SOURCE: Abrams, Elliott. “Genocide on Main Street.” National Review (28 June 1999): 54-5.

In the following review, Abrams discusses flaws in Novick's historical argument in The Holocaust in American Life, but concludes that the book offers an useful discussion of American perceptions of the Holocaust.

The murders and deportations in Kosovo have brought with them memories of the 1930s, when Europe's Jews were subjected to the genocidal attack we now call the Holocaust. Commentators on the Balkan crisis say we must “learn the lesson of the Holocaust”; an advertisement placed by the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith asks us to “respond as you wish the world had responded last time.” Such analogies are familiar nowadays—no matter how dissimilar events in Kosovo may be from the actual Holocaust. Ironically, this impulse to find new Holocausts here and there reflects the all-but-universal recognition of the uniqueness of the Holocaust—the same...