Leni Yahil

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Leni Yachil ( Hebrew לֵנִי יָחִיל Leni Jachīl , in languages ​​without the sound ch (IPA χ) : also Yahil; born Helene Westphal, born June 27, 1912 in Düsseldorf ; † 2007 in Israel ) was an Israeli historian , author and university teacher from the Mendelssohn family who made significant contributions to the field of Holocaust research .

Life

Helene Westphal grew up in Potsdam as a child of Protestant parents. Her father, the judge Ernst Westphal (1871-1949), was a grandson of the banker Alexander Mendelssohn and great-great-grandson of Moses Mendelssohn . The mother, Helene Minna Westphal, b. Simon (1880–1965), was a daughter of the textile merchant James Simon . Even at a young age, Helene Westphal was involved in the Zionist youth movement, stimulated by her ancestors 'knowledge of Judaism , despite her parents' concerns. She later became one of the leaders of the workmen (Bund Jewish Youth) .

After graduating from high school in Potsdam, Westphal studied history at the universities of Munich and Berlin and was accepted at the University for the Science of Judaism in Berlin . The emerging National Socialism ended her studies. Westphal emigrated with other members of the youth group workmen in 1934 to Palestine and was among the founders of Kibbutz Ha-Zore'a . Among other things, she worked as an orange packer. In 1935/36 Westphal left the group and moved to Jerusalem to study general history, Jewish history and Hebrew literature at the Hebrew University . In 1940 she got her master's degree for a thesis on The Concept of Democracy at Tocqueville .

Westphal was culturally, politically and journalistically active in the labor movement , in the women's group of the Israeli trade union and worked for Davar , the daily newspaper of the Histadrut (the Israeli workers' association). During her political work she also got to know her future husband, a survivor of the Kaufering / Landsberg concentration camp complex (see also European Holocaust Memorial in Landsberg ). In 1942 she married Chajim Hoffmann (later: Yachil; 1905–1974) and had two sons, one of whom was killed in the Six Day War . After the end of the Second World War , Yachil followed her husband in his international activities in 1947 to Munich and 1953–54 to Cologne , where Chaim Yachil was involved in the negotiations between Germany and Israel. From 1956 her husband was Israel's ambassador to Sweden, Norway and Iceland, 1961–65 Director General of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Yachil occasionally worked as a research assistant to her teacher Ben-Zion Dinur (Minister for Education and Culture in Israel) and decided to continue her own studies. She made an academic career and taught until her retirement as a professor at Haifa University . Leni Yachil died in Israel at the age of 95.

research

In 1964 Yachil received his doctorate from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem with a thesis on the Jews in Denmark during the Holocaust. From 1966 she taught at the University Institute of the Hebrew University in Haifa. In 1976 she received the professorship and took on visiting professorships at the University of Wisconsin – Madison and the University of Washington . From the beginning, her research has focused on the Jewish aspect of Holocaust studies. In addition to research and teaching, Yachil was an editor for the Encyclopaedia Judaica (Scandinavian Literature Department), in the editorial team of Yad Vashem Studies and the Encyclopedia of the Holocaust .

After her retirement as professor for modern Jewish history in Haifa, Yachil worked as editor of Yad Vashem Studies and the publication series of this research institute.

Yachil received many academic awards in Israel for her work: the Hebrew University's Warburg Prize (1961), the Shazar Award (1987) and the American Jewish Book Award for Holocaust Studies (1991).

In 1961 Yachil wrote to Hannah Arendt . On the occasion of the trial of Adolf Eichmann, the two Jewish thinkers debated fundamental questions of morality and the significance of the State of Israel. The correspondence ended in a controversy and in silence, which Yachil could not overcome even with a letter written a year later in 1971. The confrontation with Arendt's thinking had a strong influence on Yachil's work, although she thought as consistently as idiosyncratic as Zionist.

In 1987 Yachil's Opus Magnum Shoah was first published in Hebrew, in 1990 in English and in 1998 in German. In it, she describes the story as a conflict between the perspective of the perpetrators with their will to destroy and, above all, the perspective of the victims between persecution and resistance. The abundance of Jewish sources hitherto largely unknown in Holocaust research creates a closeness to the victim's perspective, which one can hardly avoid. The individuals become recognizable in seemingly endless stories. Nameless victims become visible people in all their dignity. Yachil's book places this achievement alongside the great works of Gerald Reitlinger and Raul Hilberg .

Works (selection)

Monographs

  • The Shoah. Struggle for survival and extermination of the European Jews . From the American by H. Jochen Bußmann. Munich: Luchterhand 1998 (Original: ha-Sho'ah, Goral Jehudei Europa, 1932–1945. Jerusalem: Schocken 1987).
  • "Dear Hannah Arendt ...". An exchange of letters between Leni Yahil and Hannah Arendt, 1961–1971 . Printed with facsimiles in: Hamburger Institut für Sozialforschung (Ed.), Mittelweg 36 , Issue 3, 19th year June / July 2010.
  • The Rescue of Danish Jewry: Test of a Democracy , translated by Morris Gradel, Philadelphia 1969 (paperback edition: 1983).
  • The Holocaust: the Fate of European Jewry, 1932–1945 , translated by Ina Friedman and Haya Galai, New York / Oxford 1991 (paperback edition: 1991).
  • On Nazis, Jews and Rescuers . Jerusalem: 2002.

English essays (selection)

  • "Euthanasia Contra Racial Extermination: The Moral Aspect." In Remembering for the Future: The Impact of the Holocaust and Genocide upon Jews and Christians. Supplementary Volume. Oxford 1988.
  • "The Historiography of the Refugee Problem and of Rescue Efforts in the Neutral Countries." In The Historiography of the Holocaust. Jerusalem 1988.
  • "Denmark Under the Occupation: A Survey of Danish Literature." The Wiener Library Bulletin 16/4 (October 1962): 73.
  • "Historians of the Holocaust: A Plea for a New Approach." The Wiener Library Bulletin 22, no. 1 NS, no. 10, (Winter 1967/68): 2–5.
  • "The Holocaust in Jewish Historiography." The Catastrophe of European Jewry, Antecedents-History-Reflections, selected papers. Jerusalem: 1976. First published in Yad Vashem Studies 7 (1968): 57-73.
  • "Jewish Resistance: An Examination of Active and Passive Forms of Jewish Survival in the Holocaust Period." In Jewish Resistance During the Holocaust. Jerusalem 1971.
  • "Methods of Persecution: A Comparison of the 'Final Solution' in Holland and Denmark." Scripta Hierosolomytana 23: Studies in History (1972): 279-300.
  • "National Pride and Defeat: A Comparison of Danish and German Nationalism." Journal of Contemporary History 26 (1991): 453-478.
  • "The Warsaw Underground Press: A Case Study in the Reaction to Antisemitism." In Living with Antisemitism: Modern Jewish Responses. London and Hanover, New Hampshire 1987.
  • "Madagascar: Phantom of a Solution for the Jewish Question." In Jews and non-Jews in Eastern Europe 1918–1945, New York, Toronto, Jerusalem 1974.
  • "Gassing." Holocaust. Jerusalem: 1974: 89-90; with Yehuda Bauer and Joseph Litvak. "Rescue." Holocaust. Jerusalem 1974: 119-131.
  • "Jewish Consciousness after the Holocaust." Holocaust. Jerusalem 1974: 191-194.
  • "Historiography of the Holocaust." Holocaust. Jerusalem 1974, 184-190.
  • "Jews in Concentration Camps in Germany Prior to World War II." In The Nazi Concentration Camps. Jerusalem 1984.
  • "The Uniqueness of the Rescue of Danish Jewry." In Rescue Attempts During the Holocaust. Jerusalem 1977.
  • "The Jewish Leadership of France." In Patterns of Jewish Leadership in Nazi Europe 1933–1945. Jerusalem 1980.
  • "Jewish Assimilation vis-à-vis German Nationalism in the Weimar Republic." In Jewish Assimilation in Modern Times. Boulder, CO 1980.
  • "Rescue During the Holocaust: Opportunities and Obstacles." In Proceedings of the Eighth World Congress of Jewish Studies Division B. Jerusalem 1982.
  • "Holocaust and Antisemitism in Historical Perspective." In Major Changes Within the Jewish People in the Wake of the Holocaust. Jerusalem 1966.
  • "The Double Consciousness of the Nazi Mind and Practice." In Probing the Depth of German Antisemitism: German Society and the Persecution of the Jews 1933–1941. New York-Oxford-Jerusalem 2000.
  • "Raoul Wallenberg — His Mission and His Activities in Hungary." Yad Vashem Studies 15 (1883): 7-53.

literature

  • Fatal-Kna'ani, Tikva. "Leni Yahil." Jewish Women: A Comprehensive Historical Encyclopedia . March 1, 2009. Jewish Women's Archive. May 25, 2011 < http://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/yahil-leni >
  • Sarit Shavit, Dan Michman : Hannah Arendt and Leni Yahil. A friendship that didn't last . In: Hamburger Institut für Sozialforschung (Ed.), Mittelweg 36 , Issue 3, 19th year June / July 2010. ISBN 978-3-86854-702-3 (online see web links)
  • Obituary in: Yad Vashem, Institute News. The International Institute for Holocaust Holocaust Research , No. June 12, 2008

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ “The Jews of Denmark During the Holocaust” (Hebrew). Ph.D. diss., Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1964.
  2. ^ Encyclopedia of the Holocaust, Israel Gutman, editor-in-chief. New York: Macmillan, 1990. 4 volumes. ISBN 0-02-896090-4 .
  3. ↑ "Dear Hannah Arendt ...". An exchange of letters between Leni Yahil and Hannah Arendt, 1961–1971 . Printed with facsimiles in: Hamburger Institut für Sozialforschung (Ed.), Mittelweg 36 , Issue 3, 19th year June / July 2010; Online see web links
personal data
SURNAME Yahil, Leni
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Yachil, Leni; Jachīl, Leni; Westphal, Helene (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Israeli historian
DATE OF BIRTH June 27, 1912
PLACE OF BIRTH Dusseldorf
DATE OF DEATH 2007
Place of death Israel