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PARTISAN REVIEW
of the 1960s disabused us of this prospect by repeating the earlier,
more painful experience in diluted form in relation to other
communist tyrannies. Many left-wing intell ectuals now seem
incurably prone to a "back to the old drawing board" att itude when
political myths they fervently embraced on ly yesterday are expo ed
as ev il illusions, an att itude which prevents them from learning
anyt hing or even from undergoing the pain of real disillusionment.
The ideals of progressivism themselves appear to encourage
persistent self-deception , or, at a deeper level, the Haw perhaps lies
in the compu lsion to tie one's most cherished sense of personal
identity to an exalted political commitment.
DENNIS H. WRONG
BLOCKING IT OUT
THE TERRIBLE SECRET. By Walter Laqueur. Penguin $14.95.
AUSCHWITZ AND THE ALLIES. By Martin Gilbert. Holt, Rinehart,
and Winston. $15.00.
THE HOLOCAUST AND THE HISTORIANS. By Lucy Dawidowicz.
Harvard Un iversity Press. $15.00.
The three books under review here have a main theme in
common: the attitudes and responses of Europeans and Americans
to the destruction of European Jewry by the Nazis. Walter Laqueur
tells us how much was known and how soon, Martin Gilbert shows
how little was done to interfere with the process or extermi nat ion,
a nd Lucy Dawidowicz offers a bleak picture or subsequent histori–
ography. Today one cannot but agree with the essenti al idea of these
three studies; however, its discussion leaves serious questions
unresolved.
In
The Holocaust and the H istorians,
Lucy Dawidowicz sets out
to
describe the insufficiencies and distortions or American, British,
German, Ru ss ian, a nd Polish hi storiography dealing with (or
omitting) the extermi nation of theJews; ror good measure, she adds
to it the weaknesses or 'Jewish" hi storiography as well. The two most
convincing chapters are those dealing with Soviet and Polish hi stori-
