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What Is the Use of Jewish History?
Essays discuss the use and misuse of the Holocaust, how the Holocaust is taught in schools, Babi Yar, the Warsaw Ghetto, a visit to Berlin, and other topics
- GenresHistory
278 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1992
16 people want to read
About the author
Lucy S. Dawidowicz
15 books18 followersLucy Schildkret Dawidowicz (June 16, 1915 – December 5, 1990), was an American historian and an author of books on modern Jewish history, in particular books on the Holocaust.
Dawidowicz was born in New York City as Lucy Bagleizer. 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 synagogue until 1938.
Dawidowicz's first interests were poetry and literature. She attended Hunter College from 1932 to 1936 and obtained a B.A. in English. She went on to study for a M.A. at Columbia University, but abandoned her studies because of concerns over events in Europe. At the encouragement of her mentor, the historian Jacob Shatzky, Dawidowicz decided to focus on history, especially Jewish history. Dawidowicz made the decision to learn Yiddish and at Shatzky's urging, in 1938 she travelled to Wilno, Poland (modern Vilnius, Lithuania) to work at the Yiddish Scientific Institute (known by its Yiddish acronym as the YIVO).
Dawidowicz lived in Wilno until August 1939 when she returned to the United States. During her time at the YIVO, she became close to three of the leading scholars there, namely Zelig Kalmanovich, Max Weinreich and Zalmen Reisen. Only Weinreich survived the Holocaust and that only because he went to New York to establish a branch of the YIVO there before World War II. In particular, Dawidowicz was very close to Kalmanovich and his family, whom she described as being her real parents. During her time in Poland, she encountered anti-Semitism from the local Gentile population and her later writings on Gentile-Jewish relations in Poland were very much coloured by her memories of the time in Wilno. Dawidowicz was well known for her view that the vast majority of the Roman Catholic population in Poland was virulently anti-Semitic before and during World War II. Other historians, such as Norman Davies, have objected to the factual validity of this portrayal of Gentile-Jewish relations.
From 1940 until 1946, Dawidowicz worked as a researcher at the New York office of the YIVO. During the war, she was aware that something horrible was happening to the Jewish people of Europe, though it was not until after the war that she finally became aware of the full extent of the Holocaust.
In 1946, Dawidowicz traveled to Germany where she worked as an aid worker for the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee in the various Displaced Persons (DP) camps. During this period, she involved herself in the search for various looted YIVO books in Frankfurt. Only after the war, did she realize the full extent of the Jewish catastrophe, when she became involved with providing aid for Holocaust survivors. By her own admission, she was full of sorrow over the fate of European Jews, hatred for the Germans and pride in the tenacity of Holocaust survivors. In particular, she was filled with sadness as 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. Moreover, Dawidowicz found it very poignant that she had left that world in August 1939; a month before the process of destruction had begun.
In 1947, she returned to the U.S. and on January 3, 1948, she married a Polish Jew named Szymon Dawidowicz. Upon her return to the U.S. she worked as a researcher for the novelist John Hersey's book The Wall, a dramatization of the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. From 1948 until 1960, Dawidowicz worked as a historical researcher for the American Jewish Committee. During the same period, Dawidowicz wrote frequently for the Commentary, the New York Times and the New York Times Book Review. An enthusiastic New York Mets fan, Dawidowicz lived the rest of her life in New York. In 1985, she founded the Fund for the Translation of Jewish Literature from Yiddis
Dawidowicz was born in New York City as Lucy Bagleizer. 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 synagogue until 1938.
Dawidowicz's first interests were poetry and literature. She attended Hunter College from 1932 to 1936 and obtained a B.A. in English. She went on to study for a M.A. at Columbia University, but abandoned her studies because of concerns over events in Europe. At the encouragement of her mentor, the historian Jacob Shatzky, Dawidowicz decided to focus on history, especially Jewish history. Dawidowicz made the decision to learn Yiddish and at Shatzky's urging, in 1938 she travelled to Wilno, Poland (modern Vilnius, Lithuania) to work at the Yiddish Scientific Institute (known by its Yiddish acronym as the YIVO).
Dawidowicz lived in Wilno until August 1939 when she returned to the United States. During her time at the YIVO, she became close to three of the leading scholars there, namely Zelig Kalmanovich, Max Weinreich and Zalmen Reisen. Only Weinreich survived the Holocaust and that only because he went to New York to establish a branch of the YIVO there before World War II. In particular, Dawidowicz was very close to Kalmanovich and his family, whom she described as being her real parents. During her time in Poland, she encountered anti-Semitism from the local Gentile population and her later writings on Gentile-Jewish relations in Poland were very much coloured by her memories of the time in Wilno. Dawidowicz was well known for her view that the vast majority of the Roman Catholic population in Poland was virulently anti-Semitic before and during World War II. Other historians, such as Norman Davies, have objected to the factual validity of this portrayal of Gentile-Jewish relations.
From 1940 until 1946, Dawidowicz worked as a researcher at the New York office of the YIVO. During the war, she was aware that something horrible was happening to the Jewish people of Europe, though it was not until after the war that she finally became aware of the full extent of the Holocaust.
In 1946, Dawidowicz traveled to Germany where she worked as an aid worker for the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee in the various Displaced Persons (DP) camps. During this period, she involved herself in the search for various looted YIVO books in Frankfurt. Only after the war, did she realize the full extent of the Jewish catastrophe, when she became involved with providing aid for Holocaust survivors. By her own admission, she was full of sorrow over the fate of European Jews, hatred for the Germans and pride in the tenacity of Holocaust survivors. In particular, she was filled with sadness as 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. Moreover, Dawidowicz found it very poignant that she had left that world in August 1939; a month before the process of destruction had begun.
In 1947, she returned to the U.S. and on January 3, 1948, she married a Polish Jew named Szymon Dawidowicz. Upon her return to the U.S. she worked as a researcher for the novelist John Hersey's book The Wall, a dramatization of the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. From 1948 until 1960, Dawidowicz worked as a historical researcher for the American Jewish Committee. During the same period, Dawidowicz wrote frequently for the Commentary, the New York Times and the New York Times Book Review. An enthusiastic New York Mets fan, Dawidowicz lived the rest of her life in New York. In 1985, she founded the Fund for the Translation of Jewish Literature from Yiddis
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
October 11, 2011
“Lucy Dawidowicz is a very interesting historian of Eastern European Jewry, particulaly the Holocaust, because her focus is on the civilization that was destroyed, not on the process used to destroy it. She was in Poland, working at YIVO, just before the war broke out. So she was personally involved with saving some of the intellectual legacy of the Yiddish world that was destroyed.
I think I'm a typical American Jew. I'm very knowledgeable about the Holocaust and read a lot of books and see the movies, but that is where my interest in Yiddish civilization begins and ends. I don't speak Yiddish, and I don't read it translation, I don't care anything really about the lives of the victims except how they reacted to the German onslaught.
If anything I think of the Yiddish culture as a dead-end replaced by the new, vibrant Israeli Hebrew culture and the even more successful, secular culture of the Jews in the US. Yiddish culture has mostly negative connotations for me of helplessness, much like the Steppin' Fetchit role black people were forced into under Jim Crow. I also never met anyone who spoke Yiddish as their primary language who was educated and not a religious crackpot. To me it was always the language of uneducated grandparents and uncles used to keep the children from overhearing. Also the language of insults. 100 different words your parents could use to call you stupid and incompetent. How very cutesy.
That is largely the attitude fostered when I grew up in the 50's when the focus of Jewish survival was on Israel being strong and the attitude to the Holocaust was one of shame, "they went like sheep to the slaughter". Now there is some attempt to look at what was actually lost, and Lucy's books are part of that.
I don't believe in any kind of Yiddish revival. That culture is dead and will survive only as a curiosity for historians and in a perverse, progressively degraded form by the ultra-Orthodox. But as history, Lucy's book is a good one.
I think I'm a typical American Jew. I'm very knowledgeable about the Holocaust and read a lot of books and see the movies, but that is where my interest in Yiddish civilization begins and ends. I don't speak Yiddish, and I don't read it translation, I don't care anything really about the lives of the victims except how they reacted to the German onslaught.
If anything I think of the Yiddish culture as a dead-end replaced by the new, vibrant Israeli Hebrew culture and the even more successful, secular culture of the Jews in the US. Yiddish culture has mostly negative connotations for me of helplessness, much like the Steppin' Fetchit role black people were forced into under Jim Crow. I also never met anyone who spoke Yiddish as their primary language who was educated and not a religious crackpot. To me it was always the language of uneducated grandparents and uncles used to keep the children from overhearing. Also the language of insults. 100 different words your parents could use to call you stupid and incompetent. How very cutesy.
That is largely the attitude fostered when I grew up in the 50's when the focus of Jewish survival was on Israel being strong and the attitude to the Holocaust was one of shame, "they went like sheep to the slaughter". Now there is some attempt to look at what was actually lost, and Lucy's books are part of that.
I don't believe in any kind of Yiddish revival. That culture is dead and will survive only as a curiosity for historians and in a perverse, progressively degraded form by the ultra-Orthodox. But as history, Lucy's book is a good one.
September 26, 2012
A series of essays, some of which are more interesting than others. The number of people in favor of revisionist history is scary but it makes you appreciate true historical research.
July 30, 2019
No Foreign Country
A stimulating collection of essays, part autobiography, by Holocaust historian and activist Lucy Dawidowsc, published shortly after her death in 1990. Selected and edited by Neal Kozodoy, these essays reflect on Jewish historical memory and those who would rewrite and deny it.
In the title essay, Dawidowisc reflects on the meanings of Jewish history at different points in time - the theocentric emphasis of the Covenant, the rabbinic framework which substituted for a nation state, the apologia of 16th century David Gans seen as a means creating esteem both within the Jewish community and from outside. Then full circle in modernity, to counter the ascendancy and the pervasiveness of the nation state which eroded community commitment both to Judaism and Jewish law, the natural reaction of historians such as Graetz , Dubnow and Baer to the fashion of the day - assert a Jewish nationalism too, albeit Dubnow’s version was that of a non-Zionist Diaspora nationalism.
Chapters 2 and 3 are autobiographical beginning with her year long residency in 1938 Vilna soaking up the essence of Jewish life in Poland, and leaving, US passport in hand, just as the Nazis arrived in 1939. Later she returns to Europe after the war to recover the remnants of the Jewish libraries sacked and collected by Nazi ideological tactician Alfred Rosenberg, Her later trip to divided West Berlin gives her a chance to take a third look at how Germany's Nazi past impacts the reality pf 1985.
The middle section, titled “In Search of Truth” contains “Lies About the Holocaust” a comprehensive breakdown of the roots of Holocaust Revisionism in the west from Elmer Barnes to Willis Carto to Alfred Butz and Robert Faurisson, though only a passing mention of David Irving who only come to prominence in 2006. It's a must read essay to understand the history, tactics and persistence of this fringe conspiracy movement of racists that seeks to burnish the image of Hitler and Nazism and recast the Jews as history's ultimate villain.
The other important essay in this book is “Indicting America's Jews” where Dawidowisc tackles the curious confluence of right wing Zionists and the far left. Journalist and playwright Ben Hecht and activist Peter Bergson were right wing supporters of the Irgun faction and from 1942 on engaged in an impressive effort to bring the situation of Europe's Jews to the public's consciousness. At the same time they were unjustly critical of the failure of mainstream American Jewry and socialist Zionists apparent failure to do the same. Ironically, Dawidowisc points out, it was the NYT owned by the anti-Zionist [[ASIN:0521607825 Jewish Arthurs Hays Sulzberger ]] that had buried news about European Jewry to the back pages of that spotlighted this retroactive accusation. In fact both American Jewish leadership, the Jewish Agency and the Yishuv were actively trying to do they could with limited resources, something the Bergson group as political outsiders were largely unaware of. Nevertheless this “indictment” is used by anti-Zionists as “proof” of Zionist duplicity. Dawidowisc summarized – the anti-Semites of the Right deny there was a Holocaust and those of the Left blame it on the Jews.
The remaining essays in this group criticize the teaching of the Holocaust in high schools as a simplified morality tale often failing to observe the world's non-reaction or that Hitler's prejudices were based on eugenic fallacies, not religion; it's abuse as a cudgel against Jews and Zionism, an essay describing the massacre of an estimated 33,771 Jews at Babi Yar on Sept 29-30 1941 by the invading German army and Ukrainian collaborators – and the subsequent Soviet conspiracy of silence cover up the event. Two of the essays are about Poland, one countering those historians like Norman Davies (God's Playground) who brush aside Polish anti-Semitism and the other on the power of images in the Warsaw Ghetto to either tell a story or to co-opt it. Another asks the question whether or not America could have saved Europe's Jews.
The 4 essays in the final section “Experiencing Democracy” examines the sociology of the Jewish community in America from Hayim Saloman's role in financing the American Revolution, the shvitzers (go getters), traditionalists and radical greenhorns of the early 20th century to the relationship of American Jewry to it's largely eastern European communal past Not only is this an excellent summary of social trends, it's also a good overview of key trends and events. She ends with a series of insights on the struggle of American Jews to embrace both the universal and the particular, their nervous relationships to both the friendly American evangelical community and the hostile National Council of Churches. It could have been written for today, and after all, isn't that what informed history of all kinds is for!
A stimulating collection of essays, part autobiography, by Holocaust historian and activist Lucy Dawidowsc, published shortly after her death in 1990. Selected and edited by Neal Kozodoy, these essays reflect on Jewish historical memory and those who would rewrite and deny it.
In the title essay, Dawidowisc reflects on the meanings of Jewish history at different points in time - the theocentric emphasis of the Covenant, the rabbinic framework which substituted for a nation state, the apologia of 16th century David Gans seen as a means creating esteem both within the Jewish community and from outside. Then full circle in modernity, to counter the ascendancy and the pervasiveness of the nation state which eroded community commitment both to Judaism and Jewish law, the natural reaction of historians such as Graetz , Dubnow and Baer to the fashion of the day - assert a Jewish nationalism too, albeit Dubnow’s version was that of a non-Zionist Diaspora nationalism.
Chapters 2 and 3 are autobiographical beginning with her year long residency in 1938 Vilna soaking up the essence of Jewish life in Poland, and leaving, US passport in hand, just as the Nazis arrived in 1939. Later she returns to Europe after the war to recover the remnants of the Jewish libraries sacked and collected by Nazi ideological tactician Alfred Rosenberg, Her later trip to divided West Berlin gives her a chance to take a third look at how Germany's Nazi past impacts the reality pf 1985.
The middle section, titled “In Search of Truth” contains “Lies About the Holocaust” a comprehensive breakdown of the roots of Holocaust Revisionism in the west from Elmer Barnes to Willis Carto to Alfred Butz and Robert Faurisson, though only a passing mention of David Irving who only come to prominence in 2006. It's a must read essay to understand the history, tactics and persistence of this fringe conspiracy movement of racists that seeks to burnish the image of Hitler and Nazism and recast the Jews as history's ultimate villain.
The other important essay in this book is “Indicting America's Jews” where Dawidowisc tackles the curious confluence of right wing Zionists and the far left. Journalist and playwright Ben Hecht and activist Peter Bergson were right wing supporters of the Irgun faction and from 1942 on engaged in an impressive effort to bring the situation of Europe's Jews to the public's consciousness. At the same time they were unjustly critical of the failure of mainstream American Jewry and socialist Zionists apparent failure to do the same. Ironically, Dawidowisc points out, it was the NYT owned by the anti-Zionist [[ASIN:0521607825 Jewish Arthurs Hays Sulzberger ]] that had buried news about European Jewry to the back pages of that spotlighted this retroactive accusation. In fact both American Jewish leadership, the Jewish Agency and the Yishuv were actively trying to do they could with limited resources, something the Bergson group as political outsiders were largely unaware of. Nevertheless this “indictment” is used by anti-Zionists as “proof” of Zionist duplicity. Dawidowisc summarized – the anti-Semites of the Right deny there was a Holocaust and those of the Left blame it on the Jews.
The remaining essays in this group criticize the teaching of the Holocaust in high schools as a simplified morality tale often failing to observe the world's non-reaction or that Hitler's prejudices were based on eugenic fallacies, not religion; it's abuse as a cudgel against Jews and Zionism, an essay describing the massacre of an estimated 33,771 Jews at Babi Yar on Sept 29-30 1941 by the invading German army and Ukrainian collaborators – and the subsequent Soviet conspiracy of silence cover up the event. Two of the essays are about Poland, one countering those historians like Norman Davies (God's Playground) who brush aside Polish anti-Semitism and the other on the power of images in the Warsaw Ghetto to either tell a story or to co-opt it. Another asks the question whether or not America could have saved Europe's Jews.
The 4 essays in the final section “Experiencing Democracy” examines the sociology of the Jewish community in America from Hayim Saloman's role in financing the American Revolution, the shvitzers (go getters), traditionalists and radical greenhorns of the early 20th century to the relationship of American Jewry to it's largely eastern European communal past Not only is this an excellent summary of social trends, it's also a good overview of key trends and events. She ends with a series of insights on the struggle of American Jews to embrace both the universal and the particular, their nervous relationships to both the friendly American evangelical community and the hostile National Council of Churches. It could have been written for today, and after all, isn't that what informed history of all kinds is for!
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews