This new collection of essays demonstrates Cesarani’s extraordinary range of interests and his formidable intellectual energy, writes David Herman
January 31, 2020 14:49
The Jews, The Holocaust, and The Public: The Legacies of David Cesarani (eds.) Larissa Allwork and Rachel Pistol (Palgrave Macmillan, £89.99)
The career of the distinguished historian, the late David Cesarani, fell into three parts. He started out as an Anglo-Jewish historian, part of a generation of young academics who challenged assumptions about modern Jewish history.
Then, working at the Wiener Library, he became increasingly involved with the Holocaust, leading to his acclaimed biography of Eichmann and his major work, Final Solution: The Fate of the Jews 1933–1949 (2016). Finally, he was a leading public intellectual, who served on the All Party Parliamentary War Crimes Group and was later awarded an OBE for his “services to Holocaust Education and advising the government with regard to the establishment of Holocaust Memorial Day”.
This new festschrift, consisting of almost 20 essays by Jewish historians, leading figures from Holocaust education and former graduate students from Royal Holloway, demonstrates Cesarani’s extraordinary range of interests and his formidable intellectual energy. Based on a conference which took place in 2017, it adds essays by Richard J Evans, Suzanne Bardgett from the Imperial War Museum, and Olivia Marks-Woldman and Rachel Century of the Holocaust Memorial Day Trust.
The book opens with a tribute to Cesarani as a teacher by a former student. “David rejoiced in his students’ successes”, she writes, but he could be a demanding supervisor. When she asked him what he thought of her undergraduate dissertation, he said, “It wasn’t bad… considering you quite obviously wrote it in a week.” He was right. She had.
The next two essays offer an overview of Cesarani’s career and the book then falls into four main sections: Minorities and Nationalisms, including an essay by David Feldman on Zionism and the British Labour Party; Perspectives on the Holocaust; Nazi Crimes and Their Legacies, reflecting Cesarani’s own work on war crimes and on Eichmann; and Public History and Holocaust Commemoration. The book concludes with an Afterword by Cesarani’s widow, Dawn Waterman, his son Daniel and one of his closest friends, the literary critic, Bryan Cheyette.
Several essays stand out. Robert Razett from Yad Vashem provides a clear and helpful introduction to Cesarani’s work over more than 20 years, from Justice Delayed: How Britain Became a Refuge for Nazi War Criminals (1992) to Final Solution (2016).
The essay by Richard J Evans on The Decision to Exterminate the Jews of Europe offers a fascinating account of the decisions that led to the Final Solution, drawing on the latest historical research.
Cesarani was always drawn to big issues rather than narrow monographs and Evans’s ambitious piece is a fine tribute.
Finally, two essays, one by Aimee Bunting and the other by Tony Kushner, and the Afterword give a fascinating insight into Cesarani as a person as well as a historian.
Kushner recalls his old friend, “utterly the worse for wear following the consumption of a frighteningly large amount of Russian vodka in an ex-KGB haunt.”
The Afterword pays tribute to “a great communicator and a passionate intellectual”. Cesarani was never predictable, always challenging. Tony Kushner is surely right: “The world is, indeed, a much, much smaller place without David.”
David Herman is a senior JC reviewer