Daniel Jonah Goldhagen has a way of upsetting some people. “Exceptionally wrong” and “racist” are just some of the adjectives his academic detractors used to describe his first book, Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust.
His second book, A Moral Reckoning: The Role of the Catholic Church in the Holocaust and Its Unfulfilled Duty of Repair, was criticized for “turning history into a kind of cudgel” and having an “anti-Catholic agenda.”
Goldhagen’s critics would perhaps prefer to ignore him, but they can’t. Formerly a professor at Harvard, Goldhagen has a knack for writing books on sensitive topics that grab public attention. When Hitler’s Willing Executioners was published in 1996, Time magazine deemed it one of the year’s two best works of non-fiction and The New York Times called it “one of those rare, new works that merit the appellation ‘landmark.’ ” Translated into 15 languages, the book sparked passionate debates in Germany and elsewhere.
Goldhagen’s latest work is The Devil That Never Dies: The Rise and Threat of Global Antisemitism (Little, Brown). Published last year, the book is less controversial than some of his earlier works but still elicited sharp reactions, both pro and con, from reviewers.
The Jewish Press: In The Devil That Never Dies, you write that a Martian who visited Earth and observed society would find anti-Semitism incomprehensible. Why is that?
Goldhagen: Because the Jews compose a tiny percentage of all humanity and yet they’re hated worldwide even in countries where there aren’t any Jews….
If a Martian looked at Israel, he’d be flabbergasted that so much hatred is directed at it when there are so many other countries perpetrating colossal crimes which merit condemnation that dwarfs any reasonable, even if critical, assessment of Israel’s policies. Sudan, for example, has been pursuing genocidal policies for more than two decades, with a mass murder toll of perhaps 2.5 million people.
You cite an interesting experiment by Professor Fred Gottheil. He e-mailed hundreds of his fellow academics who had signed an anti-Israel petition and asked them to sign another petition protesting the treatment of women and gays in Muslim countries. Only five percent agreed to. What do you make of that?
The larger point is that people who condemn Israel in the name of human rights will not apply these principles to other countries. And this is one of the ways you know prejudice [is present] – when the principles that are allegedly moving people are selectively applied.
Why do you think anti-Semitism is worse in Europe than in America?
The United States is a much more tolerant pluralistic society, and American Jews have always been seen as part of a national community. “Jewish American” is a term that doesn’t make sense in Europe. You can’t say “Jewish French,” “Jewish British,” “Jewish Italian.” They are “French Jews,” “British Jews,” and “Italian Jews” – because they’re seen as Jews first and residents or citizens of their countries second.
In the United States, most Americans understand that Jews are Americans first and members of their religion or ethnic group second. So this is one of the great achievements of the United States, and one of the things that makes it different.
People are often accused of being anti-Semitic for making generalizations like “Jews are good at business” or “Jews are communists.” But Jews are apparently good at business and Jews have, historically, been overrepresented in various radical causes, including communism. Why is someone an anti-Semite for harboring stereotypes that are based on reality?
There are sociological statements you can make about Jews just as you can about other groups that may on the whole bear out to be true. But what anti-Semites do is reduce the complexity of people to their Jewishness. A person may be a man, may be an American, may be a businessman, may be a Jew, and may be a member of a local country club, but for the anti-Semite, everything he does – particularly the negative things – are attributed to his Jewishness.
