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

The Historiography of Genocide, edited by Dan Stone. 2010. Palgrave MacMillan, London, New York

Holocaust Overshadows All: It Still Reigns Supreme Over All Other Genocides

This book examines the interface of the Holocaust and many other genocides. I focus on relevant issues.

COMPARATIVE GENOCIDE STUDIES WERE STARTED IN ORDER TO PUSH BACK AGAINST HOLOCAUST SUPREMACY

Anton Weiss-Wendt makes this eye-opening comment, “The field of comparative genocide studies was born into the opposition to the dominant Holocaust discourse...Some scholars, who tend to pose as unofficial spokesmen for genocide studies, have been attacking the Holocaust establishment ever since.” (p. 43). Note the sage use of the phrase “Holocaust establishment”. That is exactly what it is.

HOLOCAUST OVERSHADOWS ALL, DESPITE MANY RECENT STUDIES ON GENOCIDE

Other genocides, even if they now get some public attention, remain decidedly subordinate to the Jews’ Holocaust. David Moshman states, “Despite awareness of other genocides, the Holocaust remains for many the prototypical genocide against which all others are recognized and understood.” (p. 74).

How so? Dan Stone writes, “The recent fragmentation of Holocaust historiography has resulted partly from the fact that the Holocaust has become central to western consciousness, a phenomenon that it beyond the scope of this chapter to explain…” (p. 374).

Clearly, this is a zero-sum game. If the Holocaust is “central to western consciousness”, then it is unambiguously privileged. No other genocide can possibly be “central to western consciousness.” If this is not racist, then what is?

The Holocaust routinely gets expansive superlatives that are never said of any other genocide. The mystification of the Holocaust comes thick and fast. David Moshman recounts just some of the voluminous Holocaustspeak, “The Holocaust is routinely presented and understood by scholars, educators, and the general public as ‘the most shocking event of the twentieth century’, if not the ‘most terrible event in modern history’,..’the archetypical event of mass murder in human history.’ It ‘stands alone in the history of the West…’, ‘a global attack on Western human civilization itself.’ The Holocaust was ‘an unprecedented catastrophe in human civilization.'” (pp. 71-72).

Enough of this nonsense. There are no Master Genocides just as there are no Master Races.

Finally, let us keep things in some much-needed perspective. David Moshman writes, “Both Stalin and Mao far outdid Hitler in mass killing.” (p. 90). But evidently non-Jewish victims do not count.

YES, VIRGINIA. HOLOCAUST SUPREMACY DIMINISHES ALL OTHER GENOCIDES

Sometimes we need to articulate the obvious. Veena Das candidly comments, “The issue here is not whether the holocaust is unique in history–many convincing arguments suggest that the theological-political nexus in the claiming of uniqueness sometimes amounts to a denial of other people’s suffering or a hierarchy of suffering.” (p. 126).

AN OBJECTIVE MERITOCRACY OF GENOCIDES CANNOT POSSIBLY BE CONSTRUCTED

This book highlights the subjective content that is behind Holocaust and genocide studies. This makes it all the more ridiculous to suppose that a valid meritocracy of genocides could ever be erected, let alone one with the Holocaust at the top. David Moshman writes, “All genocides involve multiple motives, complex interactions of causal factors, and groups that can be divided and defined in multiple ways. Genocidal processes always interact with other sorts of historical processes.” (p. 86).

THE NAZIS DID NOT EVEN HAVE A SELF-CONSISTENT DEFINITION OF A JEW

Jean-Louis Margolin writes, “Even in that case, there was a certain fuzziness: in Nazi-occupied Europe, the definition of who was a Jew varied from one country to another (it was more extensive in Vichy France than in Germany itself), and the Nazis hesitated to include the Karaites among the Jews.” (p. 461).

HOLOCAUST OVERSHADOWS ALL: STOP BLAMING RELIGION FOR VIOLENCE AND GENOCIDE

The standard attacks on religion are thick with prejudice and skimpy in terms of evidence. Doris L. Bergen points out, “To many people, the link between religion and genocide seems obvious. Who has not heard the claim that more people have been killed in the name of God than for any other cause in the history of humanity? The scholarship, in contrast, includes few concerted attempts to identify and analyze such assumptions with historical specificity.” (p. 196).

Blaming Christianity for genocide is especially specious. Bergen writes, “Bartov and Mack note but do not analyze this fact, and they point out that genocides have also occurred in parts of the world where Judaism, Christianity, and Islam do not have a significant presence.” (p. 199).

COLUMBUS DID NOT DO GENOCIDE

Leftists often try to bully the unsuspecting into tearing-down statues of Christopher Columbus, and the renaming of Columbus Day as Indigenous Peoples Day, through the rather strident accusation that Columbus was a genocider. David Moshman at first generally agrees with this characterization of Columbus, but then backpedals and acknowledges that the genocide label depends upon definitions. He admits, “Columbus did not set out from Spain for the purpose of finding and destroying new cultural groups. The Taino, in addition to being massacred, died from pestilence, enslavement, despair, and moral collapse. It is open to question, moreover, whether the Taino of Hispaniola are best seen as a single culture, a set of related cultures, or a subculture of a larger Taino or Arawak culture.” (p. 86).

Most certainly, the leftists have not met the burden of proof in their contention that Columbus was a genocider. Not even close. So, more than ever, leave Columbus alone!