With the passing of the final survivors, the Nazi genocide of European Jews is at last truly becoming historical.

Yet antisemitic and other racial prejudice, hate speech, and
violence are everywhere still present and indeed surging.

Stuart Taberner

About the Project

Thanks to the generous $1.3 million grant from the United Kingdom Arts and Humanities Research Council, our international team of over 40 researchers, led by Stuart Taberner and Erin McGlothlin, will be able to conduct the first comprehensive study of Holocaust literature on a large scale.

Literary responses to the Holocaust have profoundly influenced the global awareness of the genocide. The most often referenced writers are Anne Frank, Elie Wiesel, and Primo Levi, whose works are extensively circulated. Nevertheless, the body of Holocaust literature is considerably more extensive, encompassing numerous works that were authored worldwide, in diverse languages, and spanning several decades. As the corpus of literary works has grown, researchers have discovered even more examples of testimonies, documentaries, poems, fiction, and other genres. These works are often organized into traditional categories based on country, time period, and genre. However, in the context of the Holocaust, these categories may be rather artificial due to the transnational and cross-temporal character of the events and the literary responses to them. When analyzing particular writings, the major areas of concern have mostly been the author’s personal experience with the Holocaust, the accuracy of the portrayal, moral reaction, the intergenerational trauma, and the formal development.

The project will engage in a comprehensive rethinking by applying contemporary concepts of power, inequality, human rights, and social justice to determine what Holocaust literature consists of, how it operates, and what the Holocaust means today.

This collaborative project also reflects our strong commitment to the future of Holocaust memory.

Erin McGlothlin

The project includes:

  • The Cambridge History of Holocaust Literature, which will be published by Cambridge University Press
  • New Approaches to Teaching Holocaust Literature, which will be published by Camden House
  • a global public engagement program, which will take place in 2025

Benjamin Paloff, University of Michigan

funded by