THE HOLOCAUST IS OVER WE MUST RISE FROM ITS ASHES

“Masada will not fall again” becomes the central element of American Jewish identity.Masada was the site where allegedly Jewish warriors chose to commit suicide withtheir families rather than surrender to superior Roman forces. In one of my early tripsin the United States I saw a poster in the offices of AIPAC, the America IsraelPolitical Affairs Committee, that read: “Masada—A Living Memory.” Is collectivesuicide the contemporary motto of American Jews?Leon Uris’s 1958 novel Exodus expanded the Shoah effect to justify the Israelistruggle one decade after the state had been established. It was a shallow,stereotypical story of a ramshackle refugee ship that was turned back at Haifa by theBritish authorities. The story is an important part of Zionist mythology. During the1950s, the World Jewish Congress (WJC), whose power derives from the AmericanJewish community, led the charge to reestablish ties among Israel, the Jews, and the“other Germany.” That is a classical Israeli expression meaning the non-Nazi, postwarGermany. The WJC navigated the intractable negotiations for the reparations,compensation, personal pensions, and the restitution of Jewish property that hadbeen stolen in the Shoah. During the 1980s, the WJC targeted Kurt Waldheim, aformer Austrian Nazi officer who had become SecretaryGeneral of the UnitedNations. Waldheim was forced to resign, and the WJC thereby justified its existence.During the 1990s, then WJC director Dr. Israel Singer, with his president EdgarBronfman and I, initiated and led the struggle against Swiss banks for the restitutionof dormant deposits belonging to Jews who had perished in the Shoah. Thecampaign succeeded beyond expectations and the organization again justified itsexistence and gained strength.In the 1990s Steven Spielberg, who directed the film Schindler’s List, donated thefilm’s profits toward the building of a world archive that would document all thesurvivors, wherever they are, for the memory of future generations. Thus he becamean essential facilitator in the process, enabling several more years of recording livetestimonies from firsthand witnesses, testimonies that would otherwise be lost forever.The Shoah is still the major forming experience of Jewish public life everywhere in theworld.It seems that more than six decades after his death, Hitler retains his influence over