SOURCE: Hochberg, Severin. Review of The Holocaust in American Life, by Peter Novick. Journal of American History 87, no. 3 (December 2000): 1099-101.

In the following excerpt, Hochberg states that although Novick's central argument in The Holocaust in American Life is sound, he misunderstands what causes the impact of the Holocaust on American culture.

A number of recent works attempt to explain the phenomenon of the “Americanization” of the Holocaust and the prominent role that this European event has increasingly come to play in the consciousness of American Jews and Americans in general. Peter Novick's book [The Holocaust in American Life] is both a history of this development and a polemic against this trend. He traces the growth of Holocaust awareness during the past six decades, touching on what he sees as significant milestones: the Adolf Eichmann trial in 1961, the Middle East wars of 1967 and 1973, the television mini-series “Holocaust” in 1978, and...