After Such Knowledge: Memory, History, and the Legacy of the Holocaust
by Eva Hoffman
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Sixty years after the Holocaust, the author explores the difficult process of preserving an authentic version of its tragic events. As 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 show more 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. show lessTags
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This title on the legacy of the Holocaust asks what insights can be carried from the past to the newly problematic present, and urges the need to transform potent family stories into a fully-formed understanding of a forbidding history.
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8+ Works 1,724 Members
Eva Hoffman was born in Krakow, Poland and eventually emigrated to Canda with her family. She received a Ph. D. from Harvard University. She taught literature and was the editor of the New York Times Book Review. Hoffman is the author of such books as Lost in Translation: A Life in a New Language (1989) and Shtetl: The Life and Death of a Small show more Town and the World of Polish Jews (1997). (Bowker Author Biography) show less
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Common Knowledge
- Canonical title*
- Après un tel savoir. La Shoah en héritage
- Original title
- After such knowledge. Memory, History, and the Legacy of the Holocaust
- Original publication date
- xxxx (1e édition originale anglaise) (1e édition originale anglaise); 2005 (1e traduction et édition française, Mémorial de la Shoah, Calmann-Lévy) (1e traduction et édition française, Mémorial de la Shoah, Calmann-Lévy)
- Original language*
- Anglais (Royaume-Uni) (Royaume-Uni)
*Some information comes from Common Knowledge in other languages. Click "Edit" for more information.
Classifications
- Genres
- Nonfiction, History, General Nonfiction, Religion & Spirituality, Biography & Memoir
- DDC/MDS
- 940.53 — History & geography History of Europe History of Europe 1918- World War II, 1939-1945
- LCC
- D804.348 .H64 — History of Europe, Asia, Africa and Oceania History (General) World War II (1939-1945)
- BISAC
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- 174
- Popularity
- 187,657
- Reviews
- 1
- Rating
- (3.68)
- Languages
- English, French
- Media
- Paper, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 5
- ASINs
- 2
