The German Catechism and the Politics of German Memory Culture

For the first few decades following the reunification of Germany, the ritualized remembrance of the Holocaust—Erinneringskultur—emerged as a widely celebrated approach to engage the nation’s fraught genocidal past. Genocide studies scholar A. Dirk Moses called this culture “The German Catechism,” which was understood though five features: (1) that ​​the Holocaust is unique because it was the exterminating Jews for the sake of extermination itself, which is different from the limited and pragmatic aims of other genocides; (2) it was a civilizational rupture; (3) Germany has a special responsibility to Jews in Germany and a special loyalty to Israel; (4) antisemitism is a distinct prejudice and it should not be confused with racism; and (5) antizionism is antisemitism. While the catechism served an important function in denazifying the country, the culture has now changed. The papers in this session will explore the politics of this catechism in contemporary German society.