Remembering the Holocaust in a Racial State

Download or read book Remembering the Holocaust in a Racial State written by Roni Mikel-Arieli and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2022-07-18 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The lens of apartheid-era Jewish commemorations of the Holocaust in South Africa reveals the fascinating transformation of a diasporic community. Through the prism of Holocaust memory, this book examines South African Jewry and its ambivalent position as a minority within the privileged white minority. Grounded in research in over a dozen archives, the book provides a rich empirical account of the centrality of Holocaust memorialization to the community’s ongoing struggle against global and local antisemitism. Most of the chapters focus on white perceptions of the Holocaust and reveals the tensions between the white communities in the country regarding the place of collective memories of suffering in the public arena. However, the book also moves beyond an insular focus on the South African Jewish community and in very different modality investigates prominent figures in the anti-apartheid struggle and the role of Holocaust memory in their fascinating journeys towards freedom.