A Very Un-American Holocaust

WRITING THE STORY of the Holocaust is a futile ambitionâ??not because the events of 1939 to 1945 are too horrible to be told, but because they are too various to be compressed into one definitive or representative story. The 6 million Jews murdered by the Nazis came from every part of Europe, from every social class and profession and age group, from every point on the spectrum of Jewish life between militant atheism and traditional piety. All these stories had a similar endingâ??but then, so do all human stories, and the monotony of death does not annul the immense multiplicity of life.