EDITH KURZWEIL
The Holocaust: Memory and Theory
In a curious way, the complex history of the Holocaust, including its
roots and horrors, is receiving more attention now than ever before,
when the world still was shocked, when its traces were fresh, and when
more of the surviving victims and perpetrators still were alive. Then, the
victims wanted to forget their trauma in order to forge a new life, and the
perpetrators did everything they could to escape punishment. As to the
many Germans who looked the other way, Victor Klemperer, who by
then was living in a "Jewish house" in Dresden, noted on August 10,
1942, that "they ignored what might embarrass them. In that lies. ..
[their] complicity, and in that. . . [they are] the typical representative[s]
for an overwhelming stratum. This stratum shares the guilt and must pay
the penalty. Otherwise, to express it loftily, Germany's soul is lost for the
duration and for eternity. [my translation]"
Alexander Mitscherlich publicly echoed these sentiments soon after
1945, but most of his German contemporaries were critical of such hon–
esty. Klemperer, a Jewish philologist and former professor of Romance
languages, anticipated him. By then, he did not expect that either he or
his diary would survive the Nazis, and yet he kept on coping with each
new anti-Semitic law and each atrocity by denying that it essentially
would catch up with him as well.
Books discussed in this essay:
lllTLER'S WILLING EXECUTIONERS: ORDINARY GERMANS AND THE
HOLOCAUST. By DanielJ. Goldhagen. Alfred A. Knopf. $30.00.
THE FINAL SOLUTION IN POLAND. By Christopher Browning. Harper
Perennial.
$12.50.
A SURVIVOR'S MEMOIR: RUTH'S JOURNEY. By Ruth Glasberg Gold.
University of Florida Press. $34.95.
CONSCIENCE AND COURAGE: RESCUERS OF JEWS DURING THE
HOLOCAUST. By Eva Fogelman. Anchor Books. $23.95.
MYTH AND MADNESS. By Mortimer Ostow. Transaction Publishers. $32.95.
THE LONGEST SHADOW: IN THE AFTERMATH OF THE HOLOCAUST.
By Geoffrey H. Hartman. Indiana University Press. $29.95.
THE DIARY OF A YOUNG GIRL. ANNE FRANK. By Anne Frank. New
Translation. Ed. by Otto Frank
&
Miriam Pressler. Doubleday. $22.95.
ICH WILL ZEUGNIS ABLEGEN BIS ZUM LETZTEN. By Victor Klemperer.
Aufbau Verlag, 2 vols. DM 98.-
