We remember with reverence and love : American Jews and the myth of silence after the Holocaust, 1945-1962 / Hasia R. Diner.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Diner, Hasia R.

Series:

Goldstein-Goren Series in American Jewish History ; 15

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

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

Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945).

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

Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)--Public opinion.

Jews--United States--Attitudes.

Jews.

Public opinion--United States.

Public opinion.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (544 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

New York : New York University Press, c2009.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Winner of the 2009 National Jewish Book Award in American Jewish Studies Recipient of the 2010 Guggenheim Fellowship in Humanities-Intellectual & Cultural History It has become an accepted truth: after World War II, American Jews chose to be silent about the mass murder of millions of their European brothers and sisters at the hands of the Nazis. In this compelling work, Hasia R. Diner shows the assumption of silence to be categorically false. Uncovering a rich and incredibly varied trove of remembrances—in song, literature, liturgy, public display, political activism, and hundreds of other forms—We Remember with Reverence and Love shows that publicly memorializing those who died in the Holocaust arose from a deep and powerful element of Jewish life in postwar America. Not only does she marshal enough evidence to dismantle the idea of American Jewish “forgetfulness,” she brings to life the moving and manifold ways that this widely diverse group paid tribute to the tragedy. Diner also offers a compelling new perspective on the 1960's and its potent legacy, by revealing how our typical understanding of the postwar years emerged from the cauldron of cultural divisions and campus battles a generation later. The student activists and “new Jews” of the 1960's who, in rebelling against the American Jewish world they had grown up in “a world of remarkable affluence and broadening cultural possibilities” created a flawed portrait of what their parents had, or rather, had not, done in the postwar years. This distorted legacy has been transformed by two generations of scholars, writers, rabbis, and Jewish community leaders into a taken-for-granted truth.

Contents:

Introduction: Deeds and words

Fitting memorials

Telling the world

The saving remnant

Germany on their minds

Wrestling with the postwar world

Facing the Jewish future

Conclusion: The corruption of history, the betrayal of memory.

Notes:

Description based upon print version of record.

Includes bibliographical references (p. 465-494) and index.

ISBN:

0-8147-8523-9

OCLC:

779828339