Polish-Jewish Relations: 1,300 Keyword-Phrase-Indexed Book Reviews (by Jan Peczkis)

Holocaust Memory Reframed: Museums and the Challenges of Representation, by Jennifer Hansen-Glucklich. 2014

Effectively a Mini-Encyclopedia of the Mystification of the Jews’ Holocaust. Enlisting the Holocaust to Promote Forced Immigration To Western Nations

This book compares the Holocaust memorialization at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, the Jewish Museum Berlin, and the USHMM (United States Holocaust Memorial Museum) in Washington, D. C. It is so thoroughly Judeocentric that it does not even have the obligatory mention of the 5 million [actually many more] “other victims of the Nazis.”

THE HOLOCAUST INSTRUMENTALIZED TO ENFORCE COMPELLED IMMIGRATION

The author comments, “The purpose of the new Jewish Museum is therefore twofold: first, to educate Germans about the role that Jews once played in German life, and second, to immunize today’s Germans against future intolerance toward cultural, ethnic, and religious difference. The Jewish Museum thus possesses relevance for current minority issues pertaining, for example, to questions of citizenship and immigration, and it is projected as an institution devoted to multicultural ideals essential for Germany’s future as a diverse and tolerant society.” (p. 39).

The informed reader who is capable of seeing beyond the standard cultural Marxist buzzwords (e. g, “intolerance”, “multiculturalism”, etc.) realizes that exactly the same tactics were used to try to force Poland to accept multitudes of Third World immigrants. (Never mind the fact that Poland has already voluntarily accepted a million Ukrainian immigrants. These “don’t count” in the eyes of the European Union). The PEDAGOGIKA WSTYDU was employed (as by neo-Stalinist Jan T. Gross) to try to shame Poland into acquiescence–based on her “awful” treatment of Jews before, during, and after the German-made Holocaust. Even the same rather manipulative Holocaustspeak terminology is used, notably “Coming to Terms With the Past” (VERGANGENHEITBEWALTIGUNG). (p. 39).

HOLOCAUSTIANITY: HOLOCAUST MEMORIALIZATION HAS SATURATED THE WESTERN NATIONS

Author Hansen-Glucklich elucidates the obvious, “Particularly striking, however, for even the most casual observer of Holocaust memory discourse, is the veritable explosion of Holocaust museums and memorials around the world, especially across Europe and the United States during the past three decades…The USHMM, for example, reports that since it opened its doors in April 1993 it has received more than thirty-four million visitors–a staggering number that reveals to what extent the museum is shaping Holocaust remembrance in the United States.” (pp. 9-10).

THE INORDINATE MYSTIFICATION AND SACRALIZATION OF THE JEWISH HOLOCAUST

The author writes, “Certain exhibits, displays, and spaces within the museums go beyond documentation to evoke a sense of the sacred of the type that often surrounds Holocaust sites and artifacts.” (p. 11).

Hansen-Glucklich returns this premise again and again, “As previously noted, the Holocaust is widely treated in contemporary culture as something outside of, or beyond, normal historical experience and therefore requiring different standards in terms of how it is represented and remembered. But the use of ‘iconic’ in these pages does not promote the sacralization of the Holocaust so much as a recognition that the Holocaust has already been elevated to a sacred status.” (p. 105).

“As discussed earlier, Holocaust museums and exhibits face the challenge of presenting the Holocaust, an event widely perceived as sacred, in a way that preserves this sense of sanctity.” (p. 154).

In a non-religious context, the term sacred, as unilaterally applied to the Shoah, can be understood as follows, “It is this complete separation from the order of the profane that is the most important qualify of the sacred for [Mircea] Eliade.” (p. 16).

What about all the genocides of non-Jews? Are their deaths any less sacred? Evidently, they are part of the commonplace and profane. [According to Rummel’s DEATH BY GOVERNMENT, at least 100 million human beings lost their lives, in the 20th century alone, from genocide and state-sponsored mass murder. Jews, at 6 million, were 6% of this total.]

SYMBOLS OF THE SHOAH: PLAYING ON THE VIEWER’S EMOTIONS

Let us extend this consideration to iconic images of the Jewish Holocaust–such as the Hall of Names at Yad Vashem (pp. 98-99) and the piles of shoes at the USHMM (pp. 129-131). How long would it take the visitor to read the names, or glance at each photograph (as per the Tower of Faces), of 94 million non-Jewish victims of genocide? How would a pile of 6 million Jewish shoes look in comparison with a pile of 94 million non-Jewish shoes? For that matter, how would the viewer of an ownerless pair of shoes, until told, know whether it belonged to a genocide-murdered Jew or a genocide-murdered GOY?