Talk:Lucy Dawidowicz

(initial discussion: intentionalism, name, general)
What about including something about Intentionalism. nobs 04:47, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

Getting right onto that. My brother needed to use the phone, so my work was interpreted. But your quite right, as one of the leading representatives of the extreme Intentionlist school, Dawidowicz's arguments ought to be mentioned. Personally, I think her argument dating the decision to launch the Holocaust on November 11, 1918 is somewhat silly, extremely unlikely and impossible to prove, but right now I can’t think of NPOV way of saying that.A.S. Brown 06:35, 1 December 2005 (UTC)


 * A.S.: Wow. Good job. This article has been long neglected, of particularly an important figure who laid some of the foundations for holocaust studies.


 * On a minor point, there appears to be three or four spellings to her name (Dawidowitz, Davidowitz, and Davidowicz), which is one reason for limited search engine results. Some inclusion along those lines may help raise its visibility.  Thanks again.  nobs 18:27, 1 December 2005 (UTC)

Thank you very much. It is nice to see one’s work appreciated. Good suggestion about getting some redirect pages going. I’ve never seen any modern historian who name has been spelled in so many different ways. In a way, this seems to match Dawidowicz’s profile today, in that her her extreme Intentionlist interpretation of the Holocaust, judging by much of the content around here and what is written about the Holocaust elsewhere is the most popular of what are broadly the five schools of the origins of the Holocaust (i.e the extreme Intentionlist, moderate Intentionlist, moderate Functionalist, extreme Functionalist and the Synthesis School), yet somehow she is not that well known today. At the risk of sounding egoistic, the first book I’ve read about the Holocaust was The War Against the Jews, and I suspect that many others first came to the subject through her writings.

I think Dawidowicz’s greatest achievement was in getting the Holocaust realized as serious topic. For reasons which I’m not quite sure about, for the first 15 or so years after 1945 the Holocaust was largely ignored as historical topic. I’m not really an expert in these matters, but as far as I can see, the Holocaust was simply regarded as too horrible to write about in the 1940s-1950s. I think Dawidowicz was wrong about some matters, but she did help to get the Holocaust established as a serious topic, and for that alone, she deserves to be remembered.

Sorry about not getting back to you sooner, I was very busy all last week. Thanks again.A.S. Brown 06:27, 13 December 2005 (UTC)

The article portrays her as somwhat rabid, I hope she was more detached intellectually. She appears to have thought that many/much of the witness testimony to the Holocaust was less than believeable - this surprises me that this was missed in the article. Did she ever produce any proof/documents/etc for her strongly held views?

I also think the article makes her appear fanatical which isn't the impression I got when I read The War Against the Jews. In her "Introduction to the Tenth Anniversary Edition," which Bantam published in 1986, she gives a very cogent explanation of the structuralist approach to history, which she criticizes as removing human volition from historical events and therefore human responsibility for them; it's an appropriate critique I think.67.173.58.139 02:40, 10 September 2006 (UTC)

Spelling of surname; consistency within the article
The spelling Dawidowicz is used by the US Library of Congress (19 entries) and in the Encyclopaedia of the Holocaust published by Yad Vashem (English edition: Macmillan, 1990). In both, she's noted as Lucy S. Dawidowicz -- and if I recall correctly, this is the form of the author's name in the publication of her works (some of which I can check at the library later this week). If I can substantiate by corroborating this form, I'm going to suggest it for a rename of the article.

After the initial paragraph giving her maiden name and her parents' names, the surname by which Lucy S. Dawidowicz is most widely known -- from her many publications and widespread citations of her works -- is appropriate for use throughout the article, rather than referring to her by her maiden name in the biographical material up to the date of her marriage. -- Deborahjay 04:01, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

Davies & POV
Besides for some spelling issues, I have removed the following lines:

"This was particularly evident in the case of Davies who at no point tried shift the blame of the Holocaust away form Nazi Germany, but mealy noted that in the case of Poland anti-Semitism was due in large part on foreign antagonism in the country."

for the these reasons. First, the way that line was written to imply that Dawidowicz had unjustly slandered Norman Davies with the anti-Semitic label, which may or may not be true, but needs some sources before it is presented as a fact. Second, the sentence is misleading because the issue is not Davies trying to shift the blame for the Shoah from the Germans, but rather the extent and level of anti-Semitism with the Gentile population of Poland. Davies argues that anti-Semitism was very limited in pre-war and war-time Poland while Dawidowicz argued for the opposite case. Third, I am not certain the line what anti-Smeitism in Poland being caused by "foreign antagonism" is supposed to mean with since there are several possible interpretations, but regardless of what was meant here, it is a POV line that lacks attribution. --A.S. Brown (talk) 05:47, 2 May 2008 (UTC)

Raul Hilberg
I am surprised to find no mention of Davidowicz' disagreements with Raul Hilberg (The Destruction of The European Jews).12.135.55.162 (talk) 00:20, 6 June 2009 (UTC) Patrick Poloney (talk) 02:06, 6 June 2009 (UTC)

Criticisms of Davidowicz
We get lots of material on Davidowicz's criticisms of other historians, but pretty much nothing on other historians' criticisms of Davidowicz, even though her views are not, in fact, the mainstream scholarly views on the Holocaust. john k (talk) 15:37, 27 September 2010 (UTC)

Mistakes in the passage beginning "Weinreich escaped..."
Regarding this passage:

Weinreich escaped the Holocaust because he went to New York to establish a branch of the YIVO there before World War II, but Kalmanovich and Reisen perished. Dawidowicz had been close to Kalmanovich and his family, whom she reportedly described as being her real parents.[3] From 1940 until 1946, Dawidowicz worked as an assistant to a research director at the New York City office of the YIVO.

1. Max Weinreich did not escape the Holocaust because he went to New York to establish...

Rather, during the summer of 1939 he was on the way (with his elder son, Uriel) from Wilno to a conference of linguists in Brussels and stopped in Copenhagen because he and two Danish linguists (Viggo Brøndal and another whose name I do not remember at the moment) made up to meet there and then proceed together to Brussels. While Weinreich and his son were in Copenhagen, news reached Denmark that Germany had begun its invasion of Poland, as a result of which the conference was cancelled and Weinreich realized that returning to Wilno was impossible and undesirable. From Copenhagen Weinreich and his son eventually reached New York City. Later his wife and younger son joined them in New York City

2. Since the branch of the YIVO in New York City (called amopteyl) had been founded in October 1925 (https://judaism_enc.enacademic.com/20944/yivo), some fifteen years before he fled to New York City, the purpose of his trip could not have been to found it.

3. Regarding "Dawidowicz worked as an assistant to a research director." There was only one research director and it was Max Weinreich.

Searching for "Max Weinreich AND Copenhagen" will bring up many websites with information about the circumstances of his trip to Copenhagen and stay there, including the reminiscences of a Danish Jew who knew the details at first hand.S. Valkemirer (talk) 23:10, 16 January 2021 (UTC)