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2 results

  • 11 - The Nazi Refashioning of the Image and the Likeness

  • from Part III - Holocaust
  • David Patterson, University of Texas, Dallas
  • Book:
    Judaism, Antisemitism, and Holocaust
    Published online:
    24 March 2022
    Print publication:
    31 March 2022, pp 229-246

  • Summary

    As it goes with God, so it goes with the human being: The assault on God, then, entails a radical refashioning of the human being created in the image and likeness of God. Hence Chapter 11 examines what Emil Fackenheim calls the Nazis’ “most characteristic, most original product,” in order to see how and why the Muselmann embodies the essence of the Holocaust. The chapter opens by examining Primo Levi’s remark in Survival in Auschwitz that the Muselmänner have no story. Here I show that the human being who harbors a trace of the divine image is a human being with a story and a name. Having a story entails telling a story. The Muselmänner embody a stark, faceless silence, without a story, without a name, “the divine spark dead within them,” as Levi says. The chapter explains that the Muselmann is not the product of starvation, exhaustion, and brutality. No, the Muselmann is the Jew who has been forbidden to pray,the tohave children, to marry - the Jew who has been robbed of his name, his soul, and who has seen his children and his parents murdered before his eyes.

Judaism, Antisemitism, and Holocaust
  • Making the Connections
  • David Patterson
  • Published online:
    24 March 2022
    Print publication:
    31 March 2022
  • In this book, David Patterson offers original insights into the dynamics that underlie the phenomenon of endemic antisemitism, arguing that in all its manifestations, antisemitism is fundamentally anti-Judaism. Structured in a unique matrix of chapters that are linked historically and theoretically, his book elucidates the interconnections that tie antisemitism with the Holocaust, as well as the Judaism that the Nazis sought to obliterate from the world. As Patterson demonstrates this is an ongoing effort and is the basis of today's antisemitism. Spelling out the historical, theological, and philosophical viewpoints that led to the Holocaust and that are with us even now, he offers insights into the basis of the hatred of Jews that permeates much of today's world. Patterson here addresses the 'big questions' that define our humanity. His volume is written for those who wish to have a deeper understanding of both the history and the current manifestations of Antisemitism.