Projecting The Holocaust Into The Present

In this accessible, clear, jargon free, and comprehensive text, Projecting the Holocaust into the Present offers an insightful historical perspective on how public conceptions of the Holocaust in film have changed over time.

Most Holocaust scholars and survivors contend that the event was so catastrophic and unprecedented that it defies authentic representation in feature films. Yet it is precisely the extremity of 'the Final Solution' and the issues it raised that have fueled the cinematic imagination since the end of World War II. Recognizing that movies reach a greater audience than eyewitness, historical, or literary accounts, Lawrence Baron argues that they mirror changing public perceptions of the Holocaust over time and place. After tracing the evolution of the most commonly employed genres and themes in earlier Holocaust motion pictures, he focuses on how films from the l990s made the Holocaust relevant for contemporary audiences. While genres like biographical films and love stories about doomed Jewish-Gentile couples remained popular, they now cast Jews or non-Jewish victims like homosexuals in lead roles more often than was the case in the past. Baron attributes the recent proliferation of Holocaust comedies and children's movies to the search for more figurative and age-appropriate genres for conveying the significance of the Holocaust to generations born after it happened. He contends that thematic shifts to stories about neo-Nazis, rescuers, survivors, and their children constitute an expression of the continuing impact the Holocaust exerts on the present. The book concludes with a survey of recent films like Nowhere in Africa and The Pianist.

Following decades of silence about the involvement of doctors, medical researchers and other health professionals in the Holocaust and other National Socialist (Nazi) crimes, scholars in recent years have produced a growing body of research that reveals the pervasive extent of that complicity. This interdisciplinary collection of studies presents documentation of the critical role medicine played in realizing the policies of Hitler’s regime. It traces the history of Nazi medicine from its roots in the racial theories of the 1920s, through its manifestations during the Nazi period, on to legacies and continuities from the postwar years to the present.

"Forty pages of full-color artwork, black-and-white photographs, and four gatefold spreads mark an account of the creation of Judy Chicago's powerful evocation of the horror of the Holocaust in a work of art called Holocaust Project." -- Amazon.com viewed August 7, 2020.

When representing the Holocaust, the slightest hint of narrative embellishment strikes contemporary audiences as somehow a violation against those who suffered under the Nazis. This anxiety is, at least in part, rooted in Theodor Adorno's dictum that "To write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric." And despite the fact that he later reversed his position, the conservative opposition to all "artistic" representations of the Holocaust remains powerful, leading to the insistent demand that it be represented, as it really was. And yet, whether it's the girl in the red dress or a German soldier belting out Bach on a piano during the purge of the ghetto in Schindler's List, or the use of tracking shots in the documentaries Shoah and Night and Fog, all genres invent or otherwise embellish the narrative to locate meaning in an event that we commonly refer to as "unimaginable." This wide-ranging book surveys and discusses the ways in which the Holocaust has been represented in cinema, covering a deep cross-section of both national cinemas and genres.

In The Future of the Holocaust, Berel Lang continues his inquiry into the causal mechanisms of decision-making and conduct in Nazi Germany and into responses to the genocide by individuals and nations—an inquiry that he began in Act and Idea in the Nazi Genocide and pursued in Heidegger's Silence. Raising the question now of what the future of the Holocaust is, he addresses among other topics how history and memory together shape views of the Holocaust; how the concept of "intention"—which played a crucial part in the events of half a century ago—shapes history and memory themselves; and how future views of this genocide may alter those of today.In addition, Lang explores cultural representations of the "Final Solution"—from monuments to public school curricula—within the Jewish and German communities. He analyzes ethical issues concerning such concepts as intention, responsibility, forgiveness, and revenge, and puts forward a theory of the history of evil which provides a context for the Holocaust both historically and morally. Addressing the claims that the Nazi genocide was unique, Lang argues that the Holocaust is at once an actual series of events and a still future possibility. If the Holocaust occurred once, he argues, it can occur twice—and this view of the future remains an unavoidable premise for anyone now writing or thinking about that event in the past.

An imprint of University of New England.

Collection of essays exploring the controversies surrounding images of the Holocaust

The Holocaust has been the focus of countless films in the United States, Great Britain, and Europe, and its treatment over the years has been the subject of considerable controversy. When finally permitted to portray the atrocities, filmmakers struggled with issues of fidelity to historical fact, depictions of graphic violence, and how to approach the complexities of the human condition on all sides of this horrific event. In Hollywood and the Holocaust, Henry Gonshak explores portrayals of the Holocaust from the World War II era to the present. In chapters devoted to films ranging from The Great Dictator to InglouriousBasterds, this volume looks at how these films have shaped perceptions of the Shoah. The author also questions if Hollywood, given its commercialism, is capable of conveying the Holocaust in ways that do justice to its historical trauma. Through a careful consideration of over twenty-five films across genres—including Life Is Beautiful, Cabaret, The Reader, The Boys from Brazil, and Schindler’s List—this book provides an important look at the social, political, and cultural contexts in which these movies were produced. By also engaging with the critical responses to these films and their role in the public’s ongoing fascination with the Holocaust, this book suggests that viewers take a closer look at how such films depict this dark period in world history. Hollywood and the Holocaust will be of interest to cultural critics, historians, and anyone interested in the cinema’s ability to render these tragic events on screen.

Debates on the Holocaust is the first attempt to survey the development of Holocaust historiography for a generation. It analyses the development of history writing on the destruction of the European Jews from just before the end of the Second World War to the present day, and argues forcefully that history writing is as much about the present as it is the past. The book guides the reader through the major debates in Holocaust historiography and shows how all of these controversies are as much products of their own time as they are attempts to uncover the past. Debates on the Holocaust will appeal to sixth form and undergraduate students and their teachers, Holocaust historians and anyone interested in either the destruction of the European Jews or in the process by which we access and understand the past.