Raz - Month # 5 (excluding Marton)

Case, Between States

This book breaks new ground in the study of modern European history. Case’s insights into the contexts, causes, and dynamics of mass violence in Transylvania during World War II are of particular interest to scholars of mass violence.

Conceptually, Case has suggested novel view points on European history: not the nation-state, she argues, should stand at the center of scholars’ attention but precisely those regions and places that defy the very construct of the nation-state as such. Regarding the Holocaust, Case has rightly posited that “[o]ne long-standing impediment to seeing how the history of the Jews and the history of territorialized statehood and state-enfranchised nationalities in the region are related has been the way historians of the Holocaust have focused on the events of the cataclysm as they unfolded within ‘national’ contexts.” (p. 197).

Case’s method reveals much that has received little or no attention in the field of Holocaust and Genocide Studies. First, Case has demonstrated the inappropriate and de-contextualized use of antisemitism as straightforward explanation, which indeed tends to obscure much more than it clarifies. Specifically, she has shown the inconsistent policies aimed at Jews in Transylvania during the first half of the 20th century, originating in broader interests and considerations related primarily to sovereignty and ideas of Europe. (pp. 6, 195, 197, and 218, for instance). Indeed, the analysis of a region such as Transylvania requires a transnational lens suited for borderlands situated “between states.” Case’s formulation, well summarized on pages 221-224, deserves careful attention: “In the cases of Hungary and Romania, modern anti-Semitism, Communism, right-wing extremism, liberalism, nationalism and ideas about Europe were all ‘domesticated’ at least in part by passing through the Transylvanian Question.” (p. 221).

However, Case has also explained that the “Jewish Question” “…constituted an awkward inconsistency in the rhetoric of those ‘European’ interests and ideals that seemed otherwise unshakable …” (p. 196). She thus added an unacknowledged element in her argument – one which runs counter to the thrust of her narrative, for it addresses the consistent, specific, and somewhat irrational characteristics of anti-Jewish feelings and positions in modern Europe. This contradiction remains unnoticed – and thus also unresolved – in Case’s narrative. And at the very least, it complicates Case’s argument that “…the Jews were not the primary policy preoccupation in these states [Hungary and Romania] either before or during the war [WWII].” (p. 197, emphasis in the text).

In addition to Case’s understanding of antisemitism, Case has convincingly tackled the destruction of Jewish life in Transylvania in the broader context of interethnic relations and conflict in that region (pp. 185-186, 190). This holds true in general for Hungary and Romania during WWII, especially with regard to their many borderlands (see pp. 195-196, for example).

Besides my abovementioned criticism, a major problem with Case’s book becomes apparent when she suggests “a common explanatory principle” of Hungarian and Romanian history in the 20th century: “…being ‘European’ has become a constituent component of being Hungarian and Romanian.” (p. 223). Here – the central point of the book – Case has overlooked a rather common methodological trap: assuming a causal explanation where merely a convergence of time and place occurs. Indeed, Case has brought insufficient evidence to support the connection she suggests and has failed to deal in depth with elements in the histories of Hungary and Romania that fit poorly if at all to her paradigm. In fact, Case’s use of the word “domestication” points to a particular process, in which elites manipulated external (i.e., outside of Hungary and Romania) visions of Europe in order to achieve specific ideological and political goals. The extent to which these visions actually became “constituent” of the ways most Hungarians and Romanians perceived themselves and their states’ place in Europe – according to whichever vision – awaits further research. But Case has no doubt raised this highly important question.