(2022) Post week 5 – 'Geen gewone geschiedenis' (original) (raw)
2022, De Groene Amsterdammer
Not an 'ordinary' history. A reaction to an article of the historian Bart van der Boom, who argues for an 'ordinary' historiography about the Shoah in his criticism of the book Het verraad van Anne Frank. Although I agree with his criticism, I wonder how one can write an 'ordinary' history about an experience that is out of the ordinary. It involves the danger is of normalising an abnormally violent period
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The ‘Bystander’ in Recent Dutch Historiography
The Dutch historian Bart van der Boom has written a controversial book about Dutch society under German occupation. Its title translates as "‘We know nothing of their fate’: Ordinary Dutchmen and the Holocaust." With his book, van der Boom seeks to weigh in on the debate about whether the Holocaust should be attributed to the Nazi regime alone or whether gentile societies throughout the occupied territories played a crucial role in aiding the mass murder of the Jews. It became a public issue after van der Boom won a prestigious book award in the autumn of 2012 in response to which a number of Dutch scholars published critical reviews. Occasionally, the current discussion is described as the second round of a Dutch Historikerstreit, a controversy among historians about the place of the Holocaust in the Netherlands. The debate is relevant to historians of the Nazi regime and of the Holocaust and its memory beyond the confines of Dutch historiography because it tackles not only academic issues such as the interpretation of sources and the theoretical and methodological standards being employed but also the intricate relationship between academic historiography and public discourses about history and memory.
Facts, Distortions and Erasures, 2018
We were told that beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder. As it happens, the same stands true for history. A historical event changes dramatically, depending on who is narrating the story. In Art Spiegelman's Maus, we hear Vladek Spiegelman's retelling of the Holocaust. As a survivor of both the war and the Auschwitz concentration camps, Vladek's story is filled with the grim remembrances of a man who had to do whatever it took to survive. Erich Maria Remarque shows us the battles of World War I, but from the point of view of a German soldier in All's Quiet on the Western Front. In popular culture, Germany is often reproduced as the antagonist in the great wars. However, Remarque shows us that for a soldier nothing exists on the battlefield other than death, violence, and a few glimmers of friendship. Schindler's List is yet another intriguing version of the Holocaust where Oskar Schindler, a member of the Nazi Party, does all that he can to save the Jewish workers in his factory. This is not just the viewpoint of someone close to the infamous party, but also glimpses of kindness and compassion in one of the darkest times in human history. My paper will attempt to understand the importance of these alternative glimpses into history and try to problematize the concepts of "truth" and "history".
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