Customer Reviews

Moral Responsibility in the Holocaust

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This book cannot be recommended even in the least.

Let us start with two facts:
(1) Raul Hilberg is the world's leading authority on the Nazi Holocaust, he represents the ultimate standard for Holocaust studies through unmatched mastery of the primary sources, professional discipline, and confident knowledge of the field. Hilberg is, in his own words, a seeker of truth.

(2) Daniel Goldhagen is the exact opposite of Hilberg. In Goldhagen's "work" the evidence is nonexistent, also apparent is lack of primary source, and his reasoning is bizarre. Hilberg sums things up nicely: "This is the only reason why Goldhagen could obtain a PhD in political science at Harvard. There was nobody on the faculty who could have checked his work."

Jones makes a double error of defending Goldhagen and attacking Hilberg. While Jones argues that many of Goldhagen's critics have misinterpreted his work it is Jones who misrepresents Goldgagen's critics, and while he does not accept Goldhagen's work without exception, his assessment is uncritical. On the other hand, when addressesing Raul Hilberg's claim that ghetto culture contributed to Jewish ignorance of Nazi intentions, which in turn explains Jewish complience with the Nazis Jones formulates his criticism of Hilberg by denying the existence of any extensive collaboration by the Jewish community. To contradict Hilberg Jones offers specific examples of Jewish resistance. Going against Hilberg on examples is suicidal "scholarship" but what is more disappointing from a philosopher is Jones' inability to distinguish the notion of "cooperation" from Hilberg's concept of Jewish compliance, explained by the latter as having been a result of the Jewish Councils' hope to minimize brutality and save Jewish lives.

This book fails both on the count of its philosophical content and its attempted contribution to the Holocaust scholarship.

Jones has produced an enormously important work in lucid, tight prose and clear, strong argumentation. Lay readers will find this a highly accessible step into what Raul Hilberg calls "the thicket of ethics." Much food for thought here; without sappy moralizing, Jones calls on the reader to do some hard thinking.