Author : Alon Confino
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
ISBN 13 : 1139502182
Total Pages : 193 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (395 download)
Book Synopsis Foundational Pasts by : Alon Confino
Download or read book Foundational Pasts written by Alon Confino and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2011-09-26 with total page 193 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Alon Confino seeks to rethink dominant interpretations of the Holocaust by examining it as a problem in cultural history. As the main research interests of Holocaust scholars are frequently covered terrain – the anti-Semitic ideological campaign, the machinery of killing, the brutal massacres during the war – Confino's research goes in a new direction. He analyzes the culture and sensibilities that made it possible for the Nazis and other Germans to imagine the making of a world without Jews. Confino seeks these insights from the ways historians interpreted another short, violent and foundational event in modern European history – the French Revolution. The comparison of the ways we understand the Holocaust with scholars' interpretations of the French Revolution allows Confino to question some of the basic assumptions of present-day historians concerning historical narration, explanation and understanding.