The Ways We Remember the Shoah
Miller, Judith
lis), the cohesion shown by Christian and Moslem elements, the emergence of women and youths as "heroes" and "martyrs"—all have combined to heighten Palestinian self-esteem and transform the society...
...Instead what this archive does is interview and record— on cassette and videotape—the recollections of survivors...
...Here the Shoah is not used to prove anything, teach anything or advocate anything...
...Most chilling is the book's final sentence: "At the very least, the intifada is forcing Israelis to take a fresh look in the mirror, and what they see is the emergence of dark spots on their democracy, blemishes that threaten to mar the face of their society for years to come...
...In the Netherlands she saw the myth taking form that everyone helped Anne Frank and no one betrayed her...
...It is not a book about the Shoah per se but about the way in which it is remembered, explained and taught...
...Lest we get some sense of superiority from reading how Europeans have denied or distorted the Shoah, know that in her last chapters, Miller gets to America...
...She shows how the Shoah has become the great sales pitch with which funds are raised for every cause from Israel to Jewish community centers...
...Bezalel Gordon is a Washington writer and former news director of the Israel Government Press Office...
...Schiff and Ya'ari lay bare the blunders committed by IDF commanders and analysts, Israeli civil administration functionaries in the territories and the cabinet ministers responsible for Israel's security policies...
...She is right in insisting, as do the people who run the program at Yale, that it can only be comprehended, absorbed and given meaning one by one by one...
...lis), the cohesion shown by Christian and Moslem elements, the emergence of women and youths as "heroes" and "martyrs"—all have combined to heighten Palestinian self-esteem and transform the society in the territories from a motley collection of downtrodden refugees into a nation-in-the-mak-ing...
...In Austria she found a community that had been Hitler's first and most enthusiastic ally now painting itself as his first victim...
...Intifada draws to a close just as a newly violent cycle has begun to, manifest itself, this one inner-directed...
...319 pp., $22.95 Reviewed by Rabbi Jack Riemer This is a book that informs, that sometimes irritates and even offends, but it throws beams of truth into corners of contemporary culture that would much rather not be exposed to the light...
...And she found Helmut Kohl determined to put an end, once and for all, to the recriminations, guilt and concern for the topic...
...In a few more years the last of those who lived through the Holocaust will have died, and before that happens, this institute carefully records what survivors remember and what they have to say...
...She lets us in on some of the in-fighting within the Jewish community over who would get which honor on that commission...
...In Germany she found a young generation that has used the Shoah as a club with which to bash its parents...
...He is co-editor of Ethical Wilis: A Modern Jewish Treasury (Schocken, 1986) and editor of Jewish Reflections on Death (Schocken, 1976...
...In France she saw the Barbie trial awaken fears that the truth about Vichy and French cooperation with the Nazis might be revealed...
...This book is an act of remembrance—and more...
...She saw Kurt Waldheim elected its president, not in spite of the fact that his Nazi background was exposed, but because it was...
...In the Soviet Union she saw no reference to the Jewish martyrs at Babi Yar—where more than 100,000 persons, the majority of them Jewish, were killed by the Nazis— and the meaning of what took place there distorted...
...Only one institution in America emerges unscathed from this book— the Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies at Yale...
...She also found the nations near Germany watching the country about to begin its Fourth Reich and still not convinced it has come to terms with what happened in the Third...
...Schiff and Ya'ari trace the evolution of the intifada from its first stage of violence directed against Israelis to a second stage of attempted non-violent civil disobedience...
...Jack Riemer is the rabbi of Beth David Congregation in Miami, Florida...
...Our smugness quickly turns to embarrassment as she shows how the Holocaust has been used, abused, trivialized and commercialized by so many here...
...The Ways We Remember the Shoah One by One by One Judith Miller Simon & Schuster, 1990...
...Still, the intifada has its dark and bloody side for the Palestinians themselves...
...They even call it the "mother" of Palestinian self-determination...
...She shows how the United States Holocaust Memorial Council was an afterthought of President Jimmy Carter when his relationship to the Democratic party in New York was in trouble...
...when that did not happen, apathy returned...
...The humorous line she quotes from Milovan Djilas about communism and how it rewrites history applies not only to Communists but to all of Europe: "The hardest thing about being a Communist is trying to predict the past...
...Judith Miller has gone to Germany, Austria, the Netherlands, France, the Soviet Union and various places throughout the United States to see how people in each of these places deal with the Holocaust...
...No war, indeed, no chapter in Israel's struggle for survival has been as complex, protracted or fought so close to home as the intifada...
...Therefore, Palestinian leaders now speak of the intifada as a revolution rather than a rebellion...
...This third stage, consisting of grisly internecine violence, is marked by gangs of masked Palestinian "avengers" murdering alleged "collaborators" in gory actions that are deplored even by the hardly squeamish PLO leadership...
...As you listen to their words you come to understand that the Shoah is not an abstraction but an individual experience, says Judith Miller...
Vol. 15 • August 1990 • No. 4
