The secular word HOLOCAUST: scholarly myths, history, and 20th ...

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JON PETRIE1949–1960 as a referent to the Nazi Judeocide beyond the examples incorporatedin this text.) 35Perhaps the desire to avoid the subject of the mass murder of European Jewsdiscouraged the framing of the events within a single and singular name. (“SinceJune 1942 a special unit had been going about carefully destroying all traces ofthe Nazi holocausts” [1954].) 36 And certainly American writers in the 1950sused a greater variety of names and phrases to refer to the Judeocide than didwriters at Yad Vashem. But with the few writings on the subject coming fromdisparate sources, a disparate vocabulary to describe a set of events dif cult toassimilate and with little modern precedent should not surprise.While the word “holocaust” was used only occasionally as an Americanappellation for the Judeocide, the word was used, starting in the late 1940s andincreasingly in the 1950s, as a referent to nuclear war. An example from 1949:“… the people of the world should know the menace of atomic warfare … whilethere is yet time to avoid such a holocaust.” 37 After Sputnik and the recognitionthat Soviet missiles could reach American cities, concern about nuclear waraccelerated sharply. Approximately 200 entries are listed under the heading“Atomic Bombs” in the Reader’s Guide to Periodical Literature, March 1959–February 1961; in contrast, eight entries are listed under the heading “World War1939–1945: Jews.” By 1961, “holocaust,” without a contextual framework andwith no modifying adjectives, was a readily understood referent for nuclearwarfare within American intellectual circles. The Reporter of August 17, 1961titled a review of two books on nuclear war and nuclear strategy, “A Cold Lookat the Holocaust.” In the October 1961 Commentary, Stuart Hughes spoke of“the holocaust of a day or two … the contemplated forty million dead …” Anda 1962 Nation editorial on life after nuclear war was titled “Post-HolocaustMorals.” 38But “holocaust,” in the 1950s and early 1960s, was not only a referent to thefeared nuclear catastrophe and the Nazi mass murders. As in the 1930s and1940s, the word was an occasional appellation for a diverse range of massacresand disasters, though increasingly the word was applied only to massivedestruction. The JSTORE data base (texts on-line of over 100 journals) yieldsten 1950 “holocausts.” Three are references to World War II, two references areto the climatic death scene in Hamlet, one a reference to a future world war, onea reference to the American Civil War, and the remaining three references areeither obscure or too obscure events. For 1959 the same data base yields 11“holocausts.” Three are references to nuclear disaster, two refer to World WarI, two to the American Civil War, one to events in 12th century Flanders, andtwo employ the words “Hitler’s/the Hitler holocaust” and are referents to theJewish catastrophe. Two employments of “holocaust” are from outside theJSTORE data base: a 1955 translation of Augustine’s Confessions referred to“the wooden horse … and the holocaust of Troy.” And in 1961, Bernard Lewiswrote of “… the terrible holocaust of 1916 when a million and [a] halfArmenians perished.” 39In the early 1960s, an intellectual climate in which American Jews could be44
THE SECULAR WORD HOLOCAUSTcompared in a Jewish magazine to the “decent Germans” of World War II who“close[d] their minds” to the death camps began to shift. In May 1960, Eichmannwas captured, and in the fall of 1961 put on trial in Jerusalem. The trial, asintended, signi cantly increased awareness of the Nazi genocide of Jews and thesubject began to enter mainstream American public discourse. As mentionedearlier, The Reader’s Guide to Periodical Literature has eight entries under“World War 1939–1945: Jews” in its volume covering the two year periodending February 1961. The next volume, ending February 1963, has 29 entries,11 with “Eichmann” in their titles.In early 1963, almost a year after Eichmann’s execution and a virtualcessation of media interest in the trial and the genocide, the New Yorker devoted ve consecutive issues to Hannah Arendt’s “Eichmann in Jerusalem.” This NewYorker series was the rst meaningful attempt in a prestigious non-JewishAmerican magazine to grapple with the Nazi destruction of European Jewry. Theanger that Arendt’s tone and some of her statements provoked in the Jewishcommunity resulted in considerable discussion, speeches in synagogues, andmany critical articles. In my opinion, the reaction to the Arendt articles and toArendt’s subsequent book marks the real beginning of American Jewry’s fullengagement with “Holocaust Studies.” The Reader’s Guide to Periodical Literaturehas 37 entries under “World War 1939–1945: Jews” in its volume that endsFebruary 1965. Five are the Arendt articles and 10 are reviews or discussions ofArendt’s work. This new willingness to engage in some serious writing andthinking about the European Jewish catastrophe was not, however, simply areaction to Arendt’s high-pro le controversial statements, but also re ected a seachange in American culture in the early 1960s. This sea change was driven andsymbolized by the election of John F. Kennedy, the Civil Rights movement, andstudent activism. Starting around 1963, particularity, ethnicity, and identi cationwith victims was not necessarily to be hidden in middle-class America. 40The new American Jewish willingness to confront the Nazi destruction ofEuropean Jewry was paralleled by an increasing adoption of “holocaust,”modi ed if context did not suf ciently elucidate meaning, as the referent to thedisaster. The concerns of this essay demand close attention to the majordisseminators of the term between January 1960 and mid-1963, but it should notbe forgotten that the term had been “in the air” and in occasional use byAmerican Jews since 1941. The four most widely circulated “holocausts”(Jewish) of the period, and the rst two essay titles to employ the term inwell-circulated American Jewish magazines are displayed below. Documented inthe endnote is employment of the term in less well-circulated American publishedtexts during the period. 41… one of our motives in bringing Eichmann to trial is to make the details of the caseknown to the generation of Israelis who have grown up since the holocaust. (DavidBen-Gurion, The New York Times Magazine, December 18, 1960, p 62)“… Counsel Says Mercy Might Help Avert New Holocaust [from headline]”;“Eichmann … might … serve as an instrument against any recurrence of a Nazi holocaust.”45
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