Ten years ago, Islamist terrorism struck the editorial offices of Charlie Hebdo and the Hyper Cacher at Porte de Vincennes, also killing police officers. To commemorate these attacks, the CRIF and Charlie Hebdo are organizing a joint evening of debate and tribute to the victims on January 9. But does this alliance, under the slogan “We are the Republic”, between the institution that represents Jewish associative life and a bastion of militant secularism make sense, beyond the tragic ordeal we have both been through? According to Bruno Karsenti, who points out that the emancipation of Jews and their conversion to the modern political condition depends on a society that is itself emancipated, it intrinsically does. But only if “Republic” is understood in a particular sense, which must resist all dogmatization.
In an era when names like Auschwitz and Dachau evoke Europe’s darkest chapters, Marta Caraion’s Geography of Darkness: Bucharest-Transnistria-Odessa, 1941–1981 sheds light on a lesser-known axis of terror. Through a deeply personal and meticulously researched narrative, Caraion uncovers Transnistria’s haunting legacy—a region transformed by Marshal Antonescu’s Romania into a nightmarish experiment in ethnic cleansing. Elena Guritanu interviewed Caraion for K. This poignant family saga of survival and exile not only illuminates the hidden memory of the Romanian Shoah but also challenges us to confront the unspoken geographies of atrocity.
To coincide with the theatrical adaptation of Katharina Volckmer’s Jewish Cock (“The Appointment”, Camille Cottin and Jonathan Capdevielle, Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord, January 7-25, 2025), we are republishing Julia Christ’s article on the novel. It discusses the possibility of a circumcised object plugging the hole of German guilt, and the Jew one must fantasize about to continue living after the Shoah.
