Admitting the Holocaust

In the face of the Holocaust, writes Lawrence L. Langer, our age clings to the stable relics of faded eras, as if ideas like natural innocence, innate dignity, the inviolable spirit, and the triumph of art over reality were immured in some kind of immortal shrine, immune to the ravages of history and time. But these ideas have been ravaged, and in Admitting the Holocaust Langer presents a series of essays that represent his effort, over nearly a decade, to wrestle with this rupture in human values and to see the Holocaust as it really was. These penetrating and often gripping essays cover a…