Modernity and the Holocaust

A new afterword to this edition, "The Duty to Remember -- But What?" tackles difficult issues of guilt and innocence on the individual and societal levels. Zygmunt Bauman explores the silences found in debates about the Holocaust, and asks what the historical facts of the Holocaust tell us about the hidden capacities of present-day life. He finds great danger in such phenomena as the seductiveness of martyrdom; going to extremes in the name of safety; the insidious effects of tragic memory; and efficient, "scientific" implementation of the death penalty. Bauman writes, "Once the problem of the guilt of the Holocaust perpetrators has been by and large settled...the one big remaining question is the innocence of all the rest -- not the least the innocence of ourselves".Zygmunt Bauman is the author of 'Modernity and the Holocaust' with ISBN 9780801480324 and ISBN 0801480329.