Mirrors of Destruction: War, Genocide, and Modern Identity, by Omer Bartov. 2000. Oxford University Press, Oxford, New York
Holocaust-scholar Omer Bartov, first of all, upends the contrived Germans/Nazis dichotomy. He writes, “West German representations of the past have often include the figure of ‘the Nazi,’…it presents ‘the Nazi’ as the paradigmatic other…‘he’ is essentially so different from ‘us’ that he can be said never to have existed in the first place in any sense that would be historically meaningful or significant for ‘us,’ namely for contemporary Germany or especially for the vast majority of individual Germans, who were either not in position of power in the Third Reich or belong to succeeding generations. Hence, ‘we’ cannot be held responsible for ‘his’ misdeeds…So-called ordinary Germans appear to have been either untouched or irrelevant to genocide, and arguments to the contrary have been seen and condemned as attempts to assign collective national guilt.” (pp. 115-116). That is what the Germans/Nazis dichotomy is all about.
NOT ONLY JEWISH DEAD ARE LOOTED
Jews often complain about the desecration of Jewish remains. This is hardly limited to the Jewish dead. Bartov remarks, “The thousands of German soldiers killed in Stalingrad still reappear every thaw on the old battlefields, serving as a rich source of souvenirs for the local population.” (p. 36).
HOLOCAUST SUPREMACY CHALLENGED
Although Bartov adheres to the presumed “centrality of the Holocaust” (p. 5), he nevertheless acknowledges that, “In recent years, a growing number of commentators have expressed criticism of what appears to them as an undue, disproportionate, and even distorting emphasis on the genocide of the Jews…a number of French scholars and intellectuals have argued that the excessive preoccupation with the genocidal policies of the Nazi regime have diverted attention from other cases of mass murder both in the past and in the present.” (p. 5). It is good that there is a substantial and growing challenge to Holocaust dominance.
HOLOCAUST EDUCATION: A PORNOGRAPHY OF VIOLENCE
Omer Bartov entertains the following ideas, “What should be clear, however, is that teaching the Holocaust does not necessarily make for better politics, more tolerance, or deeper humanism and compassion; it can also create hatred, frustration, anger, and aggression…Teaching inhumanity, in other words, even with the declared intention of preventing its recurrence, may imbue young minds with images of barbarism that will seek aggressive and violent expression.” (p. 184).
Perhaps this validates the parental objections to MAUS that are based on its contained violence, and rejects Art Spiegelman’s trivialization of this objection as “wanting a kinder, gentler Holocaust”. See:
MOST HOLOCAUST-RELATED PUBLICATIONS ARE SCHLOCK
Author Bartov makes this stunning admission, “As publishers know, in recent years books on the Holocaust—whether fiction, memoirs, or scholarship—tend to find a ready market even if their quality is mediocre.” (p. 227).
That says it all.
https://www.jewsandpolesdatabase.org/2025/08/30/sizable-and-provocative-germans-nazis-dichotomy/
