LOCAL NEWS
Lipstadt Traces Changes
In Holocaust Views
By Benjamin Kweskin
publications, TV shows and movies indirectly dealt with the Holocaust as a
or many Jews, June 11, 1967, rep- Jewish tragedy, and the messages were
resented the real end of the Holo- intended to reach a wider, non-Jewish
caust, Deborah Lipstadt said. The audience with the hope of universalizIsraeli victory in the Six-Day War was a ing the message and conveying the sufwatershed not only for Israel, but also fering while remaining aligned with
contemporary American society.
for Diaspora Jewry.
“Exodus” was published in 1958,
Many Jews had feared that Israel
was politically and militarily weak and and the movie came out in 1960. That
would cease to exist if the Arab armies work clearly linked the Holocaust and
the state of Israel, a danwon the war, but instead
gerous connection to fosIsrael claimed a quick
ter, Lipstadt said.
victory and captured exShe cited several intensive territory, includfluential movies, plays
ing the remaining parts
and books written by Jewof Jerusalem.
ish people in the 1950s and
Right before the
early 1960s that started
mournful commemorato shift the conversation.
tion of Tisha B’Av came
Betty Friedan’s “The Femito a close Sunday, July 26,
nist Mystique,” Sidney
Young Israel of Toco Hills
Lumet’s
“Pawnbroker,”
hosted the annual lecture
Deborah Lipstadt
Sylvia Plath’s “Holocaust
given by Lipstadt, the
Poems,” Arthur Miller’s
well-known professor of
modern Jewish and Holocaust studies “After the Fall” and Stanley Kubrick’s
at Emory University who will soon be “Dr. Strangelove” used Jewish motifs,
portrayed by Hillary Swank in a movie and within those iconic works were
based on her book “History on Trial: metaphors and analogies regarding the
My Day in Court With a Holocaust De- Holocaust and anti-Semitism.
Political and societal changes were
nier.”
Titled “America After the Shoah happening in America during the 1960s
1945-1978: A Time for Talk or a Time and 1970s. Whereas 1950s America
for Silence?” Lipstadt’s hour-long pre- yielded to McCarthyism and a