Survivor Transitional Narratives of Nazi-era Destruction ─ The Second Liberation

Survivor Transitional Narratives of Nazi-Era Destruction: The Second Liberation examines the historical circumstances that gave rise in the 1960s to the first cohort of Nazi-era survivors who massed a public campaign focusing on remembrance of Nazi racial crimes. The survivors' decision to engage and disquiet a public audience occurred against the backdrop of the Frankfurt Auschwitz trial and the West German debate over the enforcement of statutory limitations for prosecuting former Nazis. Dennis B. Klein focuses on the accounts of three survivors: Jean Améry, an Austrian ex-patriot who joined the Belgian Resistance during the war, Vladimir Jankélévitch, a member of the French Resistance, and Simon Wiesenthal, who dedicated his life after the war to investigating Nazi crimes. As Klein argues, their accounts, in addition to acting as a reminder of Nazi-era endemic criminality, express a longing for human fellowshipThis contextual and interdisciplinary interpretation illustrates the explanatory significance of contemporary events and individual responses to them in shaping the memory and legacy of Nazi-era destruction. It is essential reading for students and scholars of the Nazi era and its legacy, genocide studies, Jewish Studies, and the history of emotions.

Dennis B. Klein is Professor of History, Director of the Master of Arts in Holocaust and Genocide Studies program, and Director of the Jewish Studies Program at Kean University, USA. He is also the founding director of the Anti-Defamation League's Braun Center for Holocaust Studies. He is the author of Jewish Origins of the Psychoanalytic Movement (University of Chicago Press, 1985) and the editor of Societies Emerging from Conflict: The Aftermath of Atrocity (forthcoming).