Remembering the Holocaust in a Racial State

The peer-reviewed series seeks to provide an international platform for new approaches to the study of modern Jewish history. Covering the period from the Enlightenment to the 21st century, the series focuses on cutting-edge work in social, cultural, economic, and political history. It seeks to explore new avenues in the understanding of modern Jewries in their historical contexts, encouraging a multi-layered exploration of topics which transcend the analytical boundaries of ethnicity, nation, and religion. The series embraces monographs and challenging research-oriented anthologies dedicated to a deeper understanding of essential themes in the main fields of Jewish studies, such as Jewish thought, migration, biography, Israel and the Middle East, Holocaust studies, the history of memory, and identity.

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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.