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Review: Fathoming the Holocaust: A Social Problems Approach

Article in Holocaust and Genocide Studies · March 2005

DOI: 10.1093/hgs/dci015 · Source: OAI

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 Fathoming the Holocaust: A Social Problems Approach (review)
Deborah A. Abowitz

Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Volume 19, Number 1, Spring 2005, pp.
135-138 (Review)

Published by Oxford University Press

For additional information about this article

https://muse.jhu.edu/article/182189

Access provided at 8 Oct 2019 18:53 GMT from Bucknell University

dci005-017.fm Page 135 Tuesday, April 5, 2005 4:17 PM

explanation that proposes to elucidate Swiss behavior on the basis of what Americans
decided were the causes of that behavior. Indeed, in a book extensively devoted to
events in Europe, precious few references point to materials beyond Web sites and
the popular press, and even fewer that are not in English.
The lesson drawn from Bazyler’s discussion of the Swiss sanctions is emblem-
atic of some other important statements made in the book. Bazyler goes to great
lengths to implicate the Ford Motor Company as a result of a claim made against it
by forced and slave laborers who worked at Ford’s Cologne plant under the Nazis
(pp. 75–77). He specifies, in some detail and provocative language, the claims made
against Ford. He mentions, dismissively, Ford’s internal investigation and offers a
brief comment (and one footnote) in reference to the resulting report (p. 346, n. 15).
I myself worked on that investigation. It took three and a half years, collected over
98,000 pages of documentation, and, I believe, rigorously and scrupulously followed
professional standards. The report’s findings were written in purely descriptive lan-
guage and did nothing to obfuscate or mitigate any involvement on the part of Ford.
But they certainly addressed Bazyler’s central claims.
Having spent a reasonable amount of time outlining the case against Ford,
Bazyler, I believe, should have devoted a comparable amount of time to describing
the findings of the report—just as he should have better scrutinized what the Swiss
suggested influenced their decisions. I think this imbalance undermines Bazyler’s
argument, the book’s polemics compromising its value as a scholarly work. It is a
book born of passion, and it will be a good general read for those already convinced
of the rectitude of Bazyler’s claims. But it lacks the depth of research expected of
good scholarship, too busy making its point to worry about problematic details.

Simon Reich
University of Pittsburgh DOI: 10.1093/hgs/dci014

Fathoming the Holocaust: A Social Problems Approach, Ronald J. Berger

(New York: Aldine de Gruyter, 2002), 238 pp., cloth $53.95, pbk. $22.95.
In Fathoming the Holocaust, Ronald J. Berger brings a sociological perspective to
key issues in Holocaust history in a new and insightful manner. He applies “a general
theory of social problems construction” (p. 1) to his study of the “Final Solution,”
from its origins to the emergence of conflicting postwar collective memories. In so
doing, he broadens our understanding of this dark chapter of modern history.
Berger’s synthesis of sociology and Holocaust history moves beyond the confines of
some of the traditional debates, reframing them in new and important ways. As he notes,
“the Holocaust begs for sociological insight” (p. 9), which he provides by applying both
social problems and social movements theory. In Fathoming the Holocaust, Berger links
Holocaust history to current sociological ideas about how social problems are defined in
the public arena and how they form the basis for collective action. Equally important, this

Book Reviews 135

dci005-017.fm Page 136 Tuesday, April 5, 2005 4:17 PM

book brings sociological theory and analytical tools to historians, demonstrating the utility
of these tools in the explication of important questions in Holocaust history.
In the first chapter, Berger provides a brief but critical overview of the relevance
of the work of classical social theorists such as Marx (on class structure), Weber (on
bureaucracy), and Durkheim (on the collective conscience and moral order). He then
introduces the theoretical linchpin of the book: social problems constructionism. Typi-
cally, a social problem, or “a social condition that is perceived as troublesome or wrong,”
is assumed to exist in society as some objective condition, such as deprivation or
inequality. But it is critical that readers understand that social problems are “also consti-
tuted by subjective definitions, that is, by the ways in which we interpret and assign
meaning to the world” (p. 16). Social problems constructionism thus analyzes social prob-
lems as the activities, or the “social problems work” (p. 17), of individuals and groups
seeking to create or assert a grievance or claim about some perceived social wrong.
Claims-making activities tend to follow a natural history, beginning with the
creation and emergence of a group’s claim (in which the group identifies and defines
the “social problem”). Then these activities shift over to efforts to build formal and/or
informal public support for the claim (in which the group persuades others that a
problem exists and that remedial action is needed, and provides a series of practical
proposals for the problem). These efforts are typically followed by the emergence of
counter-claims and actions by groups resistant to the activities, definitions, or pro-
posals of the claims-making group. Using a contextual rather than a strict construc-
tionist approach, Berger carefully evaluates claimsmakers’ assertions and activities, as
outlined above, in relation to the sociohistorical context of the Holocaust and condi-
tions of the time. He thereby avoids the problems of excessive subjectivity and rela-
tivism inherent in many postmodern and strict constructionist views.
In the following chapters, Berger analyzes the social construction of the “Jewish
Problem” and developing Nazi solutions (chapter 2), the social organization and
bureaucratic implementation of the Final Solution (chapter 3), the problems of
resource mobilization for resistance by Jews, Germans, and third parties (chapter 4),
the politics of postwar construction of national Holocaust memory in Israel and Ger-
many (chapter 5), and the popularization and Americanization of the Holocaust in
recent years (chapter 6). In each chapter, the author shows how major issues and his-
torical controversies may be cast in terms of the construction of social problems and
of claims-making activities. He encourages readers to reflect broadly on the scholarly
literature of the Holocaust and to weigh some of the classic and ongoing debates in a
new light. These chapters are interesting, persuasive, and well-written.
For example, in chapter 2 Berger delineates how Nazi claims against the Jews
emerged from traditional Christian antisemitism and shifted politically over time to
incorporate claims based on German nationalism and pseudoscientific racial theory
(p. 24). The author explains how the Nazi party, like other successful social movements,
was able to gradually mobilize public support and resources to create a sufficient

136 Holocaust and Genocide Studies

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foundation for its ongoing claims-making activities in Germany and abroad. The insti-
tutionalization of these claims-making activities—which was a key sign of success—
through the electoral process in 1933 led to the next stage of Nazi social-problems
work: the development and implementation of practical programs to remedy or solve
the “Jewish problem.” By linking the enactment of legal solutions to emigration and
deportation solutions, and ultimately to the emergence of the “Final Solution” fol-
lowing the invasion of the Soviet Union (pp. 37–46), Berger illustrates how claims-
makers attempted practical solutions to their evolving social “problems” as access to
resources changed. Berger’s approach is refreshing because it obviates the need for
the intentionalist-functionalist debate. Reframing the discussion in terms of claims-
making activities is in many respects a more fruitful way to account for how the
Nazis’ focus, policy, and actions shifted over time.
In a similar manner, Berger’s sociological analyses in later chapters help readers
reframe current discussions of the social organization of the “Final Solution,” of
resistance to Nazi claims-making activities, of how and why “various claimsmakers
appropriated the Holocaust as a cultural resource” (p. 142), and of the Americanization
of the Holocaust as a social problem in and of itself. In each, Berger demonstrates an
impressive command of the massive amount of historical literature on the Holocaust.
But in chapter 5, when Berger tackles the social construction of postwar Holocaust
memory in Germany and Israel, he makes no mention of The Holocaust and the His-
torians, Lucy Dawidowicz’s seminal work on the politics of Holocaust historiography.1
Many of Berger’s essential points in this chapter—about how and why the history of
the Holocaust can be seen as a form of constructed collective memory written
and rewritten differently across national contexts to serve changing political
ends—were made first and most eloquently by Dawidowicz. While this omission
does not undermine the value of the social problems approach, or of Berger’s
work as a whole, it does make this chapter less persuasive and compelling than it
could have been.
The only significant weakness of this book, from a sociological point of view,
lies within the final chapter. There is a noticeable departure here from the smooth
flow and logical “social problems” exegesis of the preceding chapters. In “Jews,
Christians, and the Humanity of Difference,” Berger discusses the “problems” of
religious faith, Jewish continuity, and Jewish-Christian reconciliation in the post-
Holocaust world. These are important issues, to be sure, but they do not readily fol-
low from the preceding social problems analyses. The most important section of the
last chapter is the all-too-brief discussion of the social construction of genocide and
human rights on the international stage in the postwar period (pp. 190–93). Given a
more substantial treatment, this discussion would have provided a fitting theoretical
closing to this important new work on the Holocaust.
The somewhat disappointing last chapter notwithstanding, there is much value
in this attempt to “fathom the Holocaust” using a social problems approach. Berger

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provides insight and a fresh analytic perspective to create a cogent and well-written
case for the importance of sociological reflection on the Holocaust.

Notes
1. Lucy S. Dawidowicz, The Holocaust and the Historians (Cambridge: Harvard University
Press, 1981).

Deborah A. Abowitz
Bucknell University DOI: 10.1093/hgs/dci015

Antisemitism: Myth and Hate from Antiquity to the Present, Marvin Perry
and Frederick M. Schweitzer (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), 320
pp., cloth $35.00, pbk. $22.95.
In this highly readable book, Marvin Perry and Frederick M. Schweitzer explore the
demonization of Jews during the past 2,000 years by examining a long list of myths
alleging conspiracy. Among them are those depicting Jews as Christ-killers, the
Antichrist, desecrators of the Host, poisoners, agents of Satan, economic exploiters,
atheistic revolutionaries, fabricators of an inauthentic Holocaust, and chief perpetrators
of the African slave trade to the Americas. The authors’ central argument is that anti-
semitism, rather than emanating from Jews’ actual behavior, is a product of halluci-
natory perceptions. They posit that antisemitism “affords a striking example of the
perennial appeal, power, and danger of mythical thinking—of elevating to the level
of objective truth beliefs that have little or no basis in fact but provide all-encompassing,
emotionally satisfying explanations of life and history” (p. 3). As demonstrated by the
widespread appeal, between 1879 and World War II, of the myth of a world Jewish
conspiracy, the authors remind us that not even the highly-educated stratum of any
population is immune to groundless myths that provide simplistic and gratifying
explanations for the problems confronting the world.
The authors present in roughly chronological order a detailed account of the
principal antisemitic myths. Chapter 1 examines the deicide charge derived from
the supposed Jewish role in the trial and death of Jesus. Perry and Schweitzer con-
tend that the power of the allegation that the Jews murdered the god of another
religion affords the deicide charge a unique position within the repertoire of anti-
semitic myths—one that serves as the foundation for virtually all other anti-Jewish
myths in Christian societies. The authors masterfully provide the historical and
political context for the “longest lie”—that is, that Jews shouted for Jesus’ crucifixion
while Pontius Pilate declared his innocence. Situating events within their proper
historical context, Perry and Schweitzer proceed like skillful prosecutors tearing
apart piece by piece the gospel allegation of the Jewish role in the trial, convic-
tion, and crucifixion of Christ. It was indeed, the authors recall for us, a Roman
affair.

138 Holocaust and Genocide Studies

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