Amending the past : Europe's Holocaust commissions and the right to history / Alexander Karn.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Karn, Alexander, author.

Series:

Critical human rights.

Critical Human Rights

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)--Historiography.

Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945).

Truth commissions--Europe.

Truth commissions.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (347 p.)

Place of Publication:

Madison, Wisconsin : The University of Wisconsin Press, 2015.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

During the 1990s and early 2000s in Europe, more than fifty historical commissions were created to confront, discuss, and document the genocide of the Holocaust and to address some of its unresolved injustices. Amending the Past offers the first in-depth account of these commissions, examining the complexities of reckoning with past atrocities and large-scale human rights violations.Alexander Karn analyzes more than a dozen Holocaust commissions-in Germany, Switzerland, France, Poland, Austria, Latvia, Lithuania, and elsewhere-in a comparative framework, situating each in the context of past and present politics, to evaluate their potential for promoting justice and their capacity for bringing the perspectives of rival groups more closely together. Karn also evaluates the media coverage these commissions received and probes their public reception from multiple angles.Arguing that historical commissions have been underused as a tool for conflict management, Karn develops a program for historical mediation and moral reparation that can deepen democratic commitment and strengthen human rights in both transitional regimes and existing liberal states.

Contents:

Contents; Acknowledgments; List of Abbreviations; Introduction: Confronting the Holocaust as Historical Injustice; Part I . National Holocaust Commissions; 1. France and Switzerland: Myths of Resistance and Neutrality; 2. Poles and Jews: Mediating the Jedwabne Conflict; 3. Austria and Italy: The Reich and Its Allies; 4. Lithuania and Latvia: The Limitsof "Double Genocide"; Part II. Bilateral and International Commissions; 5. Germany and Its Neighbors; 6. The International Commission on Holocaust-Era Insurance Claims; 7. The International Catholic-Jewish Historical Commission

Conclusion: Truth-Telling, Narrativity, and the Right to HistoryNotes; Index

Notes:

Includes index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9780299305536

0299305538

OCLC:

917853709