Commemorating Hell

by Schafft, Gretchen; Zeidler, Gerhard

• ISBN13: 9780252077883
• ISBN10: 0252077881
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2011-02-01
• Publisher: Univ of Illinois Pr

Summary

This powerful, wide-ranging history of the Nazi concentration camp Mittelbau-Dora is the first book to analyze how memory of the Third Reich evolved throughout changes in the German regime from World War II to the present. Building on intimate knowledge of the history of the camp, where a third of the 60,000 prisoners did not survive the war, Gretchen Schafft and Gerhard Zeidler examine the political and cultural aspects of the camp's memorialization in East Germany and, after 1989, in unified Germany. Through the continuing story of Mittelbau-Dora, from its operation as a labor camp for the V-1 and V-2 rockets to its social construction as a monument, Schafft and Zeidler reflect an abiding interest in the memory and commemoration of notorious national events.

Author Biography

Gretchen Schafft is Applied Anthropologist in Residence at American University and the author of From Racism to Genocide: Anthropology in the Third Reich. Gerhard Zeidler is a former archivist at the concentration camp memorial for Mittelbau-Dora.

Table of Contents

Introduction	p. ix
Conceptualizing Horror	p. 1
The Camp Mittelbau-Dora	p. 19
An End and a Beginning	p. 39
The Change of Command	p. 59
Shaping the New Land and Its Memories	p. 77
The Mahn- und Gedenkstätte in the GDR	p. 93
The Wall Comes Down	p. 115
The Modern Gedenkstätte	p. 137
Major Themes and Conclusions	p. 152
Notes	p. 169
Bibliography	p. 183
Index	p. 195
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