The Holocaust Industry (7 page)

appointed task, and disproving it is equivalent to Holocaust denial. Perhaps the problem lies with the

premise, not the proof. Even if The Holocaust were unique, what difference would it make? How

would it change our understanding if the Nazi holocaust were not the first but the fourth or fifth in a

line of comparable catastrophes?

The most recent entry into the Holocaust uniqueness sweepstakes is Steven Katz's
The Holocaust in

Historical Context.
Citing nearly 5,000 titles in the first of a projected three-volume study, Katz

surveys the full sweep of human history in order to prove that "the Holocaust is phenomenologically

unique by virtue of the fact that never before has a state set out, as a matter of intentional principle and

actualized policy, to annihilate physically every man, woman and child belonging to a specific

people." Clarifying his thesis, Katz explains: "f is uniquely C. f may share A, B. D, . . . X with
s
but

not C. And again f may share A, B. D, . . . X with all
s
but not C. Everything essential turns, as it

were, on i; being uniquely C . . . pi lacking C is not J.... By definition, no exceptions to this rule are

allowed.
s
sharing A, B. D, . . . X with ~ may be like ~ in these and other respects . . . but as regards

our definition of uniqueness any or all
s
lacking C are not f.... Of course, in its totality f is more than

C, but it is never ~ without C." Translation: A historical event containing a distinct feature is a distinct

historical event. To avoid any confusion, Katz further elucidates that he uses the term

phenomenologically
"in a non-Husserlian, non-Shutzean, non-Schelerian, non-Heideggerian,

non-Merleau-Pontyan sense." Translation: The Katz enterprise is phenomenal non-sense.
6
Even if the

evidence sustained Katz's central thesis, which it does not, it would only prove that The Holocaust

contained a distinct feature. The wonder would be were it otherwise. Chaumont infers that Katz's

study is actually «ideology» masquerading as "science," more on which presently.
7

Only a flea's hop separates the claim of Holocaust uniqueness from the claim that The Holocaust

cannot be rationally apprehended. If The Holocaust is unprecedented in history, it must stand above

and hence cannot be grasped by history. Indeed, The Holocaust is unique because it is inexplicable,

and it is inexplicable because it is unique.

Dubbed by Novick the "sacralization of the Holocaust," this mystifications's most practiced purveyor

The Holocaust Industry: HOAXERS, HUCKSTERS AND HISTORY

http://www.geocities.com/holocaustindustry/chapter_2.html (2 of 20) [23/11/2000 15:47:20]

is Elie Wiesel. For Wiesel, Novick rightly observes, The Holocaust is effectively a "mystery" religion.

Thus Wiesel intones that the Holocaust "leads into darkness," "negates all answers," "lies outside, if

not beyond, history," "defies both knowledge and description," "cannot be explained nor visualized,"

is "never to be comprehended or transmitted," marks a "destruction of history" and a "mutation on a

cosmic scale." Only the survivor-priest (read: only Wiesel) is qualified to divine its mystery. And yet,

The Holocaust's mystery, Wiesel avows, is "noncommunicable"; "we cannot even talk about it." Thus,

for his standard fee of $25,000 (plus chauffeured limousine), Wiesel lectures that the "secret" of

Auschwitz's "truth lies in silence."
8

Rationally comprehending The Holocaust amounts, in this view, to denying it. For rationality denies

The Holocaust's uniqueness and mystery. And to compare The Holocaust with the sufferings of others

constitutes, for Wiesel, a "total betrayal of Jewish history."
9
Some years back, the parody of a New

York tabloid was headlined: "Michael Jackson, 60 Million Others, Die in Nuclear Holocaust." The

letters page carried an irate protest from Wiesel: "How dare people refer to what happened yesterday

as a Holocaust? There was only one Holocaust...." In his new memoir Wiesel, proving that life can

also imitate spoof, reprimands Shimon Peres for speaking "without hesitation of 'the two holocausts'

of the twentieth century: Auschwitz and Hiroshima. He shouldn't have."
10
A favorite Wiesel tag line

declares that «the universality of the Holocaust lies in its uniqueness."
11
But if it is incomparably and

incomprehensibly unique, how can The Holocaust have a universal dimension?

The Holocaust uniqueness debate is sterile. Indeed, the claims of Holocaust uniqueness have come to

constitute a form of "intellectual terrorism" (Chaumont). Those practicing the normal comparative

procedures of scholarly inquiry must first enter a thousand and one caveats to ward off the accusation

of "trivializing The Holocaust."
12

A subtext of the Holocaust uniqueness claim is that The Holocaust was uniquely evil. However

terrible, the suffering of others simply does not compare. Proponents of Holocaust uniqueness

typically disclaim this implication, but such demurrals are disingenuous.
13

The claims of Holocaust uniqueness are intellectually barren and morally discreditable, yet they

persist. The question is, Why? In the first place, unique suffering confers unique entitlement. The

unique evil of the Holocaust, according to Jacob Neusner, not only sets Jews apart from others, but

also gives Jews a "claim upon those others."

For Edward Alexander, the uniqueness of The Holocaust is "moral capital"; Jews must "claim

sovereignty" over this «valuable property."
14

In effect, Holocaust uniqueness - this "claim" upon others, this "moral capital" - serves as Israel's prize

alibi. "The singularity of the Jewish suffering," historian Peter Baldwin suggests, "adds to the moral

and emotional claims that Israel can make . . . on other nations."
15
Thus, according to Nathan Glazer,

The Holocaust, which pointed to the "peculiar
distinctiveness
of the Jews," gave Jews "the right to

consider themselves specially threatened and specially worthy of whatever efforts were necessary for

survival."
16
(emphasis in original) To cite one typical example, every account of Israel's decision to

develop nuclear weapons evokes the specter of The Holocaust.'' As if Israel otherwise would not have

gone nuclear.

There is another factor at work. The claim of Holocaust uniqueness is a claim of Jewish uniqueness.

The Holocaust Industry: HOAXERS, HUCKSTERS AND HISTORY

http://www.geocities.com/holocaustindustry/chapter_2.html (3 of 20) [23/11/2000 15:47:20]

Not the suffering of Jews but that
Jews
suffered is what made The Holocaust unique. Or: The

Holocaust is special because Jews are special. Thus Ismar Schorsch, chancellor of the Jewish

Theological Seminary, ridicules the Holocaust uniqueness claim as "a distasteful secular version of

chosenness."
18
Vehement as he is about the uniqueness of The Holocaust, Elie Wiesel is no less

vehement that Jews are unique. "Everything about us is different." Jews are "ontologically"

exceptional.
19
Marking the climax of a millennial Gentile hatred of Jews, The Holocaust attested not

only to the unique suffering of Jews but to Jewish uniqueness as well.

During and in the aftermath of World War 11, Novick reports, "hardly anyone inside [the US]

government - and hardly anyone outside it, Jew or Gentile — would have understood the phrase

'abandonment of the Jews.'" A reversal set in after June 1967. "The world's silence," "the world's

indifference," "the abandonment of the Jews". these themes became a staple of "Holocaust

discourse."
20

Appropriating a Zionist tenet, the Holocaust framework cast Hitler's Final Solution as the climax of a

millennial Gentile hatred of Jews. The Jews perished because all Gentiles, be it as perpetrators or as

passive collaborators, wanted them dead. "The free and 'civilized' world,» according to Wiesel,

handed the Jews «over to the executioner. There were the killers—the murderers - and there were

those who remained silent."
21
The historical evidence for a murderous Gentile impulse is nil. Daniel

Goldhagen's ponderous effort to prove one variant of this claim in
Hitler's Willing Executioners
barely

rose to the comical.
22
Its political utility, however, is considerable. One might note, incidentally, that

the "eternal anti-Semitism» theory in fact gives comfort to the anti-Semite. As Arendt says in
The

Origins of Totalitarianism,
«that this doctrine was adopted by professional anti-Semites is a matter of

course; it gives the best possible alibi for all horrors. If it is true that mankind has insisted on

murdering Jews for more than two thousand years, then Jew-killing is a normal, and even human,

occupation and Jew-hatred is justified beyond the need of argument. The more surprising aspect of

this explanation is that it has been adopted by a great many unbiased historians and by an even greater

number of Jews."
23

The Holocaust dogma of eternal Gentile hatred has served both to justify the necessity of a Jewish

state and to account for the hostility directed at Israel. The Jewish state is the only safeguard against

the next (inevitable) outbreak of homicidal anti-Semitism; conversely, homicidal anti-Semitism is

behind every attack or even defensive maneuver against the Jewish state. To account for criticism of

Israel, fiction writer Cynthia Chick had a ready answer: "The world wants to wipe out the Jews . . . the

world has always wanted to wipe out the Jews."
24
If all the world wants the Jews dead, truly the

wonder is that they are still alive — and, unlike much of humanity, not exactly starving.

This dogma has also conferred total license on Israel: Intent as the Gentiles always are on murdering

Jews, Jews have every right to protect themselves, however they see fit. Whatever expedient Jews

might resort to, even aggression and torture, constitutes legitimate self-defense. Deploring the

"Holocaust lesson" of eternal Gentile hatred, Boas Evron observes that it "is really tantamount to a

deliberate breeding of paranoia.... This mentality ... condones in advance any inhuman treatment of

non-Jews, for the prevailing mythology is that 'all people collaborated with the Nazis in the

destruction of Jewry,' hence everything is permissible to Jews in their relationship to other

peoples."
25

In the Holocaust framework, Gentile anti-Semitism is not only ineradicable but also always irrational.

Going far beyond classical Zionist, let alone standard scholarly, analyses, Goldhagen construes

The Holocaust Industry: HOAXERS, HUCKSTERS AND HISTORY

http://www.geocities.com/holocaustindustry/chapter_2.html (4 of 20) [23/11/2000 15:47:20]

anti-Semitism as "divorced from actual Jews," "fundamentally
not
a response to any objective

evaluation of Jewish action," and "independent of Jews' nature and actions." A Gentile mental

pathology, its «host domain" is "the mind." (emphasis in original) Driven by "irrational arguments,"

the anti-Semite, according to Wiesel, "simply resents the fact that the Jew exists."
26
"Not only does

anything Jews do or refrain from doing have nothing to do with anti-Semitism," sociologist John

Murray Cuddihy critically observes, "but any
attempt
to explain anti-Semitism by referring to the

Jewish contribution to anti-Semitism is itself an instance of anti-Semitism!" (emphasis in original)
27