Английская Википедия:Holocaust uniqueness debate

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Шаблон:Short description The assertion that the Holocaust was a unique event in human history was important to the historiography of the Holocaust, but it has come under increasing criticism in the twenty-first century.Шаблон:Sfn Related claims include the claim that the Holocaust is external to history, beyond human understanding,Шаблон:Sfn a civilizational rupture (Шаблон:Lang-de), and something that should not be compared to other historical events.Шаблон:Sfn Uniqueness approaches to the Holocaust also coincide with the view that antisemitism is not another form of racism and prejudice but is eternal and teleologically culminates in the Holocaust, a frame that is preferred by proponents of Zionist narratives.Шаблон:SfnШаблон:Sfn

History

The Jerusalem school of Jewish history originated in the 1920s and it sought to document Jewish history from a national, as opposed to a religious or philosophical perspective. It developed the notion that Jewish history itself was unique, a progenitor to the idea of the uniqueness of the Holocaust.Шаблон:Sfn The uniqueness of the Holocaust was advanced while it was ongoing by the World Jewish Congress (WJC), but rejected by governments of countries in German-occupied Europe.Шаблон:Sfn In the early decades of Holocaust studies, scholars approached the Holocaust as a genocide unique in its reach and specificity.Шаблон:Sfn Holocaust uniqueness became a subject for scholars in the 1970s and 1980s, in response to efforts to historicize the Holocaust via such concepts as totalitarianism, fascism, functionalism, modernity, and genocide.Шаблон:Sfn

In West Germany, the Historikerstreit ("historians' dispute") erupted in the late 1980s over attempts to challenge the position of the Holocaust in West German historiographical orthodoxy and compare Nazi Germany with the Soviet Union. Critics saw this challenge as an attempt to relativize the Holocaust.Шаблон:Sfn In the 1980s and 1990s, a set of scholars, including Emil Fackenheim, Lucy Dawidowicz, Saul Friedländer, Yehuda Bauer, Steven Katz, Deborah Lipstadt, and Daniel Goldhagen—mostly from the field of Jewish studies—authored various studies to prove the Holocaust's uniqueness.Шаблон:Sfn They were challenged by another set of scholars from a wide diversity of viewpoints that rejected the uniqueness of the Holocaust and compared it to other events, which was then met with an angry backlash from uniqueness supporters.Шаблон:Sfn Around the turn of the twenty-first century, polemical approaches for the debate were exchanged for analytical ones relating to claims of uniqueness in Holocaust memory.Шаблон:Sfn By 2021 there were few scholars who were still making the uniqueness argument.Шаблон:Sfn

In the twenty first century, an increasing body of scholarship challenged the claims of uniqueness proponents. While Holocaust scholars have largely moved beyond the uniqueness debate,Шаблон:Sfn belief that the Holocaust is unique continues to be entrenched in public consciousness and moral pedagogy in the West. In 2021, A. Dirk Moses initiated the catechism debate, challenging the uniqueness of the Holocaust in German Holocaust memory. The same year, in his book The Problems of Genocide, Moses argued that the development of the concept of genocide based on the Holocaust led to disregard of other forms of mass civilian death that could not be analogized to the Holocaust.Шаблон:Sfn

Arguments

Proponents of uniqueness argue that the Holocaust had unique aspects which were not found in other historical events. In particular, supporters of uniqueness argue that the Holocaust was the "only genocide in which the murderers’ goal was the total extermination of the victim, with no rational or pragmatic reason".Шаблон:Attribution neededШаблон:Sfn However, the accuracy of this statement has been disputed.Шаблон:Sfn For example, historian Dan Stone writes that Bauer's definition of "Holocaust" as "total destruction", unlike all other genocides in history, is mistaken because in the Holocaust destruction was not total.Шаблон:Sfn Opponents argue that since every historical event has unique features,Шаблон:Sfn uniqueness proponents are in fact making ideological rather than historical claims.Шаблон:SfnШаблон:Sfn

Critics of the uniqueness concept have argued that it is Eurocentric. Some Holocaust scholars who support the uniqueness concept deny other genocides, such as the Romani Holocaust and the Armenian genocide. German historian Immanuel Geiss believed that the term "genocide" could only be used as a reference to the Holocaust, while giving the term "genocidal massacre" as the intermediate stage between massacre and genocide, giving the Armenian genocide as an example. Some observers believe that the Jewish Holocaust had roots in the German colonial Herero and Namaqua genocide in Namibia earlier in the 20th century, while others observers reject the comparison. The German historian Jürgen Zimmerer has critiqued both German liberals and German conservatives who do not see "continuities" between the Namibian genocide and the Holocaust, claiming that conservatives have an unwillingness to examine German colonial history and that liberals have a "fear of challenging the dogma of Holocaust uniqueness".

See also

• Armenian genocide and the Holocaust
• Genocides in history
• Genocide studies
• Link between the Herero genocide and the Holocaust
• Holocaust studies
• Holocaust trivialization
• Japanese war crimes
• Jews as the chosen people
• List of genocides
• Racism in Jewish communities

Sources

• Шаблон:Cite journal
• Шаблон:Cite journal
• Шаблон:Cite journal
• Шаблон:Cite book
• Шаблон:Cite journal
• Шаблон:Cite book
• Шаблон:Cite book
• Шаблон:Cite book
• Шаблон:Cite book
• Шаблон:Cite journal
• Шаблон:Cite book