"Collective Innocence. The Wish to Repress the Shoah in German Collective Memory"

Online book presentation with Prof. Dr. Samuel Salzborn

Tuesday, May 26th, 2020 at 7 p.m.

Facebook live stream

(A Facebook account is not required)

An event in cooperation with the Jüdische Volkshochschule (Jewish Adult Education Center)

Samuel Salzborn's »Collective Innocence. Defense of the Shoah in German Memory «was published on the 75th anniversary of the liberation from National Socialism and the end of World War II on May 8, 1945.

The systematic trivialization of the Shoah and the inappropriate equations of liberal democracy with the Nazi regime in the so-called “hygiene demos” give Salzborn's essay a topicality that would not have been expected a few weeks ago.

The German public debate about National Socialism and the Shoah was long considered a success story. This image is beginning to crumble more and more with the increasing right-wing radicalization in politics and society. Salzborn's present book shows that in this West German self-image the history of the defense against guilt and memory, the perpetrator-victim reversal, the self-stylization as a victim and the antisemitic projection has always been faded out.

Even 75 years after the suppression of National Socialism on a social level, there was hardly any (self-) critical reappraisal of the past: the defense of the Shoah in German memory rather manifests a self-image that revolves around the myth of collective innocence.

The book was published by Hentrich & Hentrich.

PROF. DR. SAMUEL SALZBORN, born 1977 in Hano-ver, has published broadly on antisemitism and right-wing extremism. He teaches political science at the University of Giessen.

The event will take place online as a live stream. A Facebook account is not required.

This event of the MFFB in cooperation with the Jewish Adult Education Center was kindly supported by Aktionswochen gegen Antisemitismus.