Synopses & Reviews
Winner of the 1992 Anisfield-Wolf Book Award
Nearly half a century after the Nazi massacre of the Jews in Europe, the Holocaust is now moving from the domain of experience to that of history. It is becoming the subject of recorded rather than living memory. Is real comprehension of the development and horror of the Nazi onslaught accessible to us? If so, through what intellectual processes or categories of understanding, and in the face of what temptations or diversions? How can we preserve, expand, and apply our knowledge of why and how barbarity came to prevail? What meaning can present and future generations derive from the catastrophe? These are the vital questions addressed by the essays in this volume.
Review
"[This book] is enormously thought provoking, as befits a book dealing with such a formidable topic as the meaning of the Holocaust in a changing world."
—The Jerusalem Post Magazine
Review
"These essays here help us in various ways to think about an event that may be incomprehensible but whose incomprehensibility must continually be challenged."
—The Chicago Tribune
About the Author
Peter Hayes is associate professor of history and German at Northwestern University. He is the author of Industry and Ideology: I. G. Farben in the Nazi Era.
Table of Contents
Theodore Zev Weiss
Foreword
Peter Hayes
Introduction
Raul Hilberg
Opening Remarks: The Discovery of the Holocaust
I. Themes
Saul Friedländer
The "Final Solution": On the Unease in Historical Interpretation
Yehuda Bauer
Holocaust and Genocide: Some Comparisons
Steven T. Katz
Ideology, State Power, and Mass Murder/Genocide
Berel Lang
The History of Evil and the Future of the Holocaust
Michael R. Marrus
The Use and Misuse of the Holocaust
David Vital
After the Catastrophe: Aspects of Contemporary Jewry
II. Deeds
Hans Mommsen
The Reaction of the German Population to the Anti-Jewish Persecution and the Holocaust
Claudia Koonz
Genocide and Eugenics: The Language of Power
Robert Gellately
"A Monstrous Uneasiness": Citizen Participation and Persecution of the Jews in Nazi Germany
Christopher R. Browning
One Day in Jozefow: Initiation to Mass Murder
Nechama Tec
Helping Behavior and Rescue During the Holocaust
III. Encounters
Lawrence Langer
Redefining Heroic Behavior: The Impromptu Self and the Holocaust Experience
Alvin H. Rosenfeld
Popularization and Memory: The Case of Anne Frank
James E. Young
Israel's Memorial Landscape: Sho'ah, Heroism, and National Redemption
Franklin H. Littell
Early Warning: Detecting Potentially Genocidal Movements
Holocaust Educational Foundation Volunteers
Tellers and Listeners: The Impact of Holocaust Narratives
Geoffrey H. Hartman
Closing Remarks
Notes on the Contributors
Notes