American Jewish historian Peter Novick writes in his book The Holocaust in American Life:
…Once the Holocaust became centered in Jewish consciousness, and to the extent that it became centered, it provided a language and framework that deepened anxiety about American anti-Semitism, and a spiraling interaction came into play. Once one starts using imagery from that most extreme of events, it becomes impossible to say anything moderate, balanced or nuanced; the very language carries you along to hyperbole. A journalist who supported black community control of schools was told by Norman Podhoretz in 1969 that he was one of those who wanted to “shove the Jewish people back into the gas ovens.” “The ovens” recurred again and again. In Brooklyn, a militant protester against busing for school integration insisted that “we wouldn’t be led to the ovens this time.”
…As the Holocaust moved from history to myth, it became the bearer of “eternal truths” not bound by historical circumstances. Among other things, the Holocaust came to symbolize the natural and inevitable terminus of anti-Semitism: first stop, an anti-Semitic joke; last stop, Treblinka. Every loudmouthed Farrakhan acolyte was the opening act in the Julius Streicher show.
