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historical event. All transformational potential is deniedand no particular lessons can be derived from it.Contextualists, as we have said, place the Holo-caust as a historical event, neither necessarily beyondour comprehension nor beyond the reach of ourcustomary tools of social analysis. Their use of context-ualization can serve either to highlight or to minimizeany possibly unique features with strikingly differentconsequences. As we have seen the contextualizationof the Holocaust can lead either to trivialization or toexpansion of our understanding of the causes of eventslike the Holocaust. Such expanded understanding maygive us the knowledge that will enable us prevent anypossible recurrence.Within the contextual ist debate two major emphasesemerge with differing implications. Themethodologists,placing the focus as they do on the technologicaland bureaucratic means of destruction, tend to downplaythe importance of the victims of the Holocaust.On the other hand the intentionalist position places allfocus of emphasis on the Jews as victims. This emphasison the particularity of the Jewish situation tends toobscure relevant analogies with the predicaments ofother groups and also obscures the more universalimplications for the future of all humankind. Whenspeaking of the Jews' special claim to uniqueness,Geoff Eley has stated: ". . . to insist on the uniquenessof the event is a short step to insisting on the exclusive-ness of interpretation which asserts an empatheticprivilege and even Jewish proprietorship in the subject."4' As we have noted earlier one possible resultof this approach is to yield political disharmonies withother groups who have felt themselves to have beensimilarly victimized in other catastrophes and whomight feel that the insistence on Jewish uniquenessserves to underplay their own experiences. ~ConclusionWhat is important is not that the reader shouldaccept any one approach to the "uniqueness question"as true and the others as false, but that he or she shouldtry to discover which of these approaches yields themost coherent and intelligible results, which frameworkelucidates the problems of understanding the Holocaustmost clearly and is the most promising for understandingits historical and moral significance. It is not asimple matter to decide, and the fact that there aresubtle differences within each type of approach doesnot make the task any easier.NoTES1. Yehuda Bauer, The Holocaust in HistoricalPerspective (Seattle: University of Washington, 1978),31. For different formulations of this problem, see EmilFackenheim, To Mend the World: Foundations ofFuture Jewish Thought (New York: Schocken Books,1982), 20; Henry L. Feingold, "How Unique Is theHolocaust?" in Critical Issues of the Holocaust, ed.by Alex Grobman and Daniel Landes (Los Angeles:Simon Wiesenthal Center and Rossel Books, 1983),397; and Robert McAfee Brown, "The Holocaust asa Problem in Moral Choice, " in When God and ManFailed: Non-Jewish Views of the Holocaust, ed. byHarry James Cargas (New York: Macmillan PublishingCo. , Inc. , 1981), 99.2. For a more detailed analysis of the enigmas andparadoxes facing Holocaust scholarship, see AlanRosenberg, "The Problematic Character of Understandingthe Holocaust, " European Judaism 17:2 (Winter1983/84): 16-20; and Alan Rosenberg, "The Crisis inKnowing and Understanding the Holocaust, " in Echoesfrom the Holocaust: Philosophical Reflections on aDark Time, ed. by Alan Rosenberg and Gerald Myers(Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1988),379-395.3. See Pierre Papazian, "A 'Unique Uniqueness' ?"and the symposium it generated, "Was the HolocaustUnique?: Responses to Pierre Papazian, " Midstream30:4 (April 1984): 14-25.4. Saul Friedlander, "On the Possibility of theHolocaust: An Approach to a Historical Synthesis, "in The Holocaust as Historical Experience, ed. byYehuda Bauer and Nathan Rotenstreich (New York:Holmes and Meier, 1981), 1.5. George Kren and Leon Rappoport, "Failure of"Thought in Holocaust Interpretation, in Towards theHolocaust: The Social and Economic Collapse of theWeimar Republic, ed. by Michael N. Dobkowski andIsidor Wallimann (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press,1983), 380.6. Yehuda Bauer, "Right and Wrong Teaching ofthe Holocaust, " in The International Conference onLessons of the Holocaust, ed. by Josephine Z. Knopp(Philadelphia: National Institute on the Holocaust,1979), 5.7. See Ismar Schorsch, "The'Holocaust and JewishSurvival, " Midstream 17:1 (January 1981): 39; andPaula E. Hyman, "New Debates on the Holocaust, "tThe Issue of the Holocaust as a Unique Event 53