| Preempting the Holocaust Revised Edition Contributor(s): Langer, Lawrence L. (Author) |
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ISBN: 0300082681 ISBN-13: 9780300082685 Publisher: Yale University Press OUR PRICE: $33.66 Product Type: Paperback - Other Formats Published: April 2000 Annotation: Lawrence L. Langer here explores the use of Holocaust themes in literature, memoirs, film, and painting, examining the work of such authors as Primo Levi, Elie Wiesel, Cynthia Ozick, Art Spiegelman, and Simon Wiesenthal, and appraising the art of Samuel Bak, the Holocaust Project by Judy Chicago, and the Yiddish film Undzere Kinder, made in Poland after the war. |
| Additional Information |
| BISAC Categories: - History | Holocaust - Literary Criticism | Jewish - Literary Criticism | European - General |
| Dewey: 940.531 |
| Physical Information: 0.6" H x 5.56" W x 8.22" (0.58 lbs) 288 pages |
| Themes: - Topical - Holocaust |
| Descriptions, Reviews, Etc. |
| Publisher Description: Lawrence L. Langer, perhaps the most important literary critic of the Holocaust, here explores the use of Holocaust themes in literature, memoirs, film, and painting. Among the authors he examines are Primo Levi, Elie Wiesel, Cynthia Ozick, Art Spiegelman, and Simon Wiesenthal. He appraises the art of Samuel Bak, considered by many the premier Holocaust painter of our time, and assesses the "Holocaust Project" by Judy Chicago. He also offers a critical interpretation of Undzere Kinder, a neglected but important Yiddish film made in Poland after the war about Holocaust orphans. Langer focuses his attention on a variety of controversial issues: the attempt of a number of commentators to appropriate the subject of the Holocaust for private moral agendas; the ordeal of women in the concentration camps; the conflicting claims of individual and community survival in the Kovno ghetto; the current tendency to conflate the Holocaust with other modern atrocities, thereby blurring the distinctive features of each; and the sporadic impulse to shift the emphasis from the crime, the criminals, and the victimized to the question of forgiveness and the need for healing. He concludes with some reflections on the challenge of teaching the Holocaust to generations of students who know less and less of its history but continue to manifest an eager curiosity about its human impact and psychological roots. |