Hyping the Holocaust: Scholars Answer Goldhagen [Paperback]

Franklin Hamlin Littell (Editor)

Product Details

• Paperback: 177 pages
• Publisher: Cummings & Hathaway (May 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0943025982
• ISBN-13: 978-0943025988
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 5.9 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 2.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,757,606 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Mixed Bag, December 6, 1997

By A Customer

This review is from: Hyping the Holocaust: Scholars Answer Goldhagen (Paperback)

Overall, this collection is a disappointment: not enough of the essays are at the highest level of quality. Some are good, though: Yehuda Bauer's article is a balanced assessment, Jacob Neusner's critique is sharp, but not without some effective points, and Eberhard Jaeckel's critique is well-founded (but gracelessly translated). Contrary to claims that Jacob Neusner is not a sound scholar, I would like to point out that he is one of the leading specialists on the history of Judaism in the world, that he has written or edited dozens of books, and that he has received six honorary degrees from leading universities throughout the world. If you're skeptical, you can find a bibliography of his many books and a copy of his article on Goldhagen at the "Jewish Communication Network" home page (Neusner is among other things a rabbi too). I think it's wrong to suggest that these critical articles end up supporting Goldhagen. Goldhagen is obviously in large part right to insist on the importance of anti-semitism in the Holocaust, and, of course, all serious scholars agree on that. The problem is that they have agreed on that for quite some time now, and Prof. Goldhagen is far from the first person to point it out. He is the first scholar (as far as I know) to argue that the sole motivation for the actions of Holocaust perpetrators was anti-semitism, and most scholars of the Holocaust have some serious doubts about that. If you want to decide whether Goldhagen is right or wrong, the way to do it is not to read his book and then these essays: you need to have independent knowledge. It's a lot of work, but you need to read Goldhagen, and then check his account against a good history of Germany like Gordon Craig's Germany 1866-1945 (Oxford). Look also at some of the histories of the Holocaust that Goldhagen says are so wrong, like Raul Hilberg's Destruction of the European Jews (Holmes and Meier). If you do that, you will see that Goldhagen's account of German history and of the historiography of the Holocaust has some serious inaccuracies, and that even some of the harsher criticisms in this book of essays often identify real defects in Goldhagen's work.

6 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Read Goldhagen. Don't bother with this "response"., November 30, 1997

By 

N. Zachary "nzbook" (W. Newton, MA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Hyping the Holocaust: Scholars Answer Goldhagen (Paperback)

Having just read Goldhgen's book "Hitler's Willing Executioners" and then "Hyping the Holocaust", I have four comments: 1. It is ironic that the editor makes his living "hyping the holocaust". 2. Calling Neusner a scholar is stretching a point; he must be bitterly disappointed that he never received a Harvard appointment. 3. Most of the contributors appear not to have read Goldhagen's book or at least they attack arguments which Goldhagen did not make. 4. If you take the sum of Goldhagen's arguments with which one or more of the contributors agree, you will find they support almost all of Goldhagen's arguments.