Vol. 19 · No. 4 · Issue 61 · Winter 2001 · pp. 87-95 (9)

Will Kansteiner

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Abstract

Omer Bartov, Mirrors of Destruction: War, Genocide, and Modern Identity
(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000)

Omer Bartov begins his most recent book with a revealing mixed metaphor. The book was designed, Bartov explains, as "a prism through which we can distill a clearer understanding of the atrocity" at the center of twentieth-century history. To achieve this better understanding of the Holocaust, Bartov leaves behind the detailed explorations of ever technical minutiae of the "final solution," the sterile debates about exceptionality and uniqueness, and the quasi-religious reverence that have dominated Holocaust studies for too long. With refreshing vigor and ambition, Bartov weaves together the histories of Germany, France, and Israel and rewrites the cultural-intellectual history of state sponsored mass violence in twentieth-century Europe. Despite the astounding breadth of his intervention, which leads us from the trenches of World War I to the most recent attempts of shaping the collective memory of the "final solution," Bartov never loses sight of his central concern: to explain the Holocaust to the citizens of the twenty-first century. But, as we follow Bartov's tour de force, we often find that his new venues of interpretation pose as many questions as they answer. Just like the opening catachresis, ambiguously combining optical and chemical symbolism, the book's multiple levels of engagement force the reader to continue the groundbreaking work begun by its author. Consequently, the study opens the intellectual space that the discipline so desperately needs; this achievement will turn the book into a landmark even for those readers who might disagree with some of Bartov's conclusions.