Selling the Holocaust: From Auschwitz to Schindler; How History is Bought, Packaged and Sold [Hardcover]

Tim Cole (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 26, 1999 | ISBN-10: 0415925819 | ISBN-13: 978-0415925815 | Edition: 1

Cole shows us an "Auschwitz-land" where tourists have become the "ultimate ruberneckers" passing by and gazing at someone else's tragedy. He shows us a US Holocaust Museum that provides visitors with a "virtual Holocaust" experience.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In 1997, the Bee Gees toured Anne Frank's house in Amsterdam, along with 700,000 other bubble-gum chewing, minicam-clutching voyeurs. A man was spotted at Auschwitz wearing, with supreme irony, a Megadeth T-shirt. Gifted with a sensitive understanding of the Holocaust, Cole, history professor at the University of Bristol, sets out to parse the shifting myths created from the historical event of the Holocaust, especially its morphing into a ubiquitous, feel-good affirmation of America's core values. In seeking to understand the subtle implications of marketing remembrance, Cole focuses on three figuresAAnne Frank, Adolph Eichmann and Oskar SchindlerAand three sitesAAuschwitz, Yad Vashem (Israel's Holocaust museum in Jerusalem) and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. What does it mean when Schindler's List becomes a de facto primary historical text, or when the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (where Cole is a visiting fellow) is just one more item on an itinerary that includes the peep show thrills of the Texas Book Depository and Graceland? At a time when tourists flock to the Spielberg film location rather than to the actual ghetto, argues Cole, the Holocaust has been turned into a sort of virtual history. Cole's book makes an excellent complement to Peter Novick's superb The Holocaust in American Life (Forecasts, May 3), with which it shares an informed wariness about the perils of historical representation. (Sept.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Kirkus Reviews

A thoughtful and brave study of how the Holocaust has become an overly central myth and too commercialized for its own effectiveness. Cole is a fellow at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum and is well positioned to know that there is no business like Shoah (Holocaust) business. The book grew from lectures at the University of Bristol in England, whence its youthful brazenness to criticize the sacrosanct. Holocaustism as an industry is shown to dwarf the budget of other, especially educational needs in the American Jewish community. The three people whom the first chapters are named for reflect Coles vision of Holocaust history. First is Anne Frank, the most famous child and victim in our century. In 1947, long before her book, Broadway show, and Amsterdam attic became global sensations, the diary's modest popularity reflected the Jewish and gentile mood that the unspeakable tragedy was best not spoken about. Even in Israel, where the Holocaust became a flag of victimhood and cause for national survival, the yet unnamed calamity was associated with the powerless Diaspora past and neglecteduntil the capture and trial of Adolf Eichmann (Cole's second chapter). Not mere revenge, this ``trial was about reawakening a concern with the Holocaust both inside and outside the country.'' So successful was exhuming the Holocaust from buried memory that the next chapter, ``Oskar Schindler,'' shows how Hollywood turned planet Auschwitz into a well known but more benign place. The last three chapters are named for places, ``Auschwitz,'' ``Yad Vashem,'' and ``The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum,'' where Cole scores salient points contrasting the sites of genocide (now with tourist cafeteria), the Israeli museum (emphasizing partisans and resistance), and the ``theme-park'' $168-million-dollar facility in Washington, D.C. (featuring multimedia experiences and nondenominational tolerance). Cole dares to write ``that an element of voyeurism is central to Holocaust tourism. '' If the Holocaust has assumed our centurys moral crown, this book dares to challenge the emperor's clothes. -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 240 pages
• Publisher: Routledge; 1 edition (August 26, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0415925819
• ISBN-13: 978-0415925815
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.3 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (20 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,379,531 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

30 of 31 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Provocative, May 27, 2001

By 

Taylor Fleet (Alexandria, VA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Selling the Holocaust: From Auschwitz to Schindler; How History is Bought, Packaged and Sold (Hardcover)

Cole has written a provocative book, one that examines the increasing divide between the Holocaust--the factual event--and the "Holocaust"--our received notion of the event. He points to (among other subjects) "Schindler's List," "The Diary of Anne Frank," and the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum as evidence that the "Holocaust" is arguably more real to us than the Holocaust itself.

Cole rightly criticizes the (peculiarly American?) need to find a redemptive message, a clear-cut universal lesson somewhere in the Holocaust, a need that ultimately trivializes it and strips it of moral complexity. For example, Anne Frank's diary was originally published stripped of her references to growing sexual awareness or any bitterness harbored against the Germans. The first play about her life downplayed her Jewishness and stressed her universal message that "in spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart."

While Cole's arguments are insightful, his writing--repetitive at times--makes for labored reading. Annoying, for example, is his liberal use of quotation marks, needless in many cases, to assign some special meaning to a term, as in the following:

"While the process of 'Americanizing' the 'Holocaust' does involve ... stressing the role of the American 'bystander,' 'liberator' and 'survivor,' 'Americanization' also involves a certain distancing of 'self'....

I question the difference between "Americanizing" the "Holocaust" and Americanizing it.

Annoying too are the punctuation errors and subject-verb disagreements that pop up with dismaying regularity.

Despite this, Cole's ideas are well-formed, if a bit heavy-handed, and this book makes for important and interesting reading.

30 of 32 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars How history is portrayed, May 31, 2000

By 

Philip Greenspan - See all my reviews

This review is from: Selling the Holocaust: From Auschwitz to Schindler; How History is Bought, Packaged and Sold (Hardcover)

"Selling the Holocaust" is an excellent study of how history is presented. While Tim Cole uses the Holocaust as the subject for this particular study what he shows is how history generally develops at various times and in various places.

History-at any particular time and place--is a refining and processing of pertinent facts with the cultural values of the existing establishment that creates a `myth' of the historic reality. Different times in the same place or different places at the same time result in varying `myths'.

The subtitle of the book--"From Auschwitz to Schindler, How History is Bought, Packaged and Sold"-is most appropriate in expressing this manipulation of historic events to conform to a particular country's existing policies.

Cole analyzes six subjects for illustration: the diary of Anne Frank; the trial of Adolf Eichmann; Steven Sondheim's film "Schindler's List"; the concentration camp at Auschwitz; the Israeli memorial of Yad Vashem; and the Holocaust museum in Washington, D.C.

By exploring each, he shows us that in different places (Israel, United States, Poland) and at different times (post World War II, post six-day war, `80s, `90s) the Holocaust has been interpreted and portrayed differently. The cultural values of each unique time and place determine how we perceive the Holocaust.

This is obviously a study of how all of history is revealed. Events looked at in distant places and times acquire different meanings-often at variance with what actually occurred. Writers who challenge conventional history by disclosing the truth are usually criticized as revisionists and are reviled and disregarded by the establishment.

This analysis is obviously in conflict with the author's message and with other readers' interpretations. Nevertheless, it relies on six excellent case studies for validation.

30 of 32 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Don't confuse Holocaust with "Holocaust" in your marketing., March 23, 2000

By 

John Barry Kenyon - See all my reviews

This review is from: Selling the Holocaust: From Auschwitz to Schindler; How History is Bought, Packaged and Sold (Hardcover)

In a careful analysis, Tim Cole suggests that the actual holocaust is not be confused with the atrocities depicted in museums and movies. He argues, for example, that the movie Schindler's List blurs historical reality by emphasizing the "goodness" of Schindler himself and the happy outcome for the Jewish captives in his Czech factory in 1945. We all have to feel fine when leaving the cinema. Actually, much the same could be said about other movies not considered by Cole, for example Triumph of the Spirit which recounts the survival at Auschwitz of a Greek boxer. The author also feels that the establishment of so many holocaust memorials and museums may actually stimulate Revisionism by allowing holocaust deniers to pinpoint inaccuracies, for example of the Auschwitz (One) gas chamber is indeed a post war reconstruction for tourists. There is much well researched detail in this book, for example on Anne Frank whose Amsterdam house has become just another site for the curious and on Oskar Schindler himself who fled at the end of the war with his wife and mistress (contrary to the movie portrayal). It is Cole's honesty in showing up many holocaust myths that makes the book a convincing read. He is no apologist for nazi crimes, but he has opened an important debate about perception and reality in the mass media.