Meditations of a Holocaust Traveler

By Gerald E. Markle

Subjects: Holocaust Studies
Paperback : 9780791426449, 200 pages, August 1995
Hardcover : 9780791426432, 200 pages, August 1995

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Table of contents

stone soup

1. thinking
snapshots
gray
approaches
meditation

2. banality
eichmann
ordinary killers
ordinary people
are we all nazis?
abraham's choice

3. bureaucracy
routine slaughter
two visions
blood and honor
functionalism
forgetting
krema

4. modernity
total domination
gardening
medical experiments
the american connection
enlightment?
a dialogue

5. after
in memoriam
collective memory
historiography
today
anamnesis
an ending?
another ending

references

author index

subject index

This book travels across time, place, and subject to ponder the meaning of the Holocaust for contemporary cultures.

Description

Markle grasps at the Holocaust, not only from the writings of survivors and academic specialists, but also from his experience as a "tourist" of the Holocaust. He challenges the way we typically think about the Holocaust: them versus us; then versus now; there versus here. He travels across time, place, and subject to ponder the meaning of the Holocaust for contemporary cultures.

Gerald E. Markle is Professor of Sociology at Western Michigan University.

Reviews

"Markle selects and defines three basic issues of Holocaust studies and demonstrates how sociological and social-psychological scholarship illuminates these issues. The reader grasps the connection between these issues because of Markle's skillful transitions. His intermixing of his own personal experiences in approaching the Holocaust with the academic issues being debated makes the book unintimidating to the general reader who might otherwise shy from the topic (Holocaust) as well as the discipline (sociology). " — Christopher R. Browning, Pacific Lutheran University

"In a field dominated by positivist historians, Markle's constructivist approach is a breath of fresh air. His dialogue with Arendt, Bauman, Rubenstein, Milgram, et al. probes and clarifies the value, in its own right, of struggling with and against history as a scholar and a Jew in the post-Holocaust era. This is a courageous and honest work. " — R. Ruth Linden, Stanford University