Extremes Word from: Alieza

I just finished reading Memoirs of a Jewish Extremist: An American Story by Yossi Klein Halevi. It traces the author's journey from a Holocaust obsessed JDL activist to a moderate Zionist with Humanist leanings. I found it a light enjoyable read, containing a couple exquisite chapters.

Overall the book is a meditation on the appropriate role of victimhood in Jewish American identity and the unhealthy repercussions of viewing the world through the prism of the Holocaust.


These ideas reverberated in an article in The Nation on Arts and Letters Daily. Anderson argues that until recently Germans have denied themselves the right to cope with the affects of World War II (fire bombings, sons of absent soldier-fathers) through literature because of the incredible guilt of the death camps. He claims that recent books that express German civilian victimhood need not be equated with deniers of the Holocaust.

Intellectually of course I agree, every individuals pain is legitimate and should be recognized and heard by others as part of people's coping processes; I am troubled then that my stomach twists into a knot when reading descriptions of books that talk of World War II with no reference to Jews, good or bad. Has our community done such a thorough job conditioning me to fear German anti-Semitism? Or is self preservation a natural evolutionary reaction that my intellect has not conquered?

Unsatisfied with these possibilities, I wonder if mostly the generalizations about German literature are dangerous. I remember reading a similar article in the New York Review of Books last year; it pointed out that some neo-Nazi writers were using the suffering of German civilians as a way to deny the Holocaust, claiming that the Jews created the Holocaust to overshadow the victimhood of the Germans.

I think one thing we need to grapple with this new year is the very thin grey line between our natural need to preserve the memory of the Holocaust -fight anti-Semitism-and the dangerous growth of racism that stems from viewing ourselves as perpetual victims?