History

To keep the memory alive of the great historian Pierre Nora, who passed away on Monday, June 2, alive, we are republishing a text by Danny Trom—originally published in La France en récits—which explores the echoes between Nora’s Rethinking France project and Yerushalmi’s Zakhor. Two fundamentally different, even opposing, approaches to memory, yet both addressing the question of Jewish emancipation in the modern nation and what remains of their historical consciousness when the Republic fails to keep its promises.

How did a classic work of Jewish thought written in Arabic in the 12th century, which claims the absolute superiority of Jews and Hebrew, come to be cited by both the Israeli far right and the most radical fringes of anti-Zionism? To dispel this mystery and the misreadings of this text, David Lemler immersed himself in Yehuda Halevi’s Kuzari. His interpretation reveals an unexpected utopia, that of the Jewish state of the Khazars, whose critical function could help us escape contemporary aporias.

On May 8, Europe celebrates its rebirth following the defeat of the Nazis. But can Jews participate in this moment of jubilation that unites European consciousness? Through the experiences of playwright Ionas Turkov on May 8, 1945, Stéphane Bou examines the disconnect between the narratives and emotions of “the world” and those of the Jews. What place can the history of the Shoah find in the grand triumphal narrative of victory and European unity?

Retracing the life story of his maternal grandmother, Stephen Pogany offers us a glimpse into the Hungarian Jewish world of the early 20th century. With the First World War, the era changed and hopes were dashed: due to the rise of antisemitism, Jews who had become integrated into the Magyar nation were thrown into the ruts of history.

All massacres resemble each other when one deliberately decides to dispense with the analytical precision that would make it possible to differentiate between them. But where does this love of hackneyed comparisons, so common today, have its roots? Stephan Malinowski sets out to identify the intersecting and paradoxical intellectual lineages that give rise to this great confusion.

As the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz is commemorated, and the last survivors are summoned to compensate for the inadequacies of a memory that never seems to be able to take root, Ruben Honigmann reflects in this text on the possibility of recounting the Shoah. In his personal text, this attempt resembles a never-ending search, the meaning of which is never certain.

To commemorate the 80th anniversary of the discovery of the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp by the Red Army, we are publishing a special feature bringing together texts published in K., dealing with the history and memorial challenges surrounding this place which symbolizes, more than any other, the horror of the Shoah. In particular, you’ll find a reflection on antisemitism “because of Auschwitz”, a clandestine manuscript written by Jewish prisoners of the camp who were already worried about the way in which the representation of the Shoah would be distorted, and several contributions confronting precisely these distortions and the difficulties in constituting a memory of the genocide.

In twentieth-century Europe, there are places whose names are inextricably linked with the atrocities committed there. Auschwitz, Majdanek, Buchenwald, Dachau, Bergen-Belsen… But not all of them sound German or Polish. The family trajectory of survival and exile that Marta Caraion traces in Geography of Darkness. Bucharest-Transnistria-Odessa, 1941-1981 [Editor’s translation from French original], reveals another toponymy of fear. Transformed by Marshal Antonescu’s Romania into a laboratory for ethnic cleansing, Transnistria is its darkest node. This intimate and brilliantly documented account unravels this knot, thread by thread, exposing the long-obscured memory of the Romanian Shoah.

For the first issue of 2025, we invite you to read or re-read the 7 most popular articles of the past year.   The Eternal Settler Benjamin Wexler – Published…