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Sent: Tuesday, August 28, 2007 1:08 AM Query: Auschwitz as metonym One place to start is Tim Cole's book Images of the Holocaust: The Myth of the 'Shoah Business' (Duckworth, London 1999). From a footnote in an article of mine: 'In Images of the Holocaust Cole writes that: 'with the emergence of the myth of the 'Holocaust', 'Auschwitz' came into its own as not simply the Warsaw Bloc symbol of fascist aggression, but as the symbol of the 'Holocaust'. ... As early as 1955, it was the name 'Auschwitz' - not 'Belsen' - which Theodor Adorno chose to use in his well known statement that 'to write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric'' (p 100). ' There is also: Gerd Korman 'The Holocaust in American History Writing' in Societas, no 2, 1972, And this, also, this from another the footnote of an article of mine: 'There are less well-known usages of the term 'holocaust' to describe what was happened to European Jewry as early as 1942. In that year the term was used in an address delivered by Rabbi Eliezer Silver to a conference of Agudat Israel in Belmar, New Jersey. A year later the word was used by Abba Hillel Silver to describe the ongoing destruction of European Jewry at the National Conference on Palestine. (This information comes from a posting by Gershon Greenblatt to the H-Judaic List in the H-Judaic Digest for January 3-8, 1998. Greenberg references an article of his own, 'Myth and Catastrophe in Simha Elberg's Religious Thought', Tradition, Fall, 1991).' hope this helps, Jon
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