Holocaust

concentration camp

Adolf Hitler

trivia

Judaism

Italy

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book banning

is a mystery, evoking only 'silence' as a truly appropriate response. As such it cannot be turned into a narrative, or represented in a museum.

Wiesel's understanding of the holocaust as 'mystery', evoking only 'silence' as a truly appropriate response, is evidenced throughout his literary output.

is a non-communicable 'mystery' religion that 'leads into darkness,' 'negates all answers,' 'lies outside, if not beyond, history,' 'defies both knowledge and description,' 'cannot be explained nor visualized,' is 'never to be comprehended or transmitted' whose truth lies in silence.

For Wiesel, Novick rightly observes, The Holocaust is effectively a 'mystery' religion. Thus Wiesel intones that the Holocaust 'leads into darkness,' 'negates all answers,' 'lies outside, if not beyond, history,' 'defies both knowledge and description,' 'cannot be explained nor visualized,' is 'never to be comprehended or transmitted,' marks a 'destruction of history' and a 'mutation on a cosmic scale.' Only the survivor-priest (read: only Wiesel) is qualified to divine its mystery. And yet, The Holocaust's mystery, Wiesel avows, is 'noncommunicable'... 'we cannot even talk about it.' Thus, for his standard fee of $25,000 (plus chauffeured limousine), Wiesel lectures that the 'secret' of Auschwitz's 'truth lies in silence.'

is a paradigm of modern bureaucratic rationality and was not an aberration but in keeping with everything we know about our civilization, its guiding spirit, its priorities, its immanent vision of the world. Pre-modern pogroms were too inefficient to allow for the systematic murder of millions of people that occurred in the holocaust.

Bauman contends that 'the Holocaust may serve as a paradigm of modern bureaucratic rationality.' Like Bureaucracy, the Holocaust argues that the Holocaust was not an aberration but 'in keeping with everything we know about our civilization, its guiding spirit, its priorities, its immanent vision of the world.' That is, the Holocaust required the rationality of the modern world. It could not have occurred in the premodern, less rationalized societies. In fact, the pogroms that had occurred in premodern societies were too inefficient to allow for the systematic murder of millions of people that occurred in the Holocaust.'

is a preview, and mass death may be our future, for even after the holocaust, we dwell in modernity.

Arendt adds the additional warning that, even after the Holocaust, we dwell in modernity. For Arendt, the Holocaust is a preview. Mass death may be our future.

is an event that brought the jewish people into the mainstream of 'general history' but it also fundamentally altered the course of that history. In other words, the holocaust was experienced within history, yet its import reaches into the metahistorical into the realm of meaning in history.

for Wiesel, the holocaust enveloped the Jewish people into the mainstream of 'general history' but it also fundamentally altered the course of that history. In other words, the Holocaust was experienced within history, yet its import reaches into the metahistorical into the realm of meaning in history demanding that we examine not simply 'what happened and why' but what meaning this history might hold for our present and future.

is an experience of God... as such the event no longer yields to categories of history, of time and place, but transcends those categories precisely on the level of meaning and interpretation.

For Weisel, the Holocaust is an experience of God... as such the event no longer yields to categories of history, of time and place, but transcends those categories precisely on the level of meaning and interpretation. Yet, if it is an experience of God, a transcendental experience, as Wiesel says it is for him, then even a hermeneutical approach to interpretation seems inadequate in talking about the experience, how do you represent the unrepresentable'

is like sinai, the beginning of a new, universal revelation which transcended place and time. The holocaust, like sanai would galvanize the 'uniqueness of jewish suffering' as a conduit to a new revelation. A 'negative epiphany'.

just as the Sinaitic covenant would be incumbent on 'those who are standing here with us this day before the lord our god and with those who are not with us here this day' (Deuteronomy 29:13), so too does Wiesel characterized the Holocaust as the begining of a new, universal revelation. A revelation that, like Sinai, transcended place (distant nations and persons) and time (those who were born afterward). Just as Sinai would galvanize the Jewish people as a 'chosen' nation and a light unto the nations so too does the Holocaust, in Wiesel's formulation, galvanize the 'uniqueness of Jewish suffering' as a conduit to a new revelation a 'prototypically modern revelation', a 'negative epiphany'

is not only a Jewish tragedy, but also a human tragedy, whereby millions of others were persecuted, many of them only because they helped Jews.

For me the Holocaust was not only a Jewish tragedy, but also a human tragedy. After the war, when I saw that the Jews were talking only about the tragedy of six million Jews, I sent letters to Jewish organizations asking them to talk also about the millions of others who were persecuted with us together many of them only because they helped Jews. Simon Wiesenthal

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