History Aside?

Abstract

The perceptions of the Holocaust in Europe have changed since 1945, when the “opponents of the Enlightenment” disappeared without a trace and were reduced to the Nazi Party and a group of criminals and psychopaths who had surrounded Hitler, obfuscating the fact that a major part of Germany shared the ideology. These false perceptions gave way to a number of myths that are still relevant today; the myth of alleged victims’ passivity, the narrative that the State of Israel was born out of the Shoah and the concept of totalitarianism which denies the specificity of the Shoah and Nazism. Georges Bensoussan describes the transition from silence about the Holocaust after the Second World War to the current centrality of the Holocaust. The particular French, laïc perspective sharpens the problem of conceptualising the victim group as a result of the irrationality of antisemitism and the Holocaust: Why were the JEWS persecuted? Due to the fact that, with only a few exceptions, the whole of Europe was involved in the crime of the Holocaust, this history contributes to European unity. The Holocaust is rejected, but it is also a source of secondary antisemitism. This is one of the main sources of the vilification of Israel today. In the Arab world, however, empathy in regards to the Shoah is a source of frustration and seen as a concession to “the Jews”, including Israelis.

Translated from French by Jessica Ring.