"Monopolizing the Shoah ... has been a disaster for Israel"

In trying Adolph Eichmann: Israel embarked on the road to exclusive possession of the Shoah...

"[N]o other people may lay a claim to it"



Adapted from the book Review by Fr. Donald J. Moore, S.J., of Avraham Burg's The Holocaust Is Over, We Must Arise From Its Ashes.

The Jesuit magazine America. June 22 - 29, 2009.

The original book title in Hebrew of Burg's work was apparently Victory Over Hitler.

The Hebrew - to - English translation is attributed to one Israel Amrani.

Our own little 'ole extract of the book review starts below:

"The publication of this book in Hebrew prompted a tidal wave of criticism not only because of the impeccable Zionist credentials of its author.

"Zionism, Burg thought, should offer to the world an alternative political model, a rejuvenated Judaism with a universal appeal that would make Israel a light unto the nations.

"Scarcely anyone in Israel is talking in these terms, and one major reason for this is that Israeli society has become a prisoner of the Shoah.

"Burg traces the wavering of the Zionists ideal to the 1960s, beginning with the trial of Adolf Eichmann, one of the the principal architects of Hitler's Final Solution.

"The trial became an all - Israeli affair, and for Burg a turning point both personally and collectively.

"Eichmann was convicted of genocide against the Jewish people and executed by hanging in May 1962.

"Voices calling for an international tribunal and judiciary and for a wider participation of non - Jewish witnesses went unheeded.

"Instead of recognizing the Shoah as a crime against all of humanity and linking Jewish suffering with all other innocent victims of racial fanaticism, Israel embarked on the road to exclusive possession of the Shoah.

"Instead of seeing its horrors in a more meaningful, universal light, Israel made it a source of its isolation from the world, reinforcing the idea of perpetual victimhood.

"Burg points out that since the Shoah has become Israel's exclusive property, no other people may lay a claim to it.

"It has become at once a weapon in the service of the Jewish people but also the source of their imprisonment.

"Monopolizing the Shoal, he argues, has been a disaster for Israel and for Judaism.

"Monopolizing the Shoah has led to a state of hysteria, leading Israel to brand its opponents with the Nazi swastika.

"The use of the term Arab in Israeli parlance is often derogatory signifying something or someone that is inferior, as was the German word Jude in the pre - Hitler years.

"But Burg warns his readers: It happened to the Germany of Schiller, Goethe and Mendelssohn, and it can happen also to us.

"He pleads with his fellow Israelis to open their ears and eyes and hearts.

"There is a vast treasure of unfulfilled potential represented by the State of Israel.

"Yet the author is fearful that what was possible in the land of poets and philosophers [Germany] is possible here too, in the land of the prophets.

"A chilling thought indeed..."