Fantasies of Witnessing

"Fantasies of Witnessing explores how and why those deeply interested in the Holocaust, yet with no direct, familial connection to it, endeavor to experience its horror vicariously through sites or texts designed to make the event "real" for nonwitnesses. Gary Weissman argues that far from overwhelming nonwitnesses with its magnitude of horror, the Holocaust threatens to feel distant and unreal. A prevailing rhetoric of "secondary" memory and trauma, he contends, and growing efforts to portray the Holocaust as an immediate and personal experience are responses to an encroaching sense of unreality: "In America, we are haunted not by the traumatic impact of the Holocaust, but by its absence. When we take an interest in the Holocaust, we are not overcoming a fearful aversion to its horror, but endeavoring to actually feel the horror of what otherwise eludes us.""--BOOK JACKET.