Cover of Using and Abusing the Holocaust

Using and Abusing the Holocaust

"Langer, by the force of scholarship and literary precision rather than dogmatic affirmation and pathos, is one of the few writers, with the exception of significant poets and novelists, who unsettles both our customary language and conceptual instruments. His book is a moral as well as an intellectual act of a very high order." —Geoffrey Hartman, author of The Longest Shadow

Read more

In this new volume, Langer—one of the most distinguished scholars writing on Holocaust literature and representation—assesses various literary efforts to establish a place in modern consciousness for the ordeal of those victimized by Nazi Germany's crimes against humanity. Essays discuss the film Life Is Beautiful, the uncritical acclaim of Fragments, the fake memoir by Benjamin Wilkomirski, reasons for the exaggerated importance still given to Anne Frank's Diary, and a recent cycle of paintings on the Old Testament by Holocaust artist Samuel Bak.

Audience
adult
Length
short · 192 pages

Click a tag to see books like this one that share it. Point at it (on a phone, tap it) for less of it instead.

Read it? Sign in to help tag it.

Liked Using and Abusing the Holocaust? Here’s where I’d start.

These suit anyone who liked Using and Abusing the Holocaust. Sign in and mark a few books for picks shaped around your own taste.

  1. Europa, Europa Shares Holocaust, memoir, holocaust survivors
  2. From the Holocaust to a New Dawn Shares Holocaust, memoir, holocaust survivors
  3. The War Came to Me: A Story of Endurance and Survival Shares Holocaust, memoir, holocaust survivors
  4. Fear and hope Shares Holocaust, memoir, holocaust survivors

“If you want more of the same (biography about jewish), start with these.”

  1. New Dawn: A Triumph of Life After the Holocaust
  2. Tsofen
  3. Drawing the Holocaust
  4. Joshua and Isadora: A True Tale of Loss and Love in the Holocaust

“If it was the Holocaust that hooked you, try one of these.”

  1. From Broken Glass
  2. Written on memory
  3. Beyond the yellow star to America
  4. We survived the Holocaust

“These start from a similar idea, even if they go somewhere else with it.”

  1. Arthurian Women: A Casebook
  2. Eight Philosophers of the Italian Renaissance
  3. David Hockney: A Bigger Picture
  4. Anne Tyler: Three Complete Novels: A Patchwork Planet / Ladder of Years / Saint Maybe