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Faustian Bargain

JL;DR SUMMARY Alvin Rosenfeld's book "The End of the Holocaust" critiques the way the Holocaust has been portrayed in popular culture, arguing that it has been transformed from a unique atrocity into a generic lesson about human resilience and universal suffering. 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

HolocaustJewish IdentityCultural RepresentationSurvivor StoriesJewish SufferingUniversalismMemoryHistorical MemoryAlvin Rosenfeld

Places mentioned

Bloomington, Indiana, United States
"Rosenfeld, the founder and former director of the Jewish studies program at Indiana University, which has made itself a major center of Jewish publishing and learning, is a mainstream scholar who has seen the flaw in mainstream Holocaust discourse."
Hungary
"(Only two novels by this Hungarian survivor of Nazism and Stalinist oppression, a 2002 Nobel Prize winner, have been translated, a situation I would like to formally petition some serious-minded publisher to remedy forthwith.)"
Israel
"Holocaust would say to Kertesz. But no one wants to hear about such grim implications anymore. In a way, who can blame them? Why let the dead have so much power over us? How do we decide how much mental space the Holocaust should occupy? What do we owe the dead? Rosenfeld is on a lonely mission to prevent their disappearance into the maw of generalized human tragedy. Its been said before and its probably far too late to make a difference, but to me the process beganthe process of the de-natured representation of the murder of 6 millionwith the near universal acceptance of the word Holocaust for Hitlers exterminationist crime."
London, United Kingdom
"Ill never forget the moment I gingerly brought up Rosenfeds critique to Trevor-Roper face-to-face at a parlor in Londons Oxford and Cambridge Club."

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Retrieved 2026-04-15 05:33:45 UTC
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