About the War and the Holocaust

Friend Helen Eisen published a poetry chapbook about herself and her parents, survivors of the Holocaust, titled The Permeability of Memory (Cherry Pie Press). It was favorably noted, and Helen was interviewed, in the blog Writing the Holocaust. Helen says her family and their friends did not say "the Holocaust"; instead they said, "the war."

This is a point I've tried to make for years. "The Holocaust" is an insultingly reductive shorthand label that our culture finds way too convenient to use. I have had to correct careless people who equate the Holocaust with the war.