Rethinking the Holocaust

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Summary: Rethinking the Holocaust..
Review: Affirming the rational explicability and non-inevitability of the Holocaust, this book by Bauer, preeminent scholar of the Holocaust and former director of the International Institute for Holocaust Research at Israel's Yad Vashem, offers a compelling, conceptually sophisticated historiographic analysis of the critical issues debated by historians in the field. Demonstrating prodigious learning and persistent intellectual clarity, grounded in his own prior research yet thoughtfully considerate and accepting of nuanced newer approaches, Bauer persuasively distinguishes other genocides from the unprecedented Jewish Holocaust, provides searching critiques of various scholars' overarching explanations of the reasons for the Holocaust (especially those of Bauman, Aly, and Goldhagen) while presenting his own, and cogently explores the range of problematic judgments on topics such as Jewish armed and unarmed resistance, ghetto Judenrate behavior, the possibilities of rescue, and the relationship between the Holocaust and the creation of the state of Israel. Less successful are the book's foray into gender analysis and the Holocaust and its sarcastic rant against Orthodox Jewish theological confrontations with the topic. In all other respects, however, this enormously illuminating tome, reflecting a humanistically motivated lifetime of engaged scholarship into the Holocaust, deserves the undivided attention of scholars and laypersons like. B. Kraut

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Summary: An essential book for Jews
Review: I have to thank the New York Times Book Review for inducing me to read the book. Because it is so painful to read abot the Shoah and because most of the facts are already imprinted in my brain, I avoid books on the subject. But I wanted to know what was going on, as some of the revisionist ideas had filtered through and were bothering me. I found everything I wanted in this book, plus a lot more. The trauma is there, so the more we know and understand, the better.

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Summary: Rethinking "Rethinking the Holocaust"
Review: In his "Rethinking the Holocaust," Yehuda Bauer, a professor at Hebrew University, examines different interpretations of the holocaust and attempts to understand the event for himself.

Bauer begins his book with an attempt to determine what the holocaust was. He argues that genocide and holocaust are not the same thing, and that the holocaust was not necessarily a unique event; though it could have been avoided, it could also happen again. Bauer points out that "Although the Holocaust has no precedent, it could become one." The holocaust, he concludes, stemmed out of different motives than genocide and proves that man is capable of unspeakable evil. Pretty good, so far.

Chapters four and five examine several different interpretations of the holocaust. These chapters, both entitled "Overall Interpretations," might be more aptly named "Rethinking the historians whose theories I find stupid." I was generally unimpressed by the quality of scholarship in this book, and these two chapters particularly bothered me. While Dr. Bauer's determination to examine so many of the popular interpretations is admirable, his methods and conclusions leave something to be desired. For example, I found it quite ironic that in a book riddled with poor grammar, bad punctuation and many typos, Dr. Bauer saw fit to criticize a colleague for "consistently" misspelling another historian's name. I was disappointed that he did not spend more time interacting with conflicting ideas; instead, he described and quickly rejected holocaust theories that differed from his own.

In chapter nine, Bauer examines various theological attempts to understand the holocaust. I do not understand why he saw fit to spend a full twenty-six pages examining various approaches to the problem of evil, only to reject them all and state, "The theology of the holocaust is fascinating, but it is a dead end." One wonders why he bothered with this subject at all.

I have already mentioned that Dr. Bauer's book is full of typos, poor grammar, and bad punctuation. He is a terrible writer. His consistent use of passive sentence construction, unnecessarily long words, and words that were not needed at all was distracting. I had a hard time figuring out what he was trying to say. Given his writing style, I assume that English is not his first language. That's fine, but an editor could have very quickly and easily cleaned up Dr. Bauer's writing by simply cutting out unnecessary words, using simple instead of complicated terms, and restructuring sentences.

The book was published by Yale University Press. I am confused--I had expected better quality from Yale. This book was badly written, but most of the errors could have been easily fixed. Why did the publisher not take care of this? As it is, the language used is sloppy and gives the impression that Dr. Bauer does not really care about his subject. Also, he frequently repeats ideas and contradicts himself. This confuses the reader and, again, gives the impression that Bauer's ideas are not well thought out and that he did not really care much about his topic.

I would like to publish a book someday; perhaps I will contact the publishers at Yale. The quality of Dr. Bauer's book indicates that they aren't very picky.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent Historical Overview
Review: Rethinking the Holocaust by Yehuda Bauer is an excellent historical review of the various issues that are raised by the Holocaust. Bauer is one of the preeminent holocaust historians and this book will only reenforce his place in historical studies.

The book reviews most of the recent historical issues ranging from the holocausts place in history to a comparison with more recent genocides. The central thesis is that what seperates the holocaust from the more recent genocides is not the necessarily the evil of the act. What has happened in Africa or Bosnia is not less evil or horrible than what the Nazis did. However, the African and Bosnian genocides were more significanly limited in scope. The Nazi plan was to hunt down the Jews where ever they lived and to eliminate them as a race. This desire seperates the holocaust from all other genocides.

The most interesting chapter discuses the theology of the holocaust. The central theological difficulty of the holocaust is how to reconcile an all powerful God with one that is just. The question being how could a just God who had the power to stop the death of millions not stop that murder. One conclusion is that God is all powerful or just, but not both. Bauer does not have any real answers, and there might not be any; however, the discussion is thought provoking and leads to furhter readings. This chapter was worth reading the book.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent Historical Overview
Review: Rethinking the Holocaust by Yehuda Bauer is an excellent historical review of the various issues that are raised by the Holocaust. Bauer is one of the preeminent holocaust historians and this book will only reenforce his place in historical studies.

The book reviews most of the recent historical issues ranging from the holocausts place in history to a comparison with more recent genocides. The central thesis is that what seperates the holocaust from the more recent genocides is not the necessarily the evil of the act. What has happened in Africa or Bosnia is not less evil or horrible than what the Nazis did. However, the African and Bosnian genocides were more significanly limited in scope. The Nazi plan was to hunt down the Jews where ever they lived and to eliminate them as a race. This desire seperates the holocaust from all other genocides.

The most interesting chapter discuses the theology of the holocaust. The central theological difficulty of the holocaust is how to reconcile an all powerful God with one that is just. The question being how could a just God who had the power to stop the death of millions not stop that murder. One conclusion is that God is all powerful or just, but not both. Bauer does not have any real answers, and there might not be any; however, the discussion is thought provoking and leads to furhter readings. This chapter was worth reading the book.