After Such Knowledge: Memory, History, and the Legacy of the Holocaust - Hardcover

Hoffman, Eva

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1586480464 ISBN 13: 9781586480462

Publisher: PublicAffairs, 2004

Synopsis

Looks at the impact of keeping alive the memory of the Holocaust on children of survivors and the impact the atrocity has had on their lives.

About this title

About the Author

Eva Hoffman currently holds a regular appointment as a visiting professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Reviews

"Sixty years after the Holocaust took place... [and] this immense catastrophe recedes from us in time, our preoccupation with it seems only to increase," writes Hoffman in this beautifully wrought, deftly argued examination of how we might attempt to understand the Holocaust. In seven short essays, Hoffman (Lost in Translation, etc.) focuses on the consciousness and experience of the Holocaust's second generation-the children of survivors-as theirs is a "strong case-study in the deep and long-lasting impact of atrocity." Synthesizing personal history (born in Cracow, Poland, in 1945, Hoffman left at the age of 13 with her parents) with astute gleanings from the fields of psychoanalysis, sociology and literary criticism, the book considers such diverse concepts as how the "trauma" of the Holocaust is constructed, the role of emigration and national identity in shaping the second generation's narratives of their lives and how works as diverse as Marguerite Duras's The War: A Memoir and Bernhard Schlink's The Reader helped shape a series of conflicting ideas about victimhood and responsibility. But the power of Hoffman's vision comes in her posing vital questions: "what happens when we focus on `memory' itself rather than its object"; how do we sort through the question of personal and collective responsibility, "distinguish shadows from realities and fable from history" in order to understand what can be done to redress the past? Hoffman writes with a subdued but vibrant passion. In the end, she suggests that Holocaust studies now take on the difficult question of "the range of Jewish behavior during the Holocaust," particularly the missed opportunities for resistance. Such a daring, controversial challenge is emblematic of Hoffman's brave and forthright thinking and places this volume in the vanguard of Holocaust studies.
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Edition details

• Publisher: PublicAffairs
• Publication date: 2004
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1586480464
• ISBN 13: 9781586480462
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 320