Why the Shoah Must Not Be Made Universal |
The most common betrayal of the Holocaust is not denial. It is abstraction.
The Shoah is increasingly spoken of as a tragedy that befell “people,” as a warning about intolerance, or as an example of what happens when societies lose their moral bearings. These statements are not false, exactly. They are incomplete in a way that alters the meaning of the event itself.
The Holocaust was not a general collapse into evil.
It was a specific project, aimed at a specific people, for a specific reason. To universalize it is not to expand its moral reach, but to empty it of its actual meaning. And today, more than at any time in our lives, the loss of meaning is something to be acutely aware of.
This misunderstanding now appears even in language meant to honor the murdered. On Holocaust Remembrance Day, prominent public figures, including Vice President J.D. Vance, referred to “six million people” killed, without naming Jews. His words may have been sincere, but sincerity does not absolve the loss of meaning. When the Jewish people are removed from the language of their own destruction, something essential is lost. The Shoah becomes a parable rather than a critical part of history.........