Gefühlte Opfer - Illusionen der Vergangenheitsbewältigung
Feeling victims - Illusions of Coming to Terms With the Past
Author(s): Ulrike JureitContributor(s): Barbara Grzelakova (Editor)
Subject(s): Recent History (1900 till today), WW II and following years (1940 - 1949), Post-War period (1950 - 1989), Transformation Period (1990 - 2010), History of the Holocaust, Politics of History/Memory
Published by: Wiener Wiesenthal Institut für Holocaust-Studien
Keywords: Germany; Holocaust; dealing with criminal history; memory; collective memory;
Summary/Abstract: In Germany, the Holocaust is one of the central historical events of reference for collective self-description. No other country has so intensely addressed its own criminal history. The decided effort to award the national socialist mass crimes an appropriate place in the collective memory is particularly supported by the memory figure of the „perceived victim“. Victim-identified remembrance has become a norm of a kind and it contains a promise of redemption which offers reconciliation in return for honest remembrance. However, even after decades of remorse, a state of moral release has still not set in and the apparent competition on display in matters of remembrance policy creates an increasing unease. What are the consequences for collective memory when Germany identifies primarily with the victims and their stories of persecution? What are the challenges to historical remembrance more than sixty years after the end of the war?
Journal: S:I.M.O.N. Shoah: Intervention. Methods. Documentation.
- Issue Year: 1/2014
- Issue No: 2
- Page Range: 81-91
- Page Count: 11
- Language: German