Genocide, the Holocaust and Israel-Palestine: First-Person History in Times of Crisis
Omer Bartov
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments
List of Abbreviations
Introduction
PART I WRITING ATROCITY
1 Historical Uniqueness and Integrated History
2 Eastern Europe as the Site of Genocide
PART II LOCAL HISTORY
3 Reconstructing Genocide on the Local Level
4 Testimonies as Historical Documents
5 The Holocaust in the Courtroom
6 Memory Laws as a Tool of Forgetting
PART IV FIRST-PERSON HISTORIES
7 H. G. Adler's (Un) Bildungsroman
8 Leaving the Shtetl to Change the World
PART V WHEN MEMORY COMES
9 Return and Displacement in Israel-Palestine
10 My Twisted Path to Auschwitz, and Back
11 Building the Future by Telling the Past
23 ratings5 reviews
This book discusses some of the most urgent current debates over the study, commemoration, and politicization of the Holocaust through key critical perspectives. Omer Bartov adeptly assesses the tensions between Holocaust and genocide studies, which have repeatedly both enriched and clashed with each other, whilst convincingly arguing for the importance of local history and individual testimony in grasping the nature of mass murder. He goes on to critically examine how legal discourse has served to both uncover and deny individual and national complicity. Genocide, the Holocaust and Israel-Palestine outlines how first-person histories provide a better understanding of events otherwise perceived as inexplicable and, lastly, draws on the author's own personal trajectory to consider links between the fate of Jews in World War II and the plight of Palestinians during and in the aftermath of the establishment of the state of Israel.
Bartov demonstrates that these five perspectives, rarely if ever previously discussed in a single book, are inextricably linked, and shed much light on each other. Thus the Holocaust and other genocides must be seen as related catastrophes in the modern era; understanding such vast human tragedies necessitates scrutinizing them on the local and personal scale; this in turn calls for historical empathy, accomplished via personal-biographical introspection; and true, open-minded, and rigorous introspection, without which historical understanding tends toward obfuscation, brings to light uncomfortable yet clarifying connections, such as that between the Holocaust and the Nakba, the mass flight and expulsion of the Palestinians in 1948.
264 pages, Paperback
Published August 10, 2023
==
<제노사이드, 홀로코스트 그리고 이스라엘-팔레스타인: 위기 시대의 1인칭 역사> 요약 및 평론
1. 요약: 개인의 기억과 국가적 서사의 충돌
이 책은 세계적인 홀로코스트 연구 권위자인 오메르 바르토프가 자신의 학문적 여정과 현재의 비극적인 정치적 상황을 결합하여 집필한 저작이다. 저자는 거시적인 역사적 담론 속에 매몰되기 쉬운 인간의 구체적인 삶과 목소리를 '1인칭 역사'라는 렌즈를 통해 복원하고자 시도한다.
가. 홀로코스트 연구의 확장 바르토프는 홀로코스트를 단순히 과거의 박제된 사건으로 보지 않는다. 그는 독일군 내부의 이데올로기적 동조와 학살의 메커니즘을 분석했던 초기 연구에서 나아가, 피해자와 가해자 그리고 방관자가 공존했던 '지역적 차원'의 폭력에 주목한다. 특히 그의 고향인 부차치(Buczacz)의 사례를 통해, 수 세기 동안 공존하던 이웃들이 어떻게 하루아침에 서로를 학살하는 관계로 변질되었는지를 추적한다.
나. 이스라엘-팔레스타인 갈등과 '제노사이드' 담론 저자는 홀로코스트의 기억이 현대 이스라엘의 국가 정체성과 정책에 어떤 방식으로 투영되고 있는지를 비판적으로 검토한다. 이스라엘 정부가 홀로코스트를 국가 안보를 정당화하는 '방어기제'로 사용하는 지점을 지적하며, 이것이 팔레스타인에 대한 억압을 정당화하거나 보지 못하게 만드는 눈가리개 역할을 한다고 주장한다.
다. 1인칭 역사의 방법론 바르토프는 공식 기록이 삭제하거나 왜곡한 진실을 밝히기 위해 일기, 편지, 증언 등 개인의 기록을 강조한다. 이는 역사를 단순히 승자의 기록이나 국가의 선전 도구로 전락시키지 않기 위한 저항적 글쓰기이다. 그는 현재 가자 지구에서 벌어지는 비극 역시 미래에는 '1인칭의 고통'으로 기록되어야 하며, 이를 외면하는 거대 서사의 위험성을 경고한다.
2. 평론: 경계에 선 역사가의 고통스러운 성찰
가. 학문적 정직성과 도덕적 용기 이 책의 가장 큰 미덕은 저자 자신의 정체성—이스라엘인이자 유대인, 그리고 세계적 사학자— 사이의 긴장을 숨기지 않는다는 점이다. 바르토프는 이스라엘의 정책을 비판한다는 이유로 동료들이나 모국으로부터 받을 비난을 감수하면서도, 현재 팔레스타인에서 벌어지는 현상이 제노사이드의 초기 징후를 보이고 있다는 사실을 학문적 양심에 따라 증언한다.
나. 과거와 현재의 위험한 유추 일부 비평가들은 홀로코스트와 현재의 갈등을 연결하는 방식에 우려를 표할 수 있다. 그러나 바르토프는 두 사건을 동일시하는 오류를 범하지 않는다. 대신 그는 '제노사이드가 발생하는 구조적 조건'이 어떻게 반복되는지를 보여준다. 이웃을 비인간화하고, 국가적 위기 상황을 이용해 폭력을 일상화하는 과정은 과거 부차치에서나 현재의 중동에서나 소름 끼치도록 닮아 있다.
다. '우리'라는 울타리를 넘어서 저자는 민족주의적 애국심이 역사의 진실을 어떻게 가리는지 날카롭게 파헤친다. 세진님이 지적한 '세계인'으로서의 관점과도 일맥상통하는 부분이 있는데, 바르토프 역시 특정 국가에 대한 맹목적 충성보다는 인류 보편의 인권과 역사적 진실에 더 가치를 둔다. 그는 이스라엘이 스스로를 영원한 피해자로만 규정하는 '피해자 서사'에서 벗어나지 못한다면, 결국 또 다른 가해의 굴레에서 벗어날 수 없음을 역설한다.
라. 결론: 역사가의 책무란 무엇인가 이 책은 역사가가 단순히 도서관에 앉아 과거를 재구성하는 존재가 아니라, 현재의 위기 앞에 몸을 던져 목소리를 내야 하는 '기록하는 증인'임을 증명한다. 바르토프의 글은 차갑고 객관적인 사료 분석과 뜨거운 인도주의적 고뇌가 결합된 드문 사례이다. 그는 묻는다. 우리는 과거의 비극으로부터 진정으로 배우고 있는가, 아니면 그 비극을 무기 삼아 또 다른 비극을 생산하고 있는가.
총평
오메르 바르토프의 이 저작은 홀로코스트를 특정 민족의 전유물이 아닌, 인류 전체의 보편적 경고등으로 복원해 낸다. 국가라는 거대 서사에 가려진 개인의 비명에 귀를 기울이는 그의 '1인칭 역사'는, 갈등과 혐오의 시대에 우리가 견지해야 할 진정한 지적 태도가 무엇인지 보여준다. 그것은 자신의 뿌리를 부정하는 것이 아니라, 그 뿌리가 타인의 삶을 파괴하지 않도록 끊임없이 감시하는 성찰적 용기이다.
혹시 이 책에서 다루는 구체적인 역사적 사례나 바르토프의 다른 저작에 대해 더 궁금한 점이 있으신가요?
==
==
About the author
Omer Bartov37 books71 followers
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Omer Bartov is an Israeli-born historian. He is the Samuel Pisar Professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Brown University, where he has taught since 2000. Bartov is a noted historian of the Holocaust and is considered one of the world's leading authorities on the subject of genocide.
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Randall Wallace
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July 31, 2024
“The genocide of the Jews was part of a vast plan to entirely alter the democratic structure of Eastern Europe by ethnically cleansing its mostly Slav populations and resettling it with ethnic Germans. The plan could not be implemented because of Germany’s inability to win the war against the Soviet Union, and the only part of it that was carried out was the extermination of the Jews. (p.16)”.
Half of those murdered in the final solution did NOT die in extermination camps, but “in their own homes and streets, cemeteries and synagogues, in nearby hills, forests and ravines.” “The murderers often knew their victims by name and saw them face-to-face just before they shot them …[they were] often people they had known for years as classmates, colleagues and neighbors.” Townspeople made profits from this “butchery” - “there was a shop in the city where the clothes of the murdered were sold cheaply.”
Instead of seeing the Holocaust as clinical industrial murder, picture how “hundreds upon hundreds of thousands of Jews, the majority of whom were children, women, the sick, and the elderly, were murdered in full view of the populations in whose midst they had lived: in Poland (see Jan Gross’s book Neighbors), the Baltic states, Belarus, Ukraine, Romania, and Western Russia.” Poland criminalized the assertion that Poles were in any way complicit in Nazi crimes (proven Polish collaboration in the Holocaust like in Jan Gross’s Neighbors) – memory laws passed by countries as a tool of forgetting. We also have this erasure in the US where we have the Vietnam War Memorial in DC which honors the death of every American who fought in just one of our many illegal wars but intentionally makes no mention of the 2-4 million Vietnamese we killed after invading.
Israel doesn’t like “competition”: “For Israel, recognizing the Holodomor as genocide would put it perilously close to the Holocaust.” How dare historians rank Ukrainian lives as important as Jewish ones? It’s like Hiroshima victims getting upset when Nagasaki victims remind the world, “don’t forget it happened to us too!”
About the author
Omer Bartov37 books71 followers
Follow
Omer Bartov is an Israeli-born historian. He is the Samuel Pisar Professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Brown University, where he has taught since 2000. Bartov is a noted historian of the Holocaust and is considered one of the world's leading authorities on the subject of genocide.
Readers also enjoyed
4.26
23 ratings5 reviews
5 stars
11 (47%)
4 stars
8 (34%)
3 stars
3 (13%)
2 stars
1 (4%)
1 star
0 (0%)
Search review text
Filters
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
Randall Wallace
683 reviews697 followers
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July 31, 2024
“The genocide of the Jews was part of a vast plan to entirely alter the democratic structure of Eastern Europe by ethnically cleansing its mostly Slav populations and resettling it with ethnic Germans. The plan could not be implemented because of Germany’s inability to win the war against the Soviet Union, and the only part of it that was carried out was the extermination of the Jews. (p.16)”.
Half of those murdered in the final solution did NOT die in extermination camps, but “in their own homes and streets, cemeteries and synagogues, in nearby hills, forests and ravines.” “The murderers often knew their victims by name and saw them face-to-face just before they shot them …[they were] often people they had known for years as classmates, colleagues and neighbors.” Townspeople made profits from this “butchery” - “there was a shop in the city where the clothes of the murdered were sold cheaply.”
Instead of seeing the Holocaust as clinical industrial murder, picture how “hundreds upon hundreds of thousands of Jews, the majority of whom were children, women, the sick, and the elderly, were murdered in full view of the populations in whose midst they had lived: in Poland (see Jan Gross’s book Neighbors), the Baltic states, Belarus, Ukraine, Romania, and Western Russia.” Poland criminalized the assertion that Poles were in any way complicit in Nazi crimes (proven Polish collaboration in the Holocaust like in Jan Gross’s Neighbors) – memory laws passed by countries as a tool of forgetting. We also have this erasure in the US where we have the Vietnam War Memorial in DC which honors the death of every American who fought in just one of our many illegal wars but intentionally makes no mention of the 2-4 million Vietnamese we killed after invading.
Israel doesn’t like “competition”: “For Israel, recognizing the Holodomor as genocide would put it perilously close to the Holocaust.” How dare historians rank Ukrainian lives as important as Jewish ones? It’s like Hiroshima victims getting upset when Nagasaki victims remind the world, “don’t forget it happened to us too!”
Because of the Holocaust, if you bring up the Nakba, Zionists will respond, “How can you compare?” I’m sure there are Zionists who when showed the Gaza death toll since October 7th, will say, “But, still how can you compare?” How dare you mention your school shooting, because MORE people died during MY school shooting! The Holocaust was manipulated into a permanent get-out-of-jail-free card, weaponized not by Jews (believers in the “Justice, Justice, Justice” of Deuteronomy), but by Zionists for its political utility in shutting down all discussions of international law, dissent or even dialog. Yad Vashem was created in Israel to capitalize on the Holocaust in 1953. Eichmann during his famous trial repeatedly confirmed Zionist collaboration with the Nazis for the benefit of Zionist over non-Zionist Jews (the non-Zionist Jews then were worked “for their own extermination” - p.115).
Zionism teaches “to see all threats as existential, and to view all opponents as potential Nazis; and of course, the only good Nazi, is a dead Nazi. But this time it was the Jews who were armed to the teeth while the ‘Nazis’ were Palestinian teenagers armed with slingshots.” Note that Zionism’s mantra of “Never Again” is never publicly, universally, or joyfully invoked as “Never Again for Anyone” (including even Palestinians). Let’s face it, peaceful co-existence with the Palestinian occupants of the land, can never happen w/o “Never Again” finally meaning never again for ALL humans. Zionism throughout its history fosters Nakba denial, Diaspora denial, and thus demands selective erasure (just like the Nazi plan for Roma, Jews and Slavs) over obvious recognition and acceptance (p.119). Permanently inclusive types like Kermit the Frog and Mr. Rodgers would have made terrible Zionists. As an example of selective erasure, Zionists might tell you about the July 1946 pogrom in Kielce, but never the Deir Yassin Massacre (which happened only two years later).
-------
This was a great book by Omer Bartov, which I’m very glad to have read. I look forward to also reviewing his “The Eastern Front 1941-45” and “Hitler’s Army” as soon as I finish my 1 ½ year slog through reading and reviewing 80 books on Israel/Palestine (this review is #46 of the 80 I am reading after the October 7th attacks happened) on Goodreads. As long as US liberals stay utterly silent on their social media about the US financing Israel’s ongoing obvious genocide and occupation, I will keep on reading. Give me a progressive any day. It’s interesting how often today’s moral cowards (liberals) achieve their peace through intentional avoidance of the uncomfortable, omission and denial. As John Stuart Mills reminded us in 1867, “Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men look on and do nothing.”
8 likes
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Julian Olbinski
21 reviews1 follower
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April 10, 2024
"the Nazi genocide of the Jews was presented as the inevitable consequence of the Diaspora, which therefore had to be relinquished and forgotten, and the near-total destruction of Palestinian civilization had to be followed up with the erasure of its remaining material traces and the wiping of its memory, thereby allowing the newly created status of an 'Arab minority' to appeared as if it had always been such."
"It would not be correct to say that this utter displacement of Jews from everything they had belonged to made them wish to do the same to others; but by all accounts, it rendered many of them indifferent and callous and at times vengeful towards the Arab population they encountered in Palestine."
"For as the cunning of history would have it, once the displaced had displaced others, they became pawns of the fate they had imposed on themselves, recreating another version of that inescapable trap from which they had hoped to liberate themselves."
"For the Zionists, the State of Israel was an 'answer' to the Holocaust; for the Palestinians that very 'answer' implied a negation of their existence as a nation, a mass expulsion, and an ongoing repression and existence as a stateless people. All this must be recognized openly and clearly."
non-fiction
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Ben Vogensen
216 reviews1 follower
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December 8, 2024
read this for my history class. thought it was solid but also the "israel-palestine" in the title is clickbait as hell lmfao. my man spent one 10 page chapter on that. the rest of the book was mixed some chapters were fire and made some really cool points about ground up history but some were snoozers like part 3? i think? whatever the two chapters about that book and then various jews cultural impact. he also should not have put the thesis of each chapter in the intro like a sociopath fucked up to do, made reading this a lot more confusing. overall still liked it though he was COOKING in that final chapter
school
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Ozan Sülüm
6 reviews1 follower
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December 28, 2024
Although it is a great book to learn about the Holocaust in a very detailed manner, the name of the book comes from a very limited part of the whole thing. If you want to learn about what Omer Bartov thinks about the Israeli-Palestine conflict, watch his interview on Zeteo, do not read this.
2024
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Caroline
14 reviews
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November 24, 2025
me when im in a repeat the ideas you already talked about competition and bartov is my opponent😬
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
Zionism teaches “to see all threats as existential, and to view all opponents as potential Nazis; and of course, the only good Nazi, is a dead Nazi. But this time it was the Jews who were armed to the teeth while the ‘Nazis’ were Palestinian teenagers armed with slingshots.” Note that Zionism’s mantra of “Never Again” is never publicly, universally, or joyfully invoked as “Never Again for Anyone” (including even Palestinians). Let’s face it, peaceful co-existence with the Palestinian occupants of the land, can never happen w/o “Never Again” finally meaning never again for ALL humans. Zionism throughout its history fosters Nakba denial, Diaspora denial, and thus demands selective erasure (just like the Nazi plan for Roma, Jews and Slavs) over obvious recognition and acceptance (p.119). Permanently inclusive types like Kermit the Frog and Mr. Rodgers would have made terrible Zionists. As an example of selective erasure, Zionists might tell you about the July 1946 pogrom in Kielce, but never the Deir Yassin Massacre (which happened only two years later).
-------
This was a great book by Omer Bartov, which I’m very glad to have read. I look forward to also reviewing his “The Eastern Front 1941-45” and “Hitler’s Army” as soon as I finish my 1 ½ year slog through reading and reviewing 80 books on Israel/Palestine (this review is #46 of the 80 I am reading after the October 7th attacks happened) on Goodreads. As long as US liberals stay utterly silent on their social media about the US financing Israel’s ongoing obvious genocide and occupation, I will keep on reading. Give me a progressive any day. It’s interesting how often today’s moral cowards (liberals) achieve their peace through intentional avoidance of the uncomfortable, omission and denial. As John Stuart Mills reminded us in 1867, “Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men look on and do nothing.”
8 likes
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Julian Olbinski
21 reviews1 follower
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April 10, 2024
"the Nazi genocide of the Jews was presented as the inevitable consequence of the Diaspora, which therefore had to be relinquished and forgotten, and the near-total destruction of Palestinian civilization had to be followed up with the erasure of its remaining material traces and the wiping of its memory, thereby allowing the newly created status of an 'Arab minority' to appeared as if it had always been such."
"It would not be correct to say that this utter displacement of Jews from everything they had belonged to made them wish to do the same to others; but by all accounts, it rendered many of them indifferent and callous and at times vengeful towards the Arab population they encountered in Palestine."
"For as the cunning of history would have it, once the displaced had displaced others, they became pawns of the fate they had imposed on themselves, recreating another version of that inescapable trap from which they had hoped to liberate themselves."
"For the Zionists, the State of Israel was an 'answer' to the Holocaust; for the Palestinians that very 'answer' implied a negation of their existence as a nation, a mass expulsion, and an ongoing repression and existence as a stateless people. All this must be recognized openly and clearly."
non-fiction
2 likes
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Ben Vogensen
216 reviews1 follower
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December 8, 2024
read this for my history class. thought it was solid but also the "israel-palestine" in the title is clickbait as hell lmfao. my man spent one 10 page chapter on that. the rest of the book was mixed some chapters were fire and made some really cool points about ground up history but some were snoozers like part 3? i think? whatever the two chapters about that book and then various jews cultural impact. he also should not have put the thesis of each chapter in the intro like a sociopath fucked up to do, made reading this a lot more confusing. overall still liked it though he was COOKING in that final chapter
school
2 likes
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Ozan Sülüm
6 reviews1 follower
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December 28, 2024
Although it is a great book to learn about the Holocaust in a very detailed manner, the name of the book comes from a very limited part of the whole thing. If you want to learn about what Omer Bartov thinks about the Israeli-Palestine conflict, watch his interview on Zeteo, do not read this.
2024
Like
Comment
Caroline
14 reviews
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November 24, 2025
me when im in a repeat the ideas you already talked about competition and bartov is my opponent😬
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
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