An engaging meditation on the possibility of reconciliation between
the Germans and American Jews who are the grandchildren of the
Holocaust generation. Krondorfer is a German academic living in the
US. Since the late 1980s he has been organizing encounter groups of
college-age American Jews with their German counterparts. His book
- in part a report on these therapeutic adventures in Germany and
the US, but also an imaginative exploration of themes relating to
understanding of the Holocaust - is informative and original. In
order to break through the encrustations of stale rhetoric that
have accumulated around the topic "Holocaust" in both cultures,
Krondorfer establishes a "ritual" setting in which the anxiety,
guilt, anger, and other emotions experienced by the grandchildren's
generation can emerge and be discussed. Toward this end he has
organized summer programs for students, as well as the
Jewish-German Dance Theater, which has performed both in America
and in Germany. Their performances have been the scene of sometimes
productive, often brutally frank discussions of what it means to be
an inheritor of German shame or of Jewish victimhood. Apart from
occasional incidents of outright anti-Semitism in Germany, the
dancers found that some Germans resented bitterly what they see as
not simply Jews but Americans opening old wounds, subverting the
young, encouraging them to break family taboos by asking questions
about the extent of family members' involvement in Nazi crimes.
Some Jewish survivors in the US resented seeing young Jews together
with young Germans and having "their" Holocaust taken from them by
the dancers. Such setbacks notwithstanding, Krondorfer found many
people of good will in both countries. Krondorfer's book is
theoretically sophisticated, but its strength comes from its vivid,
thoughtful accounts of his own and his students' lived experience
in Germany and the US. (Kirkus Reviews)
While much has been written about the impact of the Holocaust on
survivors and their children, little is known about how the
Holocaust has affected the third generation of Jews and Germans-the
grandchildren of those who lived during the Shoah. When these young
people try to get to know one another, they find they must struggle
against a heritage of hard truths and half-truths, varying family
histories, and community-fostered pride and prejudices. In this
book Bjoern Krondorfer, who grew up in Germany and now lives in the
United States, analyzes the guilt, anger, embarrassment, shame, and
anxiety experienced by third-generation Jews and Germans-emotions
that often act as barriers to attempts to reconcile. He then
describes the processes by which some of these young people have
moved toward an affirmative and dynamic relationship. Krondorfer
points out that relations between Jews and Germans since the war
have consisted of an uneasy truce that does not address the deeply
felt pain and anger of each group. He then shows how new
relationships can be forged, providing detailed accounts of the
group encounters he arranged between post-Shoah American Jews and
Germans. He describes how the participants reacted to oral
Holocaust testimonies and to public memorials to the Holocaust, the
creative work of a Jewish-German modern dance group to which
Krondorfer belonged, and finally the students' responses to a trip
to Auschwitz, where they developed the courage necessary to trust
and comfort one another. Krondorfer argues that friendships between
young Jews and Germans can be fostered through creative models of
communication and conflict-solving and that their road to
reconciliation may become a model for other groups in conflict.
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