How The Holocaust Looks Now »

MARTIN L. DAVIES is Reader in the History of the European Enlightenment, University of Leicester with an international reputation for his work on Jewish Intellectual History. He has contributed to several volumes on German-Jewish History, and is the author of Historics: the Domination of Historical Knowledge in Comtemporary Society (2005)

CHRIS SZEJNMANN is Reader in Modern European History at the University of Leicester and has published extensively on Nazism and Modern German History, including Nazism in Central Germany: the Brownshirts in 'Red' Saxony (1999) and Vom Traum zum Alptraum: Sachsen während der Weimarer Republik (2000).

The essays in this book reflect on the significance of the Holocaust sixty years afterwards. In this time it has become embedded in collective memory This book explores the idea that even thought the tenets of Nazism--racism, dictatorship, expansionism --have become unacceptable in the western world, little has actually changed. Since 1945 crimes against humanity and human rights have occurred throughout the world. The Holocaust thus pre-figures a "death-drive" in contemporary culture: the idea that the ability to deliver death is the supreme expression of self-affirmation.

Foreword--J.Bauer
• Antisemitism Today--W.Benz
• The Ark of Innocence - Morality and Memory after Auschwitz--E.Goodman-Thau
• Part I: Wider Context: Uses, Abuses and Failures
• 'Education After Auschwitz' Revisited--M.Davies
• The Uses and Abuses of Holocaust History - a Comparative Approach--K-G.Karlsson & K.Gerner
• The Contemporary Presence of the Holocaust--P.Mesnard
• Part II: Historical Knowledge and Historiography
• The Last Year of War and the Holocaust: Decentralization of the Concentration Camp Terror--F.Bindernagel & Tobias Bütow
• Holocaust Survivors and Early Israeli Holocaust Research: a Reappraisal--B.Cohen
• The Italian Case: the Evolution of Memory and Historical Debate in Post-War Italy--G.Schwarz
• Part III: Memories
• Family Recollections of the Holocaust in Europe--S.Moller
• Possibilities and Limits of a "Conjunction" of History and Memory: Saul Friedläder's Historiography of the Shoah--K.Machtans
• Oral Testimonies of Holocaust Survivors in the US--M.Ecker
• Part IV: Representations: Narratives
• What Kind of Narratives Can Present the Unpresentable?--T.Vaizer
• The Possibilities and Problems of Narrating Facts--V.Zangl
• The New Artistic Discourse upon the Holocaust--M.Wenzel
• Part V: Perceptions & Memories of the Holocaust Today
• The Holocaust in Latin America: Cartography of a Reception--E.Schindel
• Bringing the Holocaust Home: Danish and Dutch Young People's Struggle to Make Sense of the Holocaust--I.Matauschek
• The Presence of the Holocaust in Daily Life Discourse in Israel; E.Hertzog
• Memory of the Holocaust in Poland - a Tale of a Former Shtetl; B.Törnquist
• Memory Culture in Comparative Perspective in Jewish Studies and Educational Science in Germany--R.Reicher
• Part VI: Representations: Museums, Memorials, Films and Text Books
• Representing the Holocaust in Museums: Theoretical Observations and Practical Experiences--H.Pohl & Simone Lässig
• Victims, Perpetrators, Bystanders: Representations of Jews and non-Jews in Museums of the Holocaust--H.Holtschneider
• The Politics of Memory in Germany, Israel and the USA: the Development of National Memorials--M.Haas
• Monuments and Films on Raoul Wallenberg--U.Zander
• Teaching Holocaust in Lithuania--O.Svyetlov
• The New Exhibition at the Gedenkstätte: Representing Bergen-Belsen for a New Generation--R.Schulze
• The Destruction of the European Jewry at Ukrainian Historical Culture--J.Öhman
• Teaching the Holocaust--A.Newman
• Collected Memories: Museological Considerations of the Exhibitions, "We Who Survived..., Portraits of Survival", and "Portraits From the 100 Days"--C.Shapiro