My Holocaust, TOVA REICH. HarperCollins, $24.95, (336p) ISBN 978-0-06-117345-5
In
this savage satire of Holocaust commemoration’s misuses, Reich paints and
pillories a culture of victimhood that, with its accompanying commemorative
kitsch, all but eclipses the actual victims. Novelist Reich (The Jewish
War) sketches a gallery of “Holocaust hangerson,” grotesques eager to
hijack the Shoah for tawdry commercial and ideological purposes. Presiding
over the strategic exploitation is Maurice Messer, a retired ladies'
undergarment maker who has parlayed inflated claims of being an anti- Nazi
partisan into the chairmanship of the United States Holocaust Memorial
Museum; his feckless son, Norman, president of Holocaust Connections Inc., a
brand consultancy with the motto “Make Your Cause a Holocaust” (of which
Maurice is board chairman); Norman’s daughter, Nechama, who has
embarrassingly run off to join the convent across the street from Auschwitz;
and Maurice’s right-hand man, Monty Pincus, who expertly deploys melancholy
over the six million to seduce women. Once the idea of the “Chinese
Holocaust” (the “rape” of Nanking) or the “Native American Holocaust” gain
traction, however, Maurice and Norman may not be able to control the
results. Whether Maurice and Norman are rebranding “mountains of shorn hair”
from Auschwitz for “an anti-fur organization eager to firm up its Holocaust
status” or schmoozing ecumenically with a Holocaust-denying Arab terrorist,
Reich’s satire is broad, scabrous, cynical, over-the-top, often hilarious—
and likely to cause a scandal. (Apr.)