Holocaust Goes Mainstream

I used to think the Holocaust became a well-known event (in the West) right after the second World War ended, when the concentration camps were found, when the Nurmeburg trials happened. Which is why it came as a shock to me when Malcolm Gladwell wrote about that aspect (when did the Holocaust became universally known in the West) in his book Revenge of the Tipping Point.

 

European historians barely mentioned the holocaust in books written in 1961. Lots of details of the two World Wars, hardly a few mentions of the holocaust. Contrast that with how it is talked about in recent decades! Turns out even the holocaust survivors didn’t talk much about it, even to their own children. Why remains a speculation. Maybe they weren’t sure if the Christian majority around them would take kindly to be reminded of it, maybe they didn’t want to keep reliving those horrors. Back then, Jewish groups too didn’t want to paint the image of Jews as eternal victims, always needing to be protected and molly-coddled, to be seen as the weak ones.

 

The usage of the Holocaust (capital H) starts to rise only from 1978! Why then? 


In 1976, a couple of NBC executives decided to make a documentary about the holocaust. There was a pushback from higher ups. An earlier documentary on Martin Luther King had been a fiasco. But the holocaust one got made anyway. It aired for 4 consecutive nights in 1978.

“It was television’s version of history.”

Today, it is hard to imagine TV influencing anything.

“A generation ago, television was a very different story.”

Remember how all of India tuned into Ramayana, Mahabharata, Hum Log and Buniyaad? Back then:

“It (TV) was like preindustrial religion, entire communities gathered together to absorb the same messages.”

 

The Holocaust documentary became just that in America. A few months later, when aired in Germany, it produced the same effect there as well.

“After the (documentary) Holocaust, the West German Parliament changed its mind and abolished the statute of limitations (one could now be prosecuted anytime for Holocaust crimes, no expiry dates).”

Holocaust memorials and museums came up all over Germany.

~~

 

Horrific the Holocaust was. No doubt about it. No denying it. The victims though were from a previous generation (or maybe two). Most of the survivors are now dead. The current generation of Jews can’t claim to have suffered the Holocaust.

 

But many continue to behave as if they, the current generation of Israelis, are the victims of the Holocaust. No matter what they do, they believe they are the victims. Nothing they do can ever be wrong. And while the world looked the other way from Gaza, the Iran War the Israelis started and dragged America into has changed all that. As that famous line from the Batman movie said:

“You either die a hero or you live long enough to become the villain.”

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