. Adorno, Minima Moralia: Reflections from Damaged Ufe (London:
New Left Books, 1974), p. 247; for a discussion of utopianism in Adorno's
thought, see also Martin Jay, Adorno (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Uni-
versity Press, 1984). p. 20.
10. Adorno, Authetic Theory, p. 444.
l l. The ,p hotograph, taken ,during the Warsaw Ghetto uprising , is promi•
n ently displayed in an enonnous blow-up in the museum al Yad V-asliem
in Je ru,salem. (See the "Stroop Report," Nuremberg Documents P.S. 1061.)
12. On this charge and other questions ofiiterary provenance" see Chilpter
15 by John Felstiner in the present volume and Felstiner's ··Paul Celan's
'Todesfuge,'" Holocaust and Genocide Studies, 1, no. 2-(1986), 262-263.
13, See Felst,ner. Chapter 15, Also see "Cedale's Song." by Primo Levh "Our
brothers hilve risen to the sky I Through the ovens of Sobibor 11hd Tre-
blinka / Tl\ey have dug themselves a grave in the air." Trans. Ruth Fe ld-
man , Tilckun. 5, 110. 5 (1990), inside.cover.
14. Primo Levi, "On Obscure Writing." Other People's Trade.t, trans. Ray-
mond Rosenthal (New York: Summit Books, 1989), pp. 173-J74.
i5. Ibid . . p. 173.
16. Ibid . See Celan's comment on the "obscurity" of poetry in bis "Meridian"
speech: "This obscur,ty, if it is nQI congenital, has been bestowed on po-
etry by strangeness and distance {pe rhaps of its own making) and for the
sake ofan encounter." ''The Meridian: Speech on the occasion of receiving
the. Georg Buchner Prize, Darmstadt. 22 Ootober 1960," in Paul Celan:
Collected Prose, p. 46.
17. The inherent loneliness of the literary process is embraced by Kafka in
the same terms in which it is denied by Levi, withdrawal or separation
being equated by both with a presuicidal condition: ~What we need are
books + , , that make- us feel as though we had been banished to the
woods, far from any human presence, like a suicide. A book must be the
ilX for theJi-oze n sea within us." Quoted in Ernst Pawel, The Nightmare Q[
Reason (New York: Farrar, Stmus, and Giroux), p. 158.
18. See, for el(ample, Levi's admission that the first edition of Surviool Iii
A11$chwilz sold only 2,500coples. and \he SO!Dewhat c1Jsi11genuous remark
that af\er its publication, "I hardly thought about this solitary little book
any mor~." followed b y: "even if sometimes l burned to believe that the
descent into hell had given me, -as to Coleridge's Ancient Mariner, a

1JIIII.-II .•'"'I

U'I' EP.S T'I ,)~ '•I" ;-1,,··•M

 Notes to Pages 2&i~268
< 389 >
'strange power of speech.' • · neyond Survival," Prooftnt.,, 4, no. 1 (1984),
15. Levi may be the most quoted writer jn this volume-see for example
Chapter 5 by Carlo Ginzburg. His bid for an objective position as pilr•
veyor of the reality ofAuschwitz is generally talcen at &.)e. value, and he is
widely regarded as the quintessential "witness." See Irving Howe, intro•
duction to Primo Levi, lf Not Now, When? trans. William Weaver (New
York: Summit Books, 1962). p. 9.
19, An alternative Interpretation of both Levi's suicide and his last book is
offered by Cynthia Ozick in '"The Suicide Note." The New Republic, 21
March 1988, pp. 33-35.
20. Celan, "The Meridian; in Collected Prose, p. 51.
21. See, for example, Jean-Frarn,ois Lyotard, ''Defining the Postmodern: in
Postmotkm~: ICA Documents, ed. Lisa Appignanesi (London: Free As-
sociation Books, 1989), pp. 7-10.
22. As one who not only is not a survivor of the Nazi genoctde but Is far re-
moved from the l'Ulture about whkh he writes, Thomas's "borrowings·
are highly conventionalized: he seeks access not to the reports of the
atrocities, but to a specillc genre of documentary n&mltive. On the • doc-
umentary. novel" and the publishing history of Bahl Yar, see my By Words
Alone: The Holocaust in Literature (Chicago: University ofChi~o Press,
1980), pp. 28-30. For a g)i.mpse at th.e debate that ensued over the charge
th.at D. M. Thomas plagiarized from Babi Ya, in secttons of The White
Hotel, see "Letters to the Editor" in the Timu Literary Supplement, 2
and 9 April 1982. and the symposium on "Plagiluismn vs. literary inftu-
ence, with the participation of Harold Bloom and others, in the 9 April
edition. See also James E. Young, Writing and Rewriting the Holocaust:
NarraUve and the Cooseq.uences. ofJnterpretation (Indiana: Indiana Uni•
verslty l'ress, 1988). pp. 53-59.
23, Felstiner, Cliapler 15. Fel$tiner argues elsewhere that Celao himself, in
response to aestheticlzed readings of 'Tt>desfuge," attempted in his later
poetry to concretize im~ges that might otherwise be unmoored from their
referential b;,.se, "Paul Ce)ao's 'Todesfuge,'" p. 254.
24. Felstiner, Chapter 15,
25. See Lyotard, The Di/Jerend, pp. 97-106. See also Sande- Cohen's discus-
sion of his argumen.t in "Between Image and Phrase: Progressive History
and the Final Solution as Dispossession," Cha1;>ter 11 ofthis volume.
26. Andreas Huyssen explores the spectrum of responses to these paintings
in •Ansefm Kiefert The Terror of History, the Temptation of Myth," Octo•
~,-, 48 (Spring 1989), 24-45.
27. The Deput!I, trans. Richard and Cwa Winston (New York: Grµve, 1964),
p, 223. See By Words Alene, pp. 42-45.
28. Quoted front a statement made by Celati to his translator Michael Ham-
burger, in Katharine Washburn's introduction to Paul Ce/an: La.,t P<>eT1U,

'Jd /'Id I .••'"I

U'I fP.;, -1 ,)~ '•I•• ;-1,1-01-1
 Notes lo Pages '268-27I
< 390 >

ed. and trans. Washburn and Margret Guillemin (San Francisco: North
Point Press, 1986), p. vi. Adorno, who deiicribed the "hermetic proce-
dure" that allows ;i.ct to "maintain its integrity only by refusing to go along
with communication," was, of course, not the only critic to charactetlze
Celan's poetry as hermetic. T. W. Adorno, Aeathetic Theory Appendix t
p . 443. See also Amy Colin, "Paul Celan's Poetics of Destruction ," Argu-
mentum e SllenHo: lnlernaticnal Paul Celan Sv,nposium, ed. Amy D.
Colin (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1987), pp. 177-178.
29. Paul Celan, Die Niemo.11d.irose (1963), from Sprac~ftter; Die Niemaruu-
rose: Cedichte (Frankfurt am Main: S. Fischer Verlag, 1986), p. 132.
30. Jacquu Derrida. ·schibboleth," in Argume,itum e SilentiO, pp. 22, 24.
31. In Derrida's analysis of the poem "In Eins," the incomplete dating (13
February without a specific year) seems to establ,sh historicity not as a
limiting fact but as the status and symbolic complexity of reality, past and
future. The multiplicity of possible wit,iesses and the Indeterminate na-
ture of this hour or this appointed time which (l8JJ enoap$ulale the Spanish
Civil Wat, the French-Algerian War, and of course the unmentioned war
make this both an urgent and an open-ended poem. Ibid.
32. Evan Watlcin, "Lyric Poetry as Social Language," In Argume,uum e Sllen-
tio, p. 270. Celan's poetic transactions included translations from English,
Hebrew, l\ussian, and German.
33. Hebrew is referred to llS the wa.hr gebliebem, wahr gewordene, the lan-
guage that has remained true, that has therefore become true. Felstiner,
"'Ziv, thar light': Translation and Tradition in Paul Celan," in New Ulerary
History, vol. 18 (1986-1987), 630. See also his "Langue maternelle, lan-
gue etemelle: La presence de l'hebreu" in Contre']our: Etudu ,ur Paul
Celan, ed, Martine Broda (Les Editions du Cerl), 1986,
34. Celan , "The Meridian," in Collected Prose, p. 50.
35. Stiphane Moses, "Quand le lang;ige se fait voix: Paul CeIan: Entretien
dans la mootagne" in Contre•Jour, pp. 125-126,
36. See ibid., p. 126.
37. "Lamb'.s LA:tture and Dlanlhw ,uperb,,&, the gilly8ower, i.s not far a.way.
But they, the first cousins, they have (it cries out to heaven) oo eyes ." Paul
Celan: wt PoerTl,f, p. 208. Blindness to the specific ftora, which calls at-
tention parodlcally to the Jew's lnsulatiOJl from nature, serves also to re-
inforce the generic, legendary quality of the landscape.
38. "Speech on the Occasion of Receiving the Literature Prize of the Free
Hanseatic City of Bremen," in Paul Celan:-Collected Prose, p. 35.
39. "Conversation in the Mountain," in Paul Celan: Collected Prose, p . 17.
40. For a disOU$Sion of other PQets &om Bukovina who continued to write
after the war, see Amy Colin, Paul Celan (Bloomington, Indiana Univer-
sity Press, 1991), chap. 1.
4 L. See my "Dan Pagjs-Out of Line: A Poetics of Decomposition" in Proof-

•.dl'l.-11 .,1 I

ll'l'Vt':' -, ,)~ ,4,, °l".f>o1

 Note11 to Pagu 271-274
< 391 >
tat,, 10 (1990), 335--363;-.md "Shattering Memories," TM NIN,I) &public,
25 February 1991, pp. 35-39.
42, See, fur eumple, "How to" in Dan Pagis, Variable Direction.t, trans . Ste-
phen Mitchell (San Francisco: North Point Press, 1989), p. 117.
43. Dan Pagis, Point& of Departure, trans. Stephen Mitchell with an intrtr
dlKltlon by Robert Alter (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1981),
p. 23.
44, Berel Lang, Act 4nd Idea In tM Ntu.l Cmocide (Chicago, University of
Chicago Press, 1990), pp. 138-139.
45. Ibid., p. 139. "Aspen Tree" quoted from Paul Celan. Poem,, trans. Mi•
chael Hamburger (New York: Persea, 1980}.
46. Lang, Act and lde4, p. 139.
47. Ibid .. p. 140.
48. Ibid. , p. 139.
49. See Sutzkever's poem "Mother in which the referent ("bullets") and the
metaphor {"roses") both interchange with and undermine each other.
Burnt Pearu: Ghetto POflfflJI, trans. Seymour Mayne (Oakville, Mosaic
Press, 1981), p. 27.
50, For a discussion o f the pseudo~ocumentary status of "'The Leaden Plates
ofRomm's Printing Works ," see David Roskies, After theApoca4,pae:.Re-
8POMea to CataatropM In Modern Jewi8h Ct1lture (Cambridge-, Mass.:
Harvard University Press, 198-1), pp. 251-253. and Anita Norich, "Yid-
dish Poetry: Vilna to Tel Aviv, Lublin to New York," Unirlenjf!I of Hart•
ford Studtu in Literature, 18, nos, 2 and 3 (1987), 31.
51. See the poems "For a Comrade," "Mother." "For My Child," in Burnt
Pearla: Ghetto Poem&, pp. 25, '1!1, 32-33.
52, See Chapter 14 by Yael Feldman, in this volume. Perhaps the most strik-
ing example of this phenomenon is the novel Ayen endch 'ahava (See
Under: Love) by the Israeli writer David Grossman. At the center of this
narrative is a preadolescent child of survivors growing up in Israel in the
late 1950s among relatives and mends whose life narratives have been
permanently dislocated by what is both unsptakable and irrecoverable.
He is propelled by a desperate search for the untold tales that are every
child's birthright. Through the public codes of belief and behavior to
which he is exposed at scliool and in the culture at large he encounters a
chronicle of reconstruction, heroism, political sovereignty and military
prowess. The weight of this ooherent ideological and mythical supers't ruc-
ture and the rontending vacuum of absent memories are h eld in tenuous
equilibrium by a daring act of synthesis whereby the boy weaves frag-
ments of information into the Zionist ethos and forges a narrative that he
can Uve with, even be proud of and, possibly, use to redeem his parents'
ruptured lives: "All his detective work was geared at reordering, as in a
puzzle, That Country [erett sham) which had eluded them all .. . and he

1.;.,l/'1.-11 .••"'I
I I 1•11
U'I EP.'.;, -1 ,)~ '•I◄• 'i";"/·I
 Notes to Pagu 274-279
< 392 >

is the only one who can do that, for only he can save his parents from their
terror, from the silences, &om the moans [krechtzen.t] and from the ourse
. .. [Here, then, is his narrative:) The Tzar galloped at the head on his
trusty steed, and he was very full of glory and shot off his ri8e in all direc-
tions. Sonder &om the Commando covered him from the rear . . . [Later,
nine-year-old Mumik] has already prepared a blue and white Rag for that
Country, and between the two blue stripes he has drawn a large tnJlce to
which he mu a~hed the rear fuselage of a Supermuter [Israeli war-
plane), and at the bottom he has written: 'if you will it, it i.s not a dream ."'
Aven erekh 'ahaflO, my translation. See the English translation by Betsy
Rosenberg (London, Jonathan Cape, 1990).
This act of literary re-creation is, in the Israeli context. daring not so
much for its. historical re\lisionism as for its undermining of the hegemony
of the heroic t-onstruct in the Israeli narrative of Holocaust and Rebirth.
Simultaneously empowering the victims and disempowering the heroes,
Grossman, along with Pagis and a number of other contemporary Israeli
writers, is rewriting not the history but the constitutive myth that under-
lies the social ethos.
53. See "Footprints: in Pagi.s . Points of Departure, pp. 28-37.
54. "Brothers," ii) Pagis, Points of Departure, p. 5. The translation I hove
given here is more literal than Mitchell's.
55. See m.y "Revisfoning the Past: The Changhig Legacy of the lfolocaust In
Hebrew Literature," Salmagundi, no. 68-69 (Fall 1985-Winter 1986),
245-270.
56. Steiner, After Babel: Aspect, of Language and Tron.rlation (London: Ox-
ford l?ress, 1975), p. 389. Quoted in Amy D. Colin, "Paul Celani. Poetics
of Destruction"in Argume11tum e Silenlio, p. 172.
57. Ibid.
58. l'aul Celan: Last Poems, p. xxvi.
59. Ibid., p. JtXXV.

17. The Dialectics of Unspeakability

1. The historical iext in question is an early version of Saul Friedlande r, the
'Final Solution·, Unease in ln\erpretlltion." Hutory and Memory. I
(1989), 61- 76, presented at a meeting ofthe UCLA Critical Theory Group
in 1988; H.immler's Posen speech is the basis for the discu.ssion of the
"representability" of the Holocaust Jn this chapter.
2. Jacques Derrida, "Comment ne pas parler-Di!n~gations," in l'sychi
(Paris: Galilee. 1987). pp. 5.35-596.
3. Theodor Adorno, Minima morolia, trans. E. F. N. Jephcott (London :
Verso, 1974), p. 152.
4. ·G erd Kormen, "The Holocaust In American Historical Wrlti,,g... in ffolo-

1.;.11 /'I .-1 I .•'"I

U' I E'l:a. Tl. ~ '•I◄• ;-l••·bM
 Notes to Pages 279-:284
393 >
<
cawt: Re1igiousand Pliu.osophical lmplicatioM, ed. John K, Roth and Mi-
chael Berenbaum (New Yorlc; PU1lgon, 1989), p. 45, n, I . Some of the
references are to the Book of Job, which is e ntirely appropriate, since its
topic is the (un)justifiability of what humans experience as divinely ~ used
evil.
5. Compare Hllherg's comments in •1 Was Not There," in Writing and the
llolocal.llt, ed. Berel Lmg (New York: Holmes & Meier, 1988), pp. 20-
25, with his remarks in the concluding discussion on pp, 273-274.
6. Lucy Oawidowicz, The War agaimt the Jews, 1939-1945 (New York:
Holt , Rinehart & Winston, 1975).
7. Hllhetg, Wrlling and the Holocall.ft, p. 18.
8. 11:ie most telling accqunts of these phenome(la are those by Louis 0 . Mi!lk
and Hayden White. Mink's essays have been collected and p ublished
under the title Historical Underttanding (Ithaca: Cornell Unh>ersity
Press, 1987). The major works of Ha.yden Wrute lU'e Metah/story (1973),
Tropics of Dfscourse {1978), and The Content of the Fann (1987), all pub-
lished by Johns Hopkins Press.
9. Emmanuel Levin as, Totalitt et lnjini: Essa I sur rexttrioriU, 4th ed. (!'he
Hague: Martinus Nljhoff, 1984), p. 10.
10. Emmanuel Levinas., "Signature (Nouvelle Venion),~ Difficile Liberti, ed.
Emmanuel Levinas, 3rd ed. (Paris: Albin Michel, 1916), p . 406.
11. Serio.u s but amicable criticism of Levinas' treatment of history is to he
found at the beginning of "Questions et r~ponses.~ Le Nouveau Com-
merce, 36, no. 6 (Spring I.971), 63-86. A greater sensitivity to the pres-
epce of h istQry in Levinas is to be found in Jacques Demda's early essay,
"Violence et me taphysique, Essai sur la pensee d'Emmanuel Lcvinas;
Z:lcrlture et la difference, ed. Jacques Derrida (Paris: Seuil , 1967), pp.
117-228.
12. "Questions et r~ponses," p. 85.
13. "la responsabilit~ lllimitee pour autrui," ibid., p. 6.5.
14. Levlnas, "Signature (Nouvelle version)," p. 409.
15. Walter Benjamin, "Critique of Violence," Rejlecti.ons, ed. Peter Demetz
(New York Harcourt .Brace Jovanovich, 1978); tbe original text is "Zur
Kritik der Gewalt," in volume I of Gewmmelt.e Schri/ten (Frankfurt:
Suhrkamp, 1955).
16, Document 1919-PS. The text appears in Trial of the Major War Criminal.t
before the International Military Tribunal, Nuremberg, 14 Nooe,nber
1945-0ctober1946 (New York: AMS Press, 1948), pp. U0-173, A partial
translati.o n is available in A Holocaust Reader, ed. Lucy T. Dawidowicz
r
(New York: Behrman House, 1976), pp. 130-140. have used this trans-
lation where possible, modifying it as necessary.
The text of the speech is one ofthe documents presented by the Amer-
ican prosecution in the trials of war criminals, it is labeled "Exhibit- USA-

1.11/'ldl .•1 1
I L7•11
1,•1 EP.'= r, t)i:. ,,,◄, ;:-11t--o, 1
 Notes to Pagea 284-287
< 394 >
170." Although the English heading names it a speech or Himmler's, and
although it is always refened to as such, the German-language descript!o11
considers it a collection of various speeches ("Sammlung verschiedener
Reden"), perhaps partial. The text is lengthy-more than sixty pages in
the fairly small print of the record of the Nuremberg trials.
It is preceded by a brier notice. i.n English. prlnted in capital letters,
llsting the main topics to be discussed in the speech. There is no indica-
tion in this notice that the speech contains some of the most extnordinary
comments on the Event. Tbe English-language heading, due, presum-
ably, to an American official, repeats, in the elision of iis discourse, the
eictennination which 1$ discussed in the speech, as if to pro,ide a mi.re-en-
11bv,,ie of literariness, a casting of the topic into the linguistic abyss of
silence that parallels the extermination of the Jews in a nonlinguistic real-
ity.
17. 1 am drawing here on standard concepts in narrative semiotics. Their
technical definitions may be found in A. J. Greimas and J, Courtes, Semi-
otiq orid L!lnguage: An Analytic Dictwnary, trans. L. Crist, D. l>atte, et
al. (Bloomington: tndiana University Press, 1982). I have discussed \he
appropriation of semiotics as a mode of historical interpretation in "Se.mi-
otics and History," Semiotioa:, 4-0 (1982), 187-228, and "Consid6rations
th~riques sur la s6rniotique socio-historique, • in E:rig=s et ~ c -
tives de la a6mlotique, ed. Herman Parret and Hans-Georg Ru11recht, 2
vols. (Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 1985), I, 215-228.
18. See the remarks ofLucyDawidowiez, Holocawt Reader, pp, 13-16, Hll-
berg gives a list of coded terms in his The Destruction of the European
Jews, stodent edition (New York: HQlmes and. Meier, 1985). pp. 1331f.
The allegorical qualil)' of the -evacuation• of the Jews as a code for their
extermination may be an effect of history upon language. Earlier policy
appears to have been, in fact, to rid the German body politic of the Jews
(.'ODsidered as -a vehicle of social disease. by a mass evacuation outside the
borders of the Cennan st3te. What was perhaps originally a "literal" state-
ment became a coded aJlegoi:y when the•name of the policy was retained
tn spite of a change in its content. See Hein,; H6hne, The Order of tlui
Death'i Head, trans. Richard Bany (New York: Coward-McCann, 1970),
pp. 324-353.
19. This rule of morality was doubled by economic interest. Living and dead,
the Jews pl'O'vided the Reich with wealth: "As Jong as th.e Jews were a).
lowed to Uve. their labor was .extracted without reward or mercy. Mer
their deportation, the Germans expropriated their remaining goods"
(Dawidowicz, Holocaust Reader, p. 147). Mer gassing, gold was ex•
tr.icted from the teeth of the victims. The state, prohibiting pilfering by
individual soldiers, had wealth as well as morality at stake.
20. Tnsofar as other peoples seem to possess these qualities, they are deri\<as-
 Noles to Pagu 289-290
< 395 >
tive! the Czechs and Slovaks, for mstallce, "to whom we gave their sense
of Nationality. They themselves were not capable of achieving it; we in-
vented it fur them,"
21. Arno Mayer, Why Du:l the Heoven, Not Dorkenl' The "Final Solution" in
Hutory (New York: Pantheon, 1988), p. 90.
22. I am drawing here on the theory of ideology proposed by Louis Althusser
in the article "Ideology and Ideolo_gicaJ State Apparatuses (Notes towards
an Investigation)." in Lenin and Philosophy, trans, Ben Brewster (New
York: New Left Books, 1971). pp. 127-188. To a remarkable de.gree, the
work$ of Michel Foucault represent so many transformations and varia-
tions on the fundamental,notions of Althusser in thls and related texts.
2.3. As such, this propensity i5 a kind of reaction to the other that has similar•
itles to Levinas' radjcal ethical injun,-tion, which would thus be seen as
having its basis in human nature. Himmler's strategy would then be seen
as designed to cirt-un!Vent a "natural" human propensity, transform.abl.e.
into an ethical imperative and identified as an impediment by his narra-
tive program, in order to achieve his bureaucratic aim.
24. See Friedlander, "The 'Final Solution,'· p. 68.
25. Mayer, Why Du:l the Heavem Not Darken/' p. 376.
2.6. Hobne, The Order of the Deoth's Head, pp. 380-382.
'J:I. Ibid. , p . 387,
28. Such a view would allow fur a broader hi,torical conclusion of !!Otoe im-
portanQe, to the elfect that the duality of Nazi power wu "the eq,reuion,
singular up to now, of a B.ow of ideas, emotions, -and phantasms that are
kept separate in all others modem Weste.m societie.s": Saul Friedlander,
Reflection, of Na~iml.· An Essay on K#sc.h and Death, 11'1!11S, lnomas
Weyr (New York: Harper lie Row, 1984), p. 1.34. This answers the question
of"relevance" raised by Friedlander elsewhere ("The 'Final Solution'"),
by "ma.Icing sense out of Naz.ism: Th.e qualification of Nazism ha,1 been
• singular up to now" in the conjunctions and sutures of semantic elements
dujoined by the European tnMlition. ThiS disregards, however. both the
literary tradition of (post)modemism, and its theoretical counterpart,
(post)structuraliml.
Kenneth Burke, writing befure World War II. noted on the basis of a
rhetorical analysis of Mein 'Kampf the possible coexistence of sincerity as
"the drastic honesty of paranoia" and the deliberation of shrewd, dema•
gogfc "Realpolitik of the M.aclilaYellian liOrt": "The Rhetoric of Hitler's
Battle," in The Philosophy of Urerary Fonrn Studw In Symbolic Action
(Baton Rouge: Louisiana State Unlverslty Press, 19"1), pp. 210lf.
29. Hahne, The Order of the Death'; Head, p. 357; Yehuda Bauer, The HolD-
caust in Hisiorical Per,pectlve, pp. 471f. Bauer notes that three of the lour
initial Emsatzgruppen were commanded by members of the intelllgent•
sia, p . 15.
 Notes to Pages 290-303
< 396 >

30. tfohne, The·Order of the Death'a Head, pp. 3631f. Their self-pity went as
far as to claim that "the real unfortunates were the liquidators them-
selves: Ibid., p. 364,
31. Hllhne, The Order of the Death's Head, p . 366.
32. Ibid, , pp. 3661f. See also the dlscus.sion by ~ul Hilberg, The Destruction
of the European Jews., pp. 274-29.3.
33. Gitta.Sereny, Into the Darkness (New Yor.k: McGraw-Hill 1974), p. 101:
cited b y Terrence Des Pres, "E~cremental Assault." in Howca"81: Reli-
glou.t and l'hllosophwal lmplicatiom, pp. 210ft'. An early account of tech-
nJques of de$ubjectillcation, though not named as such, wiU be found in
Bruno Bettelheim's informed Heart (New York: Free P,ress, 1960), es,p e,
cially in the chapter "Behavior in Extreme Situations: Coercton ," pp. 107-
176.
34. Mayer, ,vhy Did the HeaveM Not Darken?, pp. 16-19.
35. l"riedlander, "11:te '.Final Solution ,'" pp. 71-73.
36. Bauer, The Holocaust irt Historical Perspectives, p. 47f.
37. It was not so much evil itself that was banalized in Auschwitz and the
enennh1a(ion Cllfflps, as tts agents: the most ordinary persons were ca-
pable of the most evil acts.
38. 'Tue 'uncanny' is that class of the terrifying which leads back to something
long known to us, once very familiar." Sigmund Freud. "The Uncanny; in
On Ctllatit>lty and the Unconscicus, ed. Benjamin Nelson (New York:
H.arper & Row, 1958), pp. 1231f.
39, OzkJ, Writing and the Holocaust, pp. 280lf.
40. Bauer, ThP- Holocaust in ,fflnorical Perspective, p. 36.
4L Hommer on the Roe~, A Short Midrash R.eader, ed, Nahurn N. Glau.er
(New York: Shocken Books, 1962), p. 38.
42. Bauer, The Holocaust in Historical l'erspective , p. 52.
43. Ibid" p. 60.
44. Ibid., p. 71.

18. The Representation of Limits

1. Mary Douglas. Purity and Danger (Harmondsworth: Peng1iin, 1970). pp,
48, 53.
2. Leonardo da Vinci, Treatise on Painting, trans. A. Philip J.icMahon
(Princeton! Princeton University Press, 1956), p. 50.
3. Heiru'ich WOlfllin, Principles of Art History, trans. M. D. Hottinger
(New Yo.r'k: Dover. J950). p. ix.
4. See, for example, Victor ShklovskY, "Art as Technique.," In Buman For-
malist Criticism, ed. Lee T. Lemon and Marion J. Reis (Lincoln: Unive r-
sity of Nebrasb Press, 196.5), pp. 13- 16,

1.11 l'I .-11 .• 1

I I I II
I ''I Fil' ,., • ~ '•I" 7H ·O /,J
 Note$ to Pogea- 303--320
< .397 >

5. Aristotle. Meta11hy,ic8, l006a-l~.

6. L Kant, Critique of Ae61/ietic Judgment, sec. 28.
7. Femand Braudel. The Structures- of Everyday Life. vol, l, trans, Sian
Reynolds (New York: Ha,per & 'Row, 1982), p. 256.
8. On the role of language in the "Final Solution." see Berel Lang, Act and
Idea in the Nazi Genocide (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1990),
chaps. 1 and 4.
9. This proposal draws on Hayden White. "The Value of Narrativity in• the
Representation of Reality," Critical Inquiry. 1 (1980), 5-27-although I
alter somewhat the relation White defines between "annals" and ''cbroni-
cles."
10. On the issues of'fact-finding and interpretation between the lntenlional-
ists ~d the functionalists, see, for example, the ex:change between Saul
Friedlander and M·artin Broszat. ~A Controversy about the Historicization
of National Socialism," New German Critique. 44 (1988). pp. 81- 126;
Eberhard J~kel. Hitler. in Ce,,iuzr,y (Hanover, N.H. ; IJnlversity Press of
New England, 1984), pp. 29-46; Christopher R. Browning, "The Deci-
sion concerning the Final Solution," in Unanswered Questions, ed. Fran-
,;ois Furet (New York: Schocken, 1989). pp, 96-113. and Charles S,
Maier, The Unmalterable Past (Cambridge, Mass.: H~ard University
Press, 1988).
11. Salman Rushdie, ls Nothing Sacred? (New York: Penguin , 1990).
12. The progression !\ere will he evident: if Wstorical representation entails
moral limits, then the "imaginative" representation of a historical event
will be affected by the limits on both historical and artistic-representation.
To be sure, it is not only in respect to historical subjects that the limits On
artistic representation are pertinent, The commonplace that certain sty•
listic forms or genres are less or better able than others to accommodate
certain subjects is a v~rsion or the claim made here that art as such may
be less or better able than other expressive forms to represent certain
subjects.
13. Theodor W. Adorno, "Eng;i.gement." in Ce.,arn,nelte Scl,,ifteri (Frankfurt
am Main: Suhrkamp, 1974), p. 422; also in Negative Dialectics, trans.
E. B. Ashton (New York; Seabury, 1973) , p. 362.

19. The Book of the Destruction

I . Claude Lanzmann, in Nouvelle. Rkue de Psychaoolyse, 38 (1988), 263. (ln
Levi's Survival In Aus,;;hwltz the contett of this episode is a guard who
snatches an icicle from the newly-arrived and extremely thirsty prisoner.)
When Lanzmann, in his film, does ask why of Poli.sh peasants in the scepe
before the Qburch in Chelmno ("P.ourquoi toute cette histoire est arrivt5e

1.111'1.-II .• I

I •t f-fl'= T'I f t== "'1◄ 1 7,;--£1..1

 Note$ to Page, 321-334
< 398 >
au,c Juifs?") the explanation of deicide surfaces collectively.
2.. Jean-Fran9<1is Lyotard, The Poatmodem Condition: A Report on Know/.
edge (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota _fress, 1984). p. 78, It is in•
terestlng that Lyotard cites Diderot's half-fond, half-derogatory phrase,
"ma petite technique."
3 . Saul Friedlander. in Writing and the Holocawt, ed. Berel Lang (New
York; Holmes and Meier, 1988), p. 68.
4. JOrgen Habermas, EiM Art oon Sc~abwiclclung (Franlcfurt/Maln,
1987), p. 163; in English, Thi: NBW Conserooti8m: Cultural Cnlicinn and
the Hiatoriam' Debate (Cambridge, Mass., 1989).
5. For an authoritative overview of public opinion in Nazi EIU"Ope see Mi-
chael R. Manus, The Holocawt in Hutory (New York: New American
Library, 1989).
6. For Lyotard's most incisive reBections on the dilferend in relation to Kant
and in renns ofreasoning; witnessing, and consensus, reftections in which
Auschwitz plays a decisive part, see his work o.f 1983 translated as The
Dljferend: Phrases in Dispute (Minneapolis: University of M.innesota
Pre$$, 1988).
7. Lawrence L , Langer, Holccaust Testi111011y: The Ruin& of ftlemory (New
Haven: Yale University Press, 1991).
8. ln thinking about the testimonies as. representations I have been helped
by Hayden Whites Content of the Form; Dl8course and Hiltorical
Representation (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Onivenlty Press, 1987), eSl),
chap. 1,
9. Aharon Appelfeld, in Writing and the Holccauat, p . 86. Primo Levi did
not beg\n to write until two years after his release from the camps, at least
in part because of that same sen.se of unreality.
10. See Isaac Deutscher, '"The Jewish Tragedy and the Historian." in The
Non-Jewish Jew and other Essays, ed. Tamara Deutscher (London: 0¥-
ford University Preu. 1968),
11. See Terrence Des Pres, "Holocaust Laughter?" in Writing and the Holo-
camt, ed, 13erel UlJ!g.
12. 1'he question in this form is most sharply posed by Saul Friedlander, es-
pecially in "Historical Writing and the Holocaust" in Lai\g, Writing and
the Holccauat, and '"The "Final Solution': Unease in Interpretation.- ffi.J.
tor:y and Memory, l, no. 2 (Fall/Winter 1989).
13. Terrence Des Pres, Prai8es and Dispraise,: Pottry and Polltia, the 1\oen•
Heth Century (New York: Penguin Books, 1988). "Prolog."'
14. Fortunofl"Video Archive for Holocau·st Testimonies (Yale), T-58.
15, See C.:eslaw Milosz, The Collected 1'oenf8, 1931-1987 ~ew York: Ecco
Press, 1988). My attention was drawn to this poem by Robert Pinsky's
essay in Testimon.11: Contemporary Writers Make the Ho/ocawt Personal,
ed. David Rosenberg (New York: Random House, 19139).

•.d/'1.-11 .,1 I
11•1· EP.' T'I ,)~ '4◄• ;-1,1-bM
 Contributors

Perry Anderson, Professor of History, University of California, Los

Angeles
Mario Biagioli, Assistant Professor of History, University of California,
Los Angeles
Christopher R. Brownipg, Profei.sor of History, Pacific Lutheran Uni-
versity, Taooma
Sande Cohen, teaches !n the Critical Studies Department, California
Institute of the Arts
Dan Diner, Professor of History, Tel-Aviv University and Univers'itat
Essen
Sidra DeKoven Ezrahi, Assistant Professor of Comparative Jewish Lit-
erature, Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Yael S. Feldman, Associate Professor of Hebrew and Comparative Lit-
erature, New York University
John Felstiner, Professor of English, Stanford University
Amos Funkenstein, University Professor, The Koret Chair of Jewish
History, University of California, Berkeley
Carlo Ginzbutg, Professor of History. University of California, Los
Angeles
Peter Haidu, Professor of French, University of California, Los
Angeles
Geoffrey H. Hartman, Professor of English and Comparative Litera-
ture, Yale University; Revson Project Director, FortunotTVideo Ar-
chive for Holocaust Testimonies at Yale
Martin Jay, Professor of History, University of California, Berkeley
Anton Kaes, Professor of German, University of California, Berkeley
Dominick LaCapra, Goldwin Smith Professor of Europeari Intellec-
tual History, Cornell University
Berel Lang, Professor of Philosophy and Humanistic Studies, State
University of New York, Albany
Vincent P. Peoora, Associate Professor of English, University of Cali-
fornia, Los Angeles
Eric L. Santner, Associate Professor of German, Princeton University
Hayden White; Professor of History of Consciousness, Univer.,ity of
California, Santa Cruz
< 399 >

1.111'1.-II .' I

I 'I FIi' Tl. ~ ,,,,, ;-1,,·-01,1

 01 l1;h:al irum
UNIVERSITY 11f MIC"HIC,l>,M
Abel, 275 Buth, Johnt The Literahlre of &hau,-
Abish, Walter: How German l:s 11/W~ llon, 220
Deu18ch 1st &? , 156 Barthes, Roland, 47, 48-49, 51, 90;
Abraham, Dr., 204, 376n63, 3T!n69 My1/wlogie1, 37ln46; "To Write: An
Ad'enauer, Konrad, 218 Intransitive Verb?" 48, 3421123
Adorno, Theodor W., 2, 4, 178, 228, Baudouin, Fran1,<>is, 85
242.. 250, 251, 259, 262. 267, 316, 322. &udrillard, Jean, 370o35
323, 3.59n 13, 389-390n28; Diakkti/,; Bauer, Yehuda, 292
tkr Aujkl,;rung (with Max Horkhei• Beethoyen, Ludwig van: "Ode to joy;"
mer), 155, J63, 164, 165, 166-167, 219
168, 169; Neg,:Hue Dialectic,, 165, 'J/J7 Bellow, Sauh Mr. Sammhri Planet, 315
Aeschylus, 328 Benjamin, w.Jter, 157, 213, 284
Althusser. Louis. 156. 3951\22 Benn. Gottfried, 218
Am~ry, Jean, 244, 263 Bennington, G.• 177
Anderson, Perry, 8, 353n35 Benveniste, Emile, 96
Anton~. Carlo, 90; Dnllo ,torlcirmo a/la Berger, Alan, ·223, 224
IOcio/ogla, 87· Berger,. Peter L. , 71
Apel, Karl-Otto, 105, 106 8erger. Robert L ., 376-377067
Appclfeld, Aharon, 17, 19, 229, 230- Berlioz. Hector, 24'Z
234, 2:70, 275, 321, 327, 383nn27,34; Bernal, John D., 186
Boihnhettn 'Ir Hanofeah. 230, 231; ·Bersani, Leo, 261
Be'et Ube 'onoh 'Ah!,t, 231, 232; Hokoo- Bettelheim, Bruno, 3.5, 191, 243
lOMt Vehopa-9rim, l!Jl; HarMtzud,i/,, Beyerohen, Alan D., 192, Scientut.
231: 1:fo'or Ve/tal;ootonet, 231; 1.1fl{ier Hitl~r. 186- 187
Ke'ilhor, Ha'ayl,,, 230. 231 ; Ma..ot Bi,ogjoli. Mario, 14
BegoofBuhon, 3831121; Michwt Blake, Wliliam: •shrine of the Imagina-
Ha'or, 232, 233, 234, 383n28; Rltipat tion," 215
Ha'e1h, '231: Tor Hopeuiot, 230, 2.11, Blanchot, Maurie&: The Writing of the
383n28, TQ the Land ofCatttrils, 231 Duo.lier, 207
Arendt, Hannah. 26, 131, 132, 333 Bloch. Marc, 3401!18
Aristotle, 003, 328', 332 Boccioni, Umberto, 94
Arnold, Gottliied, 73, 74, 79, 80 Bochen, Yaalcov, 227
Auerbach, Erich, 50, 51; Mimeri&; TM Bohrer., Karl, 180
Representation of Reality in We.rtem Bourdieu, Pierre, 195
~ roture, 50 Brae.her. Ku! Dietrich, 124
Augustine. 'l'.l. 72, 79. 80: De Ci;vltate Btaudel, Femand, 305, 306
Del, 71 Brecht, Bertoli, 213, 222
Broszat, Martin, 33, 120, 121, 122- 12J,
12-l, 128, l48- l49, 358nl2
B.. Ernst. 377n68 Browning, Gh~her R. , 4, 7, 8, 323,
Bach, Johann Sebastian, 241 364-36Snl7
Ba,,clc, Leo, 347nl9 Buber, Martin, 248
Balchtin, Mikhail, 34.tn9 Bunyan, John, 242
Balzac, 1-looor~ de: l'eatJ tk chagrin, 170 Burddwdt, Jakob, 66

< 401 >

 lnder
< 402 >
Burke, Kenneth, 395n28 94. 101. 103, 352n32, ~ : "Anli-
Bush, George, '117 storicismo; 89: Contributo alla crl&o
Butz, Arthur, 312; The Hoos of the d( me nuro, 87; Logica come acienu
Tu,.,ntieth Century; 312 tkl co""""°"""'• 88; Siona, Cl"O!IGCO
• fa/u ltQrie, 95; Storio ridofta ,otto II
~ . Julius, 306 cont:etto getlMdk thllam, La. 81, 88,
Cain, 275, 331 92-9.1: Teona t ltona tklla 1torlogra-
Caroll, David, 6 fi,,, 89, 95
Carr, Edwanl Rallett: What I• Hutory?,
94 Da Vinci. LeQnardo: Treotl.,e on l'ofot·
Ca.ssiodorus, 83 mg. 302, 314
Celan, Paul, 17, 18, 19, 240- 2,41, 2,42,, D•w;dowicz, Lucy, 32
243, 244, 246, 2,49- 250, 251. 252, 259, Deleuze, Cities, 369n.28
280, 263-264, 265- 266, 'IJ37, 268, 269. de Man, Hendrik, 218
270-211, 272. 273, 274, 276. 321,330, de Man., Paul, 218
362n3,. 386n34., 388nl6, 389n23; "As· Derrida, Jacques. 49, 51, 100, 116, 165,
pen Tree,• 272-273; "Convenatfon 111 'IJ38, 278, 390n31; "Of an Apocalyptic
the Mountain," 269-270; "Engfuhr• Tone Recently Adopted tn Philoso-
ung," 250: "In Eins," 2681"In Gestalt phy," 206; "White Mytbology," 368n5
eines Eben," 244; Pa,4 Ce/an; /.Ast Descartes; Renl, 100. 349-350Y\4 l
l'oeN, 390n37; suicide (1970), 254: Des Pres, Terreni,e, l!ilS. 291. 333
1odesfuge," 240, 241, 242~254, 260, Deutscher, rsaac, 329: "Jewish Tngedy
262- 263, 265, 266, 267.:.268, 271, 272, and the Hfstorian., The." 028
274, 275; "Todesfuge· recorded, 250. Diderot, Denu. 397--398n2
254; "Todesfuge• text, 25.5- 256; "To- DilO..ey, Willielm, 98.' 99
desfuge" translated. 257- 251!: "Thd.!!S· Diner, D&11, 11
tango," 245 Di11ur, Yeb.iel, S1¥ Katzetnlk
Celine, Louu F!!rdinand, 209 Douglas, Mary, 301-302
Certeau, Michel de, 86, 87, 90, 352n20: Oroysen, Johann Cust•v, 129
Ecrltun, tk l'ht,1orre, C:, 86, 87, 94_ Dii,er, Albrecht: "Melancolia," 219
Chaplin, Charlie, 212
Chlade11ius·. 3471124 Eckhardt, Alice, 43
Christie , Douglas, 339nl l. 339nl2 Eckhardt. E. R., 43
Chun:bill, Winston, 344n20 Eb.re, -Ida, 386n33
Cicero: De Republlco, 71 Eichm&11n, Adolf, 21>, 27. 103, 229,
Clark, Tun, !78 338n8
Clever, Edlth, 379n22 Elias, Norbert, 131, 132
Clill'ord. James, 170 Eliot, T. S,, Tfwt Wom Lo,ul.,,247
Cohen, Sande, 14 Enzensberger, Hans-Magnus: Untergong
Cohn, Nonn&11, lU du Titanic, D6,; 219
CoUn, Amy D., 275 Evans, filchard: ln Hitler', Shadow:
Collingwood, R. G.: The ltka oflfu• Wt1t German Hbtorion, and the
lory, 87 AttBl>lpl to Eaco~ 1M Naz;I PMI,
Conrad. Joseph, 168: H•art of Dari/,-,, 60,344n20. 356n3
158 Ezrahi, Sidra DeKoven, 18, 19, 229, ~
Constantine (emperor ·or Rome), 84
C ~veooeur, J. Hector St. fohn, 63 Fanon, Frantz, 160, 169, 170
Cnx;e , Benedet\Q, 9, 87, 88, 89, 90. 9 1. Fas,binde,:, l!ainer Werner, 261

1 111'1,II 1
 Index
< 403 >

Faurisso,i, Robert, II,, 86, 92, 93, l<l'l; Gobioeau, Joseph Arthll(, de, 63
179, 326, 3391112 Goebbels, Joseph, 213, 220
Feldman, Yael S., 18 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 73, m,
Felman, Shoshan-. 322, 337nll 247; F1JJUI, 247
Felstiner, John, l7, 18, 2.65, Zl86 Goll, Claire. 2M
Fest, ,-,him C., Hitkr-A Co,.,,«r Goll, Yvan, 2'3, 263
(film), vtJ8 Gombricb, Ernst, 370n29
Fichte, Johann Gottlieb, 69 Goody, Jack: T4 Domuti,;olii,n of Ow
Fink~ Id-, 17, 321 Savogt Mind., 195
Fisher, Eugen, 372nl3 Gouldner. Alvin, 106
111aubert, Gustave, M"""1M 80Vd,V, Gounod, Charles. 241
100:Solammbcl. 110 Gr.mud, Antonio, 65. 91: l'rvOfl Note-
F1eclt, Ludwllc, 200, 201, ~ . booh, 00-91
375n48; Gen,im and. ~ of o Grass, Gunter: From IM Diary of a
Sdffllifa: Fad, 199; "Problems al the Snail, 334; "What Shall We •Tell Our
Science of Science: l99-200 Children?" 334
Fogelman, Eva. 38ln9 Greenberg. Clement, 100
Foua.ult. Michel. 65, 90, 105, 201, 202, Cr,,enbcrg, Irving, 333
215,366o25, 39Sn22 Greenberg, Uri Zvi: RiMl>ot Haookar.
Frank, Anne, 315 224
Freud, Sigmund, 116,144, 14.7, 151, Griffel. Henri, 86; Troltl de, diff,renlt1
153, 168. 174, 175. 177, 181, 325t >011a de preuvu qvl "'""'"' aitablir
B-i,ond t/M l'letWrw l'rlna,,le, 12. la lllrlU tk l'hlltolrw. 85
145- 146, 151- 152 Grossman, David. 17. 227, 235, 236,
Friedlander, Saul, 36, 38, 40, 41, 110, 237, 274, 321, 384n37; 'Ayen "£,.,ch
120, 123-124, 128, 148, 172, 'i/117, 223, 'AhavahlS•• Under: J;,ow, 235- 237,
~- 3}2-. 322. 342n26. 36307, ~ : 238, 39l-392.n52t Hlf/OOCh Hllfltdi!TM
-Bronal letters, 120, W-li4. 128, Smile of tit,, Lamb. 236, 237-238
149, 358-358nll, 364nl7
Frye, Northrop, 54 Habermas, Jlirgen. 3, 13, 14. 59, 61, 62,
Fulruyama. Francis: •End ol Blstory, 105, 106, HIS, ill, lit, 115, 116, 117,
The?; l!il6 118. 119, J,20, 123, 155, 156, 157-158,
Fuoken.steln, Amos. 8 159. 160. 161. 163-164, 165. 166, 161.
168. 170. 171-177. 179, 180. 181, 182.
183. 184, 1116, 197, ros. 322, 3.5&3,
Gadamer, Hans-Georg, 99 358nl0,364nl7,367nl2,368n5;"Con-
Gebirt1g, Monlechai, 386o33 o:emlng the Public IJse of History,·
Cehlen, Arnold, 2l8: "Ober /cu/run,ll,, I 16- 117, 118; The New Conservatum:
Krvl4ll1aotw11." 218 Cult,irol'Crilicilrn and U.. Hi.r-
Geiger, Abraham, 347n 19 lOnan, Dthate, 173, 174, 175-177,
G,mtile, Giovanni, 7, 9. 88- 89, 90, 91, 182
92, 93, 94, 101, 102, 352n32, 353n33, lfabnemano, Samuel, O,goMn Iler rolls
3S4n51, La fi/o•C/fa, di Mon:, 90: Teo- OIWlU..n Heil/;unde, 363n)0
no gtnerole del/o 41)irlto com,, otto Haidu. Peter, 19
puro, 89 Haman. 3l8
Giard, Luce, 86 Hartman, Geoffrey H., 19, 20
Glnzburg, Carlo, 2, 8, 9, JO, 99, 101, Hartog, Fhn~ls, u
mlrolr t!Htro-
10'2, 103, 105 dote, 352n20

1 111'1,II 1

I ''I ~I I ~ , '•I•• I" ""I

 Index
< 404 >

Hegel. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, 75, Jilclcel. Eberhard, 112

175, 177, 206,323, 349-350n<ll; "Phi- Jaeger, Karl, 21
losophy of llistory," m, 170 Jameson, Fredric, 101
l:leidegge(, Martin, 1. 8, 79, 94, 100, Jay, Martin. 9, 10
101. Ul2. 115. 165 Je.nninger, Philipp, 386n33
Reine, Heinrich, 247; ·11,e Silesian Jens, Walter, 244
Weavers, .. 248 Jesus, 71- 72, 74, 326
Heller, Andrt, 215,219, 362n4 J~of Arc. 43
Herodotus, 72 Johnson. Or;. 332
Hesiod, 331 Joseph, 70
Heyd.rich. Reinhard, 28 Josephus, F'lavius, 83-84 , 8.5; The Jewish
Hilberg, Raul, .26, 279, 280, 339nll: War. 83, 84, 85
T/v,, De,troctlDn of tlte European loyre, James, 209
]ltWI, 26 Judas l$Clltiot. 72
Hill'e sum, Etty, I
Hillgn.,ber, Andreas, 42, 43, 55, 56-64,
103, 113, 114-116, 153, 155, 340- K.. Helen, 333
341n7, 3.58nl2; Zwel,tri,,; Unlergang: Kae-S, Antpn, 14. 15-16
Die 7,er,cl,J,,gung de, Deut,alien Kail<a. Fnnz, 264, 313, 388nl7; Meta-
lleic/v,, und ·da., Ende du Euro- morpliom, 76-77
pai,c/iffl Judetttu(M, 8, 42, 54, 59, Kaniuk. Yoram, 23.5, 236, 274; Adam
63-64, J48,340..34Jn7, 344n20 BenJ'(skv/Adam Rs.ru,.,,,cted, 23.5,
f,Jlmmler, Heinrich, 16, 124, 200, :216- 'Aravi Too/A Good Arab, 238
217, 284-285, 287,, 288, 289, 290, 292, Kant, Immanuel, 6, 68, 100, 177, 304-
293,294, 359n17, 390--394.1)16, 305, 321, 323, 349-350n41, 398n6;
3951>21 Croundworlc of tlut Mmiphyail: of
Hi ndenburg, Paulvon. S.~ Morali,305
Hitler. Adolf. 7, 15, 16, 26, 32, 33, 55, Kater. Mic,hae.1 K;, 189. 1)90. 192. 19'1.
56, 58, 59, 60, 76, 79, 114, 125, 160, 197, 375n45; Doctof& ;,,.de, Hitler.
162, 196, 198, 211-212. 213, 214, 217, 186, 187
218,220.28$. 294. 308. 3 15,320. Kat2'!1:ttik (Yehle! Oinur), 223, 229
360nl9, 362·n2; films about. 14- 16, Kershaw, Jan, The Hitler "Mvth~, lmage-
z.oe a,1(1 /Jeo/ity In the Third lltlch. 123
Hobbe., Thomas, 74 Kersten, Felix, 16
Hochhuth, Rolf, 245; Tit« Deputy, 267 Kiefer, Anselm, 4, 221, 241, 254, 266-
Holderlio·, Johann C. F., 222 · '}1;7, 275, 337n8: "Oein Aschenes
Holthusen, Rans EgQn, 249 Haar, Sulamith," '11',7; ' Dein Coldenes
Horl\heimer, M-ax, 14, See auo Ad<lmo. Haar. M;uprete," 266i "Mupn,te,"
Theodor W,. D/41u.ti/r der Auj1tl4n.ng 267; "Occupations,"' 267: "Sulamith."
Howe, Irving, 228, 231 267; 'To the Unknown !'linter," '}1;7
Hogo, Victo~340n2 Kierkcgoard, S,ren, 117
Huizinga, Johan: Waning of the Middle Klein, .Hillel, 227
Age,, 43 Kohl. Helmut. 363n7
Kovnct, Abba. 272, 273
lac:hmes I. 70 Kracaaer, Siegfried: Hiltory-1'1,,t Last
lsidot of Seville. 72 Tl11ngs Before the IA.rt, 103
Krause, Karl, Wilhelm. 21(, 21.S
fa~. Edm011d: The Book of Q,;utioo.s, K'.rauss, R,. 370n29
276 K'rcn. George M., 128

1.111'1.-II .• 1

1,•, ~LI t r, f i: ,,,,1 111 n.,1

 lnder
< 405 >

Kuhn, ThomaJ, 194; Stroctun, of S-cie11• Maier, Charles S., 27, 58, 63, 108-109.
tific ll~oolut,oTUI, 199, 375"48 356n3
Ku~nutsov, Anato11: Babi Ya,; 2ji5 Malevich, Kazimir, 321
Mallarme, Stephane, 100
Labriola, Antonio: Lettere a Ben.tktto Malle, Louis, 321
Croc,,, 1885~1904, 3.52n32 Mane.tho, 69- 71, 72, 79, BO
LaCapra, Dominick, 4, 11, 12, 144, 145 Martlnf, Rayrnundus, 349n36
Laroue•Labarthe, Philippe: "The- Nazi Man. Karl, 14, 75-76, 79, BO, 90, 91,
Myth" (with Jean-Luc Nancy), 209 158,114, 177, 34Qn2; The.tu on
Lang, Berel, 17, 43-48, 52, 99, 100, Feuerboch, 90
272, 273: Act and Idea In 1k Nu:1,I Mayer, Amo, 32. 161, 162, 163, 167;
Cenocitk, 47 Why Did the Heaven, Not Darken?
Lan,g, Fritz: M (film), 212 The "Fioal Solulfon" In Hlnor1J, 161-
Langer, La-nee L : Howcawt Tedi• 163
mon!I: Th£ 11.,,,._. of Memary. 325 Meir. Golda, 81
tan:unann. Claude: Shoah (81m), 17, Mengele, Joseph, 190, 191, 202, l!OI,
208, 2151221, 320, 332-333 376n63
Leibniz, Cottfried Wilhelm, 347n24 Merton, Robert K . , 185, 186
Lessing, Gotthold £ ., .222: Laocoon, 327 Milosz, Czeslaw, 334; "Song about Por•
Levi, ltamar, 227 reJ.in." 334
Levi, J'rimo. 19, 52, 96, 100, 101, 244, Milton, Edith, S41n20
263-264, 272, 320, 332, 377n69, Mintz, Alan, 229, 23()
388nn17,l8, 398n9; The Drowned and Mommsen, Hans, 33
the Saved, 377n69; If Not Now, Mose s, 70
WhmP, 244; Sulema periodico, 1/, 52- Moses, St~phane, 269
53: 1ulcide (1987). 264 Mourt. \Volfgang Amadeus, 318
Levin, Ho.noch, 225; )'j.n,n,i 'IIJOO, 225 MOiler-Hiil, Benno, 187-189, 192, 194,
Levinas, Emmanuel , 281-282, 283, 323, 197, 372nnl4,15, 375n45
3951123; Totolltl et infini: Es:tai mr Mussolini, Benito, 7
l'merioritt, 28:1 Nancy, Jean-Luc: '"The· Nazi Myth" (with
Levi-Straus~. Claude. 63, 65 Llcoue•Lal>ar\he), 209
Lifton, Robert Jay, 152, 189, 190, 191. Napoleon, 318
192, 194, 197, 203, 204, 364n 12, Needham. Joseph, 186
375n45; Nazi Doctor,, 35. 187, l89 Needler, Howard, 229
Lud,mann, Thomas, 71 Nretz.sche, Friedrich, 7, 99, 105, 108.
LudendQrlf, Erich, 55 15-5, 156, 222, 24&. The Birth o/Trog•
Ludwig n (kfng of Bavaria), 218 •dJ/, 328
Lulalcs, Ceorge, 165 Nolte, Ernst, 27, 55, 106, 113, HS, 116,
Luria, A. R., 67 117, 147- 148, 153, 159, 181, 196-197,
Luther, Martin, 74, '248 198, 20.5, 3.58n12t "Verg;,ngeriheit, die
Lyotard, Jean-Fran~b. 5. II, 14, 96, nfcbt vergehen will ." 106, 113-114,
102, 171, 177-U!2, 184, 208, 261, 266, 147-..148
321, 322,323,326,331, 370n29, 3ff7- Nyisili, Miklos, 191, 203, 204, 376n63,
398n2; The Diffsrtrllt Phratt, in Du- 377n69
,,..,e,179-JBO, '1J1'/, 387n6. 396n6;
"Freud Aoco:rding to C~zanoe." 178; ◊bema11s, K., and S.: "Schrri/¥n. w4e
HNiegger and "the Jew," 6; The Po,t- et wirklich wart" Auful,chnungen Karl
modem Conditwn: A Reporl on Duerluifaeldem aw tkn Jahrni 1933-
Krwwltdgt, 321 l!HS, 123

1.11/'ldl .• 1

1,•, t,'ll t ~, f i: ,,,◄( l•t I\, I

 < 406 >

Ophir, Adi, 201-202. 203, 366n25 Said, Edward, 168

Ossacniph. 10 Sanlllyana. George, 156
Ozicl<. Cynthia. 295, 321 Santner, Eric L , 11, ll-13, 322
Schiller, Jo!\ann C. F. von, 7
l'llgis, Dan , 18-19, 270, 271, 272. 213.. Schipper, lguty, 326
274,275,276,321, 39l..:392n52: Schubert, Franz; Erlllonlg, ~l
"Written in Pencil in the Sealed Schuler [Ding-], Erwin. 1.99, 200, 201
Railway-Car," 271-272, 273, 275 Seeckt. Hans von, 56
Pllul, 7'l, 73 Sem.el. ?-l•v.t>. 227, 38ln9
Pecora, Vincent P., 13-1◄ Senesb, liAAna, 'J!J.3
Peleg, Dorit, 'J!J.7 Serr.a, Renato, 95. 102. 100; .Partenza di
Peleg. <><led. 'l27 un gruppo di .wldali per la Ubia, 94
Pefl}'-Amltai. Lily, 'l27 Seurat, Georges: A Sunday Afternoon on
Peter, 72 Ille 1,/,,,.J of I.A Groruk J1Jtu, 178
Peter the Venenlble, 78. 349nn36,37 Shackle, George !,.. S., 132, 134
Petrus (rabbi), 72 Shaked, Gershon. 238, F~ng IM HtJW-
Picasso. Pablo: Guemica, 245 cou,I, 229
Pierce, C, S,. 296 Shakespeare, William, 32.7, 329; Klrig
Pinsker, Leo, 80 Lear, 332, Macbeth, 320; Trollu, and
Plath, Sylvia: Ariel, 228, 260 Cre,;rida, 327
Plutarch: Ut>111, 54 Shatzm'lller, Joseph, 811
PQPper, lwl, 345-346n8 S,konlci, Wladyslaw, 3'Hn20
Proctor, Robert N., 193, 194, 200: Racial Sloterd,jk, Peter, 173, 174
Hygiene. 192-19.l Smith, Morton: Jena tlte Magw;ion.
Proudhon. Pierre-Joseph, 340nl! 341nl9
Proust, Marcel, 209 Sobol, Jo,hu.a. 225. 235t GMtto, 22.5-
~ . 233; Hapa/alinavU/The Pa/e•lln•
Quinoni. Dayas, 82, 85 Ian, 238
Quintilian, 66 Sontag, Susan, ,209
Ranke. Leopold von. 86 Sopb~les, 3.28
Rappaport , Leon. 128 Spencer. Joh1>: D, /egil,,,. et mDrihw
Rascher, Sigmund, 200, 376--3T7n67 ludoeorum. 70
l\eagan, Ronald, 277 Spiegelman, Art: ,.,_, A su,,,ioor~
Rell~ Edpr, 150, Hrimal' (fllm), 149, Tale, 41 , 42
150-151 Srebnik, Simon, 17
Rhodes, James, 1~ Sialin. Joseph, 114, 196, 198
Rosen, R. D. : Strike Tltrte You' re Dead, Sllu\gl, Ftan~ 338n8
315
Staulfenberg, Claus von, 58, 216
l\osellfeld, Alvin H., 357n4 Steiner, George. 43,228, 317, 33:); After
Rosenzweig, Franz. frl, 248 Babel: A,pecl.s of lAngiu,.ge a,.J
Tron,lolil>n, 215; '"The Long Life of
Roskies, David, 'J!J.9
Roth, Phil(p: Tlte,Gltan Wriler, 315 Metaphor: An Approach to 'the
Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. 289 Shoah,'" 378n6; The Portage ID St.
Rushdie, Sahruut, 31.f CriJtobal ofA. H., 79. 315
Ryle. Gilbert, 349--350n4l Steven,s, Wallace, 331
Sturmer. Michael, 113
Sacks, Oliver, 67 Styron, Willim. 260; Sophie'• Choice,
Sadan, Dov, 232. 234 2211

1.d/'1.-11 .• I

11'1 ~I' ' ,., • ~ '•I•• I" /I• I

 lndn
< 407 >

Sutzkever, Avraham, 272, 273-274; W'ardi, Dina: No,'n Hahotam, 226-227

"Mother." 39ln♦9 Washburn, Katharine, 276
Syberberg. Han• jilrgen, 4, 15-16, 329. Watkin, Evan, 269 '
337n8; Hitler: Bin Film au, D..,t,d;. Weber, Max, 115, 165
land, 14-16, .208-218, 219, 2.20, 221, Wehler, Hans-Ulrich, 58, 59, 61
222, '362,,4; Die No,;/it, 379n2.2 Weindllng, Paul, 372-373nl8, 373nl9
Weiss, Sheila Faith, 375n54
TacilUS, 12 Weizmann, Chaim. TT, 114
Tagg. J., 179 Wertmilller, Lina, 4
Tai, Uriel, 124, 138 White, Hayden, 2, 6, 7, 8, 9- 10, 11, 12,
Teny, Sarah: Poltind'• Plac,, in Europe, l!O, 30, 32, 54, 66, 87, 89, 90, 91 , 92,
344n20 93, 94, 97-98, 99, JOO, 101, 10'.l, 100,
Tertulllan, J.t6n13 104. 105, 172, 325, 3531135; "11,e Bur-
Theweleil, !Oaw, !70 den of History,- 91, 97; The Conlfflt of
Thomas, D, M.• 261. 389n22. T/leWhlt~ the Fprm: Narrative DuC<IUrtt ond
Hotel, 228, 26.5 Hlltorlcal lltpn!lffllalion, 55, 97; and
ThortW of Monmouth, 78 Crooe, 87, 89, 90, 101; Ginzburg's
Tolstoy, Leo., 95, 10'.li War and Psoa., 95 criticism of. 2, 101. l02, 103, 105: Me-
Tournier, Michel. 4 tohJttory: Tloe Hiltorlcal lmagil\Otion
Tnlp,p, Wilhelm, 22---.231 338112 In Nl,..,tunlh.CentvryEurope, 54,
Troelucb, Ernst, 68 68, 87- 88, 97, 100, 343n3; '"llte. Poli•
Trunk, Jsaiah, 13.'l tics of Interpretation,- 7 , 9 , 92: TrOf>ic,
Tucbolslcy, ii::urt, 222 of Ducourtt, 89, 90, 97
Wiesel, Elie, 96, 110,. 1-13, 150. 228.
Vallatl, Giovanni, 353035 317, 365n21
Van Gogh, Vincent, 318 WiUiam of Nangis (contlnuator of), 83,
Verschuer, Otmar von, 191 84, 85
Vloo, Giovanni Battiita, 90 Wilson, JIQbert, 213
Vidal-Naquet. Pierre. 8, -20, 32, 18, 86, Winch. ]';, 105
93, 94, 352.n-20: "Flavius Josephus &ncl Winrikott, D. W. , 146, 363n9
Masada," 84; Lu o,14s,ir1,t <U 14 ""'71- Wi1'genstein, Ludwig, 105
oiro, 86; Lu Julf,, ta mbnofn, et le WilllBio, Heinrich, 300
prunil, 84; "Paper Eichmann, A," Woolf. Virginia: To TM Llgluhowe, 50
84,86 Wordsworth, William, 330
Visconti, Luchino, 4
Vocgelln, Eric, 124 Yeboshua. A. ll .. 230; Facing tloe For-
Voltaire, FBl\9)i1-Marie Arouet, 93, ull, 223
300,327 Yerushalmi, Yosef Hayim: Zokhor. Jin,;
i,/i Hl.rto'IJ and Jewl.rli Memo'IJ. 229
W , Teresa, 191, 204, Im, 37in69 Yobanan (rabbi), 296
\¼gi,nsell, Johann: T.00 igMo mlonu, Young, James E., 229
349n37
Wagner, Richard. 213, 218, 222, 330; Zimmer, Christian, 211
U..b,,alod, 241 ; Jtie!w (opera), 2 15 Zundel, Ernst, 34, 339nll

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