American Jews View the Holocaust and Israel

American Jews view the Holocaust and Israel

Based on Operation Shylock: A Confession, a novel by Philip Roth

I. Introduction: Is There Reason to Believe American Jews Should Have Been More Active Against the Annihilation of European Jewry?

“For most American Jews, winning the war ¬– not the rescue of their brethren – received priority” claims Feingold (222) in his analysis of America’s response to the Holocaust. This short assertion shows the position of most American Jews in regard to the Holocaust according to one of their community. The author allows himself to say such a thing in 1995, having taken a step back and thus detaching himself from the events. He intends to give an objective account of the reasons why so little was attempted to save Jews during World War II. We can actually wonder what American Jewry indeed knew about the events occurring in Europe at that time. The fact is that the mass media would not give any account of what was happening on the European soil and mostly in Poland, Germany, and Austria unless it was for certain. They wanted to reconfirm the facts and to be given some kind of evidence. Soon enough, the American Jewish Press reported of the acts of horror. However, American Jews did not react as one would imagine them to. There is a simple reason for their behavior which Grobman reports in his essay on the knowledge of American Jewry about the events: “Some Jews doubted the authenticity of such horror tales because they believed that American Newspapers rarely suppressed news” (337). On the one hand, it is understandable that they did not even want to believe that news. If such terrible events were indeed happening, how could the American press possibly ignore it? This was unthinkable. On the other hand, the information had been made available to them and it is argued that they “knew what was happening in Europe, but for some inexplicable reason chose not to react in any forceful manner” (Grobman 353). I assume that one possible way to understand it is to consider the difficulty with which one is able to acknowledge the disappearance of his people. The Jewish people and their civilization are one of the oldest ones around the world and its annihilation through some anti-Semites seemed impossible. When American Jewry was continuously reported of the slaughters and the wish to destroy all Jews in Europe, they felt not only sorry but also desperate and helpless. But they were themselves afraid that if they acted too promptly, anti-Semitism being a reality in the U.S. as well, they would themselves suffer from unbearable consequences in America. In fact, European Jews needed a place to welcome them, as they had to flee. But most countries had established some quotas and would not give them refuge. With a growing Jewish immigration into America, American Jews would feel uneasy, fearing it would “aggravate American anti-Semitism… especially in the midst of an as yet unresolved economic crisis” (Spear 85). The solution was to support the Zionist movement for the foundation of a haven for every (European) Jew in Palestine, the soil of the Holy Land. European Jewry would thus not invade America “at the expense of [American Jews’] own security”. During World War II, we can consider that once American Jews were aware of the events in Europe, they definitely wanted to act against Hitler and his final solution and to rescue their brethren but they acted with precaution so as to prevent an ultimate danger for themselves. Nevertheless, American Jews felt a bit different since they arrived in America to construct – in English ¬– “a new life and identity as Jews” (Roth 130). We are even told that their “new behavioral norms were often in conflict with traditional ones” (Feingold 215). It could have made them less disposed to take drastic measures against Hitler and his collaborators.

With the knowledge of that background information, I would like to move to the postwar period and analyze the feeling of American Jewry regarding the action they took. What was their feeling about Zionism and the creation of the Jewish state of Israel? What kind of relationship exists between American Jews and Israeli Jews? How do they imagine the future of Israel?

I would argue that American Jews do not act straight out of compassion or sympathy for their brethren, but rather want to find a compromise in their behavior so that they have a gain without Israeli Jews being disadvantaged, afraid or suffering.

II. American Jews and Zionism: Can Zionism Be Considered As an Ingenious Response To the Holocaust?

Following the period of the Holocaust, American Jewry felt somewhat overwhelmed with guilt, persuaded they had not done enough to prevent the drama that happened on European soil. They wished they had done more for European Jews, and, as a consequence, did the most they could do to support the creation of what was to become a safe haven for all European Jewry, namely the state of Israel. The fact is that during Holocaust, American Jews were more concerned with “winning the war” than with “the rescue of their brethren” (Feingold 222). Afterward, American Jews were led to understand the reality of the Holocaust through diverse books reporting what occurred during that terrible period. Most of those have been written by Holocaust survivors and translated into English when necessary. So every American was given access to them and could feel sympathy for their brethren.

However, could they understand perfectly the meaning of the Holocaust for European Jews? Indeed, “The reality of the Holocaust surpassed any imagination” (Roth 86) and every single report was thus limited in its accuracy. On that ground, we may consider that American Jews were doubtful whether every detail was correct. In fact, the authors fictionalized many of their books so that they would be accepted by society. In Operation Shylock, Roth alludes to a novel written by his friend Aharon Appelfeld, himself a survivor of the Holocaust, on the following manner: “Badenheim 1939 has been called fablelike, dreamlike, nightmarish, and so on” (112). To discern reality, you need a real imagination for two distinct reasons. The first I already mentioned: almost every book has been fictionalized. The second is no less important but there is no proof to it: the writers do not give a real account of reality because they are not allowed to. Pipik claims: “The ‘survivors’ all wrote books. […] They’re all the same because Jewish Control Central said, Here’s the line on Auschwitz, write it!” (Roth 260). Basically, this leads us to think that if the Holocaust survivors had wanted to write what they really experienced, they would have been prevented from wholly