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Title: The Holocaust in American Life by Peter Novick ISBN: 0-395-84009-0 Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Co Pub. Date: 01 June, 1999 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $27.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.89 (28 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: A wholehearted attempt
Comment: Peter Novicks book is the successfull attempt by a highly respected and esteemed intellectual to rationally discuss a topic which even today, in the all to fequentlly cited "age of reason", is to often shrouded in idiology and nonsensical whims.
Reading through the pages one can not help but feel respect for the meticilous research and intellectual honesty the Proffesor applies to the "Hot Iron" which has caust many a freethinker his job.Putting the Holocaust where it belongs, History, is what Novick has attempted, excellently removing the blinders used by self profiting orginizations and states,rationally discussing away the term of "a sacred event" or "an unexplainable mystery" as Ellie Wiesel prefers to call it.
His conclusion may not be favourable to all; since it names the Holocaust as a event,Horrible in itself, yet one
among many in the blood soaked History of mankind. He rationally and fairly questions the claims of uniqueness asking,even if the Holocaust was unique, from which perspective would that change anything about its actual Historical and rational dimensions?
However, his conclusions as why the Holocaust has been revived nearly fifty years after, especially considering the lack of public interest in the fifties,are not as satisfying and thought provoking as the rest of his book. This is probably due to the fact that he was aware of the blood shed that naming greedy and hypocritical orginizations would have cost him, orginizations effectively using every effort to turn the Holocaust into a moral and political weapon. His statement that the memory of the Holocaust was revived among Jews after the 1967 war is not as satisfying as it may seem since we would have to apply the same reason to the war of 1948, in which Israel truly was in danger. It also would not explain the fact that if ceartain orginizations were not to constantly put all their efforts in to keeping a romantiziced versions of the Holocaust alive it would surely join the rank of other Historical atrocities, abhorred but mostly forgotten. We can conclude that the Holocaust is NOT rooted among the consciousnes of Jews and AmericaNs, rather that it is being constantly implanted there by propaganda and sentimental moral reminders.
Another Author, causing far more controversy, who successfully managed to say what Novick did not dare is Norman Finkelstein. His highly debated and above all honest attempt to finally restore justice to the real victims is worth reading, alone for the sheer debate his thesis has caused, although not even making half the pages of Novicks book. However, Novick and Finkelstein both deserve high recognition for their provokative and frutifull attempt at historical and scientific honesty. Bravo.
Rating: 5
Summary: Will shake up your beliefs
Comment: Before reading this book, some of the things I knew about the Holocaust were that (1) the Allied military ignored the pleas of Jewish groups to bomb Auschwitz... (2) Bombing the rail lines to Auschwitz would have saved Jewish lives... (3) American guilt about failure to rescue Jews was an important factor in US support for the State of Israel in 1948... (4) The very existence of Israel was in peril during the 1967 and 1973 wars...
Novick argues (convincingly to me) that these, and a bunch of other things that I'd always assumed, are simply wrong. And I'm not just talking about the "soap factory" stories. The "political message" of the Holocaust (like most other things) often doesn't have much to do with "historical truth".
An earlier reviewer comments on the issue of the uniqueness of the Holocaust: actually, Novick does discuss this issue at some length, arguing convincingly that the whole issue is quite vacuous... uniqueness is a rhetorical rather than a historical matter.
I'm a little surprised that there hasn't been more of a media uproar over this book: it's a lot *more* controversial than Goldhagen's book of a few years ago (Hitler's Willing Executioners). Maybe the storm just hasn't broken yet?
Rating: 2
Summary: Propaganda varies with the times
Comment: For an historian, Novick seems to be little interested in real history, but is rather fascinated by the ephemeral wish and wash of the propagandized masses. This book describes in exhausting detail how Americans, Jews and Gentile, have changed their perception over time of THE assumed genocide. Such a heterogeneous lot, needless to report, have reactions all over the ball-park.
More interestingly, he shows how the shifts that have occurred over time have been driven mostly by the concerns of national Jewish organizations to present an image to the gentiles that is deemed suitable for their current purposes. Immediately after the war their concern was to present Jews as a successful heroic people, getting on with their lives, and turning the desert green. Later on it was used by them to justify Israel's aggressive wars of occupation. Then, in all the rage for identity politics, with its requisite displays of historical victimization, to out-victim every other ethnie. Finally, most despicably, to "draw lessons" for school-children, suitable for bumper-stickers.
Novick's language describing all this is scholarly and temperate, but sometimes has a discernible edge. However, his talent as an historian and writer is lamentably wasted. He has produced, analogously speaking, a 400 page monograph on how the public's perception of alien abduction has changed since Goddard's invention of rockets. He describes how some have used their alien abduction to show how brave they are, surviving and going on with their lives. Some have used it in a campaign to accuse the government of a cover-up in which all of the uninvolved, un-abducted are complicit. And others have used it as a vehicle to go on the lecture circuit, write books of nonsense, and bring in some cash.
Perhaps most interesting is his discussion of the trend of organized Jewry toward making the holocaust a theological event, beyond any rational historical discussion or revision, as an ineffable, unique, illustration of the Jews' special relation to God. He disapproves of this, of course, but recognizes its inevitability.
A remarkable omission in the book is his almost total neglect of the story of how the holocaust is used in the eternal efforts of lawyers and other greedy organization men to successfully extract billions of dollars from the gentiles, mostly enriching themselves, and sullying the memories of the victims. Their essential argument: my suffering is unique and therefore greater than yours, so give me some money--you'll feel better. The silence around this phenomenon is thunderous.
One cannot be but a little disappointed in this otherwise praiseworthy effort to examine a modern delusion and its effects on the public psyche and politic. It would have been interesting to read here an account of how the legend itself has changed over the years, mostly due to the diligent efforts of real historians, who have gradually approached the truth with its revisions in the number of victims, the recognition that Dachau and Buchenwald were not extermination camps, and the discrediting of Simon Wiesenthal's hyperbolic tales of soap manufacture.
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Title: Popular Culture and the Shaping of Holocaust Memory in America (Samuel and Althea Stroum Lectures in Jewish Studies) by Alan L. Mintz ISBN: 029598161X Publisher: University of Washington Press Pub. Date: October, 2001 List Price(USD): $18.95 |
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Title: Selling the Holocaust : From Auschwitz to Schindler; How History is Bought, Packaged and Sold by Tim Cole ISBN: 0415928133 Publisher: Routledge Pub. Date: September, 2000 List Price(USD): $17.95 |
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Title: Hitler's Willing Executioners : Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust by Daniel Jonah Goldhagen ISBN: 0679772685 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 28 January, 1997 List Price(USD): $16.00 |
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Title: The Spitting Image: Myth, Memory, and the Legacy of Vietnam by Jerry Lembcke ISBN: 0814751474 Publisher: New York University Press Pub. Date: May, 2000 List Price(USD): $20.00 |
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Title: While America Watches: Televising the Holocaust by Jeffrey Shandler ISBN: 0195139291 Publisher: Oxford University Press Pub. Date: November, 2000 List Price(USD): $25.00 |
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