The Historiography of the Holocaust

14
Jewish Leadership in Extremis
Dan Michman
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‘The point of departure in any discussion of Jewish resistance during the
Holocaust must be the basic fact that the Jewish People did not succeed in
defending these lives [of the six million who died]’ – thus historian Leni
Yahil presented her view of the Jewish scene at the opening of her lecture at
Yad Vashem’s first international scholars’ conference, held in 1968. 1 Yahil
was one of the first academic Holocaust researchers in Israel, and was already
well known at the time because of her path-breaking study on the rescue of
Danish Jewry. 2 She would establish her reputation later in a comprehensive
history of the Holocaust. 3 Her view expressed the feeling of many Jews and
non-Jews alike, at that time as well as later. Even if this approach can be justified
to a certain extent, it is nevertheless based on a somewhat problematic
assumption concerning the cohesion and mode of organization of ‘The Jewish
People’, an assumption that will be discussed later. But, if ‘the Jewish People
did not succeed in defending the lives of its members’, a necessary question
regarding the Jewish leadership had to follow: how did this leadership behave
vis-à-vis and react to the Nazi threat, and – most emphatically – in what did
it fail?
It is therefore not surprising that public discussion among Jews – survivors
and others – during the first decades after 1945, and especially in Israel, as
well as historical research regarding Jewish leadership, were ab initio dominated
by enormous criticism of the Jewish leaders. At the public level the
chairmen (and in many cases also the members) of the Jewish Councils (Judenräte)
were usually identified as the Jewish leaders responsible for the débâcle, and
they were condemned as ‘collaborators’. This started as early as the 1940s,
during the Holocaust. In the immediate post-Holocaust period there were
even occasions – for instance, in the Netherlands, Belgium and Hungary – when
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