The Catechism Debate, also known as Historikerstreit 2.0, is a debate about German Holocaust remembrance initiated by Australian historian A. Dirk Moses with his 2021 essay "The German Catechism". [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6] [7] In the debate, Moses challenges the uniqueness of the Holocaust. [2] In May through August of 2021, scholars reacted to Moses's thesis in the New Fascism Syllabus in a series of reflections curated by Jennifer V. Evans. [8]
The German Catechism, as it is outlined in Dirk Moses' article includes these five credal beliefs [9] :
1.The Holocaust is unique because it was the unlimited Vernichtung der Juden um der Vernichtung willen (exterminating the Jews for the sake of extermination itself) distinguished from the limited and pragmatic aims of other genocides. It is the first time in history that a state had set out to destroy a people solely on ideological grounds.
2. It was thus a Zivilisationsbruch (civilizational rupture) and represents a break with the moral foundation of the nation.
3. Germany has a special responsibility to Jews in Germany, and a special loyalty to Israel: “Die Sicherheit Israels ist Teil der Staatsräson unseres Landes” (Israel’s security is part of Germany’s reason of state).
4. Antisemitism is a distinct prejudice—and was a distinctly German one. It should not be confused with racism.
5. Antizionism is antisemitism.
Moses argues that going through a process of internalizing and confronting Holocaust exceptionalism was an important phase in the politics of memory in post-Nazi Germany that arose from historiographic, presentational and cultural breakthroughs in the 1980's, especially in the United States and eventually migrated into German consciousness in the 21st century. [9] However, according to Moses' argument, this way of situating the Nazi Final Solution in relation to other genocides and mass-violence has become an impediment to thinking and investing in global justice and security because it makes slippery distinctions between what happened in the death camps and what happened in--for example--the colonies of the Global South during the period of European and American imperialism, what happened to Native Americans under the regime of manifest destiny, and can be an impediment to thinking clearly about the problems which now confront us in the Israel-Palestine conflict. [9]
A variety of responses have registered in the discussion that arose in the wake of this proposal.
Holocaust denial is an antisemitic conspiracy theory that asserts that the Nazi genocide of Jews, known as the Holocaust, is a fabrication or exaggeration. Holocaust denial includes making one or more of the following false claims:
Yehuda Bauer is a Czech-born Israeli historian and scholar of the Holocaust. He is a professor of Holocaust Studies at the Avraham Harman Institute of Contemporary Jewry at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Ernst Nolte was a German historian and philosopher. Nolte's major interest was the comparative studies of fascism and communism. Originally trained in philosophy, he was professor emeritus of modern history at the Free University of Berlin, where he taught from 1973 until his 1991 retirement. He was previously a professor at the University of Marburg from 1965 to 1973. He was best known for his seminal work Fascism in Its Epoch, which received widespread acclaim when it was published in 1963. Nolte was a prominent conservative academic from the early 1960s and was involved in many controversies related to the interpretation of the history of fascism and communism, including the Historikerstreit in the late 1980s. In later years, Nolte focused on Islamism and "Islamic fascism".
Saul Friedländer is a Czech-born Jewish historian and a professor emeritus of history at UCLA.
The Journal of Genocide Research is a quarterly peer-reviewed academic journal covering studies of genocide. Established in 1999, for the first six years it was not peer-reviewed. Since December 2005, it is the official journal of the International Network of Genocide Scholars. Previous editors have been Henry R. Huttenbach, Dominik J. Schaller, and Jürgen Zimmerer. The journal is abstracted and indexed in Political Science Abstracts, Historical Abstracts, and America: History and Life. As of 2022, the journal is published by Routledge and the editor-in-chief is A. Dirk Moses.
The Holocaust had a deep effect on society both in Europe and the rest of the world, and today its consequences are still being felt, both by children and adults whose ancestors were victims of this genocide.
Holocaust trivialization refers to any comparison or analogy that diminishes the scale and severity of the atrocities committed by Nazi Germany during the Holocaust. The Wiesel Commission defined trivialization as the abusive use of comparisons with the aim of minimizing the Holocaust and banalizing its atrocities.
Holocaust studies, or sometimes Holocaust research, is a scholarly discipline that encompasses the historical research and study of the Holocaust. Institutions dedicated to Holocaust research investigate the multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary aspects of Holocaust methodology, demography, sociology, and psychology. It also covers the study of Nazi Germany, World War II, Jewish history, antisemitism, religion, Christian-Jewish relations, Holocaust theology, ethics, social responsibility, and genocide on a global scale. Exploring trauma, memories, and testimonies of the experiences of Holocaust survivors, human rights, international relations, Jewish life, Judaism, and Jewish identity in the post-Holocaust world are also covered in this type of research.
The "double genocide theory" claims that two genocides of equal severity occurred during World War II: it alleges that the Soviet Union committed atrocities against Eastern Europeans that were equivalent in scale and nature to the Holocaust, in which approximately six million Jews were systematically murdered by Nazi Germany. The theory first gained popularity in Lithuania after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, particularly with regard to discussions about the Holocaust in Lithuania. A more extreme version of the theory is antisemitic and vindicates the actions of Nazi collaborators as retaliatory by accusing Jews of complicity in Soviet repression, especially in Lithuania, eastern Poland, and northern Romania. Scholars have criticized the double genocide theory as a form of Holocaust trivialization.
The assertion that the Holocaust was a unique event in human history was important to the historiography of the Holocaust, but it has come under increasing criticism in the twenty-first century. Related claims include the claim that the Holocaust is external to history, beyond human understanding, a civilizational rupture, and something that should not be compared to other historical events. Uniqueness approaches to the Holocaust also coincide with the view that antisemitism is not another form of racism and prejudice but is eternal and teleologically culminates in the Holocaust, a frame that is preferred by proponents of Zionist narratives.
"Italians, the good people" is a phrase adopted by historians to refer to Italian popular beliefs about the allegedly limited, even non-existent, participation of Fascist Italy and the Royal Italian Army in the Holocaust and war crimes committed by Axis soldiers during World War II. The phenomenon is also known as the myth of the good Italian.
Anthony Dirk Moses is an Australian scholar who researches various aspects of genocide. In 2022 he became the Anne and Bernard Spitzer Professor of Political Science at the City College of New York, after having been the Frank Porter Graham Distinguished Professor of Global Human Rights History at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is a leading scholar of genocide, especially in colonial contexts, as well as of the political development of the concept itself. He is known for coining the term racial century in reference to the period 1850–1950. He is editor-in-chief of the Journal of Genocide Research.
Genocide studies is an academic field of study that researches genocide. Genocide became a field of study in the mid-1940s, with the work of Raphael Lemkin, who coined genocide and started genocide research, and its primary subjects were the Armenian genocide and the Holocaust; the Holocaust was the primary subject matter of genocide studies, starting off as a side field of Holocaust studies, and the field received an extra impetus in the 1990s, when the Bosnian genocide and Rwandan genocide occurred. It received further attraction in the 2010s through the formation of a gender field.
"Never again" is a phrase or slogan which is associated with the lessons of the Holocaust and other genocides. The slogan was used by liberated prisoners at Buchenwald concentration camp to denounce fascism. It was popularized by Jewish Defense League founder Meir Kahane in his 1971 book, Never Again! A Program for Survival.
The claim that there was a Jewish war against Nazi Germany is an antisemitic conspiracy theory promoted in Nazi propaganda which asserts that the Jews, framed within the theory as a single historical actor, started World War II and sought the destruction of Germany. Alleging that war was declared in 1939 by Chaim Weizmann, president of the World Zionist Organization, Nazis used this false notion to justify the persecution of Jews under German control on the grounds that the Holocaust was justified self-defense. Since the end of World War II, the conspiracy theory has been popular among neo-Nazis and Holocaust deniers.
The relationship between the Armenian genocide and the Holocaust has been discussed by scholars. The majority of scholars believe that there is a direct causal relationship between the Armenian genocide and the Holocaust, however, some of them do not believe that there is a direct causal relationship between the two genocides.
The International Conference on the Holocaust and Genocide was the first major conference in the field of genocide studies, held in Tel Aviv on 20–24 June 1982. It was organized by Israel Charny, Elie Wiesel, Shamai Davidson, and their Institute on the Holocaust and Genocide, founded in 1979. The conference's objective was to further the understanding and prevention of all genocides; it marked the shift from viewing genocide as an irrational phenomenon to one that could be studied and understood.
Jennifer V. Evans is a professor of history at Carleton University and a competitive athlete. Her research and teaching focuses on the history of sexuality, right-wing populism and authoritarianism, especially in the context of its evolution on social media and visual culture. In 2016, she was elected a Member of the College of New Scholars, Royal Society of Canada. Her writing on fascism, authoritarianism, memory, and sexuality has appeared in major newspapers, including The Globe and Mail, The Guardian, the National Post, and the Washington Post.
The Problems of Genocide: Permanent Security and the Language of Transgression is a 2021 book by Australian historian A. Dirk Moses. The book explores what Moses sees as flaws in the concept of genocide, which he argues allows killings of civilians that do not resemble the Holocaust to be ignored. Moses proposes "permanent security" as an alternative to the concept of genocide. The book was described as important, but his emphasis on security is considered only one factor to be causing mass violence.
The Holocaust and the Nakba have been regarded as interrelated events in discussions of the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, both historically and in the way these two tragedies have influenced perceptions of the conflict by both parties. In Israel, all Israeli Jews are considered survivors of the Holocaust who must implement the imperative of never again in regards to being a Jewish victim. The uniqueness of the Holocaust is emphasized and linkage between it and the Nakba is often rejected. The 2018 book The Holocaust and the Nakba argues that "unless we can hold these two moments in our hearts and minds as part of the same story, there can be no moving forward in the seemingly unmovable conflict that is Israel-Palestine".