To mark Holocaust Memorial Day, here’s a piece Sam Schulman wrote for The Spectator 12 years ago, on his fear that ‘Holocaustology’ will create a new form of anti-Semitism.
Did six million die for this?, Sam Schulman, 1 January 2000
The Holocaust dominated the moral imagination of the 20th century. Before the rise of Hitler, anti-Semitism was a parochial concern of the Jews; after the war it was everyone’s concern, and everyone regarded it with horror.
The cause of anti-Semitism is a mystery to most Jews and most Gentiles, but it was not a mystery to Isaiah Berlin. He blamed it on the New Testament. That is true of one kind of anti-Semitism, based on history and doctrinal differences. Another kind is more subtle and only a century or two old. Rebecca West discovered it during her travels through prewar Yugoslavia: ‘Now I understand some other cause for anti-Semitism; many primitive peoples must receive their first indication of the toxic quality of thought from Jews.
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