Images of Rupture Between East and West

About this book

In spite of the incommensurability of the Holocaust and the dropping of the first atomic bombs, the juxtaposition of Auschwitz and Hiroshima has long been a topic of serious debate. However, the fact that the interpretation of the two events in Eastern Europe differed considerably from the Western angle was largely neglected. While in Western thinking, both Auschwitz and Hiroshima were often seen as ruptures that shook the foundations of civilization, in communist Eastern Europe the concept of rupture was either ignored or dismissed as Western defeatism. 00In their contributions, international scholars investigate the perception of Auschwitz and Hiroshima in Eastern Europe from a wide range of disciplines. The volume presents a complex picture of the divides and intersections between different cultures of commemoration, including American and Japanese responses to Auschwitz and Hiroshima.