In this provocative work, Alvin H. Rosenfeld contends that the proliferation of books, films, television programs, museums, and public commemorations related to the Holocaust has, perversely, brought about a diminution of its meaning and a denigration of its memory. Investigating a wide range of events and cultural phenomena, such as Ronald Reagan's 1985 visit to the German cemetery at Bitburg, the distortions of Anne Frank's story, and the ways in which the Holocaust has been depicted by such artists and filmmakers as Judy Chicago and Steven Spielberg, Rosenfeld charts the cultural forces that have minimized the Holocaust in popular perceptions. He contrasts these with sobering representations by Holocaust witnesses such as Jean Améry, Primo Levi, Elie Wiesel, and Imre Kertész. The book concludes with a powerful warning about the possible consequences of "the end of the Holocaust" in public consciousness.
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"This remarkable new work of scholarship—written in accessible language and not in obscure academese—is exactly the Holocaust book the world needs now. Indeed, it could not have been written before now because it is about now and how the specificity of the Nazis' gruesome, unprecedented and nearly sucessful genocide against Europe's Jews is being lost today, turned into mushy metaphor, unplugged from its historical roots." — (Bill's 'Faith Matters' Weblog 2011)
"What Rosenfeld has written, with passion and precision and some notably unanswered questions, is less an acccount of the Shoah being forgotten or denied than of being wrongly remembered." —(Moment 2011)
"This book fills the reader with gloom and rage, in nearly equal measure. The heart sinks, the mind reels, in contemplating the variegated assaults on Holocaust memory that Alvin Rosenfeld describes, analyzes, and seeks to throw back." — (The Weekly Standard)
"Let us hope that, in the months and years to come, this important book finds a ready place on some important bedside tables." — (Israel Affairs 2011)