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Cosmopolitanizing the Holocaust
From the Eichmann trial to identity politics
When a few years ago I saw an episode of the hit science-fiction television show X-Files, in which the disappearance of amphibians from a rural lake was described as a âfrog holocaustâ, I realized a boundary had been crossed in American culture. From President Clintonâs justification for the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia to the pop culture of television, the Holocaust has become the benchmark for universal suffering and victimhood . . .
(Jonathan Tobin âFrom Silence to Cacophonyâ(1999))1
[I]n an age of uncertainty and the absence of master ideological narratives . . . [the Holocaust] has become a moral certainty that now stretches across national borders and unites Europe and other parts of the world.
(Daniel Levy and Natan Sznaider, âMemory Unbound: The Holocaust and the Formation of Cosmopolitan Memoryâ(2002))2
As his contribution to the Jewish Museumâs Mirroring Evil exhibition in 2002, Boaz Arad cut and remixed original film-clips of Adolph Hitlerâs speeches, to produce a short Hebrew greeting: âShalom, Jerusalem, I apologizeâ.3 Many victimized peoples dream of such apologies, if not from the actual perpetrators, then at least from their descendents. Acknowledgement, compensation, reconciliation â these are but some of the goals persecuted groups seek as they grapple with their histories. Few, however, have come as far as the Jewish people in gaining acknowledgement of and reparations for their collective suffering. Of course, token amounts of money and an official apology may mean little to those who suffered horrendous loss. Nevertheless, the Holocaust has become the pre-eminent symbol of evil in the modern world, encouraging other groups to copy its vocabulary and imagery, while sometimes contesting its significance.
In this chapter I examine how and why the Holocaust has come to attain its current status. I also aim to highlight some of the positive and negative aspects of this status on the Jewish people, while further charting its impact on identity politics generally. I divide this chapter into two sections. In the first, I present a historicized account of the rise of the Holocaust, with reference to events in Israel, America, and, to a lesser extent, Europe. While public discussion of the Final Solution was suppressed in both America and Israel in the 1950s, it came to the forefront of Jewish identity during the 1960s and 1970s. In the context of the Six Day War (1967) and the emerging conflict between Blacks and Jews in America, the Holocaust helped Jews make sense of a seemingly anti-Semitic climate. By the 1970s, the death of survivors, coupled with the assimilation of American Jews, gave the Holocaust an important role in reanimating Jewish identity.
The 1970s and 1980s also marked an era when the Holocaust became Americanized â a part of mainstream American culture. The creation of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and the screening of Schindlerâs List, exemplified the Holocaustâs growing significance not only in America, but also throughout the Western world. This process also fed into Americaâs own national ideal of being a liberator of and haven for oppressed peoples. Americanizing the Holocaust further buttressed Americaâs own feelings of uniqueness and exceptionalism.
The second section examines the Americanization and potential âcosmopolitanizationâ of the Holocaust during the post-Cold War era. I argue that the institutionalization and nationalization of Holocaust memory helped reinforce Jewish loyalty to America. However, in an age of identity politics and globalization, other groups sought to undermine idealized narratives of the state, when national sovereignty seemed less salient than before. If, as Jeffrey Olick argues, âwe are all Germans nowâ4 â every state needs to face up to its past transgressions and attempt to make amends. Adopting this model, however, requires not just apologizing for past crimes and compensating disadvantaged groups. It also requires assuming a level of national guilt that most countries are manifestly unwilling to do.
1 The Holocaust as emergent
Throughout this book, I adopt the stance that the Holocaust evolved over several decades and was hardly seen in the 1940s as the seminal event we now perceive it to be. Peter Novick, in The Holocaust in American Life (1999), gives clear voice to this argument:
The murderous actions of the Nazi regime which killed between five and six million European Jews were all too real. But âthe Holocaustâ, as we speak of it today, was largely a retrospective construction, something which would not have been recognisable to most people at the time. To speak of âthe Holocaustâ as a distinct entity . . . is to introduce an anachronism that stands in the way of understanding contemporary responses.5
Mary Lagerwey, in Reading Auschwitz (1998), charts the progression of memory, from âfragments of experience, perception and informationâ to todayâs current view of the Holocaust as âa historically bounded phenomenon . . . [a] coherent storyâ.6 For Levi and Rothberg, too, the Holocaust âtook years to be perceived as distinctive and significantâ, going through a âlatency periodâ or âcultural lagâ before a âbroad, public Holocaust consciousnessâ arose in later decades.7 Milchman and Rosenberg similarly describe a process of âeventingâ, where the Holocaust was not a fixed âeventâ, and to term it as such, as with any other âeventâ, âseems to belie the social construction of reality and its processual characterâ.8
These authors aim to account for both the lack of public discussion about the Final Solution during the 1950s, and its rapid emergence in public consciousness thereafter. Younger academics like myself, who grew up during the 1970s and 80s, take the Holocaust for granted as one of the twentieth centuryâs most horrific events. Yet, the Holocaust took time to be seen as a separate and unique crime against the Jewish people. The âspecial consciousness of the Holocaustâ we now take for granted only emerged decades after the War was over.9
The Holocaustâs Americanization has given hope to other groups, especially since the 1990s, that they too might achieve the same level of recognition and respect if they can provide solid proof of similar events in their collective past. If, however, such proof is unavailable, cloaking or framing their history in the vestments of the Holocaust has also proven to be effective. As I asserted in the Introduction, identity politics often makes use of âtrump cardsâ to advance group interests. As Joseph Nye wisely cautions, while âmorality is a powerful realityâ that can shape conduct in positive ways, one needs also to be wary. Moral arguments âcan also be used rhetorically as propaganda to disguise less elevated motives, and those with more power are often able to ignore moral considerationsâ.10 We also have to pay close attention to what Laslo Sekelj has dubbed the âfunctionalizationâ of Jewish imagery, with âthe use of Jews, Jewish symbols, and the Holocaust for political manipulationâ.11 Occasionally, as in the former Yugoslavia, the rhetoric of victimization can disguise ethnic cleansing and genocide.
America, Israel, and the Holocaust
Scholarship on the Final Solution took several decades to develop. In the years following the War, two notable memoirs emerged from survivors: Primo Leviâs If This is a Man (1946), and Robert Antelmeâs The Human Race (1947).12 Leon Poliakovâs Breviaire de la haine (1951) was perhaps the first general history of the Holocaust.13 The forty-two volumes of the Nuremberg Trial also resulted in a number of books â such as Gerald Reitlingerâs The Final Solution (1953) and Raul Hilbergâs classic The Destruction of the European Jews (1961).14 Elie Wieselâs La Nuit (1958), abridged from a longer Yiddish semi-autobiographical story, was a landmark contribution which helped cement his own iconic status. However, while discussion and commemoration of the Final Solution did take place in the 1950s and early 60s, these decades are more notable for their silence, for the inability or unwillingness of survivors to talk publicly about their experiences, a problem which Irving Louis Horowitz has ably documented.15
Part of this may be explained by tracing the motivations and experiences of Holocaust survivor immigrants in the United States. For many survivors, a key goal after leaving Europe was to suppress painful memories of the past, to merge into mainstream America and âbelongâ, abandoning overt displays of difference (especially victimization).16 This was further encouraged by West Germanyâs transformation to Americaâs newfound ally in the fight against Communism.17
Memory of Jewish suffering was certainly vividly discussed within the American Jewish community, as Hasia Diner reveals through a wide-ranging exploration of primary sources from that period.18 However, 1950s America was hardly ready to listen. Henry Greenspan describes how survivors rarely felt comfortable speaking about their experiences. Seen in America as âthe refugeesâ, the âgreenhornsâ, or âthe ones who were thereâ, survivors encountered a mixture of âpity, fear, revulsion and guiltâ. Most were âisolated and avoidedâ, to the extent that one can speak of a âconspiracy of silenceâ suppressing survivor testimonies and discussion.19 Even when the Final Solution was discussed, representations tended to be diluted and universalized during a time when American Jews were afraid to publicize their experiences too loudly. An obvious example was the popularity of Anne Frankâs Diary, whose widespread success can be explained ironically by its very distance from the actual horrors of the events themselves. The Holocaust was always present, but never in the foreground.20
As in America, Israel was marked by a period of avoidance. Survivors, building a new country, often looked forward, as Flora Lewis recalled in 1961:
People speak of the present and the future, and only when pressed, do they turn to the past. For Israel now is a self-assured, self-absorbed country, proud and expectant, too busy and eager for growth to feed on the bitter herbs of tragedy.21
Zvi Sternhell too recalls the need for survivors to transform themselves after reaching Israel, to become â ânewâ people . . . to become Israelisâ.22
The period from 1948 to the late 1950s has commonly been referred to as the âstatistâ era. Here, nation-building necessitated a focus on values such as the Yishuv (or âthe settlementâ), heroic resistance, and toiling on the land.23 Joseph Trumpeldorâs heroic stand against invading Arabs (at the Tel Hai settlement in 1920) was celebrated,24 alongside the collective suicide of Zealots and Sicarii at Masada in AD 70,25 and the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.26 Positive myths of bravery and resistance were privileged; victimization was rejected as counterproductive to the new nationalism. As Yael Zerubavel cogently observed, Israel wanted to own the âheroicâ aspects of the Holocaust, while disowning the ânonheroicâ aspects. Ghetto fighters were thus praised as âZionistsâ and âHebrew youthâ, Holocaust victims more amorphously as âJewsâ.27 There was a sharp contrast between the victimized European Jews and the hardy and brave âZionistsâ who emerged from the ashes of the Holocaust.
The Holocaustâs emergence in the 1960s
It was only during what Liebman and Don-Yehiya call the âsecond phaseâ, beginning in the early 1960s, that the Holocaust assumed a central position within âIsraelâs civil religionâ.28 The phase began with the trial of Adolf Eichmann in 1961. Held in Jerusalem, the trial brought together over 100 witnesses, vividly testifying on national television to the horrors they had endured.29 Eichmannâs conviction and execution inspired such works as Hannah Arendtâs Eichmann in Jerusalem, and Arthur Morseâs While Six Million Died (1967). A key objective of the trial, as Arendt argued in 1963, was to force Israelis to confront their own past. The trial would also, however, reify Israelâs confrontation with a âhostile worldâ, exemplified by the âdaily incidents on Israelâs unhappy bordersâ.30 Holocaust memory and defense of the homeland were clo...
