ABSTRACT
Contemporary attempts to preserve as 'memory' things which are in the course of becoming 'history', then, seem to need explanation. 'History', prominent though it is in the debates, stands for a certain notion of truth and a certain notion of referentialhy, to be summoned up as a tool in arguments going on elsewhere, rather than identifying the place where the argument is happening. The academic discipline of history has engaged with issues of memory much less than a brief survey of 'memory studies' might lead one to expect. A cluster of politically and emotionally charged concepts -witnessing, testimony, trauma, silence, memory, history, denial - keep recurring in discussions of the holocaust, not so much in relation to the historical event as to its memorial afterlife. The chapter also presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in this book.
