COLUMN ONE : A Dilemma in Teaching Holocaust : The lesson remains ‘never forget.’ But amid a remembrance revival in Israel, critics fear the horror’s meaning is being distorted. A provocative film touches a nerve.

On the movie screen, a troop of clean-cut teen-agers filed silently into Yad Vashem, the Holocaust memorial in Jerusalem, idling past a sign in bold Hebrew advertising for sale “The Encyclopedia of the Holocaust.”

The sign elicited a titter of recognition from some of the film’s viewers who evidently had grown weary of Holocaust history presented as a consumer item; the encyclopedia is also hawked on radio by rock deejays. Responding to the giggles, a woman rose from her seat and cried out, “It’s not funny! It’s not funny! It’s the Holocaust!”

Hers was one of several emotional outbursts during showings of “Izkor: Slaves to Memory,” a provocative critique of the way Israel teaches its young about Jewish history in general and the Holocaust in particular.

The swirl of criticism that surrounded the film, as well as some fervent favorable comment, threw light on a delicate dilemma: Everyone agrees that the slaughter of Jews during World War II should be remembered so that such a horror will not be repeated, but there is deep disagreement these days about what form that recollection should take.

Israel, whose existence grew out of the Holocaust, has undergone a kind of remembrance revival. The opening of Eastern Europe to tourism has sparked a wave of visits to the tragic terrain of Auschwitz, Dachau, Maidanek and other Nazi death camps. Each springtime, televised reminiscences here during the commemoration of the Holocaust dead grow more elaborate.

Children of survivors recount in song and film the effects of their parents’ trauma on their own upbringing. Tens of thousands of Soviet newcomers are being taught the history of the genocide as part of their absorption into Israeli society.

The trend reflects a shift in the guiding idea of Holocaust teaching that dominated Israel’s early years.

At that time, the marches to the death trains and the horror of the concentration camps and gas chambers were treated as elements of a tragic past. The chances of going again to slaughter had been resolved by the creation of a new Jewish personality in Israel. Holocaust memory, like the stark remembrance of the ghettos and expulsions in Europe, would fade away.

These days, a view is emerging of the Holocaust as central to Jewish history, and by extension, Israeli life--a persecution imbued with profound, almost religious mystery. Critics charge that within this trend, lessons of the Holocaust are being distorted.

The film “Izkor”--the Hebrew word means “remembrance”--focuses on a month of Jewish commemorations beginning with Passover, through Holocaust and Army Memorial days and Independence Day. Filmmaker Eyal Syvan tried to build the controversial case that in Israel, commemoration of even the Holocaust is used to nurture a fearful, obedient and militaristic society. He believes that the lessons should be applied to building a liberal and just nation.

Syvan, 26, a self-described Israeli exile living in Paris, based his theme on the thoughts of Yeshayahu Leibowitz, a respected political theorist. Leibowitz criticizes Israeli historical teaching for its focus on persecution. By presenting Jews primarily as victims, society is being led to excuse its own abuses to others, notably, the Palestinians, he says. At one point in the movie, Leibowitz says that present education is making “violence man’s supreme end.”

“The basis of Zionism is to use the persecution of the Jews to justify our own behavior. This is a window onto how ideology is built,” asserted Syvan.

Comments like that drew fire from critics who had not yet seen the movie. Among the most common complaints is that Syvan, by living abroad, disqualifies himself from making such sweeping attacks. Syvan evaded Israeli military service and campaigned against the war in Lebanon in the ‘80s. Opting out of the army in Israel is generally viewed with contempt.

A writer in the newspaper Haaretz accused Syvan of bashing Israel abroad--the film was financed by French and German television and an Israeli investor. At the end of one showing, a young viewer expressed agreement with the thrust of the film but wondered why its maker does not come back to Israel, where life under the pressures of Arab threats might temper his views. Another charged Syvan with wanting to do away with the Jewish state.

“Perhaps we should altogether close the schools,” a viewer shouted sarcastically.

“Izkor” depicts tragicomic efforts to teach the Holocaust: Little children cutting out yellow Stars of David like the ones doomed European Jews were forced to wear; a teacher trying to get a reluctant teen-ager to make the words “throats cut, strangled and drowned” to roll boldly off the tongue; students trained to march in lock-step, rifle in hand, in preparation for Memorial Day activities.

The wail of sirens on Holocaust Memorial Day, when Israelis stop all activity and stand at attention for two minutes, was treated without commentary.

It is not only from the left that orchestrated commemoration is under assault. Magazine columnist Zeev Chafets, a former spokesman for the right-wing government of Menachem Begin, also poured scorn on it. He, too, took exception to the fashioning of paper stars by children “as they listened to harrowing, government mandated accounts of mass murder, particularly the slaughter of children.”

“In this generation, we have dragged the pain and horror of the Holocaust into the harsh sunlight. Perhaps that was a necessary part of the healing process, but no more,” Chafets wrote in the Jerusalem Report. “It is time to put an end to government-mandated mourning and to permit the Holocaust to recede.”

Retreat is unlikely. If anything, the Holocaust has become a feature of the stormy language of Israeli politics. Former Prime Minister Menachem Begin compared Palestine Liberation Organization chief Yasser Arafat, when he was in Beirut, to Hitler in Berlin. Current Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir occasionally refers to it in warning of the dangers of giving in to Palestinian demands for statehood.

Shamir’s housing minister, Ariel Sharon, suggested that Washington’s effort to halt settlements by withholding funds for immigrant housing and jobs is akin to America’s turning away Jewish refugees in the years before World War II.

For their part, Palestinians evoke the Holocaust to describe their treatment at the hands of Israeli soldiers.

Where to strike a balance? Yehuda Bauer, a prominent Holocaust scholar at Hebrew University, preaches “sound teaching” as an antidote to Holocaust abuse. He insists that the examples cited in “Izkor” are exceptions rather than the rule. He accuses the filmmaker of exaggerating and sees a mean-spirited motive behind the distortions.

“There is a massive trauma of a whole society,” he said. “It is important not to accuse, to make ill will out of someone’s inability to face reality.”

Bauer laments political uses of the Holocaust and notes that in Israel, both Shamir’s Likud Party and the opposition, leftist Labor Party, have invoked the tragedy to suit their narrow ends. Most of the distortions are based on false analogies.

“Israel today, whatever the dangers, is not in the same kind of jeopardy as the Jews in Europe. There is no plan for mass murder,” Bauer remarks.

The often-repeated statement that pre-state Palestine could have absorbed all the Jews in danger ignores the realities of the time, both in Europe and in backward and ill-equipped Palestine, Bauer asserts.

Use of the Holocaust as an excuse to build Israel’s military strength is misplaced and unnecessary, he adds. “Israel has to be strong, I agree. A state of weakness is unacceptable in any society. But if it takes 6 million dead to arrive at that conclusion, I would rather have the 6 million back.”