Saul Friedländer

Saul Friedländer is an Israeli historian and author, widely regarded as one of the preeminent scholars of the Holocaust. His seminal two-volume work, Nazi Germany and the Jews, which includes The Years of Extermination, synthesizes a comprehensive history of the Third Reich's persecution and genocide, earning him the Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction and the Bancroft Prize. A professor emeritus at the University of California, Los Angeles and Tel Aviv University, his methodology uniquely integrates the perspectives of perpetrators, victims, and bystanders, profoundly influencing modern historiography.

Early life and education

Born into a secular Jewish family in Prague, his childhood was shattered by the Nazi occupation of Czechoslovakia. In 1939, his family fled to France, where he was hidden in a Roman Catholic boarding school in Montluçon while his parents attempted to escape to Switzerland; they were captured and later perished at Auschwitz. After the war, he was raised in the Catholic faith before rediscovering his Jewish identity. He pursued higher education at the Sorbonne and the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva, earning a doctorate in political science from the University of Geneva.

Career and academic work

Friedländer's academic career began in Geneva before he moved to Israel, where he became a professor of history at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He later held the 1939 Club Chair in Holocaust Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles and a joint appointment at Tel Aviv University. His early scholarly work focused on Pope Pius XII and the Vatican's response to the Holocaust, as seen in his book Pius XII and the Third Reich, which critiqued the Holy See's diplomatic silence. He also contributed significantly to the study of Nazism, antisemitism, and collective memory, influencing institutions like the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Holocaust historiography

Friedländer's magnum opus is his two-volume history, Nazi Germany and the Jews. The second volume, The Years of Extermination: Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1939-1945, is particularly celebrated for its "integrated history" approach, weaving together the policies of Adolf Hitler and the SS with the daily experiences of victims drawn from diaries, letters, and postwar testimonies. This method challenges purely structuralist interpretations of the Holocaust, emphasizing the role of ideology and the fusion of redemptive antisemitism with bureaucratic efficiency. His work engages with and critiques the theories of other prominent historians like Christopher Browning and debates within the Historikerstreit in Germany.

Awards and recognition

His scholarly contributions have been honored with numerous prestigious awards. In 2008, he received the Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction and the Bancroft Prize for The Years of Extermination. He is also a recipient of the Peace Prize of the German Book Trade, the Geschwister-Scholl-Preis, and the Israel Prize for history. In 2014, he was awarded the Dan David Prize, and he is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a corresponding fellow of the British Academy.

Personal life

Friedländer is married to Hagith Sivan, a scholar of Classics and Jewish studies. He has two sons and resides in Los Angeles and Tel Aviv. His own traumatic experiences as a hidden child during the Shoah deeply inform his historical writing, a connection he explored in his memoir, When Memory Comes. This personal narrative reflects on identity, loss, and the burden of memory, themes that resonate throughout his academic pursuit of understanding the Final Solution.

Category:Israeli historians Category:Holocaust historians Category:Pulitzer Prize winners