Guilt, Suffering, and Memory Germany Remembers Its Dead of World War II [Paperback]

Germanys changing historical memory of World War II and its aftermath, as reflected in the official and public remembrance of the German war dead, exposes an unresolved tension between a discourse of guilt and a discourse of national suffering and victimization. In Germany, under the auspices of the Allied occupation, remembrance honored the victims of the Nazis and those who had fought against the regime. After the partition of Germany, a new culture emerged, memorializing the civilian dead and fallen German soldiers. Despite the fierce ideological rivalry between East and West Germany, however, certain similarities existed. The political leaderships who shaped these cultures ceased to confront their citizens with the question of guilt and instead depicted the German people as victims. In Guilt, Suffering, and Memorywhose Israeli edition was awarded the Jacob Bahat Prize for best original bookGilad Margalit discusses the official remembrance ceremonies for the German war dead, the memorials erected to commemorate them, the public discussions of these disparate cultures, and their treatment in postwar German literature and film.

A . . . perspective on the consequences of empire building comes from Israeli historian Gilad Margalit's meticulously documented Guilt, Suffering, and Memory.July/August 2010Gilad Margalits comprehensive exploration of how Germany viewed its own wartime dead provides new evidence about German attitudes and stresses Germans primary focus on their own suffering and their repeated failure to come to terms with the past appropriately.. . . this finely calibrated study . . . .4/21/10This is an ambitious and thought-provoking book. It presents a comprehensive overview of the ways Germans have remembered WorldWar II since 1945 and a forceful critique of what Margalit contends is the central narrative that has structured this memory work.Sept 2012

Gilad Margalit is Senior Lecturer in the Department of General History at the University ol“>