Hilene Flanzbaum, The Americanization of the Holocaust
The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999
The following note is from summer 1999 when I was reworking my dissertation to what would become my first book, Elie Wiesel and the Politics of Moral Leadership (Temple University Press, 2001). Hedy Epstein’s Erinnern Ist Nicht Genug: Autobiographie appeared in Germany in 1999. Norman Finkelstein’s book The Holocaust Industry came out in 2000.
This collection of essays doesn’t have much in the way of political relevance to my project, but there are good cultural analyses, particularly the editor’s overview to the subject (e.g., Wiesel at the Mets’ game), Steinweiss’s remarks on Wiesel in Nebraska, Greenspan’s studies of the evolving reception and discourses of survivors (stigmatizing vs. celebratory), and Young’s remarks on the politics of identity.
Indeed, it is easier to talk about cultural shifts and Americanization rather than take the more controversial and critical view that elites are happy to focus on the Nazi crimes rather than our own. Those people speaking out — more than 50 years later! — against Nazism may think of themselves, proudly, as moral beacons, say, Christian “Holocaust scholars.” But this reminds me of what Chomsky said, “You can tell the truth about Ghengis Khan, but it doesn’t rank very high on the moral scale.” People got agitated about the Reagan Bitburg scandal of 1985, but not about Reagan’s aiding and abetting the bloodbaths in Central America at the same time.
