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Preface

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 June 2012

Robert P. Ericksen
Affiliation:
Pacific Lutheran University, Washington
Affiliation:
Gig Harbor, Washington
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Summary

Preface

In 2004, I was invited by Professor Milton Shain at Cape Town University to give the biennial Kaplan Holocaust Lectures. Those lectures represent the first time I formally combined my interest in German churches and German universities. They also represent the first time I began explicitly to consider the question of Holocaust complicity in relation to these two institutions. The following summer, Christopher Browning and I hosted a small conference in Gig Harbor, Washington, on the topic of “Future Directions in Holocaust Studies.” It was at this conference, funded by Zev Weiss and the Holocaust Education Foundation, that I began to ponder more seriously another question: If we try to identify complicity in the Holocaust, does that mean we are also identifying how not to be complicit? Does scholarship on the Holocaust imply a right, or even an obligation, to search for “lessons” of the Holocaust?

Anyone familiar with Holocaust education will recognize the ubiquity of this idea of lessons, whether in teaching children not to bully or teaching adults to value tolerance and oppose injustice. These are worthy goals. However, pieties in response to the Holocaust can become saccharine and simplistic. In the worst case, they can trivialize events and impede understanding. The Holocaust was horrific, probably beyond our understanding, and it likely has no “meaning” in any important sense of the word. Furthermore, anyone familiar with the norms of modern scholarship will detect another problem in the instrumental use of Holocaust education. Objectivity is an important expectation among scholars. Can that be reconciled with turning history into moral judgments or the pronouncement of moral lessons? The nineteenth-century German, Leopold von Ranke, set the standard for historians when he said we must describe history “as it actually was,” without letting our present concerns or points of view impinge.

Type
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Complicity in the Holocaust
Churches and Universities in Nazi Germany
, pp. xiii - xviii
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2012

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  • Preface
  • Robert P. Ericksen, Pacific Lutheran University, Washington
  • Book: Complicity in the Holocaust
  • Online publication: 05 June 2012
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139059602.001
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  • Preface
  • Robert P. Ericksen, Pacific Lutheran University, Washington
  • Book: Complicity in the Holocaust
  • Online publication: 05 June 2012
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139059602.001
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Preface
  • Robert P. Ericksen, Pacific Lutheran University, Washington
  • Book: Complicity in the Holocaust
  • Online publication: 05 June 2012
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9781139059602.001
Available formats
×