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

Representing Genocide: The Holocaust as Paradigm?, by Rebecca Jinks, Devin O. Pendas (Editor). 2016

Victimhood Competition: Cambodians Beat the Jews. Non-Jewish Genocides Have Admittedly Been Minimized Thanks to Holocaust Supremacy

This book focuses on how non-Jewish genocides are sometimes understood and expressed through the Jews’ Holocaust. This fits-in with Michael Rothberg and his concept of multidirectional memory. However, none of this in any way negates the supremacy of the Shoah over the genocides of all other peoples, much less the antagonisms that this provokes. Let us explore this topic.

VICTIMHOOD OLYMPICS: THE CAMBODIAN GENOCIDE BEATS THE HOLOCAUST

Holocaust exceptionalism is reflexively defended by the rather-arbitrary (and untrue) premise that Jews were uniquely targeted for complete annihilation. However, any meritocracy of genocides is necessarily arbitrary, and a different, equally-valid or equally-invalid criterion of exceptionality can easily be chosen. This shows up in the following statements by Rebecca Jinks, “More than one Cambodian testimony makes the comment that Hitler killed the Jews, but Pol Pot killed his own race (SOME SAY THIS MAKES THE CAMBODIAN GENOCIDE WORSE)–and while on the surface these are both strategic Holocaust references and quite denigrating, it also shows them conceptualizing their own experience against their idea of the Holocaust.” (p. 42; Emphasis added).

Bravo, Cambodians! Don’t let Holocaust self-importance reign unchallenged.

HOLOCAUST EXCEPTIONALISM IS SOMEWHAT PASSE: BUT SO WHAT?

Jinks writes, “As I noted in the Introduction, most genocide studies scholars are skeptical of Holocaust exceptionalism and the concomitant, somewhat mystical discourses of unrepresentability, hence why one sees it less often.” (p. 28).

But no matter. The “Holocaust is exceptional” and “Holocaust is special” memes are very much alive and well, as shown in the next section of my review.

THE MYSTIFICATION OF THE HOLOCAUST, AND HOLOCAUST SUPREMACISM, GO ON AND ON

Jinks comments, “Almost two decades into the twenty-first century, the Holocaust appears as a cornerstone of contemporary Western culture: ubiquitously memorialized in stone, film, and print, it occupies a CENTRAL PLACE IN OUR CONSCIOUSNESS of the past.” (p. 1; Emphasis added). It most certainly does.

The author continues, “While Holocaust memory may not exactly be ‘globalized’, then, Westerners do largely share a basic internalization of the Holocaust as a CORNERSTONE in European and North American history…” (p. 3; Emphasis added). That’s pretty expansive. No other genocide qualifies as a cornerstone.

But wait, it gets even better.

Elsewhere, she notes that, “Since in the West the Holocaust IS the paradigmatic genocide…” (p. 37; Emphasis is in the original.) In other words, the Holocaust rules the roost, and there are no other genocides that can possibly be the paradigmatic genocide.

SMOKING GUN: NON-JEWISH GENOCIDES [THE 5 MILLION “OTHER” VICTIMS AT THE USHMM: UNITED STATES HOLOCAUST MUSEUM] HAVE BEEN MARGINALIZED

Any doubt that Holocaust supremacism diminishes the genocides of non-Jews is erased by the following statements of author Rebecca Jinks, “As so many note, the victims of the Holocaust are primarily understood to be six million Jews: the five million or so ‘others’–political opponents, homosexuals, gypsies, the handicapped, ‘asocials’, Jehovah’s Witnesses [note that Jinks forgot the Polokaust]–FORM A FAR LESS SIGNIFICANT PART OF THE HOLOCAUST IMAGINERY, IF THEY FEATURE AT ALL. This figure of 11 million–originally only an estimate by the USHMM [and a serious underestimate of the non-Jewish victims], which are now taken as fact–is itself a good example of the functioning of the genocidal imaginary.” (p. 34; Emphasis added).

For more on the hegemony of the Holocaust over the genocides of all other peoples, see my review:

https://www.jewsandpolesdatabase.org/2020/02/19/jewish-influence-makes-the-holocaust-dominate-american-life-definitive-work-other-nationalities-left-out-novick/