Antisemitism, philosemitism and the rise of Holocaust memory

Patterns of Prejudice

Volumn 43, Issue 1, 2009, Pages 1-16

  Moyn, Samuel ^a  

^a Och Spine at New York Presbyterian Hospitals   (United States)

Author keywords

Antisemitism; Cultural code; Holocaust memory; Jean Francois Steiner; Philosemitism; Roger Peyrefitte

Indexed keywords

EID: 61449156289     PISSN: 0031322X     EISSN: 14617331     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/00313220802636023     Document Type: Article

References (32)

1. Omer Bartov, 'The new anti-Semitism: genealogy and implications', in David I. Kertzer (ed.), Old Demons, New Debates: Anti-Semitism and the West (Teaneck, NJ: Holmes & Meier 2005), 9-26 (9).
2. Shulamit Volkov, 'Antisemitism as a cultural code - reflections on the history and historiography of antisemitism in imperial Germany', Leo Baeck Institute Year Book, vol. 23, 1978, 25-46 (35). See Shulamit Volkov, Germans, Jews and Antisemites: Trials in Emancipation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 2006), part II, and the reflections of Geoff Eley in his review of this book in Central European History, vol. 41, no. 2, June 2008, 302-5.
3. I refer here to David Nirenberg, Communities of Violence: Persecution of Minorities in the Middle Ages (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press 1996). For Nirenberg, mediaeval antisemitism often played the function of integrating religious communities in ritualized cycles, a function therefore very different from later holocaustal antisemitism. See also Christhard Hoffmann, Werner Bergmann and Helmut Walser Smith (eds), Exclusionary Violence: Antisemitic Riots in Modern German History (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press 2002).
4. But see Wolfram Kinzig's pair of articles, Philosemitismus: Zur Geschichte des Begriffs' and 'Philosemitismus: Zur historiographischen Verwendung des Begriffs', Zeitschrift für Kirchengeschichte, vol. 105, nos 2-3, 1994, 202-28 and 360-83, respectively. For two sophisticated historical treatments of philosemitism in modern German history, see Alan T. Levenson, Between Philosemitism and Antisemitism: Defenses of Jews and Judaism in Germany, 1871-1932 (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press 2004) and Frank Stern, The Whitewashing of the Yellow Badge: Antisemitism and Philosemitism in Postwar Germany, trans. from the Hebrew by William Templer (Oxford: Pergamon Press 1992).
5. Zygmunt Bauman, 'Allosemitism: premodern, modern, and postmodern', in Bryan Cheyette and Laura Marcus (eds), Modernity, Culture, and 'the Jew' (Cambridge and New York: Polity Press 1998), 143-56.
6. Roger Peyrefitte, The Jews: A Fictional Voyage into the Follies of Antisemitism, trans. from the French by Bruce Lowery (Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill 1967), 91-100 at 96: 'You'll no longer be anything but a sex organ, inspired with love and faith. That is the gift of Judaism to women.' On the Jews as the hypersexual race, see also 116-20, 178-87, 392-3 and passim. In addition, in a number of episodes (notably a scene at a ritual bath), Peyrefitte implies that the heroine's prospective Rothschild mother-in-law is erotically interested in her.
7. See the articles on the various stages of the lawsuit in Le Monde, 6, 8, 9, 10,13 and 25-6 July, 10 September and 25 December 1965, and New York Times, 6 July 1965.
8. Pierre Viansson-Pontë, 'Pour la plus grande joie des antisémites', Le Monde, 16 July 1965. Translations from the French, unless otherwise stated, are by the author.
9. Elie Wiesel, 'Mao Tse-Tung is not a Jew - yet', Chicago Tribune, 31 December 1967.
10. Christina Hobhouse, 'Not at ease', The Times (London), 2 December 1967.
11. For advance publicity, see Roger Peyrefitte, 'Pourquoi j'écris Les Juifs', Le Nouveau Candide, 7-14 January 1965, and 'Le Fantastique Bluff d'lsraël', Le Nouveau Candide, 14-21 January 1965. On the book's publication, see Pierre Démeron and Roger Peyrefitte, 'Les Juifs et moi', Le Nouveau Candide, 28 June-4 July 1965. And such responses as Bernard Frank, 'La Réponse d'un juif: "C'est un monstrueux cocktail donné dans un camp de concentration'", Le Nouveau Candide, 19-25 July 1965, and Jean Cau, 'La Vérité sur Les Juifs', Le Nouveau Candide, 2-8 August 1965.
12. Peyrefitte, The Jews, 61. The Amitié Judéo- Chrétienne was the principal post-war French institution of interfaith dialogue.
13. Hobhouse, 'Not at ease'.
14. In fact, onomastics had already been a longstanding presence in both philosemitic and antisemitic history, as observers claimed prominent personalities for the Jews, for good or for ill. Peyrefitte himself cited one of the principal genealogical sources, the so-called 'Semi-Gotha', a book published in Germany just before the Great War purporting to unmask the Jewish background of many nobles through their names; others, however, saw a greater resemblance to Theodor Fritsch's more nakedly antisemitic Handbuch der Judenfrage of 1933. The connection between Fritsch and Peyrefitte is made in a review of The Jews by Richard M. Elman, 'Many are chosen', New York Times, 25 February 1968.
15. For evidence of the persistence of the various tropes into the 1950s, see Pierre Birnbaum, Anti-Semitism in France: A Political History from Léon Blum to the Present, trans. from the French by Miriam Kochan (Oxford: Blackwell 1992), parts II and III. On more recent events, see Pierre Birnbaum, 'The retreat of the strong state and the new anti-Semitic mobilization in France', in Kertzer (ed.), Old Demons, New Debates, 93-114.
16. Jeffrey Mehlman, Legacies of Antisemitism in France (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press 1983).
17. Thus Peyrefitte charged, not wholly without merit, that Christian philosemitism reflected a desire to make Jewish martyrdom a vehicle for Christian values. In reviving another famous writer's antisemitic past (while himself playing on fears of the Jewish penetration in literary circles), Peyrefitte elicited a pained reply that added fuel to the controversy; see Marcel Jouhandeau, Riposte a Roger Perfide (Liège: Dynamo 1965).
18. See Henry Rousso, The Vichy Syndrome: History and Memory in France since 1944, trans. from the French by Arthur Goldhammer (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 1991).
19. Renee Winegarten, 'French culture and the Jews', Commentary, vol. 45, no. 1, 1968, 27-35 (27).
20. Ibid., 30-1.
21. Pierre Démeron and Jean-François Steiner, 'Les Juifs: ce qu'on n'a jamais osé dire', Le Nouveau Candide, 14-20 March 1966; this article is partially available in English as 'The Steiner view', Atlas, vol. 12, no. 2, 1966, 42.
22. Ibid.
23. Samuel Moyn, A Holocaust Controversy: The Treblinka Affair in Postwar France (Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press 2005). The purpose of this essay is to reflect, thanks to the additional material on Peyrefitte, on a dynamic the book omitted, without reproducing all of its evidence. Most accounts of Holocaust memory concur that the Eichmann trial of 1961 proved the crucial turning-point in history, but the book argues that this conclusion has to be nuanced, for the Eichmann trial had most of its effect through the nationally differentiated process of the diffusion and refraction of its themes. See Michael Rothberg, 'Beyond Eichmann: rethinking the emergence of Holocaust memory', History & Theory, vol. 46, no. 1, 2007, 74-81.
24. Wiesel, 'A plea for the dead', in Elie Wiesel, Legends of Our Time, trans, from the French (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston 1968), 174-97 (178-9, 181).
25. See Peyrefitte, The Jews, 36-9, 73, 84, 110-13, 215, 240-50, 262-73, 318-25.
26. See Edmond Michelet, 'Treblinka', Le Monde, April 2, 1966, and Moyn, A Holocaust Controversy, 71-3.
27. I thank Susan Suleiman for stressing the need to avoid this misunderstanding.
28. See Moyn, 'From I'univers concentrationnaire to the Jewish genocide: Pierre Vidal- Naquet and the Treblinka controversy', in Julian Bourg (ed.), After the Deluge: New Perspectives on the Intellectual and Cultural History of Postwar France (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books 2004), and Moyn, A Holocaust Controversy, 79-85 and passim.
29. Letter from Pierre Nora to Denver Lindley, Viking Press, 12 December 1966: Library of Congress, Washington D.C., Hannah Arendt Collection.
30. For details, see Moyn, A Holocaust Controversy, ch. 6.
31. Marie Brenner, 'France's scarlet letter', Vanity Fair, June 2003, reprinted in Ron Rosenbaum (ed.), Those Who Forget the Past: The Question of Anti-Semitism (New York: Random House 2004), 211-49 (219).
32. Joan B. Wolf, Harnessing the Holocaust: The Politics of Memory in France (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press 2004), 191.