Clio’s Psyche Understanding the "Why" of Culture, Current Events, History, and Society
Volume 6, Number 3 December, 1999 Holocaust Consciousness, Novick’s Thesis, Comparative Genocide, and Victimization How Hollywood Hid the Holocaust Reflections on Through Obfuscation and Denial Competitive Victimhood Melvin Kalfus David R. Beisel Psychohistory Forum Research Associate SUNY-Rockland Community College In the decade following the Second World Review of Peter Novick, The Holocaust in American War and our initial confrontation with the Holo- Life. New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1999. caust in all of its enormity, the motion picture in- ISBN 0395840090, 373 pp., $27. dustry continued to be dominated by “the Jews Peter Novick is a fine historian who has who invented Hollywood.” It was these Jews who written a fine, if flawed, study. In The Holocaust had created the myths that helped Americans cope in American Life he asks many of the right ques- with the enormous trauma of the Great Depression tions and offers some insightful answers. As I read (Continued on page 106) along, I found myself nodding in agreement at
IN THIS ISSUE Life Is Beautiful Is Not a "Romantic Comedy"...... 114 Flora Hogman How Hollywood Hid the Holocaust: ...... 89 “Vicitm Olympics”: The Collective Melvin Kalfus Psychology of Comparative Genocides...... 114 Ralph Seliger Reflections on Competitive Victimhood ...... 89 Review Essay by David R. Beisel Forgiveness and Transcendence...... 116 Anie Kalayjian Response to David Beisel...... 93 Peter Novick The Holocaust as Trope for "Managed" Social Change...... 119 The Memory of the Holocaust: Howard F. Stein A Psychological or Political Issue? ...... 94 An Israeli Psychohistorian: Avner Falk ...... 122 Flora Hogman Paul H. Elovitz Holocaust Saturation in America...... 97 Deconstructing Hillary Clinton’s Stab at Psychohistory 126 Eva Fogelman H. John Rogers Response to Eva Fogelman...... 100 Male Violence towards Women ...... 127 Book Review by Andrew Brink Peter Novick Knafo’s Schiele ...... 128 From Denial to Remembrance...... 101 Book Review by Dan Dervin Ellen Mendel In Memoriam: Robert G. L. Waite ...... 129 Personal Reflections on Coping & Trauma in Poland ... 103 Thomas Kohut and John M. Hyde In Memoriam: H. Stuart Hughes ...... 131 Eating and Being in the Holocaust ...... 105 Paul H. Elovitz Bulletin Board ...... 132 Page 90 Clio’s Psyche December, 1999 many points while imagining the howls of outrage answer outside the boundaries of traditional social provoked by his several challenges to current or- and political categories. thodoxies. For example, Tony Judt -- an unusually Novick's chronological reconstruction balanced scholar and one of my favorite historians seems correct. No one talked or thought much -- found Novick's book to be "dense, carefully re- about the Holocaust in the 1940s and 1950s be- searched, and rather irritating" ("The Morbid cause, he says, Jews fought hard not to be identi- Truth," The New Republic, July 19 and 26, 1999). fied as victims; the immediate post-war years were The book stirred up my own thoughts on competi- an upbeat time; tales of horrific suffering were too tive victimhood. depressing to listen to, anyway; and West Germany Psychohistorians will find here some useful had become an ally in the Cold War (no repression observations. In an interesting chapter on Holo- here). Even the 1950s success of the book, stage caust consciousness in relation to the newly emerg- play, and film versions of The Diary of Anne Frank ing phenomenon of competitive victimhood (the made Anne into a universal, not Jewish, symbol. tendency among various non-Jewish groups to pro- Things changed, says Novick, with press coverage mote their own victimizations), he speaks of of the capture and trial of Adolf Eichman. In the "Holocaust envy." In a couple of places, he notes 1970s came viewings of the television mini-series, that the Holocaust has become a kind of "moral The Holocaust. These two events in particular and ideological Rorschach," "a screen on which were what brought the Holocaust forward into people [have] projected a variety of values and American consciousness. Moreover: "When a high anxieties." And he acknowledges that "in the spe- level of concern with the Holocaust became wide- cial case of Holocaust survivors, the succession of spread in American Jewry, it was, given the impor- trauma, repression, and return of the repressed of- tant role that Jews play in American media and ten seems plausible." That, however, is about it, opinion-making elites, not only natural, but virtu- psychologically. Novick soon becomes defended: ally inevitable that it would spread through the cul- "the available evidence," he says, "doesn't suggest ture at large." (We know what he means, but one that, overall, American Jews (let alone American may hear in these words disquieting echoes of anti- gentiles) were traumatized…."; he concludes that Semitic statements like "The Jews run Holly- historical explanations do not involve "conjuring wood.") up dubious" notions like a "social uncon- Novick finds this renewed emphasis on scious" (which he puts in quotes). Indeed, he casts Jewish consciousness the result of "survival anxi- doubt on the realities of repression itself while ety," fears that secularism, materialism, and out- seeming to allow for it. "(Even here … survivors group marriage in the late 20th century were erod- in the late 1940s frequently wanted to talk about ing Jewish identity. When Novick turns to other their Holocaust experience and were discouraged contributing factors, he broadens his analysis to from doing so.)" Passages like these suggest that include other recent social and intellectual trends, Novick has an inadequate understanding of trauma; mentioning the related growth of "the new ethnic- one guesses that he does not know, or accept, that ity" and "identity politics." Although he writes embedded in the repressed trauma is also the wish that the "roots of these many-sided phenomena to express it. And, like many writers on the Holo- were various and tangled -- too complex to be de- caust, he flees from any psychological explana- tailed here," he does offer some brief observations. tions. (See my "Resistance to Psychology in Holo- caust Scholarship," the Journal of Psychohistory, The threatened "loss of identity" in the U.S. -- Vol. 27, No. 2, Fall 1999, p. 124.) and not only among Jews -- produced a quest for "a new identity of experience[d] collective disadvan- Even though he is not a psychohistorian, tage." The new identity became a victim identity. Novick does ask important psychohistorical ques- Causes included new media images of blacks in the tions: Why here? Why now? Why has the Holo- post-civil rights era as "trapped in despair and caust, which "took place thousands of miles from hopelessness in the urban ghettos. A new focus on America's shores" and affected only "a small frac- spousal abuse and child abuse," the homeless who tion of one percent of the American population," flooded city streets, and "a strong emphasis in his- become a central part of late-20th-century Ameri- torical and literary works on the experience of los- can consciousness? This is a truly important issue, ers." yet one of the things which makes Novick's work so frustrating is that he is unable to provide any All of this helped the Holocaust move "to the center of American culture." In the 1970s it December, 1999 Clio’s Psyche Page 91
"came to seem an appropriate symbol of contem- On the whole, Novick's is a good effort at porary consciousness" because the assassinations traditional historical explanation. But when he of the 1960s, the hopes for a Great Society which gets, finally, to an emotion — to the passages "had all been dashed," and Vietnam and Watergate quoted above about abuses and "diminished expec- had raised doubts about America's idealism and tations" — that Americans became "depressed" what constituted the real bases of U.S. culture. In about, he has to leave it there, and moves quickly this environment, the Holocaust "became an aptly on to other issues. bleak emblem for an age of diminished expecta- Psychohistorians will want to know more. tions." But what Novick leaves out here is the cru- The emergence of a new widespread phenomenon cial role of Christian fundamentalists and the grow- which prizes the victim identity is a startling devel- ing apocalyptic expectations, studied by Strozier opment and is not "self-evident." To identify is to and others, that this is the End Time and that the describe and it is a description of a process, not a imminent Second Coming of Jesus is connected in cause of things; it cries out for deeper explanation. some way with the birth of the State of Israel. He misses the possibility that the consciousness of How to approach the emerging culture of many Christians turned to Jews and to recent Jew- competitive victimization psychohistorically? One ish history not merely because Christianity empha- way to mark the onset of a depression (I remember sizes "suffering and redemption." reading somewhere in the psychoanalytic litera- ture) is when an analysand begins to read obses- sively about the Holocaust. By analogy, one meas- Clio’s Psyche ure of a society's depression may be when large numbers begin to express that depression by di- Vol. 6, No. 3 December, 1999 rectly assuming the identity of victims themselves. In a competitive society it is perhaps inevitable that ISSN 1080-2622 this trend should also produce what Novick calls Published Quarterly by The Psychohistory Forum the "Victim Olympics" -- what others have called 627 Dakota Trail, Franklin Lakes, NJ 07417 "the Olympics of suffering." (Novick insightfully Telephone: (201) 891-7486 e-mail: [email protected] observes the "greatest victory is to wring an ac- knowledgement of superior victimization from an- Editor: Paul H. Elovitz, PhD other contender.") It is not just that every group is Associate Editor: Bob Lentz competing for "public honor and public funds": Editorial Board victim one-upmanship looks like regression, and David Beisel, PhD RCC-SUNY • Rudolph Binion, sounds to me like so many squealing siblings seek- PhD Brandeis University • Andrew Brink, PhD ing to be crowned King of Pain by the American Formerly of McMaster University and The University "family." of Toronto • Ralph Colp, MD Columbia University • Joseph Dowling, PhD Lehigh University • Glen One reason for this emerging culture of Jeansonne, PhD University of Wisconsin • George suffering is suggested by the title of a recent piece Kren, PhD Kansas State University • Peter by Ian Buruma in The New York Review of Books, Loewenberg, PhD UCLA • Peter Petschauer, PhD called "The Joys and Perils of Victimhood" (April Appalachian State University • Leon Rappoport, 8, 1999, pp. 4, 6, 8 and 9). Buruma seems to be on PhD Kansas State University to something when he recognizes, but does not de-
Advisory Council of the Psychohistory Forum velop, the rarely acknowledged secret regressive John Caulfield, MDiv, Apopka, FL • Melvin Kalfus, pleasures of victimhood: the secondary gains of PhD Boca Raton, FL • Mena Potts, PhD Wintersville, attention and the concern of others; the possibility OH • Jerome Wolf, Larchmont, NY of financial compensation; the thrill of being al- Subscription Rate: lowed to continuously express "righteous" anger; Free to members of the Psychohistory Forum the "right" to be depressed and cranky; the lure of $25 yearly to non-members $40 yearly to institutions powerlessness. It is not that there have not been (Both add $4 outside USA & Canada) victims (and legitimate anger) in history, for surely
Single Issue Price: $10 one of psychohistory's roles is to bring the conse- quences of multiple traumas to the consciousness We welcome articles of psychohistorical interest of wider audiences. Here, however, I am con- that are 300 - 1500 words. cerned with psychological functions and emotional Copyright © 1999 The Psychohistory Forum payoffs. As Buruma notes, "almost every commu- Page 92 Clio’s Psyche December, 1999 nity, be it a nation or a religious or ethnic or sexual seem to need to reiterate that childhood is not the minority, has a bone to pick with history. All have idyll that society defensively imagines it to be. suffered wrongs." Nothing new here. So the ques- Sometimes even the mass media may acknowledge tions remain, Why here? Why this? Why now? this: The New York Times recently called its review Buruma makes at least two observations of psychoanalyst Leonard Shengold's Soul Murder which psychohistorians will find compelling. In a Revisited, "Home as Concentration Camp" (Eva passage reminiscent of Dan Dervin writing in Hoffman, Book Review, October 17, 1999, p. 28). Clio's Psyche, Buruma says: On the other hand, it is possible that what we are witnessing with the appearance of widespread Princess Diana was in fact the perfect competitive victimhood is not merely multicultural embodiment of our obsession with copycat-ism, but something truly profound, even victimhood. Not only did she identify with revolutionary, in the history of childhood. victims, often in commendable ways, hugging AIDS patients here and homeless It is not that public discussions of spousal people there, but she was often seen as a and child abuse served as catalysts for a new idea suffering victim herself: of male chauvinism, of victimhood, as Novick would have it; it is rather royal snobbery, the media, British society, that domestic violence -- ever present, never ac- and so on. Everyone who felt victimized in knowledged -- could now, in the 1970s and 1980s, any way identified with her, especially be discussed in public for the first time as acute women and members of ethnic minorities. social problems. One psychohistorical theory ar- gues that large numbers of better parented people Diana became our "victim delegate," al- had now emerged with egos strong enough to hear lowing us to viciously experience our pain through and talk about the kind of suffering which earlier her. There must have been millions upon millions generations had to repress (Lloyd deMause, of victims because millions worldwide identified "Evolution of Childhood," Foundations of Psychohis- with her suffering and death. tory, 1981, pp. 1-82). As psychiatrist Chaim Buruma's second suggestion also has to do Shatan has said for years, violence is connected to with what psychohistorians would call "the dele- an unacknowledged ocean of "impacted tears." gate role," this time played by victims' children. Comparative studies are needed, of course: for ex- Most victims -- of Nazism, of Maoist purges -- ample, what were the psychological roots of the were prevented from speaking out by their own Abolitionists' ability, by the middle of the 19th "shame and trauma." (These things may be present century, to identify with African-American slaves? many generations later, as, for example, in some Today's new victimhood suggests that millions Irish-Americans whose shame prevents them from may have now moved to the "depressive position," reading the details of the Great Famine in works that the stronger egos of a better parented psycho- like Paddy's Lament: they begin the book, then class means less repression, and that they may be have to put it down, it is "too terrible.") Some- ready to move toward some kind of tentative future times, says Buruma, "it is left up to the next gen- therapeutic working-through. Can we actually be eration, the sons and daughters of the victims, to seeing here some confirmation of those long-term break the silence." He doesn't say so specifically, improvements in the evolution of childhood found but there seems to be among them a quest for a by deMause's research some 30 years ago? But healthier, more authentic self. "It was as if part of even if improvements in childcare are merely only themselves had been amputated by the silence of a couple of decades old, the new victimhood may their parents." be telling us that the sons and daughters of a new Buruma's words seem to point us in the generation, by identifying with the Jewish victims direction of the history of childhood. On the one of Nazi persecution and expressing themselves hand, emerging competitive victimhood performs a through competitive victimhood, are not only ready psychosocial function by allowing those who are to express the silent suffering of their parents, but more defended (an "older psycho-class"?) to char- are preparing themselves sometime soon to weep acterize victims as "wimps" who should "get over" their own impacted tears. their suffering and "get on with their lives," allow- David Beisel, PhD, teaches history and ing those so defended to displace anger at their psychohistory at Rockland Community College of own traumatic victimizations as adults, and, espe- the State University of New York (SUNY) where he cially as children. In almost every writing we instructs 200 students a year in psychohistory and is the recipient of various pedagogical awards. December, 1999 Clio’s Psyche Page 93
Professor Beisel, who specialties are psychohistory plaining to the benighted rest of us, how our views and German history, is a prolific author, a past are the result of "defensiveness" furthers the belief president of the International Psychohistorical that rational scholarly disagreement can't be pur- Association, and a Contributing Editor to Clio's sued with them? How this form of argumentation Psyche. (if one can call it that) makes it certain that they will be confined to a scholarly ghetto within the historical profession? Response to David Beisel Claims that Americans were (or were not) Peter Novick "traumatized" by the Holocaust are empirical as- University of Chicago sertions -- estimates (informed guesses, if you will) about the contemporary psychic impact of the In the Introduction to The Holocaust in Holocaust. Having spent many years immersing American Life I observed that in addressing the myself in surviving evidence which bears on the question of why the Holocaust wasn't talked about question (some of which I cite in the book), I con- for a long time, then came to be talked about a lot, cluded that for most American Jews the Holocaust there was something of a tacit consensus about the was not "traumatic." Perhaps I was mistaken; I answer: like to think that I am open to correction when I am ...sometimes explicitly, always offered (non-circular) reasons for changing my implicitly, Freudian.... The Holocaust, mind. But Professor Beisel offers no grounds for according to this influential explanation, had rejecting my conclusion except to assert that it is been a traumatic event, certainly for evident that I am "defended." American Jews, more diffusely for all A short digression on "empiricism." Any Americans. Earlier silence was a theoretical discourse contains concepts which, in manifestation of repression; the explosion of practice, can't be continually questioned -- for psy- talk in recent years has been 'the return of choanalysis, the universality of infantile sexuality the repressed.' and the Oedipus complex, etc., for Marxism, the In explaining why I was not attracted to class struggle and relations between base and su- this model -- instead, preferred the approach of the perstructure, etc. One can't pursue Freudian or sociologist Maurice Halbwachs -- I wrote the fol- Marxist analysis without stipulating the impor- lowing, from which Professor Beisel quotes a snip- tance and ubiquity of these phenomena, and much pet: of such analysis consists of exploring how they play out. That's fine. But believing in the exis- Surely there were some American Jews tence of certain mechanisms of trauma, repression, -- perhaps even some gentiles -- for whom and the return of the repressed, and interest in ex- the Holocaust was a traumatic experience. ploring their interaction in practice, does not make But the available evidence doesn't suggest it legitimate to stipulate that, in any particular case, that, overall, American Jews (let alone "trauma" and its sequelae are present. And one American gentiles) were traumatized by the should be particularly wary of shoehorning a par- Holocaust, in any worthwhile sense of that ticular case into an interpretive framework because term. They were often shocked, dismayed, one has developed tools for operating within that saddened, but that's not the same thing, framework. Doing so resembles the well-known certainly not for purposes of setting in train story of the man looking for his wallet under the the inexorable progression of repression and streetlight, even though he dropped it down the the return of the repressed. block, because "the light's better here." Characteristically, it is simply assumed that the Holocaust must have been traumatic. I find it at least "peculiar," Professor And if it wasn't talked about, this must have Beisel's comment on another observation of mine, been repression. concerning why the Holocaust came to figure so largely in American culture at large. I wrote: In writing this, Professor Beisel says, I "became defended." Are psychohistorians really A good part of the answer is the fact -- unaware of how deeply offensive this sort of thing not less of a fact because anti-Semites turn it is to those outside the guild? How the superior into a grievance -- that Jews play an posture of psychohistorians, condescendingly ex- important and influential role in Hollywood, the television industry, and the newspaper, Page 94 Clio’s Psyche December, 1999
magazine, and book publishing worlds. Peter Novick, PhD, was born in 1934 in Anyone who would explain the massive Jersey City and retired this year as Professor of attention to the Holocaust has received in History at the University of Chicago. He is the these media in recent years without reference author of The Holocaust in American Life (1999); to that fact is being naive or disingenuous. That Noble Dream: The "Objectivity Question" Of my remarks on this subject, Professor and the American Historical Profession (1988) Beisel writes: "We know what he means, but one which won the American Historical Association’s may hear in these words disquieting echoes of anti- 1989 prize for the best book of the year in Ameri- Semitic statements like 'The Jews run Hollywood.'" can history; and The Resistance vs. Vichy: The Are we again delving into the depths of my (in this Purge of Collaborators in Liberated France (1968) case "self-hating") psyche, as Professor Beisel which, in translation, was a bestseller in France. "hears disquieting echoes"? Or does Professor He reports spending many years in psychoanalysis Beisel dissent from my view that one can't ignore and dedicating That Noble Dream to his analyst. this dimension of the question without being naive or disingenuous? He is, he tells us, "disquieted" about these remarks of mine, but why? Hard to say. The Memory of the Holocaust: On two points having to do with my saying A Psychological or that the Holocaust "became an aptly bleak emblem Political Issue? for an age of diminished expectations," Professor Beisel criticizes me for what I fail to do. Flora Hogman Psychohistory Forum Research Associate He says that I "leave out ... the crucial role of Christian fundamentalists and the growing Quite recently, the Council of French Bish- apocalyptic expectations ... connected in some way ops issued a “declaration of repentance” regarding with the birth of the State of Israel." I miss "the its “failings” during the Nazi Holocaust. “The possibility that the consciousness of many Chris- Catholic Church knows full well that conscience is tians turned to ... recent Jewish history not merely formed in remembering, and that, just as no indi- because Christianity emphasizes 'suffering and re- vidual person can live in peace with himself, nei- demption.'" But Christian interest in the Holocaust ther can society live in peace with a repressed or has been greatest among Catholics and untruthful memory.” In Germany, Wolfgang "mainstream" Protestant denominations which es- Thierse, the Speaker of the Bundestag chew apocalypticism; of all Christians, fundamen- [Parliament], in responding to the contentiousness talists have been those who have talked least about surrounding the Memorial to the Jews in Berlin, the Holocaust. Again, what grounds does Profes- stated, “We are building it for ourselves. It will sor Beisel have for asserting that fundamentalism help us confront a chapter of our history.” played a "crucial role" in the rise of interest in the The memory of the Holocaust is in the gen- Holocaust? eral public awareness and in the news, as well it More generally, Professor Beisel chides me should be: the World War II generation is now get- for not exploring in detail the psychic origins of ting older and facing the prospect of death. Its "diminished expectations." He might as well criti- chances for expression and for dialogue become cize me for slighting the military and diplomatic more limited as time goes on; its need for integrat- roots of the Cold War, which also played a role in ing the war experience becomes more urgent. We my story. Any historian inevitably takes some of all know about the groups of survivors and of chil- the background of what he or she writes about as dren of survivors which have mushroomed in re- "a given," lest one get caught up in "infinite re- cent years; about their writing autobiographies, gress." For Professor Beisel, diminished expecta- fiction, and films; about their returning to places of tions, like the growth of victim consciousness, hiding and saying "thank you" to rescuers -- all are "cries out for deeper explanation." I'm not sure trying to give flesh to the years of the Holocaust. about "cries out," but I agree that it is worthy of We also know about groups of the second genera- explanation from various perspectives. I could tion of Germans -- the children of the German war only do so much, and thought it prudent to restrict generation -- and we have heard about German myself to realms where I thought I had something “fatigue” with the Holocaust. And, of course, we worthwhile to contribute. December, 1999 Clio’s Psyche Page 95 know about Holocaust museums in America and a French flag still hangs in some homes.) French Holocaust awareness in general. Fifth Republic President Charles DeGaulle, in his It was not always this way. Soon after the memorial to war deportees, never mentioned the war ended, most people wished to forget about it. Jews, only “racial” deportees. Rousso sees in the The survivors needed to start new lives rather than “nostalgic” right wing not only the collaborators of to dwell on the past. The perpetrators did not wish the war but also those who pursued the Algerian to be reminded of their deeds; they, too, wanted to war of the 1960s as they sought to hold on to part resume normal lives and keep what spoils of war of the North African patrimony of France as its they could. There were issues of shame on survi- glorious past. vors at being seen as “victims” as well as of avoid- An indictment of the role of France during ance of a sense of guilt by individual and nation World War II was soon incorporated into the 1968 bystanders. The factual memories of the past were student unrest in the streets of Paris against the in- silenced, to be replaced by myths or a sense of glorious war in Algeria. Filmmaker Marcel void. Ophüls described the average French reaction dur- Often a single event or a person served as a ing World War II in highly unflattering terms in catalyst to break the silence -- demonstrating that The Sorrow and the Pity (1971). This hugely suc- the past was still alive and could not be buried cessful film was banned immediately from French again. In Israel there was the Eichmann Trial and national television. The struggle for remembrance later in Germany, the case of Anja Rasmus. This had begun. The struggle to restore the memory of young girl from Passau chose to research how peo- the Holocaust included not only survivors but ple in her town had resisted the Nazis, which was much better known people such as Ophüls, Serge what she had been taught in school. To her dis- Klarsfeld, and Claude Lanzmann. Historians may, everyone blocked her research. She finally joined the search for memory with PhD theses; sur- discovered they had not resisted at all. Because vivors formed groups and wrote, as did children of she exposed the lies and myths, there were death survivors. The 1980s trial of Klaus Barbie, a col- threats against her and she eventually left Ger- laborator responsible for numerous deportations many, but after she had raised the consciousness of and the torture of the leader of the French Resis- the people. Anja was part of the second and third tance, Jean Moulin, reflected the struggles with generations of young Germans who grew up with memory through the judicial system: Barbie’s “silent” parents and/or grandparents. In terms of "lawyers" attempted to retain the myths of pure denial of memory, theirs was a similar experience France and reject the “myth” of the good resis- to that of the children and grandchildren of survi- tance. (Barbie was first defended by a priest- vors. We know how these different groups eventu- lawyer until the Church put a stop to it.) ally gathered, spoke up, and searched for the Scandals shatter myths but defenders of “stories” of their families in the war. myths fight back. Thus, although French President Memory, myth, and silence have also Jacques Chirac admitted three years ago to the role struggled in France for center stage after the infa- of France in the deportation of Jews, a struggle for mous French collaboration with Germany, orches- indemnification of the victims is still being fought trated by Vichy Premier Henri Philippe Pétain. as different forces in the French system confront France had lost its glorious image. After the im- the issue of responsibility for wartime actions. mediate post-war “reglements de comptes" [settling The war eventually had a large impact on of accounts], myths quickly took over. For exam- the Catholic Church and European Christianity in ple, the number of those French who claimed to general. There were clashes: Paul Touvier, one of have resisted Nazi Germany swelled. Soon the the French collaborators, was hidden by the Catholic Right (according to Henri Rousso in his Church for years after the war. “Saving” Jewish book, Le syndrome de Vichy, 1987, translated as souls also produced battles after the war between The Vichy Syndrome, 1991) led an effort to reha- the Church and the Jewish community, as demon- bilitate Pétain and once again make him the “hero” strated in the Finaly Children Affair in which a of France -- claiming that Pétain was trying to convent and Catholic adoptive mother for a long “save” France from Germany. They thought he time refused to give back her converted "Catholic deserved to be treated more as a “martyr” than a children" to their Israeli relatives. However, the quisling. (As I witnessed a few years ago while guilt produced by the knowledge of the death traveling in France, the picture of Pétain framed in camps and of the Christian silence during the war Page 96 Clio’s Psyche December, 1999 impelled Christians into an examination of con- too much about the Holocaust? Does focusing on science, though they often had to be prodded by it perpetuate a Jew-as-victim status and a self- Jews. The French historian Jules Isaac, whose en- image as an oppressed people? My initial response tire family was murdered in concentration camps, is that memory is essential to the ability to mourn, wrote about the Christian teaching of contempt for with the resultant integration of suffering and loss Jews (L'enseignement du mépris, 1962) and was into a complete sense of identity: some healing for quite instrumental through his dialogues with Pope the victim only comes with acknowledgment of the John XXIII in forging the text of Vatican II in the suffering. Perhaps Heinz Kohut’s idea of mirror- l960s in which an expression of equality of all re- ing the injured self provides an appropriate concept ligions was first articulated. here. In this case, because Jews, Germans, the The dogmas of the Church and its trium- Church, and various nations are involved, the phalism [the belief that a particular doctrine is su- mourning becomes a communal enterprise. Jews, perior to all others] were later questioned. In The as the primary advocates for this historical recogni- Crucifixion of the Jews (1975), Franklin Littell tion, are helped to transcend the despair following wrote that two myths were propagated by Christi- from their loss by the public acknowledgment. In anity: first, God is finished with the Jews and, sec- doing this, they feel less like victims and more like ond, the new Israel (Christian Church) took the parts of the human community. place of the Jewish people as carriers of history. What about the present widespread interest As these myths were questioned, Judeo-Christian in the Holocaust? For some, the event becomes a movements developed with ongoing dialogues, myth, a survival archetype: there has been an evo- conferences, and publications. Recently New York lution from fear of the victim to an admiration for Cardinal John O'Connor wrote about “his abject the survivor who now has a complete story to tell sorrow” in The New York Times. However, the and thus becomes a hero worth emulating. But struggle for acknowledgment of wartime responsi- have bystanders been replaced by voyeurs? Do bility still goes on in the Catholic Church. For ex- Jews need this “mirroring?” Do they enjoy it? Is it ample, Pope Pius XII is to be canonized despite bad? Are they too steeped in the past? Or is it the increasing evidence that his conduct during the war only way for them to feel that the past is finally was mostly motivated by insuring the survival of integrated? Does it have consequences for the his “company,” the Church. “voyeurs” who might become too identified with This struggle with memory thus involves the suffering hero and perhaps distort that suffer- all protagonists of the war: victims, perpetrators, ing? There have been fears of “trivialization” of bystanders, rescuers, the Church, and nations -- all the Holocaust. Whatever the answers, society does of which impact upon each other. The victims need to accept some of the ramifications of this were first afraid of being devastated by “memory” flawed and delayed explosion of information. of their suffering but also of imposing knowledge Others are bored with the Holocaust and of their suffering. The perpetrators strove for the argue that it’s not today’s problem or even yester- “banality of evil,” engaging in dissociation. The day’s; they say it is time to forget. They note that bystanders were afraid to hear horror stories be- there is much competition for suffering in the cause they didn’t want to feel responsible and thus world. They think we are stuck on the Jew as vic- feel guilty -- they then tended to feel victimized tim. Sometimes such criticism becomes anti- themselves. Such splitting and dissociation created Semitic since it is tempting to keep on hating the a serious curtailment of identity and of a sense of victim. This perpetuates victim status because one authenticity, perhaps even of the ability to feel. cannot mourn in the middle of hate. And the vic- Yet, an event as monstrous as the Holocaust cannot tims know that the haters don’t forget -- witness just be cast away. The return of memory and an swastikas periodically painted on Jewish homes or effort at integration, as shown above, is impelled synagogues. Our world must deal with people who by a sense of guilt and incompleteness -- often in have such a need to hate. the next generations -- and the need for authentic- So where is the political issue? Earlier this ity. With the restoration of memory comes an inte- year, Peter Novick, at a presentation on his book, gration of the events and feelings which transform The Holocaust in American Life (1999), at the the separate group identities -- amidst the struggles YIVO Institute for Jewish Research in New York along the way. City, asserted that the “memory” of the Holocaust Many questions remain. Are we hearing is so much in the forefront in the U.S. today basi- December, 1999 Clio’s Psyche Page 97 cally for political purposes: American Jews need to In 1998 Dr. Hogman was guest editor of the protect Israel. It is in the interest of the American Psychoanalytic Review for a special issue on government to reinforce this focus because of its overcoming genocide and trauma. pro-Israeli policies. In the process, the Holocaust is “sacralized,” treated as unique, and the Jew re- mains a victim. Novick reported this to be in Holocaust Saturation in marked contrast to the years after the war, until the America 1960s, when no one spoke about the Holocaust. He scoffed at the idea of “repressed memories” of Eva Fogelman trauma, arguing that other concerns were prevalent Graduate Center of CUNY at the time. At this meeting I stood up in protest, describing the experience of Holocaust survivors A perception persists that Holocaust aware- including the travails of memory culminating in the ness is ubiquitous. Peter Novick's exceedingly well Conference of Hidden Children in l991 and their researched book, The Holocaust in American Life, is impact on American Jews. Novick’s rejoinder was based on this premise. But hard data tell a somewhat that Holocaust survivors constitute a miniscule different story. A 1993 study, conducted by the number and thus don’t count. Besides, he asserted, Roper Organization for the American Jewish Com- memories of survivors cannot be trusted for accu- mittee, concluded that "ignorance of the Holocaust is racy. When I spoke further with him about the ob- rampant in the United States." Thirty-eight percent jectivity of historians on the Holocaust, he referred of a representative sample of 992 adults over the age to his award-winning book, That Noble Dream: of 18 did not know what the term "Holocaust" meant, The "Objectivity Question" and the American His- or gave an incorrect interpretation of the term. Of the torical Profession (1988), in which he alleged that high school students polled, 53 percent were un- historians are totally nonobjective. Nor do I con- enlightened about Holocaust facts. Furthermore, in sider Novick to be objective. 1990 an Anti-Defamation League (ADL) survey of Americans and the Holocaust showed that the public, Why do I object to Novick’s presentation? by a 44 percent to 3 percent margin, agreed that the After all, I certainly don’t advance the idea of the public schools pay too little rather than too much at- “uniqueness” of the Holocaust beyond that it was tention to the Holocaust. unique in the sense that each genocide is different in its own way. Nor do I quarrel with his assertion How does Peter Novick, a fastidious re- that anything can be used for political purposes. I searcher, ignore these discrepancies? Novick is object because his presentation created a distorted not alone in his conclusions. For one thing, No- picture of the tortuous vagaries of “memory” of a vick appears to rely on Tom Smith's synthesis of traumatic historical occurrence -- he “flattened” several polls, in asserting that 97 percent of those this memory into a purely “political” event, dis- who were polled knew what is meant by the Holo- missing the issue of identity and trauma integra- caust. A high percentage would surely lead an ob- tion. As we have seen, not remembering as well as server to conclude that the Holocaust has entered remembering can become a political issue. It the American cultural mainstream. What is miss- would make more sense to understand the struggle ing in these data is what people "really" know. for integration of group suffering rather than to put Although anecdotes are not scientific data, I it down. This is what I have attempted to illustrate note a few in order to illustrate the lack of real in this short piece, using the European experience. knowledge in the United States about the destruction However, I would think that as all Germans must of European Jewry. Following the release of Steven include Nazism in their history, so all Jews must Spielberg's Schindler's List, I was on a tour for my include the Holocaust in theirs, and so must No- book, Conscience and Courage: Rescuers of Jews vick. Unfortunately, there is no way around it. During the Holocaust (1994). The topic was familiar Flora Hogman, PhD, is a psychologist in to radio and television talk show hosts, booksellers, private practice in Manhattan who conducts a university professors, and journalists. When, how- hidden-children-during-the-Holocaust survivors ever, I asked students, "Who was Oskar Schindler?", group. She, alone in her immediate family, they would often reply, "Liam Neeson." They either survived the war in France where she was a did not know the story, or were confused as to what hidden child and has written extensively on the was fictionalized in this Hollywood version of the need to remember as a way of coping with trauma. Holocaust. Page 98 Clio’s Psyche December, 1999
Speaking in several colleges in Illinois, one the Jews. of the first states to mandate Holocaust education, I In the late 1940s, John Slawson convened an often asked students what they learned in high school academic meeting on anti-Semitism that led to the about the Holocaust. Most could not recall much landmark Authoritarian Personality Studies. Slawson focus on the topic. This lack of education is not sur- shared the results and his conclusions with the Jewish prising. Although curricula and study materials exist, public affairs umbrella organization, the National they do not seem to get to grass roots educators. Community Relations Advisory Council (NCRAC, Many teachers of social studies, history, and English now the Jewish Council for Public Affairs). He con- in today's classrooms did not learn about the destruc- cluded from the findings that Jewish organizations tion of European Jewry as students. Clearly, if "should avoid representing the Jew as weak, victim- youngsters are to become educated in this area, ized, and suffering.…" Slawson continued,"…there teachers need to be appropriately trained. needs to be an elimination or at least a reduction of A second reason to assume that Holocaust horror stories of victimized Jewry.... We must nor- consciousness is pervasive is that America has indeed malize the image of the Jew.... War heroes stories witnessed a dramatic shift towards increased memo- are excellent.… The Jew should be represented like rialization of the Holocaust through commemoration, others, rather than like others. The image of Jewish education, literature, oral history projects, and re- weakness must be eliminated...." Slawson was most search. This heightened Holocaust consciousness interested in cultural integration of the Jews lest the bombards the media and the arts. We seem to be anti-Semites, who "subconsciously knew that Jews now in the midst of a Holocaust Zeitgeist. Novick were weak," would be stimulated to act on their correctly says that when the media focus on the "sadistic impulses." Holocaust it responds to external events, such as Nazi The changes in the Jewish religious commu- Americans wanting to march in Skokie, Illinois (a nity are for the most part ignored in Novick's The neighborhood populated by Holocaust survivors), Holocaust in American Life. This is a significant President Reagan wanting to pay homage to Waffen omission, although not surprising. Novick, a secular SS at Bitburg, the Kurt Waldheim affair, the Demjan- Jew, is an "outsider." This is reflected in his analysis juk trial, and Swiss banks' confiscating Holocaust and ultimately his conclusion that the Holocaust is survivors' bank accounts. The media are not neces- "virtually the only common denominator of Ameri- sarily eager to focus on the Holocaust. Producers can Jewish identity in the late twentieth century." seem to weigh whether they have focused too much Novick does not explain the destruction of European or too little on the Holocaust. When my book was Jewry in the larger context of Jewish history, nor the published several months after the release of psychological process of mourning. Schindler’s List, national television stations who were approached to promote the book said, "Oh, we The Jewish religious organizations' negli- already covered the topic." When survivors seek to gence in not reciting special mourning prayers for the publish their memoirs, they are told, "Holocaust six million dead Jews, the Kaddish, was motivated by books don't sell" or "The market is flooded. Sorry, very different reasons than the rest of the organized we will pass on your book." Jewish community. Some rabbis (one cited by No- vick) felt that the Holocaust was a punishment from Nonetheless, the American public and the God because the Jews of Europe went astray. These organized Jewish community did alter their total early rabbis never explained why pious people were avoidance of the subject -- the norm during the 1940s murdered and why a million-and-a-half innocent and 1950s -- and shifted to focusing on the Holocaust children were killed. Religious leaders in the Ortho- in response to external events in the 1960s and 1970s, dox and Conservative movements deliberately and even more so in the 1980s and 1990s. avoided any discussions or liturgical responses to Peter Novick astutely navigates the reader memorialization. Abraham Joshua Heschel, a Holo- through this striking transition. His years of archival caust survivor himself, purposely did not bring up the research have unearthed fascinating -- some obscure - past in his theological teachings. He felt that if - facts that were determining factors in denying the American Jewry was to flourish after the Holocaust, victimization and extermination of the Jews of Jews needed to concentrate on spirituality rather than Europe, or in misusing the tragic event for political focus on "Where was God?" purposes. One example is Novick's discovery of an Novick's conclusion, that most American early riveting decision in the Jewish community to Jews are dependent on the Holocaust for their iden- avoid focusing on the weakness and victimization of tity, is not surprising. Novick himself is an assimi- December, 1999 Clio’s Psyche Page 99 lated Jew who is not involved in Jewish communal or Harold Schulweis, a young rabbi in Califor- religious life. There is no question that there are nia at the time of the Eichmann trial, was concerned those Jews in America who identify as Jews only that when young children learn about the atrocities through the Holocaust. We do not know with certi- committed against Jews they will lose trust in the tude what proportion of Jews in America identify via world, and they will fear being Jewish. Schulweis the Holocaust. Without concrete data, our percep- tirelessly spoke of the Jewish responsibility to recog- tions, concretized by anecdotes, constitute the lens nize goodness in order to show Jewish children that through which we view the world. I live on the Up- amidst all the evil there was goodness, and therefore per West Side of Manhattan, where I participate in there is a glimmer of hope. It was in that spirit that the Simchat Torah celebration in which the streets are he approached me to direct a Jewish Foundation for blocked off to accommodate the joyousness of the Righteous Christians in 1986, and in 1987 the Anti- holiday; I share a Friday evening Shabbat service Defamation League sponsored the organization under with one thousand others; I have witnessed the in- a new name, the Jewish Foundation for Christian creased competition to enroll children in Jewish day Rescuers. The purpose of the new foundation was to schools, even as those schools are proliferating. Ju- obviate the misconception held by Novick and others daism is thriving on its own -- on its values and its that Jews recognize the rescuers only to show that inherent strengths -- and does not depend on the most were unrighteous Christians. Holocaust for its survival. Novick's glib style in discussing lessons of At times, The Holocaust in American Life is the Holocaust is a response to the misuse of the Holo- uneven in its thoroughness in researching a specific caust, but he ignores the genuine dilemma of educa- issue. Sometimes a "sound bite" is used to highlight tors, and particularly Jewish educators. The salient a specific point, while the complexity of the larger question: How do we teach about this historical pe- matter is ignored or given short shrift. For example, riod while simultaneously educating youngsters to in his treatment of the "Righteous Among the Na- embrace their Jewishness in positive and meaningful tions of the World," Novick is insensitive and unin- ways, without fear? formed. He concludes that the "institutional use of Combining facts with impressions has its the commemoration of Righteous Gentiles as 'the pitfalls. The Holocaust in American Life is engaging exception that proves the rule' has usually been in the with its behind-the-scenes information of how the service of shoring up that mentality -- promoting a Holocaust as a Jewish tragedy shifted from invisibil- wary suspicion of gentiles." Clearly, Novick has not ity to center stage concern in American Jewish life as read the writings of Rabbi Harold Schulweis, who set well as in American public discourse. However, the agenda of commemoration of rescuers on the when Novick has to resort to his own notions he is American scene, nor has he reviewed the archives of cynical and pessimistic, and at times ahistorical. the ADL's Jewish Foundation for Christian Rescuers, nor has he read my book Conscience and Courage. At the end of the 20th century, nine out of ten American Jews celebrate a Passover seder, a form of Novick is accurate when he says that Holo- commemoration, if you will, of the Jewish people's caust survivors (such as Benjamin Meed) are suspi- slavery and liberation from Egypt. The groundwork cious of Christians. As a late adolescent in Warsaw is now being set religiously, politically, culturally, during the German occupation, Meed did not have an and nationally for some form of Holocaust com- easy time finding a hiding place among his Christian memoration for future generations. We in the post- so-called friends. Meed, however, is not the one in Holocaust era are all part of the process in the way the Jewish community who sets the communal the generation of Jews that followed the destruction agenda of repaying the debt owed by Jews to those of the First and Second Temples and the Golden Age non-Jews who risked their lives. In 1953, when in Spain were responsible for shaping the memoriali- Prime Minister Ben-Gurion established Israel's Com- zation of those events. If the present is any indication mission of Martyrs and Heroes Remembrance Law, of the future then the memory of the destruction of the law included as well the recognition of those wor- European Jewry will be part of Jewish and world his- thy of the title "Righteous Among the Nations of the tory for posterity. World." The purpose of recognition of rescuers was to make visible the anonymous and visible the hidden Eva Fogelman, PhD, is a social to fulfill the Biblical injunction "to vindicate the psychologist and psychotherapist in private righteous by rewarding them for their righteous- practice in New York City. She is a Senior ness" (Kings 8:32). Research Fellow at the Center for Social Research, Graduate Center of CUNY. Dr. Fogelman is Co- Page 100 Clio’s Psyche December, 1999
Director of Child Development Research and assimilated Jew who is not involved in Jewish Psychotherapy with Generations of the Holocaust communal or religious life." For starters, where and Related Traumas of the Training Institute for does she get this "assimilated" stuff, and what is it Mental Health. She serves as an advisor to the supposed to mean? And in any case, Dr. Fogelman United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Her misstates my conclusion on the question of iden- best know publication is Conscience and Courage: tity. I wrote, summarizing the long chapter in Rescuers of Jews During the Holocaust (1994). which the matter is discussed, that "so far as self- understanding is concerned, there's no way of knowing just how many American Jews, and Response to Eva Fogelman which American Jews, ground their Jewish identity Peter Novick in the Holocaust, but the number appears to be University of Chicago large." I immediately added, "It's clear that the Holocaust has less relative importance for those Some (not all) of Dr. Fogelman's criticisms Jews with an identity firmly rooted in Jewish reli- of my The Holocaust in American Life seem to be gious belief or who are otherwise grounded in Jew- based on misunderstandings of what I wrote. She ish culture, but that's a rather small percentage of says that my book is based on the assumption that American Jewry." (Does Dr. Fogelman disagree?) "Holocaust awareness is ubiquitous" -- an assump- Then, after briefly reviewing the myriad factors I'd tion which she then proceeds to question, basing previously discussed in the chapter -- factors her argument largely on various public opinion which, in my view, led to the centering of the surveys. I am less impressed than she is with how Holocaust in American Jewish consciousness -- I much one can infer from what I term in the book wrote the following: this "blunt and flawed instrument," and I reiterated For those who prefer "harder" data, and this caveat on the occasions when I cited them. In for what it's worth, there are the results of any case, on a number of occasions I distinguished the American Jewish Committee's "1998 between the frequency of references to the Holo- Annual Survey of American Jewish caust -- increasing diffuse awareness of the Holo- Opinion." Those responding were asked to caust -- and any substantial knowledge about the rate the importance of various listed Holocaust. Indeed, so far as gentile Americans are activities to their Jewish identity. The year concerned, I argue that concern with the Holocaust 1998 was the first in which "remembrance of is "a mile wide and an inch deep." So, I don't see the Holocaust" was included in the list. It that we have any quarrel on this point, and I don't won hands down -- chosen as "extremely understand why she's trying to create one. important" or "very important" by many There are issues on which Dr. Fogelman more than those who chose synagogue offers social (or are they psychological?) explana- attendance, Jewish study, working with tions of what she sees as the deficiencies in my Jewish organizations, traveling to Israel, or book. She finds inadequate my treatment of observing Jewish holidays. American Jewish religious responses to the Holo- Dr. Fogelman goes on to say that my treat- caust. This, she says, is because I am "a secular ment of "Righteous Gentiles" is "insensitive and Jew ... an 'outsider'…." Others will have to judge uninformed." To demonstrate this, she quotes very whether the several pages I devote to religious selectively from my book. She cites my conclu- matters are inadequate, but if they are, is the expla- sion about the institutional use of the commemora- nation so simple? Are Dr. Fogelman's writings on tion of Righteous Gentiles while omitting the con- Polish Catholic rescuers devalued because she is text of that conclusion. Let me demonstrate this by not a Polish Catholic? This kind of offhand reduc- quoting the relevant passage from my book. tionism seems to me deplorable -- the sort of thing that gives psychology (and psychohistory) a bad Some individuals who pressed for name. recognition of Christian rescuers wanted to combat blanket condemnation of gentiles; in In a similarly reductionist fashion she ex- the words of one such individual, to break plains why it is "not surprising" that I conclude that down the "fortress-like mentality" of "most American Jews are dependent on the Holo- American Jews. But the institutional use of caust for their identity." My conclusion, she says, the commemoration of Righteous Gentiles as derives from the fact that "Novick himself is an "the exceptions that prove the rule" has December, 1999 Clio’s Psyche Page 101
usually been in the service of shoring up that of ourselves. Were I writing The Holocaust in mentality -- promoting a wary suspicion of American Life, it would have included a larger sec- gentiles. tion on religious institutions and their role in Holo- (I then proceed to illustrate this wary suspi- caust commemoration. cion by noting the frequency with which American With respect to Novick's question about Jews observe that they repeatedly ask themselves how many Jews derive their identity from religion, which of their gentile acquaintances would hide culture, and nationalism that are not based on the their children, "if it came to that.") Holocaust, there are no serious hard data. Again, As proof that "institutional" commemora- from my vantage point, the percentage is larger tion of rescuers does not serve the function I said it than that which Novick cites. Novick's book raised did, Dr. Fogelman cites the Anti-Defamation an important question for demographers who are League's support of her "Jewish Foundation for putting together the 2000 The National Jewish Christian Rescuers" and her own writings (which Population Survey. she mistakenly assumes I do not know). But, in As for the "institutional" commemoration fact, the example she gives supports my conten- of the rescuers, I am certain that Peter Novick is tion. Dr. Fogelman is, as it happens, one of those aware of my book, Conscience and Courage: Res- individuals I had in mind. In discussing her book, cuers of Jews During the Holocaust. Novick's use Abraham Foxman, head of the ADL, which pro- of Abraham Foxman's letter to The New York moted it, illustrates my point about institutional Times in response to a review of my book is out of use, by publicly insisting that "what is important context, and is inconsistent with the spirit in which about the book is that the reader comes away un- the Anti-Defamation League chose to house and derstanding that rescue of Jews was a rare phe- administer the Jewish Foundation for Christian nomenon. [The fact is] that 700 million people Rescuers. Furthermore, Novick diminishes the lived in Nazi-occupied Europe; to date 11,000 have passion with which the rescuers are honored at Yad been honored by Yad Vashem for rescuing Vashem by thinking that when the instrumentali- Jews." (I also cite the director of Yad Vashem's ties [spokespeople] of the organized Jewish com- Department of the Righteous, who explained that munity say that there were few rescuers, the insti- "spicing" the history of the Holocaust with stories tutions are not giving the rescuers their due. No- of rescuers was indispensable in showing the delin- vick's analysis of the rescuer in the landscape of quency of European Christians "against the back- Holocaust commemoration is incomplete and ground of the righteous.") unidimensional. Readers of this exchange will understand my difficulty in framing a satisfactory response to various adjectives Dr. Fogelman applies to me -- From Denial to Remembrance "glib," "cynical," "ahistorical." To decide whether Ellen Mendel these terms are accurate, as in reaching judgments Adler Institute of New York on the issues which I have briefly addressed above, they'll have to read the book and compare it with Why is the Holocaust the topic of so much Dr. Fogelman's characterizations. discussion today, over 50 years later? From a psy- chological perspective it makes perfect sense that the Holocaust wasn't discussed after World War II Comments on Peter Novick’s and now occupies a central role in Jewish history. “Response” Many Jews who came out of the camps were em- Eva Fogelman barrassed and ashamed. After having survived the Graduate Center of CUNY "unmentionable," to discuss it would have focused on their role, bringing with it too much pain and I thank Peter Novick for his penetrating that which would later be termed "survivor's guilt." comments, which help illumine some points in my The losses were too great and the experiences too review of his book. horrifying. Researchers are not immune to subjectiv- Moreover, it seemed that people in Amer- ity. The questions we choose to study and what we ica didn't want to hear about it. America was the focus on to analyze are often related to some core victor. After all the losses and sacrifices of the war, people didn't want to be reminded of its vic- Page 102 Clio’s Psyche December, 1999 tims and casualties. They wanted to enjoy the new Time lent distance, which made it easier for some peace and prosperity. And the survivors wanted to of the survivors to write. It began to become con- Americanize themselves and join the mainstream tagious as survivors would realize that staying si- as quickly as possible. lent might create as much pain in the long run as So the survivors kept their nightmares re- speaking about it. Moreover, as the Holocaust pressed during daylight and sometimes at night as deniers appeared and even colleges and universi- well, often not even discussing them with their ties held debates about the Holocaust's truth, it be- families and children. Their experiences as the came incumbent upon the survivors who had borne victims of Hitler's genocidal assault, on some level, witness and were aging to testify to the horrors seemed so unreal as to cast doubts on their verity. they had seen and had been victims of. This im- Often it was hard for the survivors themselves to perative began in many cases to take precedence believe what they had withstood. In spite of the over remaining silent. Suddenly it became safe to newsreel pictures of the liberation of the camps, speak. And speak they did: in books, to young which showed the indescribable, shocking every- people, and to their own families, often visiting one who viewed them, there was a general atmos- with them the places of horror they had walled off phere of denial. in their memories. As more survivors and their children opened up, others joined their ranks. Another reason for the collusion of silence is that our national policy had changed. Almost Suddenly their stories were picked up and overnight at the end of the war, the United States shown by the media, and they felt a greater support switched enemies from Germany to the Soviet Un- from the outside world. While most of the Holo- ion. After the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials, we caust films had been made in Europe, after Spiel- started reaching out to the Germans to help us fight berg's Schindler's List, the American, non-Jewish Communism. We sheltered Nazis in our country public became interested and more aware as well. and sometimes encouraged their escape to South The more that was written, shown, and spoken America as well. It seemed "unfashionable," cer- about, the less of a taboo the subject became, until tainly "not nice," to continue to discuss the atroci- people who would not have thought of revealing ties. The general American public didn't want to their experiences at an earlier date did so, often know and the survivors didn't want to talk. with the encouragement of children and grandchil- dren. Spielberg's interviews of survivors further By the late 1960s and through the 1970s, encouraged the preserving and telling of stories. though, some survivors such as Eli Wiesel and a To this must be added the opening of the Holocaust few others in Holocaust anthologies did have the Museum in Washington, DC, and the subsequent courage to describe their experiences, feeling the opening of other museums of the Holocaust which necessity of bearing witness. In 1975, Lucy created the opportunity for dissemination of infor- Dawidowicz's well-researched book, The War mation to many groups, further validating the sur- Against the Jews 1933-1945 came out, document- vivors' experiences. ing what had happened all over Europe. All these books paved the way for Helen Epstein's Children Finally, with the breaking up of the Soviet of the Holocaust (1979) in which the author inter- Union, much documentation came to the fore: pic- viewed second generation survivors, thereby tures heretofore not seen, information not known. breaking through the wall of silence. While sev- With this came the press' news articles relating to eral "children" spoke about their reluctance to the complicity of countries previously believed to question their parents about their camp and war be neutral. What now was coming out was the experiences, others wanted to know and started enormity of crimes against the survivors not only discussing this period in their parents' lives. There during the war but after the war as well. In addi- seemed to be a need to understand in order to deal tion to murder, there was robbery and deliberate with their own guilt and identity issues. withholding of information and monies of all kinds by every country in the Western Hemisphere. This coincided with a general American Every day there were new articles implicating exploration of family backgrounds; possibly start- other countries, and politicians began taking a ing with the television series, Roots. All at once it stand as well. The latest information involves the began to be fashionable to explore one's heritage. many companies that used Jews for slave labor Gradually, more survivors wrote about their ex- geared to use up the "slaves" after a few days of periences, and their children tried to come to terms labor. These include the biggest companies in Ger- with theirs, as well, through art, film and writing. December, 1999 Clio’s Psyche Page 103 many today as well as subsidiaries of theirs in the like so many candle flames U.S., e.g., Deutsche Bank, BMW, and Ford. Be- Extinguished! cause of the boundlessness of the atrocities, the Their light shining final word about this has not yet been written. For only in the eyes and tears all the above-mentioned reasons, I believe that the Of those who remember, centrality of the Holocaust in the minds of Jews in Remember their courage. 1999 is valid and necessary as well. I don't think Remember their courage! that it is being abused or exploited by them. In- Ellen Mendel was born in Germany during stead I believe from a psychological point of view the Hitler era and barely escaped, coming to the that the passage of time is crucial for the telling of U.S. in 1940. She is a psychoanalytic therapist in the "tale." private practice, and a Staff Member, a Training Finally, what sets the Holocaust apart from Analyst, and on the Board at the Adler Institute of other blood baths is that generally in situations of New York. She may be contacted at genocide the warring countries have an on-going,
Jewish GI of Lions, was no longer able to serve as the fevered imagination of Richard Nixon. Even a mythic figure – a survivor himself, of a horren- today, Nixon apologists point to the President who dous, near-fatal automobile wreck that destroyed admired the Israelis and stood by them stalwartly his face and left him in pain and drug-dependent. during and after the Yom Kippur War. Nixon an- Neither he nor his role in the film was credible tagonists point to the evidence still pouring out of enough for the task of redefining gentile attitudes the Nixon tapes, of an anti-Semitic President, la- toward Jews. boring under the fear of a vast Jewish conspiracy Of course, most gentile moviegoers were devoted to bringing him down.) unaware of what virtually every Jew in America Not incidentally, the structure of Exodus knew and celebrated: the fact that Kirk Douglas in also allowed gentile Americans to blot out the hor- the title role of The Juggler and Jeff Chandler were rific truth of the Holocaust and to blot out any lin- Jews, while Paul Newman was “a half-Jew.” gering sense of guilt they might have felt if they Douglas was already one of the two most popular had been confronted with “the memory of the Holocaust male stars of the 1950s (along with Burt Lancas- itself, the murder of six million Jews, in all its raw, ter). He had an established macho image that senseless, fiendish horror” (Philip Roth, cited in would seem to have been perfect for “the fighting Golden Cities, p. 250). Jew.” But Douglas’ refugee was a most unsympa- The Diary of Anne Frank and Judgment at thetic character, establishing the movie stereotype Nuremberg were no less designed to protect the of the Holocaust survivor that survives, in film, to sensibilities of the audience from having to fully this day: broken and bitter, often abusive – unfeel- confront the murder of six million Jews. Neither ing men, incapable of giving or receiving love or film was intended to help the average filmgoer affection. Douglas’ psychopathic survivor come to grips with the enormity and the complex- (contrasted, in the movie, with Israeli sabras sound ity and the massive machinery of the German-led of mind and body) is godfather to Sol Nazerman of attempt to make Europe Judenrein [purified of The Pawnbroker (1965), Peter Helfgott of Shine Jews]. One could not grasp, from either movie, (1996), and Isaac Geldhart of The Substance of that the extermination of the Jews had the highest Fire (1996). In The Juggler, as in all the films to priority among the German leadership, higher even follow except The Pawnbroker, the Holocaust it- than the successful prosecution of the war. self was kept offscreen. (During the final days, in 1945, precious resources, With Newman’s charisma, an array of desperately needed by the German armies, contin- credible heroes and villains, and a rich story line of ued to be committed to the transport of Jews to the a type familiar to American filmgoers, Exodus suc- death camps and to the goal of completing the Fi- ceeded enormously at the box office, creating a nal Solution.) Both movies were concerned with positive group fantasy that not only filled Ameri- universalizing the Holocaust at the expense of the can Jews with pride, but which also satisfied gen- particular (the unique fate of European Jews). tile Americans. It provided a history of, and a ra- These films helped to create the most successful tionale for, the creation of the State of Israel that Holocaust myth of the 1950s. In this myth, the was congenial to America’s own historic myths – Holocaust became the symbol of all the German “the plucky little Jewish state fighting for its free- crimes against humanity, allowing us to shed a dis- dom” (Golden Cities, p. 257). Many, if not most, creet tear for a handful of pitiful victims with gentiles still held anti-Semitic attitudes that had whom we could identify, while taking comfort in become politically incorrect in the aftermath of the the hopeful message that good will triumph over Nazi obsession with destroying the Jewish people. evil in the end. Exodus allowed them to identify with a new kind Judgment at Nuremberg focused on the of Jew, the heroic Israeli half-a-world away, with- trial of a group of German jurists as a way of out giving up their inner prejudices about the Jews dramatizing the Nuremberg War Crimes Trials. in their midst. And this at a time when these preju- The drama turns upon the appearance on a handful dices fueled, and were fueled by, the relentless fo- of pathetic victims of the Nuremberg Laws – the cus on Jewish Communists (real and alleged) in the most compelling being those portrayed by Judy movie industry, on college campuses, and in the Garland and Montgomery Clift. Garland played a State Department. (The bifurcated gentile image German woman who had been accused of having of the Jew – the heroic Israeli versus the problem- sex with an elderly Jewish friend. Clift appeared atic American Jew found its perfect embodiment in as a retarded man who had been forcibly sterilized Page 108 Clio’s Psyche December, 1999
(Clift’s battered physiognomy was most appropri- logue that passed between them, who they were ate to this role). Both cases had been tried before and how they acted contributed to the creation of Germany’s chief judge, played by Burt Lancaster. the myth that the Cold Warriors wanted to project: Maximilian Schell was fierce, electrifying, as the the Germans were fundamentally decent people German defense attorney. who had been misled by Hitler and his fellow The presiding judge, an American played gangsters, they had paid their debt for their mis- by Spencer Tracy, is pressured by U.S. officials to takes, and they were now a suitable Cold War ally go easy on the accused jurists, who were the kind against the Soviet Union (apparently a greater of Germans that would be needed in rebuilding threat to American interests than Hitler, and Hit- West Germany to be a bulwark against further So- ler’s beliefs, had been). (To my mind, Paul Lukas viet expansion in Europe. Tracy stubbornly rejects (himself a refugee from Hitler’s Germany) and this notion and – upholding “justice, truth, and the Claude Rains were far more effective in the earlier value of a single human being” – sentences the TV version. They conveyed the unbridgeable gulf judges to life imprisonment. Schell sneeringly pre- that existed between the two jurists – the German dicts that “they will be free in five years,” which in who still did not apprehend the awful nature of his fact was the case with the great majority of those guilt and the American who understood it all too Nazi officials sentenced at Nuremberg. well.) (CineBooks' Motion Picture Guide Review, cited in The Diary of Anne Frank would surely Microsoft Cinemania ’95, CD-ROM.) The Cine- seem to have been the vehicle with which to con- Books’ review also notes that the film “was sensa- front the Holocaust in a meaningful way. Instead, tional in its day” and was “an astounding success” it became the ultimate vehicle of avoidance and at the box office. denial. Millions upon millions of people have read What was faithfully reproduced rather the book and/or seen the play or movie – many, statically on the large theater screen was a drama many times more than have read the works of Elie about the abandonment of the rule of law and in no Wiesel, Primo Levi, Aharon Apfelfeld, or Andre way about the vast murder machinery that had op- Schwartz-Bart, or have seen Night and Fog, The erated far from, and without the need of, court- Shop on Main Street, The Pawnbroker, The Sorrow rooms. Yes, it succeeded powerfully as the first and the Pity, Shoah or The Last Days. No Holly- attempt to dramatize the Nuremberg War Crimes wood production has been made of Wiesel’s Night Trials, and the role of German judges in perverting or Schwartz-Bart’s The Last of the Just, two of the the rule of law by enforcing the racist, repressive earliest and still most memorable novels. These rules of Hitler’s Reich. But by focusing exclu- books were designed to take us to the heart of the sively on the deeds of these German judges, the Holocaust in the way that Anne Frank’s diary – movie fails as a means for helping Americans un- even in its original form – could not, and that the derstand the particularistic nature of Holocaust. distorted play and the movie made from it deliber- How would one know, from this movie, what Lucy ately would not. Anne Roiphe has observed: Dawidowicz dedicated her professional life to Those of the Holocaust books that are making clear: that for the first time in its history, “a true literature, Wiesel, Levi, Apfelfeld, have state and a political movement had dedicated itself found their art in negation. They tell us what to the destruction of a whole people.” And that the Anne Frank could not: the truth…. [T]hey near-total destruction of Jewish civilization in are always accusations, indictments of the Europe was something that happened, and hap- human condition. Do Christians read those pened by design, to the Jewish people alone and to books? Some do, of course, but the majority no other people that fell under the shadow of the do not. They do read Anne Frank and are Nazi horror (Lucy Dawidowicz, “Thinking About reassured, at bottom, after everything, people the Six Million,” in The Holocaust and the Histori- are basically good (Anne Roiphe, A Season ans, 1981, p. 14). for Healing: Reflections on the Holocaust, Contributing to the ultimate mythic view 1988, p. 52). that obscured the Holocaust was the casting of The movie – starring Millie Perkins, a Lancaster as the German and Tracy as the Ameri- young American model with a faint southern ac- can. These two actors, in their own personas as cent and a lightweight personality – offered Ameri- well as in the roles they were playing, projected a cans (and the world) a heroine they could identify fundamental sense of decency. Whatever the dia- with: Anne Frank as “Junior Miss,” a flighty, December, 1999 Clio’s Psyche Page 109 perky, mischievous American teenager, the girl What we know now, thanks to the work of next door. Jewish? God forbid. In this version Cynthia Ozick, Ralph Melnick, and others, is that (and there was an alternative, Meyer Levin’s origi- de-Judaizing and universalizing Anne Frank was nal script, strongly emphasizing the Jewishness of precisely the purpose of Frances Goodrich and Al- Anne Frank, her family, and the others in the hide- bert Hackett, the husband and wife playwrights, out), the onstage villains are not the Nazis, but Mr. who worked under the tutelage of Lillian Hellman, and Mrs. Van Daan and the dentist, Mr. Dussel. Garson Kanin, and Kermit Bloomgarden. They The Van Daans are scripted very broadly and were Broadway pros, all of them, and the last three played even more broadly (by the Jewish actors, of them, at least, Jewish. Their agenda included Lou Jacobi and Shelley Winters) as caricatures em- such things as expunging of Margot Frank’s Zion- bodying anti-Semitic stereotypes endemic to West- ism, and the de-Judaizing of the Chanukah celebra- ern society: Jews are shrill, pushy, materialistic, tion held in attic hideaway. Even more impor- insensitive, etc. tantly, the creative team changed the nature of To the extent that the Nazi menace was Anne’s perceptions of her predicament and of the acknowledged – by means of the blaring bleat of awful event in which she and her family were the automobile horns and the stomping of jack- caught up. Ozick, for examples, cites the boots on the stairs – it was in an image that we had “Nazified notion of race” in the lines that have grown familiar with in post-war movies. Indeed, been attributed to Lillian Hellman, which had these were symbols of the menace most often di- Anne say, “We’re not the only people that’s had to rected against French and Scandinavian and Polish suffer. There’ve always been people that have had civilians (generally, resisters of the German occu- to … sometimes one race … sometimes another.” pation). In other words, the vague threat of Nazi These lines – “pallid speech, yawning with vague- arrest was one that the de-Judaized Frank family ness” – replaced Anne’s own musings: shared with other Europeans. Moreover, the Nazis In the eyes of the world, we’re doomed, were an aberration because, after all, “people are but if [after] this suffering, there are still really good at heart.” No hint here that the Nazi Jews left, the Jewish people will be held up obsession with obliterating the Jews was directly as an example…. God has never deserted aided and abetted not only by tens if not hundreds our people. Through the ages Jews have had of thousands of “ordinary Germans” but by untold to suffer, but through the ages they’ve gone numbers of non-German Europeans – all feeding on living, and the centuries of suffering have upon the same Jew-hatred that drove Hitler and his only made them stronger. followers. Kanin apparently had found this kind of Totally missing in the film, of course, is rumination to be “an embarrassing piece of special what happened after the pounding on the door. We pleading…. The fact that in this play the symbols are presented, indeed, with an unexceptional ac- of persecution and oppression are Jews is inciden- count of a young girl’s coming of age – with all the tal, and Anne, in stating the argument so, reduces familiar teenage angst (Father Knows Best relo- her magnificent stature.” Ozick adds, “The pas- cated to an Amsterdam attic). We are spared the sionately contemplative child, brooding on con- details of the horrible fate that Anne Frank shared crete evil, was made into an emblem of eva- with a million Jewish children. No account here of sion” (Cynthia Ozick, “Who Owns Anne Frank?” the last days of Anne and Margot Frank and their in The New Yorker, October 6, 1997, p. 85). mother in Bergen-Belsen – starving, ill with ty- Thus, in the Hacketts’ version, a “de- phus, terrorized, and de-humanized. The movie’s Semitizing of the most anti-Semitic episode in his- idealized image of Anne Frank stands between “the tory" (Bernard Hammelburg, “A Fresh Look at horrifying historical event and the desire of the … ‘Anne Frank’: In Search of the Historical One,” public to be given only the most convenient and The New York Times, November 30, 1997, Arts comforting version of it,” as Omer Bartov writes in Section, p. 1), the story of Anne Frank and her di- another context (review of Anne Frank Remem- ary was mythologized as a universal human com- bered, American Historical Review, October, 1996, edy, a universal tragedy of man’s inhumanity to p. 1155). This, in fact, the role that her published man, and a universal paean of hope for redemption diary itself, as well as the denatured play and film through the ultimate good deep in mankind’s made from it, serves in Western historical memory hearts. Only a vague image of the Holocaust itself (group fantasy, we might say). could be discernible through the tears of laughter Page 110 Clio’s Psyche December, 1999 and sorrow. But what has thus been made so cover a new, warm humanity, he discovers sharper vague can easily be distorted, dismissed and, ulti- suffering – just what his armor had protected him mately, denied. All three were to be the fate of the from.” Holocaust in the minds of Americans over the next There are drawbacks to such a film, consid- two decades, thanks in no small part to the handi- ered as an alternative narrative to the dominant work of Broadway and Hollywood’s smoothest, vague and universal myth/fantasy of the Holocaust and most fearful, professionals. thus far generated by Hollywood. First, as already All of us have probably had the experience noted above, it is difficult for American audiences of re-visiting particular films that we had loved to identify with, and perhaps even care deeply once, when much younger, and being awfully dis- about, a protagonist as unsympathetic as Sol Naz- appointed. Upon reflection, we might feel that we erman. He was no match for an upbeat Millie Per- have become more mature, more sophisticated in kins version of Anne Frank. Second, the microcos- our tastes – that we have simply outgrown most of mic focus upon the fate of Nazerman, his wife, and the movies we loved in our youth. True as that his two children in fact also shields the audience may be, it is even more probable that we have out- from the full extent and nature of the Holocaust. grown – or, more accurately, no longer have a need American filmgoers, well acquainted with motion for – the myths that once were so much a part of picture images of dismal prisons staffed by sadistic our world-view, our group fantasies of the era. guards, might well assume that the Jews The assumptions and posturings of Bataan, with (personified by Sol Nazerman) were subjected to now seem more likely to provoke laughter than nothing more than an especially vicious and brutal cheers and tears. Yet there are others – even cli- form of such imprisonment. There is no hint, even ché-ridden films – whose myths continue to hold in this dark study of a film, of the industrialized us fast: e.g., Casablanca. Many of us may have murder of millions of de-humanized, starved, dis- been thrilled by Exodus and moved by The Diary eased, and tormented men, women, and children. of Anne Frank when we first saw them. In truth, I Even in a powerful film like this one, we are al- loved them both at the time. In my 20s, child of a lowed to tiptoe around the edges of the Holocaust very assimilated household, painfully aware of the instead of plunging into the heart of darkness. system of quotas still solidly in place in the univer- By the end of the 1960s, Holocaust studies, sities and the workplace, I was buoyed by the idea novels and documentaries had reached such a that two such “Jewish movies” could do such great floodtide that – though the immediate audiences box office. It betokened to me a new era for Jews were confined to intellectual circles and to those in America. And in their own way, they surely Jews and non-Jews most dedicated to knowing – contributed to precisely that, if at an expense of the key images and terminology had become the comprehending the nature and the extent of the currency of the larger society. The Holocaust itself Holocaust. Re-visit these films today and they are generally obtained a paragraph or two in the his- virtually unviewable. Not so another film of the tory books, an aside within the triumphal narrative 1960s, as shattering today as it was then: The of the Second World War. "Holocaust," Pawnbroker. "genocide," "the Six Million," "gas chambers," The first American film to take the audi- “Auschwitz” -- all of these became part of the ver- ence inside a concentration camp (through a devas- nacular, and part also of the mythology of the mid- tating series of flashbacks), The Pawnbroker was a 20th century. gritty, powerful film in its own right – based upon The facts of history are the skeletons upon the stunning, brooding novel by Edgar Lewis Wal- which we hang our myths. But to mythify histori- lant. Directed by Sidney Lumet, it offers a tremen- cal facts is not the same as to falsify them, al- dously intense performance by Rod Steiger as Sol though some myths do. Nor is it the same as trivi- Nazerman, “a benumbed Jewish survivor of the alizing them, although some myths do that, too. concentration camps who lives in Harlem, running Myths can and do exist that neither falsify, deny, a pawnshop – fat, sagging, past pain, past car- trivialize, or sentimentalize. At their best, myths ing.” (Pauline Kael, cited in Cinemania ’95.) This tell the truth in ways that help us to comprehend it, grim, wrenching, unrelenting film gives no quarter to form a consensus point of view, and to create a in its portrait of the human devastation wrought by usable past. the Holocaust. In Kael’s words, even when events strip away Nazerman’s defenses, “he doesn’t dis- Competing myths exist about that enor- mous assemblage of facts from mid-century that December, 1999 Clio’s Psyche Page 111 we call the Holocaust. Just the naming of it is the an obfuscation. The film possessed first-rate act- beginning of myth and in fact provides a mythic ing in addition to Streep: Kevin Kline as Nathan, template that can be, and has been, applied to so Sophie’s Jewish-American and abusive lover, and many other not very similar situations. The name Peter MacNicol as Stingo (read Styron), the sensi- and the myth imply a moral judgment that one as- tive Southerner they befriend. And it possessed sumes holds for most people. It is to find shelter first-rate production values; Nestor Almendros was under that consensus moral judgment that prompts the cinematographer. But it was meretricious at its users and misusers to co-opt the name, and to cre- heart. ate from it their own myths. As Lucy Dawidowicz Sophie’s Choice is a film all tarted up as recognized, to make Auschwitz, that unimaginable the ultimate, most sensitive, most powerful state- death factory, “a metaphor and a paradigm for ment to date on the Holocaust – all dressed up as a evil” raises the profound danger of obfuscating that profoundly moving human tragedy. Seen in the which was uniquely Jewish about the awfulness of soft barroom light of sentimentality, a viewer the Holocaust “under a universal or ecumenical (especially a non-Jewish viewer) might react as classification of human suffering.” And if one thus Roger Ebert did when he heralded Sophie’s Choice blurs the distinctiveness of the Jewish fate, then as “a fine, absorbing, wonderfully acted, heart- one “can disclaim the presence of anti-Semitism, breaking movie. It is about three people who are whether it smolders in the dark recesses of one’s faced with a series of choices, some frivolous, own mind or whether it operates in the pitiless some tragic. As they flounder in the bewilderment light of history.” Only forcing ourselves to focus of being human in an age of madness, they become “on the horror that happened can help avoid it for our friends, and we love them” (cited in Cinemania the future,” she concludes (“The Six Million,” p. ’95). Hey, he’s not wrong. Sophie’s Choice was 15). all that. And, by the way, isn’t his summation the Americans and Europeans most opposed to very soul of an universalist response to this film? the Vietnam War could describe U.S. bombing of (Ebert identifies Nathan as “an eccentric charmer” North Vietnam as a "holocaust." A holocaust also and “a crazy romantic.”) was the ongoing slaughter of whales in the Pacific. But guess what. If we draw close enough Yet even more pernicious than such obfuscation – to this beautifully made movie to see beneath the made all too feasible by Hollywood’s evasive, uni- greasepaint, we just might see what Anne Roiphe versalized myths – was the phenomenon of Holo- sees when reading the novel: “the heroine is Polish caust denial, a destructive counter-myth whose [Catholic], the mad villain is Jewish, the hero is a rapid acceptance on American college campuses southern gentile who is the sanest and most hu- was alarming. Even more alarming, a respected mane of all.” By making Sophie both the victim of intellectual like Noam Chomsky could lend his the Nazis with whom we are asked to identify and authority to a book that argued that gas chambers the victim also of a crazed, often vicious Jew who were a myth propagated by the Jews. Television throws her down the stairs of their tenement, Sty- and radio programs invited Holocaust deniers to ron has blurred “the essential Jewish nature of the participate in talk shows so that “both sides of the Holocaust.” Roiphe believes that Styron, a white story can be told.” And a President of the United Christian Southerner, is not comfortable about the States, Ronald Reagan, thought it appropriate to behavior of “his own kind” toward the Jews. “If he pay homage to the graves of the German military shifts the victim to the universal human being, he in World War II, including members of the SS. Of finds a category in which he belongs.” Moreover, course, Reagan himself had been a satisfied cog in she writes, Styron thus provides a much more con- the Hollywood dream machine of the founding genial product for his readers (or movie audiences) generation moguls, a loyal company man. “who also want to feel identified with the victims In the mid-1970s came William Styron’s of the tragedy, (but) are wearied by Jewish accusa- book, Sophie’s Choice – a best-seller, followed in tions” (Season, p. 44). 1982 by the movie written and directed by Alan J. Interestingly enough, the film does do Pakula, a box office success that won an Oscar for something in the service of truth that the book can- Meryl Streep as Sophie. Sophie’s Choice was the not. Through the artistry of Pakula and Almen- Hollywood statement on the Holocaust between dros, it does underscore the essentially Jewish par- The Diary of Anne Frank and Schindler’s List ticularity of the Holocaust. The pivotal scene near (1993). It was in fact both an acknowledgment and the end of Sophie’s Choice, an extended flashback Page 112 Clio’s Psyche December, 1999 in which Sophie’s awful secret is revealed, is What accounts for the sea change in the filmed in a haunting, nightmarish black and white dominant group fantasies that made possible these setting, with subtitles for the German dialogue that things, unimaginable at the time Sophie’s Choice will take place. It is the Mengelean selection proc- was released? I would submit that the process be- ess at the railroad siding entry to Auschwitz. As gan with NBC television’s Holocaust: The Story of we pan down the two doomed lines slowly shuf- the Family Weiss, a nine-and-a-half hour miniser- fling forward, it becomes clear that all of the hun- ies, broadcast over four nights before Passover, dreds and hundreds of men, women, and children, 1978. Holocaust was the brainchild of writer Ge- except for Sophie and her children, are wearing the rald Green, who was appalled by the rise of Holo- yellow star. Subliminally at least, Almendros’ caust denial and conceived of the series as a poten- cameras tell us what Auschwitz was really about. tial weapon against the deniers. But another, more subversive, message A year earlier, ABC (and the entire broad- also comes through. As we experience the agoniz- cast industry) had been astounded by the huge suc- ing dialogue between Sophie and her tormentor, cess of Roots, a nine-part miniseries. ABC had the German officer, one cannot escape the feeling expected so little of this miniseries about slavery in that the tragedy here lies in the fact that she, a the United States that it scheduled the nine epi- Catholic, has been caught in a trap set for the Jews. sodes on consecutive nights in January, 1977, to It is as if the movie was telling us that the same get them out of the way before the February ratings scene would be far less tragic if instead of being a sweeps. The final chapter received the highest rat- victim of the officer’s sadism, Sophie had been ing for any entertainment program to that date. merely an eyewitness to his torture of one of the After the success of Roots, the networks searched nameless, faceless Jewish mothers in the line. desperately about for other ideas for a miniseries. Sophie’s Choice was a dark fantasy that And there was Gerald Green, script in hand. Holo- combined acknowledgment and obfuscation, a fan- caust, too, was an enormous success, its ratings as tasy that permitted the audience to think of the a series exceeded only by Roots. (Holocaust later Holocaust as a brutal death machine that swept up received the highest ratings in the history of West Jew and Christian alike. And it permitted the audi- German television, where it has been credited with ence to think of the Holocaust as an aberration, the finally bringing the subject into public debate, par- work of a particularly sadistic gang of German ticularly among the younger generation.) Nazi gangsters who listened to Beethoven in the Holocaust, like Roots which preceded it, evenings at camp, at home with their families. It was derided by some critics at the time as a car- was a dark fantasy well suited to fleshing out the toon, a long soap opera that trivialized its subject. universalist imagery established by Judgment at The truth is that – however oversimplified the sto- Nuremberg and The Diary of Anne Frank. A dark ries, however overly good the good guys may have fantasy that in no way – by itself – could head off been – Roots and Holocaust had the facts, all of the opposing fantasy of denial propagated by them, and presented them clearly and unequivo- America’s homegrown Jew-haters. cally. After Roots, it was no longer possible for Yet, in the almost two decades since most Americans to think about slavery in quite the Sophie’s Choice was released, we have seen the same way. They could no longer entertain a group creation of the U.S. Holocaust Museum, the relega- fantasy of a benign slave system that was peopled tion of Holocaust deniers to tiny fringe groups, and by happy, loyal darkies, as in that great myth, the enormous success of Schindler’s List. Last Gone With the Wind, which had dominated the year, at Passover, Showtime, a cable channel, in- public consciousness of the subject for nearly 40 troduced an excellently produced and well acted years until Alex Haley came along. made-for-TV movie, The Devil’s Arithmetic. This And after Holocaust, it was no longer pos- astonishing film takes an imaginative Jewish sible for most Americans to think about the Holo- American teenage girl from a Passover seder into caust in quite the same way. They could no longer the heart of a Nazi concentration camp. Stressing entertain a group fantasy of a universalized “crime the importance of remembering, it is unsparing in against humanity” in which everybody is “really its verisimilitude, creating the reality of the labor/ good at heart” as in that great myth, The Diary of death camps, up to and including the gas chamber Anne Frank, which had dominated the public con- itself. And this astonishing, absorbing movie was sciousness for more than 20 years. It was not pos- aimed at teenagers. sible after Gerald Green gave chapter and verse on December, 1999 Clio’s Psyche Page 113 the single-minded destruction of the Jews by the a need to confront the horror at long last. The “sea Nazis, “ordinary Germans,” and their collaborators change” reflected a public that had evolved from in Poland, Lithuania, the Ukraine, Hungary, etc. the schizoid splitting and denial that marked the And the American public could no longer think in McCarthy era. Having been brought to the nihilis- quite the same way about “the banality of evil,” tic horror of the assassinations of Jack and Bobby Hannah Arendt’s inadequate response (especially Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr., and to the when taken out of context as it was) to the inescapable madness of the warfare that was taking Eichmann trial in Jerusalem. Not after Michael place in Vietnam, we had painfully evolved into a Moriarty’s brilliant, often understated, depiction of nation in the grip of a need to make reparation. the Eichman who helped to preside over the Wann- And yet, as David Beisel has made devas- see Conference that initiated the Final Solution. tatingly clear in another context, though we have If one of the positive roles of a myth (the come very far in knowing about the Holocaust, we history story we drape upon the facts we know) is still draw back from the full horror of it. Because to create a usable past, then Holocaust succeeded we are terrified that we will be forced to confront where Hollywood had failed to that date and be- the “existential meaningless” of it and the dread- yond. It succeeded to the point of preparing the fully fragile contingency of our own lives and be- way for Schindler’s List, to the point where even ing. Thus, for all that we know and have acknowl- The Diary of Anne Frank could no longer stand the edged, we constrain our delegates from helping us way it was originally presented. Last year, the play understand just how and why “splitting, projection, was re-written and re-staged for Broadway. Its and the permission to act out helped unleash writer, Wendy Kesselman, and its director, James Europe’s killing frenzy” (David Beisel, Lapine, have stated that as they prepared for their “Resistance to Psychology in Holocaust Scholar- assignment, searching for “the real Anne Frank,” ship,” Journal of Psychohistory, Vol. 27, No. 2, they journeyed to Amsterdam hoping to find “the Fall 1999, p. 124). (This is a beautifully written, unexpurgated, precocious Anne who listened to incisive tour-de-force by the scholar/teacher from clandestine radio broadcasts and understood that whom, more than any other single individual, I the Nazis were gassing Jews” (Hammelburg, “A learned how to do psychohistory.) Fresh Look,” p. 1). Holocaust, Schindler’s List, The Devil’s A usable past is meant to be used politi- Arithmetic – all take us very far in knowing about, cally – i.e., to achieve through political means the but not nearly as far as we could go. And they common good. Who can doubt that one of the fac- don’t even begin to take us down the path of know- tors that forced Americans to pay attention to what ing why. Nevertheless, Holocaust did find its audi- was happening in Bosnia was the presence on the ence and the “sea change” did take place, and there scene of Elie Wiesel and all that he represented, all was, after that, no going back -- only the question that had begun to become pertinent to the Ameri- of whether or not we could still go even further, a can mind after the broadcast of Holocaust and the possibility that is at least still open. extraordinary interest in the U.S. Holocaust Mu- But there are those who think: Oh, no, we seum on the part of non-Jewish Americans. We have already gone too far; there has now been too have come a long way from Bitburg, and the story- much emphasis placed upon the Holocaust; the tellers, from Gerald Green to Steven Spielberg, message has been absorbed, so “enough already.” have played a role in the journey. To them, one has only to point to the comparative To ascribe the “sea change” that has made audiences for the Italian-made productions, Life Is all this possible to the TV miniseries Holocaust is, Beautiful and The Truce. The comforting fairy tale of course, itself an inadequate explanation. The was a phenomenal success, while the tough- Hollywood moguls did not, after all, “hide the minded Primo Levi memoir, exceptionally acted by Holocaust” from a public that was thirsting to John Turturro (who is by now an honorary Jew, know. In this “hiding” – as in the creation of given his roster of Jewish movie roles), played to mythic America – Hollywood was acting as dele- miniscule art house audiences. Myth-making is gate to the needs and wishes of the nation at large. transient and group fantasies are dynamic and al- And Gerald Green and the networks did not foist a ways up for grabs. The creation of a usable past is truth-telling on the public that was still unwilling a task that never ends, and in that task knowledge to know. The ratings tell us otherwise (as with is power. Roots, too). Green was a delegate for a nation with Melvin Kalfus, PhD, taught history and Page 114 Clio’s Psyche December, 1999 psychohistory at Florida Atlantic and Lynn univer- about his World War II experiences as a child, who sities. Among his psychobiographic publications had discovered his brother and father shot. "I did- are Frederick Law Olmsted: Passion of a Public n't know what to tell my mother, so I said nothing. Artist (1990) and “Richard Wagner as Cult Mother pressed for a lie. I said I knew they were Hero” (1984). A current researcher of the Civil taken away to work. Mother believed me, know- War, FDR, and Hollywood and the Jews, he is a ing I was lying. member of the Advisory Board of the Psychohis- I find it difficult to understand how this tory Forum and a past president and long-time film can be seen as a "romantic comedy." treasurer of the International Psychohistorical As- sociation (IPA). “Victim Olympics”: Life Is Beautiful Is Not a The Collective Psychology of "Romantic Comedy" Comparative Genocides Flora Hogman Ralph Seliger Psychohistory Forum Research Associate Meretz USA It was interesting for me to read the de- In his new book on the impact of the Holo- scriptions and reactions to Life Is Beautiful in the caust on American Jewish identity, The Holocaust Clio's Psyche special issue on Humor in the In American Life, historian Peter Novick discusses Holocaust (June, 1999). Except for scenes in the what he dubs the “Victim Olympics." This is an first half of the film, alternatively funny or ironical, unseemly phenomenon of ethnic one-upmanship I did not find the rest of the film funny at all. But which pits groups against each other with self- this is related to my being a Holocaust survivor. I serving interpretations of historical grievances and was a hidden child during the war. suffering. The psychological dimension involves how the need to feel ethnic pride has created this The essence of the film for me was a tran- mutually antagonistic competition. scendent effort to safeguard feelings of love and hope against total destruction. Only through pre- I experienced an instance of this on a re- serving the innocence of the child can love survive. cent social occasion. While visiting a Jewish im- In fact, it is this innocence which must be safe- migrant from Holland, one intimately familiar with guarded against destruction. The fight is basically her parents' Holocaust-era struggle for survival, I from the child's point of view, from his lens, to discussed murderous events of more recent vin- deny the horror that is surrounding him, to prevent tage. I noted that the only close modern parallel to one's "soul" from being destroyed, not unlike the the Jewish catastrophe of World War II was end of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, the triumph Rwanda, where as many as 800,000 defenseless against despair. Tutsis were butchered during 100 days beginning in April, 1994. I hit a nerve in pointing out that A determination to preserve the child's illu- this was a rate of slaughter which may have ex- sion affirms that evil has no right to exist in the ceeded Auschwitz at its worst, even though I had world of the young child; the right to feel that fa- not done so to minimize the Holocaust, but rather ther's love can transcend, and the right not to give to emphasize the magnitude of this more recent up the prerogative to that feeling -- an essential horror. Still, her angry reaction should not have recovery of something which was certainly lost to come as a complete surprise. me. As a child of refugees from the Holocaust, Thus, the film for me has a touching, heal- who never knew his grandparents and numerous ing message. I believe the film adds a valid, im- other relatives as a result, I inherited an intense portant dimension to the Holocaust tragedy, a fight interest in both the legacy of Jewish suffering and to the death against the loss of innocence: the child the cataclysmic experiences of other peoples. I am knows the father is lying but must, wants, to be- pained, personally, when the injustices visited lieve the father. Interwoven in the "fable" is that upon others become a source of acrimony against the child also learns from the father to protect him- "the Jews" for having so successfully memorial- self. ized our bitter encounter with genocide. I remember a man whom I had interviewed December, 1999 Clio’s Psyche Page 115
I might find this at work where -- a propos fects all or most of a large group forges a link be- of nothing -- a usually cheerful black man turns tween the psychology of the individual and that of scornful about "the Jews talking about their Holo- the group." The trauma is too painful to be caust" when African Americans suffered a mourned to completion. "Because the traumatized "holocaust" of their own in the "Middle Passage" self-images passed down by members of the group of slave ships transporting and killing en route un- all refer to the same calamity, they become part of told numbers of victims. Or, over a decade ago, the group identity, an ethnic marker on the canvas when I waited in the hospital with my mother for of the ethnic tent." news on my father's emergency heart surgery The psychological aspects of this competi- alongside an elderly Armenian-American woman tive "sport" of ethnic suffering may also be dis- and her adult children in the same situation. As guised within, or supplemented by, ideological almost inevitably with my mother under stress, she agendas. An article in the Spring, 1999, issue of mentioned their survival of Hitler. This elicited a Holocaust and Genocide Studies, "The Politics of diatribe from the old woman, decrying "the Jews" Uniqueness: Reflections on the Recent Polemical for thinking they are the only ones who have suf- Turn in Holocaust and Genocide Scholarship" by fered. Garviel D. Rosenfeld of Fairfield University, pin- Psychiatrist Vamik Volkan applies his psy- points the issues as presented by leftists in indict- chological and psychoanalytic knowledge to shed ing mainstream Holocaust scholars as "Jewish ex- light on this issue in Bloodlines: From Ethnic clusivists" or Zionist apologists. One such work, Pride to Ethnic Terrorism (1997). Dr. Volkan ob- examined independently by Rosenfeld and myself, serves in this study of a variety of contemporary is a contentious book by Ward Churchill, an Amer- international and inter-ethnic conflicts that "Rarely indian activist and professor of Native American was there empathy for the suffering of the 'enemy' studies at the University of Colorado at Boulder, A group...; instead there was an inability to identify Little Matter of Genocide: Holocaust and Denial with the anguish of the other. There was only an in the Americas, 1492 to the Present (1997). isolated concern with one's own helplessness and Professor Churchill disputes official esti- losses." mates of the native population of the Americas and He quotes Anwar Sadat's speech in Jerusa- the Caribbean at the initial moment of European lem in November, 1977, that "70 percent" of the contact in 1492. He favors a population estimate problem between Egypt and Israel was psychologi- of about 25 million north of Mexico, about 15 mil- cal. Dr. Volkan then illustrates this with an exam- lion in the Caribbean Basin, and about 125 million ple from an Egyptian-Israeli group dialogue when in the Western Hemisphere as a whole. Hence, he an Egyptian found it difficult to accept that Israelis argues that the European colonizers brought on a have genuine fears about the Arab world. A zero- "holocaust" in the Western Hemisphere of far more sum competitive psychology is at work: If the massive dimension than what the Jews suffered in Egyptian acknowledged the Israelis' fears, "he World War II. Churchill not only indicts Western would be granting Israelis the status of an injured civilization for its treatment of indigenous peoples party, thereby compromising the unique, injured in the Americas but also attacks prominent Jewish status of Egyptians.... […and his reluctance under- Holocaust historians -- including Deborah Lipstadt, scored] his belief that Israelis, unlike Egyptians, Lucy Dawidowicz, Yehuda Bauer, and Steven T. lacked emotions; they were nonhuman." Katz -- for being "Jewish exclusivists" in arguing Dr. Volkan employs a mix of psychologi- that the Jewish Holocaust ranks as the world's cal insight and metaphor to explain the longevity worst instance of genocide, or, in the view of Cor- of ethnic grievances, some -- such as the Serbs on nell historian Steven Katz, that it was the only Kosovo and "the Turks" -- enduring for centuries. "true" genocide. Volkan refers to "selectively-chosen trauma" and a Prof. Rosenfeld regards Katz's terminology collective "unresolved mourning" over historical as unnecessarily inflammatory: events which are remembered inexactly or even Katz could have ... argued that the inaccurately. Together with "selectively-chosen Nazis' intent to kill the entire Jewish people glories" which depict events and eras in idealized made the Holocaust different from all other terms, these are transmitted through the genera- cases of mass murder, AND referred to these tions as "psychological DNA." "The influence of a cases (as did Yehuda Bauer) as "genocide." severe and humiliating calamity that directly af- By failing to do so, his book needlessly Page 116 Clio’s Psyche December, 1999
offended groups extremely sensitive to the As a child of a survivor of the Ottoman- neglect of their historical experiences, Turkish Genocide of Armenians, I have been very opening its author to the charge of familiar with the atrocities planned and carried out establishing a "hierarchy of victims." from 1894 to 1915. During World War I, the Turkish authorities declared the Armenians to be Churchill and other leftist scholars attacked enemies of the Ottoman Empire. Adult males, and Yehuda Bauer of Hebrew University for minimiz- especially those identified as potential leaders, ing the extent of genocide against Gypsies and were arrested, taken to a desolate area, and shot. Slavs, especially Poles, in World War II. Yet This process was designed to deprive Armenians of Rosenfeld indicates that Gypsy populations were leadership and representation, so that deportations not consistently rounded up for extermination in all might proceed without resistance. Ultimately, countries under Nazi occupation. And, although famine, thirst, torture, epidemics, pillage, and plun- ten percent of non-Jewish Poles perished, every der resulted in the deaths of one-and-one-half mil- Pole was not targeted in the same way as every lion people which was two-thirds of the Armenian Jew. Indeed, it is this concept -- to paraphrase Elie population in that area. My father was one of the Wiesel, there were many other victims, but every fortunate survivors who was then able to settle Jew was intended as a victim -- which Churchill with his family in Syria. My mother’s family fails to credit or to understand. walked through the deserts to Syria, where I was Churchill prefers to see this "interest in born. Jewish exclusivism" as an ethnocentric Jewish con- The collective pain and suffering of my ceit or perhaps a Zionist tactic to win world sympa- nation of Armenia and the continued Turkish de- thy. He quotes writer Edward Alexander to the nial of its Genocide left me feeling helpless and effect that allowing for other's experiences of pained. I eventually concluded that the best way to genocide "converts to moral capital in the political deal with those negative feelings was to sublimate arena at Jewish expense." Still, Churchill plays the them. This led me to found the Armenian Ameri- same zero-sum game he accuses "Zionists" of to can Society for Studies on Stress and Genocide. In advance his own agenda of aboriginal rights. As the Society we began systematic research on the "demonstrably one of the most victimized groups psychosocial impact of the long-term effects of the in the history of humanity, [American Indians] are Armenian Genocide. The study revealed that the entitled to every ounce of moral authority we can persistent denial of the Genocide by the Turkish get," he writes. government evoked intense anger and rage in sur- It is sometimes said that suffering ennobles vivors due to the lack of validation and reparation. the soul. Indeed, the best of the ethical and com- Validation of a traumatic experience is an essential passionate teachings in Judaism, Christianity, and step toward resolution and closure. An explicit other great religious or philosophical traditions are expression of remorse by a perpetrator to a victim based upon instances of suffering or persecution. has enormous healing value. Against a back- Yet the group- and psycho-dynamics of history ground of losses and atrocities well beyond the suggest that suffering is more likely to embitter realm of usual life experience, these aged survivors than to ennoble, and that the latter is rare -- a prod- reflected a sense of personal and communal ac- uct of profound human growth and maturity. complishment, tempered with anger regarding the Ralph Seliger, M.S., is an analyst and perpetrators’ denial of how they were victimized. writer of procedures for the City of New York's In 1988 a devastating earthquake struck HIV/AIDS Services Administration, the publica- Armenia. This motivated me to establish a Mental tions committee chair of Meretz USA (a liberal Zi- Health Outreach Program to assist the psychosocial onist organization), and a frequent contributor to a needs of the surviving community in Soviet Arme- variety of publications on issues related to Middle nia. Both my clinical outreach and research with East peace and other inter-ethnic conflicts. He the earthquake survivors in Armenia revealed yet may be contacted at
He added, "But it is not my fault; I didn’t do it." currently imposed on Kurds. I was encouraged by To this I answered, "Of course, I know you didn’t their candid reports, and decided to distribute my commit the Genocide. Do your other Turkish original abstract on the Armenian Genocide. At friends know about the Genocide?" He responded, that point the threats began. First, I was threatened "Well, you know, we don’t talk about it in Turkey. with being murdered, to which I responded with It is not mentioned in our history books." skepticism, stating that I didn’t think anyone would Ahmed’s admission helped me to achieve a dare to kill me in front of the 650 scholars from new level of understanding, forgiveness, and hope. over 48 countries present at the conference. The I meet many skeptics, as I lecture around the world next day I was threatened with torture if I talked on human-made traumas and forgiveness in order about the Genocide. The third day the Genocide to achieve closure. Many Armenians, especially, abstracts were literally snatched from my hands. confuse forgiveness with forgetting, and in this On the last day of the conference, the day when my process turn their anger against me as they ex- lecture was scheduled to be presented, I was called claim, "How could you even think of asking fellow by the Turkish organizers and the British head of survivors and their children to forgive the Turks!" the European Society for Traumatic Stress Studies I think that they equate forgiveness with forgetting. to a private meeting in the basement. At this meet- Forgiveness does not mean forgetting. Forgive- ing I was presented with an ultimatum: either I ness does not mean that I will stop researching the would sign a letter stating that I would refrain from Armenian Genocide. Forgiving does not mean speaking about the Turkish Genocide of Armeni- concealing the truth and forgetting our human ans or I would have to leave the conference with- rights. Forgiving means freeing oneself of the out presenting. This letter was given to me only 20 chains of anger, unlocking the locks of resentment, minutes prior to my lecture which was scheduled at and taking a step toward ending the cycle of ha- the last hour of the meetings. tred. Only when freed of hatred can one achieve I reminded my inquisitors that this was a one’s potential and succeed in life. human rights conference, and they were in fact vio- I wrote about my experiences with the lating my rights as a presenter, by telling me what I Turkish taxi driver, and the issue of forgiveness. It could and could not talk about. But it was to no was published in a few Armenian papers. I then avail. They reiterated that because of the political received many calls and letters to the editor, brim- situation, "we" had to protect the Turkish organiz- ming with hatred and stating that I didn’t know ers. I posed the question as to why the plight of what I was talking about. I was even called a the Kurds was freely discussed while the Armenian "Turk [enemy] lover." Many of my colleagues issue was treated with silence. They provided no stopped talking to me. satisfactory answer, but again reiterated that if I wouldn't sign the letter, I would have to leave the As I continued my journey toward forgive- conference without delivering my presentation. ness and integration of the trauma of the Armenian Given this awful choice, I chose to sign the letter to Genocide, I submitted a paper to the Sixth Euro- not lose an opportunity to address the conference. pean Conference on Psychotraumatology, Clinical Practice, and Human Rights, which was to take My European colleagues helped me to re- place in Istanbul, Turkey, in June, 1999. Because I vise my transparencies by covering the identifying was fully cognizant of the Turkish denial of the words such as "Genocide," "Armenian," and Genocide, I revised the research paper and entitled "Ottoman-Turkish," with a special black transpar- it "Mass Human Rights Violations: Resilience vs. ency marker. I began my discussion without look- Resignation." My paper was accepted with some ing at the screen where the first transparency was revisions. (Together with a colleague from Can- projected. As I began to apologize for the black ada, I submitted another paper on the Genocide, lines, I noticed smirks on the faces of many of my which was rejected.) Because they were worried European and American colleagues. A look at the about my safety, all of my friends and colleagues screen revealed the underlying, identifying words were against my going to Turkey to present on the coming through the black marker’s ink. My com- Turkish Genocide against the Armenians. Despite ment was, "Oops, I guess we could not hide it, it is all the opposition, I went to Turkey. coming through." Upon my arrival at the conference in Istan- There was a growing tension in the audi- bul, I noticed how the keynote speakers talked ence. The Turkish attendees were extremely tense, freely regarding Turkish human rights violations and others were laughing at the irony in my state- December, 1999 Clio’s Psyche Page 119 ment. I continued showing the transparencies and were Moslem Turks. focusing on forgiveness as a therapeutic interven- My colleagues could not believe that after tion. It was a tense situation as I decided what I all those threats to my life, and the difficulties I could and could not say. Nevertheless, I was able had in Turkey last June, I was still willing and able to communicate the importance of spiritual for- to assisted the Turkish surviving community. For giveness as a means of getting over resentment and me it was yet another challenge, and a step forward moving toward dialogue. I also mentioned how in my journey of forgiveness and transcendence. my Turkish colleagues were even wondering how I dared to ask the survivors to forgive, as they said, Anie Kalayjian, EdD, is Founder and "The Turks should apologize first." But, to follow President, Armenian American Society for Studies the logic of Viktor Frankl, we have been waiting on Stress and Genocide; President of the New York for 84 years and nothing has happened; we cannot Chapter of the International Society for Traumatic wait idly and continue suffering as victims. We Stress Studies; Treasurer, United Nations, NGO need to empower ourselves and move on to the (Non-Governmental Organization) Human Rights next phase of dialogue and collaboration. As long Committee; and Chairperson, World Federation as there is anger and rage we cannot collaborate. I for Mental Health Human Rights Committee. In also asserted that admission to genocide is a very addition to being an adjunct professor at Fordham difficult burden to carry on one's shoulders, espe- University and John Jay College, she is the author cially since the Turkish people have a very errone- of Disaster and Mass Trauma: Post Disaster ous view about the Armenian Genocide. I then Mental Health Outreach (1995). (This paper was asked the scientific community to assist the Turk- presented at the November 6 meeting of the ish people in the task of developing an emotional Psychohistory Forum.) maturity by accepting responsibility and apologiz- ing for the wrong doings of their ancestors. They, too, need to forgive their ancestors to be able to The Holocaust as Trope for stop the denial and accept the responsibility. After "Managed" Social Change the lecture, my European, American, and African colleagues hugged and congratulated me for my Howard F. Stein courage. I began crying in their arms. I was cry- University of Oklahoma ing with a sense of relief, empowerment, and hap- Introduction piness to be alive. This paper explores some shared psycho- I returned safely to New York with plans to logical meanings of Holocaust imagery (Primo write about my experience in Turkey. Although I Levi, The Drowned and the Saved, 1998) invoked was spiritually enriched, I was emotionally and by people experiencing downsizing, re- physically drained. For two months I postponed engineering, restructuring, managed care, and other the writing. Then the devastating earthquake hap- forms of “managed” social change in the United pened in Turkey on August 17, 1999. States. I present a brief case example to illustrate Since I have worked with natural disasters how the evidence for the Holocaust metaphor lies for over a decade in Armenia, California, Florida, in the action that carries the seed of its emotional Japan, and Santo Domingo, I began wondering, plausibility. It is my countertransference that leads Should I go to Turkey to help? The answer was a me (and others) from experience of action to its definite "Yes." My outreach does not have any symbolization. By listening via my own uncon- geographic nor political boundaries. As I was pon- scious, I can comprehend and hold onto others’ dering how to assist, I received two invitations projection of Holocaust imagery and language onto from Turkey. I then began developing the Volun- contemporary American workplace cataclysm. teer Mental Health Outreach Program for the earth- Since the end of World War II and the quake survivors, funded by the Armenian Patriar- revelation of the Nazi war of extermination (Lucy chate of Turkey, and invited many experts in the Dawidowicz, The War Against the Jews, 1933- field to join me. We worked several weeks under 1945, 1975), the word Holocaust (from the He- the tents with over 500 survivors in group therapy, brew, olah, burnt offering, sacrifice) has been debriefing, relaxation and breathing exercises, and adopted by many different groups, under varied researching the impact of the trauma. About a circumstances, to designate the nature of their suf- quarter of our clients were Armenians and the rest fering. Whatever else atrocities, genocides, and Page 120 Clio’s Psyche December, 1999 other horrors are called by those who undergo did.” Such positions serve partly as what Franco them, they are often characterized as a Holocaust. Fornari called “the paranoid elaboration of mourn- At least one common structural denominator is the ing” (The Psychoanalysis of War, 1966), substitut- concentration of power that makes institutional ing vigilance and anger for vulnerability and grief. terror possible. It is a salve for loss through continued fighting. While participating in my own workplace By contrast with this widespread narcissis- organization, in my frequent role as speaker or pre- tic-defensive usage, I find that many Americans senter at national conferences, and in my capacity evoke Holocaust images (e.g., Nazis, SS, Jews, as organizational consultant (interviewer, partici- Gypsies, Slavs, trains, Dr. Josef Mengele, selection pant observer), I have often heard downsizing, re- for life or death, gas chambers, SS police, labor engineering, restructuring, and managed care de- camps, large scale executions, euphemisms, se- scribed in the idiom of the Holocaust. What is one crecy, rumors, disappearance) as an idiom by to make of the cultural borrowing of this highly which to comprehend the extent, depth, and kind of charged image? What is its psychodynamic sig- suffering they experience in the workplace since nificance? What, exactly, does it embody and con- the early 1980s. The “symbol choice” directs us – dense? How does this use correspond to, or differ if we can bear to hear it – to the speaker’s catastro- with, the use of the Holocaust by other groups? As phic experience and to the psychohistoric dynam- a Jew who lost virtually my entire paternal family ics of group representation or group fantasy. When in Rumania to the Nazi era, how do I listen to these individuals, families, workplace organizations, and narratives and not discount them as flights of hy- ethnic-national groups suffer catastrophe, they perbole? In this paper I shall present an extended search for metaphors that -- affectively and cogni- example of this use and suggest some interpreta- tively together -- attempt to answer the question: tions. What is this experience like? (see Thomas Ogden, The Holocaust as Metaphor for Evil “Reverie and Metaphor: Some Thoughts on How I Work as a Psychoanalyst,” International Journal In The Holocaust and the Crisis of Human of Psychoanalysis, 1997, 78: 719-732). The effort Behavior (1994), George Kren and Leon Rap- at “likening” becomes an intermediate area be- poport ask, “Why does the Holocaust not fade tween consciousness and unconsciousness. away?” (p. 3). They reply: (Although I wish here primarily to immerse …insofar as the Holocaust is seen in the reader in the phenomenology of business-as- general moral terms, it stands out as the Holocaust, there is a growing literature by psy- ultimate expression of the human capacity chologists, psychiatrists, physicians, and scholars for organized evil and has come to serve as of contemporary managed social change. See my the standard to which all lesser or proximate (with others) The HUMAN Cost of a Management evils are compared. Accordingly, over the Failure: Organizational Downsizing at General past decades any substantial threat to the Hospital, 1996, and my Euphemism, Spin, and the existence or basic rights of an oppressed Crisis in Organizational Life, 1998.) population or minority group has triggered appeals to the Holocaust (p. 4). A Letter from a Colleague The Holocaust can be used “as a reminder In late September 1999, I received a letter of past evil, and … as an explanation (or analogy) from a senior Jewish academic and teacher in an of present events” (Professor Gary Holmes, per- American biomedical setting, a person whom I sonal communication, October 1, 1999). Among have known some 15 years. Her poignancy and those who commit atrocities, it is commonly in- remarkable candor take us to the heart of my sub- voked to diminish personal responsibility for ac- ject matter: the Holocaust as trope [figurative use tion, if not to exonerate oneself, and to rationalize of a word as metaphor or hyperbole] for what for oneself a victim ideology (“I was just following passes officially for American corporate “business orders”). as usual.” My colleague had read my 1998 book, Euphemism. In the summer of 1999 I had sent her A widespread group psychological use of a manuscript I would present at the Society for the Holocaust is to turn suffering from an absolute, Psychological Anthropology in September. It was lonely experience, into a comparative, relative ex- titled, “From Countertransference to Social The- perience. One encounters statements such as: “We ory: A Study of Holocaust Thinking in American suffered (a) as much as you did, (b) more than you Business Dress.” With only a few minor adapta- December, 1999 Clio’s Psyche Page 121 tions to assure confidentiality, I quote her letter in I guess I am sharing all this because I its entirety, and with her permission. believe I am basically a good human being I read your paper "…A Study of who has always identified more with the Holocaust Thinking.…" It was oppressed than with the oppressor (and, tremendously powerful -- shocking, really. indeed, as a social scientist and non-M.D., as Simply the juxtaposition of the two language you well know, have always been more categories of the title -- Holocaust and oppressee than oppressor). Yet how easily American business -- is profoundly power corrupted me and created a damning troubling. The article raised deeply personal shift in perspective. I began to dream the issues for me. This is what I must share with collective dream, and it wasn't that hard. you at the moment. Clearly I paid a price -- I attribute my subsequent health problems at least in part to As you may recall, I spent two years the internalizing and somaticizing of (1992-1994) as acting chair of my tremendous levels of anxiety and distress -- department of internal medicine, a but on a conscious level I thought I was just challenging, demanding, and ultimately exhibiting necessary toughness, showing I extremely painful and soul-crushing time for could be "one of the boys." me. When I relinquished that position, I spent the next year on sabbatical, attempting The striking thing in what you write is to become a prototypical National Institute that to NOT dream the dream, play the of Medicine hard science researcher -- and game, you almost have to be crazy -- and shortly thereafter underwent a series of very brave, to trust your inner experience health crises, including the near loss of the only in the face of overwhelming sight in one eye (wonder why!). In any disconfirming messages from the outside event, I never really allowed myself to world. But on balance, it is better to be process the administrative experience or to crazy than cruel. I had the opportunity to reflect on why it had caused me such become a Nazi -- a little, baby Nazi to be anguish. Reading your article, I was sure, but there it was -- and I seized it overcome by feelings of guilt and shame, as eagerly. Eventually, as your article points I realized how -- on a small scale -- I came to out, I was eaten in turn, when I was no approximate the aggressors you portrayed. longer useful to the survival of the machine. I don't wonder at all how the Holocaust Although I always tried to act with could have happened. integrity, I think looking back that I was frequently co-opted by the dominant bottom- Well, my friend, I hope these thoughts line corporate thinking that you describe so are not too depressing. Although I admit to well. For example, I personally fired two being temporarily devastated as these colleagues whom I had known and worked unlooked-for insights worked their way up closely with for over 10 years, simply from my unconscious, on balance I learned a because they could no longer prove their great deal. For example, I think my "utility" to the system. I am convinced now, subsequent physical recovery and with hindsight, that their terminations were professional fulfillment are both direct only symbolic in nature, did nothing results of my having had the wisdom to substantial to assuage our budget problems, voluntarily renounce the chair position and were primarily sacrificial acts to appease (which, out of pragmatism more than forces both within and without the anything else, the dean had asked me to department. The more I read of your accept on a permanent basis) and relearn the analysis, the more I realized just how guilty I skill of listening to my own heart. That was of the sins you cite -- the euphemized inward turning is also what eventually language, the personification and subsequent moved me away from hard research toward glorification of the institutional organism, the medical humanities, and I can honestly the denial of the still small voice within, the say I have recovered my soul in the process. sense of having "disappeared" good human So, while I have had to face that good beings who in a day became obliterated from people, including myself, can do bad things, our world. There are other examples as well. I have also discovered that teshuvah Page 122 Clio’s Psyche December, 1999
(Hebrew, for repentance) and redemption Conclusions both are possible. Good lessons for the New This paper has described and interpreted Year. And I have to thank your article for the symbolic linkage between modern large-scale helping me to bring all of this into such clear American business organizational style and the focus. I thank you for your plain speaking, Holocaust. A personal narrative was used to illus- your courage, and your unwillingness to trate how American workplace experience comes deny and distance from some very brutal to be represented in the idiom of Nazi atrocity. I truths. If this be insanity, then we need more have argued that the Holocaust can be used psy- of it. chologically as a trope for the experience of mas- Discussion sive forms of “managed” change that go by such This single example, a personal letter, can euphemisms as downsizing, RIFing [reductions in be read as a cultural and historical exemplar that force], surplusing, separating, re-engineering, re- articulates what many people say; and what for structuring, and managed health care. Via a single countless others serves as the “unthought document, I have offered data that help us to un- known” (Christopher Bollas, In the Shadow of the derstand how the Holocaust comes to be a compel- Object: Psychoanalysis of the Unthought Known, ling internal representation and external expression 1989). My colleague makes the implicit explicit, for what is officially “the bottom line” of “just the unconscious conscious. She describes part of business” in American life. the journey to unconsciousness and back to con- (Author's Note: The author expresses sciousness. Her letter reveals hard-won insight gratitude to Professor Michael Diamond and into herself, into processes widely shared in con- Professor Gary Holmes for their encouragement in temporary American culture -- and the personal this project and comments on this manuscript.) cost of unconscious identification with the aggres- Howard F. Stein, PhD, is professor in the sor. It shows the work of aggression in the service Department of Family and Preventive Medicine, of mastering the anxiety of overwhelming vulner- University of Oklahoma Health Sciences Center, ability -- and of the ultimate futility of such self- Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. His most recent books protection. It brings to mind Robert J. Lifton’s are Learning Pieces (1999) and Euphemism, Spin, well-known concepts of “psychic numbing” and and the Crisis in Organizational Life (1998). He is “doubling” (similar to Melanie Klein’s “splitting” the 1998 recipient of the Omer C. Stewart and “projective identification”), and of Donald Memorial Award for the application of Winnicott’s distinction between the “false self ” anthropology to the problems of society and is and the “true self.” president of the High Plains Society for Applied In part, at least, my friend’s experience in- Anthropology. cludes, among other things, the lure of power and acceptance (to be "one of the boys," with its gen- dered connotations), until another part of her talked An Israeli Psychohistorian: back, via her body (her health). I wonder whether she had become a "victim" to her wish to belong Avner Falk and to overcome marginality. Paul H. Elovitz The letter shows how, in the juncture be- Ramapo College and the Psychohistory Forum tween personal life history and organizational (cultural) history, the true self is (here, temporar- Avner Falk was born in Palestine (now ily) cast aside and recovered. It shows how Holo- Israel) in 1943 and spent his childhood and youth caust thinking, imagery, and acting, can be en- in Tel Aviv. He studied psychology and clinical gaged in within “normal” American health care, psychology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem university, corporate, and government settings -- and then went to graduate school in the U.S. and how a way that at first seems disturbing and repug- received his PhD in Clinical Psychology from nant (dissociated, not-me, “This doesn’t happen Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, in here”) becomes recognizable (integrated, me, “I 1970. He returned to Israel in 1971. From 1971 did that,” “I was that”). Finally, the letter is an in- to 1982, Dr. Falk taught clinical psychology and tersubjective document that exists in interpersonal psychiatry courses at mental health centers and space in which she trusts to see herself and to be nursing schools affiliated with the Hebrew seen. University and Hadassah Medical School in December, 1999 Clio’s Psyche Page 123
Jerusalem. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s he in my family history. As a schoolboy, even though was also Supervising Clinical Psychologist at I was good at mathematics and science, history was several mental health centers in Jerusalem. From my favorite subject. Our interest in general history 1962 to 1995 he served reserve duty as Mental begins with our quest for our personal history. Health Officer in the Medical Corps, Israel PHE: How do you define psychohistory Defense Forces, retiring with the rank of Captain. and political psychology? His books are Moshe Dayan, haIsh AF: Quite simply: Psychohistory is an in- vehaAgadah: Biographia Psychoanalytit [Moshe terdisciplinary endeavor in which psychology, pri- Dayan, the Man and the Myth: A Psychoanalytic marily psychoanalysis, is used to study history. Biography] (Hebrew) (1985), David Melech Political psychology is the psychology of politics. Yisrael: Biographia Psychoanalytit shel David Ben-Gurion [David King of Israel: A PHE: What brought you to political psy- Psychoanalytic Biography of David Ben-Gurion] chology and psychohistory? (Hebrew) (1987), Herzl, King of the Jews: A AF: As a schoolboy I was intensely inter- Psychoanalytic Biography of Theodor Herzl ested in history, as a young adult in politics. Early (1993), A Psychoanalytic History of the Jews in my professional career as a clinical psychologist (1996), and Monsieur Fils: A Psychoanalytic Biog- I began to write scholarly articles about subjects of raphy of Napoleon Bonaparte. His numerous applied psychoanalysis, such as the unconscious articles are published in The Psychohistory meaning of international borders and a psycho- Review, The Psychoanalytic Study of Society, and a biographical study of Freud's relationship to Herzl. variety of other journals. Paul Elovitz interviewed I moved more and more into the fields of psychohis- our featured scholar over the Internet in October. tory and political psychology. After many years, I Dr. Falk may be contacted by e-mail at made them my career.
Retirement from teaching in 1989 did not In Memoriam spell the end of Waite's engagement with history or with life. He was active in the affairs of the First H. Stuart Hughes Congregational Church of Williamstown, served as (1916-1999): expedition historian on numerous Williams alumni From the “Supporting Cast” of trips to Europe and other parts of the world, and was a much sought-after lecturer to community and Psychohistory alumni organizations. He taught courses and or- Paul H. Elovitz ganized a "French" table at the retirement home in Ramapo College and the Psychohistory Forum which he spent the last decade of his life. With his full beard, shaven head, knitted skull cap, and West H. Stuart Hughes, a distinguished historian of Highland Terrier, Waite was a familiar figure in Europe and friend of psychoanalytically informed Williamstown. history, died on October 21, 1999, at the age of 83. Once an inveterate smoker, he accepted In Gentleman Rebel: The Memoirs of H. Stuart with a crusader's zeal the Surgeon General's warn- Hughes (1990), Hughes reports being close to Erik ing about the dangers of smoking and took up nee- Erikson, his colleague at Harvard, and serving in the dlepoint as a substitute. He took it with him wher- "supporting cast" of psychohistory (p. 237). William ever he went: at the panel "100 Years of German Gilmore, Psychohistorical Inquiry: A Comprehensive History" at the A.H.A. convention in Chicago an Research Bibliography (1984), calls “History and otherwise stuffy occasion was enlivened as an Psychoanalysis: The Explanation of Motive,” in overhead mirror revealed Waite, the panel's Chair, Hughes’ book, History as Art and as Science (1964), at work on a "No Smoking" needlepoint; in China “classic” and “must reading” (p. 44). Several years he rivaled the Great Wall as an object of curiosity; ago, in researching an American Historical Associa- and in London, while he was observing a criminal tion meeting at which the late Professor Richard L. trial at Old Bailey, the judge halted the proceedings Schoenwald (1927-1995) decided to start the first and ordered "the bearded gentleman in the front psychohistory newsletter (the predecessor to The Psy- row to put away his tapestry. It is distracting the chohistory Review), it came to my attention that jurors." Hughes was there, encouraging this pathbreaking action. Productive to the very end of his life, Waite not only published the massive comparative Hughes starts his memoirs not with the men- study of Hitler and Wilhelm II, he recently wrote a tion of his patrician family -- Charles Evans Hughes light-hearted memoir entitled, Hitler, the Kaiser, who ran for President and served as Chief Justice of and Me: An Academic's Procession, which ap- the Supreme Court was his grandfather -- but with a peared only weeks before his death and now serves question from his psychoanalyst, Avery Weisman. as his valedictory. Stuart Hughes, in the words of his wife, "could not have lived the life he did, at least the last 40-plus A man of courage, principle, and passion, years of it, without benefit of psychoanaly- Robert George Leeson Waite was an inspiring sis" (personal communication). And what a life it teacher, a pioneering scholar, and, in every sense was: H. Stuart Hughes left his mark as a pre-eminent of the word, a very human historian. intellectual, prolific scholar, government researcher, John M. Hyde, PhD, Brown Professor of political activist, senatorial candidate, and enemy of History, Emeritus, at Williams College, is a retired conventional thought. diplomatic and political historian, who specialized Among his survivors are his wife Judith in modern French history, worked with H. Stuart who is a modern European historian at the Univer- Hughes at Harvard, and spent his career at sity of California in San Diego, a psychoanalyst, Williams. and a historian of psychoanalysis. We wish to Thomas A. Kohut, PhD, Sue and Edgar thank her for answering questions at a most diffi- Wachenheim, III, Professor of History at Williams cult time in her life. College, is a historian of modern Germany, with Paul H. Elovitz, Editor of this publication, psychoanalytic training, who has written a study of was introduced to Hughes’ scholarship while in Kaiser Wilhelm II and who is currently at work on graduate school in the early 1960s. a study of how a generational cohort, Germans born before the First World War who were active in the Youth Movement in the 1920s, experienced Bulletin Board the history of the 20th century. Page 132 Clio’s Psyche December, 1999
The next SATURDAY WORK-IN- Ellen Mendel of Manhattan. OUR THANKS: To PROGRESS WORKSHOP is scheduled for our members and subscribers for the support that January 29, 2000, when Jay Gonen makes Clio’s Psyche possible. To Benefactors (Psychohistory Forum Research Associate) will Herbert Barry and Ralph Colp; Patrons Andrew present on “Hitler’s Utopian Barbarism: The Brink, H. John Rogers, and Jacques Szaluta; Sup- Roots of Nazi Psychology,” which is also the title porting Members Anonymous and Rudolph Bin- of his book, soon to be released by the University ion; and Contributing Members David Beisel, of Kentucky Press. George Victor will be a com- Sander Breiner, Alan Elms, Paul Elovitz, George mentator. On March 4, 2000, Jacques Szaluta Gouaux, Flora Hogman, Rita Ransohoff, Vivian (U.S. Maritime Academy and private practice) Rosenberg, Roberta Rubin, Chaim Shatan, and with Richard Harrison (New York Center for Psy- Richard Weiss. Our thanks for thought-provoking choanalytic Training) will present “Steven Spiel- materials to David Beisel, Andrew Brink, Dan berg’s Creativity and Connection to the American Dervin, Avner Falk, Eva Fogelman, Flora Hog- Unconscious.” Our program committee is working man, John Hyde, Mel Kalfus, Anie Kalayjian, Tho- with three potential presenters: Michael Britton mas Kohut, Nigel Leech, Ellen Mendel, Peter No- (peace studies), Rita Ransohoff (men’s birth vick, Leon Rappoport, H. John Rogers, Ralph envy), and Vamik Volkan (ethnic cleansing). We Seliger, and Howard Stein. Thanks to Jonathan will have our usual Presidential election-year psy- Battaglia for computer assistance and to Anna chobiographical presentations on the final candi- Lentz and Richard Renaudo for proofreading. dates in the fall. CONFERENCES: A “Children and Their Literature” Conference was held Sep- tember 23-24 at Appalachian State University in Boone, North Carolina, with Peter Petschauer as one of the organizers. The International Psycho- Clio's Psyche of the Psychohistory historical Association (IPA) will meet on June 7-9, Forum 2000 at Fordham University Law School in New Call for Papers York City. The International Society of Political Psychology (ISPP) meetings are in Seattle, Wash- The Future of Psychohistory and Psychoanalysis ington, on July 1-4, 2000. David Beisel and Nigel in the Third Millennium (March, 2000) Leech presented papers at the Psychohistory Panel Violence in American Life and Mass Murder as of the September, 1999, Second European Confer- Disguised Suicide Assessing Apocalypticism and Millennialism ence of Dialogue and Universalism at Warsaw around the Year 2000 University. SCHOLARLY PRESENTATIONS PsychoGeography AND PUBLIC LECTURES: On November 13, Election 2000 1999, at the New York Psychoanalytic Institute, Psychobiography Rita Ransohoff gave the talk, “Men’s Fantasies and Manias and Depressions in Economics and Truths about the Sexuality of Menopausal Society Women,” and last May 20, Andrew Rolle spoke at The Psychology of Incarceration and Crime the Southern California Psychoanalytic Institute on Legalizing Life: Our Litigious Society “Revisiting Freud’s Rat Man Case.” PUBLICA- The Truth and Reconciliation Commission as TIONS: Congratulations to David Felix on the a Model for Healing recent publication of A Century of Political Econ- The Processes of Peacemaking and Peacekeeping omy: A History and to Howard Stein on Learning The Psychology of America as the World’s Pieces. Garth Amundson published “Therapists’ Policeman Identification with Common Social Values as Ob- Entertainment News stacles to Increased Sociocultural Sensitivity” in Television, Radio, and Media as Object Rela- the fall in the Journal of Psychoanalysis and Psy- tions in a Lonely World chotherapy. TRAVEL: David Beisel traveled to Kevorkian’s Fascination with Assisted Suicide, the Czech Republic and Poland, and Peter and Joni Death, Dying, and Martyrdom Petschauer spent part of the summer in Italy, Ger- Most of these subjects will become special issues. many, and the Czech Republic. AWARDS: Akin Articles should be from 600-1500 words with a Akini of the University of Chicago has received biography of the author. Electronic submissions the Forum Graduate Student Subscription are welcome on these and other topics. For de- tails, contact Paul H. Elvoitz, PhD, at Award. GET-WELL WISHES: To John and
The Best of Clio's Psyche The Psychohistory Forum is pleased to announce the creation of The Best of Clio's Psyche. This 93-page collection of many of the best and most popular articles from 1994 to the September, 1999, issue is available for $20 a copy and to students using it in a course for $12. It will be distributed free to Members renewing at the Supporting level and above as well as Subscribers upon their next two-year renewal. Page 134 Clio’s Psyche December, 1999 December, 1999 Clio’s Psyche Page 135 Page 136 Clio’s Psyche December, 1999
Clio's Psyche of the Psychohistory Forum Call for Papers Future of Psychohistory and Psychoanalysis in the Light of the Demise of the Psychohistory Review and the Attacks on Psychoanalysis (March, 2000) Violence in American Life The Psychology of Incarceration and Crime The Psychology and Politics of Victimization Election 2000 The Truth and Reconciliation Commission as a Model The Processes of Peace Making and Keeping The Best of The Psychology of America as the World's Clio's Psyche Policeman Assessing Apocalypticism and Millennialism The Psychohistory Forum is pleased to around the Year 2000 announce the creation of The Best of Clio's PsychoGeography Psyche. Manias and Depressions in Economics and This 94-page collection of many of the Society best and most popular articles from 1994 to the current issue is available for $20 a copy and to Legalizing Life: Our Litigious Society students using it in a course for $12. Entertainment News It will be distributed free to Members at Articles should be from 600-1500 words with a the Supporting level and above as well as Two- brief biography of the author. Electronic submis- Year Subscribers upon their next renewal. sions are preferred. Contact Paul H. Elvoitz, PhD, Editor December, 1999 Clio’s Psyche Page 137
Page 138 Clio’s Psyche December, 1999 December, 1999 Clio’s Psyche Page 139 Page 140 Clio’s Psyche December, 1999 December, 1999 Clio’s Psyche Page 141
Forthcoming in the March Issue Special Theme: The Relationship of Academia, Psychohistory, and Psychoanaly- sis Next Psychohistory Forum Meeting Additonal papers are still being ac-
Saturday, January 30, 1999 cepted. Contact the Editor -- see page
Charles Strozier 71.
"Putting the Psychoanalyst on the Couch: A Also: Biography of Heinz Kohut" Interview with Arthur Mitzman, author of The Iron Cage: An Historical Interpretation of Max Weber Ralph Colp, Jr.'s Review of Vadim Z. Rogovin, 1937: Stalin's Year of
Call for Papers Special Theme Issues Call for Nominations 1999 and 2000 Halpern Award The Relationship of Academia, Psy- for the chohistory, and Psychoanalysis Best Psychohistorical Idea (March, 1999) in a The Psychology of Legalizing Life Book, Article, or Computer [What is this???] Site PsychogeographyIndepndent Varible of Internal Stabilty – May, 1945 This Award may be granted at the level Stagnat/Disntegrating Negative TrendStable/Creative Positve Trend -5-Meeting4-3-2-10+1+2+3+4+5 the Millenium of Distinguished Scholar, Graduate, or Nazi GermanyUSA Undergraduate.
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Letters to the Editor
The History of Psychohistory Clio's Psyche's interviews of outstanding psychohistorians (see "An American in Amsterdam: Arthur Mitzman," page 146) have grown into a full-fledged study of the pioneers and history of our field. Psychohistory as an organized field is less than 25 years old, so most of the innovators are available to tell their stories and give their insights. Last March, the Forum formally launched the Makers of the Psychohistorical Paradigm Research Project to systematically gather material to write the history of psychohistory. We welcome memoirs, letters, and manuscripts as well as volunteers to help with the interviewing. People interested in participating should write, call, or e- mail Paul H. Elovitz (see page 119).
Awards and Honors • Professor Janice M. Coco, Art History, University of California- nual American Psychoanalytic Association Committee on Research T) $1,000 essay prize, will present her paper, "Exploring the Frontier Sloan's Nude Studies," at a free public lecture at 12 noon, Saturday, Forthcoming in the March ldorf-Astoria Hotel, New York City. Issue rd for the Best Psychohistorical Idea • The Psychohistory Forum is Michael Hirohama of San Francisco for starting and maintaining the Special Theme: ng list (see page 98). The Relationship of Academia, Psychohistory, and Psychoanalysis m Student Award • David Barry of Fair Lawn, New Jersey, has been Additonal papers are still being accepted. mbership in the Forum, including a subscription to Clio's Psyche, for er as part of the Makers of the Psychohistorical Paradigm Research Contact the Editor -- see page 71. Also: Interview with Arthur Mitzman, author Next Psychohistory Forum Meeting
THE MAKERS OF PSYCHOHISTORY RESEARCH PROJECT To write the history of psychohistory, the Forum is interviewing the founders of our field to create a record of their challenges and accomplishments. It welcomes participants Psychohistory Forum Presentations who will help identify, interview, and publish September 27 George Victor on Hitler’s Masochism November 15 Michael Flynn, “Apocalyptic Hope — Apocalyptic Thinking” Call for Nominations THE MAKERS OF PSYCHOHISTORY Call for Papers RESEARCH PROJECT
Independent Variable of Internal Stability – May, 1945 Stagnant/DisintegratingFree Subscription Negative Tr end Stable/Creative Positive Trend -5 -4For every-3 paid library-2 subscription-1 0 +1 +2 +3 +4 +5 Nazi($40), Germany the person donating or arranging it will USA receive a year’s subscription to Clio’s Psyche free. Help us spread the good word about Clio. The Psychohistory Forum is pleased to announce Clio’s Psyche Page 144 The Young Psychohistorian 1998/99 Membership Awards December, 1999 John Fanton recently received his medical degree and is doing his five year residency in Providence, Rhode Island. Currently, he is at the Children's Hospital, Women and Infants Hospital, and the Butler Psychiatric Hospital. His goal is to become a child maltreatment expert working in the area of Preventive Psychiatry. At the IPA in 1997 he wonTo Jointhe Lorenz the Psychohistory Award for his paper List on improving parenting in Colorado. send e-mail with any subject and message to
Dreamwork Resources homosexuals into it. He disarmed the The Historical Dreamwork Method is available to help the biographer better under- Call for Nominations stand the dreams of the subject and other as- pects of psychobiography. Clio's Psyche wel- Halpern Award comes papers on historical dreamwork for pub- for the lication and for presentation at Psychohistory Best Psychohistorical Idea Forum meetings. Contact Paul H. Elovitz (see in a page 43). Book, Article, or Computer Site This Award may be granted at the level of Distinguished Scholar, Graduate, or Undergraduate. Forthcoming in the March Issue Special Theme: American People with the Brady Bill. The Relationship of Academia, Psychohistory, and Psychoanaly- Call for Papers Indepndent Varible of Internal Stabilty – May, 1945 Stagnat/Disntegrating Negative TrendStable/Creative Positve Trend sis Special Theme Issues Additonal-5-4-3-2-10+1+2+3+4+ 5papers are still being ac- 1999 and 2000 cepted.Nazi GermanyU ContactSA Paul H. Elovitz, Edi- tor - see p. 71. The Relationship of Academia, Psy- chohistory, and Psychoanalysis Also: (March, 1999) Interview with Arthur Mitzman, author of The Iron Cage: An Historical Our Litigious Society Interpretation of Max Weber PsychoGeography Meeting the Millennium Having previously chickened out of the Manias and Depressions in Eco- Letters to the Editor nomics and Society military, he demoralized it by integrating
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Saturday, October 2, 1999 Letters to the Editor on Charles Strozier Clinton-Lewinsky-Starr "Putting the Psychoanalyst on the Couch: A Biography of Heinz Kohut" December, 1999 Clio’s Psyche Page 145
Book Review Essay
Political Personality and
Additional Articles Are Requested for the Call for Nominations September Issue of for the Clio's Psyche: Best of Clio's Psyche The Psychology of By July 1 please list your favorite arti- Online Communication cles, interviews, and Special Issues (no more than three in each category) and send the information to the Editor (see
Forthcoming in the June Issue Interview with a Distinguished Featured Psychohistorian
Additional Articles "The Insane Author of the Oxford Are Requested for the English Dictionary" "Jews in Europe After World War Call for Papers II" "A Psychohistorian's Mother and Special Theme Issues 1999 and 2000 Hayman Fellowships Our Litigious Society The University of California Interdisci- PsychoGeography plinary Psychoanalytic Consortium announces two $5,000 annual fellowships to aid psycho- Meeting the Millennium analytically informed research on the literary, Manias and Depressions in Eco- cultural, and humanistic expressions of geno- cide, racism, ethnocentrism, nationalism, inter- nomics and Society The Psychology of America as the Call for Nominations World's Policeman for the Truth and ReconciliationThe in South History of Psychohistory AfricaClio's Psyche's interviews of outstanding psychohistoriansBest of (see Clio's "An American Psyche in Amsterdam: Arthur Mitzman," page 146) have grown into a full-fledged study of the pioneers and history of our field. 600-1500 Psychohistory words as an organized field is less thanBy 25 July years 1, old,please so listmost your of thefavorite innovators arti- are cles, interviews, and Special Issues (no Contactavailable to tell their stories and give their insights. Last March, the Forum formally launched the more than three in each category) and MakersPaul ofH. the Elvoitz, Psychohistoric PhD, Editoral Paradigm Researchsend Project the information to systematically to the gather Editor material (see to write the 627history Dakota of psychohistory. Trail We welcome memoirs,page 3) for letters, the August and manuscripts publication. as well as volunteersFranklin to help Lakes, with NJ the 07417 interv iewing. People interested in participating should write, call, or e-