The bearing of all this on the centering or marginalizing of the Holocaust became manifest when, on three separate occasions in the late '40s, the leading Jewish organizations were presented with a proposal for a major Holocaust memorial structure in New York City. On each occasion the representatives of the participating groups unanimously rejected the idea. There were many factors at work in the marginalization of the Holocaust in American Jewish consciousness in the first postwar years. Fast forward to the '80s and '90s. That said, it seems to me undeniable that there has been, for various reasons, a fairly widespread transvaluation of victimization in American culture.
Stoicism is replaced as a prime value by sensitivity.
Transformations on the individual level are mirrored at the level of the group. Every group claims its share of public honor and public funds by pressing disabilities and injustices. National public life becomes the settlement of a collective malpractice suit in which all citizens are patients and physicians simultaneously. American Jews certainly did not invent the practice of legitimating, or even valorizing, the aggressive assertion of individual and group victimization. And that participation is, of course, grounded in the Holocaust.