{"id":18510,"date":"2016-04-22T00:12:24","date_gmt":"2016-04-22T07:12:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/?p=18510"},"modified":"2016-04-20T18:41:14","modified_gmt":"2016-04-21T01:41:14","slug":"there-are-lessons-to-learn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/2016\/04\/22\/there-are-lessons-to-learn\/","title":{"rendered":"There are lessons to learn"},"content":{"rendered":"

\u201cMy principal lesson of the Holocaust is \u2026 beware of lessons.\u201d With this warning, renowned Canadian Holocaust scholar Michael R. Marrus, professor emeritus at the University of Toronto, has written an essential but also essentially frustrating book, claiming that there is nothing to be \u201clearned\u201d from the study of the Holocaust \u2013 Lessons of the Holocaust<\/em> (University of Toronto Press, 2016).<\/p>\n

All the mantras usually marshaled to justify Holocaust studies, such as \u201cnever again,\u201d or \u201cwho does not learn from history is doomed to repeat it\u201d or \u201cevil will triumph when good people do nothing\u201d are bogus, says Marrus. For \u201chistory does not speak to the present with \u2026 an admonitory voice\u201d: historians are not moralists or mentors, and certainly not preceptors \u2013 their mandate is to \u201chandle history with care\u201d and to insist on \u201cgetting it right.\u201d<\/p>\n

But, if Holocaust studies have nothing to teach us, should we not ask to what end should Holocaust historians and educators \u201cget it right\u201d: and how does a Holocaust scholar\u2019s commitment to \u201cgetting it right\u201d differ from that of a botanist\u2019s or a quantum physicist\u2019s or, for that matter, an athlete\u2019s or a bricklayer\u2019s? It is the failure to answer this question that makes Marrus\u2019 book so frustrating.<\/p>\n

Marrus\u2019 credentials in Holocaust studies are impeccable. His books on the Holocaust have received prestigious awards; he has served on some extremely important international committees designed to air out crucial Holocaust issues, and has met, and often argued publicly, with some of the world\u2019s most prestigious Holocaust historians, including Raul Hilberg and Elie Wiesel, as well as Hannah Arendt, Emil Fackenheim and Daniel Jonah Goldhagen, all of whom he takes issue with in this book for suggesting that the Holocaust can offer lessons.<\/p>\n

Marrus\u2019 problem with regarding Holocaust history as a learning project is rooted in his historiography: what can one learn from history when history itself is so subjective? \u201cIf one looks hard enough at evidence,\u201d says Marrus, \u201cone can come up with the answer \u2013 or the lesson \u2013 that one wants.\u201d And, again: history is \u201ccontinually evolving,\u201d its terrain endlessly \u201cshifting,\u201d exposing \u201cnew questions.\u201d In other words, history is inevitably \u201ca matter of interpretation<\/em>.\u201d (Marrus\u2019 emphasis.) Thus, the lessons that one presumes to deduce from history will inevitably be the lessons that one preemptively wanted to find. As Marrus puts it, \u201clesson seeking often misshapes what we know about the event itself in order to fit particular causes or objectives.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"book<\/p>\n

Fair enough, when it comes to comparing the Holocaust to \u201cthe rape of the environment [or] the harshness of bureaucracy,\u201d but what about the larger, and more relevant, issues of social justice, of our moral duty to future generations, of our sacred duty to remember? Hitler saw carte blanche for his genocidal intentions by asking, \u201cWho remembers the Armenians?\u201d Surely it is crucial that no future Hitler be able to ask, \u201cWho remembers the Jews?\u201d<\/p>\n

Marrus is on more solid, if more obvious, ground when he condemns the appropriating of Holocaust history by right-wing politicos in Israel, such as Menachem Begin and Binyamin Netanyahu, who he sees as using Holocaust references to manipulate opinion toward acceptance of their conservative policies. This political exploitation of Holocaust history has \u201ccrippled Israel\u2019s capacities to respond imaginatively to questions of national identity and to seize new opportunities in a flawed global community.\u201d Here, Marrus is probably right.<\/p>\n

Marrus also condemns, again quite rightly, the enlisting of Holocaust precedents by special interest groups, such as advocates of gun control or those opposing bullying in schools, opponents of gay rights and animal abuse and so on \u2013 all anxious to further their causes by referencing the Holocaust and, in so doing, trivializing it.<\/p>\n

Most pointedly, and again with some justification, Marrus attacks the thinking of those who would \u201cuniversalize\u201d the Holocaust, making Holocaust studies \u201ca school for tolerance,\u201d a warning against hate speech, against political apathy or against overly celebrating the actions of the pitifully few Nazi-fighting heroes, such as the leader of the Munich White Rose students,<\/p>\n

Sophie Scholl, who was recently voted in Germany fourth among \u201cthe most important Germans of all time\u201d \u2013 ahead of Bach, Goethe and Einstein. Again, this is an important point, and one that quite rightly occupies a lot of serious thinking in Holocaust studies.<\/p>\n

Marrus\u2019 final chapter, a brief 11 pages, is entitled \u201cLessons of the Holocaust,\u201d and readers may be forgiven for thinking that Marrus is, finally, at the end of his book, going to take a stand.<\/p>\n

Not at all. He says here, \u201cwe learn a great deal from the history of the Holocaust.\u201d What, exactly? He doesn\u2019t say. And, again, Holocaust studies are \u201cintellectually enriching and facilitate our understanding of the world around us.\u201d How so, and to what end? No answer. \u201cWe are wiser\u201d for knowing Holocaust history. How so and, since there are no lessons in it, so what? In this final chapter, Marrus repeats over and over that Holocaust history \u201cdeepens appreciation of human reality\u201d and \u201cmakes us more mature.\u201d How so, since there\u2019s nothing to be learned from it, on his own terms?<\/p>\n

Holocaust educators will, I suspect, find Marrus\u2019 position difficult to accept: they know exactly why they are teaching Holocaust studies \u2013 to impress upon (especially) young people the fragility of our human institutions and thereby to arm them against demagoguery. In other words, \u201cnever again.\u201d<\/p>\n

Demagoguery has been raising its head again in recent months in the United States. It would indeed be encouraging to all teachers of Holocaust studies if they could believe they\u2019ve helped to effectively warn against it, a clear and inarguably important lesson to be learned from the dreadful past century.<\/p>\n

Graham Forst<\/strong>, PhD, taught literature and philosophy at Capilano University until his retirement and now teaches in the continuing education department at Simon Fraser University. From 1975 to 2010, he co-chaired the symposium committee of the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u201cMy principal lesson of the Holocaust is \u2026 beware of lessons.\u201d With this warning, renowned Canadian Holocaust scholar Michael R. Marrus, professor emeritus at the University of Toronto, has written an essential but also essentially frustrating book, claiming that there is nothing to be \u201clearned\u201d from the study of the Holocaust \u2013 Lessons of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":18467,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[784],"tags":[53,5743],"class_list":["post-18510","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-books","tag-holocaust","tag-marrus"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":8}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18510","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18510"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18510\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/18467"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18510"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18510"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18510"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}