The Holocaust and Collective Memory - Hardcover

Novick, Peter

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0747547734 ISBN 13: 9780747547730

Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC, 2000

Synopsis

How and when did the Holocaust come to loom so large in postwar Jewish and American and international life? This is the question that this book sets out to answer. It asks whether defining Jewishness in terms of victimhood alone does not hand Hitler a posthumous victory, and whether claiming uniqueness for the Holocaust does not render other atrocities (Biafra, Rwanda, Kosovo) "not so bad".

About this title

Review

In the first decades following World War II, Americans rarely discussed the Holocaust. Now, remembering the Holocaust has become a fundamental part of Jewish identity; gentiles, too, view the Holocaust as a touchstone of moral solemnity. In The Holocaust and Collective Memory, Peter Novick asks why, and his answers are both sensible and shocking. He explains the immediate post-war silence about the Holocaust by reviewing the basics of cold war politics: just after the liberation of the concentration camps, Americans were called upon to sympathise with "gallant Berliners" who resisted the Soviets and built a wall against Communism--an "enormous shift from one set of alignments to another", Novick notes. Novick then leads readers through the series of events that brought the Holocaust to the forefront of American consciousness--the trial of Adolph Eichmann, the Six-Day War, the Carter administration's Israel policy, and the construction of the Holocaust Museum in Washington DC.

Among Novick's most controversial ideas is his assertion that American Jews spoke softly of the Holocaust at first because they didn't want to be seen as victims; later, Jews decided that victim status would work in their best political interest. Or, as Novick puts it, "Jews were intent on permanent possession of the gold medal in the Victimization Olympics". The Holocaust and Collective Memory is as carefully researched and argued as it is polemical and probing. Novick does not suffer Holocaust deniers lightly, and he is empathic toward victims and survivors, but he has no tolerance for false sentiment. One wishes that more people would ask, as Novick does, what kind of a country would spend millions of dollars on a museum honouring European Jewish Holocaust victims instead of a monument to its own shameful history of black slavery. --Michael Joseph Gross

Review

'It should be required reading for all those who believe that the memorialising of the Holocaust is because its memory is only now surfacing amongst the survivors' IRISH TIMES 'Eloquently angry, at times bitterly funny, but scrupulously researched book' SCOTSMAN 'In this powerful and provocative book, Peter Novick offers a fascinating analysis of the shifting ways in which the Holocaust has been perceived by the American-Jewish world. It deserves the widest possible readership' JEWISH CHRONICLE

Edition details

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
• Publication date: 2000
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0747547734
• ISBN 13: 9780747547730
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 384