After Such Knowledge: Memory, History, and the Legacy of the HolocaustAs 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 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. |
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AFTER SUCH KNOWLEDGE: Memory, History, and the Aftermath of the Holocaust
User Review - KirkusLiterate if sometimes arid essays on the world—intellectual, cultural, and emotional—of the Holocaust's "second generation."Memoirist Hoffman (Shtetl, 1997, etc.), a representative of that ... Read full review
After such knowledge: memory, history, and the legacy of the Holocaust
User Review - Not Available - Book VerdictThe psychological effects of the Shoah on the family dynamics of survivors and their offspring have been well documented in two works by Aaron Hass, The Aftermath and In the Shadow of the Holocaust ... Read full review
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After Such Knowledge: Memory, History, and the Legacy of the Holocaust Eva Hoffman Limited preview - 2011 |
After Such Knowledge: Memory, History, and the Legacy of the Holocaust Eva Hoffman Limited preview - 2005 |
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acts affected American anti-Semitism atrocity become begin bring called camps cause childhood children of survivors close collective comes communities consciousness course cultural death difficult direct early emotional entirely experience expression extreme face fact father fear feel felt follow force German groups happened Holocaust horror human idea identity images imagination individual Israel Jewish Jews kind knowledge later least legacy less lives look loss matter meanings memory mind moral nature Nazi never one's pain parents past perhaps perpetrators Poland Poles Polish political position possible postwar present psychic questions realities relation relationship remember response second-generation seemed seen sense Shoah side sometimes speak story suffering suggests surely survivors things thought tion took trauma turn understand victims views violence wanted witness
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Page vii - Czechoslovakia, unlocked her parents' "iron box" of secrets by collecting the stories of other children of survivors like herself. Her influential book, Children of the Holocaust: Conversations with Sons and Daughters of Survivors (1979), is the remarkable result of her efforts to break the silence and give a name to a previously unacknowledged generation: Epstein called it the "second generation...
Bibliographic information
| Title | After Such Knowledge: Memory, History, and the Legacy of the Holocaust New York Times Notable Book |
| Author | Eva Hoffman |
| Edition | reprint |
| Publisher | PublicAffairs, 2005 |
| ISBN | 1586483048, 9781586483043 |
| Length | 301 pages |
| Subjects | › History / Historiography History / Holocaust Psychology / General |
| Export Citation | BiBTeX EndNote RefMan |