Newsgroup: it.politica.internazionale
Titolo: How historians remove stains

http://www.thejc.com/comment-and-debate/comment/32828/how-historians-remove-stains
Holocaust denial is gaining a patina of respectability in German 
academic circles
By Michael Pinto-Duschinsky, June 10, 2010
Holocaust history remains a vicious political battlefield. Memory and 
truth are under assault not only by the blunt frontal attacks of those 
who deny the gas chambers; there is a second form of Holocaust writing 
even more pernicious because its distortions and interpretations are 
more subtle.
Established historians in Germany and elsewhere would not dream of 
identifying with the hard-core Holocaust deniers of the far-right. But 
some of them tirelessly minimise, trivialise and explain away the deeds 
of the Nazis. Their works feature prominently on university curricula in 
the USA and in Britain.
Two common interpretations are that the Holocaust was neither 
"intentional" nor caused by antisemitism. It was, rather, a result of 
the cumulative circumstances of total war that defy any simple causal 
explanation. The reason that Daniel Jonah Goldhagen's book Hitler's 
Willing Executioners was so brutally attacked in the 1990s was that he 
dared to suggest that German antisemitism was one core reason for the 
destruction of European Jewry.
Shortly after the campaign against Goldhagen, a group of French 
historians referred me to the apologetic history, produced by Hans 
Mommsen and others, of Alfred Toepfer, a German multi-millionaire who 
masqueraded after the War as an anti-Nazi resister and "great European" 
and who lavished huge prizes on Prime Ministers, Presidents and leading 
artists --- including a smattering of Jews.
The histories commissioned, after Toepfer's death, by the foundation 
that bears his name are prime examples of the distortions that mar so 
much recent Holocaust history. The foundation funds scholarships for 
students at Oxford, where academic studies of modern European history 
and politics are heavily dependent on money from German companies and 
foundations with strong motives in laundering their pasts.
While there is no suggestion of any direct exchange of money for favour, 
it would be naive to ignore the influence of donations. The Holocaust is 
relatively little taught in the university. The 20-page internet 
bibliography of the 2003 course on Nazi Germany excludes Sir Martin 
Gilbert's seminal work The Holocaust (too simple, I was told). I believe 
the real reason for ignoring Gilbert's work was that it is harrowing. It 
actually documents the terrible events and it subscribes to the thesis 
abhorred by the dominant German school of Holocaust interpretation that 
antisemitism was at the heart of the tragedy.
The Toepfer Foundation's sponsored histories acknowledge that Toepfer 
included SS generals on the boards of his foundations and went out of 
his way to give employment and aid after the war to Holocaust 
perpetrators and war criminals; yet they insist that the founding father 
was far from being an antisemite. He had not been even indirectly 
involved in the Holocaust, it is claimed, despite the admitted fact that 
his firm supplied the Nazi ghetto administration in Lodz with goods, 
including slaked lime used for covering cadavers.
Sponsored historians mention that Toepfer was not a member of the Nazi 
party but avoid revealing that he was a member of the SS. The sponsored 
Toepfer biography of 2008 omits mention of the fact that Toepfer helped 
an SS general to establish a clandestine new life in Argentina. The 
foundation claim that this was because of lack of space.
The value to the Toepfer Foundation and similar institutions of giving 
grants to leading universities such as Oxford is that it provides 
respectability and effectively helps them to get away with a selective 
version of a tainted history. Among the questionable claims promoted by 
the Toepfer Foundation, its statement on its website that it is a 
partner institution of Oxford may itself be open to doubt. According to 
the university's legal department, the restriction of the foundation's 
scholarships to students from Oxford and Cambridge comes from the 
foundation alone and has no official standing in the university.
We tend to assume Holocaust denial is no longer respectable. 
Unfortunately, there are many degrees and forms of denial.

 Willing Executioners was so brutally attacked in the 1990s was that
era una cagata pazzesca, riconosciuta come tale da TUTTI i principali
storici dell'olocausto.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hitler%27s_Willing_Executioners#Reception


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hitler%27s_Willing_Executioners#Reception
in effetti sì.
Dai più quotati, certamente.
Gli israeliani poi ne han parlato malissimo.
Al di là di Goldhagen, la storia di Toepfer  è veramente penosa. Uno schifo, 
ammetterai.

 ammetterai.
sì, fa schifo. E' il risultato di lasciare la storia in mano alla
libera impresa, che ovviamente la finanzia pro domo sua...