ABSTRACT
The term “collective memory” accommodates a great variety of territorial claims. In its most direct meaning, a community of memory is one created by that very memory. In the case of Holocaust survivors in particular, the community of memory appears to have constantly shifting boundaries. Within memory of the Holocaust, Auschwitz, Majdanek, Treblinka stand apart, as if in clear recognition that the experience in the camps was unique among the unique. For as the Holocaust assumes a centrality in the reflections of some prominent Christians, they too may be said to belong to that community of memory. Such communities of memory bonded by traumatic experience do often become absorbed by the wider national or ethnic collectivity. In both the Jewish and the Christian tradition, collective memory of the key “events” of religious significance is built into the observance of festivals, into the prayers, into the calendar itself.
