96-11-15: HISTORIAN QUESTIONS AMERICANS' "MEMORY" OF THE HOLOCAUST
By Nancy Hurrelbrinck
In the United States, consciousness of the Holocaust has no relation to
our collective identity, and our pseudo-memory of it yields dubious
lessons, said University of Chicago history professor Peter Novick in
his Nov. 7 talk, "The Holocaust in American Culture," sponsored by the
Theory Seminar.
"In American discourse about the Holocaust, the word heard more than
any other is 'memory,'" even when those speaking were born after it,
said the Columbia-trained professor, who is writing a book on the idea
of the Holocaust in American culture. Discussing "memory" may be an
appropriate way to describe the experience of Germans, Israelis,
Holocaust survivors, and some citizens of countries that were occupied
by Germany, but not of Americans, he said. Holocaust survivors and
their descendants form less than 1 percent of the population, and most
Americans were not aware of the Holocaust while it was happening,
Novick said.
Americans' view of the Holocaust has been largely shaped by American
Jews' attitudes toward it, according to Novick. "Just after World War
II, American Jews enjoyed a period of decreased anti-semitism, so they
were not eager to emphasize their separateness from other Americans,"
he said. In the late 1940s, an American Jewish organization rejected a
government proposal for a Holocaust memorial in New York City because
its members feared it would promote the image of Jews as victims, he
added.
However, by the early 1970s, constraints on discussing the Holocaust
had disappeared, as the notion of America as a melting pot gave way to
the image of a mosaic of different ethnicities, and concern arose about
Israel's Six Day War and ensuing diplomatic isolation.
"American Jews framed the Israeli conflict in a Holocaust paradigm,"
Novick said. "It became a strong element of American Jewish identity
that, but for different circumstances, American Jews would have
suffered the same fate as European Jews."
Novick explained why Americans readily engaged with the Holocaust in
the 1970s: "Hand-wringing over the horrors of the Holocaust carried
with it no implicit or explicit demands" on Americans. It also offered
something for everyone: various segments of the right could point to
the evils of totalitarianism, the pervasive sinfulness of man, or the
breakdown of family and religious values. The left could point to the
moral bankruptcy of American xenophobia, drawing parallels with
immigration restriction. And for the center, the Holocaust serves as a
moral reference point, Novick said.
"If we agree on nothing else, we can all agree to hate the Holocaust.
Even the fruitcakes who deny that it happened say they would hate it if
it had," Novick said.
Nowadays Americans seem to regard the Holocaust as a bearer of
important, universal lessons that must be taught and learned, he said.
"There is confusion about what those lessons are, but that doesn't
lessen the sense that they are urgently needed.
"That the Holocaust might provide lessons for Americans is dubious,"
whether from an aesthetic, pedagogic or pragmatic standpoint, Novick
said.
From an aesthetic standpoint, Novick said he finds it "obscene . . .
that people like Bush and Clinton speak piously about the Holocaust,"
when their administrations armed, trained and supported the Contras in
Central America, and stood aloof during the Bosnian crisis,
respectively.
During the question-and-answer period, Novick raised another
"aesthetic" point: "American Jews are the best-off segment of American
society ... by any conceivable measure. For them to bring up the
Holocaust in exchanges with blacks, the most disadvantaged group, ...
seems tacky.
"Once Jesse Jackson said, off the record, that he was sick of having
the Holocaust thrown in his face all the time. I sympathize with him,"
Novick said.
From a pedagogic standpoint, "the extremity of the situation is far
from issues we find in ordinary life," and no attempt is made in
Holocaust museums or curricula to relate the crimes of the event to
everyday situations, Novick said. "In most Holocaust museums, it's an
article of faith that you identify with the victims," he added.
It's widely accepted that these encounters are morally therapeutic for
museum visitors, but it's doubtful that there are any lessons learned,
Novick said. "It's more likely that we'll let ourselves off the hook
more easily for small transgressions," he said.
From a pragmatic standpoint, "making [the Holocaust] a benchmark of
atrocity trivializes crimes of lesser magnitude," Novick said, arguing
that public policy-makers' decision not to intervene in Bosnia derived
in part from their assessment that the situation was less horrific than
the Holocaust.
It is too extreme to measure other international crises against it and
too removed from American life to have shaped our national identity,
Novick said. As in the case of race, "collective memory should be
disputed and negotiated. ... [But] the Holocaust is unrelated to real
divisions in American society, [making it] apolitical, even banal."
During the lively discussion period, U.Va. English professor Ralph
Cohen commented, "You have presented a number of narratives you find
inadequate. Can you propose an adequate one?"
Novick described how a Jewish museum in Chicago that was redesigning
its Holocaust section asked his advice: "I suggested that they create a
display [that] raises tough questions... [We] need to ... break down
clich?s and unchallenged assumptions."
http://www.virginia.edu/insideuva/te...96-11-15/3.txt
Before the 1970s, we just didn't hear about the Holocaust very much, until it became a convenient tool.
