








n) we will destroy the evidei with you. And even if some ] remain and some of you sur will say that the events you too monstrous to be believe say that they are the exag Allied propaganda and wii who will deny everything, a
Who would believe the i Jews whom an American lit George Patton, described human species without an) tural or social refinements c He also said no ordinary p have sunk to the level of these have reached in the si four years. 
Imagine thinking of fc Dachau as  short. 
Then again, who could reality of the Holocaust? Fn ning it has been a rumor, newspaper story, an idea sibility, an invocation. St World War II, newspapers stories about it, if they rai Governments found it con nore what reports there w strategists found it incident business of the war.
Tbward the end of the v  genocide  had to be in1 scribe it. The word  hole enter general use until the 1 ted the decade as a comm ended it capitalized. As really mattered. Elie Wit  The Holocaust in its en language and art, and yet used to tell the tale, the tai told. 
Some have a tale of nc all. For years, a small but 1 of independent scholars, neo-Nazis has denied that ever happened. Some of tl are the very people wh< supported it.
Their books have titles Myth of the Six MiUioi Million Swindle" and  Tl TVventieth Century.  A F Buchenwald survivor nar sinier wrote in 1964
182
HR^D8 of the 6,000,(XX) were alive. Another claim had it that the Holocaust was a propaganda coup created by a partnership of Nazis and Zionists.
The reality of the Holocaust grows, shrinks and metamorphoses.
 When we look back at World War II, the Holocaust stands out, but it didn t look that way at the time,  says historian Peter Novick, who is writing a book on the shifting meaning of the Holocaust in American culture.
 From 1933 to 1938, there are hardly any Jews as Jews in concentration camps. They are communists, socialists, dissidents. For the first nine of 12 years of the Thousand-Year Reich a well-informed observer would conclude that while Jews were among the victims of Nazism, they didn t stand out. By the time news of the
mass annihilation of the Jews comes out,it gets assimilated into this previous framework,  Novick says.  Also, there was still a lot of isolationism on behalf of the American public. What we all know now comes from the pictures from the liberations. You have to remember that the Americans only liberated the western camps, and most people there weren t Jewish. You looked at those pictures then and saw victims of Nazism. You look at them now and you see Jews and the Holocaust.
 Back then it was the habit of journalists after the war to call a French Jew a Frenchman, a Belgian Jew a Belgian. To call them Jews was buying into Hitler s categories. What we call survivors now were DPs [displaced persons], people Jeei"8 the Soviets, people fleeing the Nazis. In the struggle over immigration there was a deliberate attempt by Jewish organizations to downplay Jewishness in
ones who talked toe m Tk Russia- The caust were the Am?   a^ ut dte Holo-the biggest eet	moving into
Pr^SeES/Z^.^ ins ethnic d,fferen  ^^ who came hem
. wdniea to fit in______wa timni mvented the science of vicFender 11,6111 helpless.
Eui^ J s   of  The 46 b  k play  d movie out, and she became a sort of saint-not but forrh2tld * Ber8en'Be1^ the n? hk ^PP1" 58 confidence. In the play, her final words are:  In snite of really good at heart. 
_ PromPted psychologist (and refugee) Bruno Bettelheim to say  If all men are good, there was never an Auschwitz. 
The hard facts grew to m 1961, with toe Israelis  trial of Adolf  chman. who was a major architect of the Holocaust complex. Later in the 60s says Novick, friction between blacks and Jews would lead toe Jews to use toe Holocaust as their credential of oppression.
.-Bui *he biggest single thing was the  tJ Arab Isracli war,  Novick says.
There was tremendous anxiety that the past history of the Holocaust had become
40.	Gates of Nightma
Hilburg, on the other hand^w th the We	 f now t0I978 wit
*Holn  f television serie DeP^ to1^
no. i
* Were 3,1,01,8 Jews- And toe KrTe ? '^rch  f 3 m ral ahs -  I	of Vietnam, he
 T , Class on  e Holocaust. I got 50 students, then 80, then 120, and pretty soon we had to ask for a prerequisite to limit toe numbers. 
And the museum was going up in Washington.	6 F
^What is the Holocaust in toe American
It s Nazis striding around with riding crops. It s a plea for sympathy, or a demand for respect. It s guard towers, Sophies Choice,  toe horrible ee-oo sirens of Gestapo Mercedeses and toe old grandpa down toe block who stayed in his room reading so you never got to see toe number tattooed on his arm. It is Elie Wiesel s  Night.  It was a technological inevitability, a moral probability, a freak of human nature. It s toe boyman, a ghost, a historical event that someday will fade in students  minds like toe Council of Hent or toe Hanseatic League.
Yesterday, for instance, a Roper poll for toe American Jewish Committee was released, showing that 53 percent of high school students and 38 percent of adults were unable to correctly define toe word  Holocaust.  A fifth said it was possible it never happened at all.
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1
The Ethnic Factor: Challenges for the 1990s

The process of better understanding the multiethnic character of America involves the coordinated efforts of public and private sectors, educational institutions, and voluntary associations. This collection of articles addresses the sort of balances that are appropriate and required for education at various levels. Resistance to the challenge of incorporating approaches to learning about the cultural variety of America can be found in various sectors, and in behavior that indicates confusion, uncertainty, insensitivity, and violence toward and between ethnic groups. The persistence of these tensions calls for thoughtful examination of strategies for dealing with the reality of bias, hatred, and prejudice.
Examination, for example, of the legacy of the civil rights laws crafted during the 1960s and the process of shaping a society grounded in exclusionary habits and institutions involves assessment on many levels the social, the political, the ideological, and the economic. Even on the most basic level of public perception, most agree that progress has been made toward a society of equality and social justice, with increased hopes for decreased segregation in schools and neighborhoods. Yet disparities of these views among ethnic and racial groups indicate that uniformity and a shared sense of the past and present are not generally common. The process of attempting to overcome such gulfs of misunderstanding that lead to more serious forms of conflict is among the great challenges of the present and the future.
Novel approaches toward the peaceful reconciliation of conflict should be explored more thoroughly. For example, unlike interethnic conflict between groups in the United States, conflict between the United States and Native Americans is regulated by treaties. The struggle over claims regarding the rights of nations and the interests of the U.S. government and its citizens defines a field of conflict that is no longer at the margin of public affairs. Does the definition of this conflict as an issue of foreign and not domestic policy provide a meaningful distinction*? Should the claims of ethnic groups in defense of culture territory, and unique institutions be honored and protected by law and public policy?
Questions on the future state of American ethnic groups raise even more profound issues. For example understanding of the changing structure of the black family in America has stubbornly eluded researchers as well as parents who confront the realities of pride and prejudice. How does the continual redevelopment of an ethnic population enter public discussion, and what are
the implications for public policy built upon models of the family? Should public policy ethnic model of family or direct the formation ( that is consonant with public purposes and c The civil rights movement has been over imately 20 years, but many African America challenges in housing, employment, and Changing circumstances within the larger Am ety and the civil rights agenda itself have been success and failure, as well as by movement of clear issues and solutions to a time when more complex structural, economic, and p dimensions. The growing gap between black: in terms of education, financial status, and cli growing crime and death rates of young black daunting picture of the success of past policie population's future. According to scales < health, income, education, and marital sta Americans have emerged as one of the m segments of American society. These problei shadow grave difficulties for the African Ami in the years ahead.
To be sure, African Americans have mac since the civil rights movement of the 1960s made dramatic gains in education, empk financial status. Unfortunately, they still are being part of an urban underclass when only third of their population could be considerei group. While not all African Americans are who are poor are in desperate situations. W from the African American population that no part of the middle and upper classes of Amer
Scholarly differences of opinion concernin sition of the urban underclass do not minim ships that many poor people face. The g underclass, its isolation from society, and so ity to help it are tremendous obstacles t nation. Concrete strategies for improving this upon the public and the private sector in an tion, employment, and training. Suggestion future needs of this population and pra< responses also will help the general popul<
Patent historical distortion and various for cal evidence have been included in interp rearticulations of race and ethnicity. The iss the workplace and remedies for discrimina have been raised in the debate regarding tt Act of 1991. Exploring the sources of ethi
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(nobility and the development of approaches and strategies that foster the breakdown of discrimination engages us in a web of baffling arguments and an array of social and political images and institutional forces  practices and procedures.
  Since the breakup of the Soviet empire, ethnicity has reoriented the international arena. New national claims as well as the revival of ancient antagonisms are fragmenting Europe. War, the systematic expression of conflict, and its
I aftermath are also occasions for the use and misuse of I ethnically charged political rhetoric. The presence of a politically relevant past and the invocation of religious I warrants for group conflict have indicated the need for I new approaches to peacekeeping and educational strategies for meeting and transcending group differences. The critique of diversity expressed in challenges to multiculturalism and the educational controversy regarding the I dominant expressions of our human commonality and the I Shared values and virtues found in all ethnic traditions I Pose challenges for e
