Searching for Meaning in the Holocaust (Contributions to the Study of Religion)

Rating:
Summary: Absorbing and Revelatory
Review: "Searching for Meaning in the Holocaust" is a powerful scholarly work of defiant complexity. The title accurately conveys the focus of the book: it is about the searching, not about specific, definite meanings. As such, it presents a compelling case for responsible uncertainty.

The organization of the chapters is seamless and well-motivated, and the writing concise. The introduction illuminates the potential destructiveness of myth. Chapter 2 explores broad issues with crisp detail, including the relationship between testimony and historical fact, with history contextualizing and also distancing people from the personal tragedies, facilitating testimony, but diluting its immediacy.

"The Devil" of chapter 3 turns out to be modern bureaucracy blinkered, cold, and efficient. Dehumanization coupled with the separation of life into"two distinct realms" of public and private create the objective mentality to support mass murder. In this chapter, Bolkosky describes Stangl, the commandant of Sobibor and Treblinka, as corporate administrator in charge of a particular office to do a particular task. Rudolf Hoess is profiled in a similar manner, a manager focused on getting the job done.

"In Search of the Simple Answer" is a riveting argument against simplification."Of Parchment and Ink" provides necessary theological context.

Near the end of the book, Bolkosky says, "I do not believe in lessons from the Holocaust only in memory. But he also believes in instruction and in the basic value of studying the Holocaust. The findings are undeniably unsettling, even though the author attitude toward searching for meaning remains steadfast. "I do not believe in lessons from the Holocaust," he insists, "yet the actions and myopic thinking of the perpetrators . . . strike me as instructive."

Bolkosky's contributions are substantial in part because of his distinctive perspective. Extensive work with oral testimony allows him to integrate his findings on memory of Holocaust survivors with important studies of perpetrators. Readers can detect the tension between these two approaches and can learn from both. Bolkosky confronts and resolves a fundamental dilemma of writing when there are no general lessons even though the act of writing, like the act of giving testimony, implicitly promises such lessons.

In my opinion, the book would be effective as a text in both undergraduate and graduate classes. In my own teaching, I am invariably troubled by students who draw heavily on the lessons of Viktor Frankl's singular search for meaning. So I justify what Bolkosky calls Frankl's "sanguine conclusions" by telling myself that Holocaust education must begin somewhere. Even Elie Wiesel's "Night," which offers no reassurances to the reader, is nonetheless interpreted by some students as redemptive because, after all, the author lived and ultimately achieved greatness. Bolkosky's book presents accessible complexity while illuminating the profound inappropriateness of simplification. Its clear emphasis on the role of indifferent bureaucracy permits the reader to apprehend the icy subtleties of Nazi cruelty.

Although Bolkosky's searching does not produce lessons, it does uncover a complex of causes. This is a book to be read and read again, a book to be studied closely by students and teachers and the general interested public.