After-words: Post-Holocaust Struggles with Forgiveness, Reconciliation, Justice

by David Patterson, John K. Roth (Editor)

More than fifty years after it ended, the Holocaust continues to leave survivors and their descendants, as well as historians, philosophers, and theologians, searching for words to convey the enormity of that event. Efforts to express its realities and its impact on successive generations often stretch language to the breaking point--or to the point of silence. Words whose meaning was contested before the Holocaust prove even more fragile in its wake.

David Patterson and John K. Roth identify three such "after-words": forgiveness, reconciliation, and justice. These words, though forever altered by the Holocaust, are still spoken and heard. But how should the concepts they represent be understood? How can their integrity be restored within the framework of current philosophical and, especially, religious traditions? Writing in a format that creates the feel of dialogue, the nine contributors to After-Words tackle these and other difficult questions about the nature of memory and forgiveness after the Holocaust to encourage others to participate in similar inter- and intrafaith inquiries.

The contributors to After-Words are members of the Pastora Goldner Holocaust Symposium. Led since its founding in 1996 by Leonard Grob and Henry Knight, the symposium's Holocaust and genocide scholars--a group that is interfaith, international, interdisciplinary, and intergenerational--meet biennially in Oxfordshire, England.

296 pages, Paperback

First published December 1, 2003

About the author

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David Patterson holds the Hillel Feinberg Chair in Holocaust Studies in the Ackerman Center for Holocaust Studies at The University of Texas at Dallas. A member of the World Union of Jewish Studies and the Association for Jewish Studies, he has delivered lectures at numerous universities and community organizations throughout the world. He is a participant in the Weinstein Symposium on the Holocaust, a member of the Facing History and Ourselves International Board of Advisors, and a member of the Scholars' Platform for the Beth Shalom Holocaust Centre, Cambridge, England. He also serves as Co-Editor-in-Chief for the Stephen S. Weinstein Series in Post-Holocaust Studies, published by the University of Washington Press.

He has also translated literary works by Turgenev, Dostoevsky, and Tolstoy.