Goldhagen writes that in Birn's piece, "Words, turns of phrases, are wrested from their contexts," accusing her of removing quotation marks from her citations of his work to distort their meaning.
Finkelstein's 50 page piece, which appeared in the July-August issue of New Left Review, another British publication, alleges that Goldhagen's book "is not scholarship at all," and is rife with "glaring internal contradictions."
"A broad range of solid scholarly research has concluded that popular German anti-Semitism neither accounted for Hitler's triumph nor was it the impetus behind the Final Solution," writes Finkelstein, who is the son of Holocaust survivors.
Finkelstein, who is known as an ardent critic of Israel, also wrote in the article that the Holocaust was "seized upon and methodically marketed because it was politically expedient," by Zionists.
In a German newspaper, Goldhagen called Finkelstein's piece a "gross misinterpretation" of his book that "has little to do with any knowledge of and concern for scholarship on the Holocaust and everything to do with his burning political agenda."
Hilberg said he believes that Birn "did a credible job," but conceded that in citing Goldhagen, it is possible that Birn may have inadvertently omitted some quotation marks or ellipses.
Rather than an intentional defamation, Hilberg said that such mistakes may lie "in the realm of sloppiness," but that "this is a misdemeanor rather than a felony." He said he expects the revised version, which he has not yet seen, to be considerably improved.
Ruth R. Wisse, professor of Yiddish literature and comparative literature, said she had not read either of the articles, but added that criticism of this nature is inevitable.
"Professor Goldhagen has written a very important book and I think that it has certainly received the serious attention that it merits," she said. "It has also elicited the kind of reaction that is unfortunately predictable when it concerns a subject that is still surrounded with so much denial and pain."
-Jenny E. Heller '01, London bureau chief, contributed to the reporting of this story.