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Objectivity, Subjectivity, and Scholarship:
The Holocaust as Problematic History
Perhaps no other event in history provokes such an emotional response from
contemporary Westerners as the systematic murder of 6 million Jews (not to mention another 6
million Gypsies, homosexuals, and other enemies of the German state) during WWII. The
simple mention of the word “Holocaust” immediately evokes images of gas chambers, crematory
ovens, and innumerable mounds of dead bodies and what is often termed a “natural” sense of
moral revulsion, if not complete horror, in the mind of the listener. The moral weight attached to
this event, as well as fact that it is often considered somehow ‘unique’ because of what took
place, poses a specific set of problems for historians. While they are normally expected to
conduct all investigations without applying contemporary value judgements to the subject matter
under examination (and, indeed, are generally chastised if they give even the slightest
appearance of committing such a disciplinary indiscretion), this rule seemingly ceases to apply
when it comes to the matter of studying the Holocaust. In large part because of this fact, sources
on the Holocaust, particularly those written by the victims, are quite often not subjected to same
the high standards of strict interrogation that documents relating to any other historical event
would be. The question of the moral weight of the Holocaust is also an issue in the continually
contested field of contemporary historiography. On the one hand the difficulty which
contemporary historians (and the general public as a whole) seem to have with ‘understanding’
the Holocaust has helped spur some quite novel forms of historical explanation. On the other,
the battle over the interpretation of the Holocaust has been used by some historians as a blanket
argument against ‘postmodernists’ who argue (in the extreme) that we can never truly know what
happened in the past and that one interpretation of an event is as valid as any other. On the
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whole, because of the conflation of morality and scholarship relating to it, the Holocaust may
well be the most problematic event in the field of contemporary historical studies.
One of the most blatant examples of moral considerations influencing historical
scholarship in the arena of Holocaust studies comes in the examination of sources. One scholar,
Jan Gross, has gone so far as to argue that historians should “modify (their) approach to sources
for this period” (read “for the Holocaust”) (Gross 139). Instead of being “a priori critical,” as
historians are trained to be toward all sources, he argues that we should instead accept an
“account (of the Holocaust) as fact until we find persuasive arguments to the contrary” (Gross
13-40, italics in original). Gross argues that we must make this seemingly incredible exception
to normal disciplinary rules because the scale of the Holocaust left so few survivors to tell their
tale, and that we ought thus give more weight and more credibility to those few reports which do
survive. Despite the fact that many practicing historians no doubt take exception to his assertion,
the fact that he is even able to make such an argument is testament to the moral weight that the
Holocaust carries. Vast numbers of people died in the Crusades and documents from that period,
especially from those groups who were most often targeted, remain as few and far between as the
reports of Holocaust victims. Yet no historian of those events would argue that the only way to
properly respect and remember tens of thousands of dead Muslims would be to take their “lonely
voices reaching from the abyss” (Gross 140) at unexamined face value. While Gross is no doubt
in earnest about his view of how we should read documents from this period, his argument is
openly tinged with appeals for recognition of the moral outrageousness of the Holocaust which,
in his mind and no doubt the minds of many other scholars, provide a perfectly legitimate
justification for making such an exception to the rules regarding sources. It is only because this
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event is somehow considered ‘unique’ (and particularly morally repulsive) among all those
subject to historical inquiry, that such an argument can be made by a practicing historian.
The view of the Holocaust as a kind of historical anomaly that is “morally and
intellectually baffling” to even the “most dedicated students” of history (Clendinnen 4) has had
substantial consequences for the entire field. The fact that most historians seem unable (or
perhaps unwilling) to understand the Holocaust within the context of western civilization and
through the use of traditional historical models and explanatory schema, has prompted some
historians to reach across disciplinary boundaries in search of aid. Some scholars, such as
Robert Waite, who are want to understand Nazi ideology as anything other than some form of
insanity, have attempted to explain Hitler’s motivations “in terms of unconscious intentions, and
even of psychopathology” (Burke 17). Other historians have forged entirely new explanatory
schema combining “structural with psychohistorical approaches” in an attempt to understand
why the German people could be attracted to Hitler and his views (Burke 17). Inga Clendinnen
has argued that anthropological insights into ritual phenomena are useful for understanding the
events of the Holocaust, particularly “apparently aberrant phenomena like the (Concentration)
camps” in which millions of people were systematically deprived of their humanity and
ultimately killed (142). She argues that we might look at “Auschwitz as an anthropologist would
consider a newly encountered ‘exotic’ society” that does not (and ought not) conform to any of
our preconceived notions about how the world should operate (Clendinnen 142). While the
application of new techniques to the examination of historical phenomena is not necessarily a
bad thing, and can in many cases lead to greater insight and understanding of the past
(particularly of those elements which may seem to us today to be ‘exotic’), the fact that these
novel approaches were first suggested as a means of understanding the Holocaust is very
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suggestive of how historians view this event as somehow anomalous and uniquely difficult to
explain because of its moral character.
Perhaps no other point better illustrates the heavy moral weight that the Holocaust holds
for even professional historians than Richard J. Evans’ use of the Holocaust as a weapon against
postmodern critics of traditional history. Evans, contrasting (but purely as a rhetorical strategy)
the debate over the Holocaust with disputes over other historical issue, argues that in the
interpretation of that event lies “an issue where evidence really counts” and where postmodern
notions of competing interpretations and seeing events as texts “trivializes mass murder” (Evans
107). Making explicit and unapologetic value judgements, he argues that “Auschwitz was
inherently a tragedy and cannot be seen” in any other light (Evans 107). Evans takes an even
stronger stand with regards to so-called “Holocaust deniers” who argue that the event itself never
took place. Despite the assertion of one history department that “historical revision of major
events is not concerned with the actuality of these events” (quoted in Evans 208), historians do
engage in such debates all the time; over issues ranging from the existence of a medieval female
pope, to the historical basis of stories such as Robin Hood, to the factuality of reports of secret
government meetings. The fact of the matter is that Evans (and many other scholars whom he
cites in support of his position) are simply unwilling to engage in such debates over the
Holocaust, that might (in the words of Deborah Lipstadt) elevate the deniers views from
“antisemitic ideology- which is what Holocaust denial is- to the level of responsible
historiography” (quoted in Evans 207). In what would in most cases to be an odd argument for
any historian to make, Evans laments the fact that “the postmodernist intellectual climate” has
“made it difficult to assert” that even a topic like the Holocaust cannot be said to be off limits to
competing interpretations (Evans 208). Indeed, it is only because so many historians view the
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Holocaust as a unique event that requires its own specific and seemingly anti-historical rules that
Evans can make explicit value judgements and argue against permitting the existence of
competing interpretation, while still remaining within the historical mainstream.
Historians like to talk about objectivity as the goal to which they strive in the
performance of their work. And while actual works of history never quite achieve this lofty
ideal, nearly all historians earnestly attempt to view their subject matter in a kind of vacuum free
from contemporary moral constraints that might skew their view and interpretations. Except, it
would seem, when it comes to the matter of the Holocaust. As a result of what Inga Clendinnen
has called ‘the Gorgon effect’(the seeming inability of historians to progress far past
“bafflement” and “demoralization” when it comes to understanding the Holocaust), this event
has come to be seen as an uniquely terrible anomaly that requires its own set of rules; rules that
often diverge markedly from those that apply to all other historical cases. While the established
historical practice is to assume a “cautious skepticism toward any testimony until an independent
confirmation of its content has been found,” some historians argue that we need to abandon (or
even reverse) this rule in the case of the Holocaust (Gross 140). And while nearly all historical
events are interpreted and reinterpreted through well tested schema, the difficulties which
historians of the Holocaust have with understanding it by using these schema has fostered
entirely new explanatory modes designed specifically to explain this one event. Moreover, the
mainstream view of this event as one from which morality cannot be separated has allowed
historians to argue against an entire school of thought simply because of the consequences of
such thought for the interpretation of the Holocaust. Indeed, one wonders how the world will
ever be able to approach any kind of historical understanding of the Holocaust, if historians, a
group who pride themselves on their amoral analytic thinking are unable, or unwilling, to do so.