Holocaust Remembrance: The Shapes of Memory

Remembering the Holocaust may evoke trauma, moral outrage, denial, guilt or a quest for redemptive recovery of the past, as these 21 varied essays demonstrate. Israeli novelist Aharon Appelfeld probes the ``violent self-repression'' of memory among his generation of survivors. The Eichmann trial forced Israelis to confront long-buried memories, as Israeli novelist/journalist Haim Gouri, who reported on the trial, explains. David Roskies of the Jewish Theological Seminary charts a modern Jewish literature of destruction, beginning with the 1903 Kishinev pogrom. Other essays explore contemporary Germany's ``near-obsession'' with the Third Reich, the remnants of Poland's Jewish community, Christian theologians' reluctance to confront the Holocaust, the anti-Semitic motives of self-styled ``revisionist'' historians who deny that Hitler's genocide of Jews took place, and Bolivia's community of refugees from Nazi-dominated Central Europe. Among the 25 halftones are plans of Auschwitz and haunting, expressionist, cartoon-like paintings by German Jewish artist Charlotte Salomon, who sought refuge in southern France and died in Auschwitz. Yale English professor Hartman has assembled penetrating essays that constitute a meaningful act of remembrance. (Sept.)