2 
zugleich. Emmanuel Levinas sieht eben in jener 'furchtbaren 
Unabhéngigkeit'..., die den Menschen an jedem Punkt der Geschichte 
gleich nah oder gleich weit von Gott sieht, den Kern des jiidischen 
partikularistischen Universalismus'.97 
Attempts to somehow wrestle redemptive elements from remembering 
the Holocaust abound within the Jewish community (as well as 
outside of it): The establishment and florishing of the state of Israel is 
seen by many as such an incident of redemption, be they religious, or 
Zionist, or secular. For a people to which memory is structurally 
constitutive, the attempt is as essential as its failure is inevitable. 
While this holds true for all Jews, American Jews have to face 
additional dilemmata: On one hand, American academies are hiers to 
the German tradition of Jewish historiography -- according to 
Yersuhalmi the "faith of fallen (i.e. assimilated) Jews" -- on the other 
they expect this historiography to provide them with a "usable past". 
For no other period this seems more urgent than for the disruption that 
was the Holocaust, and for none it is more difficult, if not impossible. 
Secondly, to American Jews the Holocaust often was what "made 
them Americans." To prove that the experience of Americans is an 
American experience and therefore part of American history, they 
have to prove the universality of the Holocaust while at the same time 
maintaining the particularity of the Jewish loss. . 
[n settling for the liberation and the enforcement of the values of 
the American "civil religion" as the common denominator, the build- 
ers of the new Holocaust memorials and museums have covered the 
rupture but not healed it. 
The danger that Jewish identity remains tied to the Holocaust, that 
a century-old tradition should only be remembered by its destruction 
for Jews and non-Jews alike, cannot be banned by simply inserting a 
section on Shtetl-life into all the horror. The envisioned New York 
"Living Memorial to the Holocaust" which plans to make the 
97 Hanno Loewy, "Einleitung des Herausgebers," Holocaust: Die Grenzen des 
Verstehens. Eine Debatie iiber die Besetzung der Geschichte (Reinbeck bei 
Hamburg: Rowohlt Taschenbuch, 1992) 12