Looking at the Holocaust at Eye Level: Some Lessons from the Quintessential Scholar and Teacher

Abstract

ABSTRACT Yehuda Bauer has been the world's teacher of the Holocaust and has influenced the study of the Holocaust perhaps more than anyone else in the last 50 years. Bauer has significantly affected the author's own professional work, probably more than any other teacher. In addition to Bauer being a scholarly and teaching role model, the author was exposed to and learned much about the world of journal editing from him while serving as the assistant editor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies under Bauer's editorship, which subsequently helped open a long career as the editor of Yad Vashem Studies. This article reflects on two aspects of Yehuda Bauer's work and their influence on the author as scholar and teacher: looking at the Holocaust at eye level, without tinted lenses, mystification, or ideological prejudice as much as that is possible; taking the Jewish eyewitnesses to events seriously. Finally, the article discusses Bauer's clear-eyed and objective approach to the Holocaust through the subject of the Allies' responses to the Holocaust, a topic the author first encountered academically in one of Bauer's seminars more than 40 years ago. Bauer has addressed questions regarding what Allied leaders knew about the Holocaust, what they did to try to stop it, the role of American Jewry, why the Allies did not bomb Auschwitz, and more in what is arguably the most balanced, ideology-free analysis by any scholar. We should all learn from this approach to the subject.