Is the Holocaust Unique? Perspectives on Comparative Genocide (review)

Book Reviews 135 Steinlauf reviews the Solidarity movement and the fall of communism, the Auschwitz convent controversy, the interest of young Poles in Poland's Jewish past (e.g. the popular Polish translations of Isaac Bashevis Singer), and the phenomenon of "new Jews," who had been raised secular by their Marxist parents, discovering their Jewish roots and becoming religious. He looks at Poland today, after the fall of communism, with its share of antisemites on the right, convinced that all Jews hate Poles. (Why is "antisemitism without Jews" such a surprise? Shakespeare wrote the Merchant a/Venice in an England without Jews.) But I wish Steinlaufhad given some consideration as well to the anti-clericals on the left who are determined that public policy will not be dictated by churchmen. In other words, contemporary Poland, as this book demonstrates, is no more monolithic than any other society. A Senior Research Fellow at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research in New York, Steinlaufassumes a mantle once worn by the late Lucjan Dobroszycki, the meticulous and renowned chronicler ofthe Lodz ghetto. Obviously YIVO continues to be a world class institution that attracts and employs outstanding scholars. I am pleased that my friend Lucjan found a worthy successor. Ronald Modras Professor of Theological Studies Saint Louis University Is the Holocaust Unique? Perspectives on Comparative Genocide, edited by Alan S. Rosenbaum (Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1996), 222 pp. $17.00 (p). "The time has come to fix the place ofthe Nazi-engineered Holocaust against the Jews, Gypsies, and millions of others so that it can be accurately integrated into the mainstream ofrecorded history" (p. 1). To Alan Rosenbaum and the contributors to this book the issue is the question ofwhether the Holocaust is unique. But this is a question, they believe, that can only be resolved through considering other examples of genocide in relation to the Holocaust. The result is a provocative, challenging, and, at times, strident book that displays the passions that are aroused by the question at the heart of the collection. Indeed, Israel Charny states in his "Foreword" that he finds "too many parts spun from the same cloth of all-or-nothing, ideologically driven thinking, prejudice, arrogance or degradation, and posturing for power. ..." (p. xiii). Equally troubling is that neither the editor nor the contributors ever explain why the term "unique" is invoked as opposed to simply "different," what demands are being made in the name of"uniqueness," and, ifthe Holocaust is "unique," what follows from that: what are we supposed to do or become? The editor reiterates his view that the Holocaust is "an event unlike any other" and "thus" has "special significance for all 136 SHOFAR Summer 1998 Vol. 16, No.4 humanity," but his attempt to explain what that significance consists of is weak and banal in the extreme (p. 6). Yes, preaching hatred for those different from ourselves can lead to persecution, but one can learn that lesson from many sources. One wishes, too, that the editor had provided a history of the argument about "uniqueness." When did it appear, how has it changed over the years, what purposes has it served? What underlies the claim: lack ofknowledge? An expression of grief? These may be true for the public, but, apparently, are not what drives those scholars who insist that the Holocaust is wholly other. Rather, there is a theological version that sacralizes the Holocaust, removing it from history, and a political version that attempts to capture the power that flows from victimization. In these accounts, the focus is not historical truth, but rather the furthering ofone's cause through the appropriation of the reality of Nazi genocide. David Stannard's essay on "Uniqueness as Denial: The Politics of Genocide Scholarship" gets at some ofthese issues, but that is not his primary concern. Do the claims to uniqueness have harmful effects, making us callous or indifferent to the genocides ofother peoples and unprepared for new outbreaks of genocide as we look over our shoulder at the past? If it is true, as the editor states, that the assertion of ''uniqueness appears unavoidably to invite invidious comparisons with others' pain and suffering ..." (p. 6), must we insist...