In this provocative work, Alvin H. Rosenfeld contends that the proliferation of books, films, television programs, museums, and public commemorations related to the Holocaust has, perversely, brought about a diminution of its meaning and a denigration of its memory. Investigating a wide range of events and cultural phenomena, such as Ronald Reagan's 1985 visit to the German cemetery at Bitburg, the distortions of Anne Frank's story, and the ways in which the Holocaust has been depicted by such artists and filmmakers as Judy Chicago and Steven Spielberg, Rosenfeld charts the cultural forces that have minimized the Holocaust in popular perceptions. He contrasts these with sobering representations by Holocaust witnesses such as Jean Amery, Primo Levi, Elie Wiesel, and Imre Kertesz. The book concludes with a powerful warning about the possible consequences of "the end of the Holocaust" in public consciousness.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments Introduction; 1. Popular Culture and the Politics of Memory; 2. The Rhetoric of Victimization; 3. The Americanization of the Holocaust; 4. Anne Frank: The Posthumous Years; 5. The Anne Frank We Remember/The Anne Frank We Forget; 6. Jean Amery: The Anguish of the Witness; 7. Primo Levi: The Survivor as Victim; 8. Surviving Survival: Elie Wiesel and Imre Kertesz; 9. The End of the Holocaust Epilogue: A "Second Holocaust"? Notes; Index

Prizes

Cultural representations and misrepresentations of the Holocaust

Reviews

"[A] stunning reconstruction of the way in which the Holocaust has lost much of its elan vital since 1945 because of diverse pressures which have been brought to bear upon its vulnerable shoulders." Jewish Post & Opinion "The End of the Holocaust is a stunning reconstruction of the way in which that event has lost much of its elan vital since 1945 because of diverse pressures." Jewish Tribune "Offers a clear, erudite, and disturbing exposition of some of the most prominent lines of thought and argument that have emerged from Holocaust literature and cultural debate over the last half century... Effective and moving." -- Eric J. Sundquist, author of Strangers in the Land: Blacks, Jews, Post-Holocaust America "...Alvin Rosenfeld's recent sobering study, titled The End of the Holocaust. No intelligent person reading this book... could still believe that the banal pieties that have grown up around the mass murder of European Jewry could serve as an effective antidote against present-day anti-Semitism." Robert Wistrich, The Jerusalem Post, 26th January 2012 "Although Holocaust denial threatens to undermine the record of Nazi Germany's criminal legacy, Rosenfeld persuasively argues that other forces are inadvertently as dangerous." - Hadassah Magazine