US Guilt

[Heer, Jeet (National Post)]

In fact, a good book has already been written about this: Peter Novick's The
Holocaust and American Memory -- basically, Novick argues that during the
1950s, the memory of the Holocaust didn't loom very large but there was a
big resurgence after the 1967 war, due not just to Zionism but also
increased need to define Jewish identity in a secular way. I very much
recommend Novick's book -- it is very thourougly researched and convincing.
Jeet


> At 12:21 AM 04/25/2002 -0400, you wrote:
> >While po-mo is rightly hammered on this list, it seems to me that
> >here is an issue that really could do with some clearly written (if
> >that's a possibility with po-mo), factually grounded work on how this
> >whole narrative has been constructed and why it has had such
> >ascendancy in more recent times -- all these Holocaust Studies
> >programmes, Holocaust memorials, etc. have had a very short history,
> >haven't they? in fact dating from a time when most survivors are
> >gone. One wonders what Primo Levi made of it all.
>