again no intention of genocide can be shown. The Ar~ menian case is a case of genocide, very near to what I define as a Holocaust situation. The Holocaust itself was not state-Sponsored; it was executed by an ideological organization, the NSDAP, which intended to emasculate the German state because it saw in it one of its main enemies. The equation of nazism with the state bureauc- racy is correct only insofar as the bureaucracy executed the wishes of a supralegal, ideologically oriented party. mechanism. If there is a continuum. it is not one of state-sponsored cruelty, which stretches from a police- man in Los Angeles beating up a drunk to mass murder, but one that goes from mass murder to genocide to Holocaust, as de?ned above. hat I object to very Strongly is LOpate?s attempt to look at the Holocaust ?from an ironic disrance." You can do that with a lot of things, but please not with the mass murder of your or any Other people. This is not an academic exercise in literary criticism; this is mass murder. It is this unfortunate ?irony? that seems to have led Lopate to attack my article opposing the Wiesenthal de?nition of the Holocausr as being the destruction of six million Jews and ?ve milliOn non-Jews. He argues that since I see the Holocaust as killing Jews, ?pure and simple,? we Jews own the Holocaust and ?all others get your cotton-picking hands off.? Let me be ?pure and simple": the Jews were picked out for total desrruction, unlike any other people. They would have much pre- ferred not to be picked out, in which case they would A CRITIQUE or PHILLIP LOPATE not ?own? the Holocaust. As it is, they unfortunately do ?own? it. \Wiesenthal's definition is demonstrably false. The total number of non-Jewish concentration camp victims is about half a million?which is half a million too many, but it is not ?ve million. On the other hand, the total number of dead in World War II has been estimated at thirty-five million. Deduct the nearly six million Jews, and you have many more than \Viesenthal?s five million. Yet there was no premeditated plan to murder all these people?all the members of any group. If you were a Polish peasant or city-dweller and you avoided resistance and other types of opposition, you would have suffered, no doubt, but you would not have been targeted for murder. To call what happened to the non-Jewish victims ?the Holocausr" is ?simply? false. \??iesenthal, as he admitted to me in private, invented the ?gure in order to create sympathy for the Jews?in order to make the non-Jews feel like they are part of us. A nice sentiment, maybe, but ultimately totally counterproductive, not to mention false. Lopate would like the Holocausr to disappear? wouldn?t we all! Unfortunately, one third of our petiple disappeared into the abyss, and we have to know more about it, not less. Rather than deal with the Holocaust with ?ironic distance,? which is little short of scandalous, let us deal with it?including its aberrations, trivial- izations, and vulgarizations?~in a concerned and in- volved manner. It will not go away, but at least then we can face it. What is the Meaning of This to You? Debora/9 E. szstadt or the past ten years, virtually since the explosion of intereSt in the Holocaust, scholars and teachers have had serious reservations about the way in which the Holocaust has been used and abused to support an entire gamut of political and social objecrives. The Holocaust has been invoked as a means of encourag- ing Jews to study Torah, give to Jewish charities, support Deborah E. Lr'prtaa't is [be ant/Jar of Beyond Belief: The American Press and the Coming of the Holocaust, 1933- 1945 (Free Prerr, 1986) and is currently conducting a study of Holocaust Revisionism. political causes?both liberal and conservative?and observe traditional Jewish rituals. Similar concerns have been expressed about the rash of Holocaust memorials being erected in so many cities in America. The amount of money being expended on what are often artworks of questionable value could, if used differently, have a significant impact on other areas of Jewish life. Educators have struggled to ?nd a way to teach abour the Holocaust so that students, particularly Jewish stu- dents, do n0t come to conceive of theJewish experience as a sequence of painful experiences, and of Jews as 67 the perennial victims. Certainly there have been heavy- handed attempts to teach about the Holocaust, such as the one described by Phillip Lopate; but there are many quite effective ones as well. Of these, and of much else, Lopate seems unaware. Lopate?s article?at times it is more of a diatribe than anything else?takes no account of this Struggle. His real concerns have little to do with the Holocaust itself, more to do with the aesthetics of commemoration. Lopate seems confused regarding the Historikerstreit, the historians? struggle in Germany. First of allJewish institution but President Richard von Weizs'acker {son of an of?cial who played a prominent role in the Nazi foreign of?ce) who rejected the attempts by historians in Germany to compare the Holocaust to Stalin?s purges or to equate the destruction of the Jews with the defeat of the German army, as some of these historians, including Ernst Nolte and Andreas Hill- gruber, have done. Weizsacker realized that when these historians argue that the Nazis and the Bolsheviks were equivalent, they are not merely seeking an intellectual framework for historical analysis of the Holocaust; they are trying to normalize their country's past. No one denies that there might have been decent soldiers within 68 TIKKUN VOL. 4, No. 3 the \Wehrmacht. But these German historians are not intent on resurrecting an individual soldier; they are intent on rewriting German history. This is not simply an intellecrual endeavor, but a political and national one; and it is the same thing that the newly victorious right-wing German parties are trying to do. When Jenninger made his unfortunate speech, most commentators in this country~both within the Jewish community and outside of it?came to his defense. He was removed from his position by his fellow Germans less for what he said than for how he said it. The attempt to reformulate German history has its roors in Reagan?s visit to Bitburg, for which Lopate seems to have developed a newfound sympathy. The visit had nothing to do with ?old-fashioned Homeric nobility.? Lopare's conviction that Reagan?s tributes over the years to the Holocausr legitimized his visit is indica- tive of?at best?a certain confusion about the deeper implications of the visit. (Moreover, it is a strange cor- relation. It is as if someone who had long pronounced his antipathy toward sexism and anti-Semitism could use this antipathy as a justi?cation for joining a private club that discriminated against women and Jews.) Chancellor Kohl?s invitation to Reagan was issued as a means, as historian Charles Maier has observed, of linking ?slayer and slain in a dialectic of victimhood.? After having been snubbed by the Allies? Normandy commemoratiOn, the German leader wanted Reagan at his side as a means of indicating to the world that postwar Germany no longer carried the moral burden of the Holocaust The object of the visit to the cemetery in which members of the Waffen SS are buried was to obliterate the distincti0n between victims and perpe- trators. Both the Germans and the Jews became victims because both had been tyrannized by one man, Adolf Hitler, and both had been subjected to the same ultimate fate. Reagan?s visit to Bergen-Belsen furthered this blur- ring of differences in that it was an attempt to give equal time to both sets of ?victims.? Lopate?s complaint about the use of pictures of ?gentle, scholarly, middle-class, civilized people [emphasis in original],? which he claims indicates that the liquidation of illiterate peasants would not be as poignant,? also misses the mark. First of all, virtually none of the Jews killed were ?illiterate peasants." More important, the use of these pictures, in contrast to those of concentra? tion camp inmates?skeletal human beings dressed in stripped rags?is far more effective from a pedagogical perspective. Early ?lms, books, and exhibits relied, for the most part, on pictures of inmates. Such pictures are certainly more macabre, sensational, and horrifying. But they do not depict people with whom most viewers will identify. It is easy to dismiss camp inmates as ?other? and to say, This could not be me or my people; this is another universe." But the picture of a victim who dresses as I might dress brings home the point that ?there but for fortune go you or opate has had the sorry experience of being subjected to a heavy Holocaust program com- plete with substandard verse. Most such pro- grams are pedestrian at best and would certainly upset a ??nicky aesthete.? in many such cases, silence would be a more ?tting tribute. But that does not obliterate the need for a Yad Vashem, a site where those who feel the need to mourn can do so. Lopate is correct: one does find there a certain religious awe, the same awe one ?nds at Arlington, the Vietnam Memorial, and Plotzensee?the German memorial to those who resisted Hitler in 1944. And, when events in Southeast Asia are tranquil once again, Cambodians and others, one hopes, will erect a memorial to their victims. The young woman, a child of survivors, who ran out of Yad Vashem after seeing a lampshade was certainly overwrought and out of control. But was she bursting with what Lopate derisively dismisses as ?presold emo- tion?? Or was she overwhelmed by pain, pain that came from loss of family, pain transmitted by parents who witnessed and experienced unspeakable horrors, pain from unresolved fear and anger? There are reams of scholarly work by social workers, soci- ologists, and others about children of survivors. There are also many self-portraits. These works make repeated reference to the dif?culties and pain that the children of survivors endured as children and, in many cases, con? tinue to endure as adults. Should we condemn this young woman for breaking down at the wrong lampshade? One cannot hailal a Jewish identity on sa?ering alone. The challenge is to maintain a strong ana7 vihrant Jewish identity, despite that inferring. Lopate?s inability to relate to this woman is probably the most revealing aspect of his article. Like Lopate?s mother, we need not care for someone just because they have suffered a lot; but we should be able to understand their emotions. Lopate seems to have lost that sense of kinship. It is not his criticisms that are so bothersome; it is his lack of kinship. Rabbis, teachers, scholars, and others have long recog- nized that one cannot build a Jewish identity on suffering Starting Out in the Thirties Alfred Kazin stunning book. . . . Perhaps the most evoca? tive reminiscence of a vital comer of the nineteen? . 'l thirties that we are likely to get.? ?New York Times First published in 1965. Starting Out in the Thirties, the autobiographical sequel to A Walker in the City, is now available again in paperback. $6.95 Cornell University Press 124 Roberts Place, lthaca, NY 14850 alone. No person should be taught that he or she must be a Jew because of Jewish suffering. The challenge is to be a Jew, to maintain a strong and vibrant Jewish identity, despite that suffering. That identity must be built on knowledge and love of the multifaceted aspects of Jewish culture, values, history, and tradition. One does not necessarily have to agree with all aspects of that culture and tradition. But even as one argues and disagrees, one must feel a sense of kinship. There are dissenters in the Jewish community whose dissent is fueled by their passion?for Jews and Jewish culture, and there are dissenters whose passion is fueled by the desire to dissent. The second son in the Passover Haggadah asks, ?What is the meaning of this service to you?? The Haggadah instructs that he be told that had he been in Egypt he would nor have been redeemed?because he said to ?you? and not to Why does a grammatical choice evoke such a harsh verdict? Because by his use of ?you? he ?denies a basic principle of our faith?; because he has separated himself from the community. In his article Lopate does the same. And it is this separation that is at the heart of his resistance to the Holocaust. El WHAT IS THE MEANING or THIS TO You? 69