SOURCE: Ezrahi, Sidra DeKoven. “History Imagined: The Holocaust in American Literature.” In By Words Alone: The Holocaust in Literature, pp. 176-216. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1980.

In the following excerpt, Ezrahi explores the responses of postwar American writers to the Holocaust, emphasizing a conflict many of them experienced between their creative imagination and obligation to historical truth.

When six millions are slaughtered, in effect twice or thrice that number are [killed]. For the Jews [on all the other continents] die with them. All those that have not yet [perished] are not dead simply because they do not know what has happened. … A cold shiver passes over me when I think of their remorse when they do get to know, after the War. … Oh, merciful and gracious God! If the circumstances had been reversed, we the Jews of the great European religious academies would have known what was...