After Such Knowledge: Memory, History, and the Legacy of the HolocaustAs the Holocaust recedes in time, the guardianship of its legacy is being passed on from its survivors and witnesses to the next generation. How should they, in turn, convey its knowledge to others? What are the effects of a traumatic past on its inheritors? And what are the second-generation's responsibilities to its received memories? In this meditation on the long aftermath of atrocity, Eva Hoffman -- a child of Polish Jews who survived the Holocaust with the help of neighbors, but whose entire families perished -- probes these questions through personal reflections, and through broader explorations of the historical, psychological, and moral implications of the second-generation experience. She examines the subterranean processes through which private memories of suffering are transmitted, and the more willful stratagems of collective memory. She traces the "second generation's" trajectory from childhood intimations of horror, through its struggles between allegiance and autonomy, and its complex transactions with children of perpetrators. As she guides us through the poignant juncture at which living memory must be relinquished, she asks what insights can be carried from the past to the newly problematic present, and urges us to transform potent family stories into a fully informed understanding of a forbidding history. |
From inside the book
Results 1-5 of 29
Page ii
... Poles is intriguing.” —The Forward “Refreshingly clear-eyed . . . Hoffman asks many questions, bringing a voice of reason to the irrational, reaching out for reconciliation.” —Sunday Times (UK) “Thoughtful . . . Hoffman, the daughter of ...
... Poles is intriguing.” —The Forward “Refreshingly clear-eyed . . . Hoffman asks many questions, bringing a voice of reason to the irrational, reaching out for reconciliation.” —Sunday Times (UK) “Thoughtful . . . Hoffman, the daughter of ...
Page xiv
... Poles and Germans of all ages, and with yet others who have brought insights into violent events in other parts of the world. It may be that a cross-cultural, or cross-situational, un- derstanding here, too, may be illuminating; and ...
... Poles and Germans of all ages, and with yet others who have brought insights into violent events in other parts of the world. It may be that a cross-cultural, or cross-situational, un- derstanding here, too, may be illuminating; and ...
Page 16
... , the site of two catastrophes. One was the Nazi war of conquest against the Polish nation and the policy of widespread murder and eventual enslavement of the Poles. The other was the campaign of extermination directed 16 eva hoffman.
... , the site of two catastrophes. One was the Nazi war of conquest against the Polish nation and the policy of widespread murder and eventual enslavement of the Poles. The other was the campaign of extermination directed 16 eva hoffman.
Page 17
... Poles, with German permission or perhaps inspiration, murdered their Jewish neighbors, it can still be said that the actions of individual Poles during the cataclysm showed all the variations of human character and behavior. They ranged ...
... Poles, with German permission or perhaps inspiration, murdered their Jewish neighbors, it can still be said that the actions of individual Poles during the cataclysm showed all the variations of human character and behavior. They ranged ...
Page 18
... Poles and Ukrainians continued to murder each other in the east, and in the western territories, horrific acts of collective revenge were perpetrated upon ethnic Germans even as they were being expelled from Polish soil. On the official ...
... Poles and Ukrainians continued to murder each other in the east, and in the western territories, horrific acts of collective revenge were perpetrated upon ethnic Germans even as they were being expelled from Polish soil. On the official ...
Contents
II From Fable to Psyche | 31 |
III From Psyche to Narrative | 75 |
IV From Narrative to Morality | 101 |
V From Morality to Memory | 149 |
VI From Memory to the Past | 201 |
VII From the Past to the Present | 235 |
Selected Bibliography | 281 |
Acknowledgments | 293 |
Index | 295 |
Other editions - View all
After Such Knowledge: Memory, History, and the Legacy of the Holocaust Eva Hoffman Limited preview - 2005 |
After Such Knowledge: Memory, History, and the Legacy of the Holocaust Eva Hoffman Limited preview - 2005 |
After Such Knowledge: A Meditation on the Aftermath of the Holocaust Eva Hoffman No preview available - 2017 |
Common terms and phrases
adult aftermath American annihilationist anti-Semitism atrocity Auschwitz become behavior caust childhood children of survivors collective concentration camps conflict consciousness course cultural death emigration emotional Eva Hoffman experience extreme fate father feel felt generation’s genocide German groups guilt happened Holo Holocaust horror Hryczko human I. F. Stone idea identity images imagination Israel Israeli Jedwabne Jedwabne massacre Jewish Jews kind knowledge legacy lives loss Majdanek massacre matter meanings memory ment mind moral mother mourning murder narratives Nazi one’s pain parents past people’s perhaps perpetrators persecuted Peter Osnos Poland Poles Polish Polish-Jewish political post-Holocaust postwar prejudice psyche psychic psychological questions realities relation remember response Rwanda Rwandan genocide second-generation seemed sense September 11 Shoah shtetl sister sometimes Soviet stories suffering survived sympathy things tion trauma Trial of Socrates turn understand victims violence vivors wabne Załosce