THE HOLOCAUST INDUSTRY

THE HOLOCAUST IN AMERICAN LIFE
By Peter Novick. 1999; Mariner Books edition, 2000.

THE HOLOCAUST INDUSTRY: REFLECTIONS ON THE EXPLOITATION OF JEWISH SUFFERING
By Norman G. Finkelstein. Verso, 2000.

In the sixties, Tisha b'Av, the day of fasting and lamentation for the
First and Second Temples, was still the quintessential - indeed the only -
day of institutionalized North American Jewish mourning. Who knew from Yom Ha-Shoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day? If anyone observed any date in connection with the Nazi genocide, it was secular Jewish leftists, with
April 19th, the anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising.

Times and fashions have changed. Today synagogues throughout North America observe Yom Ha-Shoah and, a week later, two other recently sanctified springtime Israeli state holidays: Yom Ha-Zikaron (Memorial Day, in honour of Israel's fallen soldiers) and Yom Ha-Atzma'ut (Israel's Independence Day). Congregants, especially children in Hebrew school, are strapped in for an emotional roller coaster ride from the agonized ashes of Hitler's Europe to the radiant promise of Eretz Israel.

"There's no business like Shoah1 business", that gay wag Abba Eban is said
to have quipped. The link between The Capitalized Holocaust and the
communal obligation to Zionism is zealously forged and religiously
maintained. Like the pair of cherubim in the ancient Holy of Holies, these
two, Holocaust and Zionism, are held to be locked in a mystic, intimate
embrace.

Forty and fifty years ago, when memories were fresh and their relevance
immediate, few talked about the Holocaust; today, few (including me, it
seems) will shut up about it. What's going on? These two books set
themselves to address that question, attacking it in markedly different
though complementary ways.

Peter Novick's The Holocaust In American Life is an excellent work, and
should serve as a source-text for discussion and further research for
decades to come. Novick, Professor Emeritus of history at the University of
Chicago, proceeds chronologically, dividing his book into five sections and
considering the American response to the Holocaust during the war, postwar,
"transition" (1960s and '70s), recent and future periods. "This book had
its origin in curiosity and skepticism", he informs us at the outset, and
those critical tools remain key to his prodigious research and careful
analysis throughout. Curious, Novick asks provocative questions; skeptical,
he offers answers that challenge the mainstream consensus.

His core questions include: Why was the Nazi genocide so nearly absent from American awareness and Jewish discussion for so many years? How did the Holocaust come to hold its present sacred position, central to Jewish
identity and American political discourse? And - conscious of the
question's irony - "about our centering of the Holocaust in how we
understand ourselves and how we invite others to understand us: 'Is it good
for the Jews?'"

Here's the conventional myth: the phenomenon of the Holocaust is a sacred
mystery, unique and transcendent, beyond rational understanding or
analysis. Former Holocaust avoidance and present Holocaust fascination are
symptoms of collective psychological trauma. European survivors were too
wounded, their American contemporaries too guilty, runs the argument, to
confront the reality of the Holocaust at first; with time came healing, and
now we perceive its centrality to our definition of ourselves.

Novick gently dismantles this ahistoric, irrational non-analysis.
Preferring French sociologist Maurice Halbwach's concept of "collective
memory" to "such dubious entities as a 'social unconscious'", Novick sets
out to explore "the ways in which present concerns determine what of the
past we remember and how we remember it."

Until the early '60s, many American Jews and Jewish leaders feared that in
the assimilationist, patriotically cheery atmosphere of the time, Jewish
particularism (exemplified by interest in such things as the State of
Israel or the Nazi genocide) would be perceived as leftist and un-American.
Hence such interests tended - with notable expedient exceptions - to be
discouraged.

The Eichmann trial in 1961 awakened public interest in the Holocaust, but
the real sea change came in the aftermath of the Six Day War in 1967.
Though "Israel was hardly in serious peril" in '67, among American Jews
"thoughts of a new Holocaust were surely present." Further, "The
'miraculous' victory of Israel also made it easier to integrate the
Holocaust into Jewish religious consciousness," and "offered a folk
theology of 'Holocaust and Redemption'." In the wake of the 1973 Yom Kippur
war, "talk of the Holocaust ... became increasingly institutionalized"; as
scrutiny and criticism of Israel's presence and actions in the Occupied
Territories grew, "the Holocaust framework allowed one to put aside as
irrelevant any legitimate grounds for criticizing Israel."

Novick chronicles the influence and interaction of these and many other
factors meticulously, subtly, clearly and, by and large, convincingly.
Norman G. Finkelstein's The Holocaust Industry, while courageous,
important, clear and often convincing, is hardly meticulous and far from
subtle. Novick seeks to explain a layered web of processes; Finkelstein -
sometimes brilliantly - articulates rage and assigns blame. He knows who
the bad guys are, and he points the finger and tells them off with savage
wit. It makes for a perversely entertaining read.

The first third of Finkelstein's book is heavily dependent on Novick's, a
dependence he acknowledges - sort of - in a deliciously convoluted
combination of backhanded compliment and sharp critique early in his own
introduction. "The initial stimulus for this book was Peter Novick's
seminal study, The Holocaust in American Life," he explains - going on to
characterize said seminal study as "more a congeries of provocative aperçus
than a sustained critique". Yum.

Finkelstein, who teaches political theory at Hunter College, City
University of New York, draws an important distinction between the phrases
"Nazi holocaust", which "signals the actual historical event", and the
"'The Holocaust' [as] its ideological representation." He maintains that
"Holocaust memory is an ideological construct of vested interests", and
singles out the holders of those interests: "Jewish elites", which phrase
"designates individuals prominent in the organizational and cultural life
of the mainstream Jewish community". His thesis simplifies and extends
Novick's more nuanced analysis: Jewish elites first suppressed and
subsequently (after 1967) encouraged interest in the Nazi holocaust,
constructing "The Holocaust" in order to "sustain significant political and
class interests" - power and money chief among them.

Careful now. Finkelstein, whose parents were survivors of the Warsaw Ghetto
and the concentration camps, does not deny or understate the extent of
Jewish suffering under the Nazis. Rather, as his title suggests, he attacks
the exploitation of that suffering.

Novick and Finkelstein - each with some reason - criticize one another
sharply. Finkelstein dismisses what he calls "Novick's central analytical
category ... 'memory'" as "surely the most impoverished concept to come
down the academic pike in a long time". Novick for his part charges that
Finkelstein makes "false accusations", "egregious misrepresentations",
"absurd claims" and "repeated misstatements". As Tevye says: "You know, you are also right!" Both authors' criticisms -and their defenses - carry some
merit.

Novick takes care to distinguish "the calculated public posture of Jewish
officialdom" from the more organic "'around the kitchen table' feelings of
American Jewry", and to acknowledge their interdependence. But in seeking
to convey some of the complexity of evolving public attitudes, he sometimes
seems to describe actions without agents, decisions without intent.
Finkelstein, on the other hand, overstates his case, bitterly ascribing
only the most cynical of motives to those he criticizes, oversimplifying
his opponents' arguments the better to shred them, and twisting the sense
of some of his sources. That said, he presents startlingly important
information and powerful arguments. He is, of course, by turns vilified or
ignored by North American "Jewish elites", but it's interesting to note
that most attacks against him centre less on the explosive substance of his
allegations than on his abrasive style - and his daring to say what Must
Not Be Said.

Finkelstein's three chapter headings tell his tale: "Capitalizing The
Holocaust" presents and bulldozes the "ideological construct"; "Hoaxers,
Hucksters and History" savages the ideological carpenters (notably Elie
Wiesel and Daniel Goldhagen); "The Double Shakedown" follows the money.
It's on the money trail that Finkelstein leaves Novick far behind. Novick
barely touches the issue of material compensation, and it's a glaring
omission. Finkelstein traces the extraction (or extortion) over many years
of billions of dollars from various European governments, following the
flow of a great proportion of those dollars not to the individual survivors
of Nazi oppression on whose behalf they were collected, but rather to the
coffers of the organizations doing the collecting. It's a nasty, sordid
chronicle, and if a tenth of Finkelstein's allegations are correct, so too
is his conclusion: "The Holocaust industry has clearly gone berserk."
These two books, their authors so at odds, make a strong pair. Novick's
provides the historical foundation without which Finkelstein's could not
stand; Finkelstein's provides a powerful political critique, and important
further information without which Novick's work is incomplete. I recommend
both. My suggestion: study most the one you like least.