The Americanization of the Holocaust

If the Holocaust as image and symbol seems to have sprung loose from its origins it does not mean we should decry Americanization; rather the pervasive presence of representations of the Holocaust in our culture demands responsible evaluation and interpretation.-from the IntroductionThe Holocaust is everywhere in American cultural consciousness today-in movies books theater and television in college courses museums and public monuments. In <I>The Americanization of the Holocaust</I> Hilene Flanzbaum presents a collection of essays on America's cultural appropriation of this central event in twentieth-century history. The authors discuss a broad range of topics and examples from <I>Schindler's List</I> to Elie Wiesel's throwing out the first pitch at the Mets season opener in 1988 from the idealizations of Anne Frank to a cookbook of recipes from survivors of the Terezin concentration camp from a look at Art Spiegelman's acclaimed comic book <I>Maus</I> to a contemporary faux pas at the Nike Corporation. While several authors draw directly from the testimony of survivors the volume as a whole examines how much of our knowledge of the Holocaust comes to us through cultural filters--from editors and publishers producers and directors artists and advertising executives. Covering the more than fifty years since the end of the Holocaust this rich and comprehensive overview spans a wide variety of critical approaches media and genres. <P>Contents and contributors: <I>The Imaginary Jew and the American Poet</I> Hilene Flanzbaum . <I>Aliens in the Wasteland: American Encounters with the Holocaust on 1960s Science Fiction Television</I> Jeffrey Shandler . <I>Imagining Survivors: Testimony and the Rise of Holocaust Consciousness</I> Henry Greenspan . <I>America's Holocaust: Memory and the Politics of Identity</I> James E. Young . <I>Inheriting the Holocaust: Jewish American Fiction and the Double Bind of the Second-Generation Survivor</I> Andrew Furman . <I>Surviving Rego Park: Holocaust Theory from Art Spiegelman to Berel Lang</I> Amy Hungerford . <I>Three Thousand Miles Away: The Holocaust in Recent Works for the American Theater</I> Joyce Antler . <I>The Cinematic Triangulation of Jewish American Identity: Israel America and the Holocaust</I> Sara R. Horowitz . <I>Reflections on the Holocaust from Nebraska</I> Alan E. Steinweis . <I>You Who Never Was There: Slavery and the New Historicism-Deconstruction and the Holocaust</I> Walter Benn Michaels . <I>Suffering as a Moral Beacon: Blacks and Jews</I> Laurence Mordekhai Thomas . <I>Play Will Make You Free: Reprising </I>The Triumph of the Will<I> in Chicago's Nike Town</I> Andrew Levy