Focus 580; How to Talk about the Holocaust

Good morning and welcome to focus 580 This is our telephone talk program My name's David inj very glad to have you listening this morning. In this part of focus 580 we're going to spend some time talking about how it is that we think about and talk about the holocaust here in this country. And our guest is a scholar who's written about this and has talked about it quite a lot. His name is Peter Novick He is professor emeritus of history at University of Chicago he's taught there at Chicago since 1966. He's authored several books and his most recent one that has caused a lot of conversation and debate is the Holocaust in American life it was published in 1999. And we talk about some of the ideas try to talk about some of the ideas in the book. He's here visiting the campus he gave a talk in the Miller com Series last night. And there will be another event that I want to mention So people who are in and around Champaign-Urbana. You might like to attend. This is a panel discussion on the politics and culture of memory and their titling at the future of the Holocaust and it will involve several people our guest Peter Novick also Dan Diener from the

University of Leipzig and he has a number of affiliations but at the moment he is George Miller endowment visiting professor and international counsel visiting professor here at University of Illinois in fact he'll be on the program next week. He'll be on this panel Michael Rothberg who teaches in the English department and Peter Fritchey who is also an historian at U of I will chair this panel discussion will be taking place at the level faculty center at 7:30 this evening on the third floor. And anyone who is interested in attending is certainly welcome to do that as we talk here this morning. Questions comments are welcome. We encourage people to call in of course we ask people just to try to be brief so we can keep things moving along but anyone is welcome to participate by calling here in Champaign-Urbana 3 3 3 9 4 5 5. We also have a toll free line good anywhere that you can hear us. A hundred to 2 2 9 4 5 5 so 3 3 3 W I L L toll free 800 1:58 W while I'm well thanks very much for being here and giving some your time for it to be here.

I'd like to talk have you talk a little bit about what I understand to be some of the basic arguments in the Holocaust in American life starting with the idea that it apparently had been the prevailing sort of idea that after the war at the time when the Holocaust was still a matter of recent memory people it was something that was so it was so horrible it was just it was pretty much too much for people to to think about. And I don't agree. OK. OK let me start I'm going to be going to I mean I guess that sort of saying that that had that had been sort of the prevailing view of the way here and that was the way that people had talked about something that you're come along and you're saying OK so. So they're saying that this this had been and maybe in some people's mind still is this idea that you know it was it was so it was so horrible that people didn't they felt it was something they couldn't deal with and that they wanted to put behind them. And what you're one of the things the place I think you begin in the book is by suggesting a

different a different approach to sort of two things that on one level nationally our policy was going in a different direction than Hitler was. We were done with Hitler we were moving on to something else. But also making the argument that American Jews were were interested in a part of a particular kind of image that is the image of being successful and being Americans and perhaps also for that reason American Jews were essentially wanting to move on and this was this is a new way of thinking about how people were thinking about it at that time. Right. I do apologize for jumping down your throat before. Yeah I think that's true. There are a lot of different things going on. For one thing during during the Second World War. People did not perceive this separate hard edged object called the Holocaust the murder of European Jews was perceived at the time as simply the Jewish dimension of Nazi barbarism in general. So that in and it was it was it was a

reified made into a separate object. It's not a question of one view or the other being right or wrong it's just different ways of looking at it. It's also true as you as you remarked that after the war with with astonishing rapidity there was this reversal of alliances. And we went from being allied with the Soviet Union against Germany to being allied with a revived Germany against the Soviet Union and in 1945 Americans had had cheered as the red army bombed BERLIJN into rubble in 1948 we were cheering gallant Berliners who were resisting the Red Army. So it was no longer useful for in the national interest to dwell on the crimes of Nazi ism the crimes of the Germans our new ally. It is also true that American Jews were.

Interested in integrating into the United States anti-Semitism which had been fairly high before and during the war started to drop very rapidly after 1945 and in. In the face of a disposition to treat Jew Jews as no different than other Americans it seemed foolish to say normal. We are different as the Holocaust demonstrated I mean that was totally not what was on the agenda. One might also say that nowadays might nowadays the last 15 or 20 years there has been a kind of I don't want to say celebration of the status of victim but it's positively regarded. But in post-war America still in a Victory Culture our military culture our cowboy culture and. The victim status was something that received the best the kind of sympathy not unmixed with contempt I mean being being a winner being a hero was what people wanted to be.

So there's all sorts of ways in which there simply was not any group of people in the United States who much wanted to talk about it there were some survivors of the Holocaust in the United States perhaps 100000 but this in a country of a couple hundred million this is a tiny drop in the bucket. These were by and large young people didn't know English very well they weren't even that well integrated to start with. Within the American Jewish community some of them were perfectly willing to talk about it but nobody much wanted to listen. So there. Memory I guess I would say is not natural. Or are they a collective body does not turn something into a collective memory automatically there has to be a reason. And in this case there were reasons there was no particular reason to do it. Lots of reasons not to do it. Well then you go on to explain that how things changed

in perhaps in the 1000 sixties and that now we're at a point where the big change is that for a great many American Jews this this event has central important central significance it has a lot to do with how it is they define themselves and this is a this is a very big change over seemingly relatively short period of time. No it is a big change and I think. It begins in the late 60s even more in the 70s in response to a variety of things I mention a few of them briefly concerned for the security of Israel particularly after the 1973 Yom Kippur War. War is terribly important. Israel almost loses the war in one thousand seventy three takes very serious casualties. There is a disposition to regard Israel as being in what might called proto Holocaust illustrates and to frame events in the Middle

East with a new Holocaust paradigm. Arabs as the new the new Nazis. There is also there comes to be within American Jewry a great deal of survival anxiety not physical survival against some military or murderous menace but demographic survival against the. Assimilation intermarriage and as as we all know from the sixties onward increasing in the 70s and 80s the growth of particular risk identities particular group consciousness is a big thing. Well as as American Jews ask themselves what they had in common what distinguish them from other Americans it was a little hard to specify what it was. They couldn't distinguish themselves on the basis of distinctive religious beliefs because most American Jews simply didn't have distinctive religious beliefs. They couldn't distinguish themselves on the basis of shared cultural traits. Most American Jews

didn't have these either. There was their support Israel but it was of a fairly thin nature. The one thing that all American Jews did have in common was that but for the happy accident of grandparents or great grandparents immigration they would have shared the fate of European Jewry. So in this way the holocaust symbolically became the center of for many. So I want to say for everybody and least of all for the most religious after all for the most religious there was there was Judaism there was Jewish religious practice but most American Jews are not that religious so they had to be some some secular alternative on which to ground identity. And it turns out that this is very hard to measure but. There was a recent survey by the American Jewish Committee in which American Jews were asked to were presented with a list of activities going to synagogue observing Jewish holidays visiting Israel commemorating the

Holocaust and asked which of these listed activities are most important to your Jewish identity and commemorating the Holocaust. One hands down beat you know beating out and the others. Now as I say I'm a little skeptical about how significant these kind of findings are but they're certainly interesting. Well then moving on to what it would seems to me the point where there there's the most controversy or perhaps the thing that has that upset people was your argument that this preoccupation with the Holocaust having it be such an important point for American Jews to define themselves is it's not healthy. So it seems to me and so it seems to many others but of course there are those who disagree. One of the interesting things that I've discovered in the couple of years since the book. Came out and just as I'm visiting University of Illinois.

Yesterday and today I've been traveling all around the country speaking to groups about about the book over the last couple of years and what is so interesting is that is interesting because I am myself completely without religion and almost a caricature of secularity. The people who are most enthusiastic about my book by and large are the most religious because they are so distressed that a kind of pseudo religion of the Holocaust is driving out traditional Jewish religion. So there is this this is a very large portion of those who share my distress. My own distress is that you know I guess you'd call it call it secular. I don't think it's healthy for any group to think of themselves as essentially victims. I don't I don't think it's healthy for blacks I don't think it's healthy for Hispanics I don't think it's healthy for Jews and particularly in the case of American Jews who are

in no sense victims. I think it's a kind of false consciousness which I criticize. Our guest this morning in this part of focus 580 is Peter Novick He's professor emeritus of history at University of Chicago. And as I mentioned beginning has taught at Chicago since 1966. Some of the ideas here that we're discussing in brief form can be had be examined at greater length in his book The Holocaust in American life it was published in 1999 he was here visiting the campus of the University of online Questions Comments welcome we have a couple of people ready to go already. And again as I say this I often try to say we did encourage people just to try to be brief in their comments. And we do that so that we can get in as many different people as possible and keep things moving along but anyone certainly is welcome to participate in the conversation here. 3 3 3 9 4 5 5 toll free 800 2 2 2 9 4 5. We have a couple of callers here and both in Champaign will start with the

first person in line. Line number four. Hello. Hi. I had wanted to bring up a couple of what I think of the issues related to this and here are the comments. I was like well took from my own experience in part because I grew up with a number of survivors and their children a large number of survivors. And I want to say that my perception certainly in the 50s and the 60s is the survivors for a long time were much too traumatized to talk about their experience in the camps even to talk about it with a family much less to talk about it with anyone else and much less to make anything of it and their attempt was always to distance themselves from their memories which were much too painful which caused all sorts of psychological and physical difficulties. It's only as their children grow up. Cho met children even born right after the war in Europe were born in

America that way and that we start having some willingness even within the families to talk about it at length. And then you also have all sorts of of the children of survivors issues beginning to come up as there. They become adults in the 60s and 70s. You were talking about the number of issues but I want to bring up that it seems to me that at least in the Jewish communities and certainly in the Jewish communities of survivors that there was an increased perception of anti-Semitism in the United States particularly related to one issues of the anti-Israeli feelings particularly on the left and those in the political left even those who in the past had been connected to or had some affiliation with the Jewish community and also increased anti-Semitism in the black was least perceived in anti-Semitism when we say it that way in the black civil rights movement.

And I think all of those factors are important in the increased interest and exploration of the Holocaust in the 60s and 70s and it seems that that's something that at least I haven't heard you talk about I haven't read your book so I'll you know put that aside. But I'd be interested to hear your comments on that. Well yeah. Excuse me I got a frog in my throat. So far as the year for your first point and survivor's reluctance to talk about their experiences this is it's a very mixed picture and depending on sort of what part of the elephant you touch you get a very different impression. There certainly were. There is no question that there were survivors for whom the memories were too painful to bring to the surface and did not speak to the children etc..

At the same time the sort of coexisting with this we have abundant testimony of survivors both in this country and in Israel who were anxious to talk about their experiences but found that other people didn't want to listen to them and just to avoid being regarded as as a pain. Stop talking about it so it's a it's a very mixed picture but I but I certainly do not would not for a moment deny that there were people like those whom you describe what the balance was between these two. I think it's impossible to say. Your second point I think is absolutely right I do. I do discuss it in the book and increased perception of anti-Semitism in the United States. I think the perception was wrong. I do not think that there was any substantial increase in anti-Semitism in the United States. I was part of that mindset. Part of that world view which led to a lot more talk about about the

Holocaust. Also in as you as you say also the perception of increased and he Semitism among blacks. My own view you can see you can see it you know sort of expanded and spelled out in the book is that there really was was less here than met the eye and that a great deal was being made out of very little. But as far as perception is concerned you're absolutely right. Yeah. If I could just go take one step further and then leave. GET OFF THE PHONE Let others. One of the things that I think also developed along with the Holocaust the focus on the Holocaust was an increase of of call it movements on the right in the Jewish community and outside the Jewish communities particularly I can think of my own personal experience that many of those attracted to movements such as the more extreme JDL and

other Jewish nationalist movements of various sorts grew out of that increased perception of anti-Semitism and increased feeling that. This is what wasn't responded to before the Holocaust and now we have to respond to it otherwise etc. etc.. You know I guess I agree completely. The JDL the Jewish Defense League is particularly interesting in this regard. The slogan Never again which has become so so common so popular used so widely was in fact originally a Jewish Defense League slogan invoked in conflicts with blacks in New York City and one of the things I discovered as I as I looked through organizational records in the 1960s and 70s is that many of the mainstream Jewish organizations were distressed by the way in which the Jewish Defense League was was growing by this invocation of the

Holocaust and seemed to be establishing a kind of rhetorical monopoly over the Holocaust and part of the Holocaust programming and talking more about the Holocaust on the part of mainstream Jewish organizations was not to let the Jewish Defense League maintain this monopoly. I appreciate the coming of the call and have some other folks here and I want to continue that will go to another champagne person and this is line number one. Hello. Hello. Yes as a Jew who has operated more with Jewish institutions both religious and secular. I don't think it's been a consensual process or a kind of a populist process by which the whole the whole cost has become so central to our lives. I think basically it's been forced down our throats it's been forced on our throats primarily by by it's Israel it's been forced out of throats by Jewish leaders in this country for a pretty any number of reasons from from media

logical reasons to fundraising reasons. And it's been forced down our throats increasingly by elites in this country who it's almost as if they want to feel the whole costs were victims from within this country not from not in in Europe and also who perhaps you know have their own poet political political agenda who definitely have their own political agenda for tying the innocence of Holocaust victims to the increasingly implausible innocence of you know of you know the United States against all people like Castro as it were during the Cold War or so forth. But I don't think that this particular version of the Holocaust that's been forced down or throats is a is at all a scholarly version of the Holocaust I mean I think that's what you're what you're arguing in fact that there really isn't much interest in Holocaust historical scholarship.

I've never seen I've never seen it. Related to that historic risk Streit in Germany or to the to the gold Hagen book or to the charge you know that that back and forth charges that are made about the Holocaust it's all. All this conversation about the Holocaust is really fairly program from the top down just to create certain appellate political environment for the support of Israel. And as the last caller pointed out for that for Jewish antipathy towards black interests in this country completely manufactured in the 1960s and 1970s. I'm going to have to disagree pretty thoroughly with this caller. I think it's fair to characterize the views he's expressed as a kind of conspiracy theory. The Israeli elites Israeli hawks Jewish leaders anti-black sentiment on the part of Jewish leaders. I think that's that's

wrong. In any case much too simple the relationship between leaders and followers between leaders and their constituencies is a very complicated and reciprocal one. Jews the Jew in the street whatever there's a sort of average ever Jew to some extent is going to take some some guidance from leaders at the same time. Leaders become leaders continue to be leaders by expressing views that are found among their constituents. There was a time it is perfectly true that there was a time particularly in the mid 1970s when there was a kind of heavy in vocation Holocaust rhetoric on behalf of a in defense of Israel on behalf of a of a hawkish position in Israel I think that that was already declining by the end of the 70s by the 1980s was declining still

further. And nowadays it is simply gone. But you say you're not within Jewish life and I am with you when you were gone if they are there every day I experience. I don't know. I don't know what being and not within Jewish life. When did I say I am not within. If you will wish OK you said you weren't a practicing Jew in any way. I said I was a caricature of secularity there are many ways of being a Jew besides being religious. Well yes and that's fine. And even from within secular Jewish life the connection between the Holocaust and support for Israel is constantly and incessantly made. Well what can I say except we we differ in our reading of the sources I have. I'm not I'm not trying to read I'm really not trying to trying to pull rank as as an academic or a scholar but I spent about 10 years going very carefully through the Jewish and other discourses about the Holocaust over the last half century and it seems to me

to the salience of this discourse with respect to the Middle East has declined for superficially continuously since the 1970s. You read it differently and this is is not the kind of dispute that's going to be fruitful. You know there was there was a Lexis-Nexis search done on the New York Times. In 1999 there was over 700 articles about the Holocaust in that same year there was 30 articles about Africa. I mean what do you expect this is part of. I'm not a conspiracy theorist First of all I'm definitely not a conspiracy theorist. It's just when one begins to delve into Israel American support for Israel and American Jewish support. And then one put that alongside this incessant clamoring about the Holocaust and constant articles about about musical instruments and paintings and everything else and and then the constant in any vocation of Jews being under siege in Israel of there being an incipient

holocaust of Jews being driven into the sea. You know I don't see how you could fail to see that relationship between those two. Between all this rhetoric I guess what I would say is that even in the origin of widespread talk about the Holocaust in the United States I think support of Israel. It was important. Since then I think one set in motion this is declined in fact it is. It is the case that there are many Israelis who are resistant to all of this. American Jewish talk about the Holocaust which they feel takes place at the expense of support of Israel that the Holocaust has become in their view and I think there's something to this alternative to Israel as the center of Jewish loyalty and Jewish identity. And they're very troubled by this. So there's this this paradoxical situation in that the Holocaust made a first come to prominence within American Jewry in large part

to mobilize support for Israel over the course of 20 years. It has come to some substantial extent to replace Israel and American Jewish consciousness. I must champion again I hope the caller forgive me but we're already past our midpoint the lines are full and I do want to give some others call or chance some other callers a chance to get into the conversation here too. And let me again mention that our guest is Peter know it. He's professor emeritus of history at University of Chicago. If you'd like to read more of his thinking on this subject you can look for the book that we've mentioned it's titled The Holocaust An American Life published in 1909. Also I do want to mention that that there will be a panel discussion I'm sure dealing with these issues and others the future of the Holocaust a panel discussion on the politics and culture of memory. Our guest Peter Nowak will be one of the participants and that will be taking place tonight at 7:30 at the 11:00 faculty center on the campus on the third floor it's free and open to the public so anybody who is interested in attending should feel welcome and we will continue here.

Our next caller is in Urbana. It's line number two. Hello. Yes. I'm not Jewish I haven't read the book I'm not particularly well-informed on this but as an outsider the thing that strikes me is the way in which it seems that. The Holocaust and the suffering that the Jews underwent during the Holocaust is used to justify in some way policies in Israel toward Arabs which it seems to me caused great suffering among Arabs and Moslems and that's a little bit backward from the way I would have hoped it might be that Jews would be more aware of suffering of other groups but because of the Holocaust. And my guess is you've dealt with this and in your book and I'll hang up and you cannot talk to that point. Thank you very much. All right. You know it is. It's a bad day to be on the radio with a frog in my throat.

In large you know in part I agree with you it is. It is certainly true that. Again particularly in the 1970s and the night and the early 1980s there was fairly widespread and a lot of Israeli discourse a kind of self-righteousness based on the Holocaust the invocation of the Holocaust. In the 1900 to Lebanon War for example then prime minister bacon talked about Yasser Arafat in Beirut as being like Hitler in his bunker in Berlin. At the same time at the same time it was used in the other direction as well. And there were many on the Israeli left in the Israeli peace movement who explicitly invoked the Holocaust and the Jewish experience with with foreign oppression and an occupation in order to argue for

a more liberal and. A more peaceful policy that there are. People within within Israel within the Jewish community who who do in fact use the Holocaust in order to justify Israeli policies is perfectly true. I would say here that the problem is that the the only historical maxim I know that's really useful is if you can imagine that somebody will do it. So you know that the there is always an example of anything you want to. You want to talk about. The question is is is this widespread. Is this is this dominant does this this define the present use of the Holocaust and my sense is as I said to the last caller is that whereas once upon a time it played a rather significant role. I don't think it does anymore. All right let's go to Champaign County line number three. Hello. Hi I will associate myself with the remarks and I wanted to

call it. I really think that maybe it is. You know I make arguments anymore in prison and in the press or something. But I think that's something that we can leave here for the moment I actually wanted to try to approach something exceptional or some truth and what I mean by that is there is a security underlying underlying death camps but even the death and just I mean there are many. It seems to me. We just always you know this is not something that's not been a remarkable fact that you know

six million Jews and three million others in the camps and it wasn't and again they call it a particular event. But the way it's used in the language here it only means one thing and I think that's the same. I want to raise the idea that on college campuses we have an attack on particularity. Out of the box so much success but the same time the people that kind of years despite any acknowledgement of difference or some kind of you know and it's in itself a racist kind of thing like Jewish studies and stand right next to other cultural studies and I don't mean that in a way that is used a lot but I'll just hang up my thank you. Well here's the point I think actually agree with the caller. I'm sorry to be an academic Yes I know.

There is to my mind a it's a really very foolish and unproductive discussion is the real number of Holocaust victims 6 million or 11 million that these this call or suggest that mine but it's been more more common to say is does the Holocaust consist of the six million Jews who were killed or six million Jews plus five million non-Jews. This is a purely definitional question there were there were there was an onslaught against European Jews. There were others who were also targeted depending on your particular purposes and. Subject you're talking about. It may be useful to talk about it one way or the other but it's not as if one is right and the other is wrong. If if your point is that as it may be is that there is sometimes a certain possessiveness in some Jewish discourse which resents

the mention or the inclusion of non-Jewish victims of Naziism in the same breath with talk of Jewish victims. Yes that is regrettably the case. I think that most leaders of American Jewry try to steer clear of that kind of talk but by no means all do with respect to your remarks about Jewish studies and other ethnic studies I confess I don't really get the point. Well let me ask an equally. Problematic question I guess because you think that you are suggesting to people that we should be careful. We should be careful about the kinds of words we use and how we talk about the Holocaust because on the one hand there will be those people who would who would say that this this was in and you talked about this last on your talk this was an event unique in human history. There just simply wasn't ever anything else like this. And then there will be people

who say but there we can point through history to many examples of genocide and the other I suppose the other extreme point would be would be the person who would say the question is not how this could have happened but how is it this keeps happening. How does one steer though the appropriate course. And at between I think the two the two points because I think one doesn't want to do either you don't want to say yes and it's in fact there was nothing ever like the Holocaust and then and then maybe there never will be again or that this or that you're saying that it happens every day. I. Again realize I am a caricature of the professor. I don't accept the notion of steering a correct course between these two. For example. David you and I. Are we more alike than different. There are or you could make a very long list of all the ways in which we are alike all the things we

share. You could make a very long list of all the ways in which were different. Which is it which list is more important how to how does one steer a course between talking about the similarities and talking about the differences. I think it's a foolish project for some purposes it might be depending on what we're trying to do. It might be useful to talk about the similarities for other purposes it might be useful to talk about the differences there is no Jew wall correct of course between between the two. All right I'll just go on to another call to Belgium Illinois. Line number one. Hello sir. I take exception with what you said about this being a single event in world history because if you point to the aspect of MS or American. North America upon the upon the emergence of North Northern Europeans into this area. Yes there were 6 million Jews killed or whatever number you want to use but there were still some

Jews left in the world. We can take the example of many many Native American peoples who no longer exist for the plain simple reason that Jesuits wanted to change me into a into Christians. But that's another topic. The aspect of the Holocaust and Israel is interesting in that any time that I point out to other people that I take exception with some of the policies of Israel I'm immediately called anti-Semitic and I'm not being anti-Semitic I'm pointing out that we need a very equal policy on both sides and probably help a whole lot. But the American Jewish community that is integrated into Israel has polarized the situation they're in and moved right into the very heart of the Palestinians and really asseverated the problem. It seems to me that we could really solve some a problem if we didn't get so. What are some of the émigrés that are really causing a great deal of problem in Israel to just back off. So I know that's

almost impossible to do. Thank you very much. OK. I don't know where you got it. Anyway I want you. Yeah well there are many. At least at least a couple of different different parts to it. So far as as the caller's suggestion that there are many other examples of genocidal programs in history. He is absolutely right. And in so far as what is bothering him what he's what he is objecting to is what I call before a certain certain possessiveness and a certain desire for primacy for those who talk about the Holocaust are catastrophe is incomparable and is not to be spoken of together with other people's catastrophe. I think that's terrible terrible stuff. I think that's bad stuff. I think we should have nothing to do with it. So far he repeats what other callers have said about the Holocaust being used to justify Israeli policies I

can only repeat what I've said before. Sometimes I don't think it's as central as he does. He suggests that many American Jewish immigrants to Israel have been among the most hawkish and belligerent settlers. This turns out to be true. I mean once upon a time there were American labor Zionists who went to Israel to participate in the building of this new social experiment. Most American immigrant not all but most American immigrants to Israel in recent years have been among the ultra-Orthodox who have been very active in expanding settlements in the West Bank. I wish it didn't happen I disapprove. I don't I don't I don't like it. I don't know what more to say.

And then we have about six or seven months left to get another call I will go to Clifton number four. Hello. Yes doctor. There are two that are not served in the Pacific. But there are a lot of them. Just assist and call it a course has been said demands him inhumanity to man and don't make any difference to me who's who's doing it to who. But this was a terrible thing. But one thing I want to bring out is do we tell the truth and tell us how it was a good little upset when they want they don't want to tell about to atomic bomb they wouldn't put it on a postage stamp in 1945. And so many things it seems like we just want to sweep under under the rug and I never will forget. Go into deco about four years ago and I saw the four languages there says never again. Course in German and English and. And I don't know what the other languages French or whatever but anyway.

They would kill to fifty three million four hundred thousand people in World War Two and that's just what was killed and this is just. I'd just hope that we can stop this but one thing you know I want to say is we don't stop it by not being militarily prepared. So I'll stop right there. See what you got to say. I guess we're going to have to disqualify myself on questions of military policy. I don't want to stop there. I appreciate the guy getting most of the call and we're coming down to the point where we're going to have to stop we have a couple minutes left and I'll be the student again and you can be the professor. We know in Washington DC have a Holocaust Museum. Would it. Would it serve us any purpose if we said

well that's that's it you know it's fine it's probably a good thing that we have a Holocaust museum but we ought we ought to find extra space on the Mall for the you know for the Museum of the Armenian Genocide and the museum for all the people Stalin killed in the museum for all the people Pol Pot killed and while we're at it. We better deal with slavery and then while we're at that we better deal with the genocide of indigenous peoples of the Americas and pretty soon we wouldn't have room for another building because we'd have so many. What what's the what's the function of places like like that and does it does it do anything for us that we have them. The the people who. Work to construct the Holocaust Museum believed believe sincerely continue to believe that the kind of confrontation with the horrors of the Holocaust that the museum provides is going to have moral

consequences is going to in some ways energize people to be alert to take action about the other atrocities in the here and now I'm not sure that happens. I'm not sure that it doesn't but I don't know what the evidence is that it does. You mention and I think it's very important. The absence of a museum in Washington to American black slavery. It really seems to me striking that we have this enormous Museum of the Holocaust in Washington and none to slavery which of course is the great disfiguring atrocity of American history. It seems to me that it is as if the Germans said well the Holocaust was really a terrible terrible thing. But what's really important is that we build an Berlin museum about American black slavery. I think if the Germans did that we would think something very very

peculiar was going on it seems to me what's going on is something analogous to that. What do you do indeed the Germans think that it's because earlier that he we here in Washington in the United States in Washington D.C. We have a Holocaust museum that you say. Do Germans think this is like what Americans think no no I'm going to get I get I'm being the professor and I know obviously some do some I've talked with. Well I guess I feel like I don't know where I am but maybe that's with a topic like this that's that's an appropriate admission to make. I wonder how you think about the fact that I guess some some people I'm I'm sure reacted to the Holocaust in American life as if you were almost as if you were denying it. Not so much as you would know it but you know what you are saying as if you were saying well it's not as it's not as important as maybe you think you know it is you know it is. It is true that there are people who responded that way.

Part of it again being the professor has to do with whether you think collective memory as something that arises spontaneously and naturally or whether you think collective memory is as the result of choices by collectivity is about what it is useful to remember for present purposes and going back to the beginning of our discussion about the reasons why the Holocaust was not talked about originally and came to be talked about later. I think a lot of the people who are upset by my book are upset by the fact that I I talk about this as to a very considerable extent involving deliberate choice and I don't think is anything wrong with that. But but for those who regard it as a kind of natural and spontaneous development to talk about it as the result of deliberate choice sounds as if I'm saying something disparaging about it. We will have to stop there. I want to mention again that people are interested in reading on the subject. You can look for this book that we have mentioned is titled The Holocaust in American life was published in

1999 by our guest Peter Novick He's professor emeritus of history at University of Chicago he's visiting here the campus and will be taking part in this panel discussion about the future of the Holocaust tonight 7:30 at the levels faculty center and anyone who is interested in attending should feel welcome. Thank you very much for being with us. Enjoyed it. Today's broadcast made possible with support from Chorley photography at 1:18 North walnut in Champaign providing portrait wedding and commercial photography service bus the copying and restoration of old photos.