The Nazi Ancestral Proof: Genealogy, Racial Science, and the Final Solution. By Eric Ehrenreich. Bloomington and Indianapolis, IN: Indiana University Press. 2007. Pp. xx+234. Cloth $34.95. ISBN 978-0-253-34945-3.

摘要

One would be hard-pressed to exaggerate just how central notions of race werenfor the National Socialist project. As the Nazis saw it, their racial agenda wasnunderpinned by scientific insight and empirically verifiable facts. Yet thenactual implementation of this agenda inevitably subverted any such claim. Need-nless to say, when it came to establishing the racial identity of various groups andnindividuals, the distinguishing racial features supposedly established by “racialnscientists” never provided sufficiently reliable criteria for the clear distinctionsnthe regime envisaged. Ehrenreich cites the Thuringian Reichsstatthalter, FritznSauckel, who stated in 1940 that he had seen “hundreds of extremely criminalnfull-Jews in the Buchenwald concentration camp byWeimar, who, for the mostnpart, did not exhibit even a trace of anthropological Jewish characteristics. Fre-nquently they were tall and blond and possessed a sharply defined ‘Aryan’ coun-ntenance” (p. 130). In short, when it embarked on the realization of its racialnagenda, the regime, far from relying on the “racial science” that supposedly pro-nvided the basis for its actions, in fact had to rely simply on the principles ofndescent and (ultimately) religious affiliation. The racial characteristics that sup-nposedly set Jews apart really only played a role in the identification of Jews whenntheir occurrence happened to coincide with the fact that an individual’s fore-nbears had belonged to the Jewish community anyway. The ancestral proofnthus formed the bedrock of the regime’s racial policies and “spawned its ownncottage industry” (p. 70). Ehrenreich suggests that “it is probably not an over-nstatement to say that by 1945, aside from the very old and the very young, vir-ntually every Reich citizen, or would-be citizen, had made an ancestral proof atnone time or another” (p. 61). It is all the more surprising that this issue has notnreceived more scholarly attention, and Ehrenreich has made an interesting andnvaluable contribution by elucidating it.