Solidarität und Hilfe für Juden während der NS-Zeit. Regionalstudien 1: Polen, Rumänien, Griechenland, Luxemburg, Norwegen, Schweiz (Solidarity and Help for Jews during the Nazi Period. Regional Studies 1: Poland, Rumania, Greece, Luxembourg, Norway, Switzerland) (review)

148 SHOFAR Fall 1998 Vol. 17, No.1 Solidaritiit und Hilfe fUr Juden wiihrend der NS-Zeit. Regionalstudien 1: Polen, Rumiinien, Griechenland, Luxemburg, Norwegen, Schweiz (Solidarity and Help for Jews during the Nazi Period. Regional Studies 1: Poland, Rumania, Greece, Luxembourg, Norway, Switzerland), edited by Wolfgang Benz and Juliane Wetzel. Berlin: Metropo1, 1996. 283 pp., index. DM 36.00. Since the premiere of the film Schindler's List we have been inundated by a list of Schindlers. Chiune Sugihara has been hailed as the "Japanese Schindler," Paul Griininger the "Swiss Schindler," and so on. The stories ofthese courageous "rescuers" are undeniably captivating and morally instructive, but how much do they really tell us about the big picture ofthe Holocaust? The volume under review represents an attempt at systematic, comparative assessment of altruistic "solidarity and help" for Jews in Nazi-dominated Europe. It is the first of a projected multi-volume series containing the [mdings of a team research project sponsored by the Center for Antisemitism Research at the Technical University of Berlin. An obvious pitfall for this kind of research is that examples of altruistic behavior can be ripped out ofthe broader context and thereby made to seem typical. The editors and contributors are well aware of this problem, and provide frequent reminders that "solidarity and help for Jews" took place against a background of widespread antisemitism, indifference to the fate of Jews, and, all too often, active collaboration with the Nazis. Nonetheless, the number of those who did help Jews-by 1995 Yad Vashem had designated 13,618 "Righteous Persons"-is sufficiently large to justify systematic study of this phenomenon. This is by no means the first attempt at such a study. Earlier works by Samuel and Pearl Gliner, Eva Fogelman, and others endeavored to construct ideal types of "rescuers" by identifying common personal and psychological characteristics. If there is one overriding conclusion ofthe present volume, it is that no such ideal type existed. "An altruistic personality structure could be a condition for readiness to help," the editors observe, "but did not have to be" (p. 15) (emphasis mine). "Rescue" was simply too complex a phenomenon to sustain any monocausal explanation. A major advantage of the team approach to.this subject is that it brings to bear a level of historical and linguistic expertise that no single scholar could command. The contributors consulted documentation and secondary sources in German, English, Polish, Rumanian, Greek, French, and Norwegian. (Noticeable, however, is the absence of references to Israeli scholarship in Hebrew, or to Yiddish primary sources.) The contributors succeed admirably in conveying the enormous complexity of conditions and factors that determined the possibilities for "rescue" within each of the countries under scrutiny. Particularly valuable are the chapters on Rumania, Greece, Norway, and Switzerland, countries that have been underrepresented in previous research on this subject. Book Reviews f.:' 149 Especially worthy of mention is Jacques Picard',s chapter on Switzerland, the conduct ofwhich has been very much in the news recently, Without apologizing in the least for the behavior of Swiss officials who turned Jewish refugees away at the border, and who transacted a good deal ofbusiness with Nazi Germany, Picard reminds us that individuals and organizations in Switzerland rescued Jews, including about 1,300 children smuggled across the border with France. It is to be hoped that this collection and its forthcoming companion volumes will find their way into English translation. They raise the study of "rescuers" to the next level ofsophistication and are refreshingly devoid ofthe moralizing tone that continues to plague the field of Holocaust studies. Alan E. Steinweis Department of History University ofNebraska-Lincoln The Myth of Rescue: Why the Democracies Could Not Have Saved More Jews from the Nazis, by William D. Rubenstein. New York: Routledge, 1997. 267 pp. $25.00. Historical reassessment often comes with the contested territory ofHolocaust study, and just as often, these efforts can take a nasty, ad hominem tum. William D. Rubenstein's counter-thesis-that the world's democracies did all that was pragmatically possible in the years when German Jews were candidates for emigration and that nothing, absolutely nothing, could have been done when they became political prisoners of the Third...