Jews in Leipzig - The University of Texas at Austin

nature German anti-Semitism (though not as an exclusive cause for persecution of Jews)
can be found in the work of Robert Gellately. 7
The opposing ground is held by Christopher Browning 8 and Omer Bartov 9 , who
both argue for the primacy of context in the decision of actors in the genocide to
perpetrate their crimes. From their perspective, there seems to be no particular
impediment to German-Jewish integration among ordinary Germans, until the state steps
in to prevent it. So, then, were German Jews hopelessly devoted to a liberal model of
nationalism, that as many have noted (George Mosse, Walter Laqueur) was changing to a
more virulent and exclusionary model, or were they well-integrated into German life?
No historian of the holocaust can ignore the realities of the expulsion of the Jews
from German life, but that does not mean that the expulsion was pre-ordained. As will
become clear over the course of this study, its sympathies are with Browning and Bartov,
and historians like Amos Elon 10 , whose work evokes the lost world of German Jewry
without the assumption that the dream of assimilation was foolish or wicked. From that
perspective, the actions of integrationist Jews like those studied here gain a new power.
The power to build and define their community was certainly undone from 1933-1945.
That does not mean that Jewish agency in doing so was always illusionary. As Elon and
others show, the crucial determinant was not a long history of German Jew-hatred, but
the form and intent of the German state.
7
Robert Gellately, Backing Hitler: Consent and Coercion in Nazi Germany. Oxford, 2001.
8
Christopher Browning, Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland,
New York, 1992.
9
Omer Bartov, Mirrors of Destruction: War, Genocide, and Modern Identity. New York and Oxford, 2000.
While Browning sets his explanatory model squarely in the contingencies of war and masculine group
dynamics, Bartov goes somewhat further afield, using literature and film to situate twentieth century
genocide in the context of utopian politics throughout Europe. Though the reliance on literary sources is
not unproblematic, this study is probably most sympathetic to Bartov’s insistence on the importance of
utopian ideals and their presence outside of Germany.
10
Amos Elon, The Pity of It All: A History of Jews in Germany, 1743-1933, New York, 2002.
9