Sociology Confronts the Holocaust: Memories and Identities in Jewish Diasporas (review)

This volume is the product of a welcome initiative to confront “the profound silence” – in the words of the editors – that describes sociological study of the Holocaust. Surprising as it may sound, the description is true, even if this volume, ironically, does only little to overcome the silence. The essays collected here hardly deal with the precursors of the travesty or the goings-on within it, but with its aftermath, and while the editors may be right in thinking that there is a marked absence of post-holocaust sociology too, these are different silences The subtitle, not its title, tells what the book is about. I agree with Martin Oppenheimer, one of the contributors, that this volume “deals not with the Holocaust but with Holocaust discourse.”

True, there is an introductory essay reviewing early work – mostly by refugee sociologists, which also makes plain that the outpouring of subsequent scholarship is by historians, not sociologists. And there is a brilliant essay by Olick analyzing the debates among Thomas Mann, Carl Jung, Erich Kastner and others, on whether Nazism is integral or alien to German culture, on the question of collective guilt, and on how one should have behaved during those years. And there is an excellent bibliography. But there is no serious discussion of the contemporary few – Zygmunt Bauman and Helen Fein, for example – who have made heroic efforts to approach the horror of the Holocaust sociologically.

Two of the essays relate to the war years themselves. Like Holocaust cinema, these deal with “exceptions.” One is about life in Belgian convents that accepted Jewish children (Vromer), and another explores the dynamics of organization of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising (Einwohner).

The large majority of the contributions deal with the ways in which the concept Holocaust has been constructed (Williams), the competing meanings that have been attached to it, its influence and “uses” in the United States, Germany and Israel (Levy and Sznaider), its role in the identities of American Jewish youth (Aviv and Shneer). A number of essays deal with pre- and post-war migration from Europe to the Americas (Levine, Gold, Alba). Of particular interest methodologically is Wolf’s comparison of her interview with Jake, a Holocaust survivor resettled in upstate New York, with the interview of the same individual in the Spielberg archive. The Spielberg interview, she shows, is a deliverance narrative – from hell to salvation – whereas the Jake she discovers is an almost indentured servant in the grocery store of his relatives.

In applying the cultural-studies concepts of construction, identity, collective memory, globalism, etc. the editors and contributors are at pains to ask why these post-Holocaust studies are somehow separated from studies of other diasporas, migrations, identities – and even genocides! Far from wanting to particularize the Holocaust, these authors wonder why it plays so small a part in comparative work! Apparently, this is the silence to which they refer.

What explains these silences? Why have so few of us devoted at least part of our professional lives to analysis of how this monstrosity could (and did) happen. We are indebted to Martin Oppenheimer again for speculating on some possible reasons: (1. that sociologists avoid “deviant cases” – because these incline them to description more than to analysis; (2. that grand narratives lead their authors astray methodologically, and evoke harsher-than-usual reactions from competing paradigms (as some of the historians have learned – ek); (3. that “big” subjects like these are a poor fit for journal publication; (4. that American sociologists do not command the relevant languages; (5. that there is an uneasy fear of being academically ghettoized; (6. or worse, that there is fear of being labeled opportunist, for climbing onto the bandwagon of the Holocaust Industry (“shoa-business”).

Apart from my frustrated expectations, I would like to point out – and praise – two themes that underlie this book. The first is its implicit call for “normalizing” the Holocaust (and its...