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Reading the Holocaust
The events of the Holocaust remain unthinkable to many men and women, as morally and intellectually baffling today as they were a half century ago. Inga Clendinnen seeks to dispel what she calls the "Gorgon effect" the sickening of imagination and the draining of the will that afflict so many of us when we try to confront the horrors of this history. Clendinnen explores the experience of the Holocaust from both the victims' and the perpetrators' points of view. She discusses the remarkable survivor testimonies of writers such as Primo Levi and Charlotte Delbo, the vexing issue of "resistance" in the camps, and survivors' strategies for understanding the motivations of the Nazi leadership. She focuses an anthropologist's precise gaze on the actions of the murderers in the police battalions and among the SS in the camps. Finally she considers how the Holocaust has been portrayed in poetry, fiction and film. Searching and eloquent, Reading the Holocaust is an uncompromising attempt to extract the comprehensible--the recognizably human--from the unthinkable inhuman acts of the Holocaust. Inga Clendinnen is the author of Ambivalent Conquests: Maya and Spaniard in Yucatan, 1517-1570 and Aztecs: An Interpretation, both published by Cambridge University Press.
238 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1998
About the author
Inga Clendinnen
13 books37 followersInga Clendinnen, AO, FAHA was an Australian author, historian, anthropologist, and academic.
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
May 21, 2014
Gradually a feeling of reluctance came upon me as I read this book, a reluctance to continue. I hasten to say that these essays are excellent meditations on several crucial aspects of the Holocaust. But it was a question of when was it appropriate to pick this up and read? Not after a good dinner, that’s for sure. Not in the English spring sunshine, in my quiet garden. Not drowsing before sleep. Not in the middle a hectic office. Nowhere and at no time was it appropriate to continue reading about the Holocaust. Always, it felt hideously crass, in the poorest taste.
And this was what the survivors got, when they tried to tell their stories. A turning away, a mass flinching, everyone saying to themselves it couldn’t have been as bad as that, it just couldn’t. The survivors told us the bleakest truths about human beings and what they can do, and who wants to know. It’s the same reason why child abuse victims can’t speak about their situation for years, or if they do are shut down and ignored – they’re bringers of the worst news.
What does this mean? You can see how the Holocaust has gradually (it took 30 years at least) become sacred, venerated, revered, memorialized, enshrined and of course denied. Primo Levi put this imaginary speech into the mouth of an exultant and prescient SS officer talking to a Jew, some time in 1943 :
“However this war may end, we have won the war against you. None of you will be left to bear witness, but even if someone were to survive, the world would not believe him. There will be perhaps suspicions, discussions, research by historians, but there will be no certainties, because we will destroy the evidence together with you. And even if some proof should remain and some of you survive, people will say that the events you describe are too monstrous to be believed – they will say they are the exaggerations of Allied propaganda and will believe us, who will deny everything, and not you.”
And this did nearly happen, and amongst the deniers, still does.
I’ve read too much about this subject. I’m haunted by another imaginary conversation, this time between Hitler and his creepy, fawning, true-believer colleague Heinrich Himmler. It’s early 1941 and the Nazis bestride Europe, and they’re up at the Berghof, it’s late, they’re on about the Jews again, and Himmler is pointing out that all these plans to get rid of the lot of them to Madagascar (!) or Palestine or Argentina (!) or anywhere just aren’t practical in the middle of a war. So what are we going to do with them? He wonders aloud – so maybe we could just…. What? Maybe…. (he smiles timidly) … just get rid of them permanently. You know. What? Even Hitler hasn’t actually crystallised in his mind the idea of physical liquidation. But this is where it happens. Hitler is startled, amazed. Really? Do you think we could do that? Ah, if we could only do that. Himmler says slyly, Well... we can do anything we want to. And with this war raging all around, who would notice? The Jews would just… disappear. I imagine Hitler suddenly realises that – you know, yes, it could really be done! No more half measures. We will do this thing properly. This is what I was actually talking about when I said I’d destroy them… of course. Now it’s obvious….
Well, I think somewhere there was some kind of conversation like that, because I am a Functionalist, not an Intentionalist. This is one of the many debates historians conduct about the Third Reich. And should you steel yourself and soak up the details of this awful period, so you call tell the difference between a Dachau (work camp) and a Treblinka (extermination camp), and between 1941 (the wild Einsatzgruppen slaughters in occupied Poland and Russia) and 1942 (as the process became mechanised); and because of your now sophisticated knowledge of the complexities of Auschwitz you can explain why there was a brothel behind the barbed wire – what then? Has this knowledge prevented other outbreaks of genocidal fury, in Bosnia, Rwanda, South Sudan and will it prevent the next one, wherever it might be? Of course not.
We are all like the Wedding Guest, and the Holocaust survivors and their historians are like a gang of Ancient Mariners
IT is an ancient Mariner,
And he stoppeth one of three.
'By thy long beard and glittering eye,
Now wherefore stopp'st thou me?
The Bridegroom's doors are opened wide,
And I am next of kin;
The guests are met, the feast is set:
May'st hear the merry din.'
I hear the merry din of my own life. But the old man’s glittering eye holds me spellbound, and I have to hear him out.
And this was what the survivors got, when they tried to tell their stories. A turning away, a mass flinching, everyone saying to themselves it couldn’t have been as bad as that, it just couldn’t. The survivors told us the bleakest truths about human beings and what they can do, and who wants to know. It’s the same reason why child abuse victims can’t speak about their situation for years, or if they do are shut down and ignored – they’re bringers of the worst news.
What does this mean? You can see how the Holocaust has gradually (it took 30 years at least) become sacred, venerated, revered, memorialized, enshrined and of course denied. Primo Levi put this imaginary speech into the mouth of an exultant and prescient SS officer talking to a Jew, some time in 1943 :
“However this war may end, we have won the war against you. None of you will be left to bear witness, but even if someone were to survive, the world would not believe him. There will be perhaps suspicions, discussions, research by historians, but there will be no certainties, because we will destroy the evidence together with you. And even if some proof should remain and some of you survive, people will say that the events you describe are too monstrous to be believed – they will say they are the exaggerations of Allied propaganda and will believe us, who will deny everything, and not you.”
And this did nearly happen, and amongst the deniers, still does.
I’ve read too much about this subject. I’m haunted by another imaginary conversation, this time between Hitler and his creepy, fawning, true-believer colleague Heinrich Himmler. It’s early 1941 and the Nazis bestride Europe, and they’re up at the Berghof, it’s late, they’re on about the Jews again, and Himmler is pointing out that all these plans to get rid of the lot of them to Madagascar (!) or Palestine or Argentina (!) or anywhere just aren’t practical in the middle of a war. So what are we going to do with them? He wonders aloud – so maybe we could just…. What? Maybe…. (he smiles timidly) … just get rid of them permanently. You know. What? Even Hitler hasn’t actually crystallised in his mind the idea of physical liquidation. But this is where it happens. Hitler is startled, amazed. Really? Do you think we could do that? Ah, if we could only do that. Himmler says slyly, Well... we can do anything we want to. And with this war raging all around, who would notice? The Jews would just… disappear. I imagine Hitler suddenly realises that – you know, yes, it could really be done! No more half measures. We will do this thing properly. This is what I was actually talking about when I said I’d destroy them… of course. Now it’s obvious….
Well, I think somewhere there was some kind of conversation like that, because I am a Functionalist, not an Intentionalist. This is one of the many debates historians conduct about the Third Reich. And should you steel yourself and soak up the details of this awful period, so you call tell the difference between a Dachau (work camp) and a Treblinka (extermination camp), and between 1941 (the wild Einsatzgruppen slaughters in occupied Poland and Russia) and 1942 (as the process became mechanised); and because of your now sophisticated knowledge of the complexities of Auschwitz you can explain why there was a brothel behind the barbed wire – what then? Has this knowledge prevented other outbreaks of genocidal fury, in Bosnia, Rwanda, South Sudan and will it prevent the next one, wherever it might be? Of course not.
We are all like the Wedding Guest, and the Holocaust survivors and their historians are like a gang of Ancient Mariners
IT is an ancient Mariner,
And he stoppeth one of three.
'By thy long beard and glittering eye,
Now wherefore stopp'st thou me?
The Bridegroom's doors are opened wide,
And I am next of kin;
The guests are met, the feast is set:
May'st hear the merry din.'
I hear the merry din of my own life. But the old man’s glittering eye holds me spellbound, and I have to hear him out.
May 27, 2019
Enjoyed reading this book. I'm going to reread it later so that I can give it the proper review it deserves. Will update soon.
April 5, 2022
This is a book about studying the Holocaust. Inga Clendinnen masterfully grapples with problems which crop up all over Holocaust studies, from fiction, film, the trials, eyewitness reports, and the historian's method. She ruthlessly interrogates not only her own discipline, but also the human nature and limitation which she and all of the rest of us bring to something which we must face but cannot look at directly, calling this "the Gorgon effect." The result of her work is a paradox of humiliating acceptance of limitation and ineptitude in studying the Holocaust and a simultaneous ratcheting up of the obligation to look, even if the risk is blindness.
"The shadow of the Holocaust has lengthened with the years. In that shadow, none of us is at home in the world, because now we know the fragility of our content. If we are to see the Gorgon sufficiently steadily to destroy it, we cannot afford to be blinded by reverence or abashed into silence or deflected into a search for reassuring myths. We must do more than register guilt, or grief, or anger, or disgust, because neither reverence for those who suffer nor revulsion from those who inflict the suffering will help us overcome its power to paralyse, and to see it clearly." pg. 182
"The shadow of the Holocaust has lengthened with the years. In that shadow, none of us is at home in the world, because now we know the fragility of our content. If we are to see the Gorgon sufficiently steadily to destroy it, we cannot afford to be blinded by reverence or abashed into silence or deflected into a search for reassuring myths. We must do more than register guilt, or grief, or anger, or disgust, because neither reverence for those who suffer nor revulsion from those who inflict the suffering will help us overcome its power to paralyse, and to see it clearly." pg. 182
March 22, 2017
This was an historian's take on the materials available to read on the Holocaust. Now keep in mind that this was published in 1996 and there has been more research done in the last twenty years. More archives have been opened and more diaries have been discovered. Most survivors are no longer alive so first hand accounts are slim. Just about every perpetrator was executed so their stories have never been told. Clendinnen is concerned about that fact very much, that we do not have the stories from the leaders of the third Reich because they were killed in Wartime tribunals for crimes against humanity. I am not so sure that we need those stories. We know what racism is and the disgustingness of judging someone from perceived differences.
This was wrong in the 1930s and 1940s and is most definitely wrong in 2017, though the political climate in the United States currently says otherwise. Books like this are needed to remind us that killing people for religious or lifestyle differences is wrong. The idea of going to war to eradicate these differences will end up starving us out. I have read better books on Nazi Germany than this one, but this book has an excellent bibliography.
This was wrong in the 1930s and 1940s and is most definitely wrong in 2017, though the political climate in the United States currently says otherwise. Books like this are needed to remind us that killing people for religious or lifestyle differences is wrong. The idea of going to war to eradicate these differences will end up starving us out. I have read better books on Nazi Germany than this one, but this book has an excellent bibliography.
September 20, 2007
probably one of the best non fiction books i've ever read - mind blowing and expanding, Clendinnan teaches the idea of understanding in order to transcend the gorgon effect.
December 28, 2023
In this short collection of essays Clendinnen writes with a sensitivity, gravity, and solemnity equal to her subject matter. She has set herself the task, one she hopes to share with her readers, of inching her way through the morass of moral and intellectual repugnance that is ineluctably part of coming to terms with the human reality of the Holocaust.
Frequently humbling, this journey is framed by a narrative of personal experience that highlights not only Clendinnen’s determination to achieve the clarity and understanding that are the hallmarks of a great historian but also the shortcomings of a specialist working outside her purview—shortcomings she openly acknowledges. We join Clendinnen as she grapples with the complexities that accompany any attempt to situate the Holocaust in the record of human history; examine the psychological, moral, ethical, and existential perils that confront the survivors who offer us their eyewitness testimony; gaze in shock as the stark contours of perpetrator and victim come to a bloody coalescence in the lives of the sonderkommandos; and attempt to do the impossible (some might say the immoral): enter the lived experience of Nazi soldiers in order to view them as mere men.
The greatest value of this work lies in Clendinnen’s frank exposition. The chapters all have a clear question to answer. Major historical works that have sought to address those questions are described, compared, and critiqued. The debates that have vexed historians are introduced in concise and compelling language, and finally Clendinnen’s own perspective is proffered. What may surprise some readers of more narrative-driven histories is how wide her frame of reference can be. The philosophers Barthes and Rorty make an appearance in Clendinnen’s musings of the power of the written word (particularly those written after the historical method) to help make sense of ourselves in an increasingly technological era dominated by television, film, and the internet. The theories of the sociologist Goffman and anthropologist Geertz are introduced as key resources for amplifying our understanding of the German Police Battalions. Literary references abound. I found this quite engaging, but I can also understand that readers may find it haughty or even superfluous. There are times when the personal is perhaps overindulged, as when Clendinnen describes stapling closed pages in a short story by Nabokov whose willingness to imagine his own Holocaust-derived atrocities is judged beyond the pale.
However, it was in the first chapter labelled ‘Beginnings’ that I was most struck by Clendinnen’s project. She relates the impact of a literary scandal in Australia during the 1990s. The Hand That Signed the Paper was feted by the literary establishment, won multiple awards, including the most prestigious, the Miles Franklin Literary Award. The author, Helen Demidenko, was later revealed to be Helen Darville. The story of a Ukrainian family suffering horrendously at the hands of ‘Jewish Bolsheviks’, is revealed to be purulent ideological anti-Semitism. That the historical understanding of the Australian literary intelligentsia of the time was so meagre, so easily hoodwinked, is a source of shame. And it is one Clendinnen openly shares. As a fellow Australian, I found this increased the urgency and poignancy of her book (I am of course, very late in reading it).
Overall, this is a remarkable work that certainly achieves its goal: to serve as an empathic guide and moral impetus as one takes on the momentous task of reading the holocaust.
Frequently humbling, this journey is framed by a narrative of personal experience that highlights not only Clendinnen’s determination to achieve the clarity and understanding that are the hallmarks of a great historian but also the shortcomings of a specialist working outside her purview—shortcomings she openly acknowledges. We join Clendinnen as she grapples with the complexities that accompany any attempt to situate the Holocaust in the record of human history; examine the psychological, moral, ethical, and existential perils that confront the survivors who offer us their eyewitness testimony; gaze in shock as the stark contours of perpetrator and victim come to a bloody coalescence in the lives of the sonderkommandos; and attempt to do the impossible (some might say the immoral): enter the lived experience of Nazi soldiers in order to view them as mere men.
The greatest value of this work lies in Clendinnen’s frank exposition. The chapters all have a clear question to answer. Major historical works that have sought to address those questions are described, compared, and critiqued. The debates that have vexed historians are introduced in concise and compelling language, and finally Clendinnen’s own perspective is proffered. What may surprise some readers of more narrative-driven histories is how wide her frame of reference can be. The philosophers Barthes and Rorty make an appearance in Clendinnen’s musings of the power of the written word (particularly those written after the historical method) to help make sense of ourselves in an increasingly technological era dominated by television, film, and the internet. The theories of the sociologist Goffman and anthropologist Geertz are introduced as key resources for amplifying our understanding of the German Police Battalions. Literary references abound. I found this quite engaging, but I can also understand that readers may find it haughty or even superfluous. There are times when the personal is perhaps overindulged, as when Clendinnen describes stapling closed pages in a short story by Nabokov whose willingness to imagine his own Holocaust-derived atrocities is judged beyond the pale.
However, it was in the first chapter labelled ‘Beginnings’ that I was most struck by Clendinnen’s project. She relates the impact of a literary scandal in Australia during the 1990s. The Hand That Signed the Paper was feted by the literary establishment, won multiple awards, including the most prestigious, the Miles Franklin Literary Award. The author, Helen Demidenko, was later revealed to be Helen Darville. The story of a Ukrainian family suffering horrendously at the hands of ‘Jewish Bolsheviks’, is revealed to be purulent ideological anti-Semitism. That the historical understanding of the Australian literary intelligentsia of the time was so meagre, so easily hoodwinked, is a source of shame. And it is one Clendinnen openly shares. As a fellow Australian, I found this increased the urgency and poignancy of her book (I am of course, very late in reading it).
Overall, this is a remarkable work that certainly achieves its goal: to serve as an empathic guide and moral impetus as one takes on the momentous task of reading the holocaust.
January 13, 2011
This is a book that helps towards an understanding of the Holocaust but I felt an initial reluctance to read it, worried that it was morbid to do so and yet feeling a responsibility to know and remember and communicate about the fact of the Holocaust.
It is, amongst other things, these very feelings that Inga Clendinnen explores. She writes that Helen Demidenko/Darville The Hand That Signed the Papergot away with writing an anti-Semitic book that promotes false history because young people especially don't know their history. Clendinnen then dissects those histories, as we have them, in a powerful exploration of the historiography of the Holocaust.
It is, amongst other things, these very feelings that Inga Clendinnen explores. She writes that Helen Demidenko/Darville The Hand That Signed the Papergot away with writing an anti-Semitic book that promotes false history because young people especially don't know their history. Clendinnen then dissects those histories, as we have them, in a powerful exploration of the historiography of the Holocaust.
September 16, 2013
A disturbing and powerful excavation of the literature of the holocaust. Clendinnen has such a remarkable eye and sensitivity and she manages to convey complex and nuanced ideas so clearly. An impossible task perhaps, dealing with this subject, but by focusing on language, history and literary representation this study works. Clendinnen forces the reader to think and not to look away she uses texts to find the human truths within them.
August 9, 2023
Such an important book with strong implications for our current era of politically supported violence and discrimination .
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews