The_Holokaust_-_origins,_implementation,_aftermath

ALAIN FINKIELKRAUT
More than forty years later, the Holocaust is causing a furor. As soon as a Jew starts
to cry somewhere in this vast world, humanity is accused of being basically anti-
Semitic, and, one after the other, History and
the men who made it are dragged in. The Holocaust is the Jewish
flame of Olympus. maintained by a worldwide
financial power, with the aid of the media. How can you tell
Palestinians to commit to memory the dramas of the past, when they
are living through far more unbearable ones What difference is there
between a gas chamber and a cluster bomb that falls
on an Arab house on a night of Ramadan What can you say to
Palestinian children about the common foundations of humanity if
one day the men who deprived them of memories don’t suffer the
infamy of being in the dock of the accused While awaiting brotherly
love, which has been sublimated like death, there exists this truth.
The truth of Mr. Jacques Vergès, “anti-Semite” in spite of himself,
surrounded by the insulting slogans of these fanatics of persecution:
“The Zionists go so far back in time that they assume the aspect of
Teutonic knights.”
23. Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 2d ed. (Cleveland: World Publishing,
1958), p. 469.
24. Ibid., p. 464.
25. Ibid., p. 465.
26. Max Picard, L’Homme du néant [Hitler in uns selbst], tr. Jean Rousset (Paris: La
Balconnière, 1947), p. 191.
27. Le Procès de Nuremberg, Le verdict (Paris: Office français d’édition, 1947).
28. Quoted and discussed in Henri Meyrowitz, La Répression par les tribunaux
allemands des crimes contre l’humanité et de l’appartenance à une organisation
criminelle (Paris: LGDJ, 1960), p. 18.
29. Quoted in Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews (Chicago: Quadrangle
Books, 1961), pp. 686–687.
30. Milan Kundera, L’Insoutenable légèreté de l’être (Paris: Gallimard, 1983), p. 316;
Michael Henry Heim, tr., The Unbearable Lightness of Being (New York: Harper
and Row), 1984.
31. Goethe, “Les époques de la culture sociale” [1832], in Ecrits sur l’Art,. tr. and ed.
by Jean-Marie Schaeffer (Klincksieck, 1983); Ellen von Nordroff and Ernest H.
von Nordroff, tr., John Gearey, ed., Essays on Art and Literature (New York:
Suhrkamp, 1986).
32. Thomas Mann, “Défense de Wagner,” in Wagner et notre temps (Paris: Pluriel,
1978), p. 178.
33. Jan Patoc34. ka, Essais hérétiques (Paris: Verdier, 1981).
34. Jean-François Bizot, Libération, June 18–19, 1989 (speaking about the triple concert
Paris–New York–Dakar organized by SOS Racism to mark the anniversary of
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