ABSTRACT
The extermination of European Jews was unprecedented, but the use of that term to characterize what we would today call genocide was not. Witnesses to mass violence against Jews during the Second World War were redeploying the trope of the “unprecedented” to make sense of and communicate experiences that words seemed inadequate to capture and convey. This essay explores the history of the concept of the “unprecedented” in the era from the First World War to the Second World War. Characterizing European Jews’ extreme experiences of suffering as an “unprecedented” event in history was a way of connecting that crisis to earlier humanitarian crises out of a desire to incite engagement and empathy on the part of readers. Out of empathy, it was hoped, would follow recognition of victims’ suffering and political subjecthood, as well as humanitarian relief, for survivors.
