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Murder in Our Midst: The Holocaust, Industrial Killing, and Representation
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Citations
0
References
1997
Year
Literary TheorySocial CriticismRace LawLawMass AtrocityCriminal LawPhilosophy Of HistoryHistorical SociologyLiterary CriticismHolocaust StudiesOmer BartovCultural HistoryHeroic SoldierIntellectual HistoryCrime Against HumanityGenocideHomicideImaginative WritingWar LiteratureCritical TheoryLiterary HistoryHumanitiesIndividual CourageWar CrimeHistorical ReassessmentArtsIndustrial Killing
War is often portrayed as heroic, yet societies instead try to construct coherent images of mass, anonymous death, a theme examined in this book’s essays on the emergence, implementation, and representation of industrial killing. The book argues that the Nazi genocide shapes contemporary views of war, history, and memory, urging compassion and commitment amid growing violence. Bartov analyzes diverse representations of war’s horrors—from scholarship to popular culture—to identify common themes. The book demonstrates that the Holocaust embodies the tension between heroic myth and mass death, revealing how revisionist narratives and Hollywood’s fascination obscure its reality as industrial killing.
War endlessly tries to mask itself. The myth of the heroic soldier testing his individual courage stands in stark contrast to the reality of mass, anonymous death and the suppression of individual actions. Murder in Our Midst shows that this fundamental tension reached its natural conclusion in the Holocaust, and that disguising it has required an ongoing effort to misrepresent war and the Holocaust as something other than industrial killing. Examining a broad range of the representations of war's horrors, from scholarly depictions to those in popular literature, poetry, art, and the movies, Omer Bartov finds they have some things in common. Societies and cultures have attempted to form coherent images of horrific events, to draw didactic lessons from them, and to exploit them to legitimate ideological or political positions. Made up of interconnected essays, this book is both a scholarly and an often personal and passionate examination of the emergence, implementation, and representation of industrial killing. Bartov draws out the links between recent revisionist attempts to minimize and deny the Holocaust, and Hollywood's ongoing fascination with National Socialism and Hitler's Final Solution. Arguing that the modern predicament reflects the effects of the Nazi genocide on current perceptions of war, history, and memory, this book is a plea for compassion and commitment in an increasingly violent and indifferent world.