ABSTRACT
To grapple with the Holocaust, educators need to have some kind of understanding around the complexities of representation and anti-Semitism. In this chapter, my aim is to point out the difficulties of interpreting these notions. I suggest that anti-Semitism signifies many different things in different historical periods. I argue that anti-Semitism is not monolithic. It is important to contextualize this term historically so educators understand it is a changeable, shifting creature. It is important to understand also that there were many complex reasons that the Holocaust emerged and anti-Semitism is only one reason among many. I think it is naive to reduce the Holocaust to anti-Semitism. Yet, it is also naive not to acknowledge its role during the Holocaust. The literature on anti-Semitism is separated from Holocaust historiography. The texts on anti-Semitism, that is, seem to form a separate and distinct canon which stands apart from Holocaust scholarship. Further, Holocaust scholarship is so balkanized that some historians tend to have difficulty treating anti-Semitism as part of their work. If they do treat anti-Semitism, it is done, sometimes, in superficial ways. In the chapter dealing with Holocaust historiography (chap. 5) I discuss Daniel Goldhagen’s (1997) text Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust. Here, I examine why historians have roundly criticized his treatment of anti-Semitism. Goldhagen’s work signals that the notion of anti-Semitism is not well understood, even among historians. One of the problems in historians’ analyses of anti-Semitism is that it is treated, ironically, ahistorically, and acontextually My approach to anti-Semitism in this chapter is an historical and theological one. I attempt to contextualize antiSemitism against the backdrop of the Holocaust.
