What is particular about the Holocaust is the opposite of what we have made it. What is particular about the Holocaust is that it was trivial, proximate, and local. The Holocaust was families being singled out and made to assemble. It was trains leaving the ghettos in Poland, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, Greece, Czechoslovakia, Lithuania, Latvia – all countries under Nazi control – trundling through Europe, coming to a halt at tiny stations outside Polish villages, Treblinka, Sobibor, Auschwitz, Belzec, where those inside were bundled out if they came from the east or instructed to
...more
