Wolfgang Benz (born 9 June 1941) is a German historian and anti-semitism researcher from Ellwangen. He was the director of the Center for Research on Antisemitism of the Technische Universität Berlin between 1990 and 2011, and is also a member of the advisory board for the Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe and was involved in the memorial's design. He has written or published over 200 works. He is considered to be one of the most renowned and well-known historians in modern Germany, and one of the foremost scholars on anti-semitism studies. He has been referred to as the "doyen" of anti-semitism research.

Personal life

Benz studied history, political science and art history in Frankfurt am Main, Kiel and Munich. In 1968 he completed his doctoral thesis on under the supervision of Karl Bosl at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München. From 1969 till 1990, Benz worked at the Institute for Contemporary History in Munich. In 1985 he was co-founder and editor of Dachauer Hefte and since 1992 he also edits the Jahrbuch für Antisemitismusforschung (Yearbook for Research on Antisemitism). He is also editor of the Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft. (Both published by Metropol Verlag.) In 1986 he lectured at the University of New South Wales in Sydney. In 1992, Benz was awarded the Geschwister-Scholl-Preis and the Das politische Buch prize of the Friedrich Ebert Foundation, a social democratic political foundation. Benz received the emeritus status on 21 October 2010. Benz is a member of the advisory board of the Islamophobia Studies Yearbook, edited by Farid Hafez.

Research and opinions

Holocaust casualty numbers

Benz is known for his research at Technische Universität Berlin, estimating that between 5.29–6.2 million Jews were killed by the German Nazi regime during the Holocaust. Benz has been carrying out work on data received after the opening of government archives in Eastern Europe in the 1990s resulting in the adjustment of the death tolls that had been published in the pioneering works by Raul Hilberg, Lucy Dawidowicz and Martin Gilbert. He concluded in 1999: "The goal of annihilating all of the Jews of Europe, as it was proclaimed at the conference in the villa Am Grossen Wannsee in January 1942, was not reached. Yet the six million murder victims make the holocaust a unique crime in the history of mankind. The number of victims—and with certainty the following represent the minimum number in each case—cannot express that adequately. Numbers are just too abstract. However they must be stated in order to make clear the dimension of the genocide: 165,000 Jews from Germany, 65,000 from Austria, 32,000 from France and Belgium, more than 100,000 from the Netherlands, 60,000 from Greece, the same number from Yugoslavia, more than 140,000 from Czechoslovakia, half a million from Hungary, 2.2 million from the Soviet Union, and 2.7 million from Poland. To these numbers must be added all those killed in the pogroms and massacres in Romania and Transitrien [sic!] (over 200,000) and the deported and murdered Jews from Albania and Norway, Denmark and Italy, from Luxembourg and Bulgaria."

• Benz, Wolfgang The Holocaust: A German Historian Examines the Genocide

Comparing Islamophobia and Antisemitism

Benz claimed in early 2010 in connection with the Minaret controversy in Switzerland that "anti-Semites of the 19th Century and some detractors of the Islam of the 21st Century work with similar methods on their concept of the enemy" and warned against the global discrimination of Muslims, which he saw as a "declaration of war against tolerance and democracy". He was criticized by historian Julius H. Schoeps who claimed Benz's suggestions are "dubious – if not dangerous" and by journalist Henryk M. Broder, pointing out that 'Islamophobia' – unlike Antisemitism – has a real basis, e.g. terrorist acts, the way dissidents are treated in Islamic countries etc. The educationist Micha Brumlik, however, has argued that as far as social-psychological aspect is concerned, Benz was right when comparing today's Islamophobia and anti-Semitism of the late 19th and early 20th century. The historian Norbert Frei agreed with Brumlik.

Opposition to Polish monument

Benz opposed the idea of constructing the monument in Berlin to honor Poles who were victims of the German occupation between 1939 and 1945. Being the director of the Center for Research on Anti-Semitism, Wolfgang Benz wrote a letter to the Bundestag president warning of the "danger of nationalizing memory" by building such monuments.

Awards

As a result of his work, Wolfgang Benz has received multiple awards. Most noticeable is the Geschwister-Scholl-Preis he won in 1992, and shared with Barbara Distel. He received the "Gegen Vergessen – Für Demokratie" prize in 2012, from the organization Gegen Vergessen – Für Demokratie.

Literature