Erich Goldhagen

Erich Goldhagen (born August 3, 1930 in Rożnów , Poland ) is a Polish- Canadian historian and father of the author Daniel Goldhagen .

Life

Erich Goldhagen grew up in the Romanian town of Chernivtsi , which became Soviet in 1940. After the German attack on the Soviet Union in 1941, he was imprisoned in the Ghetto of Chernivtsi, which was now Romanian again, because of his Jewish descent , and survived the Holocaust there . He emigrated to the United States of America after the Second World War, married Norma Bachrach in 1957 and studied history. In 1959 his son Daniel was born. Erich Goldhagen first worked as an Eastern Europe expert at Brandeis University , then specialized in topics such as the minorities in the Soviet Union and the Holocaust. In 1970 he became a lecturer at Harvard University and the Harvard Extension School , and held that position until his retirement in 1995. He lives in Newton, Massachusetts , a suburb of Boston .

Spear controversy

At the suggestion of an article of Holocaust researcher Lucy Dawidowicz , began Goldhagen with the Posen speeches by Heinrich Himmler to deal, and pushed into this hitherto little-noticed document to the passage, the apparently seated in the audience where Himmler , Albert Speer responds personally. He then published an article in Midstream magazine in October 1971 in which he accused Speer of having lied when Speer repeatedly claimed during the negotiations before the Nuremberg Military Tribunal and later that he was aware of his complicity in the Holocaust, but had personally didn't know about it. Because in this speech Himmler described the Holocaust in detail. Speer wrote a basic reply in which he tried to prove that although he had been in Posen that day, at the time when Himmler gave his speech, he had already left for Rastenburg. Today's historical research holds it as a certain fact that Speer was present during Himmler's speech. Historian Magnus Brechtken emphasized in his Speer biography in 2017 that the facts are clear: "All contemporary documents testify to Speer's stay in Posen, all claims to the contrary are post-war formulations".

Works

• Ideology and the transition to Communism. In: Soviet Survey. A Quarterly Review of Cultural Trends . 1959.
• The future of communist society. In: The month . Volume 13, 1961, No. 151, pp. 7-16.
• Ethnic minorities in the Soviet Union . Published for the Institute of East European Jewish Studies of the Philip W. Lown School of Near Eastern and Judaic Studies, Brandeis University 1968.
• Albert Speer, Himmler, and the secrecy of the final solution. In: Midstream (Theodor Herzl Foundation), 1971, pp. 43-50.
• The ethnic consciousness of early Russian Jewish socialists. In: Judaism. 23/1974 (American Jewish Congress), pp. 479-496.
• Weltanschauung and final solution. In: Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte. Volume 24, 1976, pp. 379-405.
• The mind and spirit of East European Jewry during the Holocaust . Harvard Univ., Cambridge, Mass. 1979.
• The Holocaust in Soviet Propaganda and Historiography. In: Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte . Volume 28, 1980, pp. 502-507.

Web links

• Article in the Harvard university magazine about Goldhagen ( Memento from July 10, 2010 in the Internet Archive )

Individual evidence

1. ^ ^{A b} Biographical Directory of the American Political Science Association. 4th edition (1961). P. 86.
2. ^ Note in the New York Times on the wedding
3. ↑ See Erich Goldhagen: Albert Speer, Himmler and the Secrecy of the Final Solution. German in Adelbert Reif: Albert Speer - Controversies about a German phenomenon. Munich 1978, p. 383 ff.
4. ↑ See Albert Speer: Answer to Erich Goldhagen. reprinted in Reif / Speer 1978. p. 395ff.
5. ↑ Magnus Brechtken: Albert Speer. A German career . Siedler Verlag, Munich 2017, p. 463; see. also the article by SE Kellerhoff in Die Welt 2007