The End of the Holocaust (review)

Alvin H. Rosenfeld, the author of a number of well-received works on the literature of the Holocaust, holds the Irving M. Glazer Chair in Jewish Studies and is professor of English at Indiana University, Bloomington, where he is founder and former director of the Borns Jewish Studies Program. The central problem that concerns him here is the Holocaust as it is reflected in popular culture. He fears that despite the many books that are written about it, the many museums that are founded and devoted to perpetuating its memory, and the many films and plays that continue to draw large audiences, the memory of the Holocaust is being misused: "The image of the Holocaust is continually being transfigured, and the several stages of its transfiguration, which one can trace throughout popular culture, may contribute to a fictional subversion of the historical sense rather than a firm consolidation of accurate, verifiable knowledge. Such a development may be an incipient rejection of the Holocaust as it actually was rather than its incorporation by and retention in historical memory" (p. 16).

For many, the Holocaust has transcended the conceptual bounds of historical catastrophe and become a metaphor for radical evil. The result has been mixed and paradoxical. On the one hand, the study of the Holocaust has drawn talented scholars from many disciplines; these researchers have tried to understand not only the course of events, but also their larger significance for the human enterprise. On the other hand, conceptualization of the Holocaust as a template for radical evil has had at least two unforeseen and unfortunate consequences. In some cases, it has led to hyperbole and trivialization, and in others it has provoked a resentful response at times verging on antisemitism.

Hyperbole is a widespread phenomenon, especially among groups who seek to equate their victimization to the Holocaust. Quoting well-known author Betty Friedan, Rosenfeld cites an unfortunate passage in The Feminine Mystique (1963): "The women who 'adjust' as housewives, who grow up wanting to be 'just housewives,' are in as much danger as the millions who walked to their own death in the concentration camps" (p. 47). The danger that Friedan writes about is not physical annihilation but the psychological loss of the sense of self. Nevertheless, Rosenfeld has made his point: if American housewives are "in as much danger" as prisoners in concentration camps, it follows that prisoners in concentration camps were in no more danger than American housewives. If even an insightful writer such as Friedan, herself a Jew, can reach for such farfetched Holocaust metaphors, then other, less perceptive and meticulous writers can do the same.

Still others have rejected the notion that the Holocaust was unique, or that it represents the extreme coordinates of radical evil. Writers such as David Stannard and Ward Churchill, for example, imply that a focus on the Holocaust necessarily draws attention from other atrocities, including slavery and the destruction of Native Americans (pp. 257-59). From this they draw the illogical conclusion that this is done purposefully by a cabal of Holocaust writers and scholars in order to exalt Jewish victimization and to justify the supposed oppression of Palestinians by Israelis. Norman Finkelstein goes even further, stigmatizing Holocaust scholars as participants in a venal "Holocaust industry" (pp. 261-68). With that we have come full circle from viewing the Holocaust as a great disaster that befell the Jewish people to viewing it as its inverse—an instrument of domination, exploitation, and victimization of non-Jews by Jews. Moreover, the inversion of Holocaust memory has become a weapon of state propaganda against Jews. As Rosenfeld warns in his epilogue, "A Second Holocaust," Iran uses this twisted logic to justify its calls for the nuclear destruction of Israel.

In contrast to such subversive and destructive forces, Rosenfeld singles out a number of survivors—some of them important writers such as Primo Levi, Elie Wiesel, Jean Amé ry, and Imre Kertész—who are the true and authentic spokesmen for the survivor community and...