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American ‘Auschwitz’

JL;DR SUMMARY Henry Greenspan explores how Holocaust imagery entered the American imagination during the economic collapses of the 1970s and 1980s. A way out west there was a fella, fella I want to tell you about, fella by the name of Jeff Lebowski. At least, that was the handle his lovin' parents gave him, but he never had much use for it himself. This Lebowski, he called himself the Dude. Now, Dude, that's a name no one would self-apply where I come from. But then, there was a lot about the Dude that didn't make a whole lot of sense to me. And a lot about where he lived, likewise. But then again, maybe that's why I found the place s'durned innarestin'.

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Tags

Holocaust ComparisonCultural ShiftsAmerican EconomyHolocaust ImageryEconomic InstabilityHolocaust Rhetoric1970s Economic CollapseIndustrial DeclineSurvivalism1978 Holocaust Miniseries

Places mentioned

Wyandotte, Michigan, United States
"In the early 1980s, I worked as a psychotherapist in Wyandotte, Michigan, a town in the Downriver area south of Detroit."
Youngstown, Ohio, United States
"The Museum of Industry and Labor in Youngstown, Ohioalso known as Youngstowns Steel Museumwas described by a reporter in the 1990s as our Holocaust museum."

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Cairo Item ID 80090
Cairo Source ID 10
Retrieved 2026-04-15 05:33:32 UTC
Curated 2026-04-15 08:30:58 UTC