Mennonite Weekly Review

Historian Franklin H. Littell broke ground in two fields of study, the Holocaust and the origins of Anabaptism. Littell died May 23 near Philadelphia at the age of 91. Recent events confirm that what he taught for decades bears repeating: Christians must learn the lessons of the Holocaust and oppose anti-Semitism.

A Methodist, Littell held a place of honor among Mennonite historians for his contributions to the midcentury rebirth of Anabaptist scholarship.

Littell “helped to bring credibility to the Anabaptist movement in university settings at a time when this was a novel, and academically risky, position to take,” said John D. Roth, professor of history at Goshen (Ind.) College. Roth edits Mennonite Quarterly Review, a scholarly journal that Littell contributed to as a consulting editor, and later honorary editor, from 1969 to 2009.

Outside Mennonite circles, Littell was most widely known as a pioneer of Holocaust studies. The field essentially didn’t exist before 1959 when he set up the first graduate seminar on the topic at Emory University. Now, according to Littell’s obituary in The New York Times, “hundreds of colleges offer courses on the Holocaust, and many states require public schools to teach about it.”

Knowledge of Nazi Germany’s genocidal slaughter of 6 million Jews during World War II remains essential. Holocaust denial and its evil companion, hatred of Jews, persist as stains on humanity.

Early this year Pope Benedict XVI sparked a controversy when he lifted the excommunication of Bishop Richard Williamson, who has denied that millions of Jews were killed in the Holocaust. Responding to protests, Benedict in February condemned Holocaust denial as “intolerable and altogether unacceptable.”

President Obama denounced Holocaust denial on at least two occasions in June. Speaking in Germany at the site of the Buchenwald concentration camp, he said: “To this day, there are those who insist that the Holocaust never happened — a denial of fact and truth that is baseless and ignorant and hateful. This place is the ultimate rebuke to such thoughts, a reminder of our duty to confront those who would tell lies about our history.”

In his speech to the Muslim world in Egypt, the president included a similar message, meant particularly as a rebuke to Iranian president and Holocaust denier Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Less than a week later, on June 10 in Washington, security guard Stephen Johns was shot dead at the U.S. Holocaust Museum. Authorities identified 88-year-old white supremacist and Holocaust denier James von Brunn as the killer.

Thankfully, overt anti-Semitism is much less common in the United States than it once was. Recent polls have found that less than 2 percent of Americans seriously doubt the Holocaust happened. Yet a subculture of anti-Jewish bigotry thrives, especially on the Internet. Violence still crawls from dark corners of prejudice.