Hiroshima

Abstract

In 1962, a Hiroshima peace delegation and an Auschwitz survivor's organization exchanged relics and testimonies, including the bones and ashes of Auschwitz victims. This symbolic encounter, in which the dead were literally conscripted in the service of the politics of the living, serves as a cornerstone of this volume, capturing how memory was utilized to rebuild and redefine a shattered world. This is a powerful study of the contentious history of remembrance and the commemoration of the atomic bomb in Hiroshima in the context of the global development of Holocaust and World War II memory. Emphasizing the importance of nuclear issues in the 1950s and 1960s, Zwigenberg traces the rise of global commemoration culture through the reconstruction of Hiroshima as a 'City of Bright Peace', memorials and museums, global tourism, developments in psychiatry, and the emergence of the figure of the survivor-witness and its consequences for global memory practices.

Israel Charny’s Attack on the Journal of Genocide Research and its Authors: A Response

“…Many Israelis and Jews seem to fear even the suggestion of looking at the Holocaust in the context of postwar history in general; fearing context might lead to relativization and downgrading of the horror. 63 Zwigenberg's report of his experiences mirror ours: judging by Charny's article and its resonance with some readers, conducting research on the Holocaust threatens "a peculiar form of Jewish nationalism that centers on victimization and precludes any wider view of the tragedy," as Zwigenberg puts it. 64 This nationalism may indeed be one of the strongest influences on this perspective on the Holocaust.…”

Transnational Memory and the Fukushima Disaster: Memories of Japan in Australian Anti-nuclear Activism

“…One approach to thinking through transnational social movements is to examine the transnational circulation of memories of struggle. The bombing of Hiroshima and its memorialisation were central to the development of global memory culture (Zwigenberg 2014;Yoneyama 1999). The global turn in memory studies challenges the privileging of the nation.…”