The European Legacy: Toward New Paradigms
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/10848770.2018.1449396
Published online: 12 Mar 2018.
The European Legacy, 2018 https://doi.org/10.1080/10848770.2018.1449396
BOOK REVIEW
Stealth Altruism: Forbidden Care as Jewish Resistance in the Holocaust, by Arthur B. Shostak
Arthur B. Shostak, eminent sociologist and futurist, has made the examination of “stealth altruism” during the Holocaust his retirement project both in this book and in his social activism (xiii, 238). He focuses on “overlooked teachable lessons in the secret caring behavior of certain European Jews who defied Nazi prohibitions against helping landsmen (other Jews)” (xi).
Based on visits (with his wife Lynn Seng) to 48 Holocaust museums and education centers around the world and 178 accounts by survivors, Shostak claims that what he terms the “Help Story” of altruism has been crowded out by the “Horror Story” of violence (xii). He seeks to shift the narrative of the Holocaust in a more positive direction to draw more attention to altruistic “Carers,” a shift that Shostak depicts as part of a growing trend (225–48).
As might be expected of such a prolific and experienced scholar, Shostak excels at gleaning the secondary literature on the Holocaust for pertinent information. The book makes heavy use of survivor accounts. With sixteen chapters organized in six parts and broken down into sections that sometimes contain only a paragraph or two, the book is overly structured though clearly if pedantically written. Four “profiles” delineate the types of actions that Shostak wishes to emphasize.
In two chapters, he examines altruism in general and specifically the link between Judaism and altruistic action. The next two chapters discuss “Prewar Germany” and “War-Torn Europe.” Behavior in the camps is the subject of the following four chapters from which the “help story” is almost completely absent. Amidah, which Shostak defines, following Meir Dworzecki, as “the resistance of ‘suffering people who continued to act according to their conscience,’” that “helped many European Jews make it through to liberation” (109), is the subject of two chapters. An additional four chapters scrutinize the actions of “Carers” before three final chapters assess what is and can be done to change Holocaust education.
Shostak aimed the book at Holocaust survivors, their children and grandchildren, museum and education center careerists, academicians, teachers, parents, clergy, and Jewish people, because “All can learn there was far more to the Holocaust than the Horror Story alone” (xvi). To understand Shostak’s goals, it is important to recognize his emphasis on “the mainstream Holocaust narrative” as “the prime component of being an American Jew” and “a defining memory for many Israelis” (207).
Although I am sympathetic to many of Shostak’s objectives, I must fundamentally disagree with his analysis of the scholarly literature and cultural memory of the Holocaust. Shostak is correct that a high proportion of survivors’ stories contain examples of altruism, an analysis that has been noted for decades. Nor have scholars ignored the subject. To take just one example among many, for years, the chapter “The Jewish Rescuers” in Raul Hilberg’s Perpetrators, Victims, Bystanders: The Jewish Catastrophe, 1933–1945 (Harper Perennial, 1992) was one of my students’ favorites.
Although there has been a great deal of attention paid to Gentile “carers,” thousands of whom have been enshrined as “Righteous Among the Nations” by Y’ad Vashem, the Israeli Holocaust Museum, their Jewish counterparts have not been forgotten or undervalued.
Consider Steven Spielberg’s 1993 multiple Academy Award winning film Schindler’s List. Liam Neeson’s Oskar Schindler got top billing, but Ben Kingsley’s role as Itzhak Stern was essential. He and many others who portrayed Jews demonstrated altruism. It is my view that Shostak’s assertion that he could not find such examples says more about his preconceptions than the state of the literature.
Making sure that the “Help Story” is part of the Holocaust story, perhaps even a larger part of the narrative, is a worthy goal. Shostak, however, has taken that goal several steps too far. He acknowledges some of the potential drawbacks to the shift in emphasis he seeks (231), but he leaves out several key issues.
Quoting Avraham Burg, Shostak states that “Improving the Holocaust Narrative—a key determinant of modern Judaism’s ‘moral space’—will require moving beyond ‘mournful years of bereavement, suspicion, and anger to the age of memory, optimism, trust, and hope’” (237). This perspective on the future undermines the effectiveness of the Holocaust as a lesson not just for Jews but for humankind. Yes, it is important to remember Jewish “carers” but that is only a relatively small part of the story. To put it at center stage runs the risk of distorting the Holocaust experience and its meaning—past, present, and future.
Jeff Horn
Manhattan College, USA
jeff.horn@manhattan.edu
© 2018 Jeff Horn