Regional Studies: American Studies - Israel Studies

Regional Studies: American Studies - Israel Studies

Investigating the representation of the Holocaust as Jewish collective memory in the political literature of Israel; a case study of three works, The Diary of a Young Girl, the Night and The Dance of Genghis Cohen

Document Type : Original Article

Author
Graduated from Master's degree in Political Science, Kharazmi University, Tehran, Iran.
Abstract
Israel, as a newly founded political system, has been spared from devastating damage such as social disintegration, civil war, secession, coup, and terrorism, and is located in the troubled and turbulent region of the Middle East. In addition, the majority of Israeli citizens are Jewish immigrants with different life experiences, and what unites them is their ethnic and religious history. A history that has been manifested in the form of collective memory in political literature, religious and national practices, and rituals, their monuments and memorials, on the one hand, it provides unity and identity to the people who share in it, and on the other hand, it gives legitimacy to the power that relies on it. Book of Exodus, The Assyrian Siege of Jerusalem and the Displacement of the Ten Lost Tribes, the book of Esther, the Narrative of the Wandering Jew, and the Holocaust are among these Jewish collective memories. The present study aims to investigate the functions of Israel's Holocaust-oriented political literature by studying hermeneutics based on the text of three prominent works in the field of Holocaust literature (The Diary of a Young Girl by Anne Frank, The Night, by Elie Wiesel and The Dance of Genghis Cohen by Romain Gary). And to answer the question of what role Israeli political literature focusing on the Holocaust, plays in the cohesion of Israeli society and bringing public opinion together with the policies of the Israeli government. The hypothesis of the upcoming research is based on the fact that during the last seven decades, the Holocaust event, as a dynamic and active memory, has formed the basis of Israeli political literature.
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