Research Catalog

Before "The Holocaust" : American Jews confront catastrophe 1945-1962 / Hasia R. Diner.

Title
Before "The Holocaust" : American Jews confront catastrophe 1945-1962 / Hasia R. Diner.
Author
Diner, Hasia R.
Publication
Ann Arbor : Jean and Samuel Frankel Center for Judaic Studies, The University of Michigan, 2004.

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TextRequest in advance D804.3 .D57 2004Off-site

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Details

Additional Authors
Jean & Samuel Frankel Center for Judaic Studies.
Description
38 p.; 20 cm.
Summary
Dismisses the historiographic tendency of the 1990s-2000s, which claims that between 1945-early 1960s the organized American Jewish community was silent on the Holocaust - i.e. survivors refused to talk and American Jews refused to listen. They contend that this deliberate policy of silence was aimed at easing the integration of the immigrant Jews in America. States that the writers representing this tendency ignore huge arrays of texts - in Yiddish, in Hebrew, but first and foremost in English - compiled by various Jewish institutions, both religious and secular, relating the events of the Holocaust to both young and old. These texts, which before 1962 functioned exclusively within the boundaries of the American Jewish world, had two aims: to institutionalize the remembrance of the Jewish victims, and to mobilize the Jewish communities to help the refugees. The tendency of ignoring the postwar Holocaust narratives emerged in the late 1960s-70s as part of a campaign to incriminate the Jewish "establishment" for its alleged indifference toward the victims - both before and after the war. After 1962, the Holocaust narratives were addressed to Jews and non-Jews alike. It became accepted due to the emergence of a new American public culture that venerated and validated discussion on group suffering.
Series Statement
David W. Belin Lecture in American Jewish Affairs ; 11
Uniform Title
David W. Belin lecture in American Jewish affairs ; 11.
Subject
  • 1939-1945
  • Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945) > Foreign public opinion, American
  • Jews > United States > Attitudes
  • Jews > United States > Politics and government
  • Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945) > Influence
  • Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945) > Historiography
  • Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945) > Public opinion, American
  • Public opinion > United States
Bibliography (note)
  • Includes bibliographical references (pages 34-38).
Processing Action (note)
  • committed to retain
OCLC
  • 63470771
  • SCSB-11684669
Owning Institutions
Harvard Library