Michael Marrus on July 23, 2001.Tibor Kolley/The Globe and Mail
The eminent Canadian historian Michael Marrus, a guiding light among international scholars of the Holocaust, died in Toronto on Dec. 23 at the age of 81. Author of eight books on Jewish history, editor of a 15-volume set of Historic Articles on the Destruction of European Jews (published in Germany and the United States) as well as lectures on four continents and numerous journal articles, Prof. Marrus was a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society (U.K.) and a member of the Order of Canada.
He was the first person to hold the Chancellor Rose and Ray Wolfe Chair of Holocaust Studies at the University of Toronto, where Prof. Marrus spent most of his academic years. These included seven years as dean of the School of Graduate Studies and 19 years on the university’s governing council.
Despite his mountain of academic works on the subject, Prof. Marrus had never intended to be a Holocaust scholar.
“Since as early as I can remember, I wanted to be a lawyer,” he said. “I wanted to be the Clarence Darrow of my age.”
Michael Marrus was born Feb. 3, 1941. His father was a lawyer. Captain Elliott Marrus served in the office of the Judge Advocate General of the Canadian Forces in London during the Second World War when Michael, his first born, was 1-4 years old.
“I’m so proud of him,” said Prof. Marrus, pointing to a large framed photograph of a handsome thirtysomething man in an officer’s uniform, mustache and beret.
After the war, Capt. Marrus resumed his private practice in Toronto and the family lived for a time in the comfortable Forest Hill home of his in-laws where Prof. Marrus and his mother had spent the war years. They later moved to a house on Bathurst Street, the spine of Toronto’s Jewish community, a block south of Holy Blossom Temple, the largest synagogue in the country and among the least orthodox.
Prof. Marrus was a self-confessed nerd growing up. “I hated sports,” he said. “I wasn’t good at any of them.” He eschewed music classes too. The only club he joined was the debating club at Forest Hill Collegiate. “That was fun,” he allowed.
Every summer the Marruses would rent a cottage at Balfour Beach on Lake Simcoe, an hour’s drive north of Toronto. The area was popular with the Jewish community, having been established as a place where Jews could purchase property and build cottages at a time when restrictive covenants prevented them from buying in other areas.
As an undergraduate at University College in the University of Toronto, Prof. Marrus quickly realized two things: He loved “any kind of history” and, after working at his father’s law office in the summer, he didn’t want to practise law. “He couldn’t believe how dull it was,” his sister, Lesley Barsky, said.
Taking an honours Modern History degree, the budding scholar wrote in his memoir that he welcomed the demanding courses. “There was just too much to read, and too little time to do so. After a year or so, I was hooked.”
And, for the first time, he was popular. “I was even invited to join a prestigious social group called the History Club, where selected students and their instructors would meet at a professor’s home in the evening and – guess what? – read papers to the rest!”
Being what he called “an academic all-star” he decamped for the University of California, Berkeley in 1963 to study for a master’s and then a doctoral degree in European history.
It was an exciting time to be at Berkeley and the 22-year-old said he was taken aback, at first, by the civil-rights and anti-war protests taking place on the grounds of the university. The atmosphere couldn’t have been more different from the studious tone he had left behind in Toronto. But he soon fit right in.
“We managed to blend radical student politics with serious academic application,” he wrote, “and I came to love it.”
Prof. Marrus elected to write his thesis on France and the assimilation of French Jews at the time of the Dreyfus affair, an 1894 trial in which a Jewish officer in the French military was wrongly convicted of treason for allegedly passing military secrets to the enemy (Germany).
Prof. Marrus spent considerable time doing research in France in the mid-1960s and was able to read, write and speak French fluently, thanks to the help of a girlfriend. “Cherchez la femme,” he explained with a twinkle in his eye, just a few weeks before he died.
Prof. Marrus’s dissertation was exceptionally well written and was printed in book form by Oxford in 1971 as The Politics of Assimilation.
He returned to Toronto and, for the next few years, the budding academic rose through the ranks of the history department at U of T, becoming a full professor in 1978.
During those years he wrote, not on the Holocaust, but mostly for academic journals in his chosen field of social change in France.
But it was The Politics of Assimilation that drew the attention of the renowned American historian Robert Owen Paxton – a specialist on France during the Second World War – and that changed everything.
Prof. Marrus was asked by Mr. Paxton’s publisher if he would partner with him on a book about the Jews under the rule of Vichy France, a collaborationist administration that governed “unoccupied” France during the 1939-45 war.
He jumped at the chance. “Paxton was one of the leading historians on Europe,” Prof. Marrus said. “I was flattered to be asked.”
Vichy France and the Jews, published in 1981 in both French and English, proved to be revolutionary. The book sold thousands of copies in the United States, France and internationally, largely because it exposed the extent to which the authorities in Vichy abetted Germany’s “final solution” for the Jews in France.
For the next three decades, Prof. Marrus focused primarily on the Holocaust, turning out six more books and almost 100 journal articles on the subject as he rode the wave of his newfound acclaim.
The Holocaust in History, published in 1987, was the first comprehensive historiography of Holocaust scholarship. In it, Prof. Marrus implored scholars to focus on “understanding why so many followed [Hitler] down his murderous path.”
“Michael cautioned against the temptation of historians’ hubris,” noted Christopher Browning, a prominent scholar at the University of North Carolina. You cannot condemn people in history, “for not acting with the same wisdom and moral awareness that we have obtained by hindsight.”
He wrote a highly readable biography of Canadian liquor tycoon Samuel Bronfman, titled Mr. Sam, which was commissioned by the Bronfman family (on his condition that they would not view any part of the book until it had been published.)
He also earned a master’s of law degree from U of T (2005) to help in writing Some Measure of Justice, a book on restitution for survivors of the Holocaust.
But, of all Prof. Marrus’s accomplishments, it was a partial failure that gave him satisfaction.
“I think Michael was proudest of his work on the Vatican Commission,” said Doris Bergen, who succeeded Prof. Marrus in the Wolfe chair of Holocaust Studies at U of T. She was referring to the six-person Historical Commission (three Jewish scholars and three Roman Catholic scholars) looking into Pope Pius XII and his role in the Second World War, as it pertained to the Jews of Germany and Nazi-occupied countries.
The commission was charged with critically examining 11 volumes of archival Holy See documents and with raising relevant questions should these files not adequately cover certain delicate matters concerning the pope and Nazi Germany.
Over the course of several months, the commissioners pored over the documents and met four times in different cities.
It was unanimous that the 11 volumes fell well short of “understanding the role of the papacy during the Holocaust,” the commissioners said.
Prof. Marrus took a leading role in drafting the group’s report. It posed 47 questions that needed answering and required many more documents.
Prof. Marrus said he “really believed” they were brushing away the ashes that had concealed the role of the papacy.
“Which is why he took it very hard when the Vatican dismissed the commission’s request,” said Prof. Bergen, and slammed the door in their faces.
Despite that, Prof. Marrus’s was a brilliant and distinguished academic career.
In her foreword to his final book, Lessons of the Holocaust, published in 2016, historian Margaret MacMillan wrote: “If I had to walk through a minefield I would like someone like Michael Marrus to lead me. He is calm, careful and wise.”
The Massey Incident
Nearing the end of his career, however, in September, 2017, Prof. Marrus did put a foot wrong and set off a politically charged blast.
Prof. Marrus loved Massey College, a graduate residential enclave at the University of Toronto. He loved the red-brick architecture, reminiscent of Oxford and Cambridge. And he loved the rituals: Fellows of the college wear academic gowns to High Table, people take port in the library; a George Santayana quote is carved in wood: “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”
Prof. Marrus appreciated the college for welcoming him as a senior fellow in 2006 when he was required to retire from his university position at the age of 65. He was given a lovely large office and lots of respect.
And he continued to write, to lecture, and to advise others, especially the junior fellows. He made it a point to lunch frequently with a different group each time. It was at such a lunch with three junior fellows that Prof. Marrus uttered a dozen words that would change the remainder of his life.
One of the fellows at the table was a young Black woman. The party was joined by the then-Master of the College, former senator Hugh Segal.
Sensing an auspicious moment, Prof. Marrus turned to the Black woman, pointed toward Mr. Segal and said: “You know this is your master, eh? Do you feel the lash?”
After a stunned moment, the woman rose and told Mr. Segal: “If this man [Prof. Marrus] doesn’t know what he has done wrong, you better explain it to him.”
Prof. Marrus, speaking five years later, said it was only when the woman got up to leave that he realized his remarks were taken the wrong way. “It was silly,” he said. “I never meant to hurt her.”
His remarks, however, were quickly labelled “an anti-Black racial slur” in various media and the outcry that followed compelled Prof. Marrus to resign from the college six days later.
“He was devastated,” said a close friend, Harold Troper, co-author of the book None is Too Many – Canada and the Jews of Europe.
A Globe and Mail editorial denounced the outcry and said Prof. Marrus “has been treated unfairly, which is as unacceptable as the remark he made.”
Made aware of the Massey incident from press coverage, the award-winning U.S. author, Philip Roth, then gravely ill, sent Prof. Marrus a copy of his 2001 book, The Human Stain. It tells the story of a Jewish university professor in a small New England town, wrongly accused of being a racist and suffering the loss of his university position, his reputation, his academic legacy.
Philip Roth was Prof. Marrus’s favourite author. Receiving this gift, he said, was “very unexpected … a source of pride.”
Ironically, the incident led Massey College to quickly drop the title of Master and to replace it with “Head of College.” This should not be surprising, since the Marrus statement that day had been an attempt to lampoon the racist-sounding title of “Master” rather than level a slur against the Black student.
Prof. Marrus leaves his wife Randi; their children Jeremy, Adam, Naomi Kriss, son-in-law Alan and grandchildren Noah, Aaron and Judah.