Holocaust or holocausts?
Dave Monroe
davidmmonroe at yahoo.com
Sun Jul 15 05:33:45 CDT 2001
I agree with just about anybody's trepidations about
the word, "holocaust," and its connotations,
denotation, for that matter, of "sacrifice," "burnt
offering." Of whom, by whom, to whom, to what end,
with what effects? And so forth ...
I also have trepidations, however, about appropriating
the term, "Shoah," myself, which certainly isn't "my"
(Irish-Polish-German Catholic American et al.) term,
and, while I ought to know better (and do, and,
certainly, know even better now, thanks), I generally
stick with "Holocaust." Just more authentically
Gentile, is all (and all the more problematic for it,
no doubt). "Shoah" feels like an affectation rolling
of my tongue, pen, keyboard, so I've laid off it ...
But I've yet really to figure out just what the bone
of contention really is, has been, might well continue
to be here. Just today I've seen all sorts of
speculations I've floated here myself over the past
year go from being ridiculed and dismissed to being
reconsidered, perhaps even embraced. Even as I've
continued to be insulted ... sorry, caffeine
withdrawal ...
But, well, again, "intent" aside, Nazi atrocities are
Nazi atrocities, whether or not one wants to include
them all under the rubric, "The Holocaust," and I have
yet to have had it made clear to me how certain
differentiations among them are in any way productive
in discussing Gravity's Rainbow (or V., or The Crying
of Lot 49, or ...). GR et al. invoke these
atrocities, position them in some seeming relationship
with other atrocities, and ...
Well, much is hinted at by Mr. jbor sir there, but
very little is delivered. Criticisms are offered of
others' comments on the subject, but, if our
Antipodean ... acquaintance has any alternatives, any
even tentative interpretations of what might
"really"--or, more realistically, what might
possibly--be going on here, I've yet to quite discern
them ...
Really, if the rest of us are so wrong, just what
might be right here? I've asked this repeatedly, but
... but I'm genuinely curious to see how Pynchon's
alleged relativism (amoralism, even?) might be
sustained in this regard. Thanks again ...
--- KXX4493553 at aol.com wrote:
> In einer eMail vom 15.07.01 07:42:59 (MEZ) -
> Mitteleurop.
>
> That's why the Jews themselves prefer the term
> "shoa". Shoa means only annihilation, nothing else;
> the word has no eschatological implications, like
> Holocaust, a word which gives the Endloesung a "last
> sense", perhaps in the direction of a kind of a
> "negative armaggeddon". Shoa is sharper and
> underlines the complete senselessness of the
> "events" in the concentration camps. The Holocaust
> can not only be "pluralized" (every massacre, every
> genocide, every extermination) but also
> "theologized". So in deed the "Holocaust" provokes
> debates like: who is a victim, and who not? F. e.
> the gypsies (Sinti and Roma, the word "gypsie"
> (Zigeuner) is not longer "PC") in Germany still
> today have difficulties to be recognized as victims
> of the Nazi Holocaust: Nobody in the official
> politics denies that 250.000 Sinti and Roma
> were killed in the concentration camps; but what is
> denied is the fact that they were killed for the
> same reasons as the jews. Still today a lot of
> people (in Germany) say that the Sinti and Roma were
> killed as a consequence of their "antisocial
> behaviour" or their unableness to be integrated in
> the society. This example shows that - in the
> "framework" of the Holocaust - the question: who is
> victim, and who not? is still a field of ideological
> and political fights. So: why not prefer the term
> "shoa" for avoiding misinterpretations and
> misunderstandings from the very beginning?
>
> Kurt-Werner Pörtner
And all this crankiness has once again made me forget
to mention that HBO has been running that Paragraph
175 documentary ...
http://www.hbo.com/americaundercover/cmp/p175/index.shtml
Almost ...
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