In Memoriam: Franklin H. Littell, 1917–2009

On July 23, 1998, Yehuda Bauer interviewed his friend Franklin Littell at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, where the two scholars frequently led seminars on the Holocaust. The interview provides an overview of Littell’s primary concerns in Holocaust studies, and concludes with remarks that succinctly capture the character, outlook, and aspirations of this remarkable man. Littell—a scholar, organizer, and Christian—died on May 23, 2009, at the age of 91. Underscoring that his motivation in studying the Holocaust was above all to prevent “premature closure,” Littell ended the 1998 interview by declaring his intent “to keep this thing [the memory of the Holocaust] irritating—you know, be the harpoon that the fish can’t escape.”¹

Those who knew Littell may hear his voice in those words—a voice that was earthy and earnest, intense and impassioned, edged at times with laughter and humor, but one that always cut to the chase. Littell’s eyes glistened with insight. His embrace and grip expressed warm friendship, and his feisty, intrepid spirit inspired courage. These characteristics invited others to join him in his work—work that was governed by the conviction that the unredeemable atrocities of the Holocaust and of all genocides must provoke resistance against the injustice and indifference that produce them.

A scholarly presence such as Littell’s—a necessary irritant with a harpoon—is cause for celebration in a world such as ours, in which brutality cries out for aroused conscience and energized political will against injustice. All who care about human rights, all who work in the field of Holocaust and genocide studies, have abundant reason to be grateful to him. His absence reminds one of how exceptional he was and of how much the world needs scholars, organizers, and other committed people to support his causes.

The catalog of the United States Library of Congress contains thirty-four Littell entries. The earliest titles, from the 1950s, suggest that this ordained Methodist minister, who held a doctorate in theology and religious studies, might have had a conventional professorial career. During this early period, he concentrated on church history in the United States, with an emphasis on Protestant Christianity and church-state relationships. However, much more was gestating. A visit to Nazi Germany in 1939 made an indelible impression on Littell—one that was deepened and intensified by his work in postwar Germany, where he served as the chief Protestant advisor for the U.S. occupation forces. These experiences led to Littell’s 1960 book The German Phoenix: Men and Movements in the Church in Germany and honed the harpoon that Littell would thrust at his own Christian tradition.

Two books loom largest in Littell’s body of works. Christian scholars Edward Flannery and James Parkes preceded Littell in documenting their tradition’s culpability for antisemitism, but Littell’s 1975 monograph The Crucifixion of the Jews was nonetheless ground-breaking in that it drove home Christian responsibility for and complicity in the Holocaust. Written in the aftermath of the military attacks on the state of Israel in 1967 and 1973, Littell’s book also staunchly defended “the right of the Jewish people to self-identity and self-definition.”²

Littell often referred to the Holocaust as an “alpine event,” his way of identifying its unprecedented, watershed significance. In his view, the Holocaust constituted the most severe “credibility crisis”—one of his favorite terms—to afflict the Christian tradition. That tradition’s “teaching of contempt” about Judaism and Jews had contributed mightily to genocide against the Jewish people, he believed. Only profound contrition and reform, including fundamental theological revision that tackled the New Testament’s anti-Judaic themes, could restore integrity to post-Holocaust Christianity.

Littell’s belief that Christianity faced a monumental credibility crisis was not based solely on his knowledge of the centuries-old history of Christian hostility toward Judaism and Jews. More immediately, his postwar experiences in Germany made him painfully aware that most German churches had embraced Adolf Hitler and Nazism. He recognized the complicity of German churches in the Holocaust, as well as the widespread indifference of the churches outside Germany...