The Holocaust

The Dartmouth Speakers’ Forum presented a three-day series of six lectures on “World War II and the Holocaust” last month. Speakers from the United States, Europe, and Israel discussed the implications of the Nazi murder of six million Jews. Mark Feldman ’80, director of the Speakers’ Forum, said-“it took six months of work” to organize the program, which was co-sponsored by ten campus and community groups as disparate as the Nathan Smith Medical Society, Dartmouth Hillel, and the Department of Romance Languages.

Steven Katz, professor of religion at the College, recounted the ideological and historical background of the Holocaust, saying that if the background is un- derstood, “what came to pass is, almost of necessity, intelligible.” The dehumaniza- tion of the Jew made it possible for genocide to be seen as a logical conclusion to “the Jewish problem,” he concluded. Elie Wiesel, professor of humanities at Boston University and a survivor of the Auschwitz and Buchenwald concentration camps, said he saw hope in the fact that “the victims remain victims and don’t join the killers.” A Norwich resident, Freya von Moltke, widow of a fighter in the Ger- man resistance executed for conspiring to assassinate Hitler, described the reign of fear in Germany.

Beate Klarsfeld spoke about her career as a Nazi hunter. She began her active public life in 1968 by slapping West Ger- man Chancellor Kiesinger and crying out, “Nazi! Nazi!” His previous work for Hitler was consequently publicized and he was dismissed from office. The revisionist historians’ view that Hitler was not deliberately and personally responsible for the fate of German Jews was attacked by Robert Waite, professor of history at Williams College.

Finally, panelists representing Jewish, black, and American Indian perspectives discussed whether or not the Holocaust was unique to Jewish history. “When it. happens once, it can happen again,” one professor observed. “We can never really understand the extent of the suffering peo- ple endured,” another said, “but we can marvel at their persistence to survive.”