ABSTRACT
This chapter takes up functional and existential perspectives on genocide. Whatever be the results of current debates concerning the uniqueness of the Holocaust, few events in the annals of twentieth-century genocide equal in horror the treatment of European Jewry by Nazi Germany. In contrast to the German and Russian State apparatuses, the American State apparatus was formed by groups of people who have evaded European and Asian despotism by fleeing to a virgin territory free of immediate and effective traditions. To see how ubiquitous the use of labels such as "fascism" can be, one need only contrast the situation in Germany with that in Italy, both in respect to the general nature of Italian fascism and its particular attitudes toward the Jewish question. A crucial existential distinction should be made between genocide and coercion, between the physical liquidation and cultural stifling of peoples in contrast to bending the will of peoples to a presumed common end.
