Oliner, Pearl M.

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Oliner, Pearl M.

PERSONAL:

Married Samuel P. Oliner (a sociologist and educator). Education: University of California, Berkeley, Ph.D.

ADDRESSES:

Office—The Altruistic Personality and Prosocial Behavior Institute, Department of Sociology, Humboldt State University, Arcata, CA 95521. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Sociologist, educator, and writer. Humboldt State University, Arcata, CA, emeritus professor of education and research director for the Altruistic Personality and Prosocial Behavior Institute.

WRITINGS:

Teaching Elementary Social Studies: A Rational and Humanistic Approach, Harcourt Brace Jovanovich (New York, NY), 1976.

(Editor, with others) The Social Studies Teacher, Social Studies Review, 1984.

(Editor, with others) The Study of Women: New Challenges, New Directions, Humboldt Journal of Social Relations, 1984.

(With husband, Samuel P. Oliner) The Altruistic Personality: Rescuers of Jews in Nazi Europe, foreword by Harold M. Schulweis, Free Press (New York, NY), 1988.

(Coeditor) Embracing the Other: Philosophical, Psychological, and Historical Perspectives on Altruism, New York University Press (New York, NY), 1992.

(With Samuel P. Oliner) Toward a Caring Society: Ideas into Action, Praeger (Westport, CT), 1995.

Saving the Forsaken: Religious Culture and the Rescue of Jews in Nazi Europe, statistical analysis by Jeanne Wielgus and Mary B. Gruber, Yale University Press (New Haven, CT), 2004.

SIDELIGHTS:

Pearl M. Oliner has focused much of her career on the topics of altruism and prosocial behavior in education and society at large. In the process she has examined and written about the rescuers of Jews during the Holocaust and explored the influence of religion, gender, and national culture on altruism. For example, in the 1988 book The Altruistic Personality: Rescuers of Jews in Nazi Europe, Oliner and her husband and coauthor, Samuel P. Oliner, examine the differences between the people who did nothing to help Jews who were being persecuted in their countries during the Holocaust of World War II and the few people who did risk their lives, as well as the lives of their families, to save Jews from almost certain death. Coauthor Samuel P. Oliner is himself a holocaust survivor.

For their book, the authors interviewed more than 700 European rescuers, nonrescuers, and Holocaust survivors. The questionnaire that they used to interview people is reproduced in the book. Among the authors' findings were that rescuers were more likely to have had Jewish friends before the war and a certain amount of resources to accomplish the rescue mission, such as money for bribes. "The answers of rescuers and rescued to the questionnaire indicate poignantly the varieties of deliverance," wrote Thomas Keneally in the New York Times Book Review. "People were concealed in walls, smuggled in trains, given false identities, succored, fed, rescued in an instant by a clever lie or sustained over years by a brave ruse."

Oliner also collaborated with her husband to write Toward a Caring Society: Ideas into Action. Based on the idea that one of society's primary moral obligations is to foster a sense of individual responsibility for the welfare of the others, the book examines developmental and social psychology along with examples from the real world, such as politics and business, to reveal how caring efforts have worked in various parts of society. Furthermore, the authors discuss what can be done to build a more caring society and institutions, from the family and schools to the workplace and places of worship. In their effort to present pragmatic guidelines, the authors discuss what they believe are basic principles that can be incorporated into all aspects of daily life to produce a more caring society.

"This is definitely not a book to be read only once and then put on the shelf," wrote Fred Cloud in the Civil Rights Journal. "It may properly be viewed—and used—as a manual for agents of social change. The reviewer shares the conviction of the authors that all human beings need to be valued, included, and involved in the life of the total community."

For her 2004 book Saving the Forsaken: Religious Culture and the Rescue of Jews in Nazi Europe, Oliner draws on data collected by the Humboldt State University's Altruistic Personality and Prosocial Behavior Institute, where the author has served as research director. From the data, the author examines how religion factored into individuals' decisions to either rescue or not rescue Jews during the Holocaust. Examining religious, irreligious, and moderately religious individuals within their cultural contexts, the author, according to Commonweal contributor Ernest Rubenstein, "assesses the impact of religious culture, or its absence, on the willingness of people to rescue those in need." Among the author's findings is that people who were less likely to reject people who were very different from themselves within their own cultural contexts were more likely to help the Jews during the Holocaust.

"Oliner's motive is noble: to uncover the social factors favoring the appearance of altruism so that they may be reproduced in our own times," wrote Rubenstein in Commonweal. Donald J. Dietrich wrote in Church History: "If this book can challenge scholars to become social and political activists in constructing caring societies, Oliner has succeeded in her mission."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Choice, February, 1996, B.E. Lawson, review of Toward a Caring Society: Ideas into Action, p. 963; January, 2006, D. Harper, review of Saving the Forsaken: Religious Culture and the Rescue of Jews in Nazi Europe, p. 894.

Church History, December, 2005, Donald J. Dietrich, review of Saving the Forsaken, p. 867.

Civil Rights Journal, fall, 1997, Fred Cloud, review of Toward a Caring Society, p. 66.

Commonweal, January 13, 2006, Ernest Rubenstein, "A Test of Goodness," review of Saving the Forsaken, p. 25.

Contemporary Sociology, March, 1989, Helen Fein, review of The Altruistic Personality: Rescuers of Jews in Nazi Europe, p. 191.

Families in Society: The Journal of Contemporary Social Services, December, 1990, Morton S. Perlmutter, review of The Altruistic Personality, p. 621; May, 1997, review of Toward a Caring Society, p. 333.

German Studies Review, February, 2007, Joel Dark, review of Saving the Forsaken, p. 325.

International Journal of Comparative Sociology, September-October, 1989, Rudi H. Nussbaum, review of The Altruistic Personality, p. 274.

New York Times Book Review, September 4, 1988, Thomas Keneally, "How Good People Got That Way," review of The Altruistic Personality.

Present Tense, May-June, 1989, Peter I. Rose, review of The Altruistic Personality, p. 61.

Public Opinion Quarterly, fall, 1990, Paul D. Allison, review of The Altruistic Personality.

Reference & Research Book News, February, 1996, review of Toward a Caring Society, p. 2.

Social Service Review, March, 1990, Ian S. Evison, review of The Altruistic Personality, p. 160.

Sociology of Religion, summer, 2007, Marilyn F. Nefsky, review of Saving the Forsaken, p. 227.

ONLINE

Humboldt University Web site,http://www.humboldt.edu/ (February 23, 2008), faculty profile of author.