Victimhood Competition A Retort To Holocaust Supremacism Aschheim

In Times of Crisis: Essays on European Culture, Germans, and Jews, by Steven E. Aschheim. 2001

Holocaust Supremacism, By Its Very Nature, Provokes Victimhood Competition. UPDATE (2018): Measured Proof That All Non-Jewish Genocides Are Still Marginalized

Author Steven E. Aschheim is now Professor Emeritus of History at Hebrew University. Owing to the fact that this book was written now almost 20 years ago, I update it with some crucial, recent (2018) information in the latter part of my review.

HOLOCAUST POLITICS. VICTIMHOOD OLYMPICS IN ACTION

Aschheim comments, “On the other hand, over the years the insistence upon the uniqueness of the Holocaust assumed the form of an extra-historical and political vested interest, becoming a crucial means of defining the particularity of Jewish identity. The rhetoric—and elevation—of singular Jewish victimization (in itself not inaccurate when viewed in its purely historical context) inevitably produced a certain resentment and initiated a kind of fruitless competition in both historical and ongoing victimization that informs, for instance, even current tensions between Black and Jewish people. Michael Bernstein has elegantly formulated the problem: ‘once victimhood is understood to endow one with SPECIAL CLAIMS AND RIGHTS, the scramble to attain that designation for one’s own interest group is heated as any other for legitimacy and power.’” (p. 48; Emphasis added). Yeah, no kidding.

Even though we nowadays do not hear as much as we used to about so-called Holocaust uniqueness or Holocaust exceptionality, it still is very much a real issue. I now elaborate on this:

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UPDATE 2018: HOLOCAUST SUPREMACISM CONTINUES TO RULE OVER THE AMERICAN PUBLIC CONSCIOUSNESS

This part of my review refers to: Holocaust Knowledge and Awareness Study – Topline Results—a survey of American adults that was conducted on March 2018. The survey was conducted by the Claims Conference [read: Holocaust Industry], and the results are located at the Claims Conference website:

In this survey, overt Holocaust supremacism is still being actively promoted, as demonstrated by the following question asked! Question #41: “The Holocaust is unique and different from any act of genocide that has occurred in the 20th or 21st century”.

65% of American adults agreed, as did 48% of millennial adults. (p. 16).

So, even when non-Jewish genocides, such as the Polokaust, Holodomor, Aghet, or Porajmos get a little bit of attention, they effectively remain second-class genocides in the eyes of most Americans.

NON-JEWISH GENOCIDES REMAIN LARGELY INVISIBLE

Now consider the active disenfranchisement of all the non-Jewish genocides. (For the student of Polish-Jewish relations, this includes Polokaust negationism.)

Question #25 asks: “Thinking about the Nazis, did the Nazis persecute just the Jewish people or were other groups persecuted as well?”

An astonishing 34% of all adults, and 49% of millennial adults agreed with the following statement, “Only Jews were persecuted by the Nazis.” (p. 10).

Wow! So much for the myths that: The Jews’ Holocaust is now “universal”, that it validly can be made part of a so-called multidirectional memory of many genocides, that it does not functionally create a zero-sum game (or close to it), or that it does not diminish the genocides of non-Jews. It most certainly does.

There is one and only one possible remedy:

Genocide Recognition Equality Now!