Memory, history, and the extermination of the Jews of Europe

Throughout these essays Saul Friedlander is concerned about the relationship between memory and history, the stages in the evolution of attitudes toward the Nazi epoch and the Shoah in both German and Jewish memory, and the gap between individual memory and the collective re-elaboration of the past. "The passage from memory to history," he states, "the changing attitudes toward this epoch, the waning of individual memory lead of necessity (with or without the impact of decisive political normalization) to the expulsion of terror from the presence of those years." The book includes chapters on Nazism, the German struggles with memory, the new German debates about the "final solution," Israeli memory of the Shoah and the Shoah in present historical consciousness, the genesis and various interpretations of the "final solution," the extermination of the Jews in Europe, the historicization of National Socialism, and the views of Martin Broszat. Consideration is given to the implications of German reunification.