Eternal Mirroring: Charles Patterson’s Treatment of Animals and the Holocaust

Abstract

This article uses Michael Rothberg’s (2009) Multidirectional Memory: Remembering the Holocaust in the Age of Decolonization to question whether or not Charles Patterson (2002) is justified in his comparison of the Holocaust with animal cruelty in Eternal Treblinka: Our Treatment of Animals and the Holocaust. It considers whether the comparison adheres to a competitive model of ethics (animal cruelty is worse than the Holocaust because it is “eternal”) or a multidirectional model (there is an implicit connection between our treatment of humans and animals, which implies that the Holocaust is eternally mirrored in such acts of violence as animal cruelty).