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 6-10 of 82
Page 20
... Jews of Poland was undertaken by both Jewish and non-Jewish institutions. The Central Jewish Historical Committee attempted to register names of all Jewish survivors in Poland (although some chose to retain their assumed “Aryan” names ...
... Jews of Poland was undertaken by both Jewish and non-Jewish institutions. The Central Jewish Historical Committee attempted to register names of all Jewish survivors in Poland (although some chose to retain their assumed “Aryan” names ...
Page 21
... Jews were , to some extent , acknowledged and punished by the Polish authorities . There were trials of Poles responsible for informing or perpetrating acts of violence directed against Jews . Twelve of the perpetrators involved in the ...
... Jews were , to some extent , acknowledged and punished by the Polish authorities . There were trials of Poles responsible for informing or perpetrating acts of violence directed against Jews . Twelve of the perpetrators involved in the ...
Page 22
... Jewish and non-Jewish stories side by side without comment. At the same time, the ethnic identity of each voice, in her spare, seemingly neutral and nearly unbearable vi- gnettes, is clear; the character of Jewish suffering remarked ...
... Jewish and non-Jewish stories side by side without comment. At the same time, the ethnic identity of each voice, in her spare, seemingly neutral and nearly unbearable vi- gnettes, is clear; the character of Jewish suffering remarked ...
Page 23
... Jewish and non - Jewish artists , some of them marked by deep guilt , others by an absurdist nihilism . One need only think of the fiercely bitter stories in This Way to the Gas , Ladies and Gen- tlemen by Tadeusz Borowski ( a non ...
... Jewish and non - Jewish artists , some of them marked by deep guilt , others by an absurdist nihilism . One need only think of the fiercely bitter stories in This Way to the Gas , Ladies and Gen- tlemen by Tadeusz Borowski ( a non ...
Page 24
... Jewish identity , became taboo subjects in Poland . So did many other issues , including the activities of the non ... Jewish stories and how they differed from the Polish ones . Jewish speech about " that time " expressed a deeper ...
... Jewish identity , became taboo subjects in Poland . So did many other issues , including the activities of the non ... Jewish stories and how they differed from the Polish ones . Jewish speech about " that time " expressed a deeper ...
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 Cracow cultural death emigration emotional Eva Hoffman experience extreme fate father fear feel felt genocide German groups guilt happened Holo horror Hryczko human idea identity images imagination Israel Israeli Jedwabne Jedwabne massacre Jewish Jews kind knowledge legacy lives loss Majdanek massacre matter meanings memory ments mind moral mother mourning murder narratives Nazi one’s pain parents past people’s perhaps perpetrators persecuted Peter Sichrovsky Poland Poles Polish Polish-Jewish political post-Holocaust postwar prejudice psyche psychic psychological questions realities relation remember response Rwanda Rwandan genocide Second World War second-generation seemed sense September 11 Shoah shtetl sister sometimes Soviet stories suffering survived sympathy things thought tion trauma turn understand victims violence vivors W. G. Sebald wabne witness Załośce