The Holocaust and American Jewry

Paper Summary:

The writer of this paper uses numerous and varying sources in explaining how American Jews were affected by the Holocaust by stating how their distance from the event compounds the difficulty of writing about the tragedy, both geographically and increasingly, chronologically. The paper also explains why Holocaust literature was not frequently written in America until the 1960s, when there was a sudden awakening of interest due to the Eichmann trial, the publicizing of which made the facts of the Holocaust newly accessible to Americans.

From the Paper:

"Nothing remains of the six million Jews and the European culture that died with them. In their places, we have the multitudes of responses from those who lived to bear witness and those who experienced the Holocaust only indirectly. Lawrence Langer delineates the difference between the event and the symbolism, which has since accrued:
For Dachau, like Auschwitz and in a related sense like Hiroshima, is no
longer merely a place-name with grim historical associations for those who care to pursue them. All three have been absorbed into the collective memory of the human community as independent symbols of a quality of experience more subtle, complex, and elusive than the names themselves can possibly convey."

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