“Despite the Importance and Centrality of
Antisemitism, It Cannot Serve as the Exclusive
Explanation of Murder and Murderers”
David Bankier’s (1947–2010) Path in Holocaust Research
Dan Michman
D
avid Bankier, Professor of Holocaust History at the Institute
of Contemporary Jewry, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, head of the International Institute for Holocaust Research and holder of the John Najmann Chair at Yad Vashem, passed away on February 25, 2010. This is a great loss not only to
his family, to Yad Vashem and the Hebrew University, to his friends
and colleagues, including the present author, but also to the field of
Holocaust research in general. Bankier wrote several basic studies and
was known in the community of researchers of Nazism and the Holocaust as a punctilious scholar with a piercing and analytical mind. He
also nurtured a group of young scholars, providing them with basic
tools for Holocaust study, and gave advice to many researchers.
For my part, our shared path extended over several decades. It
commenced in the late 1960s and early 1970s when together we studied Jewish History at the Hebrew University. The past decade, when we
worked closely and intensively in the academic administration of the
International Institute for Holocaust Research, was a rich and productive period. Bankier was graced with a mixture of humor, academic
acuity, receptiveness to other opinions, and appreciation of scholarly
originality combined with sincere but uncompromising criticism; he
also loved Yiddish, movies, and excellent football. All these attributes
were completely devoid of any trace of arrogance. Thanks to these
traits, he was an inspiring colleague and a dear friend whom I will
miss greatly.
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Dan Michman
David Bankier was born on January 19, 1947 (27 Tevet, 5707),
in the Zeckendorf DP camp in the Bamberg district, Oberfranken,
Germany, in the then American Occupation Zone. His parents were
Holocaust survivors from Ukraine and Poland. From there his family
migrated first to Israel and then to Argentina (on reaching adulthood,
David immigrated to Israel; the family immigrated to the USA; in the
1980s his parents returned to Israel). David grew up in Argentina; he
studied at a public school and at a Jewish school where he consolidated
his knowledge of the Hebrew language. In his youth he participated
in Zionist activity and in 1967 immigrated to Israel. In that year he
began to study Jewish history at the Hebrew University and in 1983
he completed his doctoral dissertation, “German Society and National
Socialist Antisemitism, 1933–1938.”1
The great basic question in Holocaust research — “How could
this happen?” — was also at the basis of Bankier’s research work. Holocaust scholars have sought and still seek to answer this question in
various ways while dealing with diversified secondary questions deriving from the main question: To what extent did ideology have an
influence? Did propaganda play a real role? Should the explanation
focus on the leader (Hitler), on the regime’s bureaucratic mechanism,
or on German society — and by extension on societies in the occupied countries and in the Axis countries, or perhaps on a complex and
complicated interaction between them? How did the mental and organizational transition occur from “normal” antisemitism to murderous
antisemitism working with rational tools? Was the success of the Nazi
extermination project the result of the acts of the murderous activists
only? Or did the latent attitude toward the Jews even in circles not involved in the actual murder make its contribution, serving initially as
a convenient background for murder, allowing it to continue without
real opposition and even affecting the way of coping with it a posteriori? Scholars of the Jewish aspect also asked whether characteristics
of Jewish society and Jewish conduct in face of the events played their
part in the territorial range and the numerical extent of the murderous
enterprise.
These questions led Bankier to focus on German society principally, but also on European society in general, even though his training
1
David Bankier, “German Society and National Socialist Antisemitism, 1933–1938,”
(Hebrew), Ph.D. diss., Hebrew University (Jerusalem: March 1983).
David Bankier’s Path in Holocaust Research
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was actually in Jewish History. This focus produced a doctrine with
several thematic points:
a. Clarification of the role of the different types of antisemitism
as an actual motivating factor under the Nazi regime, particularly in its initial stages, until the Final Solution.
b. Clarification of the relation between Hitler and anti-Jewish
policies.
c. Clarification of the extent to which those who were not active participants knew about the slaughter (Germans on one
hand and the Allies on the other), and the room for maneuver that enabled the perpetrators to perform their acts.
d. Clarification of the political and bureaucratic collaboration
mechanisms that created the murder operation when the
idea had already been formulated and accepted.
e. Clarification of the methods of coping with the Nazi legacy — German guilt — after the Holocaust.
The Role of Antisemitism as a Motivating Factor under the
Nazi Regime
As I have shown elsewhere, the “Jerusalem School” of Israeli Jewish
History scholars active at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem from the
1940s — Ben-Zion Dinur, Yitzhak Beer, Shmuel Ettinger, Jacob Katz,
and Jacob Talmon — dealt extensively with the question of modern
antisemitism.2 They considered that the main change in the history of
antisemitism to which the Jews were subjected over the generations occurred in the second part of the nineteenth century and the early twentieth century; the radicalization that arose at this point led to the rise of
Nazism and the Holocaust.3 A series of younger Israeli scholars in Jeru2
3
Dan Michman, “Is There a ‘Jerusalem School’ in the Study of the Holocaust? Study
of the Holocaust and Study of Antisemitism in Light of the Holocaust in the State
of Israel,” in Albert Baumgarten, Jeremy Cohen, and Ezra Mendelsohn, eds., To
Remember and also to Forget: An Israeli View of the Jewish Past, (Hebrew), Zion,
vol. 74 (special issue) (1999), pp. 229–230; for a shorter version in English see: Dan
Michman, “Is There an ‘Israeli School’ in Holocaust Research, in David Bankier
and Dan Michman, eds., Holocaust Historiography in Context. Emergence, Challenges, Polemics and Achievements (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 2008), pp. 37–65.
Jacob L. Talmon, “Mission and Testimony: The Universal Significance of Modern Antisemitism,” in Israel Gutman and Livia Rothkirchen, eds., The Catastro-
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salem and in Tel Aviv — Nathaniel Katzburg, Uriel Tal, Bela Vago, Walter Zwi Bacharach, Moshe Zimmerman, Shmuel Almog, Michel Abitbol, etc. — wrote studies including doctoral dissertations in line with
this perspective. They analyzed the way in which antisemitism took root
in the political dialogue that developed in those years in various countries — principally in Germany, Hungary, Romania, and France — the
social circles that adopted it and the reasons for this, the new elements
that integrated into it and reflected reactions to the current hardships,
and the programs that they prepared and even partially implemented.4
The view at the basis of these studies was that the fundamental
change in thought that occurred in modern antisemitism was sufficient to explain the Holocaust. When the Nazi party, which professed
“modern” antisemitism, came to power, the seed had already been
sown for the process that was to end in extermination from an inner
logic. This historiography, which prevailed in Israeli research for many
years, therefore understood the Holocaust in an intentionalist way, asserting that the intention came into existence in the last decades of the
nineteenth century. Moreover, this approach assumed that the ideology in itself sufficed in order to set a process in motion if the holders
of this ideology achieved governmental power that allowed its implementation through the governmental tools at their disposal.
Bankier accepted the diagnosis of the profound changes that
occurred in the manifestation of antisemitism until the Nazi rise to
4
phe of European Jewry (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 1976), pp. 127–174; Shmuel Ettinger, Antisemitism in the Modern Era (Hebrew) (Tel Aviv: Moreshet and Sifriyat
Poalim, 1979); Jacob Katz, From Prejudice to Destruction: Antisemitism 1700–1933
(Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 1997). To these should
also be added Alex Bein, Die Judenfrage. Biographie eines Weltproblems (Stuttgart:
Deutsche Verlags–Anstalt, 1979).
Nathaniel Katzburg, Antisemitism in Hungary, 1867–1914 (Hebrew) (Tel Aviv: Dvir,
1969); Uriel Tal, Christians and Jews in Germany: Religion, Politics and Ideology in
the Second Reich, 1870–1914 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1975); Bela Vago,
The Shadow of the Swastika: The Rise of Fascism and Antisemitism in the Danube Basin, 1936–1939 (London: Institute of Jewish Affairs, 1975); Zvi Bacharach,
Modern Antisemitism (Hebrew) (Tel Aviv: Ministry of Defense Press, 1979); idem,
Racism in the Service of Politics (Hebrew) (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1985); idem,
From Cross to Swastika (Hebrew) (Tel Aviv: Sifriyat Poalim, 1991); Moshe Zimmerman, Wilhelm Marr: The Patriarch of Antisemitism (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1987); Shmuel Almog, Nationalism and Antisemitism in Modern Europe,
1815–1945 (Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1990); Michel Abitbol, From Cremieux to Petain: Antisemitism in Colonial Algeria, 1870–1940 (Hebrew) (Jerusalem: Zalman
Shazar Center, 1994).
David Bankier’s Path in Holocaust Research
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power, and on numerous occasions — in lectures to many groups at
Yad Vashem and in other discussions — he emphasized these trends
as creating potential. However, as a scrupulous historian aware of the
complexity of historical processes, particularly in a country with a
large population like Germany, he was not prepared to allow research
to stop at the development of antisemitism and the ways in which it
functioned in social and political life at the very time of the Nazis’ rise
to power. As one who shaped his research outlook regarding Nazi Germany and the Holocaust in the second half of the 1970s, he was well
aware of the functionalist criticism of the overly linear viewpoint in
relation to the development of the policy toward the Jews — the intentionalist approach, which was also the heritage of his teachers to
some extent. He also did not accept the approaches prevalent in the
world regarding the power of propaganda and the complete control
of totalitarian regimes. Thus, at the beginning of his doctoral dissertation, which later became the first part of his book, The Germans and
the Final Solution, he wrote:5
In the literature discussing totalitarian regimes we regularly find
categorical determinations concerning the government’s effectiveness in creating uniformity, with the consequent development
of absolute mass loyalty to the ruling regime. According to some
of the scholars in this area, in the process of arriving at totalitarianism, interpersonal relationships are dissolved and the previous
social institutions and political cultures are destroyed. As a result all the classes in society become amorphous masses devoid
of opinions and viewpoints on any social or political subject. This
reality … leads to one result — social fragmentation and elimination of critical self-judgment in the population.
In this historiographic context many scholars who examined the social reality in National Socialist Germany came to the
conclusion that in the Third Reich public opinion independent of
the totalitarian government did not exist. Since the Jewish question was an organic and basic part of the National Socialist doc5
David Bankier, “German Society and National Socialist Antisemitism, 1933–1938”;
See also idem, The Germans and the Final Solution: Public Opinion under Nazism
(Oxford, UK and Cambridge, MA: Blackwell, 1992; 19962, 20013).The book was
also published in German, see idem, Die öffentliche Meinungim Hitler-Staat. Die
“Endlösung” und die Deutschen, Eine Berichtigung (Berlin: Berlin Verlag, 1995).
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trine, the German public had no independent opinion in this area
either, or alternatively, the regime reflected the almost monolithic
antisemitic consensus in the population.6
David Bankier disagreed with these assumptions. To him the notion
that Nazi rule was totalitarian from the time of the Nazi rise to power, that Hitler gave his instructions from the top and the government
mechanisms fell into place and the masses obeyed and toed the line
(the top-down view) is clearly simplistic and completely unreasonable.
Under the influence of one of his doctoral advisors, the preeminent
scholar George Mosse, one of the most important researchers on the
underlying forces in German society,7 he decided to examine in detail
the place of antisemitism in the first years of the Nazi regime. In the
wake of his other advisor, Otto Dov Kulka, who had dealt from the
mid-60s with the regular secret reports (Lageberichte, Stimmungsberichte, Meldungen) written methodically and continuously by the Reich
and SS security organizations,8 he decided to use this material as one
of the main sources for this examination. He also searched a number of
archives in Germany, the United States, Italy, and Israel.
After studying different German groups in different areas and at
different times in the first years of the regime, he concluded that the
description of the success of the National Socialist doctrine among the
German public was exaggerated. He showed that the external signs of
processions and demonstrations and symbols indeed initially attracted
the masses, but over time they lost their effectiveness, and ultimately
large portions of the German public did not change their basic opinions and positions due to the propaganda and the party indoctrination.
National Socialism’s success, he determined, was to be attributed to the
6
7
8
David Bankier, “German Society and National Socialist Antisemitism, 1933–1938,”
pp. 1–2.
Bankier studied with Mosse who from 1971 taught one semester a year at Hebrew
University. Several of his books helped Bankier in his doctorate, including George
L. Mosse, The Crisis of German Ideology: Intellectual Origins of the Third Reich
(New York: Grosset and Dunlap, 1964); idem, Germans and Jews: The Right, the
Left and the Search for a “Third Force” in Pre-Nazi Germany (New York: Howard
Fertig, Inc., 1970).
Otto Dov Kulka, “‘The Jewish Problem’ in the Third Reich: Its Role in National Socialist Ideology and Policy and its Significance for the Status and Activities of the
Jews,” (Hebrew), Ph.D. diss. (Jerusalem: Hebrew University, 1975); idem, “‘Public
Opinion’ in Nazi Germany and the ‘Jewish Question,’” The Jerusalem Quarterly, 25
(1982), pp. 121–144 and 26 (1983), pp. 34–45.
David Bankier’s Path in Holocaust Research
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failure of the alternative political systems rather than to the effectiveness of the regime’s indoctrination.
As regards antisemitism and its functioning in propaganda, in recruiting the masses, and in the deterioration of the situation of the Jews,
he determined — contrary to the accepted theories in the research until
then — that the antisemitic elements in the National Socialist propaganda did not always play unifying roles in German society. Nor did
they necessarily help to recruit the masses to the anti-Jewish policy. Antisemitism was effective in recruiting the party activists to action but
“most of the public did not attribute to antisemitism the importance
that it had in the eyes of the National Socialist Party, and placed it in a
secondary place in its order of priorities.” Moreover, “points of friction
appeared between the party and the population,” and from this point of
view the regime did not achieve one of its most important goals. Nonetheless, it should be emphasized that generally the reservations about
the antisemitic policy in the Third Reich did not derive from “humanitarian motives and the success of the ideals of the Emancipation” but
from “the fears of the possible negative repercussions of the persecution
of the Jews and, except for a few exceptional cases, there is almost no
opposition to the actual State antisemitism... but a demand to stop the
terror and its dangerous repercussions and to give a legal framework to
a solution of the Jewish problem in the Third Reich.” And thus:
The general population played its part in the success of the antisemitic policy, precisely because it demonstrated moral apathy and
estranged itself from the ideas of the Emancipation. The latent
hostility to the Jews remained as it was, and to this was added the
declared indifference to the fate of the persecuted. This combination made it possible to carry out the antisemitic policy until the
final solution stage.
However, regarding the way in which the government conducted the
anti-Jewish policy, “a close connection can be shown between the public mood and ‘public opinion’ and political decisions or their timing.”
There was a clear correlation “between the attempt to maintain the ideological momentum and prevent the waning of revolutionary energy
on the one hand and the political decision-making on the other.”9
9
The quotes are taken from Bankier, “German Society and National Socialist Antisemitism, 1933–1938,” pp. 247–251. Bankier developed this last question on anti-
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Already in these writings Bankier took a very interesting independent stance in relation to accepted approaches on a series of subjects in the study of that period, including:
• the power of the Nazi propaganda: it was very intensive
because Hitler believed in it, as he specified also in Mein
Kampf;10 Goebbels also developed it extensively out of a deep
belief in its power and therefore it was the subject of extensive documentation11 — a fact that led scholars to give it decisive weight.12
• the public’s attitude to the government: on one hand scholars who generalized in relation to the masses’ support of the
government, and on the other scholars who sought to greatly
reduce the scope of the circles that supported the government and to describe the Nazi government as the rule of a
small band that took control of an entire nation through terror.
• and the extent to which the government related to the reactions of the German population to its actions: many scholars
believe that public opinion had real weight.
When he prepared his doctoral dissertation for print, Bankier expanded his investigation of public opinion to the period after 1938.
The last three chapters of the book discuss the population’s responses
to the severe measures deriving from the antisemitic policy until the
semitism subsequently in two articles published shortly after the completion of his
doctoral dissertation: “The Use of Antisemitism in Order to Revive the Ideology
and Mobilize the Masses in Nazi Germany,” (Hebrew), Proceedings of the Eighth
World Congress of Jewish Studies (Jerusalem, 1982), pp. 195–199 (cf. also idem, Hitler, the Holocaust and German Society (Hebrew) (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 2008)
43–51; “The ‘Jewish Question’ as a Focus of Conflict between Trends of Institutionalization and Radicalization in the Third Reich, 1934–1935,” (Hebrew), in Shmuel
Ettinger, ed., Nation and History: Studies in the History of the Jewish People, vol. II,
(Jerusalem: Zalman Shazar Center, 1984), pp. 357–371 (ibid., pp. 53–72).
10 Werner Maser, Hitler’s Mein Kampf (Munich and Esslingen: Bechtle, 1966), pp.
89–91, 210–225.
11 Elke Fröhlich, “Joseph Goebbels: The Propagandist,” in Ronald Smelser and Rainer
Zittelmann, eds., The Nazi Elite (New York: New York University Press, 1993), pp.
48–61.
12 Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1973), pp. 341–364; Z.A.B. Zeman, Nazi Propaganda (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 1973).
David Bankier’s Path in Holocaust Research
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Final Solution and the interaction between the government and public
opinion. After showing that in general the public was aware of what
was happening, he reached the conclusion that from 1941 a buffer was
created between the population and the regime, a buffer “that derived
from the growing pessimism about the war, the dissatisfaction with the
euthanasia program, and the conflict with the Catholic Church in the
campaign to remove the crosses. By 1942 the people were already very
tired of the war.” The decreased hopes of victory and the fear of the
retaliation of the Jews or the Allies led many ordinary Germans to distance themselves from the propaganda, and particularly from the subject of the Jews. The attempts of the Nazis to incite antisemitic feelings
did not only fail to calm the fears of the public but actually increased
them, and thus the more the information about the mass extermination filtered through the more the public wished to be less involved in
the Final Solution. This conclusion was essentially a continuation of
Bankier’s view in relation to the first years of the Nazi regime. 13
Bankier’s object was not to detract from the role of German society in the extermination campaign’s success but to show that this success and the participation in it of so many Germans — a fact about
which there is no disagreement — did not derive simply from the driving force of antisemitism in the population through the propaganda
but from other reasons, and principally from distancing and clear disinterest. This attitude was already evident, as previously mentioned,
in the 1930s, but in the 1940s in the face of the systematic extermination, this conduct casts a heavy shadow on the German population in
general.
In light of his great sensitivity as regards the complexity of the
driving force of antisemitism in the Third Reich, we can understand
his sharp response to two studies published in the 1990s and which
provoked many reactions: Götz Aly’s and Susanne Heim’s Vordenker
der Vernichtung,14 and Daniel Jonah Goldhagen’s Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust.15 Susanne Heim and
13 Bankier, The Germans and the Final Solution, pp. 151–152.
14 Götz Aly and Susanne Heim, Vordenker der Vernichtung: Auschwitz und die
deutsche Pläne für eine europäische Ordnung (Hamburg: Hoffmann und Campe,
1991). English edition: Architects of Annihilation: Auschwitz and the Logic of Destruction (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 2002).
15 Daniel Jonah Goldhagen, Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the
Holocaust (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1996).
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Götz Aly, according to Bankier’s analysis, sought to present the Holocaust as a “rational” process,
A way of solving economic questions, so that the Jews were not
killed because they were Jews but because they were underdeveloped Luftmenschen. Moreover, the Holocaust was not unique.
The murder of the Jews was the first step in a much more comprehensive plan to commit genocide against other ethnic groups and
cannot be isolated from the vast schemes of social modernization
undertaken by the Third Reich.16
Bankier examined the different claims made by Heim and Aly, showed
their weaknesses and rejected them. “Nazi racism,” he maintained,
“was the driving force behind the extermination, and the rationalization of social engineering was simply objectified hatred in order to
give a social and economic meaning to mass murder.”17 Bankier expressed great appreciation of the new sources offered by the scholars,
but “Above all there is no persuading explanation of why the Jews
were singled out. And the absence of comparative methodology does
not provide a firm analytical base. In downplaying ideological factors the authors leave to themselves no opportunity to respond to this
question.”18
He reacted more severely to Goldhagen’s book in a criticism that
he wrote in the late 1990s in which he compared Goldhagen’s attempts
to explain the Holocaust with those of Saul Friedländer. He firmly
declared: “The question is posed of whether the author succeeded in
proving his thesis on the basis of his sources. The answer to this must
be negative.” In his criticism Bankier dealt with several questions, but
in our context the following are the important topics:
The question of the murderers’ motives has always been one of the
main questions — perhaps the main question — in Holocaust research. In Goldhagen’s opinion the only motive for the Holocaust
is [eliminationist] antisemitism. He is certainly right in determining that the murder derived from an ideological motive. The Na-
16 David Bankier, “On Modernization and the Rationality of Extermination,” Yad
Vashem Studies, vol. 24 (1995), p. 112.
17 Ibid., p. 117–118.
18 Ibid., p. 119.
David Bankier’s Path in Holocaust Research
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zis did not murder out of euphoria or because of social pressure.19
He is also right when he asserts that the murderers were proud of
their actions. Yet, despite the importance and centrality of antisemitism, it cannot serve as the exclusive explanation of murder
and murderers. Therefore, I consider that the discussion of the
motives is the weakest part of the book. Goldhagen’s explanation,
based on one single motive, and his treatment of that basic motive for all the actions, over time and in every place, is not the
historical explanation. This sweeping view leads to overlooking
extreme changes that occurred during the years of Nazi rule and
to a failure to make distinctions between different types of expressions of antisemitism, from social isolation to mass murder.
He also discusses two types of motives as if they were one: murder for pleasure and murder out of belief. If pleasure accompanies
murder, the moral question does not exist. Alternatively, not every person who commits murder out of belief — even among the
Nazis — enjoys it.20
The issue is therefore much more complicated than Goldhagen assumed.
Bankier firmly asserted that “it [antisemitism] cannot serve as the exclusive explanation of murder and murderers,” and at the same time
he sought to show that different types of non-Nazi antisemitism were
widespread in the German population to the extent that they served to
prevent support of the Jews even among ideological opponents of the
regime; even among the finest there was distancing and alienation. The
different types of antisemitism had an influence not only on the motivation for murder but also on the absence of intervention on behalf of
the Jews as a particularly persecuted group (and also on the reflections
that arose in these circles on the method of Germany’s rehabilitation
after the fall of the Nazi government). This is discussed in a series of
articles Bankier devoted to the attitude of the German Socialists and
Communists, both in and outside Germany (those who fled for fear of
the regime), toward the Jews and the “Jewish question” in Germany.21
19 Here Bankier hinted at his objection to the thesis presented by Christopher Browning in his book Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution
in Poland (New York: HarperCollins, 1992).
20 Bankier, “Two Studies on the Holocaust,” Yahadut Z’manenu (Hebrew), 13 (1999),
pp. 288–289.
21 Bankier, “The German Communist Party and Nazi Antisemitism, 1933–1938,”
Leo Baeck Institute Year Book, vol. 32 (1987), pp. 325–344; idem, “Leftist Opposi-
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Bankier was an innovator in this field too, because in Bankier’s words,
“historians have focused primarily on the attitudes to antisemitism in
the Wilhelmine empire and in the Weimar Republic.”22 They generally
assumed that certain segments of the left-supporting public were won
over by Nazi propaganda,23 and others — as they were anti-Nazi they
were therefore opposed to the antisemitic element in Nazism.
However, Bankier’s examination of the Social Democrats in Germany and of German exiles showed a complex picture. Indeed, the
Socialist doctrine minimized the importance of antisemitism and saw
it as a secondary category of a general problem, and its official spokesmen indicated that the antisemitic propaganda was a manipulation of
the Nazi propaganda. However, they too were not free of prejudices
against the Jews. The literature and the press expressed reservations,
sometimes declared and sometimes concealed, about the Jews as a
bourgeois group. Even though there was no clear-cut antisemitic tradition among members of the German Social Democratic movement,
language disdainful of “Jewish” characteristics and contempt for Jews
as a bourgeois group was not unknown in these circles. Jews were perceived as narrow-minded, arrogant, aggressive, etc., and the reaction
tion and the Jews in the Third Reich,” in Moshe Zimmerman, ed., Opposition to
National Socialism (Hebrew) (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1986), pp. 94–120; idem,
“German Social Democrats and the Jewish Question” in David Bankier, ed., Probing the Depths of German Antisemitism: German Society and the Persecution of
the Jews, 1933–1941 (Jerusalem, New York and Oxford: Yad Vashem, Leo Baeck
Institute and Berghahn Books, 2000), pp. 511–532; idem, “Los exiliados alemanes
en México y sus vínculos con la comunidad judía (1942–1945),” in Judaica Latinoamericana. Estudios histórico-sociales (Jerusalem, 1988), pp. 79–89; idem, “Responses of Exiled German Socialists in the USA and the UK to the Holocaust,” The
Journal of Holocaust Education, 10/1 (2001), pp. 1–20; the discussion in the present
article focuses on two sectors that interested him particularly, but he also devoted
a discussion to the Conservative Liberals: David Bankier, “German Conservative
Exiles’ Responses to Nazi Antisemitism,” in Remembering for the Future: Jews and
Christians during and after the Holocaust (Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1988), pp. 18–
31; idem, “German Anti-Nazi Exiles and the Jewish Question,” in Edward Timms
and Andrea Hammel, eds., The German–Jewish Dilemma: From the Enlightenment
to the Shoah (New York: Edwin Mellen Press, 1999), pp. 229–242.
22 Bankier, “German Social Democrats,” p. 511.
23 See for instance Richard Hamilton’s conclusions on the voting patterns that led
to the Nazi rise to power: Richard F. Hamilton, Who Voted for Hitler? (Princeton:
Princeton University Press, 1982), pp. 265–308, 361–419.
David Bankier’s Path in Holocaust Research
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in the leftist camp to the antisemitic legislation was generally, they
have it coming to them.24
In his discussion of Communism, Bankier criticized the “idealization [made] of the fight of the KPD [the German Communist
Party] against German antisemitism — both in the Weimar Republic and in the Third Reich.” In this party too there were “antisemitic
foundations” as early as the Weimar period, he stated. However, the
main problem in the early years of the Third Reich was the “dogmatic
rigidity of the Communist interpretation, and consequently its disregard of the qualitative differences between National Socialism and the
other fascist movements in relation to the Jewish question.” Moreover,
in these first years the KPD adopted a propaganda method “of goring the regime while plucking on antisemitic chords in the public;” its
various representatives argued inter alia that the Nazi regime’s antisemitic policy was directed only against the poor, not against the wealthy
Jews. However, there were Communist activists in different places in
Germany who revealed a more unequivocal position and condemned
the regime’s policy. Kristallnacht from this point of view was an event
that shocked and provoked open criticism and sharp condemnation;
in the party publications the arguments and positions of combating
antisemitism were close to the polemical literature and struggle of the
liberal Jewish camp.25 In this matter Bankier saw “not only a change
in the viewpoint regarding the Jewish question, but also... a reevaluation of Jewish nationalism” that led to controlled support of the Zionist goals. This position continued to grow subsequently and from
1941 a trend was apparent, according to Bankier, that emphasized the
uniqueness of the Jewish fate in the war and led ultimately to support of the Jewish aspirations to statehood. However, this trend was
self-serving and utilitarian during wartime and would disappear after
its end.26
In conclusion, Bankier showed that antisemitism was a main instrumental tool utilized by Nazi policy, but the success of this tool was
limited and evident principally among the party’s circle of supporters,
which indeed expanded. Antisemitism in German society was diversified and not uniform; but in the 1930s it was enough to ensure that the
24 Bankier, “German Social Democrats,” pp. 511–532.
25 “The German Communist Party,” pp. 325–344.
26 Bankier, “Los exiliados alemanes en México,” pp. 79–89.
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general population protested little about what was being done to the
Jews, and also any protests derived mainly from expedient calculations,
not from moral ones. In the 1940s, and particularly in the Final Solution
period, the regime again used antisemitism as a driving force as regards
its supporters, so that they would help in the mission of implementing
the antisemitic vision. Meanwhile, in relation to the general German
public, the government adopted an action plan similar to that of the
1930s, that is, making known its criminal actions in general and vague
terms only and justifying them on the basis of antisemitic arguments.
The aim was not actually to urge the public to become activist, but to
accustom the masses to what was being done out of an understanding
whose object was to solve a real problem. The reaction of extensive nonNazi circles in the German public to this tactic was also similar to that of
the 1930s — distancing themselves and becoming inured, but now the
circumstances were far more serious. Thus, the population ignored the
continued extermination until the last moments of the Third Reich.
Bankier summarized this view in an interview that he gave in
1997 at Yad Vashem. In Germany there was a radical kind of antisemitism that wished also to see the practical application of the antisemitic
ideology; conversely, there was a society that related to this type of
antisemitic activity with extreme opportunism. After 1938, when the
antisemitic steps became a murderous policy, German society chose
acquiescence (Sich-Fügen) and silence. It is doubtful whether this combination — radical and zealous antisemitism initiated by one part of
the population that was tolerated by the majority — could ever have
happened in such a way in other societies. From this point of view,
German society bears the blame since, as he quoted in the name of
Kurt Tucholski when writing to Arnold Zweig after the legislating of
the Nuremberg Laws, “a country must be judged not only on the basis
of what it does, but also on the basis of what it allows to happen.”27
The Relation between Hitler and the Anti-Jewish Policy
David Bankier published his groundbreaking article on Hitler’s involvement in anti-Jewish policy and received international acclaim
27 “David Bankier,” in David Bankier, ed. Fragen zum Holocaust: Interviews mit
prominenten Forschern und Denkern (Göttingen: Yad Vashem and Wallstein,
2006), pp. 35–36.
David Bankier’s Path in Holocaust Research
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29
before the translation of his doctoral dissertation into other languages.28 The period when the foundations of his research work were being
laid — the second half of the 1970s and the first half of the 1980s —
corresponded to the time of the functionalist–intentionalist polemic
when the scales tipped clearly in favor of functionalism. As noted, his
doctoral dissertation proved that the accepted premises — intentionalism and generalization regarding the complete power of the totalitarian regime — are not confirmed by a strict historical examination.
However, he also no longer accepted the functionalist argument that
lessened the importance of Hitler’s role. He emphasized this in the
aforementioned article:
This line of analysis tends to disregard the personal factor, the
role of the dictator and his personality in determining and conducting the policy-making process…. Admittedly, functionalist
historical research has convincingly demonstrated the coexistence of Hitler’s monocratic position and the polycratic structure
of the Third Reich….29 The whole system worked, however, because he personally provided the indispensable public charisma,
without which his subordinates would have been powerless,
while reserving for himself the ultimate decision-making on
questions in which he had paramount interest. What interested
him most were foreign, military, racial, and antisemitic policies
and in these spheres he determined the course of action from
above. In the antisemitic policy his intervention had a domino
effect: one step led to another. Each step was harsher than the last
and each was an outgrowth of the previous one…. A look at the
interaction between Hitler and his hermeneuts in the party and
the bureaucracy reveals that the latter were not autonomous, but
worked under the pressure generated by Hitler’s will. Based on the
28 David Bankier, “Hitler and the Policy-Making Process on the Jewish Question,”
Holocaust and Genocide Studies, vol. 3, no. 1 (1988), pp 1–20; a Hebrew version was
published in 1987.
29 Bankier was referring here to the works of Karl Schleunes, Uwe Dietrich Adam,
and Hans Mommsen: Karl A. Schleunes, The Twisted Road to Auschwitz (Urbana
and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1970); Uwe Dietrich Adam, Judenpolitik
im Dritten Reich (Düsseldorf: Droste, 1972); Hans Mommsen, “The Realization of
the Unthinkable: The ‘Final Solution’ of the Jewish Question in the Third Reich,” in
Gerhard Hirschfeld, ed., The Politics of Genocide (London: Allen & Unwin, 1986),
pp. 93–144.
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Dan Michman
Führerprinzip, the supreme leader acted as the ideological and political originator of antisemitic measures, supplemented by men
who wished to prove their diligence, efficiency and indispensability. He approved and sanctioned their work, stamping his own
personal imprint on the direction the work had to take. Hitler
saw his particular strength in the ability to think consistently and
simplify complex problems, deciding matters of political significance and of principle…. The figure of authority had to provide
inspiration and not concern himself with administration…. One
of the salient peculiarities of the Nazi regime was the absence
of using common decision-making formulas, as we know them
from democratic systems. Instead, we find an informal method
whereby Hitler vaguely intimated his view on a certain issue or
very generally expressed the course of action to be taken. It was
subsequently the task of the policy makers to interpret these
“Führer wishes” properly and to give them concrete and practical meaning. Although the wish was always communicated by a
third party and not explicitly passed on as a Führer order, it has
the force of an order. 30
Later in the article he gave detailed proof of Hitler’s method of action in the main questions in which the functionalists disagreed with
the others: whether Hitler determined the policy; whether Hitler was
moderate in his antisemitic policy; and regarding Hitler’s role in antiJewish legislation.
In a brilliant discussion based on diversified documents, Bankier
showed the extent of Hitler’s involvement in the policy-shaping and
decision-making process on the Jewish question. Hitler was not “a
prisoner of forces, but their creator.” He was motivated by ideological
obsessions that became policy in the hands of his exponents.
Hitler controlled the policy-shaping process and was, as Alan
Bullock calls him, ‘a combination of calculation and fanaticism.’ He conceived and initiated the entire antisemitic process,
and when it began to move and received independent momentum at the ideological level, the bureaucrats joined in to give it
a practical impetus. Hence, they were tools only in accelerating
30 Bankier, “Hitler and the Policy-Making Process,” pp. 1–3.
David Bankier’s Path in Holocaust Research
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31
his initiatives and did not work independently and of their own
accord.31
The importance of this article cannot be underrated. In it Bankier
laid down the foundations of the viewpoint accepted today in the
mainstream of so-called “perpetrator historiography,” and decisively
undermined what was then considered a dominant functionalist approach. He was not alone in feeling extreme dissatisfaction with the
then polemic that presented extreme and mainly simplistic positions.
Ian Kershaw, for instance, strived precisely in that period to find a link
between the findings on the bureaucratic activity, on one hand, and
Hitler’s centrality, on the other — an effort expressed for the first time
in his book The Hitler Myth in which he discussed the power of the
Führer’s image in the Nazi regime and in German society beyond Hitler, the man.32 Bankier’s study, which showed that Hitler was involved
and closely followed the anti-Jewish policy, made a great contribution
to breaking out of the impasse of the then contemporary polemic; this
breakthrough preceded the great changes that occurred following the
collapse of the Communist Bloc, with the opening of archives and the
broadening of research outlooks.
It is therefore not surprising that the article immediately attracted attention. In the second edition of his book on the historiography
of Nazism, published in 1989, Kershaw devoted a long note to David
Bankier’s article in the chapter on “Hitler and the Holocaust.” Kershaw
considered that “Bankier succeeds in demonstrating that Hitler did intervene in the ‘Jewish Question’ more often than has been thought, and
that he showed from time to time interest in the minutiae of anti-Jewish policy.” Alongside the appreciation of Bankier’s findings, Kershaw
argued with him, claiming “Bankier takes the thrust of his findings too
far in claiming that Hitler ‘conceived, initiated, and directed the entire
process,’ and his argument appears to be based in part on a misunderstanding (or exaggeration) of the structuralist (or functionalist) case
he is attacking.”33
As noted, in that period, Kershaw himself adopted an orientation
31 Ibid., p. 17.
32 Ian Kershaw, The ‘Hitler Myth’: Image and Reality in the Third Reich (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1987).
33 Idem, The Nazi Dictatorship: Problems and Perspectives of Interpretation, 2nd ed.
(London: Arnold, 1989), p. 89 n. 28.
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Dan Michman
that sought to restore to Hitler his central status, but still largely adhered to the functionalist view and defended several of its assertions.
In time he also tended more toward the synthetic approach and consolidated an outlook closer to Bankier’s positions, in particular, after
reading Bankier’s The Germans and the Final Solution. This is clearly
expressed in Kershaw’s great two-volume book on Hitler published in
1998–2000, particularly in the first volume in the extremely important
methodological chapter, “Working Towards the Führer,” in which he
quotes Bankier extensively.34
Hans Mommsen — from many points of view, the main functionalist — also felt a need to respond to Bankier’s article and to defend
himself. He found the appropriate platform in his foreword to the reprint (1990) of Karl Schleunes’s book The Twisted Road to Auschwitz,
first published in 1970, in which the functionalist view was applied in
the field of analysis of the anti-Jewish policy. Mommsen emphasized
in this foreword the importance of Schleunes’s book — nobody who
had tried “to describe the process of Jewish persecution in Germany”
since the publication of Schleunes’s book for the first time, he wrote,
“had succeeded in presenting such a well-balanced summary account
of its early stages.” He added that Schleunes’s claim that “‘the Final Solution as it emerged in 1941 and 1942 was not the product of a grand
design’ still is controversially received, but has not been convincingly
refuted in spite of the opposing view of several Israeli scholars, especially David Bankier, who regards Hitler as the central promoter of
the individual anti-Jewish actions throughout the course of the Third
Reich.”35
Bankier’s pioneering article, published at the beginning of his research career, thus provoked strong reactions among leading scholars
in the field at that time and helped to pave the way for a new stage in
the study of the development of the anti-Jewish policy, which returned
Hitler to the first cause of the Holocaust without ignoring the complexity of its actual implementation. Bankier summarized his opinion
on this matter briefly in an interview:
34 Ian Kershaw, Hitler: 1889–1936 Hubris (New York and London: Norton & Co.,
1998), ch. 13; idem, Hitler: 1936–1945 Nemesis (New York and London: Norton &
Co., 2000).
35 Hans Mommsen, “Foreword,” in Karl S. Schleunes, The Twisted Road to Auschwitz
(Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1990; 1st ed., 1970), p. x.
David Bankier’s Path in Holocaust Research
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33
Hitler’s role [in the process that led to the Final Solution] is unequivocal. Without him such a “Final Solution” would not have
occurred, and things would have remained at the level of expulsion of the Jews from Germany.... Hitler had no doubt that
there was no room for Jews in Europe. He would have agreed [to
become moderate only to the level of a policy that would lead]
to expulsion to Siberia or to the Ice Sea [i.e. the Arctic Ocean],
which is identical in its nature to “the Final Solution.” From this
viewpoint Hitler’s role was decisive.36
A posteriori, it can be said that Mommsen’s opinion was rejected and that
of Bankier and several other scholars was adopted, as shown in several
comprehensive basic books published in the last fifteen years — first
and foremost those of Ian Kershaw, Saul Friedländer, Peter Longerich,
and Christopher Browning. These scholars, despite the differences between them, represent the mainstream in perpetrator historiography
that asserts Hitler’s forward thrust and decisive centrality alongside his
vagueness as regards implementation of his goals. This fact also gives
crucial importance to the extensive willingness in the bureaucracy and
in German society to work in order to find the most effective means for
the implementation of his goals.37
What Did the German Public Know about the Murder and
How Did it Understand and Interpret It?
What did the German population know about the Nazi extermination
policy? “What did the German public know about the Holocaust? To
what extent was it aware of the mass shootings in the east, the gassing,
36 “David Bankier,” in Bankier, Fragen zum Holocaust, p. 42.
37 Kershaw, Hubris; idem, Nemesis; idem, Fateful Choices: Ten Decisions That Changed
the World, 1940–1941 (London: Penguin, 2007) (ch. 10: “Berlin/Eastern Prussia,
Summer–Autumn 1941: Hitler Decides to Destroy the Jews”); Saul Friedländer,
Nazi Germany and the Jews: The Years of Persecution, 1933–1939 (New York: HarperCollins, 1997); idem, The Years of Extermination: Nazi Germany and the Jews,
1939–1945 (New York: HarperCollins, 2007); Peter Longerich, Politik der Vernichtung Eine Gesamtdarstellung der nationalsozialistischen Judenverfolgung (Munich–Zurich: Piper, 1998); Christopher R. Browning with contributions by Jürgen
Matthäus, The Origins of the Final Solution: The Evolution of Nazi Jewish Policy,
September 1939–March 1942 (Lincoln and Jerusalem: University of Nebraska Press
and Yad Vashem, 2004).
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Dan Michman
and the extermination centers?” These questions continued to trouble
David Bankier even after the publication of his book on German public opinion, and he devoted a series of articles to this topic.
In his article “The Germans and the Holocaust: What Did They
Know?”38 he examined a far greater variety of sources than in his book.
Bankier, like Kershaw, arrived at the conclusion that the secret reports of the Nazi regime’s security institutions, which were previously
a main source of research, are not sufficiently reliable as regards the
war period, and particularly not for the extermination period. “Because of these obstacles, and in the interest of the historical truth, it
becomes highly imperative to compare the information conveyed by
these sources with other records, such as diaries, eyewitness accounts,
and Allied intelligence reports,” he indicated.39 Indeed, he added
cautiously,
We acknowledge that the new material basis of this paper, like the
SD reports, is unquantifiable and of an impressionistic nature, a
fact that precludes the possibility of drawing definite conclusions.
Nevertheless, some tentative conclusions can be suggested. Much
information on the extermination of the Jews definitely circulated in Germany. We must distinguish, however, between various
levels of knowledge.40
There were those who participated in the murder or saw the murders
with their own eyes — soldiers, administrators, and other people who
were at the murder sites. Others — clerks and people of the opposition — who sought information “had to view it in their mind’s eye,”
and because these things were unprecedented, “they were not always
able to conceive the monstrous dimensions of the crime.” Therefore,
“what became known as The Holocaust was an inconceivable and
therefore unbelievable reality even for those anti-Nazis who deliberately sought information.” Most of the population heard rumors that
38 David Bankier, “The Germans and the Holocaust: What Did they Know?” Yad
Vashem Studies, vol. 20 (1990), pp. 69–98; the German version: “Was wussten die
Deutschen vom Holocaust?” in Beate Kosmala and Claudia Schoppmann, eds., Solidarität und Hilfe für Juden während der NS-Zeit: Überleben im Untergrund. Hilfe
für Juden in Deutschland 1941–1945, vol. 5 (Berlin: Metropol, 2002), pp. 63–88; the
above quotation is taken from the opening of the article.
39 Ibid., p. 70.
40 Ibid., p. 97.
David Bankier’s Path in Holocaust Research
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35
went through many screening stages and therefore became distorted.
“… the greater the number of filters, the less precise the information.
The lack of a graphic sense of how the murders were perpetrated activated their imagination, and this explains the stories that circulated on
gassing tunnels or mass electrocution.”41
The question was not “who knew?” but “who wanted to believe?” to quote Hans Mommsen. Therefore, “the Germans definitely
felt the gravity of the crime committed by the regime they supported,”
but those who participated actively in the mass murder, who could
not deny what they did and saw, were separate from “those back in
Germany who obtained the information only in a roundabout way.”
The latter seem to have “consciously avoided such knowledge, especially when fear of retribution triggered guilt feelings, and vice versa,
when awareness of guilt gave rise to fear of the consequences. In one
sentence: They knew enough to know that it was better not to know
more.”42
In another article Bankier analyzed the tactics employed by the
regime in relation to information about the murder. In the past some
scholars, principally Raul Hilberg but also many others including myself, asserted that there was a decisive policy of erasing the traces of
the murder and concealing information about it,43 but Bankier pointed
to a sophisticated approach of releasing the information, an approach
that he called “imposed guesswork.” “What was said by the German
media about the Final Solution and in what context?” he asked and
examined this subject by tracing “what linguistic construction was employed by the Nazi propaganda and what was the symbolic content of
41 Ibid., p. 98.
42 Ibid., p. 98. See also his article “German Society and the Deportation of German
Jews,” Michael, vol. 13 (1993), pp. 53–68. Most of his conclusions already appear
there, and sometimes in blunter wording. Two more variations of these conclusions
were published in the following articles: David Bankier, “German Public Awareness of the Final Solution,” in David Cesarani, ed., The Final Solution: Origins
and Implementation (London: Routledge, 1994), pp. 215–227; idem, “Warum ‘Die
Endlösung’ ein öffentliches Geheimnis war,” in Ludmila Nesládková, ed., Nisko
1939–1994. Der Fall Nisko in der Geschichte der Endlösung der Judenfrage (Ostrava:
Faculta Philosophica Universitatis Ostraviensis, 1995), pp. 78–91.
43 Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews (Chicago: Ivan Dee, 1961), see
the following entries in the index: Secrecy, Erasure; Dan Michman, Holocaust Historiography: A Jewish Perspective (London: Vallentine Mitchell, 2003), pp. 193 and
203 n. 69.
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Dan Michman
the conveyed imagery.”44 He distinguished two important tactics. Firstly, when the Allies accused the Nazis of war crimes, the latter rejected
the accusation as slander, yet when they were accused of exterminating the Jews, the Nazis neither denied nor confirmed the Allies’ claim
but simply did not respond. Clearly, this silence was intentional.45 The
other tactic was gradual disclosure in the editorial articles of the press
from the spring of 1942 “of the true meaning of the Final Solution.”46
Bankier concluded, stating:
Information on the Final Solution was conveyed obliquely in a
highly suggestive pattern: a cynical manipulation with a political vocabulary that conferred different levels of meaning which
structured the political perceptions of the propaganda. The Nazis
used in their political discourse a technique of imposed guesswork: by not giving details on what was really happening to the
Jews they wished to prevent public discussion, and by employing
a language with implicit presuppositions they wanted the public
to speculate on what was actually going on with the Jews and thus
to become responsible for what they understood the term “Final
Solution of the Jewish Question” meant. 47
In recent years Bankier extended his study of the extent of knowledge
of the murder of the Jews to a second sphere, that is, areas outside Germany. Since studies have already been made of the information that
reached Jews and local inhabitants in the Nazi-occupied countries,
he concentrated his interest on information that could be received
through the official information channels allowed by the occupier. In
this area he noted in his summary of the summer 2009 workshop held
44 David Bankier, “Signaling the Final Solution to the German People,” in David
Bankier and Israel Gutman, eds., Nazi Europe and the Final Solution (Jerusalem:
Yad Vashem, 2003), pp. 15–39.
45 Ibid., p. 15.
46 Ibid., p. 21.
47 Ibid., p. 39. Many of the insights in this article already appeared in another article
published several years previously, viz., David Bankier, “The Use of Antisemitism
in Nazi Wartime Propaganda,” in Michael Berenbaum and Abraham J. Peck, eds.,
The Holocaust and History: The Known, the Unknown, the Disputed and the Reexamined (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, in association
with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, 1998), pp. 41–63. For a further discussion of the subject, see David Bankier, “La Solución Final en el discurso
político del nazismo,” Acta Sociológica, vol. 26–27 (1999), pp. 181–197.
David Bankier’s Path in Holocaust Research
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37
at Yad Vashem48 that the official German-controlled media usually
omitted to report arrests and roundups in the framework of the Final
Solution that occurred “at home,” within the country. For instance, he
indicated in particular the absence of reports in France on the Vélodrome d’Hiver roundup in Paris in the summer of 1942, an action carried out in view of the local inhabitants. However, reports could be
heard or read on the actions carried out in other countries; in other
words, the “great action” carried out against the Jews was not hushed
up completely. Here too he discerned a sophisticated approach of the
regime, a variation on the approach adopted in Germany itself.
The third sphere that he examined during his last decade was
the Free World. What was the scope of the information in the Free
World, and principally in the hands of the Allied intelligence services,
and how did they interpret it?49 This was the subject of the anthology
that he edited and that was based on a congress held in New York in
2003, following the opening of the archive collections of British and
American intelligence in the late 1990s. In the foreword to the book,
he summarized his opinion on this question, an opinion based on his
examinations and on the material presented in the book.
The papers included [in the book] indicate that the West obtained
much more detailed information about the Holocaust than previously assumed…. We learn that coded Nazi messages intercepted since July 1941 revealed the scope of German genocide. By
September 1941, British intelligence had assembled conclusive
evidence that the Nazis were conducting a genocidal policy in
the conquered territories of the Soviet Union. The decrypts were
assembled into daily lists for the use of intelligence desks of the
military and political headquarters. Based on this material alone,
Churchill could learn that the number of Jews murdered amounted to tens of thousands. 50
48 “The Holocaust and its Immediate Aftermath (1933–1947): The Press, Newsreels
and Radio Broadcasts in Real Time,” International Workshop for Holocaust Scholars, Yad Vashem, July 13–20, 2009.
49 David Bankier, “What Was Known in the Free World?” in Marina Cattaruzza, et
al., eds., Storia della Shoah. La crisi dell’Europa, lo sterminio degli ebrei e la memoria del XX secolo (Turin: UTET, 2005), vol. I, pp. 1122–1155.
50 David Bankier, preface to David Bankier, ed., Secret Intelligence and the Holocaust
(New York and Jerusalem: Enigma Books and Yad Vashem, 2006), p. x.
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Dan Michman
The deciphered messages gave information on concentration camps,
labor camps, and extermination camps. Well before 1943, the intelligence services had information on the slaughter and the deportations. Did the decoders and analysts understand the significance and
the implications of the data? Did the analysis of the intelligence material influence the political echelon’s decision-making with regard
to saving Jews? In Bankier’s opinion the decipherers, even the most
experienced and expert, failed to understand the implications of the
information that reached them. As regards the political echelon, Bankier maintained, “President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill
were often hindered in their attempts to do something to help the
Jews in occupied Europe by bureaucratic petty-mindedness prevailing in some ministerial quarters, or anti-Semitic sentiments in public
opinion.”51
Bankier’s interest in Pope Pius XII also belongs to the third sphere.
This subject, which was one of the first that arose for discussion as part
of the study of the “bystanders” already in the early 1960s with the
staging of Rolf Hochhuth’s play The Deputy and the publication of Saul
Friedländer’s book on the issue, has been debated ever since. However,
in recent years the debate has become heated following the publication
of several books on Pius XII with the disclosure of new archive materials and in the wake of the Catholic Church’s intention to canonize
him. In this context Bankier intensified his investigation of the subject
in his last year in light of new documents that arrived at Yad Vashem
and the publication of new research literature. He was one of the participants in the March 2009 historians’ workshop held at Yad Vashem,
made possible by the cooperation between Yad Vashem and the office
of the Apostolic Nuncio in Jerusalem. Because of his illness, he was
able to participate in only a few of the discussions, but together with
Iael Nidam-Orvieto he edited the proceedings of the conference and
attached great importance to this, particularly as some of the studies
presented at the workshop shed new light on many controversial issues. Even though he did not publish anything in the book, I can attest
from my joint work with him that also on this question he applied his
meticulous methodology. He opposed the extreme statements on the
Pope’s conduct (he considered the epithet “Hitler’s Pope” to be inappropriate), and at the same time criticized those who wished to canon51 Ibid., p. xii.
David Bankier’s Path in Holocaust Research
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39
ize him. He wanted research to examine in depth the key points in the
chronology of persecutions of the Jews on one side, and on the other,
the activities of the Pope and Church circles close him – and have them
meticulously synchronized in order to reach an unbiased conclusion
regarding the Pope’s positions anchored in historic reality. As a rational scholar, he preferred to see the Pope first as a political leader,
and he believed that the future opening of the secret Vatican archive
would give us additional, extremely important information on this
question.52
The Political and Bureaucratic Collaboration Mechanisms
that Created the Murder Operation
In recent years Bankier sought to broaden research on the organization
of the pan-European murder operation after the idea of the Final Solution was consolidated, i.e., from 1942 onwards. In fact this was a necessary continuation of Christopher Browning’s book The Origins of the
Final Solution.53 A tremendous research effort has been devoted in the
last ten years to clarifying the ideological and practical path that led to
the Final Solution. Concerning the organization and implementation of
the genocide from the time that the idea had crystallized in the spring
of 1942, there are indeed many studies, but only as regards implementation in the different countries and not as an integrative entity. The comprehensive books on the Holocaust generally divide the descriptions of
the events following the implementation of the Final Solution by countries and do not give a global picture. How was the murder coordinated
at the pan-European level, and how were events in seemingly distant
places related? How was the operational network deployed over the vast
areas under Nazi rule? Bankier wanted an infrastructure to be laid that
would make it possible to arrive at such an integrative view. For this,
two large projects were planned under his guidance at the International
Institute for Holocaust Research at Yad Vashem: the killing sites project
and the deportations project. The killing sites project was designed to
create as completely as possible a picture of all the murder sites in the
areas of the USSR — their locations, the number of victims and their
52 David Bankier and Iael Nidam-Orvieto, eds., Pius XII and the Holocaust: The Current State of Research (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, forthcoming 2010).
53 Browning (with Matthäus), The Origins of the Final Solution.
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Dan Michman
places of origin, the perpetrators of the murderous enterprise, etc. The
deportations project was designed to lead to a full recording of all the
transports of Jews carried out during the Third Reich — from where to
where, the number of victims in each transport and their origin, etc.
Thus, we are destined to receive for the first time more comprehensive
and exact information on two main aspects of the extermination operation — the murders by mobile units (Einsatzgruppen, German police,
military units, local auxiliary units, etc.) throughout the occupied areas
of the Soviet Union, and the complex and sophisticated transport system of Jews from all the other parts of the European continent.
Clarification of the Methods of Coping with the Nazi
Legacy — German Guilt — after the Holocaust.
Bankier was greatly preoccupied in his research, particularly in recent
years, by the question of the self-examination of the peoples of Europe,
and in particular the Germans, in light of the dimension and scope of
the crime against the Jews.
Shortly after his appointment as head of the International Institute for Holocaust Research at Yad Vashem, he planned an international conference on the subject of “The Jews Are Coming Back: The
Return of the Jews to Their Countries of Origin after World War II.”
At this conference and in the anthology that derived from it, he asked
all the participants to relate not only to the postwar situation but to
reflections and plans that arose after the great turning point in the war
in early 1943 (after the German defeats at El Alamein and Stalingrad),
when Germany’s defeat in the war became a real possibility. He was
particularly interested in the positions of the governments and populations in Europe with regard to the possible return of the surviving
Jews, demanding reintegration into the societies where they had previously resided and the restoration of their property taken from them,
principally their homes and businesses. In the foreword that he wrote
for the anthology, he presented his fairly depressing conclusion that
all the governments declared on the face of it that they would restore
matters to the prewar and pre-occupation situation, but they knew that
the return of the property, even in the countries where antisemitism
did not prevail, would meet with many obstacles. It was clear in many
countries after the war that the governments would not have the power
to order people to vacate their previously Jewish-owned homes or to
David Bankier’s Path in Holocaust Research
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41
leave their formerly Jewish-occupied positions and jobs. A government that dared to do so would be committing political suicide.54
He cited examples from Poland, France, and Germany; in all
these countries even the most moderate people and people who had
been anti-Nazi saw the Jews as the “other” and as foreigners, a special
category not included in the national rehabilitation.55 He defined the
attitude to Jews returning to their places in European societies toward
the end of the war and immediately afterwards as “a cool reception at
best.”56
In the foreword to the anthology published after Yad Vashem’s
December 2006 international conference, “Justice and the Holocaust,”
he expressed his astonishment regarding the first trials held for war
criminals at Nuremberg, that “The Holocaust was not a central issue
in any of the thirteen trials of the international military tribunal conducted in Germany between 1945 and 1949, even though the very facts
of the persecution of the Jews and their wholesale murder were explicitly mentioned in several instances and implicitly in many. Why was
this so?”57
However, his main interest in this question focused on the Germans and how they coped with the guilt immediately after their defeat.
He devoted one of his last studies to this, a study written when he was
already dealing physically and emotionally with his serious illness. The
research was carried out for the purpose of writing a historical introduction to the Hebrew translation of Karl Jaspers’ book Die Schuld-
54 David Bankier, introduction to David Bankier, ed., The Jews Are Coming Back: The
Return of the Jews to Their Countries of Origin after WWII (New York, Oxford, and
Jerusalem: Berghahn Books and Yad Vashem, 2005), pp. viii–xi.
55 Ibid. On the opinions of anti-Nazi Germans on the place of the Jews in postwar
Germany, he wrote extensively in three articles: “The Rehabilitation of Germany
after the Second World War and the Jewish Question,” Yalkut Moreshet (Hebrew),
vol. 71 (April 2001), pp. 11–21; idem, “The Future of the Jews after Hitler,” Lessons
and Legacies: The Holocaust and Justice, vol. 5 (2002), pp. 313–330; idem, “The Jews
in Plans for Postwar Germany,” Jewish Political Studies Review, vol. 14 (2002), pp.
57–68.
56 David Bankier, “Wartime Views on Jews in Post-War Europe: A Cool Reception at
Best,” in Manfred Gerstenfeld, ed., Europe’s Crumbling Myths: The Post-Holocaust
Origins of Today’s Antisemitism (Jerusalem: Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs,
Yad Vashem, and the World Jewish Congress, 2004), pp. 93–101.
57 David Bankier and Dan Michman, Introduction to David Bankier and Dan Michman, eds., Justice and the Holocaust (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem, 2010), p. 7.
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Dan Michman
frage that Bankier edited with his philosopher colleague Jacob Golomb
from the Hebrew University.58
With the end of World War II public debate both in and outside Germany focused on the question of the collective guilt of
the German people for the Nazi crimes. In this debate there were
two opposing viewpoints: some argued that there should be no
mercy for the Germans, their aggressiveness is an integral part of
their nature and all are guilty collectively for the Nazi crimes.... In
contrast, others denied the very idea of collective guilt imposed
on the Germans and wished to alleviate their punishment…. In
the Jewish public the opinions were also divided, and precisely
among Jews of German origin many objected to the thesis of collective German guilt....
With the collapse of the Third Reich, the question of Germany’s guilt became a burning question also in the German public. Yet in Germany itself, only a few dared to argue for collective
guilt of the entire people.... From the public political viewpoint
the question that arose was: What are the limits of liability of the
Germans as a people for the actions of the Nazi regime? It follows that the question that troubled the people of that period was
not who was guilty for the outbreak of the war, but a completely
different question — whether the Germans are guilty of denial
of the basic principles of human civilization. In this climate Karl
Jaspers wrote his book The Guilt Question.59
Bankier emphasized Jaspers’ public courage which, he said, “touched ...
a sensitive nerve and awakened the subject of the Holocaust, that the
German public wished to erase from its consciousness,” a widespread
tendency among many in the German public when people began to
learn about the Final Solution, and particularly from 1942 onwards.
This was indicated by Bankier, as already noted, in his previous studies and was emphasized once more in this article. “The people of that
time refused to acknowledge the unique significance of the murder of
the Jews. In the debate on the question of German guilt and the extent
58 David Bankier, “The Historical Background: Germany 1945–1947” (Hebrew), in
David Bankier and Jacob Golomb, eds., Karl Jaspers: The Guilt Question (Jerusalem: Yad Vashem and the Hebrew University, 2006), pp. 9–29.
59 Ibid., pp. 9–10.
David Bankier’s Path in Holocaust Research
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of their responsibility for antisemitism, the murder of the Jews was
pushed from consciousness and from the public agenda. Karl Jaspers
and Wolfgang Veil were among the few who condemned the conduct
of the Germans on account of their indifference to the deportation of
the Jews to their death.”60
Bankier demonstrated that various circles and personalities in
Germany were involved in the debate, but all skirted around the sensitive question of the extermination of the Jews. “The Holocaust of the
Jews was pushed to the margins of awareness after the war, also because
the narrative that prevailed in the post-1945 intellectual dialogue emphasized that Germany was the main victim of Nazism and attributed
the country’s misfortunes to Hitler’s charisma, completely exonerating
the people.”61
The Allies did indeed try to influence public opinion in Germany
in different ways; they initiated a program of denazification, but this
also “did not help to instill awareness of guilt in the population.”62 Their
propaganda did not have real influence, and the Cold War needs had a
detrimental influence on their determination to carry out the denazification. Moreover, “interruption of the denazification left the elite in
their positions,” and because of this “a conspiracy of silence was created on their activity in the Nazi period.”63 If we add to this the continued
existence of extensive antisemitism and the wish of the churches — a
few of which indeed criticized the Nazi government during the Third
Reich — to attract the public back to them, clearly the main desire that
prevailed in Germany at that time was to forget.
In the context of the general tendency in Germany, the importance of his [Jaspers’] treatment of the guilt question is outstanding, and particularly his profound reflection on the question of
the “moral” and “metaphysical” guilt. Precisely because he refuses
to recognize the all-embracing and undifferentiated guilt of the
German people, Jaspers defines the area in which the ethical process of recognition by the Germans of the guilt is possible and
necessary: guilt in what is beyond the political and criminal questions, guilt of keeping in line with the requirements of what Jas60
61
62
63
Ibid., p. 11.
Ibid., p. 13.
Ibid., p. 18.
Ibid., p. 20.
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Dan Michman
pers calls “the criminal state.” The interest of this awareness lies in
the universal values of solidarity and compassion between human
beings, and in man standing personally before his conscience and
before his God. In all these there is an appeal — exceptional in its
time — to reflect profoundly, to look truly at what happened and
at the place of each individual in the course of the events and to
start out on the path towards great change, spiritual purification
and renewal of the commitment to the humanistic values of German tradition that was trampled underfoot so crassly under Nazi
rule.64
This moving description of the importance of Jaspers’ intellectual discourse immediately after the collapse of the Third Reich and after the
Holocaust shows, to my mind, why Bankier had the urge to discuss Jaspers. Bankier found in him a representation of his own aspirations and
investigations. In his study, as already noted, Bankier also refused “to
recognize the all-embracing and indistinguishable guilt of the German
people.” Like Jaspers, he also sought to see “beyond the political and
criminal questions” to within human conduct and the different patterns of thought of the Germans — what led them to stand aside when
their neighbors were taken from their homes and when they heard of
the horror — namely, “to reflect profoundly, to look truly at what happened, and at the place of each individual in the course of the events.”
Bankier was a realistic and critical man also politically, but he was
not a man to demonstrate and make declarations. However, his studies
and his lectures to many publics and the diverse projects that he initiated and developed as part of his work at Yad Vashem and as a professor at the Hebrew University, his meticulous guidance of the students
in the courses that he taught, and particularly the young scholars that
he instructed, were to him a way to give the public tools for analysis of
the past that would also be beneficial for analysis of the present — for
purposes of “renewal of the commitment to humanistic values.”
With his death, we lost a profound and influential scholar, a colleague, and a friend. He embodied the words of the sage Ben Sira, who
lived over 2000 years ago:
Do not refrain from speaking at the crucial time, and do not hide
your wisdom.
64 Ibid., p. 29.
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For wisdom is known through speech, and understanding
through the words of the tongue.
…Do not be reckless in your speech, or sluggish and remiss
in your deeds.
…Be quick to hear, and forbearing in answering.
…Search out and seek, inquire and find; and when you get
hold of her [wisdom] do not let her go.
…The mark of a happy heart is a cheerful face, and dealings
with fellow humans result from thorough contemplation .65
May his research work be a memorial to him.66
Translated from the Hebrew by Stephanie Nakache
65 “The Wisdom of Ben Sira,” 4:23–24, 29; 5:11; 6:27; 13:26 in the Apocrypha.
66 This analysis of David Bankier’s research work covers the main aspects of his
oeuvre. However, he also devoted several articles to the Jewish and non-Jewish
German exiles in South America; and he was a member of the international committee of historians that investigated the policy and actions of the principality of
Lichtenstein in face of the Third Reich and in World War II. See David Bankier,
Arthur Brunhart, Peter Geiger, Dan Michman, Carlo Moos, and Erika Weinzierl,
eds., Fragen zu Liechtenstein in der NS-Zeit und im Zweiten Weltkrieg: Flüchtlinge,
Vermögenswerte, Kunst, Rüstungsproduktion: Schlussbericht (Zürich and Vaduz:
Chronos and Historisches Verein für das Fürstentum Liechtenstein, 2005); English version: Questions Concerning Liechtenstein during the National Socialist Period and the Second World War: Final Report (Zürich and Vaduz: Chronos and
Historisches Verein für das Fürstentum Liechtenstein, 2005). It should likewise
be noted that he was a member of the editorial boards of several journals, first and
foremost Yad Vashem Studies and Holocaust and Genocide Studies.