Ruth Bettina Birn (born 1952) is a Canadian historian and author whose main field of research is the security forces of Nazi Germany and their role in the Holocaust.
Based on hundreds of Security Police investigation files kept in the Estonian State Archives, the book analyzes the persecution policies against various victim groups: Communists, Jews, Roma, Russians, Soviet prisoners of war, and so-called asocials.
She was sharply critical of the 1996 book by Daniel Goldhagen, Hitler's Willing Executioners, who she accused of being highly selective with the materials from the Central Office in her article "Historiographical review: Revising the Holocaust", published in The Historical Journal.
[3] In response to their book, Goldhagen sought a retraction and apology from Birn, threatening her at one point to sue her for libel, and, according to Slate, declaring Finkelstein "a supporter of Hamas".
[3][4] The force of the counterattacks against Birn and Finkelstein from Goldhagen's supporters was described by Israeli journalist Tom Segev as "bordering on cultural terrorism ...