To suffer by comparison?

Daedalus

Volumn 128, Issue 2, 1999, Pages 31-66

  Power, Samantha ^a  

^a HARVARD UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 33751232356     PISSN: 00115266     EISSN: 15486192     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Article

References (82)

1. Marla Stone, remarks at the International Conference on Genocide, California State University at Sacramento, 23-24 October 1998. Stone presented a paper entitled "The Bosnian Genocide and the Holocaust: The Power of Historical Analogy."
2. President Clinton, "Address to the Nation," The White House, Office of the Press Secretary, Washington, D.C., 24 March 1999.
3. Though I focus on the American response to atrocity in this essay, it should be noted that no U.S. ally has reacted any more robustly to genocide.
4. For a detailed survey of American and European media coverage of and governmental responses to the Khmer Rouge atrocities in Cambodia, see Jamie Frederic Metzl, Western Responses to Human Rights Abuses in Cambodia, 1975-80 (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1996).
5. See Senator Dole, Congressional Record of the United States, 95th Cong., 2d sess., vol. 124 (22 March 1978): 8119.
6. See McGovern, Cong. Rec., 95th Cong., 2d sess., vol. 124 (9 May 1978): 13019.
7. See Dornan, Cong. Rec., 95th Cong., 2d sess., vol. 124 (12 May 1978): 14193.
8. Nigel Baker, "Sending in the Troops," RTNDA Communicator (February 1996): 25.
9. Quoted in Susan Moeller, Compassion Fatigue (New York: Routledge, 1998), 267.
10. Roy Gutman, "If Only They Could Flee," Newsday, 26 July 1992, A4.
11. Margaret Thatcher in a BBC Television interview, 13 April 1993, as cited in Marion Finlay, "Thatcher Sparks Row over Bosnia," The Toronto Star, 14 April 1993.
12. Cliford Krauss, "U.S. Backs Away from Charge of Atrocities in Bosnia Camps," New York Times, 5 August 1992, A12.
13. John Darnton, "Does the World Still Recognize a Holocaust?" New York Times, 25 April 1993, sec. 4, p. 1.
14. Krauss, "U.S. Backs Away from Charge of Atrocities in Bosnia Camps."
15. CNN International Correspondents, 9 May 1994, transcript #104.
16. Jennifer Parmelee, "Fade to Blood: Why the International Answer to the Rwandan Atrocities is Indifference," Washington Post, 24 April 1994, C3.
17. Douglas Jehl, "Officials Told to Avoid Calling Rwanda Killings 'Genocide,'" New York Times, 10 June 1994. Reuters, "Witness Likens Rwanda to Nazi Atrocities."
18. Roger Winter, "Journey into Genocide: A Rwanda Diary," Washington Post, 5 June 1994, C1.
19. Charles Herbert Stember et al., Jews in the Mind of America (New York: Basic Books, 1966), 141-142. This poll data is included in the chapter "Holocaust," which offers a thorough survey of American public opinion toward Jews (and Jewish immigration) before, during, and after the Holocaust.
20. Ilan Avisar, Screening the Holocaust: Cinema's Images of the Unimaginable (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1988), 96-97.
21. Avisar notes that Charlie Chaplin's The Great Dictator (1940) was an exception for its attention to the plight of Jews.
22. Avisar cites Lewis Jacobs, "World War II and the American Film," Cinema Journal I (Winter 1967-1968): 21.
23. Jeffrey Schandler, While America Watches: Televising the Holocaust (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 30, 34.
24. See also David Margolick, "Television and the Holocaust: An Odd Couple," New York Times, 31 January 1999, A31-32.
25. Schandler, While America Watches, 77-78.
26. James Young, Writing and Rewriting the Holocaust (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1988), n. 8, p. 87.
27. Gerd Korman, "The Holocaust in American Historical Writing," Societas 2 (Summer 1972): 260-261.
28. See also Samuel G. Freedman, "Laying Claim to Sorrow Beyond Words," New York Times, 13 December 1997, A19.
29. See, for example, Peter Novick, The Holocaust in American Life (New York: Houghton Mifflin, forthcoming), 133.
30. Korman, "The Holocaust in American Historical Writing," 261.
31. See Novick's discussion of several of these events, The Holocaust in American Life, 226-230.
32. James Carroll, "Shoah in the News: Patterns and Meaning of News Coverage of the Holocaust," discussion paper, The Joan Shorenstein Center for Press, Politics and Public Policy, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University, Cambridge, Mass., 1997, 9. Carroll's study only goes up to 1996, but I have applied his method to Holocaust-related coverage in 1997.
33. According to the 1997 figures on Capital Attractions, the Holocaust Memorial Museum received two million visitors in 1997 and 1,927,227 in 1996. In comparison, the White House received 1,227,000 visitors in 1997; the Lincoln Memorial, 1,558,000; and the U.S. Supreme Court, 635,420.
34. The Shoah Foundation has collected more than twenty-nine thousand testimonies in some thirty-five countries in more than twenty-five languages.
35. Julia Duin, "Handbook May Be Imported to Show Holocaust to Youths," Washington Times, 2 September 1998.
36. Novick, The Holocaust in American Life, 120.
37. Novick quotes Norman Lamm, president of Modern Orthodox Yeshiva University: "With a diminishing birth rate, an intermarriage rate exceeding 40%, Jewish illiteracy gaining ascendance daily - who says that the Holocaust is over? . . . The monster has assumed a different and more benign form . . . but its evil goal remains unchanged: a Judenrein world." See Norman Lamm,
38. "Schools and Graves," in Ivan L. Tillem, ed., The 1987-88 Jewish Almanac (New York: Pacific Press, 1987), 111.
39. "Book by Green Seen as Help to Israel's Lobby," American Examiner-Jewish Week, 30 April 1978. Cited in Novick, The Holocaust in American Life, 156. For a lengthy discussion of Zionist uses of the Holocaust, see ibid., 146-169.
40. "The Shame of Srebrenica," 60 Minutes II, Wednesday, 10 March 1999.
41. Azell Murphy Cavaan, "Holocaust Survivors Say Attack May Prevent Another Genocide," Boston Herald, 25 March 1999, 32.
42. Mark Twain advised readers to be sure to get out of experience only the wisdom it contains, "lest we be like the cat that sits down on a hot stove lid. She will never sit down on a hot stove lid again and that is well; but also she will never sit down on a cold one." Quoted in Arthur Schlesinger, The Bitter Heritage (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1967), 99.
43. Fritz, "'Words Cannot Describe. . .,'" IPI Report (May/June 1995): 24, 32.
44. Quoted in Moeller, Compassion Fatigue, 281.
45. Lawrence Langer, The Age of Atrocity (Boston: Beacon Press, 1978), 40.
46. "The Obscenity of Understanding: An Evening With Claude Lanzmann," American Imago 48 (4) (Winter 1991): 487.
47. James Bennet, "Clinton Declares U.S. and the World Failed Rwandans," New York Times, 26 March 1998, A1.
48. Dan Burton, Hearing before the Subcommittee on Africa of the Committee of Foreign Affairs, sess. 103-2, 4 May 1994, 19.
49. Exchange quoted in William Shawcross, The Quality of Mercy (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1984), 47.
50. Jean Amery, Jenseits von Schuld und Suhne: Bewaltigungsversuche eined Uberwaltigten (Munich: Szczesny Verlag, 1966), 59,
51. translated by and quoted in Langer, The Age of Atrocity, 51.
52. "Arthur Koestler, "The Nightmare that Is Reality," New York Times Magazine, 9 January 1944, sec. 6, p. 5.
53. "Remarks at the Dedication of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, April 22, 1993," Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: William J. Clinton, 1993 (Washington, D.C.: G.P.O., 1994), 479.
54. Eighty-four percent of American adults and 75 percent of American students agreed with the statement "It is important that people keep hearing about the Holocaust so that it will not happen again." Jennifer Golub and Renae Cohen, What Do Americans Know about the Holocaust? (New York: American Jewish Committee, 1993), 46-47. When asked, "Are there any situations similar in nature to the Holocaust going on in the world today," 47 percent of adults surveyed answered "yes," while only 26 percent replied "no." Ibid., 60-61.
55. For poll data related to American adults' and students' grasp of the details of the Holocaust, see Holocaust Denial: What the Survey Data Reveal (New York: American Jewish Committee, 1995).
56. Roy Gutman, Witness to Genocide (New York: Macmillan, 1993), xiii, describing reactions to the August 2 article.
57. Philip Gourevitch, We Wish to Inform You that Tomorrow We Will Be Killed with Our Families: Stories from Rwanda (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1998), preface; emphasis added.
58. The Holocaust moves many outside the United States as well. In late May 1994, the Israeli cabinet issued a statement calling on the international community to "halt the [Rwandan] slaughter" and offering medical and humanitarian assistance. Having "suffered bitterly during the Holocaust," the statement said, "Israel cannot be indifferent as it witnesses the shock of Rwanda." David Makovsky, Reuters, Jerusalem Post, 23 May 1994, 4.
59. For the UNTAC cost estimate, see GAO Briefing Report, 29 February 1996, National Security and International Affairs Division, at 〈http://www. cambodia.org/facts/gaobr296.html〉 (accessed 9 February 1999). For the U.S. financial commitment to the UNTAC, see Heather M. O'Brien, "Cambodian Peacekeeping," Christian Science Monitor, 22 April 1992.
60. On the total UNPROFOR budget, see the United Nations Department of Peace-keeping Operations web site at 〈http://www.un.org/Depts/DPKO/Missions/unprof-p.htm〉 (accessed 9 February 1999). For the U.S. share of the total, see Peace Operations: U.S. Costs in Support of Haiti, Former Yugoslavia, Somalia, and Rwanda (Letter Report, 6 March 1996, GAO/NSIAD-96-38).
61. Clinton requested $320 million on July 20, 1994, but the U.S. Congress only authorized $170 million of that request in September 1994. See Milton Leitenberg, "Rwanda, 1994: International Incompetence Produces Genocide," Peacekeeping and International Relations 23 (1994).
62. See Thomas Lippman, "U.S. Costs Mounting in Rwanda, Caribbean; No Provision Made for Unexpected Spending," Washington Post, 27 August 1994, A10;
63. and Thomas W. Lippman, "U.S. Troop Withdrawal Ends Frustrating Mission to Save Rwandan Lives," Washington Post, 3 October 1994, A11.
64. As mentioned above, the NATO military intervention of August and September 1995 in Bosnia helped bring the war to a swift end, but the operation was prompted more by strategic concerns than by the genocide, which had already been carried out. When it came to Kosovo, numerous pressure groups and editorialists urged the United States to bomb the Serbs in response to an increase in violence in the province. However, virtually none of these advocates likened Serb abuses in Kosovo to those committed during the Holocaust. After NATO began bombing Serb targets in March 1999, however, the analogy surfaced, as the scenes of a mass Albanian exodus and the harrowing tales of atrocities convinced many that the parallel suddenly applied.
65. Freedman, "Laying Claim to Sorrow Beyond Words."
66. Niki Cervantes, "Mayor's problems with Black Muslim leader," United Press International, 16 September 1985.
67. "ADL Hits Christian Fundamentalists," The Forward, 10 June 1994, 4; my italics. The Forward piece surveys an Anti-Defamation League study on right-wing, evangelical Christianity.
68. C. Everett Koop, "The Sanctity of Life," Journal of the Medical Society of New Jersey 75 (June 1978): 62.
69. Quoted in Novick, The Holocaust in American Life, 241.
70. President Bush's statement in Colorado Springs, Colorado, announcing the establishment of full diplomatic relations with Slovenia, Croatia, and Bosnia, 6 August 1992.
71. Oberdorfer, "Week of Publicity and Policymaking Started Off with a Chilling Headline," Washington Post, 7 August 1992, A26.
72. Elaine Sciolino, "U.S. Goals on Bosnia," New York Times, 19 May 1993, A10.
73. For instance, the American Jewish Committee, the American Jewish Congress, and the Anti-Defamation League published a joint "Open Letter to World Leaders" in the New York Times, headlined "Stop the Death Camps." The advertisement declared: "To the blood-chilling names of Auschwitz, Treblinka, and other Nazi death camps there seem now to have been added the names of Omarska and Brcko, where it is reported thousands have been starved, tortured and executed, and cremated as fodder for animals. Is it possible that fifty years after the Holocaust, the nations of the world, including our own, will stand by and do nothing, pretending we are helpless? . . . Every day we delay [action], innocent men, women and children will be slaughtered." New York Times, 5 August 1992, A14.
74. Richard Cohen, "Nothing New Here," Washington Post, 22 April 1993, A23.
75. Quoted in Nina Bernstein, "Holocaust Parallel to Bosnia," New York Times, 22 October 1992. According to Bernstein, Steinberg "stressed the difference between Hitler's 'Final Solution' and what he called 'the horrors of warfare in a very complex political situation.'"
76. CNN News, transcript #126-4, 8 August 1992; CNN News, transcript #93-4, 12 August 1992.
77. Alvin Rosenfeld, Thinking about the Holocaust (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1997), 131.
78. Alan S. Rosenbaum, ed., Is the Holocaust Unique? (New York: Westview Press, 1996), 4.
79. Jacob Neusner, The Public Side of Learning (Chico, Calif.: Scholars Press, 1985), 129.
80. Quoted in Novick, The Holocaust in American Life, 198.
81. Steven T. Katz, "The Uniqueness of the Holocaust: The Historical Dimension" in Rosenbaum, ed., Is the Holocaust Unique? 33.
82. Koestler, "The Nightmare That Is a Reality," New York Times Magazine, 9 January 1944.