Debates on the Holocaust

Debates on the Holocaustis the first attempt to survey the development of Holocaust historiography for a generation. It analyses the development of history writing on the destruction of the European Jews from just before the end of the Second World War to the present day, and argues forcefully that history writing is as much about the present as it is the past. The book guides the reader through the major debates in Holocaust historiography and shows how all of these controversies are as much products of their own time as they are attempts to uncover the past. Debates on the Holocaustwill appeal to sixth form and undergraduate students and their teachers, Holocaust historians and anyone interested in either the destruction of the European Jews or in the process by which we access and understand the past.

Tom Lawson is Reader in History at the University of Winchester.

Introduction *  ‘The Theory and Practice of Hell’: Post-War Interpretations of the Genocide of the Jews * ‘Eichmann in Jerusalem’: War Crimes Prosecutions and the Emergence of  Holocaust Metanarratives * ‘The Deputy’: Bystanders to the Holocaust * ‘The Realisation of the Unthinkable’: Searching for the Origins of the Final Solution * ‘National Socialist Extermination Policies’: The End of the Cold War and the Breakdown of Holocaust Metanarratives * Ordinary Men: Re-thinking the Politics of Perpetrators History *  ‘Like Sheep to the Slaughter’: Debates on Jewish Responses to Nazism * ‘Holocaust Testimonies’: The Ruins of Memory and Holocaust Historiography * Conclusion * Guide to Further Reading