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- Title
Erfolglose Versuche zur Rettung von Juden in Film und Literatur der deutschen Nachkriegszeit, 1945-1960.
- Authors
KABALEK, KOBI
- Abstract
Scholars studying representations of the Nazi period in postwar Germany tend to look for the deliberate failure of »the Germans« to remember difficult aspects of their past. In so doing, they often portray the 1950s as the peak of Germans’ moral failure. Upon closer investigation, however, a more complex picture emerges. This article focuses on an aspect that many historians have viewed as repressed and silenced. It examines the connection of memory, failure, and morality in East and West German films and literary depictions between 1945 and 1960, based on the topos of the aid given to Jews during the Holocaust. It asks: why did the authors of most of these representations prefer to tell a story in which the attempts to save the lives of Jews fail? Do these descriptions of a failed rescue correspond with the scholarly assumptions on Germans’ postwar failure to remember the rescue of Jews and the Holocaust? The article shows that the decision not to present a successful rescue did not necessarily (or solely) aim at exculpating the German population. Rather, the portrayal of failed rescues enabled the authors of these works to contribute to the re-education of the German society and to force a confrontation with the Nazi crimes.
- Subjects
FAILURE (Psychology); JEWS in motion pictures; JEWS in literature; HOLOCAUST, 1939-1945, in motion pictures; NAZI Germany, 1933-1945; TWENTIETH century; HISTORY
- Publication
Werkstatt Geschichte (Klartext Verlag), 2016, Issue 71, p45
- ISSN
0942-704X
- Publication type
Article