Author attempts to understand, explain 'why'

INDEX OF THIS ISSUE

FEATURES
     Long-distance house call
     Good sport Former athlete now on team at chamber
SPECIAL:
ELECTION '98
     GOP gubernatorial candidates discuss ways to strengthen families
     Budget issues separate Republican attorney general hopefuls
     'Who's the real Democrat?' key issue in District 4 primary race
VALLEY
     Backers seek Arizona trade office in Israel
     Two Valley women to help with conversions
     Shofar Factory makes several Valley visits
     Sisterhood wraps holiday honey jars
NATION
     U.S. adopts Israeli stance against terror
WORLD
     European insurers agree to pay Holocaust claims
     Recent upheavals in Russia heighten concerns among Jews
ISRAEL
     Holocaust restitution deals fail to engross Jewish state
     Tensions in Hebron escalate after murder of rabbi
OPINION
     Editorial - Comrades at arms
     Letters to the Editor - In the Mail - August 28, 1998
     Marty Latz - In one week, faith shines after trust fades
ARTS
     AJTC holds auditions, wins nominations, meets with JCCA in New York
BUSINESS
     Local summit to focus on multicultural tourism
SPEAKING VOLUMES
     Author attempts to understand, explain 'why'
TORAH STUDY
     God is master of all

Author attempts to understand, explain 'why'

They say that time heals all wounds. But there are exceptions. For example, no amount of time will erase from the minds - or bodies - of the victims, be they direct survivors or close relatives of those victims, what the Holocaust has done to them.

It has been more than half a century since mankind, and especially the Jews of Europe, experienced the greatest and, in its cruel enormity, the most inconceivable suffering, perpetrated by Adolf Hitler and his regime, the Holocaust.

There may have been other human transgressions during and since World War II, but the concept of a Holocaust, of a so-called "Final Solution," the slaughter of all Jews within reach, probably was the most unimaginable, evil idea to have sprung from a human being's mind.

Perhaps thousands of books and essays have been written about the Holocaust. Still, Hitler, his image and his aura are topics of acute discussion and sophisticated debates to this day. It's not only ordinary people - witnesses and others - but also learned writers, historians and erudite philosophers who over the years have kept digging into the subject.

It is quite astonishing that Hitler, who first thought and wrote about exterminating the Jews in 1918, came upon the political scene only at the end of the first World War, and had been in power as Germany's Reichskanzler a mere 12 years (1933 to 1945) when he killed himself at the end of World War II. In this relatively short time, the suffering, damage and arbitrary killings he caused created an estimated 26 million victims, including 6 million Jews who were slaughtered not because of what they might have done, but merely because they existed.

Not surprisingly, when the smoke from the concentration-camp chimneys finally cleared, people could not even agree as to Hitler's end. Did he really kill himself, or was it all a scheme so, like Adolf Eichmann, he could seek refuge in South America? Did he really shoot himself, or did he take cyanide because he was not brave enough to pull the trigger? Was the immediate autopsy conducted by the Soviets, its results not released until 1968, reliable? And, most important, what kind of "evil genius" or Satan, or simply what kind of weak man, possibly despondent over imagined Jewish blood in his veins and dragged down by self-hatred, could have hated the Jews as much as he did, and therefore conceptualized such horrors?

In his new book, "Explaining Hitler" (Random House, hard cover, $30), Ron Rosenbaum, a Yale graduate in English literature who teaches literary journalism at the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism, addresses the issue of, "Why?" He asks incisive questions of dozens of scholars and writers who also have studied the subject.

Even while attempting to answer the question, Rosenbaum, in 444 pages of meticulously researched analyses and interviews, also wonders if "explaining Hitler" would not result in granting this demon a measure of humanness, an exculpatory escape hatch, and what some have called an "ultimate victory."

Given this extraordinary type of evil, and to establish how Hitler wielded such a mesmerizing hold over millions of people, including some Jews, Rosenbaum wants to know what made him "tick." And the answers he comes up with - and essentially, none of these answers are his own - are as diverse as the people whose views he relates. He discusses the subject with such Hitler experts as H.R. Trevor-Roper, Allan Bullock, Christopher Browning, Daniel J. Goldhagen, and even the dictatorial Claude Lanzmann (director of the nine-hour documentary, "Shoah," a man who would not even tolerate that the question "Why?" be asked), and the revisionist David Irving.

He also recalls documents left by the Munich journalist Fritz Gerlich, the man who exposed Hitler's sexual perversions and his involvement with his half-niece Geli Raubal (who, in 1932, mysteriously died of a shotgun wound in Hitler's Munich apartment) and whose Munich newspaper strongly opposed Hitler until 1933, when Gerlich was hauled off to Dachau and murdered.

Rosenbaum writes in a fluid, although at times grammatically a bit mannered style, and as the book progresses, reading it becomes as suspenseful as a mystery novel. Whether one agrees with the premises posed by Yehuda Bauer, or Emil Fackenheim, or Louis Micheels, or Lucy Dawidowicz, their opinions are intelligently and objectively laid out. If it is even remotely possible, they may lead one to espouse one or the other side of the controversy over a question that, perhaps, will never find its definite answer.

For anyone with a relative who was a victim of the Holocaust, and for all who feel that Hitler is an as-yet unsolved mystery, "Explaining Hitler" is a must read.

Dimitri Drobatschewsky, former music critic for the Arizona Republic, is a freelance writer and translator/interpreter living in Glendale.

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