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TOWARD A SOCIOLOGY OF THE HOLOCAUST

Jack Nnsan Porter University of Massachnsetts-Lowell (ContemporaryJewryv.17 1996) Meditations of a Holocaust Traveler by GERALD E. MARKLE. Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1995, xii + 185 pp. bibliography, $12.95 (paper). The Origins of Nazi Genocide: From Euthanasia to the Final Solution by HENRY FRIEDLANDER. Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1995, xxiii + 421 pp. $34.95 (cloth). The Uprooted." A Hitler Legacy: Voices of Those Who Escaped before the 'Final Solution'by DORIT BADER WHITEMAN. New York and London: Plenum Press, Insight Books, 1993, xv + 446 pp. $28.95 (cloth). Shattered Faith: A Holocuast Legacy by LEON WELICZKER WELLS. Lexington, KY: The University Press of Kentucky, xv + 175 pp. $19.95 (cloth). Will to Live: One Family's Story of Surviving the Holocaust by ADAM STARKOPF. Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1995, 242 pp. $14.95 (paper). "It is a home which is built above all of memory; memory is at the core of our identity.... We must carry it within us even though it is unpleasant or painful." Akira Kurosawa (1982)

Not only sociologists of Jewry but sociologists in general avoided the topic for several decades after World War ]I. However, a sociology of the Holocaust (Shoah) is now being formed after many years of neglect. There were many reasons for the neglect: a return to "normalcy" after the War, a reluctance of sociology to deal with unique events, a lack of role models, stimulation, intellectual criticism, recognition and inspiration for those studying the Holocaust. Given the incentive structure of the sociological profession lhose mteTestedin Holocaust studies faced marginalization. Such study had a low research priority. The result was a constricted sociological imagination. In short, no incentives, no research. (See: Fern 1979; Porter 1993) All this has changed. The establishment of a national Holocaust museum in Washington, D.C. (with strong link.~ to the American Sociological Association's national office), increased funding, a growth of interest in Holocan~ courses, the new Spielberg Foundation (based on proceeds from iris movie, Schmdler's List) have all supported interest in the Shoah among sociologists. People who toiled alone in the vineyards for many years (Helen

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Fein, Vahakn Dadrian, Jack Nusan Porter) have now been joined by a new "geaeration" of scholars such as Debra K a,ffrnan~ Spencer Blakeslee, Lenore Weitzman, and Ruth Linden. (But where is the thirty-something generation of scholars?) Sociology has a great deal to offer Holocaust studies. A concorn for both theory and methodology as well as with social problems, social control, social psychology, and deviance make sociology a natural for Holocaust studies. Indeed, many fields of sociology, from the sociology of professions to the sociology of knowledge, could be applied to the study of the Holocaust. Sociological concepts ilb,minate many Holocaust questions as shown in the works of I-lilberg (1961/1985), Rubenstein (1978), and Pawelozynska (1979) as well as in those sociologists suoli as Zygmunt Bauman (1989) and two books under review here: Markle's Meditations of a Holocaust Traveler and Friedlander's The Origins of Nazi Genocide. In each of these works, the sociological imagination, appfied to the Shoah, is alive and well. A sociologist, William Helmreich, wrote the introduction to clinical psychologist Whiteman's The Uprooted, a dramatic story of some 190 escapees from Hitler and how they adapted to their new counlries, despite a lack of knowledge of the local language, sldlls, money or contacts. The "classic" eyewimess accounts by Wells and Starkopf are good examples of sociological case studies of identity and memory. The Markle work is the most sociological of all. It is a perfect textbook, showing students how sociology can deal with the Holocaust. It is an excellent book to use in introductory sociology courses since so many students are aware of the Holocaust because of Schindler's List. Markle, remarkably unknown to most Holocaust scholars and even to most sociologists of Jewry, is a professor of sociology at Western Michigan University. He uses two core sociological concepts, "bureaucracy" and "modernity," and two core non-sociological concepts, "banality of evil" and "collective memory." He does so in a uniquely personal way. In his words, which explain it best: As a sociologist, I study what happens to most people most of the time: the normal~ not the abnormal; the everyday, not the unique. When we think of the Holocaust, we think of something uniquely horrific and horrifyingly unique.Yet, I believe that we cannot understand the Holocaust without appreciating its normalcy, its everydayness. This book is a sociological meditation on the Holocaust. These two words-sociology and meditation-do not usually go together; the former is analytical and rigorous, the later speculative and subjective But I believe that a sociological meditation might help us see the

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Holocaust from a different perspective. I ask dilficult sociological questions... Why did the Holocaust happen...at the center of Western civilization? What kind of civilization produces (an) Auschwitz? ( a n d ) . . . what does it mean to live in the modern world after the Holocaust?

I write this book not so much to wrestle with the Holocaust...but rather to wrestle with myself. I write, therefore I a m (pp. 26-27). These are powerful words, rarely coming from a sociologist, in a field dominated, as Ruth Linden notes, by positivist historians as well as positivist sociologists, sociologists who oRen mistrust feelings, such as the feelmgs expressed above and in this very moving book. Markle beautifully mcorporates his own personal voyage through the debris of the Shoah with a sociological analysis of core concepts such as "obedience," "bmeancraey," and "social pathology." His is a book to peruse and to use in your courses. Henry Friedlander, a Holocaust survivor and one of the few remainin~ survivor-teachers (the others include Erich Goldhagen at Harvard and Saul Friedlander at UCLA) is a professor of history in the Department of Judaic Studies at Brooklyn College and a long-time student of the Sboah. He is extremely respected in his field. His book is the very opposite of Markle's-an objective, positivist, historical account of how the Nazi program of secretly exterminating the handicapped and disabled quickly evolved into the systematic ~ of Jews and Gypsies. It ~aces the rise of racist and eugenic ideologies in Germany that led to an infamous euthanasia program, a program that was a model for the later final solution of the Jews and Gypsies. Ironically, the euthanasia program was the only mass murder program that was stopped by public protest (by German mothers). A chilling, well-documented book, I urge sociologists to add this book to their libraries as well. Compare it to Markle's book. They employ very different approaches to the Shoah. The Wells and Starkopf books are eyewitness accounts of survivors. It is these testimonies that the Shoah Visual History Foundation, sponsored by the Spielberg Foundation, is rushing against time to gather on video. Starkopfs work is as Arthur Landwehr notes, a gripping story of ingenuity, courage, and an intense desire to survive the enemy in Aryan disguise. Wells' book is more reflective, less a narration than a meditation on faith. Wells is well-known for his (1963) book The Death Brigade (Janowska Road), but here he writes as a m~, approaching the end of his time on earth. It is a meditation of a young boy's faith and how he becomes disillusioned with God and Man. The descriptions of his Polish shtetl are heart wrenching. In his final scene, he compares a Yom Kippur service in a Warsaw shul before the Shoah and then fifty years later, in 1994, m present-day Poland.

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It bore no resemblance to the Kol Ni~e from before the war. There was no lighted candies, no sense of awe, no one without shoes or in slippers, no aura of fear for the Day of Judgment. The prayers were mumbled routinely, quickly, and without any special melody or sense of urgency. This synagogue for me was proof that "what was, was and is no m o r e " . . . Dead is dead. It is all gone, completely eradicated, as it was on the first Yom Kippur after my liberation (p. 147). In short, in good sociological terms, not only were the Jews mass murdered but their culture was destroyed as well. They could speak the same words, sing the same prayers, but these prayers had a totally different meaning to Leon Wells in 1994 than in 1934 or 1944. We need to involve many more sociologists and sociology students in the study of the Shoah. We simply cannot leave the field to psychologists, historians and literary critics. REFERENCES Bauman, Zygmunt. 1989. ModemiV and the Holocaust. Ithaca, NY:CorneU University Press. Fern, Hele~ 1979. "Sociologists and Holocaust Researchers." unpublished t y p ~ t . Association for the Sooinlogical Study of Jewry panel, June. Hilberg, Paul. 1961/1985. The Destruction of the European Jews. New York: Holmes and Meier. Kurosaw, Akira. 1982. Something Like an Autobiography. New York: Knopf. Porter, Jack Nusan. 1993. "The Holocaust as a Sociological Construct." Contemporary Jewry 14: 184-187. Pawelozynska, Anna. 1979. Values and Violence in Auschwitz: A SociologicalAnalysis. Berkeley, CA: Unviersity of California Press. Rubensteh~ Richard. 1978. The Cunning of History. New York: Harper. Wells, Leon Weliczker. 1963. The Death Brigade (Janowska Road). New York: MacMillan. WHITHER AMERICAN JEVCRY? Stcven Bayme American Jewish Committee (Contemporary Jewry v. 17 1996 )

Community and Polity: The Organizational Dynamics of American Jewry, Revised and Updated Edition, by DANIEL J. ELAZAR. philadelphia and