My Holocaust, TOVA REICH. HarperCollins, $24.95, (336p) ISBN 978-0-06-117345-5
While
Reich’s focus is on the Holocaust and its symbol, the U.S. Holocaust
Memorial Museum, her broader target is manipulation and mendacity in
contemporary society. Holocaust survivor Maurice Messer, who runs Holocaust
Connections Inc. (“Make Your Cause a Holocaust”) with his son Norman, is the
president-appointed chairman of the board of the Holocaust Museum,
soliciting seven-figure contributions on a private tour of death camps,
while Norman tries to see his daughter, who—to the despair of her
parents—has joined a Carmelite convent just outside Auschwitz. Because of
Maurice's stature, his misrepresentation of his wartime heroics is protected
by survivors who know the truth, to keep from providing ammunition to
Holocaust deniers. But the threat to the museum and what it symbolizes is
ultimately not from deniers but from the United Holocausts Rainbow, whose
members (apparently embracing the Messers’ motto) protest the denial of all
Holocausts, ranging from women’s to chicken’s, except the Jewish Holocaust.
Reich has assembled an outlandish cast—including Mara Lieb, from Mara
(1978), now Buddhist postlife-therapist Marano/Rama—and although this satire
could be tighter, it is piercing and perceptive and cuts a wide swath.