Lucy Schildkret Dawidowicz (June 16, 1915 – December 5, 1990) was an American
historianA historian is a person who studies and writes about the past and is regarded as an authority on it. Historians are concerned with the continuous, methodical narrative and research of past events as relating to the human race; as well as the study of all history in time. If the individual is...
and an author of books on modern Jewish history, in particular books on
the HolocaustThe Holocaust , also known as the Shoah , was the genocide of approximately six million European Jews and millions of others during World War II, a programme of systematic state-sponsored murder by Nazi...
.
Life
Dawidowicz was born in
New York CityNew York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
as Lucy Schildkret. Her parents, Max and Victoria (née Ofnaem) Schildkret were secular-minded Jews with little interest in religion. Dawidowicz did not attend a service at a
synagogueA synagogue is a Jewish house of prayer. This use of the Greek term synagogue originates in the Septuagint where it sometimes translates the Hebrew word for assembly, kahal...
until 1938.
Dawidowicz's first interests were
poetryPoetry is a form of literary art in which language is used for its aesthetic and evocative qualities in addition to, or in lieu of, its apparent meaning...
and
literatureLiterature is the art of written works, and is not bound to published sources...
. She attended
Hunter CollegeHunter College, established in 1870, is a public university and one of the constituent colleges of the City University of New York, located on Manhattan's Upper East Side. Hunter grants undergraduate, graduate, and post-graduate degrees in more than one hundred fields of study, and is recognized...
from 1932-36 and obtained a
B.A.A Bachelor of Arts , from the Latin artium baccalaureus, is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate course or program in either the liberal arts, the sciences, or both...
in English. She went on to study for a
M.A.A Master of Arts from the Latin Magister Artium, is a type of Master's degree awarded by universities in many countries. The M.A. is usually contrasted with the M.S. or M.Sc. degrees...
at
Columbia UniversityColumbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...
, but abandoned her studies because of concerns over events in
EuropeEurope is, by convention, one of the world's seven continents. Comprising the westernmost peninsula of Eurasia, Europe is generally 'divided' from Asia to its east by the watershed divides of the Ural and Caucasus Mountains, the Ural River, the Caspian and Black Seas, and the waterways connecting...
. At the encouragement of her mentor, the historian
Jacob ShatzkyJacob Shatzky was a distinguished Jewish historian.Shatsky was born in Warsaw. He received a traditional Jewish education and went on to study at universities in Lemberg, Vienna, Berlin and Warsaw. He earned the Ph.D...
, Dawidowicz decided to focus on
historyHistory is the discovery, collection, organization, and presentation of information about past events. History can also mean the period of time after writing was invented. Scholars who write about history are called historians...
, especially
Jewish historyJewish history is the history of the Jews, their religion and culture, as it developed and interacted with other peoples, religions and cultures. Since Jewish history is over 4000 years long and includes hundreds of different populations, any treatment can only be provided in broad strokes...
. Dawidowicz made the decision to learn Yiddish, and, at Shatzky's urging, she traveled to Wilno,
PolandPoland , officially the Republic of Poland , is a country in Central Europe bordered by Germany to the west; the Czech Republic and Slovakia to the south; Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania to the east; and the Baltic Sea and Kaliningrad Oblast, a Russian exclave, to the north...
(present-day
VilniusVilnius is the capital of Lithuania, and its largest city, with a population of 560,190 as of 2010. It is the seat of the Vilnius city municipality and of the Vilnius district municipality. It is also the capital of Vilnius County...
,
LithuaniaLithuania , officially the Republic of Lithuania is a country in Northern Europe, the biggest of the three Baltic states. It is situated along the southeastern shore of the Baltic Sea, whereby to the west lie Sweden and Denmark...
) in 1938 to work at the Yiddish Scientific Institute (known by its Yiddish acronym as the
YIVOYIVO, , established in 1925 in Wilno, Poland as the Yidisher Visnshaftlekher Institut , or Yiddish Scientific Institute, is a source for orthography, lexicography, and other studies related to the Yiddish language...
). With the help of Shatzky she became a research fellow there.
Dawidowicz lived in Wilno until August 1939 when she returned to the
United StatesThe United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
. During her time at the YIVO, she became close to three of the leading scholars there, namely
Zelig KalmanovichZelig Hirsch Kalmanovich was a Litvak Jewish philologist, translator, historian, and community archivist of the early 20th century. He was a renowned scholar of Yiddish. In 1929 he settled in Vilnius where he became an early director of YIVO.He was incarcerated in the Vilna Ghetto where he became...
,
Max WeinreichMax Weinreich was a linguist, specializing in the Yiddish language, and the father of the linguist Uriel Weinreich, who edited the Modern Yiddish-English English-Yiddish Dictionary.- Biography :Max Weinreich began his studies in a German school in Kuldiga,...
and Zalmen Reisen. Weinreich escaped
the HolocaustThe Holocaust , also known as the Shoah , was the genocide of approximately six million European Jews and millions of others during World War II, a programme of systematic state-sponsored murder by Nazi...
because he went to New York to establish a branch of the YIVO there before
World War IIWorld War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, but Kalmanovich and Reisen perished. Dawidowicz had been close to Kalmanovich and his family, whom she reportedly described as being her real parents. From 1940 until 1946, Dawidowicz worked as an assistant to a research director at the
New YorkNew York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
office of the YIVO. During the war, like most Americans, she was aware of the Nazi persecution of the Jewish people in Europe, though it was not until after the war that she became aware of the full extent of the Holocaust.
In 1946, Dawidowicz traveled back to Europe where she worked as an aid worker for the
American Jewish Joint Distribution CommitteeThe American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee is a worldwide Jewish relief organization headquartered in New York. It was established in 1914 and is active in more than 70 countries....
in the various Displaced Persons (DP) camps. During this period, she involved herself in the search for various looted books in
FrankfurtFrankfurt am Main , commonly known simply as Frankfurt, is the largest city in the German state of Hesse and the fifth-largest city in Germany, with a 2010 population of 688,249. The urban area had an estimated population of 2,300,000 in 2010...
and their retrieval for YIVO. and was involved with providing aid for Holocaust survivors. She realized that the world of Eastern European Jewry that she had encountered and lived among in Poland before the war had been destroyed forever, and all that was left of it were the emaciated survivors she was working with and her own memories.
In 1947, she returned to the U.S. and on January 3, 1948, she married a Polish Jew, Szymon Dawidowicz. Upon her return to the U.S. she worked as a researcher for the novelist
John HerseyJohn Richard Hersey was a Pulitzer Prize-winning American writer and journalist considered one of the earliest practitioners of the so-called New Journalism, in which storytelling devices of the novel are fused with non-fiction reportage...
's book
The Wall, a dramatization of the 1943
Warsaw Ghetto UprisingThe Warsaw Ghetto Uprising was the Jewish resistance that arose within the Warsaw Ghetto in German occupied Poland during World War II, and which opposed Nazi Germany's effort to transport the remaining ghetto population to Treblinka extermination camp....
. From 1948 until 1960, Dawidowicz worked as a historical researcher for the
American Jewish CommitteeThe American Jewish Committee was "founded in 1906 with the aim of rallying all sections of American Jewry to defend the rights of Jews all over the world...
. During the same period, Dawidowicz wrote frequently for
CommentaryCommentary is a monthly American magazine on politics, Judaism, social and cultural issues. It was founded by the American Jewish Committee in 1945. By 1960 its editor was Norman Podhoretz, a liberal at the time who moved sharply to the right in the 1970s and 1980s becoming a strong voice for the...
, the
New York Times and the
New York Times Book Review.
An enthusiastic
New York MetsThe New York Mets are a professional baseball team based in the borough of Queens in New York City, New York. They belong to Major League Baseball's National League East Division. One of baseball's first expansion teams, the Mets were founded in 1962 to replace New York's departed National League...
fan, Dawidowicz lived the rest of her life in New York. In 1985, she founded the Fund for the Translation of Jewish Literature from
YiddishYiddish is a High German language of Ashkenazi Jewish origin, spoken throughout the world. It developed as a fusion of German dialects with Hebrew, Aramaic, Slavic languages and traces of Romance languages...
and
HebrewHebrew is a Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Culturally, is it considered by Jews and other religious groups as the language of the Jewish people, though other Jewish languages had originated among diaspora Jews, and the Hebrew language is also used by non-Jewish groups, such...
into
EnglishEnglish is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
. A fierce
anti-CommunistAnti-communism is opposition to communism. Organized anti-communism developed in reaction to the rise of communism, especially after the 1917 October Revolution in Russia and the beginning of the Cold War in 1947.-Objections to communist theory:...
, Dawidowicz campaigned for the right of Soviet Jews to emigrate to
IsraelThe State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...
. She died in New York City in 1990, aged 75, from undisclosed causes.
Public criticism by Dawidowicz
Dawidowicz’s major interests were
the HolocaustThe Holocaust , also known as the Shoah , was the genocide of approximately six million European Jews and millions of others during World War II, a programme of systematic state-sponsored murder by Nazi...
and
Jewish historyJewish history is the history of the Jews, their religion and culture, as it developed and interacted with other peoples, religions and cultures. Since Jewish history is over 4000 years long and includes hundreds of different populations, any treatment can only be provided in broad strokes...
. A passionate
ZionistZionism is a Jewish political movement that, in its broadest sense, has supported the self-determination of the Jewish people in a sovereign Jewish national homeland. Since the establishment of the State of Israel, the Zionist movement continues primarily to advocate on behalf of the Jewish state...
, Dawidowicz believed that had the Mandate for Palestine been implemented as intended, establishing the Jewish State of
IsraelThe State of Israel is a parliamentary republic located in the Middle East, along the eastern shore of the Mediterranean Sea...
prior to the Holocaust,
"the terrible story of six million dead might have had another outcome".
Dawidowicz took an IntentionalistFunctionalism versus intentionalism is a historiographical debate about the origins of the Holocaust as well as most aspects of the Third Reich, such as foreign policy...
line on the origins of the Holocaust, contending that, beginning with the end of World War IAn armistice is a situation in a war where the warring parties agree to stop fighting. It is not necessarily the end of a war, but may be just a cessation of hostilities while an attempt is made to negotiate a lasting peace...
on 11 November 1918, Hitler conceived his master plans, and everything he did from then on was directed toward the achievement of his goal, and that he had "openly espoused his program of annihilation" when he wrote Mein KampfMein Kampf is a book written by Nazi leader Adolf Hitler. It combines elements of autobiography with an exposition of Hitler's political ideology. Volume 1 of Mein Kampf was published in 1925 and Volume 2 in 1926...
in 1924.
Dawidowicz's conclusions was: "Through a maze of time, Hitler's decision of November 1918 led to Operation Barbarossa. There never had been any ideological deviation or wavering determination. In the end only the question of opportunity mattered."
In her view, the overwhelming majority of Germans subscribed to the völkischeThe volkisch movement is the German interpretation of the populist movement, with a romantic focus on folklore and the "organic"...
antisemitism from the 1870s onward, and it was this morbid antisemitism that attracted support for Hitler and the Nazis. Dawidowicz maintained that from the Middle AgesThe Middle Ages is a periodization of European history from the 5th century to the 15th century. The Middle Ages follows the fall of the Western Roman Empire in 476 and precedes the Early Modern Era. It is the middle period of a three-period division of Western history: Classic, Medieval and Modern...
onward, German Christian society and culture were suffused with antisemitism and there was a direct link from medieval pogroms to the Nazi death camps of the 1940s.
Citing Fritz FischerFritz Fischer was a German historian best known for his analysis of the causes of World War I. Fischer has been described by The Encyclopedia of Historians and Historical Writing as the most important German historian of the 20th century.-Biography:Fischer was born in Ludwigsstadt in Bavaria. His...
, Dawidowicz argued there were powerful lines of continuity in German history and there was a SonderwegSonderweg is a controversial theory in German historiography that considers the German-speaking lands, or the country Germany, to have followed a unique course from aristocracy into democracy, distinct from other European countries...
(Special Path), which led Germany inevitably to NazismNazism, the common short form name of National Socialism was the ideology and practice of the Nazi Party and of Nazi Germany...
.
Dawidowicz criticized what she considered to be revisionist historians as incorrect and/or sympathetic to the Nazis.
For Dawidowicz, National Socialism was the essence of total evil, and she wrote that movement was the "... daemon let loose in society, Cain in corporate embodiment."
Regarding foreign policy questions, she sharply disagreed with Taylor over his book The Origins of the Second World War. In even stronger terms, she condemned the American neo-Nazi historian David HogganDavid Leslie Hoggan was an American historical writer, author of The Forced War: When Peaceful Revision Failed and other works in the German and English languages.-Early life:...
for his book, War Forced on Germany, as well as David IrvingDavid John Cawdell Irving is an English writer,best known for his denial of the Holocaust, who specialises in the military and political history of World War II, with a focus on Nazi Germany...
's revisionist Hitler's WarHitler's War is a history book by David Irving. It describes the Second World War from the point of view of Adolf Hitler.It was first published in April 1977 by Hodder & Stoughton and Viking Press . Avon Books reissued it in 1990...
, which suggested Hitler was unaware of the Holocaust.
Dawidowicz criticized German historians who sought to minimize German complicity in the Nazi eraNazi Germany , also known as the Third Reich , but officially called German Reich from 1933 to 1943 and Greater German Reich from 26 June 1943 onward, is the name commonly used to refer to the state of Germany from 1933 to 1945, when it was a totalitarian dictatorship ruled by...
attempt to annihilate Europe's Jews.
In her view, historians who took a functionalist line on the origins of the Holocaust question were guilty of ignoring their responsibility to historical truth.
Disputes with Arno Mayer
Dawidowicz was a leading critic of the American historian
Arno J. MayerArno Joseph Mayer is a United States Marxist historian originally from Luxembourg, who specializes in modern Europe, diplomatic history, and the Holocaust, and is currently Dayton-Stockton Professor of History, Emeritus, at Princeton University.-Early life and academic career:Mayer was born into a...
's account of the Holocaust in his 1988 book
Why Did the Heavens Not Darken? arguing that Mayer played up anti-communism at the expense of antisemitism as an explanation for the Holocaust.
Dawidowicz titled her review of Why Did the Heavens Not Darken? in the October 1989 edition of CommentaryCommentary is a monthly American magazine on politics, Judaism, social and cultural issues. It was founded by the American Jewish Committee in 1945. By 1960 its editor was Norman Podhoretz, a liberal at the time who moved sharply to the right in the 1970s and 1980s becoming a strong voice for the...
as "Perversions of the Holocaust".
Dawidowicz argued against Mayer that the historical evidence shows that Hitler was not convinced that the war was lost as early as December 1941, and that Mayer's theory is anachronistic.
Dawidowicz commented that the EinsatzgruppenEinsatzgruppen were SS paramilitary death squads that were responsible for mass killings, typically by shooting, of Jews in particular, but also significant numbers of other population groups and political categories...
had been massacring Jews since the beginning of Operation Barbarossa in June 1941, and that Mayer's claim that the Jews were only surrogate victims due to Germany's inability to defeat the Soviet Union was, in her opinion, rubbish.
Dawidowicz attacked Mayer for saying that more Jews died at Auschwitz from disease than from mass gassing, and for writing that Holocaust survivor testimony was highly unreliable as a historical source as supporting Holocaust denial.
Dawidowicz questioned Mayer's motives in listing the works of Arthur ButzArthur R. Butz is a Holocaust denier and associate professor of electrical engineering at Northwestern University. He achieved tenure in 1974 and currently teaches classes in control system theory and digital signal processing.-Education:...
and Paul RassinierPaul Rassinier was a French pacifist, political activist, and author. He was also an anti-Nazi French Resistance fighter, and a prisoner of the German concentration camps at Buchenwald and Mittelbau-Dora. A journalist and editor, he wrote hundreds of articles on political and economic subjects...
in his bibliography.
Dawidowicz ended her review of Why Did the Heavens Not Darken? by accusing Mayer of excusing German racism, rationalizing the Nazi dictatorship, of portraying Soviet Jews as better off than they were under the Soviet dictatorship, and by presenting the Holocaust as due to reasonable political goals instead of the ideological decision fueled by fanatical antisemitism that Dawidowicz saw as it as.
Other
She accused the British historian
Norman DaviesProfessor Ivor Norman Richard Davies FBA, FRHistS is a leading English historian of Welsh descent, noted for his publications on the history of Europe, Poland, and the United Kingdom.- Academic career :...
of seeking to whitewash Polish antisemitism and of being an anti-Semite himself.
During the same period, Dawidowicz denounced the work of the philosopher Ernst NolteErnst Nolte is a German historian and philosopher. Nolte’s major interest is the comparative studies of Fascism and Communism. He is Professor Emeritus of Modern History at the Free University of Berlin, where he taught from 1973 to 1991. He was previously a Professor at the University of Marburg...
, whom she accused of seeking to justify the Holocaust.
In her The War Against the JewsThe War Against the Jews is a 1975 book authored by Lucy Dawidowicz. The book researches the Holocaust of the European Jewry during World War II....
, 1933-1945, she writes that antisemitism has had a long history within ChristianityChristianity is a monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus as presented in canonical gospels and other New Testament writings...
.
In her opinion, the line of "antisemitic descent" from Martin LutherMartin Luther was a German priest, professor of theology and iconic figure of the Protestant Reformation. He strongly disputed the claim that freedom from God's punishment for sin could be purchased with money. He confronted indulgence salesman Johann Tetzel with his Ninety-Five Theses in 1517...
to Adolf HitlerAdolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party , commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and head of state from 1934 to 1945...
was "easy to draw". She wrote that Hitler and Luther were both obsessed by the "demonologized universe" inhabited by Jews, and that the similarities between Luther's anti-Jewish writings and modern antisemitism are no coincidence, because they derived from a common history of Judenhass, which can be traced to Haman'sHaman is the main antagonist in the Book of Esther, who, according to Old Testament tradition, was a 5th Century BC noble and vizier of the Persian empire under King Ahasuerus, traditionally identified as Artaxerxes II...
advice to AhasuerusAhasuerus is a name used several times in the Hebrew Bible, as well as related legends and Apocrypha. This name is applied in the Hebrew Scriptures to three rulers...
.
Although modern German antisemitism has roots in nationalismNationalism is a political ideology that involves a strong identification of a group of individuals with a political entity defined in national terms, i.e. a nation. In the 'modernist' image of the nation, it is nationalism that creates national identity. There are various definitions for what...
, Dawidowicz held that ChristianChristianity is a monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus as presented in canonical gospels and other New Testament writings...
antisemitism is linked to the Roman Catholic ChurchThe Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the world's largest Christian church, with over a billion members. Led by the Pope, it defines its mission as spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ, administering the sacraments and exercising charity...
, and was the foundation "upon which [Martin] Luther built".
Criticism of Dawidowicz
Raul HilbergRaul Hilberg was an Austrian-born American political scientist and historian. He was widely considered to be the world's preeminent scholar of the Holocaust, and his three-volume, 1,273-page magnum opus, The Destruction of the European Jews, is regarded as a seminal study of the Nazi Final...
critisized Dawidowicz for her work 'The War Against The Jews' stating that it builds "largely on secondary sources and conveying nothing whatever that could be called new," and then going on to say in regards to Dawidowicz portrayal of Jewish resistance and resisters that she included "soup ladlers and all others in the ghettos who staved off starvation and despair." Hilberg suggests that "nostalgic Jewish readers [would find here] vaguely consoling words, [which] could be easily clutched by all those who did not wish to look deeper." He then goes on to list over twenty key authors on the subjects that Dawidowicz covers, that she did not use as reference in her own work. Hilberg ends on the subject of Dawidowicz stating "To be sure, Dawidowicz has not been taken all that seriously by historians".
Books by Dawidowicz
Her books include
The War Against the Jews 1933-1945The War Against the Jews is a 1975 book authored by Lucy Dawidowicz. The book researches the Holocaust of the European Jewry during World War II....
, her best-selling 1975 history of the Holocaust, and
The Holocaust and the Historians, a study of Holocaust
historiographyHistoriography refers either to the study of the history and methodology of history as a discipline, or to a body of historical work on a specialized topic...
.
A collection of her essays relating to Jewish history, What Is the Use of Jewish History?, was published posthumously in 1992. Dawidowicz wrote The Golden Tradition: Jewish Life and Thought in Eastern Europe to document Jewish civilization in Eastern Europe prior to its destruction during the Holocaust.
In On Equal Terms: Jews in America, 1881-1981, Dawidowicz wrote an account of Jews in the United States that reflected an appreciation for her American citizenship, which saved her from being a victim herself in the Holocaust.
Sources
- Bessel, Richard Review of The Holocaust and Historians, Times Higher Education Supplement, March 19, 1982, page 14.
- Eley, Geoff "Holocaust History", London Review of Books, March 3-17, 1982, page 6.
- Marrus, Michael
Michael Robert Marrus is a Canadian historian of France, the Holocaust and Jewish history. He was born in Toronto and received his BA at the University of Toronto in 1963 and his MA and PhD at the University of California, Berkeley in 1964 and 1968...
The Holocaust In History, Toronto: Lester & Orpen Dennys, 1987 ISBN 0-88619-155-6.
- Rosenbaum, Ron
-Life and career:Rosenbaum was born into a Jewish family in New York City, New York and grew up in Bay Shore, New York. He graduated from Yale University in 1968 and won a Carnegie Fellowship to attend Yale's graduate program in English Literature, though he dropped out after taking one course...
Explaining Hitler: The Search For The Origins Of His Evil, New York: Random House, 1998 ISBN 0-679-43151-9.
External links
See also
- Research Materials: Max Planck Society Archive
At the end of World War II, the Kaiser Wilhelm Society was renamed the Max Planck Society, and the institutes associated with the Kaiser Wilhelm Society were renamed "Max Planck" institutes. The records that were archived under the former Kaiser Wilhelm Society and its institutes were placed in the...
The source of this article is
wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. The text of this article is licensed under the
GFDL.
