Unlearning the Holocaust with Juergen Zimmerer

The Holocaust is at the heart of German national memory culture.  From commemorative events organized on the floor of the parliament to mandatory instruction in public schools, «never again » is a much repeated refrain echoed throughout German society.  How then is it possible that Germans are unlearning the lessons of the Holocaust?  This is the contention of historian Juergen Zimmerer, renouned for his scholarship on the genocide in imperial German South West Africa.  Zimmerer argues that by making the defense of Israel, Staatsräson, or national policy based on the burden of the past, Holocaust memory is being used to stifle freedom of expression and to promote ethnonationalist thinking.  By reducing the causal factors of the Holocaust to antisemitism in the Nazi era, it becomes possible to bracket out an uncomfortable past as a problem resolved. Antisemitism can now be located either in the regressive thinking of unwanted Muslim minority communities or the horrors perpetrated by Hamas in the present.  Instead of embracing tolerance and respect for fundamental human rights, Germany is now unlearning the lessons of the Holocaust and moving towards a more intolerant, ethno-nationist future.  A conversation with Juergen Zimmerer about his book, Germany’s History Wars: Contesting Memory and Identity Today, in this episode of the Realms of Memory podcast.