Unpacking His Library Again: Why does the Paul A. Levine Library Matter?

Abstract

The main purpose of this paper is to properly honor the legacy of Holocaust historian Paul A. Levine, who had passed away in 2019. This has not happened so far due to several reasons, including the new pandemic reality, that obscured the sorrowful effort of the few people who struggled to maintain the wealth that he had left behind, and saved the archive from being lost forever. Therefore, for the sake of love, empathy, and historical memory, I shall bring forth a few simple suggestions and some questions of high significance: (a) Why should Paul A. Levine be honored one more time? (b) Why was there a need to rescue Levine’s library (in 2020)? (c) What does the library hide in it, and why should it be kept? As the initiator and the historian’s closest friend, in Berlin, I want to tell you about the initiative’s struggles, its first achievements, and its visions.

Since present argument draws from both the concept of historical memory and from the issue of the historian's responsibility, I discuss some moral aspects which make more vivid the whole issue; highlighting the importance of private micro-archives for future historiographical Studies of the Holocaust, I argue that maintaining the archive is about more than the initiative’s struggle against indifference towards a particular historian's legacy. Going deeper, in a limited way, into suggested "what-&-why" questions, I furthermore attempt to provide some core ideas that finally could supplement a lost narrative of a historian left in the shade.