Holocaust in American life by Peter Novick 1999

Résumé du document

Peter Novick is a professor of History in the University of Chicago. After "The Noble Dream : The "objectivity Question" and the American Historical Profession" in 1988, in which he criticizes the idea of an ideal objective and neutral historical work, he published "The Holocaust in the American life" in 1999, in which he explains and analysis of how the American discourse focused more and more on the Holocaust, after a paradoxical period of silence about it. This book was a kind of illustration of his theory supported in his former book of how implied an historian can be in his work and point of view on the historical events. Peter Novick's willing of writing this book is born from "curiosity" as an historian and "skepticism" as a American and a Jew. But his opinion, different from the mainstream opinion about the sacred necessity of commemorating the Holocaust, shows that it is above all the opinion of the historian Peter Novick that we get, and not the opinion of just any Jew or any American. The questions he asks in this book are why now, why here, or in other words, why so late, why so far?

Extraits

[...] What can we say about European countries? For instance in France, the very renowned specialist about the Holocaust and its representation Annette Wierviorka points out the fact that the silence of the surivors after the war is not due to any trauma or the fear of talking about it, but to the deafness of the society in general. She shows that not only after the war but even in the camps the victims have always written, having the wish to witness or may be to reach a kind of immortality. [...]

[...] This kind of information we can find in the book “Americanization of the Holocaust” by Hilen Flanzbaum, but which as a result lacks analizing about the reasons for this presence. Also we can say that the author fails in explaining how the Holocaust memory spread and became so important from the Jewish community to the whole American society. There is a last point that the author does not clarify: his role of historian, and his identity of Jew. Although he mentions it in the introduction, he does not develop this point which however can be important. [...]

[...] What's more, he uses and demonstrates official trends and opinions about the topic, namely the government, Jewish and Christian organizations, media but he does not deal with the view of socialists and the view of most of the American citizens –which, true, is not the easiest to find. Finally there are essential questions that Novick asks in his introduction and to which he does not seem to answer clearly. He postulates that the Holocaust has too big a place in the American collective memory and society in general, in the every day life. But then he does not say what that place is supposed to be exactly. [...]

[...] Are the Jewish organizations, or historians, or sociologists to decide about what builds up the identity of a group? This is a critic that we can make about Novick's book. If the misuse of the Holocaust is bad for the selfunderstanding of the American Jews, then what is supposed to define themselves in the USA today? The author does not really give an answer to this, if ever it is possible to give any. Another critical remark that we can make about Holocaust in American life” is about the sources that Peter Novick used. [...]

[...] Also, the influence of people like Elie Wiesel is very important. Peter Novick considers him as most influencial interpreter of the Holocaust as sacred mistery” (p274). But he warns that in the future the American Jews and the American society in general should be careful not to remain prisoners of the choices made in the past. Commentaries 1. Few weaknesses of the argumentation As the professor Jeremy Popkin remarks it, for people not aware of the scholarly discourses about how should the Holocaust be represented, Novick's book and opinion about the overwhelming place and the misusing of the Holocaust memory might be very striking. [...]