the abuse of holocaust memory - Jerusalem Center For Public Affairs

244 Pages·2009·1.11 MB·English

THE ABUSE OF HOLOCAUST MEMORY
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THE ABUSE OF HOLOCAUST MEMORY
DISTORTIONS AND RESPONSES
Manfred Gerstenfeld
Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs
Institute for Global Jewish Affairs
Publication of this book was made possible in part by the support of the
Conference on Jewish Material Claims against Germany (Rabbi Israel Miller
Fund for Shoah Research, Documentation and Education) for the JCPA program
on Contemporary Holocaust Distortion.
Copyright © 2009 by Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs (JCPA)
and Manfred Gerstenfeld
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form, or by any
means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or recording, or by
any information storage and retrieval system—except for brief quotations in
critical articles or reviews—without written permission from the JCPA, 13 Tel
Hai Street, Jerusalem, 92107, Israel. Tel: [phone], Fax: + 972 2 561
9112. E-mail: [email protected], www.jcpa.org
ISBN: 978-965-218-076-6
Set in New Times New Roman by Judith Sternberg, Jerusalem
Printed at Ahva — Coop. Printing Press Ltd
Cover design by Rami & Jacky
Dedicated to all those who fight the perpetrators
of Holocaust justification, inversion, denial
and other abuses of Holocaust memory.

Table of Contents
Acknowledgments 9
Abraham H. Foxman: Foreword 11
Introduction 15
Chapter One: Categories of Distortion 23
Chapter Two: Holocaust Justification and Promotion 33
Chapter Three: Holocaust Denial 47
Chapter Four: Holocaust Deflection and Whitewashing 60
Chapter Five: Holocaust De-Judaization 79
Chapter Six: Holocaust Equivalence 90
Chapter Seven: Holocaust Inversion: The Portraying of Israel and Jews
as Nazis 101
Chapter Eight: Holocaust Trivialization 116
Chapter Nine: Obliterating Holocaust Memory 129
Chapter Ten: The Importance of Apologies 136
Chapter Eleven: What Can and Should Be Done? 151
ESSAYS AND INTERVIEWS
Manfred Gerstenfeld: Europe’s Distortion of the Meaning of the Shoah’s
Memory and Its Consequences for the Jews and Israel, an interview
with Shmuel Trigano 175
Mikael Tossavainen: The Holocaust in Arab Public Discourse:
Historicized Politics and Politicized History 184
Susanne Y. Urban: Representations of the Holocaust in Today’s Germany:
Between Justification and Empathy 196
Manfred Gerstenfeld: The Destruction of the Memory of Jewish Presence
in Eastern Europe; A Case Study: Former Yugoslavia, an interview
with Ivan Ceresnjes 207
Dave Rich: The Holocaust as an Anti-Zionist and Antiimperialist Tool
for the British Left 218
Index 231
Acknowledgments
I would like to express my gratitude to the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs
and the Anti-Defamation League for publishing this book. Many thanks to Isi
Leibler for his role in the agreement between the publishers.
Thanks are also due to the authors and interviewees whose contributions are
contained in the second section of this book.
I appreciate the support received for the activities of the Institute for
Global Jewish Affairs and in particular its Post-Holocaust and Anti-Semitism
program, from Dore Gold and Chaya Herskovic, president and director-general,
respectively, of the JCPA. Many thanks are also due to Edna Weinstock-Gabay,
who was responsible for the production of this book. Michael Salberg and Phyllis
Gerably at the ADL have been particularly helpful.
I am grateful to Michael Bazyler, Alex Grobman, Peter Medding, Robert
Rosett, Michael Salberg, and Efraim Zuroff for sharing with me their views on
a number of topics. I have greatly benefited from Mikael Tossavainen’s insights
on a large number of issues. The participants in the JCPA’s Post-Holocaust and
Anti-Semitism seminars have made a variety of valuable comments. Tamas Berzi
has helped in many ways.
I would like to thank researchers Debby Hartmann and Asaf Tal for their
dedication. A number of research students who interned at the JCPA have
contributed to this book by identifying and collecting sources. I am grateful to
Jessica Feldman, Rena Garshowitz, Clara Girard-London, Yonit Golub, Romy
Grace, Miranda Jones, Miriam Mandl, and Elise Wiedre, and to those others
whose contribution was incidental.
Many thanks to Fredelle Ben-Avi for typing the multitude of drafts of this
book, and to David Hornik for his copyediting and proofreading.
Manfred Gerstenfeld
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