The Holocaust in American Life - Hardcover

Novick, Peter

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0395840090 ISBN 13: 9780395840092

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 1999

Synopsis

An award-winning history scholar explores the impact of the Holocaust in American political and cultural life, examining its role as a moral reference point for all Americans and the ways in which Jews have used it to define a distinctive identity for themselves. Tour.

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Reviews

An exceptionally interesting, prodigiously researched study of how the Holocaust has been understood and the uses to which it has been put, in Americanparticularly American Jewishpolitical, communal, and intellectual affairs. Novick (History/Univ. of Chicago; The Resistance Versus Vichy, not reviewed) notes that until about 1965, the Holocaust was marginalized in American life, subsumed under the Cold Wars political dynamics, as well as its cultural and pedagogic agenda. A wide variety of forces, from the Eichmann trial to the rise of identity politics and concomitant focus on victimization, led to the Holocaust becoming centered in American life. In the 1980s and particularly the 90s, with Holocaust education made compulsory in the high schools of several states, the erection of Holocaust memorials, and the opening of the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C., it came to have transcendent status as the bearer of eternal truths or lessons that could be derived from contemplating it. American Jewish leaders were instrumental in furthering this process, both to garner support for Israel and as part of their effort to deter assimilation. The Holocaust has achieved, in one of Novicks more polemically charged phrases, a perverse sacralization. Yet parts of his book seem to argue against this thesis, or at least to demonstrate that Holocaust- centeredness may be an ephemeral phenomenon. Novick notes how superficial, and sometimes opportunistic or manipulative, allusions to the Holocaust from both ends of the political spectrum have been; he wonders how long it will be before Holocaust memorials become part of the tuned-out urban background; and he maintains that the memory of the Shoah has had a negligible influence on Washingtons response to genocide in places like Biafra and Cambodia. Concerning Americas hesitant response to Serb atrocities in Bosnia, for example, he asserts that the lessons of Vietnam . . . easily trumped the lessons of Holocaust. Inconsistent in its approach, occasionally characterized by rhetorically overcharged prose, this well-written, richly layered, pathbreaking work nonetheless deserves a wide readership. -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Why has the Holocaust, five decades after its conclusion, remained such a burning issue in the consciousness of Americans, both Jews and Gentiles? After all, most historical events fade from memory with the passage of time and the deaths of those who directly experienced the events. Yet, despite the occurrence of more recent and certainly quite horrific mass atrocities, from Cambodia to Rowanda, the Holocaust continues to play a central role in American public discourse. In this unsettling and fascinating work, Novick, a Jew and a professor of history at the University of Chicago, examines how a variety of domestic and foreign events have moved Holocaust consciousness to the center of American life and kept it there. The author unhesitatingly probes touchy subjects, including the role of Holocaust consciousness in cold war politics, the "uniqueness" of the Holocaust, and even the supposed "obsession" of American Jews (few of whom are Holocaust survivors) with the Holocaust. This is an important work that is bound to irritate, even outrage, many readers. Jay Freeman

Edition details

• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
• Publication date: 1999
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0395840090
• ISBN 13: 9780395840092
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 320