The Holocaust

Abstract: Because traumatic events are unbearable in their horror and intensity, they often exist as memories that are not immediately recognisable as truth. Such experiences are best understood not only through the straightforward acquisition of facts but through a process of discovering where and why conscious understanding and memory fail. Literature, according to Cathy Caruth and others, opens a window on traumatic experience because it teaches readers to listen to what can be told only in indirect and surprising ways. Sociology, film and political activism can also provide new ways of thinking about and responding to the experience of trauma. This work offers an analysis of what literature and the new approaches of a variety of clinical and theoretical disciplines bring to the understanding of traumatic experience. The combination of essays and interviews is intended to be of interest to analysts and critics concerned with the notion of trauma and the problem of interpretation and, more generally, to those interested in current discussions of subjects such as child abuse, AIDS and the effects of historical atrocities such as the Holocaust.

Abstract: Multidirectional Memory brings together Holocaust studies and postcolonial studies for the first time. Employing a comparative and interdisciplinary approach, the book makes a twofold argument about Holocaust memory in a global age by situating it in the unexpected context of decolonization. On the one hand, it demonstrates how the Holocaust has enabled the articulation of other histories of victimization at the same time that it has been declared "unique" among human-perpetrated horrors. On the other, it uncovers the more surprising and seldom acknowledged fact that public memory of the Holocaust emerged in part thanks to postwar events that seem at first to have little to do with it. In particular, Multidirectional Memory highlights how ongoing processes of decolonization and movements for civil rights in the Caribbean, Africa, Europe, the United States, and elsewhere unexpectedly galvanized memory of the Holocaust. Rothberg engages with both well-known and non-canonical intellectuals, writers, and filmmakers, including Hannah Arendt, Aime Cesaire, Charlotte Delbo, W.E.B. Du Bois, Marguerite Duras, Michael Haneke, Jean Rouch, and William Gardner Smith.

Abstract: Daniel Goldhagen re-visits a question which history has treated as settled, and his research leads him to the inescapble conclusion that none of the answers holds true. That question is: How could the Holocaust happen? His response is an exploration of German society and its ingrained anti-semitism that demands a fundamental revision of our thinking about the years 1933-1945. The author marshals fresh, primary evidence - including extensive testimony from the actual perpetrators - to show that the killers were ordinary Germans who were not compelled to act as they did (they knew they could refuse without retribution) yet they killed willingly and zealously.

Abstract: Pt. 1. Psychological and cultural bases of genocide and other forms of group violence: An introduction ; The origins of genocide and mass killing : core concepts ; The psychology of hard times : the effects of difficult life conditions ; Cultural and individual characteristics ; The psychology of perpetrators : individuals and groups ; Steps along a continuum of destruction : perpetrators and bystanders -- pt. 2. The Nazi Holocaust: Hitler comes to power ; Preconditions for the Holocaust in German culture ; Nazi rule and steps along the continuum of destruction ; The SS and the psychology of perpetrators ; The behavior and psychology of bystanders and victims -- pt. .3 Other genocides and mass killings: The Turkish genocide of the Armenians ; Cambodia : genocide to create a better world ; The disappearances : mass killing in Argentina ; Summary and conclusions : the societal and psychological origins of genocide and other atrocities -- pt. 4. Further extensions : the roots of war and the creation of caring and nonaggressive persons and societies: The cultural and psychological origins of war ; The nature of groups : security, power, justice, and positive connection ; The creation and evolution of caring, connection, and nonaggression.