Context And Continuity

For your consideration from The Bussels Journal: Muhammad, the Holocaust and Good Behavior

Such laws have a telling weakness of omission: Lenin, Stalin, Mao, the Gulag, red stars and CPs are not included. While anti-Nazi, these commandments are not consequently anti-totalitarian. I have always felt that Jewish organizations should have insisted on an anti-totalitarian consistency here. Letting the Holocaust become a unique event might have brought tempting initial tactical advantages but it has hardly served the cause of preventing the repetition of the past. By taking the Holocaust out of its totalitarian context the original event was allowed to become an embalmed mummy. Detached from current affairs – what is unique is irrelevant as a pattern for the future – the Shoa became the subject of ritualistic incantations but lost its utility to serve the future.

This is an interesting thought in and of itself, but you should read it in the context of the full article.