Ethics and Extermination: Reflections on Nazi Genocide (review)

Book Reviews 171 Ethics and Extermination: Reflections on Nazi Genocide, by Michael Burleigh. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997. 261 pp. $17.95. All pondering about the Shoah is re-pondering and to some an exercise in futility. Consider what E1ie Wiesel said about the TV miniseries Holocaust presented on NBC television in April 1978: "The witness feels here duty bound to declare: What you have seen on your screen is not what happened there. You may think you ~ow how the victims lived and died, but you do not. Auschwitz cannot be explained nor can it be visualized. Whether culmination or aberration of history, the Holocaust transcends history. Everything about it inspires fear and leads to despair. The dead are in possession ofa secret that we, the living, are neither worthy or capable ofrecovering." (New York Times, April 16, 1978). Though Wiesel maintains that the Shoah transcends history and the living are incapable of recovering its mystery, still he relates witness-stories lest he violate his personal oath, recited before the Gathering of 5000 survivors at the Wall in Jerusalem several years ago, never to forget the Kedoshim ("Holy Martyrs"): "We swear in the name ofparents and children that never will they be forgotten" (Literature and Belief 18.1 [1998], p. 96). And so we the listeners thirst for information, albeit repetitive, in particular rituals and in collective memory. "More"-not "Never"-comes the command, "Again!" Bound in this tight wanting-to-know cycle is a taste-nay, a need-for clarity that seems fundamental to the act ofcomprehending. One commonly thinks ofreading and learning about the Shoah as an exercise in objective fact gathering. Yet the brain does not always comply. It wanders, skips, goes forward, backward and sideways. Sometimes the mind connects with other narratives; other times it relates to personal experience; and ofttimes, it is frustrated in how to explain the Nazi genocide. When Holocaust matters, Shoah spirals overhead like a raging storm and roars in deafening silence in one's head. If the seeker is an historian ofNazi Germany, s/he may be moved to confront the whirling current and report on its aftereffects. In the most general terms, this is the intent of Michael Burleigh. His nine essays expound ethical issues derived from three central subjects: the Germans and relations with "the East," "Euthanasia," and Extermination. Burleigh(University ofWales)bestows uponhis themes and sub-themes a no-nonsense approach. His book, twelve years in the making, offers a variety of stimulating impressions and suggestions. In Part One, he argues that the German-Soviet confrontation during World War II is not the issue ofOstforscher alone but the "fate of eastern Europe and non-Russian Soviet nationalities, for whose peoples 1945 did not bring liberation." Not taking this fate seriously in post-totalitarian Europe is a contributing factor to the present dilemma of nationality disenchantment and ethnic cleansing. In Part Two, Burleigh continues his research on euthanasia found in his earlier monograph, The Racial State: Germany 1933-1945 (with W. Wipperman, 1991). Here 172 SHOFAR Summer 2000 Vol. 18, No.4 he explores international developments in eugenics with an emphasis on American policy. He is unyielding in his criticism ofNazi eugenics and racial science and Marxist state policy, e.g., contemporary China's efforts at biological engineering. These are unconscionable feats ofending life and are not comparable to responsible mercy-killing, which, he argues, is motivated by respect for individual autonomy and compassion for a person suffering from an incurable disease. Finally, in Part Three he grapples with a variety of Holocaust theories (economic, literary, philosophical, political, and social) and the section is highlighted by a forceful and effective criticism ofnamed historians in the field (e.g., Bauer, Goldhagen, Hilberg, Katz, etc.). The author's cross-disciplinary scholarship is deceptively compact and demands the careful attention of the reader to follow the line of argument. Multiple hours of archival research are poured into an arduous writing style at once insightful and confrontational. The reader feels frustration (the prose is in the European analytic tradition), and possibly confusion (the vocabulary is technical), in the beginning but definitely admiration at the end. An important journey to Nazi evil and...