Hoover Institution and History: when are documents not historical documents?

The Hoover publications can be found on the web at Stanford; the Hoover Institute is at hoover.org.

I want to look at one publication, "War Through Children's Eyes" which bears the sub-title
The Soviet Occupation of Poland and the Deportations, 1939-1941

This is no simple matter: the crimes of the Soviets following their invasion of Poland rank among the most dastardly of the 20th Century as war-crimes and crimes against humanity.  Few instances of more gross and murderous disregard for the then Geneva Convention are on record for the past century.

So what could be the issue?  Only a few days ago I was challenging Marburg bloggers to address the documents concerning Marburg/Lahn which are here at the U. of Minnesota.

These Hoover 'documents' in this volume are presented by a foreward by Bruno Bettelheim in which he chooses to relativize the expectations of the arriving Soviets and the expectations of the Poles.  Bettelheim reminds me of the famous film by the deveopmental psychologist Gesell in which a naked boy is shown but during the course of his remarks and observations the boy's perverse penile erection is passed over without comment.  At the time of this publication, Bettelheim was not yet fully appreciated for the nature of his camp survivor claims (he was released in 1939 and NOT in 1945) and a defender of Arendt's distortions (she was only briefly interned in France before escaping.)

The book is composed of selected essays by children - compositions written once they had escaped to British-controlled Iran.  These are not letters home collected from camp survivors or witnesses to an event.  A composition written for school is not a diary and is not even a protocol of an interview for an on-going investigation.  Of particular interest would be to learn where and how and why so many children had heard and then repeated that "Jews and Communists" collaborated with the Soviets and not "Communists - some of whom were Jews - " and how it is that so many of the children had such clear recall that collaborators were Jews.  The reader who is not advised concerning hearsay, rumor and bias will be ill-prepared for this jarring "testimony".

As valuable as these essays by the children are, they are not historical documents. Many of the essays contain stereotypic hearsay in addition to their eye-witness accounts. Notably missing are children recounting what they did themselves to survive - whether to siblings or the less fortunate - or what their parents did - candid veracity often missing in survivor testimony - and confessed only in assured privacy and years later.

The association of this book with Bettelheim is regrettable as the essays contain stereotypic antisemitic reports with the children often repeating what they had heard about the Jews and the Soviets. These essays were written on demand and do not constitute historic documents but merely more eye-witness testimony and irretrievably muddled with hearsay - horrific and heart-wrenching - but not suitable for "selected" book form unedited and without a critical assessment.  The reader is left without a simple facsimile in which one might note erasures or corrections - although the book has many photographs.

These essays were deserving of being preserved - but not all that we preserve as research materials constitute historical documents nor does their collection constitute an "archival documentary".

The title of this book should have reflected that these were compositions by survivors - compositions written after the events.  The very distortions which were the mainstay of Molotov-era propaganda otherwise risk being repeated as if fro the mouths of child witnesses.  Stanford University would do a service to readers by making available on the web the compositions which were not selected and any document reflecting the instructions to the students by the teachers involved and whether the compositions were written in one sitting in a room or benefited from hearsay correction by parents.

What we know of human behavior in situations were many will perish is not reflected in these accounts.  In particular, no details of bullying in the traincars by victims against victims are reported although such matters are commonplace in these circumstances.  Photographs of boys in boots do not indicate the fate of the weaker boy from whom the boots had been stolen.  These are the sad realities and some of the many reasons that testimonials and photographs are not themselves part of an historical account no matter how much we me be tempted to use them as illustrations.

What occurred is so horrendous that a finer memorial to all victims is deserved and their memory was not well-served by Hoover Institute no matter how well-intentioned and even if ignorant of the personality and life of Bettelheim.

Having myself taught from Bettelheim's writings in college courses prior to 1981, I can only feel more anger than shame.  He ranks as a more serious fraud than Harry Stack Sullivan or Margaret Mead and his name mars any memorial to suffering inflicted upon children.

The reality of war, ethnic cleansing and genocide is too important for casual "history" to pass without objection.  To say nothing in opposition to this book is to countenance falsification of the past - a falsification however unintended in a story of a series of events which itself began with an immense lie.

At the very least, Stanford should release an edition with facsimilies, without selection and with a critical assessment to address both the issues raised here and elsewhere.