Surviving in the Holocaust: A Transnational History

Abstract

Surviving in the Holocaust: A Transnational History offers a novel approach to the study of European Jews during World War II, in particular, and victim experiences during genocide and mass violence, in general. Examining over 2,000 testimonies from 15 archives and in 10 languages, this thesis investigates how Jews sought to stay alive in four cities in Western Europe (Marseille, Brussels, Amsterdam, and Copenhagen) and four in Eastern Europe (Kyiv, Lviv, Vilnius, and Kraków). With tools from social and cultural history, I suggest the value of a shift from the outcome (survival) to a social process (surviving), which restores the full spectrum of wartime responses, wide variations in experiences, and a sense of contingency that mass violence would otherwise erase. I argue that no one biographical trait, wartime experience, or factor shaped whether someone lived to see May 8, 1945. Considered as a process, surviving meant all efforts to minimize the growing lack of control, mitigate risks and luck, and halt persecution. While only survivors could speak of survival, every persecuted person experienced elements of surviving that coalesced into an untold story of luck, specific moments of agency, psychological changes, and encounters with others. By dismantling the unwarranted divide between victims and survivors, this dissertation offers the first systematic, interdisciplinary analysis of civilian responses to mass destruction.

Surviving in the Holocaust comprises six chapters. Using a semantic analysis of corpus linguistics, chapter 1 investigates the use of the term “survival” in 4,000 oral histories from the Fortunoff Video Archive, which pioneered the recording of video testimonies about crimes against humanity. In addition to “luck,” three recurring themes emerge: emotional changes, wartime behaviors, and social relations. Chapter 2 delves into the process of personality change that was both universal and intimate. More than trauma, resilience, or the “will to live,” the new concept of the “Holocaust personality” captures best both the deliberate appropriation of new roles and the emergence or reinforcement of character traits after 1939. Surviving meant experiencing a Holocaust personality, whether one survived or not. Paying particular attention to women, chapters 3 and 4 turn to wartime choices and behaviors. More than assimilation, knowledge, or beliefs, it was prior experiences of violence, reflexive distrust of state authorities, and exposure to threats that determined whether a person’s initial response was flight. As the Nazi persecution morphed into mass murder, however, and everyone became a refugee and was hunted down, individual responses to persecution were increasingly leveled by a process that each person underwent at a different pace: the painful coming to terms with local society, the presence or absence of family and loved ones, and the growing threat or first-hand witnessing of Nazi annihilation. Chapter 5 and 6 examine Jews’ perceptions of help and harm. Local populations had more leeway than historians usually admit, but the persecution increasingly interfered with their day-to- day obligations and relationships. To designate all behaviors that furthered or slowed down the persecution, I suggest the concept of “social reactivity,” which diverged from both rescue and resistance in its fleeting, opportunistic, uncoordinated, and inconsistent nature. More than the extremes of perpetration and rescue, it was clearly the local context of Nazi rule, the role of loved ones, and the gaze of fellow citizens that shaped whether Jews experienced help or harm after 1940.

Surviving in the Holocaust makes three key contributions to Holocaust studies, modern European and Jewish history, and the social sciences of violence. First, while Jewish voices have been increasingly integrated into the history of World War II, my research is the first to analyze these personal experiences at a Europe-wide level and to bridge the still prevalent division of Jewish history before and after 1939. My work also weaves Jewish history together with French, Belgian, Dutch, Danish, Polish, Ukrainian, Lithuanian, and Soviet history. Herein lies the second key contribution. Only a transnational perspective offers the necessary depth for understanding the history of Jewish experiences and the societies in which they occurred. Third, my work employs tools from the digital humanities to map Jewish mobility and analyze social encounters and wartime behaviors. Drawing on political science, cultural anthropology, relational sociology, and social psychology, this thesis offers the first systematic analysis of civilian responses to mass destruction across these disciplines.