ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the history of how the Nazi Holocaust has come to occupy a unique place in global memory, and the politics of its meanings and usage. Ranging widely, it explores the changing shape and significance of Holocaust memory in the United States, Europe (in particular Britain, Germany and Poland), Israel and elsewhere. Adam Sutcliffe explains why there was little attention to the Holocaust as focus of memory until the 1960s, and why there was a dramatic boom in Holocaust memory in the 1990s, immediately following the end of the Cold War. He also explores the immense impact of reflections on the Holocaust on the wider fields of historical memory, trauma and memorialization, and also on historians’ thinking on the methodology and ethical purpose of their discipline. More than for any other historical event, there is a widespread yearning for the Holocaust to teach us something: to yield a usable lesson for the future. However, Sutcliffe argues, many diverse and contrasting lessons have been drawn from the Holocaust, shaped by different contexts, perspectives and political agendas. Today, not least in relation to the continuing Israeli–Palestinian conflict, the politics of Holocaust memory are if anything more contested than ever.
