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Article: Irving Howe and the Holocaust: Dilemmas of a Radical Jewish Intellectual.
- Article from:
- American Jewish History
- Article date:
- March 1, 2000
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2000 American Jewish Historical Society. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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How did Irving Howe, who was to become the most eminent Jewish public intellectual of the twentieth century, respond to the Holocaust? Did he bring his considerable powers of mind and capacity for imaginative sympathy to bear upon the news that the Jews of Europe were being done to death by the forces of National Socialism? Or did he fall prey to ideology, which--as Lionel Trilling, another leading Jewish intellectual, often pointed out--was not the product of thought at all but the habit or ritual of showing respect for certain formulas regardless of facts and experiences that confuted them?(2)
Howe's political ideas between the time he left City College in ...