Ruth Bettina Birn | |
---|---|
Born | 1952 (age 71–72) |
Occupation(s) | Historian, author |
Academic background | |
Alma mater | Stuttgart University |
Academic work | |
Era | 20th century |
Institutions | War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity Section,Canadian Department of Justice |
Main interests | Modern European history History of the Holocaust |
Notable works | A Nation on Trial:The Goldhagen Thesis and Historical Truth |
Ruth Bettina Birn (born 1952) is a Canadian historian and author whose main field of research is the security forces of Nazi Germany and their role in the Holocaust. For nearly 15 years,she held a position of chief historian in the war crimes section at the Canadian Department of Justice. Birn co-authored A Nation on Trial:The Goldhagen Thesis and Historical Truth with Norman Finkelstein.
Ruth Bettina Birn was born in 1952 in Stuttgart,West Germany. In 1985,she received her PhD from the Stuttgart University with the dissertation Die Höheren SS-und Polizeiführer:Himmlers Vertreter im Reich und in den besetzten Gebieten ("Higher SS and Police Leaders:Himmler's Representatives in the Reich and the Occupied Territories"),published in Düsseldorf in 1986 as a book. From 1991 to 2005,she was the chief historian at the War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity Section of the Canadian Department of Justice. [1] [2]
Birn studied the Estonian Security Police and SD,publishing a book on this topic,Die Sicherheitspolizei in Estland 1941 –1944:Eine Studie zur Kollaboration im Osten ("The Security Police in Estonia 1941 –1944:A Study in Collaboration in the East"). Based on hundreds of Security Police investigation files kept in the Estonian State Archives,the book analyzes the persecution policies against various victim groups:Communists,Jews,Roma,Russians,Soviet prisoners of war,and so-called asocials. [2]
Since the 1970s,Birn conducted research at the Central Office of the State Justice Administrations for the Investigation of National Socialist Crimes in Germany. She was sharply critical of the 1996 book by Daniel Goldhagen, Hitler's Willing Executioners ,who she accused of being highly selective with the materials from the Central Office in her article "Historiographical review:Revising the Holocaust",published in The Historical Journal .
Birn's essays were later published in book form as A Nation on Trial:The Goldhagen Thesis and Historical Truth . [3] along with a critical article,"Daniel Jonah Goldhagen's 'Crazy' Thesis",by American political science professor Norman Finkelstein (first published) in the UK political journal New Left Review . [3]
In response to their book,Goldhagen sought a retraction and apology from Birn,threatening her at one point to sue her for libel,and,according to Slate ,declaring Finkelstein "a supporter of Hamas". [3] [4] The force of the counterattacks against Birn and Finkelstein from Goldhagen's supporters was described by Israeli journalist Tom Segev as "bordering on cultural terrorism ... The Jewish establishment has embraced Goldhagen as if he were Mr Holocaust himself ... All this is absurd,because the criticism of Goldhagen is backed up so well." [5]
The historian Hans Mommsen describes Birn's criticism as harsh;he writes that,in an effort to refute Goldhagen's assertion that Jews and Gentiles were treated completely differently by the regime,Birn comes "close to obviously unintended apologetics". At the same time,he regrets that Goldhagen reacted to Birn's criticism by threatening her and her editor with legal action,thus choosing this route in order "to silence his academic critics". [6]
Friedrich-Wilhelm Krüger was a German paramilitary commander in charge of, and personally involved in progressive annihilation of the Polish nation, its culture, its heritage and its wealth. Long before the war he was a high-ranking member of the SA and the SS. Between 1939 and 1943 he was the Higher SS and Police Leader in the General Government, giving him command of all police and security forces in German-occupied Poland. In this capacity, he organized and supervised numerous crimes against humanity and had major responsibility for the German genocide of the Polish nation: the extermination of six million Poles and massive destruction, degradation and impoverishment of the Polish state. He committed suicide in May 1945.
Ludolf-Hermann Emmanuel Georg Kurt Werner von Alvensleben was a Schutzstaffel (SS) functionary of Nazi Germany. He held positions of SS and Police Leader in occupied Poland and the Soviet Union, and was indicted for war crimes including the killing of at least 4,247 Poles by units under his command.
Daniel Jonah Goldhagen is an American author, and former associate professor of government and social studies at Harvard University. Goldhagen reached international attention and broad criticism as the author of two books about the Holocaust: Hitler's Willing Executioners (1996), and A Moral Reckoning (2002). He is also the author of Worse Than War (2009), which examines the phenomenon of genocide, and The Devil That Never Dies (2013), in which he traces a worldwide rise in virulent antisemitism.
The title of SS and Police Leader designated a senior Nazi Party official who commanded various components of the SS and the German uniformed police (Ordnungspolizei), before and during World War II in the German Reich proper and in the occupied territories.
Christopher Robert Browning is an American historian and is Professor Emeritus of History at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC). A specialist on the Holocaust, Browning is known for his work documenting the Final Solution, the behavior of those implementing Nazi policies, and the use of survivor testimony. He is the author of nine books, including Ordinary Men (1992) and The Origins of the Final Solution (2004).
Udo Gustav Wilhelm Egon von Woyrsch was a Nazi Party politician and SS-Obergruppenführer in Nazi Germany who participated in the massacre of Jews in Poland, and was later convicted of being an accessory to manslaughter in connection with the Night of the Long Knives murders.
Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust is a 1996 book by American writer Daniel Goldhagen, in which he argues that the vast majority of ordinary Germans were "willing executioners" in the Holocaust because of a unique and virulent "eliminationist antisemitism" in German political culture which had developed in the preceding centuries. Goldhagen argues that eliminationist antisemitism was the cornerstone of German national identity, was unique to Germany, and because of it ordinary German conscripts killed Jews willingly. Goldhagen asserts that this mentality grew out of medieval attitudes rooted in religion and was later secularized.
Carl Albrecht Oberg was a German SS functionary during the Nazi era. He served as Senior SS and Police Leader (HSSPF) in occupied France, from May 1942 to November 1944, during the Second World War, Oberg came to be known as the Butcher of Paris. From May 1942, under orders from Reinhard Heydrich, Oberg ordered the execution of hundreds of hostages and the roundup and deportation of over 40,000 Jews from France to extermination camps, most infamously during the Vel' d'Hiv Roundup with the assistance of the Vichy French police.
Fritz Katzmann, also known as Friedrich Katzmann, was a German SS and Police Leader during the Nazi era. He perpetrated genocide in the cities of Kattowitz, Radom, Lemberg, Danzig, and across the Nazi occupied District of Galicia in the General Government during the Holocaust in Poland, making him a major figure during the Holocaust there.
Martin Sandberger was a German SS functionary during the Nazi era and a convicted Holocaust perpetrator. He commanded Sonderkommando 1a of Einsatzgruppe A, as well as the Sicherheitspolizei and SD at the time of Nazi German occupation of Estonia during World War II. Sandberger perpetrated mass murder of the Jews in German-occupied Latvia and Estonia. He was also responsible for the arrest of Jews in Italy, and their deportation to Auschwitz concentration camp. Sandberger was the second-highest official of the Einsatzgruppe A to be tried and convicted. He was also the last-surviving defendant from the Nuremberg Military Tribunals.
Josef Fitzthum was a high-ranking Austrian member of the SS and Special Representative of the Reichsführer-SS in Albania during World War II.
Emil Mazuw, formerly Emil Maschuw was Landeshauptmann of the Province of Pomerania from 1940 to 1945. He was a member of the Schutzstaffel beginning in 1933. He held the ranks of SS-Obergruppenführer, General of the Waffen-SS (1944), General of Police (1942) and Ostsee Higher SS and Police leader (1939–1945). He had involvement with the euthanasia that was used during World War II. After the war, he was convicted of crimes associated with abuse of political prisoners and Jews. He was sentenced to 16 years imprisonment.
Theodor Berkelmann was a German SS functionary during the Nazi era who served as the Higher SS and Police Leader in Saarland and Moselle during World War II.
Rudolf Querner was a German SS functionary during the Nazi era. He served as the Higher SS and Police Leader in Austria and Germany and was responsible for the evacuations and death marches from concentration camps at the end of the war. Arrested by the Allied authorities, he committed suicide in prison.
Hermann Höfle was a German SS and police official during the Nazi era who served as SS and Police Leader (HSSPF).
Otto Schumann was a German SS and police general during the Nazi era. He was born in Metz, Lorraine, on 11 September 1886. During the First World War, he served in the German Army as an officer. After the war, he became a police officer. Otto Schumann joined the NSDAP in 1933 and the SS in 1939.
Ernst-Heinrich Schmauser was a German Nazi Reichstag deputy and SS-Obergruppenführer who was the Higher SS and Police Leader (HSSPF) in Breslau during World War II. He was responsible for the death march from Auschwitz–Birkenau concentration camp, in which upwards of 25 percent of the prisoners were killed. In the last months of the war, he was captured by the Red Army and presumed killed.
Richard Jungclaus was a German SS-Gruppenführer and Generalleutnant of Police who served as the Higher SS and Police Leader (HSSPF) in Belgium and Northern France. A member of the Waffen-SS, he was killed in combat in the Independent State of Croatia toward the end of the Second World War.
Gerret Korsemann was a German SS-Gruppenführer and Generalleutnant of Police. During the Second World War he served as a police official in the General Government and as an SS and Police Leader in the occupied Soviet Union where he was involved in the Holocaust. At the end of the war, he was convicted of war crimes and imprisoned in Poland.