Omer Bartov, one of the leading historians in German and Holocaust Studies, spoke about new forms of anti-Semitism Sunday in his lecture, “The Holocaust as the Leitmotif of the Twentieth Century.” Under the staff direction of History professor Ron Schatz, The History and Jewish Studies departments were responsible for bringing Bartov to campus, who Schatz described as “ a young, highly renowned scholar of German history.”
Bartov was born in Tel Aviv, educated in England with a degree from Oxford, and currently holds a chair at Brown University. He’s written four books and edited three volumes pertaining to the representation of The Holocaust and Genocide.
His lecture, which he’s given at both Claremont College and The ISK institute in Vienna, focused on explaining the shifting importance placed on The Holocaust throughout the twentieth century, with an emphasis on a new form of anti-Semitism that has taken shape in the last two decades.
“After World War II there was an immediate recognition of crimes against humanity, as evidenced by the Nuremburg Trials and the mobilization of the International Community,” Bartov said. “There was a general understanding that something new and important was happening, and that something had to be done about it.”
After this surge of action, Bartov observed that post-1948, the awareness and discourse pertaining to the Holocaust and to genocide in general, suffered a severe decline, not to be fully resurfaced until the 1980s.
“Genocide took a back seat for quite some time,” Bartov said. “And I aim to ask why (talk of) the Holocaust and genocide vanishes, and what happened when it came back in the last twenty years.”
With this rise in Holocaust discourse in recent years, a contradiction has occurred in the way it is treated, both in social contexts and in the academic circle.
“One the one hand, there is increasing discussion and preoccupation with the Holocaust,” Bartov said. “And on the other hand, there are the other arguments against it, which are being legitimized precisely by the preoccupation. These attitudes that that generate this opposition are the same attitudes of anti-Semitism that originated these events.”
Bartov has been writing and teaching on the Holocaust for many years, but is specifically interested in the way it has been addressed in the last five years.
“It is a phenomena that had to be recognized—a new form of anti-Semitism,” Bartov said.
Schatz first admired his work when he read a provocative book review written by Bartov that addresses Hitler’s second book, a sequel to Mein Kampf that was not published until recently. Bartov argued in the review that the book was as important to read today as it is now, and it explained exactly what Hitler intended to do in the Holocaust, twelve years earlier. Schatz then heard Bartov speak at Harvard, and began to show interest in bringing him to Wesleyan.
“I just know of his work as one of the most impressive scholars in modern German history and on the Holocaust,” Schatz said. “I was very keen to bring him here. I was very excited to have somebody of his stature speak on the issue.
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