From: rchandlr@ccr.dsi.uanl.mx
Date: October 1995

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Denial takes many forms

Denial of the holocaust takes many forms. The most important form of denial does not come from outsiders; rather, those who experienced it and their offspring. Imagine, a survivor who is now a psychoanalyst whose patients are the children of survivors, denying that their parents and their analyst had really suffered it! There are only a handful of these analysts who are still practising and were brought together for a panel discussion in San Francisco this past August at the World Congress of Pyschoanalysis. The term 'holocaust' says everything: a whole, burnt offering to the god(s) in Greek. Its use by those who would deny the holocaust happened or make it a trivial event in contemporary history are to be pitied--their antisemitism makes them lose the meanings of language and its historical development. A postmodern "intellectual" without knowledge of the terms she/he uses has no authority at using a public forum and for this reason those who survived and who know what "holocaust" really means refuse to debate with the ignorant.

This panel discussion will be available in the _International Journal of Psychoanalysis_ (March 1996).

R. M. Chandler-Burns

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