The Holocaust in American Life None Edition

by Peter Novick (Author)

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ISBN-13: 978-0618082322

ISBN-10: 0618082328

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Prize-winning historian Peter Novick illuminates the reasons Americans ignored the Holocaust for so long -- how dwelling on German crimes interfered with Cold War mobilization; how American Jews, not wanting to be thought of as victims, avoided the subject. He explores in absorbing detail the decisions that later moved the Holocaust to the center of American life: Jewish leaders invoking its memory to muster support for Israel and to come out on top in a sordid competition over what group had suffered most; politicians using it to score points with Jewish voters. With insight and sensitivity, Novick raises searching questions about these developments. Have American Jews, by making the Holocaust the emblematic Jewish experience, given Hitler a posthumous victory, tacitly endorsing his definition of Jews as despised pariahs? Does the Holocaust really teach useful lessons and sensitize us to atrocities, or, by making the Holocaust the measure, does it make lesser crimes seem "not so bad"? What are we to make of the fact that while Americans spend hundreds of millions of dollars for museums recording a European crime, there is no museum of American slavery?

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Editorial Reviews

Review

"...has already established itself as one of the most controversial and thought-provoking discussions of the Holocaust and Jewish identity to date." --JEWISH TRANSCRIPT

"The history book of the year."

The Nation

About the Author

Peter Novick is professor of history at the University of Chicago. He is the author of The Resistance Versus Vichy and That Noble Dream: The Objectivity Question and the American Historical Profession, which won the American Historical Association's prize for the best book of the year in American history.

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Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Mariner Books; None edition (September 20, 2000)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 382 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0618082328
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0618082322
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 15.6 ounces
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6 x 0.88 x 9 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #162,303 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #138 in Historiography (Books)
- #213 in European History (Books)
- #352 in Jewish Holocaust History

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Richard E. Hegner

A thought-provoking intellectual history, well presented

Reviewed in the United States on July 16, 2000

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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.

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Kindle Customerjoan

Novick has said it all about the politics of the Holocaust!

Reviewed in the United States on December 9, 2005

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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.

24 people found this helpful

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bob lewis

Read this one!!!

Reviewed in the United States on November 1, 2015

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Enlightening and well worth the effort.

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Paul D. Harvill

Thanks to Dr. Richard L. Rubenstein, my life long primary study interest is the Holocaust and the theology of the Holocaust.

Reviewed in the United States on August 3, 2016

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Thanks to Dr. Richard L. Rubenstein, my life long primary study interest is the Holocaust and the theology of the Holocaust.

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Ilya

Why is the United States obsessed with the Holocaust?

Reviewed in the United States on October 25, 2010

During World War II, neither Americans in general nor American Jews in particular singled out the Nazi murders of the Jews among all crimes of the Nazis, and in fact were disinclined to believe their extent. Sure, the Soviets told the world about the Nazi murders of Soviet Jews, but the Soviets seemed to have lied about the Katyn forest massacre, so why believe them in this case? Soon after the war the murders did not enter the American popular consciousness, not least because the concentration camps liberated by the Americans were not the ones where Jews were being exterminated: the latter were located in eastern Germany and Poland, and were liberated by the Soviets. Memory of the Nazi genocide was not a major factor in the American decision to recognize Israel or in the ratification of the United Nation Convention on Genocide; the major backers of the ratification were Ukrainian Americans and Lithuanian Americans who believed that what the Soviets were doing in their homelands amounted to genocide. Through the 1950s the Nazi genocide was not remembered much in the United States: during the early Cold War it was not politically correct to remind of the crimes of the former enemy and present ally, which were stopped by the former ally and present enemy. However, in the 1960s and the 1970s several things happened. The black Civil Rights movement led to the rise of ethnic consciousness among all Americans, including American Jews; unlike blacks, Chicanos or Native Americans, American Jews could not conceivably claim to be oppressed now - but 30 years ago in Germany! Also, after the murder of one President, a lost war, a civil rights movement that ended in race riots, and a resignation in disgrace of another President, it became less fashionable to think of oneself as just an American, as opposed to a Chicano or a gay man or a woman. In 1967 Israel fought a war with her Arab neighbors who threatened to wipe her off the map; in 1973 the threat was more realistic; this of course brought memories of the Nazi attempt to wipe the Jews off the face of the earth. Since the 1970s and into the 1990s the Holocaust became an American fixture, with the NBC miniseries, endless books, films, memorials, and a taxpayer-funded museum. This had something to do with the American Jewish leaders wishing to promote ethnic separatism in the face of the spectacular Jewish assimilation into the American society; something with the fact that the Holocaust gives a clear picture of good and evil in a morally uncertain world; something with the fact that the victims of the Holocaust were white Europeans, often wealthy like Anne Frank's father, and were easier for Americans to identify with than victims of Third World wars and genocides. Something like 97% of the Americans polled are aware of the Holocaust, while only about 49% are aware of the fact that the Soviet Union fought on the same side as the United States in World War II. However, this knowledge is often garbled; Martin Niemöller's famous poem begins, "First they came for the Communists" but the taxpayer-funded museum in Washington DC omits this line because it is not politically correct. A book called Encyclopedia of the Holocaust moved Jews to the first place; Al Gore and Time Magazine did the same thing and added the Catholics.

Despite so many words, the Holocaust does not seem to have had much impact on American foreign policy. The United States did not do a thing to prevent the genocide in Rwanda; a humanitarian intervention in Somalia was cut short after a few American soldiers died. The Holocaust is the American Jewish entry in "the Victimization Olympics", competing against black slavery (Toni Morrison's Beloved is dedicated to the 60 million who died in the transatlantic slave trade, even though serious historians estimate that about 12 million slaves were transported across the Atlantic over 300 years, the vast majority to Brazil and the Caribbean, of whom about 2 million died - which is not a round multiple of 6 million) and the oppression of gays. Peter Novick argues that this contest is good neither for the nation nor for the ethnic group.

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J. Gordon

Rise of the Holocaust Memorial Cult

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 25, 2010

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First published in 1999, this book provides a scholarly account of the development of the role of Holocaust in America.

It shows how the Holocaust, relatively little discussed in public in World War II and the 1950s and 1960s, has become the leading feature of Jewish identity in the US, and has become central to the way many Jewish organizations in the US present themselves and to the way that Jews are perceived: they have, in effect, become the People of the Holocaust, though Novick does not use this phrase. At the same time, the Holocaust has been `memorialized' as an ahistorical cult in the form of Holocaust remembrance within the context of a broader celebration of victimhood, which is very easily exploited for political ends. Others have, unsurprisingly, jumped on to Holocaust bandwagon, appropriating aspects of its imagery and status.

The first half or so of the book, dealing with developments up to c. 1970, is excellent; the second half, which describes later developments, is also very good, but inevitably more controversial.

Although the book is concerned with the US, many of the more general points apply much more widely. More than a decade after its publication it is still valid and well worth reading.
For me, it answered many questions about the rise of Holocaust cult and its manipulation.

One person found this helpful

delia ruhe

Background reading for all Canadians

Reviewed in Canada on September 22, 2009

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Many pro-Zionists -- Jews and non-Jews -- despise this book because it discloses the story of the instrumentalization of the Holocaust for political purposes. That must be a serious embarrassment, not just to pro-Zionists but to virtually all Jews, both in the Diaspora and Israel. I read this book because I suspected that it would help me understand better why the Canadian government has outsourced its foreign policy to Israel -- especially after so many decades of relative even-handedness with respect to the Israel-Palestine conflict -- and why our politicians are making such fools of themselves pandering to the Canadian Jewish establishment. Novick's book is one of several I've chosen to help me with these questions, and it has proved an excellent choice. (Avraham Burg's *The Holocaust is Over* is another very useful one.) I won't review Novick's book because that has already been done by readers here. But I will say something about its usefulness to me -- and perhaps to other Canadian readers.

For many, many decades, Canada has been a vassal-state of the U.S., but this intensified with the signing of the Free Trade agreement back in the Mulroney days and intensified even more with the signing of NAFTA. But I think it was with the beginnings of the "war on terror" and the SPP (now apparently abandoned) that our policies and some of our institutions have become indistinguishable -- including our lobbying institutions. In Ottawa, as in Washington, a pro-Israel lobby appears to have politicians from both major parties (and even the NDP) by the short hairs, and a big part of that lobby's ammunition is accusations of something called the "new antisemitism," which is in fact the trend among Canadians of getting fed up with Israel's role as the spoilt brat of the Middle East. Americans bankroll Israel's periodic massacres of Arabs -- as in Lebanon in 2006 and Gaza in 2008-09 -- and Canada, along with other nations, gets to pay for the cleanup. Novick's book provides essential background for understanding how Israel gets away with this -- and why it will continue to get away with this indefinitely.

As Novick explains, by permanently securing the gold medal in the "Victim Olympics" of the 1960s (it wasn't hard to get this medal, since the Jewish establishment was the only competitor), Jews have inherited perpetual innocence from their ancestors who perished in the Holocaust. In addition, the Holocaust has been sanctified and made unique -- i.e., no other genocide is as important or as sacred as the Shoah. Therefore, no other genocide really counts in the Victim Olympics.

This sanctification of an atrocity seems to me very Christian. While the Christians have their tortured and bloody prophet nailed to a cross and dying in the blast-furnace of a Middle Eastern afternoon, Jews have their 6 million cadaverous ancestors shuffling into the gas chambers. The Christian tradition never stopped anyone from slaughtering innocents -- indeed, Christians since the time of Constantine have ridden into battle under the sign of the cross. Holocaust religion appears to be following in that bloody tradition, if the massacre of innocents in Lebanon and Gaza is any indication. The scriptural lesson of the Holocaust -- "Never Again" -- clearly exempts Arabs.

I would recommend Novick to anyone seeking to understand these issues.

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