Webinar #3 took Wednesday April 13th in the middle of the exam frenzy us university students call the last few weeks of the term, we all found time to come together for an hour and half to regroup and have a wonderful presentation by Carson Phillips who is a candidate for his PhD at York University in Toronto. Prior to the Webinar we were asked to read two articles from Prism Magazine which can be found online. One article discussed the Evian Conference and the other discussed the role of archival documents and memoirs to aid in teaching the history of Holocaust to students today.
A little bit of background on Mr. Phillips, in 2005 he graduated from York U with his M.A. in Humanities, and he also has a graduate diploma in Holocaust & Genocide Education from the University of Toronto. Mr. Phillips has interned at the Auschwitz Jewish Centre in Oswiecim, Poland, studied at the International School for Holocaust Studies in Jerusalem, Israel, and at the Holocaust Education Foundation Institute of Northwestern University in Evanston, IL. (York U Website)
The lecture Mr. Phillips presented last night was formed around, "Paradigm of the Perpetrator, Bystander, Victim, & Helper." For those of you who are unsure of what a paradigm is described as 1) a typical example or pattern of something; a mode and 2) a worldview underlying the theories and methodology of a particular scientific subject.
Raul Hilberg
We begin by discussing Mr. Raul Hilberg who opened up the field for Holocaust studies in publishing his definitive scholarly text, "The Destruction of the European Jews" in 1961. In this text he identified three components to the paradigm, Perpetrator, Bystander, and Victim. The other addition of components such as helper and rescuer were added to the paradigm at later dates by other scholars. Most recently scholars have made additions to the model in terms of gender and sexuality studies.
Holocaust Reverberations
The past will never rest when it comes to the Holocaust and Mr. Phillips indicated to us that the reverberation of the Holocaust is particularly strong in Germany and Austria as the newer generations in these countries attempt to "come to terms" with the past. During this new generation of youth the category of the perpetrator becomes more complex as stories and knowledge begin to come to light as those individuals attempt to discover who there family members were. There have been many books published by relatives of those involved in the war, but few have been translated to English and Mr. Philips highlighted three books and one documentary that he finds particularly interesting and important in learning about reverberations and the perpetrator.
Books: The Himmler Brothers, The Man in the Pulpit, and Tracks of My Father
In all of these publications the authors discovered, throughout their research on their family members who they really were. In most causes family members overshadowed the real actions and roles their family members had in the Holocaust and it not until these later dates where those from the new generations discover the real truth.
Opening Up the Paradigm
Mr. Phillips discussed the difference between the Mitlaufer (someone who runs with the crowd) and a Semi-active participant. Even if someone during the war was just designing decrees for the Nazis to pose they still have a negative impact on someone's quality of life and thus would be considered a perpetrator.
Brief History of the Perpetrators
After the war in the 1950s were perpetrators were since as "devils/monsters in human form" and through the years have gone through transitions to "banality of bureaucrat/evil" into the 1960s, during the 1990s there was a shift as people begin to see how "ordinary" men and women became perpetrators and this made it much more difficult to understand. An example of this "ordinary" perpetrator was seen when Mr. Christopher Browning went to trial for his war crimes.
Using the Lens of Gender for Perpetrators
Next Mr. Phillips discussed the role of women in the role of perpetrators. Throughout war times women created a buffer from their husband's jobs. They provided their husbands with a safe home and the ability to come home and be fathers after a long day (of killing). Many scholars after the war identified women as victims in totality due to the male dominance and interracial policies that existed at the time. Mr. Phillips also used the example of Hitler's secretary and her role in the war as the tasks she were to complete were what were required of her in order to fill the demands of her job.
Victims
When Mr. Phillips spoke about the victims of the Holocaust, primarily the Jews, he made it clear that each Jew responded to the events unfolding around them in a different way, whether that be through the concept of agency, spiritual resistance, or choiceless choices.
The example provided for the concept of agency looked at a young girl who lost her whole family early on during the war and decided that it was only appropriate that she hide the fact that she was Jewish and join the Partisans. She made this conscious decision because she felt that she had nothing left to live for.
The concept of spirituality was a struggle for Jewsih people as many of them tried to keep their beliefs as a part of their life. Choiceless Choices is something that may be more difficult for some people to grasp as it is the lesser of two evils. Mr. Phillips use the example of Adam Cenokvo (Ghetto Leader) to show how when faced with the unthinkable of being asked to make a selection of which Jewish people to put on the deportation list. When faced with this task that other leaders found easy to complete Mr. Cenokvo simply could not allow himself to chose these individuals fate and instead took his life.
Rescuers
There is no "prototype" of a rescuer as they transcend education, socioeconomic backgrounds, religion, etc. This is also the area where fluidity and overlap of the categories takes place.
Contemporary Issues
Lastly, Mr. Phillips highlighted some key issues surrounding the Holocaust that are occurring today, one of which being the National Fund of the Republic of Austria. Austria's process of dealing with their part in the Holocaust occurred very late and didn't begin until the 1990s. The lady who was hired to head the National Fund is Jewish and her father is a survivor, therefore, she has some ability to understand Austria complex history in relation to the Holocaust. The Fund was created in hopes to support and educate individuals on the Holocaust.
"Over a half-century has passed since the hell of the Holocaust, but its spectre still hangs over the world and doesn’t allow us to forget." - Irena Sendler (Polish victim who rescued children)
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