Holocaust Memory and its Discontents: The Case of Germany, Featuring Michael Rothberg

In this lecture, Rothberg will trace the rise of what became known as the “German model” of addressing a nation’s own crimes. While a few years ago it seemed obvious that countries like the United States could “learn from the Germans” to confront their troubled pasts (in Susan Neiman’s terms), today the situation seems more complicated.

Focusing especially on the Federal Republic of Germany, Rothberg will survey state-level engagements with National Socialism and the Holocaust as well as grassroots efforts at commemoration that began in the 1980s. He will show how the model of Vergangenheitsbewältigung (“coming to terms with” or “mastering” the past) was consolidated after German unification and then started to fray in the twenty-first century. He will conclude by emphasizing how migration, colonialism, and the October 7/Gaza moment intersect with — and have come to unsettle — German Holocaust memory.

This event is generously sponsored by July Galper.

How to Attend

This event is offered both in person at Geisel Library and virtually via Zoom beginning at 5 p.m. Pacific time. Click the Register button at the top of this page and select your preferred mode of attendance.

About the Speaker

Michael Rothberg is the 1939 Society Samuel Goetz Chair in Holocaust Studies and Professor of English and Comparative Literature at the University of California, Los Angeles. His research focuses on the social and cultural implications of political violence and its afterlives, and his writings have been translated into French, German, Hindi, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Polish, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Swedish, and Turkish. His books include “The Implicated Subject: Beyond Victims and Perpetrators” (2019), “Multidirectional Memory: Remembering the Holocaust in the Age of Decolonization” (2009), “The Holocaust: Theoretical Readings” (2003; co-edited with Neil Levi), and “Traumatic Realism: The Demands of Holocaust Representation” (2000). With Yasemin Yildiz, he is completing “Memory Citizenship: Migrant Archives of Holocaust Remembrance.”

He has also written for public-facing venues such as Inside Higher Ed, Los Angeles Review of Books, the Los Angeles Times, and The Nation, as well as German-language publications such as Die Zeit, Berliner Zeitung, and Geschichte der Gegenwart. The 2021 German translation of “Multidirectional Memory” prompted a national debate in the mainstream press about the relationship between the Holocaust and colonialism. His forthcoming book, “The Holocaust Analogy: On the Use and Misuse of Historical Comparison” (2027), grows out of that experience and considers contentious public debates about the use of Holocaust comparisons.

About the Series

The Holocaust Living History Workshop (HLHW) series is an education and outreach program co-sponsored by the UC San Diego Library and the Jewish Studies Program. It aims to preserve the memories of the victims and survivors of the Holocaust by offering public events involving witnesses, descendants and scholars and through the use of the USC Shoah Foundation Institute’s Visual History Archive. Past HLHW workshops are now part of the Library’s digital collections and are available online.