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See: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/docs/news/19980126/GlobeFront/USITUN.html 


Nazi-hunting scholar under fire for views 

Link with anti-Zionist enrages CJC [the Canadian Jewish Congress] 

Monday, January 26, 1998
By Sean Fine
The Globe and Mail

Ruth Bettina Birn is a historian in a minefield. And she is not one to
tiptoe her way through it.

No ordinary academic, Dr. Birn is a Nazi hunter. Since 1991 she has been
the chief historian of Canada's war-crimes unit, searching international
archives for the evidence needed to bring its aging suspects to trial. 

As if that weren't minefield enough, she is now battling representatives
of the Jewish community over scholarly writing she does in her spare time.
They want the federal Justice Department to persuade her to withdraw an
article she wrote from a controversial book to be published this spring. 

Last year Dr. Birn joined the worldwide fray stirred up by U.S. author
Daniel Jonah Goldhagen's controversial bestseller, Hitler's Willing
Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust . Writing in Britain's
Historical Journal , she disputed the Harvard professor's contention that
only widespread German anti-Semitism could have led to the murder of six
million Jews.

That is not what has the Canadian Jewish Congress upset. Rather, it's her
decision to allow a revised version of the article to be included in a
book alongside one written by Norman Finkelstein, an outspoken and
controversial U.S. critic of Israel.

"Publish," explained CJC spokesman Bernie Farber, "but don't publish with
somebody who's loathed and despised by the Jewish community." Prof.
Finkelstein, a political science instructor at Hunter College in New York
whose parents survived the Holocaust, links the Goldhagen book with a
"Holocaust-studies industry" he says is designed to divert attention from
repressive Israeli policies. He has called the Holocaust "in effect the
Zionist account of the Nazi Holocaust . . . seized upon and methodically
marketed because it was politically expedient." 

To Jewish organizations, comments like these approach hate-mongering, and
the CJC is hoping she can be persuaded to withdraw her article from the
book, A Nation On Trial: The Goldhagen Thesis and Historical Truth , which
is to appear in April.

That is not what she wants to do. Soft-spoken but formidable, she accuses
the congress of trying to use its political muscle to intimidate her.
"That is the real story for Canadians. It is really a question of the
attempted suppression of fair comment through the exertion of political
influence." 

To an outsider, the dispute is difficult to fathom. On one hand, the
Internet Web site of Holocaust denier Ernst Zundel heaps praise on Prof.
Finkelstein and Dr. Birn. On the other hand, so do some leading
historians, including pre-eminent Holocaust scholar Raul Hilberg, who have
written blurbs for the book's dust jacket.

All in all, the 45-year-old Dr. Birn finds herself in an unusual position
for someone who has dedicated her career to tracking down war criminals.
Making the issue even more sensitive is her background: She was born and
raised in postwar Germany.

Her father, a lawyer, served in the German navy, and his war stories, she
says, are among her earliest memories. "The crew of the ship my father was
on witnessed mass killings of Jews in the Baltic countries in 1941 and
1942," she said last week while in Toronto to attend the deportation
hearing of a war-crimes suspect.

"He always maintained that whoever didn't see -- even before '33 -- that
the Nazis were criminals, political criminals, didn't want to see." 

As far back as she can remember, she wanted to be a historian. For a
German of her generation, the Nazi era with its militarism and mass
rallies seemed incomprehensible. "On the other hand, I felt it was very
close: One's parents' generation was entirely involved. One is left to
oneself; one has to guide oneself. There is no authority one could just
accept." 

She earned her doctorate at the University of Stuttgart, the German city
where she was born in 1952. After postdoctoral studies at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology in the mid-1980s, she became an
adviser to the Nazi-hunting arm of the U.S. government, the Office of
Special Investigations.

Then, in 1991, she won an international competition to become the lead
historian for the Canadian equivalent of the OSI, moving to Ottawa where
she now lives in the fashionable Glebe district. 

Created in 1987, the war-crimes unit has been dogged by controversy. A
former director has accused it of anti-Semitism in its early years; courts
have been slow in dealing with deportation cases and juries are loath to
convict elderly men charged with acts committed decades ago. 

And now Dr. Birn strides through the minefield in pursuit of a book by a
Harvard scholar that has sold 500,000 copies. 

The Boston-born Prof. Goldhagen contends in Hitler's Willing Executioners
that historians have underemphasized German prejudice. He concluded that
"anti-Semitism moved many thousands of 'ordinary' Germans -- and would
have moved millions more, had they been appropriately positioned -- to
slaughter Jews."

Dr. Birn counters that not only has Prof. Goldhagen overstated the case,
his approach deprives the Holocaust of meaning. "It's a vision which is
palatable for North American and German readers 50 years after the fact."
But it avoids a tougher issue: why even people who did not hate Jews took
part in an attempt to destroy an entire people. Thus, people today can
react with: "If it's just these evil guys, hallucinatory demonological
anti-Semites, why should I be bothered?" 

Accusing Dr. Birn of distortion and fabrication, Prof. Goldhagen has
demanded a retraction. And the CJC is determined to keep her from
publishing with Prof. Finkelstein. "For her to think that it is acceptable
to associate herself with someone like Finkelstein is mind-boggling," said
Mr. Farber. "That's the piece that gets to us -- her lack of understanding
of our community, her lack of sensitivity to our community," despite the
job she holds.

What does Dr. Birn think of Mr. Finkelstein's theories? "A lot of what he
talks about is America and I can't say one way or another." Still, she
says she was astonished both by the promotion enjoyed by Prof. Goldhagen's
book, the work of a first-time author, and by criticism of her and Prof.
Finkelstein from Elan Steinberg, executive director of the World Jewish
Congress, who called their book "garbage." 

"Why," she asked, "would they occupy themselves with books and footnotes
and scholarly debate? That's for historians." Asked to suggest an answer,
she responded: "I can only guess it is of political significance how the
Holocaust is depicted in books and articles." 

Reached at the WJC's New York office, Mr. Steinberg retorted: "Isn't that
precisely the point -- footnotes and scholarly credentials? And she asks
why? She has aligned herself with someone who is purporting to write about
Germany's history who doesn't speak German and who is known as a virulent
anti-Zionist."

All this, said Dr. Birn, has hurt and offended her. "All my life has been
spent doing these prosecutions and I flatter myself to say that none of
the cases would be there without my participation and my work." 

The CJC's complaint to the Justice Department "means one has to be
intimidated because one's job is at risk . . I have been called up to
defend my position."

John Sims, the assistant deputy minister of Justice who oversees the
war-crimes unit, called the dispute "a private controversy between an
American academic and his critics."

A split decision

Jacques Kornberg, a history professor at the University of Toronto who
specializes in the Holocaust and Middle Eastern studies, has read hundreds
of responses to Hitler's Willing Executioners . 

Ruth Bettina Birn's, he says, is "by far the best critique of the book
because she is one of the few who knows the documents he used." 

Prof. Kornberg knows Dr. Birn personally -- she taught for a year at the
University of Toronto. "I found her to be extraordinarily sensitive to
Jewish concerns, to Israel's existence, and to the horrors of the
Holocaust. I found her to be a real friend of the Jewish people," he said
in an interview.

However, he said, he would not publish his work alongside that of Norman
Finkelstein.

"His view of a Zionist conspiracy feeds into anti-Semitism. There is no
'Holocaust industry.' The word 'industry' suggests a kind of organized
collective force wielding power. There are scholars working in the field
with varied opinions."

[End]

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* "What sort of truth is it that needs protection?"        * 
* Auberon Waugh - The London Daily Telegraph - May 9, 1992 *