Eric Recommends: ‘My Holocaust’
“My Holocaust,” by Tova Reich, is a relentlessly savage satire about the modern-day religion of Victimism, where everybody wants in on the martyr action in order to feel special about themselves.
Its central character is Maurice Messer, an old Jew who survived the Holocaust (by hiding in the woods, though he tells everyone he was a resistance fighter) and now runs the lavish U.S. Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C., with his son Norman. Norman is what they call a “second generation survivor,” even though he didn’t actually survive anything himself, having been born long after the war. Survivorship can be inherited, you see. They spend ridiculous amounts of government money wining and dining potential donors, taking personalized tours of Holocaust sites in Europe and forever claiming everything they do is for “the six million.” You can’t cut their budget or insist they stop flying first class everywhere — it’s for the six million! Many Jews, Reich suggests, worship at the altar of the Holocaust, using it to define themselves and their religion above everything else.
But that’s not all! Reich also has stinging barbs for all the gentiles who try to latch onto the Holocaust for their own needs, other religions and groups who try make their persecutions and trials match up with those of the Jews, everyone eager to wrench a piece of the sympathy market away from them. The “holocaust” against women, gays, African Americans, endangered animals — why should the Jews have a monopoly on holocausts?
The novel is brilliantly, caustically funny, at first because you can’t believe someone had the guts to make jokes anywhere in the vicinity of the subject of the Holocaust, but eventually simply because Reich has established so many memorable, flawed characters, all of them ripe for ridicule.
Funny story: I was reading this book in a movie theater before a screening a couple weeks ago, when the place was still mostly empty. A sponsor was passing out flyers for a local museum exhibit called Body Works, which features actual human bodies on display in various poses, their skin removed so that you can see how the muscles work. She asked a woman sitting a few rows behind me if she wanted a flyer, and the woman said, “Oh, no, I can’t go see that. My father was a Holocaust survivor, and he saw people skinned alive.” And I thought: Well, that’s a good reason for your father not to go. But it sounds like you’re wearing your Holocaust credentials on your sleeve just so that people will … what? Feel sorry for you? Revere you? Be impressed by you?” See, the book was already sinking in. We all want to be victims.
(I became aware of the book through Lisa Schwarzbaum’s glowing review in Entertainment Weekly, which you can read here.)
October 9th, 2007 at 5:15 am
I’ve always wondered about those people who drape themselves in offended hurt. I am an American Indian, and I always have to laugh when people bring up the “houlocaust” my “people” suffered at the hands of the white man. Listen, it happened a long time ago. I’m fine, really. But thanks for treating my like the delicate rose petal I obviously am. Hee hee.
October 9th, 2007 at 8:06 am
I was just reading the article on the “Mountain Meadows Massacre” in the Ensign last month and there was a quote from a great-grandson of a child survivor of the massacre who says ““I still feel pain; I still feel anger…”
Reading that I thought how can you *still* feel pain for something that didn’t even happen to you. It happened to an ancestor, one you may have never even met? Definitely someone who wants to have their own martyr merit-badge to wear.
October 9th, 2007 at 5:26 pm
I think it’s because they want some excitement in their lives and don’t realize how good they’ve got it. There is nothing glamorous or heroic about surviving genocide (or civil war, or disease, or natural disaster). It’s literally at random; one person could get chosen for the gas chambers, or skewered with a machete, or have their hands and feet cut off and left to bleed to death while another person might “just” end up being the sole survivor of his entire family. For someone who wasn’t even born back, who didn’t suffer anything like that, to actually volunteer to bear that cross so that they can get sympathy points from a stranger, is beyond pathetic. It’s callous and monstrous and shows a profound disrespect for all of the victims of the Holocaust, both the survivors and the people who died.
October 9th, 2007 at 6:46 pm
Wombatty, what do you expect with a delicate little name like that? This sounds like an interesting book, and a good reminder….I always worry that I’ll catch victimitis just because of it’s prevalence…
October 10th, 2007 at 6:50 am
Well, isn’t that what reparations is all about? “My ancestors were slaves of this country and now I suffer as a result so I want the current government to pay me on behalf of my slave ancestors.”
October 10th, 2007 at 7:53 am
Well, I would just like to say that my father was laid off from his job about fifteen years ago. That is right; I am a layoff survivor (second generation). I believe therefore that I should also receive unemployment benefits and be lauded for my courage in dealing with the trauma suffered by my father.
Oh, and I am sure that my great-great grandfather had some tough times during his emigration to this country from Denmark, so I am claiming the inherited right to call myself an expert on immigration policy now.
October 11th, 2007 at 12:55 am
To be honest, I prefer reading relentlessly savage satires about evil and/or stupid people, not about people who do good for the wrong reasons.
Regarding the woman who doesn’t want to see “Body Worlds”: I think it’s not too hard to understand her. Apparently her father told her about him seeing people skinned alive - otherwise she wouldn’t know. If my father had told me about that - watching bloody, gory murder - I admit I would have had trouble with that. Would I want to see “Body Worlds”? Probably not. Would I want to be handed a flyer (with a picture on it)? Probably not.
Why is it that everyone is so negative towards everyone and everything? Do we always have to assume the worst motives?
I don’t want to critizise you, Eric, but the author of the book. And I know there is a storm of shrieking protest coming - “bla bla bla political correctness bla bla bla”. This has nothing to do with political correctness. It’s just that I don’t agree with the notion that the book is somehow “daring”. Making fun of people who are sensitive about murder victims? Fantastic idea…
Thanks for letting me write what I think although apparently everyone else thinks differently…
October 11th, 2007 at 10:33 am
On a website frequented by a large number of Mormons, I’m surprised that everybody’s missing a major opportunity here. My ancestors were raped, beaten, murdered and driven from their homes in the early 19th century. I’m a (6th? 7th? 8th?) generation survivor! I’m pretty sure the states of Missouri and Illinois owe me some major compensation.
October 12th, 2007 at 5:43 am
Cologneme, I think the issue is not that subsequent generations, like that man’s daughter, can’t be somehow sensitized by years of their parents’ stories like she claims. The issue is that she apparently advertises her own father’s suffering for her own sake. She has turned his story of torture into her personal attention-seeking device. “How dare you ask me to see that? Don’t you know my father went through that in reality? Don’t you feel the perfect ass now? Feel guilty for what you just did! Me me me me me me ME!” She couldn’t have just turned down the pamphlet and said she wasn’t interested WITHOUT the need for the guilt-laden tirade? Of course she could have. She chose to lecture instead because she found an audience for it. I believe this is the point the author is making. He’s not mocking those who have been through traumatic events, or even generations who have suffered as a result of those events; he is mocking those who obviously take advantage of their ancestor’s pain and misery to make themselves seem more important and/or pitiful, or to make a buck off of forced guilt-trips, etc.
As for other Mormons who want money from Illinois and Missouri, boo hoo. They got an apology somewhere in there–an apology from people who didn’t even commit the crimes. It’ll be a cold day in hell before they ever deserve a dime of compensation. They aren’t even remotely disadvantaged because of their ancestor’s pain and suffering, so what is the deal with that?
October 12th, 2007 at 10:19 pm
Hmmmm. Maybe I should have used “irony” tags.
October 13th, 2007 at 1:27 pm
No, I got the sarcasm in your post. Very hilarious. What it did, though, was remind me of the people who honestly DO take that seriously and whine about it (see some of the decendants of the Mountain Meadows Massacre, etc.), hence my further rant. I was speaking to the audience in general, not to you specifically.
November 9th, 2008 at 3:52 pm
I guess the world needs a funny book about greedy Jews, there hasn’t been a really good one published since the Third Reich.