Holocaust uniqueness claims position all other genocides as marginal by comparison

Evidence

As LaCapra (1994:45-7) observes, the Holocaust or Shoah has become the quintessential embodiment of the oldest opposition in historical thinking: the unique versus the universal. Recently, several writers have suggested that the Holocaust is both unique and universal, standing as a “generic term” (Bauer, 1990:154) for a type of genocide that could be repeated (Rosenberg, 1987). In spite of their differences, these positions place the Holocaust at the center of discourses of genocide; insofar as it becomes the prototype of genocide, all other events are evaluated in relation to it (see Goekjian, 1991), seemingly occupying a more marginal relationship to the category. Efforts to compare the Holocaust to the Armenian genocide (see Dadrian, 1996) or to the “American Indian Holocaust” (see Churchill, 1997; Stannard, 1992; Thornton 1987) have thus been deemed to trivialize it. — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 272

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the ‘moral panic’ and definitional-competition dynamics in the reader’s existing work on how framing control over a category shapes what gets seen. — connects to: Comparing the Holocaust to postwar German expulsions broke all possibility of dialogue — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 606; The Holocaust’s uniqueness does not make it incomparable to other genocides — David Theo Goldberg, John Solomos, A Companion to Racial and Ethnic Studies, 516