Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Preface
- 1 Why Jews are more guilty than others?: An introductory essay, 1945-2016
- Part I Post-Liberation Antisemitism
- 2 ‘The Jew’ as Dubious Victim
- 3 The Meek Jew – and Beyond
- 4 Alte Kameraden: Right-wing Antisemitism and Holocaust Denial
- 5 Jewish Responses to Post-Liberation Antisemitism
- Part II Israel and ‘the Jew’
- 6 Philosemitism?: Ambivalences regarding Israel
- 7 Transnational Left-wing Protest and the ‘Powerful Zionist’
- 8 Israel: Source of Divergence
- 9 ‘The Activist Jew’ Responds to Changing Dutch Perceptions of Israel
- 10 Turkish Anti-Zionism in the Netherlands: From Leftist to Islamist Activism
- Part III The Holocaust-ed Jew in Native Dutch Domains since the 1980s
- 11 ‘The Jew’ in Football: To Kick Around or to Embrace
- 12 Pornographic Antisemitism, Shoah Fatigue and Freedom of Speech
- 13 Historikerstreit: The Stereotypical Jew in Recent Dutch Holocaust Studies
- Part IV Generations. Migrant Identities and Antisemitism in the Twenty-first Century
- 14 ‘The Jew’ vs. ‘the Young Male Moroccan’: Stereotypical Confrontations in the City
- 15 Conspiracism: Islamic Redemptive Antisemitism and the Murder of Theo van Gogh
- 16 Reading Anne Frank: Confronting Antisemitism in Turkish Communities
- 17 Holocaust Commemorations in Postcolonial Dutch Society
- 18 Epilogue: Instrumentalising and Blaming ‘the Jew’, 2011-2016
- References
- Index
13 - Historikerstreit: The Stereotypical Jew in Recent Dutch Holocaust Studies
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 December 2020
- Frontmatter
- Dedication
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Preface
- 1 Why Jews are more guilty than others?: An introductory essay, 1945-2016
- Part I Post-Liberation Antisemitism
- 2 ‘The Jew’ as Dubious Victim
- 3 The Meek Jew – and Beyond
- 4 Alte Kameraden: Right-wing Antisemitism and Holocaust Denial
- 5 Jewish Responses to Post-Liberation Antisemitism
- Part II Israel and ‘the Jew’
- 6 Philosemitism?: Ambivalences regarding Israel
- 7 Transnational Left-wing Protest and the ‘Powerful Zionist’
- 8 Israel: Source of Divergence
- 9 ‘The Activist Jew’ Responds to Changing Dutch Perceptions of Israel
- 10 Turkish Anti-Zionism in the Netherlands: From Leftist to Islamist Activism
- Part III The Holocaust-ed Jew in Native Dutch Domains since the 1980s
- 11 ‘The Jew’ in Football: To Kick Around or to Embrace
- 12 Pornographic Antisemitism, Shoah Fatigue and Freedom of Speech
- 13 Historikerstreit: The Stereotypical Jew in Recent Dutch Holocaust Studies
- Part IV Generations. Migrant Identities and Antisemitism in the Twenty-first Century
- 14 ‘The Jew’ vs. ‘the Young Male Moroccan’: Stereotypical Confrontations in the City
- 15 Conspiracism: Islamic Redemptive Antisemitism and the Murder of Theo van Gogh
- 16 Reading Anne Frank: Confronting Antisemitism in Turkish Communities
- 17 Holocaust Commemorations in Postcolonial Dutch Society
- 18 Epilogue: Instrumentalising and Blaming ‘the Jew’, 2011-2016
- References
- Index
Summary
A postwar history of antisemitism and representations of ‘the Jew’ includes the historiography of the Second World War and the Shoah. In the postwar Netherlands Abel Herzberg and particularly Jacques Presser and Loe de Jong slowly and partly – there would always be opposition – managed to get their historical views adopted through their publications and, in the case of De Jong, also through his prominent role in the media. Their views, incidentally, didn't always correspond. But from the mid-1960s, through communication with a substantial readership and a television audience that was susceptible to the subject, the Shoah would very gradually become a central part of the history of the Second World War. Before that, the persecution of Jews was a minor topic in the public debate and historiography. The ‘national story’ of occupation, collaboration and resistance was the main area of concern, the Jewish perspective was neglected. Even so, experiences of Jewish persecution during and after the war did get recorded in the form of verbal and written testimonies, and in 1940's and 1950’s, in the publications of respectively Sam de Wolff, Willy Kweksilber and Abel Herzberg – none of them being historians.
From the late 1980s, the Shoah was a focal point of collective memory in the Netherlands – and elsewhere in the West. From a symbol of Jewish suffering, ‘Auschwitz’ developed into a universal symbol of persecution and annihilation. As a result, Jewish survivors to a certain extent lost ownership of their history. In the same paradoxical manner – albeit in a different context – the Jewish testimonies at the Eichmann trial had not necessarily led to more empathy, but rather had been experienced as painful.
The academic representation of the Shoah is not disconnected from perceptions in society. Through their work and authority historians intervene in society, but they themselves are influenced by the overall cultural-historical developments of their time. This is evident in the case of the historiographical shift that J.C.H. (Hans) Blom (b. 1943), one of the successors of De Jong as director of the Netherlands Institute for War Documentation (niod) (1996-2007), brought about with his inaugural lecture in 1983.
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- Information
- Holocaust, Israel and 'the Jew'Histories of Antisemitism in Postwar Dutch Society, pp. 341 - 374Publisher: Amsterdam University PressPrint publication year: 2016