Two Regimes of Memory

The development of post-Holocaust culture is coming to be understood as a transition between two regimes of memory. An initial period of repression gave way, after twenty years or more, to one of obsession. Before he turns to a careful discussion of the second of these regimes in international context, Omer Bartov deals with the first only briefly and then in largely negative and summary terms. In this short comment, I want to try to complicate this somewhat undifferentiated account of the first twenty years after the war. The period is critical, I suggest, because it may offer some important resources for escaping the vicious circle of enemies and victims that Bartov identifies