The Question of the Holocaust's Uniqueness: Was it Something More Than or Different From Genocide?

Dating back to the very beginning of our knowledge of the events that constituted the Holocaust, some historians, social scientists, philosophers, theologians and public intellectuals argue that it was a unique historical, or even trans‐historical, event. The aim of this article is to clarify what the uniqueness question should be about and to ascertain whether there are good reasons for judging that the Holocaust is unique. It examines the core meanings of ‘unique’ that feature in the literature and identifies which of these is most apt for considering the possible uniqueness of the Holocaust. It then works out what it would take for the Holocaust to be unique in the appropriately rigorous sense, which is facilitated by inquiring into the nature of genocide. The key question turns on the relation of the Holocaust to genocide: was the Holocaust more than, or different from, genocide?     

A DIFFERENT READING OF S. Y. AGNON'S STORY, “THE KERCHIEF”

This paper argues that effective Holocaust education involves exploring pupils' perceptions of Jews and Jewish identity. Identifying these preconceptions is necessary for combatting anti-Semitism, challenging misconceptions and facilitating a historically accurate understanding of the Holocaust. How do pupils define the Jews and what it is that makes someone Jewish? How do pupils explain the causes of the Holocaust and why it was that the Nazi regime specifically targeted Jews? The empirical basis of this paper attempts to help answer these questions. One hundred and forty seven children aged 13 and 14 took part in mixed-method research in order to explore their ideas and concepts of Jewish identity and why the Holocaust took place. The paper concludes with a discussion of the implications of the findings for Holocaust education.     

When criticism is ineffective: The case of historical trauma and unsupportive allies

Three studies examined the effect of historical trauma reminders and criticism from international allies on attitudes toward current conflicts. In Study 1, Israeli participants (N = 116) were primed with the Holocaust, and read either that the U.S. President Obama supports Israel's right to defend itself and attack Iran, or that he opposes such action. Then, support for preemptive violence was assessed. Study 2 (N = 133) replicated this design, comparing inclusive and exclusive framings of the Holocaust. Study 3 (N = 478), examined the effect of Holocaust reminders and criticism from the European Union on attitudes toward militant policies against Palestinians. All three studies found that Holocaust primes juxtaposed with international criticism increased support for aggression, especially under exclusive framings of the Holocaust. Study 3, however, found this effect only among left‐wing participants. These findings indicate that when historical trauma is salient, international criticism may be ineffective and may even backfire.     

PROFESSIONALIZING SURVIVAL: THE POLITICS OF PUBLIC MEMORY AMONG HOLOCAUST SURVIVOR-EDUCATORS IN MONTREAL

The majority of Holocaust survivors never speak publicly about their experiences, but those who do tend to find themselves at the centre of commemorative work in their communities. As Holocaust scholars, Holocaust education institutions, and members of the general public become increasingly interested in how to ethically universalize the lessons of the Holocaust, the public Holocaust survivor's role has broadened. It is no longer enough to recount one's own experience; survivors are expected to speak to current human rights abuses and genocides.In Montreal, Canada, a city which once claimed the third largest survivor population in the world, public survivors do a great deal of work. They give testimony in schools and at commemorative events, organize book clubs, write plays, direct films, teach, act as museum docents, and assume roles as community spokespeople. Given their dedication to this work, and a push to get them to speak beyond their personal experiences, we argue that there is a major shift taking place: the act of giving public Holocaust testimony is being professionalized. This professionalization raises unique questions about how people who lived through the Holocaust conceptualize themselves and their identities as survivors. By treating testimony as professional work, survivors contemplate, on a daily basis and in an applied manner, their stances on big questions regarding hierarchies of suffering, comparability, the connection between the personal and the political, blame and forgiveness, as well as many other relevant themes that are central to Holocaust and memory scholarship. All of this plays out in their testimonies.     

National Days,National Identity,and Collective Memory: Exploring the Impact of Holocaust Day in Israel

This study uses the case of Holocaust Day in Israel to examine the premise that national days impact national identity and collective memory. Specifically, the study examines whether a very unique type of national day—Holocaust Day—impacts national identification, nationalism, and collective memory in the form of Israeli Jews' perceptions of the “lessons” of the Holocaust. This study uses panel survey design data on national identity and perceptions of the Holocaust's lessons from the same sample of Israeli Jews (N = 665) collected two months prior to Holocaust Day and again during and after Holocaust Day. During and after Holocaust Day, respondents expressed increased levels of nationalism and more perceptions of both particularistic and universalistic Holocaust lessons. Participation in Holocaust Day practices had a stronger relationship with nationalism and national identification during Holocaust Day than before but a weaker relationship with the perception of a universalistic lesson during Holocaust Day. These findings indicate that Holocaust Day impacts national identity and collective memory and highlights the multifaceted nature of the relationships between national identity, collective memory, and national days. The theoretical implication of the findings as well as the case comparability are discussed in light of the findings.     

MANY QUESTIONS,FEW ANSWERS: THE HOLOCAUST IN THE THEOLOGY OF LOUIS JACOBS

Louis Jacobs identified the Holocaust—and the creation of Israel—as the two most significant events influencing contemporary Jewish consciousness. Yet his engagement with the theological implications of the Holocaust is notably limited. Since many of his writings are focused on issues facing those he termed “the Jew in the pew,” this absence of detailed consideration of the theological questions posed by the Holocaust seems particularly perplexing. This paper will consider if there is an explanation for this lacuna.     

Theistic Dissonance Among Religious Jewish Holocaust Survivors: A Psychodynamic Perspective

Coining the term theistic dissonance to capture conflicted attitudes and feelings toward God, this article examines faith-based reactions to the Holocaust. The theological weltanschauung of religious Jewish Holocaust survivors is analyzed, with a particular focus on their attempts to reconcile the notion of a benevolent and caring God with their harrowing experience. Basic religious sources and contemporary literature are presented to elucidate the realm of resolutions of theistic dissonance. It is suggested that elements of defense mechanisms are adapted from the emotional into the cognitive realm, and are used by survivors to facilitate respective interpretations of God’s role during the Holocaust. Dissonance resolution is seen as being informed theologically and experientially for these victims who confronted stark challenges to their religious integrity.     

HOLOCAUST COMMEMORATIONS IN LONDON AND ANGLO‐JEWISH (DIS‐)UNITY

This study of selected episodes of Holocaust commemorations in London (UK) sheds light on the tense and ambiguous relationship between commemoration of the Holocaust and Anglo‐Jewish unity. Many have shared the aspiration for Anglo‐Jewish unity at Holocaust commemorations, but a narrow definition of “unity”, as taken to mean centralization, uniformity and consensus, has been restrictive and has not served the desired end. As these case studies demonstrate, despite the high level of cohesion achieved by the rituals of the ceremony and the collective mourning, Holocaust commemorations have also been occasions of conflict and disunity. It is the recent proliferation of commemorations in the 1990s, taking place in a diverse range of Jewish organizations and institutions rather than one combined memorial gathering, that has led to Anglo‐Jewry’s uniting in common moments of remembrance. These differing approaches to the nature, form and content of Holocaust commemorations should be perceived not only as a positive development for the future of Holocaust remembrance in Britain but also an indication of an increasingly healthy Anglo‐Jewry.     

Salutogenesis and autobiographical disclosure among Holocaust survivors

Forty-five Holocaust survivors and a comparison group of 21 Jews who had not experienced Nazi persecution completed questionnaires assessing salutogenic (health-enhancing) and pathogenic (illness-inducing) outcomes of Holocaust vs. other traumatic experiences. Salutogenesis and pathogenesis were negatively correlated. Holocaust survivors were consistently higher on the measure of salutogenesis; with marital history held constant, this difference was statistically significant. Neither group reported high incidences of posttraumatic stress symptoms, although survivors reported more. Talking about one's Holocaust experiences was related to more positive and fewer negative responses. Marital history and religious observance mediated some aspects of both positive and negative long-term consequences. The results indicate that the long-term consequences of even extreme trauma may include increased personal strength and growth.     

Working with the Holocaust victims psychologically: Some vital cautions

This article traces the evolution of a major psychological organization's involvement with the Holocaust as a fully justified and legitimate topic of concern and of an ongoing commitment to its study and memory. A number of important cautions and requirements are presented for mental health workers who wish to work in the areas encompassed by the Holocaust, including working therapeutically with Survivors of the Holocaust and their children. The special danger of diminishing or trivializing the Holocaust in the course of writing about aspects or elements of it in psychological articles or writings, as has been the case in other kinds of literature, is brought into focus.     

Holocaust <Emphasis Type="Italic">Laughter</Emphasis> and Edgar Hilsenrath’s <Emphasis Type="Italic">The Nazi and the Barber</Emphasis>: Towards a Critical Pedagogy of Laughter and Humor in Holocaust Education

This article tries to defend the position that Holocaust Education can be enriched by appreciating laughter and humor as critical and transformative forces that not only challenge dominant discourses about the Holocaust and its representational limits, but also reclaim humanity, ethics, and difference from new angles and juxtapositions. Edgar Hilsenrath’s novel The Nazi and the Barber is discussed here as an example of literature that departs from representations of Holocaust as celebration of resilience and survival, portraying a world in which lies, hatred and violence are still perpetuated. Because of its transgressive qualities, Hilsenrath’s narrative of the Holocaust as a satire with elements of black comedy can offer pedagogical openings for using laughter to interrupt normative constructions of the Holocaust as an unspeakable and sacred event that lies outside history, and thus beyond the capacities of human understanding. It is argued that laughter is an important modality for inviting deep thinking about the Holocaust, to move it from a transcendent phenomenon to an immanent event, situated clearly in the realm of human action and worthy of understanding so as to prevent it from happening again.     

“FROM THE UTTER DEPTH OF DEGRADATION TO THE APOGEE OF BLISS”: THE GENDERINGS OF DIASPORIC ZIONISM AND JEWISH HOLOCAUST EDUCATION

This article examines some of the memories of the Holocaust produced in Holocaust education in a selection of Jewish high schools in Melbourne and New York at the beginning of the twenty-first century. It is being suggested here that the narratives about the Holocaust being taught in these schools are in part shaped by a gendered Zionist outlook. This article takes up the question of why this is, and in doing so provides an explanation of these types of narratives. In particular, this article explores the ways that this pedagogy places the story of the creation of the sovereign Jewish State of Israel at the end of a unit of study on the Holocaust, thus linking these two “events” in an important way. This article also explores what it is that makes these narratives gendered, and what work such narratives, and collective memories, do in the formulation of particular notions of diasporic Zionist thinking.     

Negotiating the marketplace: The role(s) of Holocaust museums today

This paper explores four roles played by Holocaust museums today, as sites of mass tourism; memorials to the dead; vehicles of historical exposition; and living memorials educating subsequent generations about the “lessons” of the Holocaust. Whilst the paper refers to various Holocaust museums, it focuses on the Auschwitz museum and the Holocaust exhibition at the Imperial War Museum (IWM).     

The Holocaust and Its Effects on Survivors: An Overview

The Nazi Holocaust has had continuing and widely reverberating consequences not only for the Jewish survivors but for the world at large. These consequences are detailed, first through a personal account of an Auschwitz survivor, and then through a discussion of the adaptive measures of concentration camp inmates and the long-term psychiatric and psychological effects on survivors and their families. The Survivor or Concentration Camp Syndrome and its relationship to the Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder is described. Indirect effects of the Holocaust have been manifested in various ways, particularly through various levels of psychologic denial displayed by Holocaust criminals and (at least during the early postwar period) by the German public. The Holocaust has had profound effects on the ways the Jewish people regard themselves and are seen by others. Finally, the Holocaust can be seen as offering a kind of paradigmatic signature to the worldview of the end of the 20th century, emphasizing the persistence of evil and the limitations of the idea of progress.     

Collective Trauma From the Lab to the Real World: The Effects of the Holocaust on Contemporary Israeli Political Cognitions

This research tested whether chronic or contextually activated Holocaust exposure is associated with more extreme political attitudes among Israeli Jews. Study 1 (N = 57), and Study 2 (N = 61) found that Holocaust primes increased support for aggressive policies against a current adversary and decreased support for political compromise via an amplified sense of identification with Zionist ideology. These effects, however, were obtained only under an exclusive but not an inclusive framing of the Holocaust. Study 3 (N = 152) replicated these findings in a field study conducted around Holocaust Remembrance Day and showed that the link between Holocaust exposure, ideological identification, and militancy also occurs in real‐life settings. Study 4 (N = 867) demonstrated in a nationally representative survey that Holocaust survivors and their descendants exhibited amplified existential threat responses to contemporary political violence, which were associated with militancy and opposition to peaceful compromises. Together, these studies illustrate the Holocaustization of Israeli political cognitions 70 years later.     

“ONCE UPON A TIME THERE WAS AN S.S. OFFICER”: THE HOLOCAUST BETWEEN HISTORY AND FICTION IN ELSA MORANTE'S LA STORIA

The twentieth-century Italian Jewish novelist Elsa Morante's La Storia, published in 1974, is rarely included in the canon of Holocaust literature today, yet contains considerable content regarding the Italian experience of the Holocaust. In this essay I examine how Morante's proclaimed artistic principles, in particular her notion of “verità poetica”, “poetic truth”, and “storia”, “history” or “story”, affect her depiction of the Holocaust. I also trace what I term an “anxiety of absence” in La Storia, which I believe explains not only Morante's use of characters who are unreliable witnesses to the Holocaust as it unfolds in Rome, but also explains her ultimate swerve away from her artistic ideals and her problematic use of historical sources.     

Holocaust Abuse

This essay reconsiders the category of “Holocaust denial” as the marked indicator of ethical transgression in Holocaust historiography within American civil religion. It maintains that the present category excludes and thereby enables other violations of responsible Holocaust historiography. To demonstrate the nature and gravity of such violations, the essay engages the widespread claim that Hajj Muhammad Amin al‐Husayni, the former mufti of Jerusalem, was an instigator, promoter, or “driving spirit” of the Nazi genocide against Jews, and the associated suggestions of wider Arab and Muslim complicity. The essay uncovers the history of the Husayni narrative in question, the dramatic circumstances in which it emerged, its role in the 1961 trial of Adolf Eichmann, and its rediscovery and misuse within American popular and political circles over the past two decades. Such misuse, it concludes, corrodes Holocaust recognition within American civil religion and demonstrates the need for a revision of the socially accepted ethical boundary for responsible Holocaust historiography.     

Lack of long-lasting consequences of starvation on eating pathology in Jewish Holocaust survivors of Nazi concentration camps

The purpose of the present study was to investigate whether Holocaust survivors will show the same eating pathologies that were found in other participants who had also undergone starvation. Fifty-five Holocaust survivors and 43 matched control participants answered a questionnaire designed to explore eating problems and pathologies described in the literature as lasting for decades after a period of severe food restriction. Confirmation of the survivors' reports was obtained from their children. No significant differences in current eating habits were found between the Holocaust survivors and their matched controls. Prolonged starvation in Holocaust survivors did not lead to disordered eating habits in the sample. These results conflict with the notion that severe starvation consistently leads to food preoccupation and disordered eating.     

DELEGITIMIZING JEWS AND ISRAEL IN IRAN'S INTERNATIONAL HOLOCAUST CARTOON CONTEST

In 2006, the Iranian government-aligned newspaper Hamshahri sponsored The International Holocaust Cartoon Contest. The stated aim of the contest was to denounce “Western hypocrisy on freedom of speech,” and to challenge “Western hegemony” in relation to Holocaust knowledge. This government-backed initiative was a clear attempt to export the Iranian regime's anti-Zionist agenda. Using qualitative thematic analysis and Social Representations Theory, this article provides an in-depth qualitative analysis of the cartoons submitted to the contest in order to identify emerging social representations of Jews and Israel. Three superordinate themes are outlined: (i) “Constructing the ‘Evil Jew’ and ‘Brutal Israel’ as a Universal Threat;” (ii) “Denying the Holocaust and Affirming Palestinian Suffering;” (iii) “Constructing International Subservience to ‘Nazi-Zionist’ Ideology.” Although the organizers of the International Holocaust Cartoon Contest claimed that their aims were anti-Zionist, this article elucidates the overtly anti-Semitic character of the contest and its cartoons. It is argued that the cartoons exhibit a distorted, one-sided version of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and of Jewish history, and may therefore shape viewers' beliefs concerning Jews and Israel in fundamentally negative ways, with negative outcomes for intergroup relations and social harmony.