That Hamilton Woman 1941 - Vivien Leigh - Olivia 1951 & The Fox (1967)

Marlene Dietrich - The Blue Angel That Hamilton Woman 1941 - Vivien Leigh Olivia (1951) The Fox (1967) Conrad Veidt and Vivien Leigh in Dark Journey (1937) Anna Karenina. André Roussin - La Voyante - Elvire Popesco - Pauline Carton - 1972
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Aragon & Ferrat

avec Christine Sevres

http://youtu.be/-jdc7QTfzZA


Christine Sèvres - Ame te souvient-il (Verlaine... par LeGreumeuleu
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Paul Verlaine


Vers pour être calomnié

    À Charles Vignier

    Ce soir je m'étais penché sur ton sommeil.
    Tout ton corps dormait chaste sur l'humble lit,
    Et j'ai vu, comme un qui s'applique et qui lit,
    Ah ! j'ai vu que tout est vain sous le soleil !

    Qu'on vive, ô quelle délicate merveille,
    Tant notre appareil est une fleur qui plie !
    Ô pensée aboutissant à la folie !
    Va, pauvre, dors, moi, l'effroi pour toi m'éveille.

    Ah ! misère de t'aimer, mon frêle amour
    Qui vas respirant comme on respire un jour !
    Ô regard fermé que la mort fera tel !

    Ô bouche qui ris en songe sur ma bouche,
    En attendant l'autre rire plus farouche !
    Vite, éveille-toi ! Dis, l'âme est immortelle ?

Paul Verlaine

Un veuf parle

    Je vois un groupe sur la mer.
    Quelle mer ? Celle de mes larmes.
    Mes yeux mouillés du vent amer
    Dans cette nuit d'ombre et d'alarmes
    Sont deux étoiles sur la mer.

    C'est une toute jeune femme
    Et son enfant déjà tout grand
    Dans une barque où nul ne rame,
    Sans mât ni voile, en plein courant...
    Un jeune garçon, une femme !

    En plein courant dans l'ouragan !
    L'enfant se cramponne à sa mère
    Qui ne sait plus où, non plus qu'en....
    Ni plus rien, et qui, folle, espère
    En le courant, en l'ouragan.

    Espérez en Dieu, pauvre folle,
    Crois en notre Père, petit.
    La tempête qui vous désole,
    Mon coeur de là-haut vous prédit
    Qu'elle va cesser, petit, folle !

    Et paix au groupe sur la mer,
    Sur cette mer de bonnes larmes !
    Mes yeux joyeux dans le ciel clair,
    Par cette nuit sans plus d'alarmes,
    Sont deux bons anges sur la mer.

    1878.

Paul Verlaine


Chanson d'automne

Les sanglots longs
Des violons
De l'automne
Blessent mon coeur
D'une langueur
Monotone.
Tout suffocant
Et blême, quand
Sonne l'heure,
Je me souviens
Des jours anciens
Et je pleure
Et je m'en vais
Au vent mauvais
Qui m'emporte
Deçà, delà,
Pareil à la
Feuille morte.
Verlaine
Poèmes saturniens

Un crucifix

    À Germain Nouveau
    Église Saint-Géry, Arras.

    Au bout d'un bas-côté de l'église gothique,
    Contre le mur que vient baiser le jour mystique
    D'un long vitrail d'azur et d'or finement roux,
    Le Crucifix se dresse, ineffablement doux,
    Sur sa croix peinte en vert aux arêtes dorées,
    Et la gloire d'or sombre en langues échancrées
    Flue autour de la tête et des bras étendus,
    Tels quatre vols de flamme en un seul confondus.
    La statue est en bois, de grandeur naturelle,
    Légèrement teintée, et l'on croirait sur elle
    Voir s'arrêter la vie à l'instant qu'on la voit.
    Merveille d'art pieux, celui qui la fit doit
    N'avoir fait qu'elle et s'être éteint dans la victoire
    L'être un bon ouvrier trois fois sûr de sa gloire.
    " Voilà l'homme ! " Robuste et délicat pourtant.
    C'est bien le corps qu'il faut pour avoir souffert tant,
    Et c'est bien la poitrine où bat le Coeur immense :
    Par les lèvres le souffle expirant dit : " Clémence " ,
    Tant l'artiste les a disjointes saintement,
    Et les bras grands ouverts prouvent le Dieu clément ;
    La couronne d'épine est énorme et cruelle
    Sur le front inclinant sa pâleur fraternelle
    Vers l'ignorance humaine et l'erreur du pécheur,
    Tandis que, pour noyer le scrupule empêcheur
    D'aimer et d'espérer comme la Foi l'enseigne,
    Les pieds saignent, les mains saignent, le côté saigne ;
    On sent qu'il s'offre au Père en toute charité,
    Ce vrai Christ catholique éperdu de bonté,
    Pour spécialement sauver vos âmes tristes,
    Pharisiens naïfs, sincères jansénistes !
    - Un ami qui passait, bon peintre et bon chrétien
    Et bon poète aussi - les trois s'accordent bien -
    Vit cette oeuvre sublime, en fit une copie
    Exquise, et, surprenant mon regard qui l'épie,
    Très gracieusement chez moi vint l'oublier.
    Et j'ai rimé ces vers pour le remercier. -

    Août 1880.

Paul Verlaine

Prière du matin

    Seigneur, exaucez et dictez ma prière,
    Vous la pleine Sagesse et la toute Bonté,
    Vous sans cesse anxieux de mon heure dernière,
    Et qui m'avez aimé de toute éternité.

    Car - ce bonheur terrible est tel, tel ce mystère
    Miséricordieux, que, cent fois médité,
    Toujours il confondit ma raison qu'il atterre, -
    Oui, vous m'avez aimé de toute éternité,

    Oui, votre grand souci, c'est mon heure dernière,
    Vous la voulez heureuse et pour la faire ainsi,
    Dès avant l'univers, dès avant la lumière,
    Vous préparâtes tout, ayant ce grand souci.

    Exaucez ma prière après l'avoir formée
    De gratitude immense et des plus humbles voeux,
    Comme un poète scande une ode bien-aimée,
    Comme une mère baise un fils sur les cheveux.

    Donnez-moi de vous plaire, et puisque pour vous plaire
    Il me faut être heureux, d'abord dans la douleur
    Parmi les hommes durs sous une loi sévère,
    Puis dans le ciel tout près de vous sans plus de pleur,

    Tout près de vous, le Père éternel, dans la joie
    Éternelle, ravi dans les splendeurs des saints,
    Ô donnez-moi la foi très forte, que je croie
    Devoir souffrir cent morts s'il plaît à vos desseins ;

    Et donnez-moi la foi très douce, que j'estime
    N'avoir de haine juste et sainte que pour moi,
    Que j'aime le pécheur en détestant mon crime,
    Que surtout j'aime ceux de nous encore sans foi ;

    Et donnez-moi la foi très humble, que je pleure
    Sur l'impropriété de tant de maux soufferts,
    Sur l'inutilité des grâces et sur l'heure
    Lâchement gaspillée aux efforts que je perds ;

    Et que votre Esprit Saint qui sait toute nuance
    Rende prudent mon zèle et sage mon ardeur :
    Donnez, juste Seigneur, avec la confiance,
    Donnez la méfiance à votre serviteur.

    Que je ne sois jamais un objet de censure
    Dans l'action pieuse et le juste discours ;
    Enseignez-moi l'accent, montrez-moi la mesure ;
    D'un scandale, d'un seul, préservez mes entours ;

    Faites que mon exemple amène à vous connaître
    Tous ceux que vous voudrez de tant de pauvres fous,
    Vos enfants sans leur Père, un état sans le Maître,
    Et que, si je suis bon, toute gloire aille à vous ;

    Et puis, et puis, quand tout des choses nécessaires,
    L'homme, la patience et ce devoir dicté,
    Aura fructifié de mon mieux dans vos serres,
    Laissez-moi vous aimer en toute charité,

    Laissez-moi, faites-moi de toutes mes faiblesses
    Aimer jusqu'à la mort votre perfection,
    Jusqu'à la mort des sens et de leurs mille ivresses,
    Jusqu'à la mort du coeur, orgueil et passion,

    Jusqu'à la mort du pauvre esprit lâche et rebelle
    Que votre volonté dès longtemps appelait
    Vers l'humilité sainte éternellement belle,
    Mais lui, gardait son rêve infernalement laid,

    Son gros rêve éveillé de lourdes rhétoriques,
    Spéculation creuse et calculs impuissants
    Ronflant et s'étirant en phrases pléthoriques.
    Ah ! tuez mon esprit et mon coeur et mes sens !

    Place à l'âme qui croie, et qui sente et qui voie
    Que tout est vanité fors elle-même en Dieu ;
    Place à l'âme, Seigneur, marchant dans votre voie
    Et ne tendant qu'au ciel, seul espoir et seul lieu !

    Et que cette âme soit la servante très douce
    Avant d'être l'épouse au trône non-pareil.
    Donnez-lui l'Oraison comme le lit de mousse
    Où ce petit oiseau se baigne de soleil,

    La paisible oraison comme la fraîche étable
    Où cet agneau s'ébatte et broute dans les coins
    D'ombre et d'or quand sévit le midi redoutable
    Et que juin fait crier l'insecte dans les foins,

    L'oraison bien en vous, fût-ce parmi la foule,
    Fût-ce dans le tumulte et l'erreur des cités.
    Donnez-lui l'oraison qui sourde et d'où découle
    Un ruisseau toujours clair d'austères vérités :

    La mort, le noir péché, la pénitence blanche,
    L'occasion à fuir et la grâce à guetter ;
    Donnez-lui l'oraison d'en haut et d'où s'épanche
    Le fleuve amer et fort qu'il lui faut remonter :

    Mortification spirituelle, épreuve
    Du feu par le désir et de l'eau par le pleur
    Sans fin d'être imparfaite et de se sentir veuve
    D'un amour que doit seule aviver la douleur,

    Sécheresses ainsi que des trombes de sable
    En travers du torrent où luttent ses bras lourds,
    Un ciel de plomb fondu, la soif inapaisable
    Au milieu de cette eau qui l'assoiffe toujours,

    Mais cette eau-là jaillit à la vie éternelle,
    Et la vague bientôt porterait doucement
    L'âme persévérante et son amour fidèle
    Aux pieds de votre Amour fidèle, ô Dieu clément !

    La bonne mort pour quoi Vous-Même vous mourûtes
    Me ressusciterait à votre éternité.
    Pitié pour ma faiblesse, assistez à mes luttes
    Et bénissez l'effort de ma débilité !

    Pitié, Dieu pitoyable ! et m'aidez à parfaire
    L'œuvre de votre Coeur adorable en sauvant
    L'âme que rachetaient les affres du Calvaire :
    Père, considérez le prix de votre enfant.

Paul Verlaine

Il pleure dans mon coeur. - Paul Verlaine


Il pleure dans mon coeur
Comme il pleut sur la ville ;
Quelle est cette langueur
Qui pénètre mon cœur ?

Ô bruit doux de la pluie
Par terre et sur les toits !
Pour un cœur qui s'ennuie
Ô le chant de la pluie !

Il pleure sans raison
Dans ce coeur qui écœure.
Quoi ! nulle trahison ?...
Ce deuil est sans raison.

C'est bien la pire peine
De ne savoir pourquoi
Sans amour et sans haine
Mon cœur a tant de peine!
                             P.Verlaine(1844-1896)  

Nuit du Walpurgis classique

    C'est plutôt le sabbat du second Faust que l'autre.
    Un rhythmique sabbat, rhythmique, extrêmement
    Rhythmique. - Imaginez un jardin de Lenôtre,
    Correct, ridicule et charmant.

    Des ronds-points ; au milieu, des jets d'eau ; des allées
    Toutes droites ; sylvains de marbre ; dieux marins
    De bronze ; çà et là, des Vénus étalées ;
    Des quinconces, des boulingrins ;

    Des châtaigniers ; des plants, de fleurs formant la dune ;
    Ici, des rosiers nains qu'un goût docte effila ;
    Plus loin, des ifs taillés en triangles. La lune
    D'un soir d'été sur tout cela.

    Minuit sonne, et réveille au fond du parc aulique
    Un air mélancolique, un sourd, lent et doux air
    De chasse : tel, doux, lent, sourd et mélancolique,
    L'air de chasse de Tannhauser.

    Des chants voilés de cors lointains où la tendresse
    Des sens étreint l'effroi de l'âme en des accords
    Harmonieusement dissonants dans l'ivresse ;
    Et voici qu'à l'appel des cors
    S'entrelacent soudain des formes toutes blanches,
    Diaphanes, et que le clair de lune fait
    Opalines parmi l'ombre verte des branches,
    - Un Watteau rêvé par Raffet ! -

    S'entrelacent parmi l'ombre verte des arbres
    D'un geste alangui, plein d'un désespoir profond,
    Puis, autour des massifs, des bronzes et des marbres
    Très lentement dansent en rond.

    - Ces spectres agités, sont-ce donc la pensée
    Du poète ivre, ou son regret, ou son remords,
    Ces spectres agités en tourbe cadencée,
    Ou bien tout simplement des morts ?

    Sont-ce donc ton remords, ô rêvasseur qu'invite
    L'horreur, ou ton regret, ou ta pensée, - hein ? - tous
    Ces spectres qu'un vertige irrésistible agite,
    Ou bien des morts qui seraient fous ?

    N'importe ! ils vont toujours, les fébriles fantômes,
    Menant leur ronde vaste et morne et tressautant
    Comme dans un rayon de soleil des atomes,
    Et s'évaporent à l'instant

    Humide et blême où l'aube éteint l'un après l'autre
    Les cors, en sorte qu'il ne reste absolument
    Plus rien - absolument - qu'un jardin de Lenôtre,
    Correct, ridicule et charmant.

Paul Verlaine


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Raoul Hilberg


Raul Hilberg

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Raul Hilberg
Hilberg1.jpg
BornJune 2, 1926
Vienna, Austria
DiedAugust 4, 2007 (aged 81)
Williston, Vermont, U.S.
NationalityAmerican
EducationBrooklyn College (B.A.)
Columbia University (M.A.)
Columbia University (Ph.D.)
OccupationPolitical scientist and historian
Raul Hilberg (June 2, 1926 – August 4, 2007) was an Austrian-born American political scientist and historian. He was widely considered to be the world's preeminent[1][2][3] scholar of the Holocaust, and his three-volume, 1,273-page magnum opus, The Destruction of the European Jews, is regarded as a seminal study of the Nazi Final Solution.

Biography[edit]

Hilberg was born to a Polish-Romanian Jewish family in Vienna, Austria.
Hilberg was very much a loner, pursuing solitary hobbies such as geography, music and train spotting.[4] Though his parents attended synagogue on occasion, he personally found the irrationality of religion repellent and developed an allergy to it. He did however attend a Zionist school in Vienna, which inculcated the necessity of defending against, rather than surrendering to, the rising menace of Nazism.[4] Following the March 1938 Anschluss, the family were evicted at gunpoint from their home and his father was arrested by the Nazis, but was released because of his service record as a combatant in World War I. One year later, on April 1, 1939, at age 13, Hilberg fled Austria with his family; after reaching France, they embarked on a ship bound for Cuba. Following a four-month stay in Cuba, his family arrived in the United States on September 1, 1939, the day the Second World War broke out in Europe.[5] During the ensuing war in Europe, Hilberg's family was to lose 26 members in the Holocaust.[6]
The Hilbergs settled in Brooklyn, New York, where Raul attended Abraham Lincoln High School and Brooklyn College. He intended to make a career in chemistry, but found that it did not suit him, and left his studies to work in a factory. Having reached draft age, he was then called up for military service. As early as 1942, Hilberg, after reading scattered reports of the Nazi genocide, went so far as to ring Stephen Wise and ask him what he planned to do with regard to 'the complete annihilation of European Jewry'. According to Hilberg, Wise hung up.[4]
Hilberg served first in the 45th Infantry Division (United States) in World War II, but, given his native fluency and academic interests, was soon attached to the War Documentation Department, charged with examining archives throughout Europe. It was his discovery of part of Hitler's crated private library in Munich, which he stumbled across while quartered in the Braunes Haus, that prompted his research into the Holocaust, a term for the genocidal destruction of the Jews which Hilberg personally disliked,[7] though in later years he himself used it.[8]

Academic career[edit]

After returning to civilian life, Hilberg chose to study political science, earning his B.A. at Brooklyn College in 1948. He was deeply impressed by the importance of elites andbureaucracies while attending Hans Rosenberg's lectures on the Prussian civil service. At one particular point in Rosenberg's course, Hilberg was taken aback by a remark his teacher dropped:
"The most wicked atrocities perpetrated on a civilian population in modern times occurred during the Napoleonic occupation of Spain."
The young Hilberg interrupted the lecture to ask why the recent murder of 6 million Jews did not figure in Rosenberg's assessment. Rosenberg replied that it was a complicated matter, but that the lectures only dealt with history down to 1930, adding, "History doesn’t reach down into the present age." Hilberg was amazed by this highly educated, German-Jewish emigrant passing over the genocide of European Jews in order to expound on Napoleon and the occupation of Spain. The episode served to strengthen his interest in the subject.[9]
Hilberg went on to complete first an M.A. (1950), and then a Ph.D (1955), at Columbia University,[10] where he entered the graduate program in Public Law and Government. Meanwhile, in 1951, he obtained a temporary appointment to work on the War Documentation Project under the direction of Fritz T. Epstein.
Hilberg was undecided under whom he should carry out his doctoral research. Having attended a course on International Law, he was also attracted to the lectures of Salo Baron, the leading authority on Jewish historiography at the time, with particular expertise in the field of laws pertaining to the Jewish people. According to Hilberg, to attend Baron's lectures was to enjoy the rare opportunity of observing "a walking library, a monument of incredible erudition", active before his classroom of students. Baron asked Hilberg whether he was interested in working under him on the annihilation of Europe's Jewish population. Hilberg demurred on the grounds that his interest lay in theperpetrators, and thus he would not begin with the Jews who were their victims, but rather with what was done to them.[9]
Hilberg decided to write the greater part of his Ph.D. under the supervision of Franz Neumann, the author of an influential wartime analysis of the German totalitarian state.[11]Neumann was initially reluctant to take Hilberg on as his doctoral student. He had already read Hilberg's master's thesis, and found, as both a deeply patriotic German and a Jew, that certain themes sketched there were unbearably painful. In particular he had asked that the section on Jewish cooperation be removed, to no avail.[12] Neumann nonetheless relented, warning his student, however, that such a dissertation was professionally imprudent and might well prove to be his academic funeral.[4] Undeterred by the prospect, Hilberg pressed on without regard for the possible consequences.[13] Neumann himself contacted Nuremberg prosecutor Telford Taylor directly, to facilitate Hilberg's access to the appropriate archives. After Neumann's death in a traffic accident in 1954, Hilberg completed his doctoral requirement under the supervision of Professor William T. R. Fox. His dissertation won him the university's prestigious Clark F. Ansley Award in 1955, which carried with it the right to have his thesis published by his alma mater.[14] He taught the first college-level course in the United States dedicated to the Holocaust, when the subject was finally introduced into his university's curriculum in 1974.[4]
Hilberg obtained his first academic position at the University of Vermont in Burlington, in 1955, and took up residence there in January 1956. Most of his teaching career was spent at the university, where he was a member of the Department of Political Science. He was appointed emeritus professor upon his retirement in 1991. In 2006, the university established the Raul Hilberg Distinguished Professorship of Holocaust Studies.
Hilberg was appointed to the President's Commission on the Holocaust by Jimmy Carter in 1979. He later served for many years on its successor, the United States Holocaust Memorial Council, which is the governing body for the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.[15] Following his death, the Museum established the Raul Hilberg Fellowship, intended to support the development of new generations of Holocaust scholars.[16] For his seminal and profound services to the historiography of the Holocaust, he was honored with Germany's Order of Merit, the highest recognition that can be paid to a non-German.[13] In 2002, he was awarded the Geschwister-Scholl-Preis for Die Quellen des Holocaust (Sources of the Holocaust). He was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2005.[17]

Personal life[edit]

Hilberg had two children, David and Deborah, by his first wife, Christine Hemenway. After his divorce, in 1980 he married Gwendolyn Montgomery. Deborah moved to Israel when she was 18, assumed dual citizenship, and became a specialist teacher of children with learning disabilities. She has written memorably of her father's approach to rearing in an article composed on the occasion of the publication of the Hebrew translation of his masterpiece, in 2012.[18]
Hilberg was not religious, and considered himself an atheist. In his autobiographical reflections he stated, "The fact is that I have had no God."[19] In a 2001 interview that addressed the issue of Holocaust denial, he said, "I am an atheist. But there is ultimately, if you don't want to surrender to nihilism entirely, the matter of a [historical] record."[20]After his second wife's autonomous decision, 12 years into their marriage, to convert from Episcopalianism to Judaism, in 1993, Hilberg began quietly to attend services at Ohavi Zedek, a Conservative synagogue in Burlington. What he most esteemed, and identified with in his own tradition, was the ideal of the Jew as 'pariah'. As he put it in a 1965 essay, "Jews are iconoclasts. They will not worship idols... The Jews are the conscience of the world. They are the father figures, stern, critical, and forbidding."[4]
Hilberg was the only scholar interviewed for Claude Lanzmann's Shoah, and according to Guy Austin was "a key influence on Lanzmann" in depicting the logistics of the genocide.[21] A strong supporter of Norman Finkelstein during the latter's controversial tenure battle and of Finkelstein's The Holocaust Industry, Hilberg also made a posthumous appearance in the 2009 film, American Radical: The Trials of Norman Finkelstein.[22][23]
Though a non-smoker, Hilberg died following a recurrence of lung cancer on August 4, 2007, aged 81, in Williston, Vermont.[24]

The Destruction of the European Jews[edit]

Main article: The Destruction of the European Jews
Hilberg is best known for his influential study of the Holocaust, The Destruction of the European Jews. His final doctoral supervisor, Professor Fox, worried that the original study was far too long. Hilberg therefore suggested submitting a mere quarter of the research he had written up, and his proposal was accepted. His PhD dissertation was awarded the prestigious Clark F. Ansley prize, which entitled it to be published by Columbia University Press in a print run of 850 copies.[25] However, Hilberg was firm in desiring that the whole work be published, not just the doctoral version. To obtain this, two opinions in favor of full publication were required. The work was duly submitted to two additional academic authorities in the field, but both judgments were negative, viewing Hilberg's work as polemical: one rejected it as anti-German, the other as anti-Jewish.[26]

Struggle for publication[edit]

Hilberg, unwilling to compromise, submitted the complete manuscript to several major publishing houses over the following six years, without luck. Princeton University Pressturned down the manuscript, on Hannah Arendt's advice, after quickly vetting it in a mere two weeks. After successive rejections from five prominent publishers, it finally went to press in 1961 under a minor imprint, the Chicago-based publisher, Quadrangle Books. By good fortune, a wealthy patron, Frank Petschek, a German-Czech Jew whose family coal business had suffered from the Nazi Aryanization program,[27] laid out $15,000, a substantial sum at the time, to cover the costs of a print run of 5,500 volumes,[28] of which some 1,300 copies were set aside for distribution to libraries.[13]
Resistance to Hilberg's work, the difficulties he encountered in finding a U.S. editor, and subsequent delays with the German edition, owed much to the Cold War atmosphere of the times. Norman Finkelstein observed,
It is hard now to remember that the Nazi holocaust was once a taboo subject. During the early years of the Cold War, mention of the Nazi holocaust was seen as undermining the critical U.S.-West German alliance. It was airing the dirty laundry of the barely de-Nazified West German elites and thereby playing into the hands of the Soviet Union, which didn't tire of remembering the crimes of the West German "revanchists."[29]
The German rights to the book were acquired by the German publishing firm, Droemer Knaur, in 1963. Droemer Knaur, however, after dithering over it for two years, decided against publication, due to the work's documentation of certain episodes of cooperation by Jewish authorities with the executors of the Holocaust — material which the editors said would only play into the hands of the antisemitic right wing in Germany. Hilberg dismissed this fear as "nonsense".[30] Some two decades were to pass before it finally came out in a German edition in 1982, under the imprint of a Berlin publishing house.[31] Hilberg, a lifelong Republican voter,[32] seemed to be somewhat bemused by the prospect of being published under such an imprint, and asked its director, Ulf Wolter, what on earth his massive treatise on the Holocaust had in common with some of the firm's staple themes, Socialism and Women's rights. Wolter replied succinctly: "Injustice!"[33] In a letter of July 14, 1982 Hilberg had written to Mr. Wolter/Olle & Wolter, "Everything you said to me during this brief visit has impressed me very much and has given me a good feeling about our joint venture. I am glad that you are my publisher in Germany." He spoke about a "second edition" of his work, "solid enough for the next century".

Approach and structure of book[edit]

The Destruction of the European Jews provided, in Hannah Arendt's words, 'the first clear description of (the) incredibly complicated machinery of destruction' set up under Nazism.[34] For Hilberg there was deep irony in the judgment since Arendt, asked to give an opinion of his manuscript in 1959, had advised against publication,[4] arguing that it dealt with things one no longer spoke about. Her judgement influenced the rejection slip he received from Princeton University Press following its submission, thus effectively denying him the prestigious auspices of a mainstream academic publishing house.
With a terse lucidity that ranged, with unsparing meticulousness, over the huge archives of Nazism, Hilberg delineated the history of the mechanisms, political, legal, administrative and organizational, whereby the Holocaust was perpetrated, as it was seen through German eyes, often by the anonymous clerks whose unquestioning dedication to their duties was central to the efficacy of the industrial project of genocide. To that end, Hilberg refrained from laying emphasis on the suffering of Jews, the victims, or their lives in the concentration camps. The Nazi program entailed the destruction of all peoples whose existence was deemed incompatible with the world-historical destiny of a pure master race – and to accomplish this project, they had to develop techniques, muster resources, make bureaucratic decisions, organize fields and camps of extermination and recruit cadres capable of executing the Final Solution. It was enough to chase down each intricate strand of communication over how to conduct the operation efficiently through the enormous archival papertrail to show how this took place. Thus his discourse probed the bureaucratic means for implementing genocide, in order to let the implicit horror of the process speak for itself.[35] In this he differed radically from those who had focused heavily on final responsibilities, as for example in the case of predecessor Gerald Reitlinger's groundbreaking history of the subject.[36] Because of this layered departmentalized structure of the bureaucracy overseeing the intricate policies of classifying, mustering and deporting victims, individual functionaries saw their roles as distinct from the actual 'perpetration' of the Holocaust.[37] Hilberg made it clear, however, that such functionaries were quite aware of their involvement in what was a process of destruction.[13] Hilberg's minute documentation thus constructed a functional analysis of the machinery of genocide, while leaving unaddressed any questions of historical antisemitism, and possible structural elements in Germany's historical-social tradition which might have conduced to the unparalleled industrialization of the European Jewish Catastrophe by that country. Yehuda Bauer, a lifelong adversary and friend of Hilberg, who often clashed polemically with the man he considered 'without fault' over what Bauer saw as the latter's failure to deal with the complex dilemmas of Jews caught up in this machinery, recalls often prodding Hilberg on his exclusive focus on the how of the Holocaust rather than the why. According to Bauer, Hilberg "did not ask the big questions for fear that the answers would be too little."[38] or, as Hilberg himself says interviewed in Lanzmann's film, "I have never begun by asking the big questions, because I was always afraid that I would come up with small answers."
Hilberg's empirical, descriptive approach to the Holocaust, though it exercised a not fully acknowledged but pervasive influence on the far better-known work of Hannah Arendt,Eichmann in Jerusalem,[39] in turn aroused considerable controversy, not least because of its details concerning the cooperation of Jewish councils in the actual procedures of evacuation to the camps.

Critical reception[edit]

At the time, most historians of the phenomenon subscribed to what would today be called the extreme intentionalist position, where sometime early in his career, Hitler developed a master plan for the genocide of the Jewish people and that everything that happened was the unfolding of the plan. This clashed with the lesson Hilberg had absorbed under Neumann, whose Behemoth:The Structure and Practice of National Socialism (1942) described the Nazi regime as a virtually stateless political order characterised by chronic bureaucratic infighting and turf disputes. The task Hilberg set for himself was to analyse the way the overall policies of genocide were engineered within the otherwise conflictual politics of Nazi factions. It helped that the Americans classifying the huge amount of Nazi documents used, precisely, the categories his future mentor Neumann had employed in his Behemoth study.[32]
Hilberg came to be considered as the foremost representative of what a later generation has called the functionalist school of Holocaust historiography, of which Christopher Browning, whose own life was changed by reading Hilberg's book,[40] is a prominent member. This is an ongoing debate, around approximately the following basic points: Intentionalists see "the Holocaust as Hitler's determined and premeditated plan, which he implemented as the opportunity arose",[41] while functionalists see "the Final Solution as an evolution that occurred when other plans proved untenable".[41] Intentionalists argue that the initiative for the Holocaust came from above, while functionalists contend it came from lower ranks within the bureaucracy.
It has often been observed that Hilberg's magnum opus begins with an intentionalist thesis but gradually shifts towards a functionalist position. At the time, this approach raised a few eyebrows, but only later did it actually attract pointed academic discussion.[42] A further move towards a functionalist interpretation occurred in the revised 1985 edition, in which Hitler is portrayed as a remote figure hardly involved in the machinery of destruction. The terms "functionalist" and "intentionalist" were coined in 1981 by Timothy Masonbut the origins of the debate go back to 1969–1970 with the publication of Martin Broszat's The Hitler State in 1969, and Karl Schleunes's The Twisted Road to Auschwitz in 1970. Since most of the early functionalist historians were West German, it was often enough for intentionalist historians, especially for those outside Germany, to note that men such as Broszat and Hans Mommsen had spent their adolescence in the Hitler Youth and then to say that their work was an apologia for National Socialism. Hilberg was Jewish and an Austrian who had fled to the United States to escape the Nazis and had no Nazi sympathies, which helps to explain the vehemence of the attacks by intentionalist historians that greeted the revised edition of The Destruction of the European Jews in 1985.
Hilberg's understanding of the relationship between the leadership of the Third Reich and the implementers of the genocide evolved from an interpretation based on orders to theRSHA originating with Adolf Hitler and proclaimed by Hermann Göring, to a thesis consistent with Christopher Browning's The Origins of the Final Solution, an account in which initiatives were undertaken by mid-level officials in response to general orders from senior ones. Such initiatives were broadened by mandates from senior officials and propagated by increasingly informal channels. The experience gained in fulfilling the initiatives fed an understanding in the bureaucracy that radical goals were attainable, progressively reducing the need for direction. As Hilberg put it in a late interview:
In earlier editions of Destruction, in fact, Hilberg discussed an "order" given by Hitler to have Jews killed, while more recent editions do not refer to a direct command. Hilberg later commented that he "made this change in the interest of precision about the evidence[...]." Notwithstanding Hilberg's focus on bureaucratic momentum as an indispensable force behind the Holocaust, he maintained that extermination of Jews was one of Hitler's aims: "The primary notion in Germany is that Hitler did it. As it happens, this is also my notion, but I'm not wedded to it" (qtd. in Guttenplan, p. 303).
This contradicts the thesis advanced by Daniel Goldhagen that the ferocity of German anti-Semitism is sufficient as an explanation for the Holocaust; Hilberg noted that anti-Semitism was more virulent in Eastern Europe than in the Third Reich itself. Hilberg criticized Goldhagen's scholarship, which he called poor ("his scholarly standard is at the level of 1946") and he was even harsher concerning the lack of primary source or secondary literature competence at Harvard by those who oversaw the research for Goldhagen's book. Hilberg said, "This is the only reason why Goldhagen could obtain a PhD in political science at Harvard. There was nobody on the faculty who could have checked his work." This remark has been echoed by Yehuda Bauer. Conversely, Hilberg was supportive of Norman Finkelstein's book The Holocaust Industry, which he endorsed "with specific regard" to Finkelstein's work showing that the money claimed to be owed by Swiss banks to Holocaust survivors was greatly exaggerated.[44]
What is most contentious about Hilberg's work, the controversial implications of which influenced the decision by Israeli authorities to deny him access to the Yad Vashem's archives,[7] was his assessment that elements of Jewish society, such as the Judenräte (Jewish Councils), were complicit in the genocide.[45][46] and that this was partly rooted in long-standing attitudes of European Jews, rather than attempts at survival or exploitation. In his own words:
"I had to examine the Jewish tradition of trusting God, princes, laws and contracts [...] Ultimately I had to ponder the Jewish calculation that the persecutor would not destroy what he could economically exploit. It was precisely this Jewish strategy that dictated accommodation and precluded resistance."[47]
The result of his approach, and the sharp criticism it aroused in certain quarters, was such, as he records in the same book, that:
"It has taken me some time to absorb what I should always have known, that in my whole approach to the study of the destruction of the Jews I was pitting myself against the main current of Jewish thought."[7]

Bibliography[edit]

  • The Destruction of the European Jews (Yale University Press, 2003; originally published in 1961).
  • The Holocaust today (Syracuse University Press, 1988).
  • Sources of Holocaust research: An analysis (Ivan R. Dee, Chicago, 2001).
  • The politics of memory: The journey of a Holocaust historian (Ivan R. Dee, Chicago, 1996).
  • Perpetrators, Victims, Bystanders: The Jewish catastrophe, 1933-1945 (Aaron Asher Books, NY, 1992).
  • "The Fate of the Jews in the Cities." Reprinted in Betty Rogers Rubenstein (ed.), et al. What kind of God? : Essays in honor of Richard L. Rubenstein (University Press of America, 1995).
  • "The destruction of the European Jews: precedents." Printed in Bartov, Omer. Holocaust: Origins, implementation, aftermath (Routledge, London, 2000).
  • Hilberg, Raul (editor). Documents of destruction: Germany and Jewry, 1933-1945 (Quadrangle Books, Chicago, 1971).
  • Hilberg, Raul, et al. (editors). The Warsaw diary of Adam Czerniakow: Prelude to Doom (Stein & Day, NY, 1979).

References[edit]

  1. Jump up^ Joffe, Lawrence (2007-09-25), "Obituary: Raul Hilberg", The Guardian, retrieved2010-01-09
  2. Jump up^ Wyman, David (1985-08-11), "Managing the Death Machine", The New York Times, retrieved 2010-01-09
  3. Jump up^ Woo, Elaine (2007-08-07), "Raul Hilberg, 81; scholar was an authority on the Holocaust", Los Angeles Times, retrieved 2010-01-09
  4. ^ Jump up to:a b c d e f g Nathaniel Popper, 'A Conscious Pariah: On Raul Hilberg,' in The NationApril 19, 2010
  5. Jump up^ "Raul Hilberg", Rutland Herald, 2007-08-06, retrieved 2010-01-09
  6. Jump up^ Luc Ferry and S.Passquier, interview with Hilberg, ‘Les fonctionnaires du génocide’, inL’Express international, May 27, 1988 pp.50-58, Cited Gie Van den Berghe, ‘The Incompleteness of a Masterpiece: Raul Hilberg and the Destruction of European Jews’, BTNG-RBHC, 1990, 1-2 pp.110-124 p.110 n.1
  7. ^ Jump up to:a b c "Raul Hilberg", The Times, (London), August 8, 2007.
  8. Jump up^ In a recent lecture in Vienna he is on record as saying,'We know perhaps 20 per cent about the Holocaust,' Times Obituary ibid
  9. ^ Jump up to:a b Götz Aly, "Geschichte reicht in die Gegenwart Ein Gespräch mit dem Historiker Raul Hilberg", in Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 10 December 2002
  10. Jump up^ Associated Press, "Holocaust Scholar Raul Hilberg dies at 81", International Herald Tribune, August 6, 2007.
  11. Jump up^ Neumann, Franz Leopold, Behemoth: The Structure and Practice of National Socialism, 1933 - 1944. Octagon Books, New York 1944
  12. Jump up^ "«Streichen Sie das!» – «Stimmt das nicht?», entgegnete ich. Darauf er: «Nein, too much to take – das ist zu viel." Götz Aly, "Geschichte reicht in die Gegenwart Ein Gespräch mit dem Historiker Raul Hilberg", ibid.
  13. ^ Jump up to:a b c d Douglas Martin, "Raul Hilberg: Historian Who Wrote of the Holocaust as a Bureaucracy, Dies", The New York Times, August 7, 2007.
  14. Jump up^ Ronald J.Berger, Fathoming the Holocaust: A Social Problems Approach, Aldine Transaction, 2002 p.148.
  15. Jump up^ "A Remembrance of Raul Hilberg", by Michael Berenbaum
  16. Jump up^ "In Memoriam: Raul Hilberg (1926-2007)". United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Retrieved 19 July 2010.
  17. Jump up^ "Book of Members, 1780–2010: Chapter B". American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Retrieved June 3, 2011.
  18. Jump up^ Deborah Hilberg, My father, the Holocaust scholar; the man whose message Israelis wouldn't hear,' at Haaretz 6 December 2012
  19. Jump up^ Raul Hilberg, The Politics of Memory: The Journey of a Holocaust Historian, Chicago: Ivan R. Dee; 1996, p. 36
  20. Jump up^ "The war on truth", by DD Guttenplan, The Guardian, March 12, 2001
  21. Jump up^ Austin, Guy. Contemporary French Cinema: An Introduction. Manchester University Press, 1996. p. 24.
  22. Jump up^ Susan Ryan (2010). "American Radical: The Trials of Norman Finkelstein". Cineaste(Cineaste Publishers) 35 (2): 60–61. Retrieved 6 December 2010.
  23. Jump up^ ""It Takes an Enormous Amount of Courage to Speak the Truth When No One Else is Out There"—World-Renowned Holocaust, Israel Scholars Defend DePaul Professor Norman Finkelstein as He Fights for Tenure". Democracy Now!. Pacifica Radio. May 9, 2007. Retrieved 6 December 2010.
  24. Jump up^ "Holocaust scholar Raul Hilberg dies at 81". United Press International. Aug 7, 2007.
  25. Jump up^ Ronald J. Berger, Fathoming the Holocaust: A Social Problems Approach, Aldine Transaction, 2002, p.148
  26. Jump up^ Götz Aly, 'Geschichte reicht in die Gegenwart Ein Gespräch mit dem Historiker Raul Hilberg ', ibid.
  27. Jump up^ Harold James, 'Schwere moralische Schuld,', in Die Zeit September, 1995 [1]
  28. Jump up^ Götz Aly, 'Geschichte reicht in die Gegenwart Ein Gespräch mit dem Historiker Raul Hilberg ', ibid.
  29. Jump up^ Norman Finkelstein, "Remembering Raul Hilberg", CounterPunch, August 22, 2007.
  30. Jump up^ Götz Aly, 'Geschichte reicht in die Gegenwart Ein Gespräch mit dem Historiker Raul Hilberg ', ibid.
  31. Jump up^ Raul Hilberg,Die Vernichtung der europäischen Juden, ed. Ulf Wolter, tr. Christian Seeger, Olle & Wolter, Berlin 1982
  32. ^ Jump up to:a b Neumann, Michael (2007-08-15), "In Memoriam: Raul Hilberg", CounterPunch, retrieved 2010-01-09
  33. Jump up^ Götz Aly, 'Geschichte reicht in die Gegenwart Ein Gespräch mit dem Historiker Raul Hilberg ', ibid.
  34. Jump up^ Hannah Arendt,Eichmann in Jerusalem(1963) rev.ed.1964 p.71
  35. Jump up^ Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews (1961) 1973 Preface p.v
  36. Jump up^ Gerald Reitlinger,The Final Solution,1953
  37. Jump up^ "For these reasons, an administrator, clerk or uniformed guard never referred to himself as a perpetrator,” cited 'Raul Hilberg:Historian Who Wrote of the Holocaust as a Bureaucracy, Dies ',http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/07/us/07hilberg.html
  38. Jump up^ Bauer, Yehuda (2007-10-02), "A human being without fault", Haaretz, retrieved2010-01-09
  39. Jump up^ Hilberg counted up to 80 passages in Arendt's book taken verbatim or indirectly from his own work. In reviewing her book, Hugh Trevor-Roper concluded that 'behind the whole of Miss Arendt's book stands the overshadowing bulk of Mr. Hilberg's.' See Nathaniel Popper, 'A Conscious Pariah: On Raul Hilberg,' in The Nation, April 19, 2010.
  40. Jump up^ 'He read it during a long convalescence from mononucleosis, and it changed his life. "Some people have religious conversion experiences," Browning said at a memorial service for Hilberg; "upon reading Hilberg I had a life-changing academic conversion experience".' Cited Nathaniel Popper, 'A Conscious Pariah: On Raul Hilberg,' April 19, 2010.
  41. ^ Jump up to:a b Berenbaum, Michael; Peck, Abraham J., eds. (1998). The Holocaust and History: The Known, the Unknown, the Disputed, and the Reexamined. Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press. p. 4. ISBN 0-253-33374-1.
  42. Jump up^ Jäckel, Eberhard (1998). "The Holocaust: Where We Are, Where We Need to Go". In Berenbaum, Michael; Peck, Abraham J. The Holocaust and History: The Known, the Unknown, the Disputed, and the Reexamined. Bloomington, Indiana: Indiana University Press. p. 24. ISBN 0-253-33374-1. While in the 1960s and 1970s the stream of historical publications grew steadily, there was still almost no scholarly debate on the Holocaust. Hilberg certainly had sparked a stormy controversy, which was particularly vehement in Israel, but his interpretation, derived from Franz Neumann, was not discussed profoundly by his fellow historians
  43. Jump up^ "Facing History" interview
  44. Jump up^ [2] Democracy Now, Interview with Hilberg, May 9, 2007]
  45. Jump up^ "The Germans controlled the Jewish leadership, and that leadership in turn controlled the Jewish community. This system was foolproof. Truly, the Jewish communal organizations had become a self-destructive machine." Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews, (1961)1973 pp122-125,p.125
  46. Jump up^ "In Amsterdam as in Warsaw, in Berlin as in Budapest, Jewish officials could be trusted to compile the lists of persons and of their property, to secure money from the deportees to defray the expenses of their deportation and extermination, to keep track of vacated apartments, to supply police forces to help seize Jews and get them on trains, until, as a last gesture, they handed over the assets of the Jewish community in good order for final confiscation." Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem (1963) 1964 p.118
  47. Jump up^ Raul Hilberg, The politics of memory, pp. 126-127).

Further reading[edit]

External links[edit]

See also[edit]

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