HERBERT GOLD
641
his struggle. He has fellow logicians. If Hitler with
all
his discipline was such a
big deal, why do the Jews still take our jobs, our women, make our movies,
decide what we'll see on the tube-tell us what to think? If the Jews were
destroyed, why are they still so much with us? It makes their power even
more oppressive.
It
means even extermination can't help. Like the devil, the
Jew survives his death.
In this madness there is a certain truth. Judaism revived, Israel
happened, a world and a history were lost but something both new and old
came into the hollow place.
As
the years go by, the story disseminates into myth and politics. The
nation of Israel disturbs the world's comfort. These years, some feel like
Claire Booth Luce, weary of the matter; some come to a more efficient form
of denial. I learned from a personal friend about the power of that peculiar
form of philosophy, Holocaust Revisionism, and its appeal to the sophisticated
and well-meaning. At a dinner party in San Francisco, a lady turned to the
Jew at her right with a question which troubled her. "Herb, have you heard?
It seems the so-called Holy Coast of the Jews during World War Two, you
remember, isjust a propaganda. I was talking to a professor from
L. A.
the
other day, he's a real expert and he made a study, he told me a lot of books
prove...."
My fork, lifting asparagus, paused as she chattered on. "The Zionists
made it
all
up, you see, to get people upset and then they could do what they
wanted...."
This woman is university-educated, energetic, devoted to the arts. She
was the wife of a colleague. During our twenty-five years of sociability, I've
seen her give energy and money to a succession of causes: young
playwrights, blacks, the environment, health foods. There was no ill-will or
spite in her announcement between the soup and the fish that the murder of
the six million did not take place. There was curiosity. There was the never–
ceasing need for dinnertime conversation. There was a pleasure in discovery
and the sincere wish that I might share her joy. "Now I understand
something, Herb. I wondered why so many of my friends are Jews, I mean
if they were supposed to be all killed by the Nazis. I didn't stop to realize,
Herb...."
Normally, I am impatient, impolite, and abrupt. In this case, perhaps
because of the occasion and because I have known the lady so long, I merely
mumbled that I preferred to discuss the subject when we could speak
privately.
Charlotte is a perfectly decent young woman in the mode which keeps
the average prosperous American world in order. She pays some attention
to her children; she enjoys serving soup and salad to her friends; she grieves
