State of Israel itself . Among the examples are the reaction of a group of adolescents visiting the camps who call for a tougher stance from Israel towards the Arabs , or the comment of a pupil after the visit that one has to be a “ bit Nazi ” to survive , justifying violence against innocents on the grounds that “ the children of today are the terrorists of tomorrow ”.
The monster of memory is created by the contradictions that the protagonist must endure inside the global framework of the commercialization of the Holocaust . It is to be found in the forced adaptation of places of memory to the tourist industry , and in many other instances in the book . The monster of memory makes an appearance when a video company uses human suffering as the main selling-point for one of its video games , or when the Israeli army prepares the recreation of the liberation of a concentration camp , or when a film director prepares a kitsch product on the history of the camps . The monster of memory embraces any practice or discourse that is likely to trivialize the real history of the Holocaust .
Sarid stresses the need to criticize the use and abuse of the Holocaust ; perhaps more importantly given his nationality , he stresses how important it is that Israelis should criticize it , especially its exploitation for commercial purposes . Just as Peter Novick ( 2000 ) warned us of the dangers of the Americanization of the Holocaust story , or Tim Cole ( 1999 ) and the always controversial Norman Finkelstein ( 2000 ) reminded us of the need to dissociate the historical event ( the systematic murder of six million Jews ) from the excessive mythologization of the commercialized narrative of the Holocaust , Sarid argues that a misuse of the memory of the Holocaust can indirectly promote the growth of the extreme right . Cole ( 1999 ) himself came to the same conclusion in noting how the recreation of non-real spaces of the Holocaust for tourist consumption was an effective argument for denialist discourses .
All these implicit criticisms make Yishai Sarid ’ s “ The Memory Monster ” an important book today , especially at a time when the market for novels set in the context of the Holocaust has reached saturation point . It is particularly significant because this is not a novel about the Holocaust but about the memory of the Holocaust .
References
Ciwinsky , Piotr ( 2019 ). Memory of Tomorrow . Observing Memories , 3 , 18-21 .
Cole , Tim ( 1999 ). Selling the Holocaust : From Auschwitz to Schindler . How history is bought , packaged and sold . New York – London : Routledge .
Finkelstein , Norman ( 2000 ). The Holocaust industry : Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering . New York - London : Verso .
Novick , Peter ( 2000 ). The Holocaust in American life . Boston – New York : Mariner Books .
REVIEW
89