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

Victims and Values: A History and a Theory of Suffering, by Joseph A. Amato. 1990. Greenwood Press, New York, London

The Manifold Benefits to Jews of Holocaust Supremacy: Why anti-Christianity, German Guilt-Dilution, Polonophobia, etc.

This work examines the preeminence of the Jews’ Holocaust, over all other genocides, in considerable detail. I focus on a few issues of lasting relevance.

VICTIM STATUS AND THE PEDAGOGIKA WSTYDU (PEDAGOGY OF SHAME) GO HAND IN HAND

Historian Amato gets right to the heart of the matter, “Victim status gives powerful moral leverage. It is a means of controlling much of society’s diffuse guilt.” (p. 159).

VICTIMHOOD COMPETITION: AFRICAN-AMERICANS CHALLENGE THE JEWS

Author Joseph Amato quotes black scholar Na’im Akbar, who said, “‘They don’t understand that going to the ovens knowing who you are, is damn well better than walking around for 100 years not knowing who you are…Our holocaust in America is worse than the holocaust in Europe.'” (pp. 159-160).

WHITE PRIVILEGE MYTH: THE STANDARD VICTIMHOOD NARRATIVE SLIGHTS POLES AND OTHER ETHNICS

It is not difficult to discern what happens when left-wing pseudo-intellectuals get to arbitrarily divide peoples into “victim groups” and “not victim groups,” and to make their ideological constructs a matter of public policy. Amato comments, “Ethnic Americans resented the assumption that their cultures and experiences were not only denied any special value but also the implication that they and their ancestors belonged to the white exploiting class of America. Ethnic leaders argued that the vast majority of their peoples arrived after the Indians were removed from the land, Mexican territories were taken, and slavery was ended…Ethnic leaders found it profoundly insulting to be labeled exploiters and victimizers by upper class members of the press, the government, and the courts and to be told that the suffering of their parents and grandparents did not count.” (p. 166). For more on this, see:

https://www.jewsandpolesdatabase.org/2019/11/04/white-privilege-myth-harms-polams-pienkos2/

HOLOCAUSTIANITY: HOLOCAUST SUPREMACY EXISTS TO GIVE JEWS A PERPETUAL MORAL HIGH GROUND

Amato writes, “Holocaust (the Greek word to describe an offering consumed wholly by flames) has come, not without argument even among the Jews themselves, to fashionably suggest an unimaginably unique suffering providing special moral entitlements in contemporary political discourse.” (p. 181. Emphasis added).

HOLOCAUST SUPREMACY ENABLES JEWS TO LOOK DOWN ON OTHERS

Author Amato comments, “On an even more comprehensive scale, the Holocaust serves as the point from which Jews can morally survey the entire past and classify all present society. It forms the great court of wronged innocence, in which Jews can judge religions, nations, cultures, and individuals.” (p. 181)

HOLOCAUST SUPREMACY ENABLES JEWS TO MAKE SELF-RIGHTEOUS ACCUSATIONS AGAINST OTHERS

Amato, a historian, comments, “Non-Jews are tried by two questions: what did they do (collectively or individually, directly or indirectly, by commission or omission) to further anti-Semitism. What did they do to stop the Holocaust? The most severe judges find everyone guilty who did not risk his and his family’s lives to save Jews from the Holocaust.” (p. 181). Jews have chosen to zero-in on the Poles with such accusations: Polish aid to Jews is never enough. See:

https://www.jewsandpolesdatabase.org/category/all-reviews/polish-rescue-of-jews-never-enough-endless-jewish-complaining/

HOLOCAUST SUPREMACY ENABLES JEWS TO EXEMPT THEMSELVES FROM ANY CRITICISM

Amato writes, “The Holocaust is understood to be the logical and, in some measure, unavoidable consequence of all preceding forms of anti-Semitism, from the subtlest prejudices to the most cold-blooded and massive acts of murder.” (p. 181).

HOLOCAUST SUPREMACY ENABLES JEWS TO DEFLECT BLAME FROM WHERE IT BELONGS (THE GERMANS) AND TO BLAME EVERYTHING ELSE

Author Joseph Amato comments, “Instead of being understood as a type of historical accident, a unique and singular action of Nazi Germany, the Holocaust is understood as the historical culmination of all past anti-Semitism. Christian beliefs and superstitions, medieval patterns of discrimination and pogroms, as well as nineteenth-century ideologies of anti-Semitism and modern doctrines of race, empire, and nationalism, are all understood to have their final end in the Holocaust.” (p. 181). Yes. History is made to run backwards, and most of the blame is placed on Christianity in place of the Germans.

HOLOCAUST SUPREMACY GENERATES DOUBLE STANDARDS ON NAZI COLLABORATORS

Amato writes, “Also, in debate among Jews, is the issue of Jewish collaborators–who did exist in considerable numbers—and the matter of who, if anyone other than the Jews themselves, has the right to judge these collaborators.” (p. 182).

NOT SURPRISINGLY, HOLOCAUST SUPREMACY POLARIZES JEWS AND POLES

Historian Joseph Amato concludes, “Although essentially ignored by the public at large, one of the most revealing debates over the merit of past suffering in general and the Holocaust in particular exists between Polish Americans and Jewish Americans.” (p. 184).