The Nazi genocide of European Jews is treated as a historically singular catastrophe and as a test of how antisemitism is explained. Rather than narrating its events, the book insists that its uniqueness must be acknowledged without detaching it from the historical conditions that made it possible.

Historical Context

The discussion rejects the pseudo-Marxist claim that modern antisemitism is simply a by-product of capitalism, a claim that would make Jewish victimhood no more deserving of particular attention than other forms of oppression. The book argues instead that the genocide could have occurred only against the background of a shift in the anti-Semitic figure of the Jew. This formulation situates the event within a changing history of antisemitism without reducing it to a single economic cause.

Uniqueness and Explanation

The book calls the Shoah a unique excess. Its distinctiveness, in this argument, does not mean that it should be treated as detached from history: its singularity must be held together with the background that enabled it. The passage therefore resists two simplifications at once—explaining the genocide away as an automatic effect of capitalism, and treating its uniqueness as a reason to avoid examining the transformation in antisemitic ideas.

Place in the Book

The event enters the argument as a conceptual and historical limit, not through a narrated sequence of actions or a detailed account of perpetrators, policies, or chronology. The index directs readers to the discussion of the Shoah on page 183, locating it within the book’s broader examination of political history and ideology.