Holocaust and Genocide Studies 17.1 (2003) 62-88
The Holocaust and American Public Memory, 1945-1960
San Diego State University
Abstract: Until the 1960s, many scholars assert, most Americans
awareness of the Holocaust was based upon vague, trivial, or inaccurate
representations. Yet the extermination of the Jews was remembered in
significant ways, this article posits, through World War II accounts,
the Nuremberg trials, philosophical works, comparisons with Soviet
totalitarianism, Christian and Jewish theological reflections, pioneering
scholarly publications, and mass-media portrayals. These early postwar
attempts to comprehend the Jewish tragedy within prevailing cultural
paradigms provided the foundation for subsequent understandings of
that event.
Between the end of the war and the 1960s, as anyone who has lived