Holocaust Exceptional Lampooned Finkelstein

A Nation on Trial: The Goldhagen Thesis and Historical Truth, by Norman G. Finkelstein, Ruth Bettina Birn. 1998

Norman G. Finkelstein Lampoons Holocaust Exceptionalism, Which Does in Fact Minimize all the Genocides of Non-Jews, and Which Serves Certain Political Agendas

This book is mostly a critique of Daniel Goldhagen’s HITLER”S WILLING EXECUTIONERS (an analysis of German anti-Semitism). But it tells much more.

YES, VIRGINIA. HOLOCAUST SUPREMACISM DOES CREATE A ZERO-SUM GAME (OR CLOSE ENOUGH)

Finkelstein introduces this subject: “One upshot is the Holocaust ‘uniqueness’ mantra. In the Holocaust literature paradigm, the persecution of non-Jews in the Nazi holocaust becomes MERELY ACCIDENTAL and the persecution of non-Jews in history MERELY EPISODIC. Thus the double claim in Holocaust literature that Jews suffered uniquely in the Nazi Holocaust and the Nazi holocaust was unique in the annals of human suffering. From every standpoint Jewish suffering was unique.” (p. 88; Emphasis added).

SOME ORWELLIAN GEMS

Norman G. Finkelstein brings up some of the Holocaustspeak rhetoric that has, in dead seriousness, developed about the presumed peerlessness of the Holocaust. We hear of “a no-man’s-land of understanding (Dan Diner). But wait; it gets even better. We get the Holocaust as “‘essentially different from not only ordinary uniqueness but even unique uniqueness…transcending uniqueness'” (Alice L. and A. Roy Eckardt). George Orwell must be turning over in his grave.

A SATIRE OF HOLOCAUST EXCEPTIONALISM

Turning to humor, Norman Finkelstein comments, “The fixation on Holocaust ‘uniqueness’ has plainly broken the threshold–to paraphrase the Eckhardts—not only of ordinary delirium, not only of delirious delirium, but even of transcendent, absolute delirium.” (p. 89).

THE POLITICAL MOTIVE BEHIND HOLOCAUST SUPREMACISM

Without mincing words, Norman G. Finkelstein quotes Peter Baldwin (“The HISTORIKERSTREIT in Context,” 21), as follows, “‘The singularity of the Jewish suffering adds to the moral and emotional claims that Israel can make on her citizens and on other nations.'” (p. 89).

It certainly does. The current main target is Poland.