Forgiveness and Resentment in the Aftermath of Mass Atrocity

Jewish Voices in Literature and Film

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by Idit Alphandary

Type

Essays

Subject

Sociology

Keywords

Jewishness, holocaust

Publishing date

2025 (June 30, 2025)

Publisher

De Gruyter

Collection

Perspectives on Jewish Texts and Contexts

Language

English

Relative size

Physical desc.

Paperback • 226 pages
6 ¼ x 9 ½ inches (16 x 24 cm)

ISBN

978-3-11-221535-7

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Book Presentation:
The author's starting point is the interweaving of forgiveness and resentment in the works of Jewish writers after the Holocaust, most especially Hannah Arendt and Jean Améry, to make sense of the catastrophe and to point to a way forward for both victims and perpetrators. The insights of these two writers and of several Jewish novelists and poets, including Bruno Schulz, Paul Celan, and Aharon Appelfeld, are used to develop accounts of forgiveness and resentment in other cases of mass atrocity around the world. The author offers a critical rereading of primary sources that aim to separate resentment from nonviolent resistance, and forgiveness from reconciliation. Forgiveness and resentment are not, as they might first appear, mutually exclusive. Together with Arendt, Améry, and Walter Benjamin, it is argued that it is through the interaction between them that victims of mass atrocity become agents of personal and cultural change. Together, forgiveness and resentment interrupt the present, reframe the past, and shape the future. They can reduce the chasm that separates memory and trust by fashioning new connections between identity and alterity, which can open paths to truly ethical coexistence for victims and perpetrators, and their descendants.

About the Author:
Idit Alphandary, Tel Aviv University, Tel Aviv, Israel.

See the publisher website: De Gruyter