After Such Knowledge: A Meditation on the Aftermath of the Holocaust

This is an important and timely book on the legacy of the Holocaust from a world-renowned commentator on the subject. As the Holocaust recedes from us in time, the guardianship of its legacy is being passed on from its survivors and witnesses to the generation after. How should we, in turn, convey its knowledge to others? What are the effects of a traumatic past on its inheritors, and the second generation's responsibilities to its received memories? Eva Hoffman probes these questions through personal reflections and through broader explorations of the historical, psychological and moral implications of the second-generation experience. She examines the subterranean processes through which private memories of suffering are transmitted, and the more wilful stratagems of collective memory. As she guides us through the poignant juncture at which living memory must be relinquished, she asks what insights can be carried from the past, and urges the need to transform potent family stories into a fully-informed understanding of a forbidding history. Author Bio: Eva Hoffman was born in Cracow, Poland, and emigrated to America at the age of thirteen. The recipient of the Guggenheim Fellowship, the Whiting Award and an award from the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters, she currently lives in London. 'Hoffman draws upon disparate disciplines and forms of literature to probe the issues that haunt her generation' - Frances Spalding, "Independent". 'Hoffman asks many questions, bringing a voice of reason to the irrational, reaching out for reconciliation' - "Sunday Times". 'Eloquent testimony to the need not only to understand and absorb the past but also to recognise the danger - of focusing on the memory at the expense of the object of the memory' - "Jewish Chronicle".