The Holocaust is an international event, its the brutal crimes happened in specific places and are remembered, to a large degree, in various national discourses. The essays in this book examine the complex and often ambiguous relationship between national identity and the legacy of the Holocaust in countries including Lithuania, Poland, France, Germany, Austria, Italy, the United States, and Israel. Specificity about place and national context matters very much when we talk and write about the Holocaust, and this book takes up important questions about the relationship between the traumatic past and our sense of place, language, and cultural or political identity in the post-Holocaust world.

About the Author
Jennifer Taylor is associate professor of German Studies in the department of modern languages and literatures at the College of William and Mary.

Reviews
Focusing on Austria, East Germany, France, Israel, Italy, Poland, Lithuania, and the US, these ten essays analyze films, novels, stories, poetry, and museums to reveal the country's dominant Holocaust narrative-a narrative determined by the role the population of the country played in the Holocaust and the prevailing self-image of the nation. The contributors define a country's dominant Holocaust discourse (and competing counter narrative) by studying how cultural works reflect trauma, guilt, and collaboration. Austria and France play down direct collaboration in the Holocaust; Poland and Lithuania emphasize victimhood rather than direct involvement in mass murder; the former East Germany equated persecution of communists with that of others; the US highlights itself as land of redemptive new beginnings; Israel accentuates homecoming. The essays also analyze works that emphasize the counter narrative or debunk works reflecting the mainstream discourse. Films analyzed include Night and Fog, The Sorrow and the Pity, Shoah, Schindler's List, and Life Is Beautiful, to name just a few. Also examined are Holocaust reports in the work of Zofia Nalkowska, Czeslaw Milosz, Sherri Szeman, Aharon Appelfeld, Yoram Kaniuk, Yehudit Hendel, and Shesh Knafayim, and three historical museums in Lithuania. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty and researchers. * CHOICE *



Book Information
ISBN 9781611490565
Author Jennifer Taylor
Format Hardback
Page Count 214
Imprint University of Delaware Press
Publisher University of Delaware Press
Weight(grams) 454g
Dimensions(mm) 236mm * 161mm * 21mm