The Holocaust in American Life [Hardcover]

Peter Novick (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 1, 1999

A prizewinning historian offers a groundbreaking look at the changing fortunes of Holocaust memory in America and provocatively questions the prominent role it now plays in our political and cultural life. In recent years the Holocaust has become an important and prominent symbol in American life. It is a cornerstone of how Jews understand themselves and would have others understand them as well as a moral reference point for all Americans, embodied by Washington's Holocaust Museum, now a national shrine and the repository of lessons all must learn. While ordinarily historical memories are most vivid in the immediate aftermath of events and fade with the passage of time, in the case of the Holocaust the reverse has been true. During the decades following World War II the Holocaust was not much talked about -- even by American Jews. Historian Peter Novick explores with piercing insight the reasons for this long silence, describing the impact of new cold war alliances and Jews' desire not to be seen by their fellow Americans as victims. He recounts the events and decisions that in later decades moved the Holocaust from the margins of American life to the center, including the desire of Jews to define what made them distinctive and the search for moral ground on which increasingly divided Americans could stand. What, Novick boldly asks, are the costs -- for Jews and for all Americans -- of making the Holocaust a defining symbol? Are there really "lessons of the Holocaust" as many presume? A path-breaking book, THE HOLOCAUST IN AMERICAN LIFE is sure to be widely discussed and hotly debated.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

In the first decades following World War II, Americans rarely discussed the Holocaust. Now, remembering the Holocaust has become a fundamental part of Jewish identity; gentiles, too, view the Holocaust as a touchstone of moral solemnity. In The Holocaust and American Life, Peter Novick asks why, and his answers are both sensible and shocking. He explains the immediate postwar silence about the Holocaust by reviewing the basics of cold war politics: just after the liberation of the concentration camps, Americans were called upon to sympathize with "gallant Berliners" who resisted the Soviets and built a wall against Communism--an "enormous shift from one set of alignments to another," Novick notes. Novick then leads readers through the series of events that brought the Holocaust to the forefront of American consciousness--the trial of Adolph Eichmann, the Six-Day War, the Carter administration's Israel policy, and the construction of the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C.

Among Novick's most controversial ideas is his assertion that American Jews spoke softly of the Holocaust at first because they didn't want to be seen as victims; later, Jews decided that victim status would work in their best political interest. Or, as Novick puts it, "Jews were intent on permanent possession of the gold medal in the Victimization Olympics." The Holocaust in American Life is as carefully researched and argued as it is polemical and probing. Novick does not suffer Holocaust deniers lightly, and he is empathic toward victims and survivors, but he has no tolerance for false sentiment. One wishes that more people would ask, as Novick does, what kind of a country would spend millions of dollars on a museum honoring European Jewish Holocaust victims instead of a monument to its own shameful history of black slavery. --Michael Joseph Gross

From Booklist

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

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin; First Edition edition (June 1, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0395840090
• ISBN-13: 978-0395840092
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.3 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (33 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #348,913 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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22 of 24 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars About the representations of the holocaust in American life, August 24, 2006

By 

Maria from London (London UK) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Holocaust in American Life (Paperback)

Before anything else, I'd like to comment on some previous (negative) reviews on this book, which said that it was, among other things, 'trite' and 'boring'. The word 'trite' in particular has been mentioned several times by previous reviewers. These 2 characterizations puzzle me, since they seem far from what anyone could say about 'The holocaust in American life'. Could this book be called controversial? Sure. Provocative? Perhaps. But trite and boring? No way. The book is interesting and fascinating. This just goes to show how, when lacking arguments, one can just accuse someone or something of being 'trite' and 'boring' and think they've expressed an opinion. What they have done in actuality is express a great big 'nothing'.

Other reviews mention inaccuracies in Novick's book, or accuse him of discussing the representations and discourses of the holocaust, and not the holocaust itself in its historical details. But surely they're missing the point: Novick is looking at the American collective memory of the holocaust, he's looking at the way the discourse around the holocaust is shaped today, including how it was shaped in the past and how and why it has changed. So one could say Novick is a historian of the present moment, interested in how certain ways of talking about the holocaust contribute to the shaping not only of Jewish identity, but also of the identity of the victim, of what suffering means, of what an atrocity is etc. I fail to understand why this is criticized by some reviewers. It seems to me a perfectly legitimate goal, to document the way a discourse is shaped, separately from the actual historical facts of the holocaust as it happened in the '40s.

Furthermore, what Novick does, he does very well. On a subject that is full of minefields and strong emotions, Novick manages to express his arguments clearly and persuasively. His main point (discussed by previous reviewers) is that the way the discourse around the holocaust is shaped in America today is far from self-evident: it was different in the past and could be different in the future. He stresses that a historical understanding of the events of world war 2 & of the holocaust do not lead to only one way of representing it and understanding it in today's culture.

The Holocaust as historical event is one thing. The Holocaust as discourse today, as representation in cultural life, is another. Novick discusses the second, and is very critical of the uniqueness, unrepresentability, incomprehensibility discourse that seems prevalent today. He is also critical of the emphasis on the identity of victim which seems central not only to Jewish Americans, but also to various other groups. His critique is not at all a conservative one, i.e. 'get over it and get on with things'. Far from it, he stresses the importance of memory and history. What he does is question the way this memory and history of the holocaust is shaped and implemented, especially when people end up comparing different historical instances of suffering, always putting the holocaust on top, as the instance of suffering par excellence. Novick insists that such an approach is not only meaningless but also morally problematic: because, as he says, even if there had been 2 or 3 genocides of equal horror before Hitler's one, we would still have to say that what happened in Europe in the '40s was terrible and unique in some ways, similar to other catastrophes in others; we would still have to remember it and fight against anything like it happening in the future. Because really- do we need something to be unique in order to fight against it? The idea of uniqueness, Novick argues, is often used to really talk about an hierarchy of catastrophes, with the Holocaust on top, which can really only serve other goals, far from the actual historical understanding of the Holocaust.

One important point to stress here: this idea of 'serving other goals' does not mean that there is any kind of conspiracy, any far fetched group which plans and plots about how the holocaust will be discussed. This couldn't be further from Novick's point. What he argues is rather more everyday. How all of us, you and I, discuss and understand the holocaust today, has to do with present needs and desires that we have: for example, the need to have a clear moral compass, a guide to show us what the absolute good and what the absolute evil is. It is to an understanding of these needs and desires of all of us that lead to certain ways of understanding the holocaust that Novick addresses his book.

All in all, Novick's book is interesting, thought-provoking and actually a quick and easy read. Its main points are explained well, and I think anyone interested in this subject would find it a very good read.

25 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A thought-provoking intellectual history, well presented, July 16, 2000

By 

Richard E. Hegner (Columbia, MD USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Holocaust in American Life (Hardcover)

This is one of the most intellectually stimulating books I have ever encountered. While few people with probably agree with everything the author has to say, he has written a thoughtful, thoroughly researched examination of how the idea of the Holocaust--and popular thinking about that tragedy among both Jewish and Gentile Americans--has evolved over the 60 years since the outbreak of World War II. He also has the courage to challenge conventional thinking as well as the beliefs of generally revered leaders like David Ben Gurion and Elie Wiesel.

The book does an excellent job of linking popular thinking about the Holocaust with concurrent historical trends and developments, including the more intense American focus on the Pacific as opposed to the European theatre for much of the war, the lack of appreciation during and immediately after the war for the immensity of the Jewish genocide, the emergence of the Cold War (together with the "discovery" of common totalitarian threads between Nazism and Stalinism), the "rehabilitation" of Germany after Stalin took over Eastern Europe, changing views about "victimization" in American popular culture, the Eichmann trial in Jerusalem and Hannah Arendt's controversial analysis of it, the Arab-Israeli Wars of 1967 and 1973, as well as the decline in American anti-semitism in general at the same time that radical black activists were employing anti-Jewish rhetoric.

One of the most important contributions of the book is its discussion of the alleged "uniqueness" of the Holocaust, which the author shows to be both historically inaccurate and dangerous in leading down the slippery slope where any other more recent catastrophes and disasters are minimized in comparison. Rich with example and documentation--the footnotes and endnotes should be read, too--the book is one I expect to return to in the future. Broad in its scope and well-written, it is generally quite persuasive in the arguments it advances.

I would concur with those critics who fault the author's occasionally overly colloquial style, especially when he is discussing Holocaust deniers. His dismissal of them as "kooks" and "nut cases" detracts from the generally strong case he makes against them.

16 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Novick has said it all about the politics of the Holocaust!, December 9, 2005

By 

R. Leslie Turbeville "novice reviewer" (Murrells Inlet, SC USA) - See all my reviews

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This review is from: The Holocaust in American Life (Paperback)

This excellent book could have only been written by an historian with ties to Judaism and much of it was destined to fall on deaf ears on both sides of the political/cultural divide. Being a non-Jew but interested in politics, this book seems to mesh well with other books that are nominally on the subject and my own experience. My favorite, aside from this one, is Culture of Critique by Kevin MacDonald which appears to have been received as a mixed blessing, like this one, by the "Jewish community" judging from some of the reviews and the author's comments in an update. It would be good to hear from Prof. Novick in this regard as both books appear to be well done academic works and the subsequent "debate" could add to the understanding of the controversial topic.

Several books could help a serious reader, and Paul Johnson's History of the Jews, especially the last part on Zion, is among others in that category. The Holocaust Industry by Norman G. Finkelstein, Salvation is from the Jews by Roy H. Schoeman and The Politics of Anti-Semitism by Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair are not academic works but provided this writer with some good background of the diversity of Jewish opinions on the subject.