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365 Conclusion The Corruption of History, the Betrayal of Memory A M E R I C A N J E W S I N the years from the end of World War II into the early 1960s had much to say about the European Jewish catastrophe, doing so in a multiplicity of ways. Whether in liturgy or journalism, in pedagogy or sermons, in staged ceremonies or in the deliberations of their organizational meetings and the discussions of their youth groups—in all of these, the tragic fate of European Jewry coursed prominently through their public culture. It moved them, frightened and angered them. It stirred them to action, and they consistently designated times, places, and ways to say so. They reflected on the horrific set of events, the Holocaust, to remember it for its own sake and to teach and learn more about the fate of its victims , with whom they identified, referring to them as “we,” “our,” and “us.” They incorporated into their communal cultures images, words, names, and references to the Jewish catastrophe. The Jews of America in the postwar years had practical reasons not to consign the tragic events into obscurity. Instead, they held up to public gaze images of the concentration camps, gas chambers, and ghettoes, pictures , both metaphoric and graphic, of numbers tattooed into Jewish flesh, of families ripped asunder, lives destroyed, and yet a hopeful “saving remnant .” They did this in order to encourage the broad public to help them in aiding survivors, exposing perpetrators, and winning support for the State of Israel, as well as advancing liberal political causes they supported. Because they believed that practical and necessary results would flow from their telling of the tragedy of the six million to the American public at large, they did not repress or suppress it. Within the Jewish community, references to the destruction of European Jewish culture, the liquidation of the great centers of Jewish learning, and the violent deaths of the women and men who had been the source of Jewish creativity served a decidedly communal purpose, as the leaders of 366 Conclusion American Jewry tried to inspire the American Jewish masses to give more, care more, and do more to strengthen Jewish life in the United States. Spontaneous and disorganized, lacking a single icon to symbolize the catastrophe or a central address to coordinate programs and publications about it, American Jews, through their local and national bodies, religious, educational, associational, and political, incorporated into their many endeavors the details of the hurban, the great destruction of European Jewry. Not always appearing under the rubric “Holocaust” or “the six million,” the European catastrophe wound its way into their culture organically, yoked to Jewish texts on nearly every cultural and political issue, to Jewish history, civil rights, the observance of Jewish ritual, and a host of other concerns.1 Books, radio broadcasts, and sermons on a range of topics told about the tragedy. The Holocaust pervaded their lives. They wove it into their works. In their publications and speeches, these American Jews differed among themselves as to how best to narrate the catastrophe and what lessons should be derived from it. Those differences reflected the degree to which it weighed on them. They experimented with language, texts, images , and pageantry, casting about for answers to some ineffable questions: Why did it happen? Did it constitute a new reality, or did it represent “merely” the latest and worst link in a long chain of Jewish suffering? How did the destruction of the six million impinge on their American lives? How did it structure their relationships to other Jewries? How did it define their connection to Palestine, then Israel? What constituted heroism and resistance? Where had God been? Most participants in this unstructured discussion did not come from the ranks of an intellectual class. They registered little awareness of the possible epistemological implications resulting from the usages of such phrases as “the six million” versus “catastrophe,” or “Holocaust” versus “Hitler Holocaust,” “Hitler times” versus “concentration camps.” They did not fret over the linguistic and philosophic ramifications of referring to the slaughtered Jews of Europe as “victims” or “martyrs,” or kedoshim, if they expressed themselves in Yiddish or Hebrew. Indeed, they used all these terms interchangeably, sometimes in the same text. They knew that because most of Europe’s Jews had been murdered, they, the Jews of the United States, bore some kind of posthumous responsibility toward them. Directly and indirectly, they pondered how to memorialize the...

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