Part memoir, part analysis, part historiography, this book is the product of much rumination over years of study, research, teaching, and lecturing on the history of the Holocaust – at the University of Toronto, the University of California at Berkeley, St Antony’s College, Oxford, UCLA, the University of Cape Town, and numerous other venues in Canada, the United States, Europe, and Israel. I feel honoured to have had the opportunity to appear at some very distinguished institutions, to have been so warmly received, and to have engaged with students, colleagues, and members of the general public who have had the patience to hear me out over the years. I am especially grateful to my home institution, the University of Toronto, where I first found my way in intellectual matters more than a half a century ago, and where I have taught for more than forty-five years – including some as the Chancellor Rose and Ray Wolfe Professor of Holocaust Studies. Within that home, I have been particularly fortunate to be a part of the wonderful community of colleagues and students at Massey College, led over the past nineteen years by the exemplary Master John Fraser, and now his successor, the Honourable Hugh Segal. These fine institutions have provided me with the space, libraries, time, collegiality, feedback, and above all encouragement to pursue work that I enjoyed – and to do so freely, without intellectual hindrance of any kind. What more could one expect from these places of learning? The least I can do is to offer my heartfelt appreciation.
Focusing on “lessons of the Holocaust,” this book is a way of explaining to myself and others what I have been doing at the various institutions I have mentioned. This has not always been easy to clarify. I have spent much time attempting to do so in conversations with my successor as Wolfe Professor, Doris Bergen, exchanging views about our varied responsibilities in teaching Holocaust history, why we frankly enjoy working in this exceptionally grim subject of study, and what we think is the point of it all. I am extraordinarily appreciative of the way in which her vigour and intelligence have helped me maintain my own enthusiasm for my field, not to mention my continuing understanding of it. I want also to record the debt I owe to wonderful mentors, teachers, colleagues, friends, and students in history and other disciplines, people with whom it has been a privilege and pleasure to work and learn from over the years – and this when in agreement or disagreement, sometimes on matters that touch upon the very nature of the Holocaust itself. Some of these appear by name in the pages of this book, but this is the place to thank them all. I want to add that I particularly appreciate how this engagement continues now that I have formally retired, representing a never-ending quest to get to the bottom of things. I have chosen lessons as my unifying theme because I sense that this is how many people understand the work of Holocaust historians. Certainly “lessons” is the most popular designation of what the Holocaust is supposed to teach. My own view is that this is a misperception, and I believe that the best way I can explain what I do is to discuss just why I think this way. That is the subject of this book.
Meanwhile, and taking of course sole responsibility for what I have written here, I want to thank all of those who have assisted me by discussing these issues either in a general or very specific way, and in some cases even taking the trouble to review an earlier draft of this book. These include Howard Adelman, Steven Aschheim, Doris Bergen, Leora Bilsky, Michael Bliss, Rivka Brot, Christopher Browning, Roger Errera, Eugene Fisher, Louis Greenspan, Peter Hayes, Shira Herzog, Susannah Heschel, Gerald Izenberg, Naomi Kriss, Tamar Liebes, Wendy Lower, Dow Marmur, Michael Morgan, Robert Paxton, Derek Penslar, Anna Porter, Brenda Proulx, Seymour Reich, Milton Shain, Janice Stein, and Bernard Wasserstein. In a special category of thanks for her advice is my literary agent, Beverley Slopen, from whom I have learned, over the years, to listen carefully even when it is painful, and to revisit a manuscript even when I want to send it off. And finally, I want to record that, happily for me, all of these opinions can be set against those of my wife, Carol Randi Marrus, who has never let me sink too low or to rise too high, both with what is here and what is not. This book is dedicated to her.
Massey College in the University of Toronto
June 2015