Robert Gellately
Biographical information
For his major contribution to Holocaust studies, Dr. Robert Gellately was awarded an honorary doctor of letters degree during the 10 a.m. session of spring convocation on May 24.
Dr. Gellately did his BA, B.Ed. and MA at Memorial where, as an undergraduate, he took the Gold Medal for Academic Excellence in History. His doctoral thesis for the London School of Economics was published under the title The Politics of Economic Despair: Shopkeepers and German Politics, 1890-1914. That led to a tenure-track position at Cornell. From 1976 to 1998, he taught at Huron College/University of Western Ontario. He moved to Clark University in 1998 where he was Strassler Professor in Holocaust History from 1998 to 2003. In August 2003 he joined the faculty of Florida State University where he is the Earl Ray Beck Professor of History. In 1990 he published The Gestapo and German Society: Enforcing Racial Policy, 1933-1945. His latest book is Backing Hitler: Consent and Coercion in Nazi Germany, 1933-1945.
Oration honouring Robert Gellately, given Shane O'Dea, Public orator
History is a bit like heaven: it is a house with many mansions: some of them wondrously opulent, others oppressively poor, still others banally bourgeois. It is this last house that Robert Gellately occupies and he has decorated it with the everyday thoughts of German anti-Semites. But do not, Vice-Chancellor, think Gellately's work takes on the character of his subjects. Far from it, for he brings to these people a depth of research, a pungency of analysis, a clarity of prose that lets us understand what the ordinary German was thinking before and during the last war. And this has implications that are not merely academic or even intellectually prurient for Dr. Gellately's work leads to an understanding of what fosters racism and inculcates genocide.
His academic career has been most distinguished: he has held three university chairs in Holocaust studies at Clark University, at Florida State and, most recently, at Oxford. His three books, The Gestapo and German Society, Backing Hitler and Nuremberg Interviews have all been highly acclaimed, been brought out in French, German and Spanish and one has even been edited for use in German schools. So his reach is well beyond the academic and he has clearly touched on a matter of considerable public concern: the complicity of the person in the street with the action of the politician in the state. From what did this come? Bob Gellately was born in St. John's and did his BA and MA at Memorial. But his career as an undergraduate can be seen as salutary. While he always did reasonably well in his studies, it was not until he got into the Honours History program that his mind was set afire. Caught by the courses he was doing, he wanted to read documents in the original, in German, in a language he had never studied. So he taught himself with a drive that staggered even his academically-driven professors. And he did brilliantly, winning the University Gold Medal in History in his graduating year. It was his MA thesis that put him on a track from which he has not swerved in almost 40 years. He began to look behind the obvious – the centuries-old religious anti-Semitism – and to examine the development of political anti-Semitism brought into being by changes in late 19th century Germany.
He has looked at the process of this dark aspect of humanity as it moves from exclusion, to inclusion to extermination. The excluded comprise both victim and victimizer. His study of late 19th German retailers deals with a group who felt excluded by new developments in their trade and who, susceptible to the libels of the day, blamed the Jews for their plight. His co-edited volume, Social Outsiders, looks at the process of excluding peoples in various societies. Backing Hitler deals with inclusion and with the extraordinary and not entirely planned way in which the Nazis engaged the majority of Germans (and, indeed, other conquered peoples) in the elimination of the Jews. The Specter of Genocide, a collection of essays co-edited by Gellately, looks at the origins and the nature of genocide internationally so takes in the mass murders in Armenia, Cambodia and Rwanda. His most recent book, one that has drawn great public interest, Nuremberg Interviews, is an edition of the notebooks of an American psychiatrist assigned to observe the Nazi war criminals. What is most disturbing about this book is that none of the defendants expresses any remorse for his war crimes and that almost all display an appalling normality. It would seem then, that such conduct, that the capacity to be complicit in what is viewed as the greatest and most conscious mass murder in human history does not require that one be pathological. The deep horror is that quite ordinary people accepted Nazism in all its manifestations. Dr. Gellately's works are the finest demonstration of what Hannah Arendt strikingly described as the Òbanality of evil.Ó Gellately sets us to look into this and to question ourselves in a time when small wars threaten to bloom into large, when racism is rife between communities and nations, when the drive of blood is not to unity but to division and to death. Vice-Chancellor, I present to you for the degree of doctor of letters, honoris causa, a scholar explicating the inexplicable, one who, reading the dark past, enables us to ponder the uncertain present, Robert John Gellately.
Address to convocation
Granting honorary degrees is the greatest recognition a university can bestow. I am extremely grateful and privileged to have been chosen by the university's Senate for such a degree. To receive this honour from my alma mater is particularly joyful.
When I came to Memorial as a student I had no idea what a university was all about, nor what I wanted to study. I thought it might be interesting to teach high school, but it was difficult to visualize much beyond that. I did not have my career neatly mapped out in advance.
I showed up for classes in my first year and I was just grateful they let me inside the doors. MUN was such an exciting place. My professors were fantastic across the board. I was drawn to history and English.
My history professors impressed me by their great knowledge and expertise. They were so cosmopolitan, spoke so many languages, and came from the best schools all over the world. I have to make special mention of Professor Gerhard Bassler, a new professor at the time. He came from Germany but did his PhD in the United States. I did not have much background in German history, so it took me a while to figure out what he was talking about. But then I began to see that it was important to study the past in order to understand our own world, and I never turned back. I was converted. It was Professor Bassler's broad knowledge of German and Russian history that inspired me. However, what struck me most in him and my other professors here was their love of learning, deep interest in ideas, and commitment to advancing knowledge. Those virtues rubbed off and have stayed with me ever since.
At Memorial I began to do research on the history of modern anti-Semitism and racial persecution. Ever since that time, I have investigated and written about the Holocaust. I am particularly honored to be given this degree on the same day as Mr. Philip Riteman, a survivor of Auschwitz.
In higher education today the Holocaust has become the subject of serious academic investigation involving many scholars from different academic disciplines. There is a great deal of research to do.
Alas, it has to be said that our world in the 21st century, like the 20th century, is haunted by the spectre of genocide. Genocide is not going away. It can happen again, it is happening now. We can see that today in Darfur. Why can't we get the UN to work better? Why can't we do better?
I was struck by what happened in Rwanda just over 10 years ago: 800,000 people murdered in 100 days. That's 8,000 people per day, this in the most Christian country in Africa. That happened in our lifetime. I teach about this subject in courses on comparative genocide. American students are deeply affected when they learn what happened. Contrary to what you might have heard, they are not all rushing off to make their fortunes. They join the Peace Corps and undertake many other selfless commitments, as I know Canadian students do as well.
Let me recommend one book to you about Rwanda, which is so much more than the story of the mass murder itself. The book is Roméo Dallaire's Shake Hands with the Devil: The Failure of Humanity in Rwanda. Dallaire was the Canadian General in charge of the UN peacekeeping mission in Rwanda in the midst of the genocide. He writes in his memoir that he is convinced to this day that he could have stopped the whole thing with 5,000 troops and the powers to use them. Instead the UN tied his hands and took away his troops. His frustration led him to the brink of suicide. We cannot have this. Our civilization demands we find better ways.
It would be a great step forward if we could get universal acceptance of the International Criminal Court. That's going to take responsible work and much effort.
Memorial University opened its doors to me, for which I remain forever grateful. The University is remarkable because it gives us a chance and opens limitless opportunities. On the day I received my B.A. degree I could not imagine that MUN had already laid the foundations for what I would do the rest of my life. I was hooked on history but I still didn't know I was going to have a career as a historian! It is difficult to realize the day you graduate that the years you have spent here will be among the great formative experiences of your life. I am here to honor you. I congratulate you on your accomplishments and wish you further success.
Graduation is a big step, a major milestone, but it is up to you what happens next. This is your century and it will be up to you to get involved and to make the world a better place. The challenges are great and the possibilities are endless. Aim high!