The Shadow and the Flame

Loss, Survival, and the Making of Holocaust Memory

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An urgent history – intimate in its telling, epic in its scope – of the argument that shaped the postwar world: how to define and remember the Holocaust.

In 1945, the end of World War II also marked the end of the attempted extermination of the Jewish people. Stunned by grief, survivors faced the task of not only forging new lives but of shaping how this unprecedented cataclysm might be remembered by generations to come.

A magisterial work of history years in the making, The Shadow and the Flame takes as its subject the fierce debate that ensued – one that spanned decades and continents and was the first of its kind. Acclaimed historian James McAuley takes us into the minds and hearts of the individuals – many well-known, others largely forgotten – who waged that dispute in Europe, the United States, and the newly established state of Israel: from Hannah Arendt, whose reporting from the Eichmann trial enraged her fellow Jews; to Salo Baron, the era’s pre-eminent Jewish historian, who battled to protect the story of his people from the burden of tragedy; to Elie Wiesel, whose account of life at Auschwitz became the one the world chose to embrace, even as it alienated many of his peers.

McAuley transports us from Paris to New York, from the desecrated ghettos of Poland to the fledgling kibbutzim of Israel, as the event that gradually came to be called the Holocaust made an uneasy transition into memory – one that, far from being neatly resolved, weighs all too heavily upon the present. Bold, learned, and infused with the energy and emotion of its principals, The Shadow and the Flame is the dramatic account of the contentious process – at once painful and shot through with urgency and consequence – of crafting history in real time.

This is a gripping account of the battles of small groups of survivors to shape the memory of the Holocaust. McAuley takes a vast historical theme and tells it as a story of fully drawn individuals. Moving, compelling, relevant to our times, and beautifully written
Simon Kuper

In sensitively and accurately depicting the multi-faceted identities, complex personalities, and diverse voices of the men and women who first set out to chronicle the perpetration of the Hitlerian 'Final Solution of the Jewish Question,' James McAuley has successfully brought to life the critically important origins of the historiography of the Holocaust. At a time when the persecution, oppression, suffering and systematic genocide of European Jewry during World War II is far too often exploited and relativized, The Shadow and the Flame is certain to become required reading and an essential resource for scholars, theologians and students of history alike who seek to understand the purpose and significance of recording, preserving and perpetuating anguished and agonized memory
Menachem Rosensaft

In the decades after 1945, survivors, scholars, and writers in Europe, America, and Israel debated the story of the slaughter of the European Jews — what to call it, how to record it, who had the standing to speak about it. The Shadow and the Flame tells the story of that debate, and reminds us that the creation of public memory is never accidental, and never permanent. James McAuley reminds us that individual choices helped shape what we remember, and will continue to define how we interpret the past
Anne Applebaum, author of Autocracy Inc

The Shadow and the Flame is absolutely superb. It’s written with elegance and nuance as well as immense knowledge. I learnt a great deal and was consistently awed by McAuley’s judicious assessments of his protagonists. This is an important and hitherto untold story, more relevant now than ever. McAuley’s work is in every way admirable: a necessary and brilliant achievement.
Bart van Es, author of The Cut Out Girl

A stunning, harrowing and deeply humane book. The Shadow and the Flame is an impeccably researched account of the men and women who first set out to record the Holocaust, bearing witness while laying the foundations of how the world would remember. In telling their stories, McAuley offers a poignant look at how memory is claimed and shaped, and at what is lost when remembrance becomes doctrine. Essential and timely
Clarissa Ward, author of On All Fronts

About James McAuley

James McAuley is the author of The House of Fragile Things, which won the 2021 National Jewish Book Award. He is a journalist and former Paris correspondent for the Washington Post, and he has been published in The Economist, Times Literary Supplement, New York Times, New York Review of Books, among others. He holds a PhD in French history from the University of Oxford, where he was a Marshall Scholar. He lives in London.

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