The Abuse of Holocaust Memory: Distortions and Responses

In an increasingly uncertain world, the Holocaust is likely to continue to play an important role as the metaphor of absolute evil. This is all the more so as threats of genocide again appear in public statements. Fighting the main manipulations of the Holocaust requires first understanding the nature of the abuses. This must be followed by exposing the manipulations of the perpetrators, who should then be turned into the accused.

Over the past several decades, awareness of the Holocaust in the Western world has increased greatly. Many of its aspects are cited accurately. The broad superficial familiarity with the subject, however, also makes it prone to a multitude of distortions. Its history and terminology are abused for a variety of purposes, including using it as a tool against one's enemies and, in particular, Jews and Israel.

Denial of the Holocaust is the best-known and most-studied distortion of its memory. Other categories of abuse include Holocaust justification, deflection, whitewashing, de-Judaization, equivalence, inversion, and trivialization, as well as obliterating Holocaust memory.

Preserving Holocaust memory correctly requires documentation; education; the establishment of monuments, museums, and memorials, ceremonies and remembrance days; as well as commemorative projects. Legislation and art are other spheres that have made important contributions.

This book analyzes the categories of distortion and the responses to them. Also included are case studies that analyze Holocaust distortion in several European countries and the Muslim world.

Dr. Manfred Gerstenfeld is chairman of the Board of Fellows of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, an editor of the Jewish Political Studies Review, publisher of Changing Jewish Communities, and co-publisher of Post-Holocaust and Anti-Semitism and Jerusalem Viewpoints.

Gerstenfeld has been an international business strategist for forty years. His background is in chemistry, economics, environmental studies, and Jewish studies. He is a former director in an international business consultancy whose other shareholders included four of the world's largest banks. He has worked in twenty countries and his clients have included the boards of several of the world's largest multinational corporations, as well as governments. He has also been a board member of several public companies including a large investment firm.

Gerstenfeld has authored eleven books and edited four. Books of his have been published in five languages, including the Italian bestseller Revaluing Italy. He has also published articles in leading newspapers and journals in various countries on political, economic, environmental, religious, and historical subjects.