July 12, 1999 Holocaust Creationism by JON WIENER Between 1945 and 1947 the United States underwent perhaps the most breathtaking ideological transformation in its history. "The Good War," which had united America with Russia to save Western civilization from Nazi barbarism, ended, and within two years the incarnation of evil had been relocated: Germany was suddenly our ally in defending freedom from the USSR. This astonishing ideological shift was accomplished by invoking the theory of totalitarianism, which held that Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia were "essentially alike." Whatever the intellectual strengths or weaknesses of the theory, it served to marginalize talk about what we today call the Holocaust: The suggestion that the destruction of European Jewry was the defining feature of the Nazi regime undermined the logic of the cold war by denying the essential similarity of Hitler and Stalin. The dizzying reversal redefined discussion of German war crimes as evidence of disloyalty to the "free world." A riveting new book by historian Peter Novick describes how "the Holocaust" as we speak of it today--a singular event--barely existed in Jewish consciousness or anybody else's at the end of World War II and for many years afterward. American Jews had learned by 1945 about the fate of "the 6 million." But for Jews and non-Jews alike, it was the overall course of the war and the deaths of 50 million people that were the dominant facts. Jews understood themselves to be one group among many that suffered immense and heartbreaking losses. (Complete review is at http://www.thenation.com/) Louis Proyect (http://www.panix.com/~lnp3/marxism.html)
