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History, Memory, and the Historian: Dilemmas and Responsibilities

Author(s): Saul FriedlnderSource: New German Critique, No. 80, Special Issue on the Holocaust (Spring - Summer, 2000),pp. 3-15Published by: New German CritiqueStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/488629 .

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History, Memory,and the Historian:Dilemmas and Responsibilities

Saul Friedlander

On July 9, 1942, Henry Montor, the President of the United Pales-tine Appeal, asked Richard Lichtheim, the representative of the JewishAgency in Geneva, to send him a 1500-word article reviewing the posi-tion of the Jews in Europe. "I feel at present quite unable to write a'report'," Lichtheim answered Montor on August 13, "a survey, some-thing cool and clear and reasonable. .... So I wrote not a survey butsomething more personal, an article if you like, or an essay, not of1500 words but of 4000, giving more of my own feelings than of the'facts.'. . ." Lichtheim ends his accompanying letter with "all goodwishes for the New Year to you and the happier Jews of 'God's owncountry'." Lichtheim's essay, entitled "What is Happening to the Jewsof Europe," opens with the following two paragraphs:

A letterhas reachedme from the UnitedStates,askingme 'to reviewthepositionof the Jewsin Europe.'This I cannotdo because the Jewsof Europearetodayno morein a 'position'thanthewatersof a rapidrushingdown into some canyon,or the dust of the desertlifted by atornadoand blownin all directions.I cannot even tell you how manyJews there are at present n this orthattown, in this or thatcountry,becauseat theverymoment of writ-ing thousandsof them are fleeing hitherand thither,from Belgiumand Holland to France(hopingto escape to Switzerland), rom Ger-many- becausedeportationo Polandwas imminent to FranceandBelgium,where thesame orders ordeportation avejust been issued.Trappedmice running n circles. They are fleeing from Slovakia to

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4 History, Memory, and the Historian

Hungary,romCroatiao Italy .. At thesame ime,thousands rebeingshiftedunderNazisupervisionrom heghettoof Warsawoforced-laborampsnthecountryurtherast,whileother housandsjustarrivedromGermanyr Austria rethrownntotheghettosofRigaorLublin...

We do not know whether, when Lichtheim sent his "essay," onAugust 13, 1942, he was privyto the informationhatfive days earlierhis Geneva colleague, GerhardRiegner, had conveyed to the StateDepartment nd the ForeignOffice. In fact,the planfor a generalexter-minationof EuropeanJewry that Riegnertransmitted o LondonandWashingtonhad already been implementedfor months; by August1942, close to a million and a half EuropeanJews had been extermi-nated.Yet, even if Lichtheim'sdescriptionof "what was happening othe Jews of Europe"was factuallyfalse because it missed the definingaspectof these events, totalphysicalextermination,t conveys in wordsnot to be forgotten, omething hatdefies directexpression: he sense ofdespairand doom of tens and tens of thousandsof Jews fleeing "hitherand thither" ike "trappedmice running n circles,"as well as - unre-portedby him, but sensed throughout is essay - the suffocatingterrorof theremainingmillions."I am burstingwith facts,"Lichtheimwenton, "butI cannottell themin an article of a few thousandwords. I would have to write for yearsand years. . . . That means I really cannot tell you what has happenedand is happeningto five million persecutedJews in Hitler's Europe.Nobody will ever tell the story- a storyof five millionpersonal rage-dies everyone of which wouldfill a volume."

As strangeas HenryMontor'sdemand or a 1500-wordreporton thesituationof theJews in Europemay appear o us today,it can, in a way,be consideredas paradigmaticormostrepresentationsnd commemora-tions of the Shoah;Lichtheim'sanswerexpressesan oppositemode ofevocation.On theone hand,a reportprovidesprecisefactual nformationofferedwithin strict limitsandusuallyarounda central dea thatgives itcoherence;on the other,Lichtheim'sansweris an outburstof pain anddespair hat, nprinciple, ejects hepossibilityof orderandcoherence.Over the last decades, the memory of the Shoah has crystallizedaround hese two poles. Whereas he firstone meansclosure,the second


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indicates an open-endedprocess of remembrance. n other terms, thefirst is embodiedin set ritualsand in organizedpresentationsrangingfrom textbooksto museums,from monuments o public commemora-tions. This publicmemorydemandssimplicityas well as clear interpre-tation; its aim, unstated and maybe unperceived, is to domesticateincoherence,eliminate pain, and introducea message of redemption.The seconddomainknows no rules. It disruptsany set renditionamongthose who imaginethis past - the immensemajoritynow - and thosewho still remember t. In the testimoniesof those who remember,bothexpressionsof the pastresurface: he organized,oft-rehearsednarrationon theone hand, he uncontrolled ndchaoticemotion,on theother.In the longrun,thememoryof the Shoahwill probablynotescapecom-plete ritualization.Yet, to this day at least,an open-ended epresentationof these eventsseems present n the Westernworld andpossiblybeyond.Moreso, it appears o be growingas timegoes by. Afterinterpretingheparadoxicalxpansionof this memoryandpointing o the complexinter-actionbetweenthe memoryof the Shoahandthewritingof its history,Iconcludeby dwelling on the challengesand responsibilities ncumbentupon the historian.In this domaintherecan be no credo, merely somereflectionsaboutcompellingassignmentsand unresolvedquestions.TheExpandingMemoryof the ShoahThe two decadesfollowingthewar canbe characterizeds a periodofvirtualsilenceaboutthe Shoah:Theconsensuswas one of repression ndoblivion. Adult contemporaries f Nazism still dominatedthe publicscene. Even the survivorschose to remainsilent, since very few peoplewere interested n listeningto them (even in Israel)and since, in anycase,theirown maingoalwas socialintegrationnda returno normalcy.In the mid-1960s,a first wave of debates shook these defenses. Thegenerationbornduringor towardthe end of the war was moving intothe limelight.Mainly in Europe,the students'unrestof the late 1960sand its sequels called into question various aspects of contemporaryculture as well as the lies and the obfuscation regardingthe Naziperiod. The majorturmoiloccurredin Germany,but the famous slo-gan of the Frenchstudents,"We are all GermanJews" [nous sommestous des juifs allemands], intendedto protest against the expulsion ofthe Jewish student leader, Daniel Cohn-Bendit,had more than onemeaning.At the same time, in Marcel Ophuls's The Sorrow and the


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Pity, France witnessed a first rift in the constructionof the mythicalself-representation f its history duringthe war years. However, thisreturn of the past was quickly neutralizedby theoreticalabstractionsabout all pervasive "fascism,"produced mainly on the extreme left,andby the extremepoliticizationof the debates.In the late 1970s and early 1980s, a second wave of controversiesopened the way for a growingsubjectivityand weakenedthe hold ofsome of the theoreticalconstructsof the previousdecade. An expan-sion of autobiographicaliterature, mongGermansandamongJews, ofdeeply probingand innovativefilms, as well as the quest for the his-toryof everydaylife underNazism createda new, moredirect confron-tationwith the past.However,some of these endeavors, n Germany nparticular, lso carriedan unmistakable pologetic urge and earlypost-modemrepresentationsf the Nazi era were not devoid of perversefas-cination.Strangelyenough,it was a mass mediaevent, the screeningofthe NBC miniseries "Holocaust" n 1978-79, that became a turningpoint all over the West, drawingincreasedattentionto the extermina-tion of the Jews as the definingevent of the Nazi period.Over the lastdecade, this past became even more present,particularly,t seems, forthe thirdpostwargeneration, he "generation f the grandchildren,"ol-lowing the fierce debates of the 1980s in Germany,known as "the his-torians' controversy,"and as an indirect sequel of the downfall ofcommunismandGerman eunification.The durationof the phases varies in differentnational and religiouscontexts. Forexample,the periodof "amnesia"may have been particu-larly lengthy and the passage to broaderawareness quite abrupt inFranceand, even more so, in Switzerland.In France,the surge of anationalmemoryof Vichy's anti-Jewishpolicies found its first majorexpressionsome twentyyearsago, firston thejudiciallevel then on thepolitical and institutionalone, as well as in the intellectualand artisticdomains.As for the unexpecteduproarover the role of Switzerlanddur-ing the war, it has led to fierce public controversyabout the materialand financialexploitationanddefrauding f Jewishvictims,not only inthatcountry,butthroughoutEurope.Thisdebate, t has to be added,hascontributedo the reappearance,n Switzerlandand possibly elsewherein Europe,of a kind of anti-Semitism hat seemed to be a thing of thepast:an anti-Semitismof the middle classes that is "salonfdhig"or, inotherwords,openlyacceptableagain.


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The religiousdomainmay have an even more lasting impacton thepresenceof the pastthanthe nationalone. Establishing Carmelitecon-vent at Auschwitzwas a minor mattercompared o the stormthatmayeruptaround he imminentbeatificationof Pius XII, if maintained.Theentire set of controversiesregarding he role of Christianity, ts anti-Jewish teachingsand its traditionalhostilitytowards the Jews - all ofwhich providedthe obviously involuntary,but historicallyunavoidablebackground o their extermination would reappearagain. Thus thepresence of the Holocaustin western consciousness resembles that ofsome sort of lava rising ever closer to the surfaceand announcedbyever strongereruptions.Yet, recognizingthis growingpresenceof thepast does not explainit. Let me turnto threepossible interpretations:generational actor,an ongoingdemandforjustice, and the transforma-tionof Nazism intothemetaphor f evil forourtime.

The generationalactor s the firstexplanationhatcomes to mind.The"generation f thegrandchildren,"ainlyamongEuropeans Germans nparticular) utamongJews as well, has now acquired ufficientdistancefromthe events in termsof both the sheerpassageof time andpersonalinvolvement o be.able to confront he full impactof the past.Thus,thegrowingrise of the memoryof the Shoahcould be interpreted s thegradualiftingof collectiverepression,nducedbythepassageof time.This interpretationould be understood,metaphorically peaking,as"workingthrough"but also, possibly, as a collective "returnof therepressed."Are we now readyto face the worstaspectsof thispastor isthe repressedreturning, s the historianDominickLaCapra xpressedit,in the form of "reneweddisavowalin certainquarters.. and commer-cialized, politically tendentious, and self-interested (if not porno-graphic)representationsnotherquarters?"'In other words, are we mainly witnessing a gradual lifting ofdefenses or could one arguethat, simultaneously, he growing aware-ness of the past is also due to very different mpulses,such as the fas-cinationwith the aestheticsof Nazism that flourished n the 1970s, or,morerecently,the growingdiatribesof negationistsandthe activismofradicalright-winggroups?

I. DominickLaCapra,RepresentingheHolocaust:History, Theory,TraumaIth-aca: ComellUP, 1994) 189.


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Generationsare not merely categoriesof time but also clusters ofshared formativeexperience. In terms of experience, those Germanswho served in the Wehrmachtwere far apartfromadolescentsmerelytwo or threeyearsyounger,who at the end of the war were only "Fla-khelfer,"that is, those who manned anti-aircraft atteries. One singleyearcould make a majordifference.While this issue demandsa longerdisquisition,suffice it to mention here that mainly in Germanythereoften is an age group (or generational)element in what I called thereturn f therepressed.In the 1980s, the "Historians'Controversy"ook place amongschol-ars who, with the exception of two out of some twelve of fourteen,were all membersof the Hitlerjugendgeneration,havingall been ado-lescents in the ThirdReich.Theirpositionswere sharplydivided,as weknow, butthe intensityof the debatestemmed, n partat least, from theimpactof these long-buried xperiencesand theirrefractionhrough heprismof laterpoliticalchoices.Last year, MartinWalser's outburstand the standingovation that hereceived at the Friedenspreisceremonyin Frankfurt, r the accoladesfrompeople like von Dohnanyior Augstein,carriedonce morethe signsof an age group.IgnazBubis, howeverclumsily or angrily, expressedtheoutrageof a memorymuch ess deflectedor reinvestedby time.

In a letterto KarlJaspers,HannahArendtwrote on August 17, 1946:"The Nazi crimes, it seems to me, explode the limits of the law; andthatis preciselywhat constitutes heir monstrousness.Forthese crimes,no punishmentis severe enough. It may well be essential to hangG-ring, but it is totally inadequate.Thatis, this guilt, in contrast o allcriminalguilt, overstepsand shattersany and all legal systems. Thatisthe reasonwhy the Nazis in Nurembergare so smug.They know that,of course. Andjust as inhumanas theirguilt, is the innocenceof theirvictims. Humanbeings simply can't be as innocent as they all were inthe face of the gas chambers. . . . We are simply not equipped to deal,on a human,political level, with a guilt that is beyond crime and aninnocence hat s beyondgoodandvirtue."2Arendt'sletter is a cri du coeur thatmade much sense in 1946;yet,

2. HannahArendt,KarlJaspers,Correspondence 926-1969,eds. LotteKohler&HansSaner;rans.Robert&RitaKimberNewYork:Harcourt raceJovanovich,1992)54.


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SaulFriedldnder 9even today, many peoplewouldopt for suchan absolute standin regardto Nazi crimes. The present-dayudicialprocessis basicallynot at issueanymore(the Papon trial in France was possibly the last majorcourtcase regardingNazism and relatedcrimes)but the demandfor an abso-lute, uncompromising, nd almostmetaphysicalustice remains,mainlyin the communityof the victims. It also appears n segmentsof Euro-peansociety somehowinvolvedin the collaborationwith Nazism. Thereit becomes a demandfor distinctionsbetweendegrees of involvement,of responsibility,and of guilt.On all sides, the questforjustice focuseson theshapingof memoryand contributeso thegrowthof memory.The demandforjustice is also fueling fierce debateson comparativevictimizationwithin the Nazi system of terrorand exterminationtselfand among variousterrorand extermination ystems, the Stalinist andthe Nazi, for example.Overthe last threedecadesor so, some of thesedebates have spreadto the Americanscene. The growing demandofdiverseethnicminorities or the recognitionof their own historicalheri-tage, one thatwould offer a tale of sufferingandtriumph, s leadingtoovertconfrontations boutdegreesof historicalmartyrdom.n this con-text, the Holocausthas become a focus of resentmentand the demandforjustice fuses with increasinglyacrimoniousargumentsaboutthe his-toricalcomparability r exceptionalityof the extermination f the Euro-pean Jews. Mainly, the adoptionof the Holocaustby popularculturehas increasinglyadded a peculiardimensionto its image in the con-sciousnessof vast sectorsof U.S. andWestern ociety.Nazismhas becomethecentralmetaphor f evil of ourtime.In ourageof genocideand mass criminality,apartfromits specific historicalcon-text, the exterminationf the Jews of Europe s now perceivedby manyas theultimatestandard f evil againstwhichall degreesof evil aremea-sured. Such a perceptionof Nazism was alreadypresent before andmainlyduringthe war amongthe Allies, in occupiedEurope,and evenamongresistancegroups n Germanytself.Afterthewar,HannahArendtidentifiedNazism with "radicalevil." Her laternotionof the "banalityof evil" was no contradiction.n ourepoch,radicalevil is linked to theutterbanalityof its perpetrators,heEichmanns f thisworld.The most extremeinsultthat one can hurlagainstany brutalbehavioris to compare t with Nazism, the worsttag applicable o a hatedleaderis the comparisonwith Hitler. And, incidentally,the only Christianname that may have disappearedfrom the repertoryafter 1945 is


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"Adolf."In other words, Nazism and evil have become so naturallyintertwined hat this identification riggersan ongoing and expandingprocess of representationut also of recallby association:"Schindler'sList," "Life is Beautiful,"The Reader; Kosovo, Le Pen, Heider;gaybashing, mercykilling,abortionor anti-abortion,nd so on. But doesn'tthat ever spreadingreferencemean an ever growingdilution,and evergrowing simplification,and ever growing vulgarization?Moreover,istheprocessself-triggered rdoes it fulfill a function n oursociety?I wish to suggestherea linkbetweenthesimplificationn therepresen-tationof Nazism and theHolocaust n popular ultureandthe functionofthissimplifiedrepresentationn oursociety. By function do not meantodwell again uponthe politicsof identityof variousgroupsin this coun-try nor upon the diverseformsof instrumentalizationf the Holocaust.More relevantwould be theurgeof theCatholicchurch o make sure thatbelievers today and in the future be convincedthat at the time of itsgreatestchallenge,the Papacywas resolutelyon the side of the victimsandthat heVicarof Christ toodundauntedgainstevil inourtime.The most basic functionof this representationf evil is inherenttothe self-image of liberalsociety as such. Nowadays, liberalsociety isnot faced with any concreteenemy; its existence was not threatened,even beforethe completedemiseof communism.But, in orderto iden-tify its own idealsand the natureof its institutions, ny society needs todefine the quintessentialoppositeof its own image. Due to its unques-tionablehorror, o the immensenumberof its victims,to the heroicsac-rifices demanded o achievevictoryover it, Nazismdid and does fulfillthe functionof the enemy per se. This is truefor the UnitedStatesbutalso, for differentand no less obviousreasons,for present-day iberal,democraticGermanyand for the westernworldmoregenerally.In fact,few are the regimes that, since 1945, would have chosen to identifywiththe Nazi model.The memoryof the exterminationbut also that of the sufferingandthe agony imposed by Nazism or that of the fateful commitmentsdemandedof those willing to resist it remainsa landscapeof deathonthe background f which choicesweremade thatstill appear o manyasthe most important ver decidedupon in modem times. In a world inwhich such choices have all in all disappeared, he memory of theShoah is paradoxically inked to a simplified,watereddown, yet realandprobablydeep-seated ongingforthetragicdimensionof life.


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OnMemoryandHistoryIt may have becomeevident,fromwhat has been said untilnow, thatthe various facets of the expandingmemoryof the Holocaust create awhole arrayof dilemmasin the writingof its history.The impactofgenerationalchange on the transformation f the historiographyofNazism and the Shoahhas often been mentioned.3The personalmemo-ries of those historianswho were the contemporariesof Nazism doindeedfindtheirexpression n distinct ormsof emphasisoravoidance.4More specifically, it has been arguedthat emotionalinvolvementinthese events precludesa rationalapproach o the writing of their his-tory. The "mythicmemory"of the victims has been set against the"rational" nderstanding f others.I certainlydo not wish to open olddebatesbutmerelyto suggestthat Germanand Jewish historiansas wellas those of any otherbackground annotavoid a measureof "transfer-ence" in regardto this past. Of necessity, such involvementimpingesupon the writing of history.But the historian'snecessarymeasureofdetachments not hindered herebyproviding he presenceof sufficientself-awareness.It may indeed be harder o keep one's balance in the

other direction;whereasa constantlyself-criticalgaze might diminishthe effects of subjectivity,it could also lead to other,no lesser risks,thoseof unduerestraint ndparalyzing aution.The main aspectof the interaction etweenthe memoryof the Holo-caustandits historiographyelongsto the moraldimensionof theevents,that s to the demand orjusticeand to Nazismas a metaphor f evil.In the early 1980s, Germanhistoriansseized upon the TV show"Holocaust"and similar media representationsn order to criticize ablack and white, so-called moralisticrepresentation f Nazism. In theunfolding"historians' ontroversy" nd in the debateaboutthe histori-cization of National Socialism, among other themes at stake was this"moralistic,""black-and-white"imensionof the representation f theeventsand,thus,the limits of theirhistoricization.53. See inparticularNorbertFrei,"Farewello the Eraof Contemporaries: ationalSocialismand ItsHistoricalExamination n route ntoHistory,"History&Memory9.1/2(Fall 1997):59ff.4. See, in particular,MartinBroszatand SaulFriedliinder,A Controversy boutthe Historicization f NationalSocialism,"ReworkinghePast:Hitler,theHolocaustandthe Historians'Debate,ed. PeterBaldwin Boston:Beacon, 1990).5. The mostprofound ommenton this debateandits implications s to be foundin JoimRilsen,"TheLogic of Historicization:MetahistoricalReflectionson the DebatebetweenFriedliinderndBroszat,"History&Memory9.1/2 (Fall 1997): 113-44.


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interpretations:he special course of Germanhistory, anti-Semitism(eliminationistor not), fascism, totalitarianism,modernity.It is at thislevel thata peculiarresponsibility f the historian omesto the fore.On the Historian'sResponsibilityThe historiancannotbe and shouldnot be the guardianof memory.The historian'sgaze is analytic,critical,attuned o complexity,andwaryaboutgeneralizations.But the historian houldnot avoidthe precisedef-initionof interpretiveonceptsandcategories n a domainso wide opento extraordinarylights of imaginationor maliciousdenials in interpre-tive endeavors.Moreover,on a very differentlevel, historiansshoulddareto challengethe complacencyand routinealreadyexisting in theirdomain.Regarding he first issue, let me choose the continuingdebateaboutthe comparability f Nazi and Stalinistcrimes within the frame-workof two similar otalitarianegimesas a brief illustration.Totalitarianismas a key interpretivecategory is on the rise again.Decades ago duringthe cold war, it helpedto fight communism; odaytotalitarianism s used to bury communismhistoricallyby trying toshow that Stalin'scrimesmay have been worse thanthose of Hitler.IneasternEurope,first and foremost,but also in Franceand to a lesserdegree in Germany, his revivalof the "GreaterEvil"theoryhas some-times takenstrangeaccents.We arenot confrontedwith Arendt'squeryinto the originsof totalitarianystemsbut with a crusadeof sorts,aim-ing to demonstrate hat totalitarianisms the explanationof it all andthaton the scale of masscriminalityStalinwas first,Hitlerin mere sec-ond place. It certainlyis a legitimatequery,but one thatdemands,forexample,thatthe followingbe considered.The fall of 1942the Wehrmachtwas aboutto cross the Volga at Stal-ingrad.Had the Germans ucceeded,theywouldprobablyhave broughtaboutthe militarycollapse of the Soviet Union, a significantprolonga-tion of the war,the non liberation f Auschwitzin January1945 andthecomplete exterminationof the remnantsof EuropeanJewry.Are theremany people today who, notwithstandingheir knowledge of Stalinistcrimes, would declarein retrospect, hatthey wish the WehrmachthadcrossedtheVolga?

The majoritythat still would answer negatively remains,I believe,influencedby a vague intuitionrelatedto a historical-philosophicalis-tinction most admirablyexpressed by the French-Jewish ntellectual


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RaymondAron. Aron's anti-Stalinismwas straightforwardnd uncom-promisingfrom the immediatepostwaryears onward,but, nonetheless,he clearly perceived he differencebetweenNazismandcommunism,asArendtdid in her"Questionsof MoralPhilosophy" nd as manyhistori-ans do to this day. Aron identified he quintessentialdifferencebetweenthe two regimesat the conceptual evel- andthereindeedit lies: "Forthose who wish to 'save the concepts',"Aron wrote, "thereremainsadifferencebetweena philosophywhose logic is monstrous,andone thatlends itselfto a monstrousnterpretation."7It remains the historian'sprime responsibility o probe the concreteaspects of such distinctionsand to work through he details of relatedarguments.Therein ies the majorchallengeas well. In the face of sim-plified representationsf the past, the historian'sduty is to reintroducethe complexity of discrete historicalevents, the ambiguityof humanbehavior,andthe indeterminationf wider social processes.The task isdauntingdue to thedifficultyof conciliatinghenuanced esultsof schol-arshipand thenecessaryreference o historical,butalsomoral/philosoph-ical categories.In the face of a phenomenon uch as Nazism, however,suchtasks are notyet sufficient.There s, as mentioned,a run-of-the-millhistoryof theHolocaust hatdemandso be thoroughly uestioned.Some two yearsago, the BerkeleyhistorianThomasLaqueurwrote ahighlyperceptivecritiqueof whathe called the "businessas usual"his-toriography f the Holocaust,one that "fails to confrontboth the partic-ularmoralbreakdown hese events implyand the subjectiveterror hatthey inspired."8For Laqueur,as for myself, only the integrationof theindividual fate within the historical narration ould eventuallyenablethe historianto overcome the dichotomy between the unfathomableabstraction f the millions of deadand the tragedyof individual ife anddeath n thetimeof extermination.In otherwords,how can we rendera historyof the Holocaustwhereinnot only the historyof the victimsas a collectivityis included,but onewhich also comprisesthe narration f the events according o the vic-tims'perceptions, s well as descriptions f their ndividualate?Laqueurevokedthe thousandsof shortbiographical ata andpicturesof childrendeported romFrance,collectedby SergeKlarsfeld.These childrencould

7. Tony Judt,TheBurdenof Responsibility:Blum,Camus,Aron,and the FrenchTwentiethCentury Chicago:U of ChicagoP, 1998) 154.8. ThomasLaqueur,"TheSound of Voices IntoningNames,"LondonReviewofBooks(5 June1997):3.


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SaulFriedldnder 15not speakin theirown voice, but the little thatcould be found aboutthelife and deportationof a boy of eight or a girl of three sufficed, pre-cisely becauseit was so little.The victims' testimonies cannot enlighten us about the internaldynamics of Nazi persecutionsand exterminations,but they put Nazibehavior n its full perspective; hey describethe face to face encounterof the perpetrators ith the victimsduring he persecutions, he deporta-tions, and the killings. But, mainly, the victims' testimonies are ouronly sourcefor the historyof their own pathto destruction.They evoke,in their own chaotic way, the depth of their terror,despair, apatheticresignation and totalincomprehension.The integrationof the victims' voices radicallywidens the narrativespan.This integrationhas to be complementedby the historian'seffortto find correspondinglynew concepts that would express, howeverinadequately,he breakdownof all norms andthe dimensionsof suffer-ing thattraditional istoriographyannoteasilydeal with.

Wittlich(in the Mosel region),November 10, 1938. The synagoguehas been set on fire, the Jewishshopshave been destroyed.HerrMarx,the butcher,as most Jewishmen, has been shoved into a truckabout toleave for a concentrationcamp. On the street, in front of the ruinedshop, among jeering SA men, FrauMarxstandswailing:"Whydo youdo this to us? What did we ever do to you?"And, on both sides of thestreet, the Marxs' life-long Germanneighborsstand at theirwindows,watching her - in silence.Was it fear,was it hatred,was it just plainhuman ndifference o thedespairof today'soutcastswho had been yesterday'sfriends?The mostelementaryhuman ties had disappearedand the tornadoevoked byLichtheim n his anguishedetterhadnot even started.

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