Scholars' Conference - Save the Date

Joan Peterson

Franklin's righteous anger and straight talk inspired me . . . gave me courage to write about what I could not speak.

He is a hero to me.

Sending sympathy to Marcie and to his family.

Joan Peterson
Professor of Education
Saint Mary's College of California

Yitzchak Kerem

Dear Marcie and Colleagues,
I convey my deepest sympathies on the passing of our dear colleague and mentor Dr. Franklin H. Littell. Not only is his contribution to Holocaust studies, education, and commemoration unprecedented and unique, similar was his activity in ecumenical and interfaith dialogue, study, and understanding.

We will all remember Franklin for his keen intellect, deep understanding of human nature and evil, and for his unique character. His Texan sayings, slang, proverbs, and style were entertaining and unforgettable. His cosmopolitan and multi-religious personality was similarly fascinating and rare. His devotion to Holocaust education and Gentile responsibility merits the utmost admiration and respect. He succeeded in bring together peoples of diverse disciplines and faiths to study the lessons of the Holocaust (Shoa) and also not forget other genocides and conflicts. He was a pioneer in seeing Christian/Gentile responsibility for the Shoa and bringing Jews and Gentiles together for understanding, and education.

Franklin also highlighted the Righteous in the Holocaust; especially in the Germany that he knew in the 1930s, and WWII, tried to enter the
Eastern Orthodox churches and Islam into our dialogue on the Holocaust and responsibility, and made great efforts to expand the dialogue in the general public, in school systems, and media.  

Franklin was a mentsch of the first degree, extremely friendly and personable to all he met, and a good friend and colleague.

These words are an understatement for a great man, who has left a valuable legacy.
I console Marcie in her time of mourning and am hopeful that we will all continue the work Franklin began and devoted his life, and advance the study of the Holocaust and the Churches even in these difficult financial times.

Shalom and may Franklin Littell's memory live on.

Yitzchak Kerem
Historian on Sephardic and Eastern Jewry and the Holocaust
on sabbatical
American Jewish University of Los Angeles ykerem@ajula.edu ykerem1@ca.rr.com

New York Times publishes obituary of Franklin

Franklin Littell, Scholar of Holocaust, Is Dies at 91

By DOUGLAS MARTIN

Published: May 30, 2009

Franklin H. Littell, a father of Holocaust studies who traced his engagement with the subject to the revulsion he felt as a young Methodist minister while witnessing a big Nazi rally in Nuremberg in 1939, died last Saturday at his home in Merion Station, Pa., outside Philadelphia. He was 91.

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Dith Pran/The New York Times

Franklin H. Littell, left, Methodist minister and supporter of Israel, with Menachem Begin, the Israeli prime minister, in 1981.

His wife, Maria Sachs Littell, announced the death.

Dr. Littell (pronounced lih-TELL), the author of more than two dozen scholarly books and a thousand articles, was among the first intellectuals to delve into the question of how baptized Christians in the heart of Christian Europe could have either killed or ignored the killing of six million Jews. A big part of the answer, as he found it, was that Christians from the time of Jesus on had shown systematic contempt for Jews and their beliefs.

Hubert G. Locke, a leading Holocaust scholar and former dean of the Evans School of Public Affairs at the University of Washington, said in an interview on Wednesday that Dr. Littell had had “singular influence” in turning a focus on these ancient prejudices as the basis for the Holocaust.

Another Holocaust scholar, John K. Roth, emeritus professor of philosophy at Claremont McKenna College, said Dr. Littell had “helped to turn the tide on the awareness of Christian complicity, shortcoming, indifference in the face of what was happening to Jews under Hitler.”

For more than a decade after the end of World War II, the Holocaust was studied and publicly discussed sparsely; the common wisdom was that survivors needed time to heal. But by the 1960s, attention to it was starting to grow with the publication of books like Elie Wiesel’s “Night,” the trial of Adolph Eichmann and other efforts to collect testimony of survivors.

It was around then that academic programs on the Holocaust were pioneered by Dr. Littell. At Emory University in 1959, he started the first graduate seminar on the Holocaust, preceding what are believed to have been the first undergraduate courses on it, in 1960 at Brandeis and in 1961 at Brooklyn College. In 1970, with Dr. Locke, he set up one of the first annual scholarly conferences on the Holocaust, a forum that continues today.

In 1976, at Temple University, he began the first doctoral program in Holocaust studies. And in 1998, he and his wife established the first interdisciplinary master’s degree program in Holocaust studies, at the Richard Stockton College of New Jersey.

“When Franklin Littell started his work, it was almost the case that there was no such thing as Holocaust studies as a field,” Dr. Roth said. Now hundreds of colleges offer courses on the Holocaust, and many states require public schools to teach about it.

Dr. Littell also became an enthusiastic supporter of Israel, in part because he believed that its very existence refuted theologies that foresaw or favored the withering away of the Jewish people. He rejected the theology of some Christian backers of Israel that Jews must ultimately become Christian, Maria Littell said.

Soon after the Six-Day War, of June 1967, Dr. Littell started an organization called Christians Concerned for Israel, to promote a pro-Israeli spirit in Roman Catholic and mainline Protestant churches. In 1978, he founded the National Christian Leadership Conference for Israel, which lobbied against arms sales to Arab nations and campaigned against the United Nations resolution, adopted in 1975 and since repealed, that described Zionism as racism.

Franklin Hamlin Littell was born on June 20, 1917, in Syracuse, graduated from Cornell College in Iowa and earned a divinity degree from Union Theological Seminary. Afterward he visited Germany on the way to a religion conference for young people in Amsterdam.

It was then that he attended the Nuremberg rally, out of curiosity. Later in life, he recalled having been appalled by its open racism and its religious glorification of Aryans. When Hitler made an almost godlike appearance, bathed in a halo of lights, Mr. Littell was so repelled, he remembered, that he had to leave.

Mr. Littell later earned a doctorate in theology from Yale and, after teaching at the University of Michigan, joined the United States high commissioner in occupied Germany as the Protestant adviser on de-Nazification.

In 1966, he founded the Institute for American Democracy to fight political extremists. It was attacked by far-right groups, and a window of his home was shot out.

In 1969, Dr. Littell published a book on political extremism, “Wild Tongues: A Handbook of Social Pathology,” in which he accused the prominent conservative author and columnist William F. Buckley Jr. of being a “fellow traveler” of fascism. Mr. Buckley sued for libel and won.

Dr. Littell’s first wife, the former Harriet Lewis, died in 1978. In addition to Maria Sachs Littell, he is survived by three daughters from his first marriage, Jeannie Lawrence, Karen Littell and Miriam Littell; a son from that marriage, Stephen; his stepsons, Jonathan Sachs and Robert L. Sachs Jr.; his stepdaughter, Jennifer Sachs Dahnert; 11 grandchildren; and four great-grandchildren.

Over his long career, Dr. Littell was also president of Iowa Wesleyan College and a founding board member of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, in Washington.

His best-known book was “The Crucifixion of the Jews” (1975), in which he pressed his view that Christianity is essentially Jewish. Jesus, Paul and Peter, Dr. Littell said, would have been executed at Auschwitz.

Images of Franklin and Marcie

Dr. Rosalie H. Franks

Dr. Franklin Littell's scholarship, kindness, and warmth inspired me to teach about the lessons of the Holocaust that I learned from interviewing 92 survivors for the Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation from 1994-1999. Starting in 1995 the Scholars' Conference helped me immeasurably to educate myself and my students about the annihilation of the Jews.

I became better acquainted with Franklin when I traveled with him and Marcie during the Richard Stockton College's Lest We Forget Graduate Study Tour of Lithuania, Poland, and Hungary. In spite of his advanced years in 2003, Franklin continued to lecture about the early warnings of genocide and educators' responsibility to teach students about the lessons derived from history and the past. He was a provocative and inspiring teacher.

I loved Franklin's infectious sense of humor, his sharp intellect, his willingness to listen, and, most of all, his openness to educators needing to study and learn from his wisdom. I will miss Franklin's smile and curiosity about his students and the world.

Marcie was a wonderful helpmate and, fortunately, we have her to carry on his revolutionary scholarship. She like Franklin are a blessing to all of us.

My condolences to Marcie and her family.

Rosalie H. Franks, Ed.D.
Roger Williams University
Department of Writing Studies, Rhetoric , and Composition

From Patrick Henry

Franklin was an absolutely irreplaceable human being. This is why his loss is so heavy and why we are all so fortunate to have known him and to have been influenced by him. 

Patrick Henry

Whitman College 

Walla Walla, WA 99362