The Historiography of the Holocaust

326 Dan Michman
Jewish Councils, by the very fact of their nomination by the outside power, are
clearly defined first of all as ‘headships’. This, of course, does not rule out the
fact that they could – and did – also fulfil leadership functions. This, however,
could not be their major commitment.
The two schools have another hidden assumption in common: that there
was a harmonized, linear (intended or escalating) German anti-Jewish policy,
of which the Jewish Councils were an essential corollary. Therefore, when
speaking about the very fact of their establishment and who instigated it, the
general formulation ‘the Germans’ is almost always used. With the benefit of
hindsight, we know that the Nazis’ anti-Jewish policy led to the Final Solution;
and under the impact of this knowledge the Jewish Councils are usually seen
from this perspective (see especially Arendt, but also most of the studies on
local Jewish Councils). Thus it is assumed that they were part of the ghettoization
and isolation process that preceded the implementation of the Final Solution, and
therefore existed ‘everywhere’.
Hilberg, Arendt, Friedman, Trunk and others whose views shaped research
on the Jewish Councils, conceived and wrote their studies in the early stages of
Holocaust research, that is, before the end of the 1960s. Their perceptions contained
assumptions regarding the functioning of Hitler and the Third Reich
and the linear path in which anti-Jewish policies developed, which were common
during that period. These assumptions, however, have since been challenged,
first by the ‘functionalists’ and, since the 1990s, by (what I would call) the
‘integrationists’, that is, a younger generation of scholars who criticize the ‘functionalists’
for having gone too far, but do not return to old-fashioned ‘intentionalism’.
The most important changes in research on those contextual issues
that have to be taken into account are: (1) that – following Karl Schleunes’
formulation 17 – ‘the road to Auschwitz’ was ‘twisted’, that is, that there were
ups and downs, trials and failures, and not a constant, linear escalation; and (2)
that anti-Jewish policies, even while having an overall framework and general
direction set by Hitler and the Nazi Weltanschauung, were shaped by the continuous
power struggles between different power centres in the Third Reich, who
‘worked towards the Führer’. 18
If this is true, certain questions regarding the Jewish Council phenomenon
that have not been given serious consideration since the early 1970s, should be
raised: (1) Who conceived of the idea – ‘the Germans’ (or ‘German authorities’)
in general or some specific body or person(s) in the bureaucracy? (2) Why did
the idea emerge – as part of the course towards the Final Solution, or because of
some other purpose? (3) When and how did the idea emerge – during the first
weeks of the occupation of Poland (with Heydrich’s Schnellbrief of 21 September
1939), 19 as asserted in research literature, or in a different way and at a different
moment? (4) Was it indeed implied ‘everywhere’? (5) Were there no other
‘leaderships’ on the Jewish scene?