Tova Reich's "My Holocaust"

From a review in The Washington Post by Melvin Jules Bukiet:

An innocent eye -- if such a thing exists anymore -- might assume that this is shock for shock's sake, yet Reich is not trivializing. Precisely the opposite; she's writing about trivializing. ...

Serious and hilarious and utterly scathing -- no, lacerating; no, disemboweling -- My Holocaust takes no prisoners in its two short, bookended chapters and its two lengthy set pieces, one inside the museum's hallowed walls and another on a special donors' tour of Auschwitz. Reich knows this territory intimately; her husband, Walter, used to be the head of the D.C. institution she now pillories....

Throughout the book, Reich goes too far, a clear strategy to spark attention after reams of authentic or sanctimonious tears have drowned many people's capacity to feel genuine grief. Reich accomplishes this by turning tragedy into a farce of greed and phony redemption and cheap moralism in which "everyone wants a piece of the Holocaust pie." Still, Reich reserves her most brutal commentary for the so-called "universalists" who use empathy and spuriously heartfelt identification to exterminate the particular, historical tragedy of the Jewish people.

As usual, unknowing Maurice says it best. The purpose of the Holocaust is "to make lessons, of course, to make memorials mit morals." Yet there's almost -- dare I say it? -- faith at work in Reich's willful outrage. Faith that evil is at large in the world. Also faith that we're too stupid to see it for more than a blink in time. "Who," she cries, "would ever have imagined that this . . . would metastasize into a fatal plague of persecutees, an epidemic of victims, a pestilence of freelance and copycat Holocausts?"

Beneath the humor lies the pure fury that once animated thoughts about the original atrocity. Tova Reich is the master of fury's return.

The Greatest Shoah on Earth

Forward.com:By Gabriel Sanders
Novelist Takes Aim at World of Holocaust Commemoration

My Holocaust, By Tova Reich (HarperCollins)

Reich is no stranger to the world of Holocaust commemoration — indeed, no stranger to the twisted tale of the Carmelite sisters of Auschwitz. When, in 1989, a group of protesters scaled the fence surrounding the convent, which at that time was located on the grounds of the death camp itself, they were led by her brother Rabbi Avi Weiss — or “that crazy spiderman rabbi,” as one of the novel’s characters calls him. The author is also the wife of Walter Reich, who served as director of D.C.’s Holocaust museum from 1994 to 1998. His departure came in the aftermath of a public relations disaster set into motion by a botched attempt to have Yasser Arafat visit the institution. Though the invitation was said to have been initiated by the museum’s then chairman, Miles Lerman, it seemed as though Reich was made to take the fall.

“My Holocaust” is clearly an attempt to settle some old scores. Yet, while there are similarities between Lerman and Messer — as there are ties between Messer’s chief aide, Monty Pincus, and historian Michael Berenbaum — it would be a mistake to see Reich’s novel as a simple roman à clef. The book is far more than the story of a couple of boobs trying to run a museum. It is, rather, a much grander indictment, an indictment of an entire universe of groups — Catholic, Mormon, German, Polish, Japanese, African American, Native American, Palestinian, feminist and more — all looking to claim their own little slice of Holocaust victimhood. Despite parallels to real-world entities, this is a work of the imagination, through and through.

But the fact that she’s writing fiction does not in any way diminish the force of Reich’s sting. She doesn’t just skewer her subjects; she puts them on the grill and chars them. ...

Such is the apotheosis of suffering, Reich seems to be saying, a theology as un-Jewish as it is impracticable. And yet, despite her critiques of the Holocaust business and of the countless hangers-on trying to claim their piece of it, Reich doesn’t seem to offer an alternative to the thorny questions of just how to preserve properly the memory of the 6 million and just what connection the Holocaust has to other atrocities, past, present and future. Then again, maybe her answers are so simple as to be staring one right in the face. Maybe the Holocaust has no connection to history’s other horrors, and maybe the 6 million should be allowed to just rest in peace.

'My Holocaust'

New York Times:

To the Editor:

Below is a letter I've written in response to the review of my novel, ''My Holocaust'' (May 27). The letter is written in the voice of one of the minor characters in the novel, Lipman Krakowski, who sees himself, among other things, as a veteran letters-to-the-editor writer. I believe the review was wrongheaded and surprisingly ad hominem, reflected no understanding of either fiction or satire, was strikingly at odds with the many other very positive reviews that have appeared, and left your readers with a deeply and relentlessly distorted impression of my book.Tova Reich

Chevy Chase, Md.

Esteemed Mr. Editor:

Maybe you remember from Mrs. Tova Reich's hoo-hah novel, ''My Holocaust,'' how my dear friend and fellow survivor of the Shoah, Mrs. Henny Soskis, mentioned that I'm a professional letters-to-the-editor writer, with already 3,467 published letters to my credit. The authoress Mrs. Tova Reich has turned to me because of my credentials to write this letter. Mrs. Tova Reich is not so young and beautiful anymore, so there's nothing in this for me, but that review you printed (May 27) was such schlock that I've agreed to dictate this letter of protest. The authoress herself has promised to write it down word for word.

You should excuse me, Mr. Editor, but where did you find this reviewer of yours? Does he know something from fiction writing? The credits say he knows from Joe Louis -- so is he some kind of boxer maybe? I myself am an experienced weightlifter and still in very good shape, as Mrs. Tova Reich was kind enough to remark in her book, so I don't need this boxer of yours to defend me or any of my fellow survivors, thank you very much. And what's this business of saying to such a respectable lady like the authoress Mrs. Tova Reich that she has ''chutzpah'' for how she writes about us survivors? For this I came to America? To hear some little Jewish ayatollah boxer deliver a little Jewish fatwa against a writer, telling her what she can and cannot write because of how it looks to the goyim?

For your information, the authoress Mrs. Tova Reich has known Shoah survivors all her life. We are not saints. We are people to whom a terrible thing happened. Excuse me, but I don't want my claim to fame to be that someone tried to exterminate me. Anyone with half a brain is sick and tired of all this ''sacred'' talk and victim idolatry at the expense of the dead. I'm sorry to inform you, Mr. Editor, but this boxer you dug up from I-don't-know-where to review my book is just another uncomprehending little knee-jerk. (My old friend Mrs. Henn'sche Soskis -- a charming lady in her own right, who, by the way, is proud of every one of her 220 pounds no matter what your boxer thinks -- tells me I shouldn't call it ''my'' book, but I feel like it's mine; I feel like it dares to tell it like it is for all of us who have been bullied and silenced by all those self-righteous machers and exploiters of the memory of the real victims, may they finally be allowed to rest in peace.)

Lipman Krakowski
Wheaton, Md.