EDITH KURZWEIL
357
The collapse of the Soviet Union and of its client states has opened
up previously closed archives, among them Klemperer's diary. We now
have proof of many more camps than we had been aware of, of death
marches and killing sprees which ordinary people could not help but wit–
ness in one way or another. Thus, survivors' memories are being
substantiated; it is no longer possible to claim, for instance, that anti–
Bolshevism rather than antiSemitism was the driving force of the Holo–
caust; and that millions of Jews (and some Poles, Gypsies and
homosexuals) were exterminated by very few Germans. Moreover, ex–
planations blaming aspects of "German character," and of psychological
traits, have worn thin as well. Altogether, the celebrations of various
milestones associated with the demise of the Nazis and the end of World
War II, which more or less coincide with the opening up of newly avail–
able records, have propelled historians and academics to reexamine and
reevaluate this past - and the role of the Holocaust.
Each of these above books is representative of a specific genre - ex–
plaining and speculating how and why friendly neighbors turned into the
enemies ofJews, how and why decent people suddenly were pumped full
of hatred, and what allowed for a garden variety of anti-Semitism to run
amok and end up in the near-extermination of the Jews between 1933
and 1945. Holocaust books range from history to theory, from scholarly
research to literary treatment, from serious fiction to critiques in stirring
films, and from reminiscences by survivors of the death camps to descrip–
tive treatments of specific types of camps. A range of theories address
why, when, and how "the Germans," or specific Germans, were reacting
to Nazi imperatives; why, when, and how each of the successive racist
laws was passed, and instituted; whether the SA, the SS or the Ein–
satztruppen were most culpable; and whether or not a hyped-up, virulent
anti-Semitism was intensified when linked to the Jews' alleged Commu–
nism. But none of these treatments have explained why anti-Semitism has
been so persistent.
Earlier treatments of the Holocaust were less empirically grounded,
and usually referred to one or another of the theses of the refugee schol–
ars. For instance, Hannah Arendt's term "the banality of evil" still is being
cited, although it is not always made clear that she did not mean that evil
is banal, but that Eichmann was a banal man. Had she had more intimate
knowledge of the killing fields and the death marches, and of the ghettos
which Jews, starved and frozen, were herded into, I don't think she
would have maintained that Jews could have defended themselves more
effectively, or have been less passive. Erich Fromm's notions about the
German personality as afraid of freedom, and the massive study of the
"authoritarian personality" by T. W. Adorno and his associates, as well as
