Language:
English
Year of publication:
2007
Titel der Quelle:
Naharaim
Angaben zur Quelle:
1,2 (2007) 195-213
Keywords:
Holocaust (Jewish theology)
;
Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945) History
Abstract:
Reflects on the Holocaust as a unique event and on the difficulties of understanding it. Attempts to explain the Holocaust have led to two opposing perspectives: the particularist one, that of "why", which focuses on the victimized Jewish people, and the universalist one, that of "how", which focuses on the perpetration of the crime and on the Jewish individuals who were its victims. The latter perspective leads to the incrimination of modernity and of its inherent potentiality for violence and destruction. The concept of "rupture in civilization" epistemically reconciles these perspectives and represents the Holocaust as an aporetic event. It resists attempts to conceptualize the Holocaust, i.e. to find some logic in it. Illustrates this by two cases in which Jewish leaders failed to act properly because they tried to rationalize the Nazi genocide. In 1942-45, the Executive Committee of the Jewish Agency, in full knowledge of the mass murders, misconceived what was going on and failed to act. In 1940-43, the Jewish Councils throughout Poland also failed to make correct decisions because they attributed logic to the actions of the perpetrators. Dwells on the postwar views of some leading Jewish intellectuals (Horkheimer, Adorno, and Arendt) on the Holocaust as an event which went against the spirit of Enlightenment and against principles on which Western civilization is based.
DOI:
10.1515/NAHA.2007.015
URL:
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