Assassins of Memory [Paperback]

Pierre Vidal-Naquet (Author), Jeffrey Mehlman (Translator)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 023107459X | ISBN-13: 978-0231074599 | Publication Date: April 15, 1993 0

"Assassins of Memory" is a passionate and painstaking look at one of the more curious realities of recent French cultural life: the prominence accorded to the phenomenon of "revisionism". An attempt on the part of a tiny group of fanatics, often masquerading as scholars and researchers, to deny the existence of the gas chambers and horrors of Hitler's genocidal policies, revisionism is quietly gaining adherents. The movement has been most visible in France in the past decade, particularly because of the trial of Klaus Barbie and the writings of Robert Faurisson. Revisionists are more prevalent and are gaining followers in other countries, including the United States, where the "Journal of Historical Review" is devoted to revisionist thought and where a current presidential candidate has expressed what could be described as revisionist ideas. "Assassins of Memory" exposes revisionism for the deeply perverse enterprise it is, laying bare the mechanisms of lies and manipulations on which it is sustained. More than this, it asks searching questions about the underlying causes of revisionism and its influences and diffusion in France and elsewhere. The book is particularly illuminating on the role the American linguist Noam Chomsky has played as writer of a preface to one of the movement's more influential tracts. Underlying Vidal-Naquet's argument is the question: is it acceptable for people to spread evil ideas, or should they be suppressed?

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

This is a collection of essays written in the 1980s in response to those who deny the reality of the Holocaust. The writer, a scholar of ancient Greece who teaches at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Science Sociales in Paris, is torn by the dilemma of how to provide a necessary critique of academics who reject the genocide of European Jewry without at the same time dignifying them as a possibly legitimate "revisionist" school of intellectual thought. Vidal-Naquet writes persuasively and often passionately in response to Robert Faurisson, a French professor of literature, whose arguments have appeared in Le Monde and other outlets for French intellectuals, and also takes to task American linguist Noam Chomsky, who wrote a preface to one of Faurisson's books. Vidal-Naquet offers an interesting perspective on a debate that should not have taken place. For informed readers.
- Frank L. Wilson, Purdue Univ., West Lafayette, Ind .
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Review

In these essays the eminent French classicist Pierre Vidal-Naquet engages the issues raised by the denial of the Holocaust with an extraordinary fusion of moral passion and historical vigor. -- Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi Columbia University

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 205 pages
• Publisher: Columbia Univ Pr (April 15, 1993)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 023107459X
• ISBN-13: 978-0231074599
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.6 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 15.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #992,290 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars How does one refute a lie?, August 6, 2003

By 

I. Tysoe "Inna Tysoe" (Earth) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Assassins of Memory: Essays on the Denial of the Holocaust (European Perspectives: A Series in Social Thought and Cultural Criticism) (Hardcover)

This is a commentary on our age as much as it is a series of essays about the people Vidal-Naquet calls assassins of memory. And a sad commentary it is. For it features some of our greatest minds and some of our most revered institutions.

Here is Chomsky, proudly proclaiming that "It is the responsibility of intellectuals to speak the truth and expose lies"... shortly before penning a preface to Robert Faurisson's book--a book that denied the Holocaust. (Chomsky later realized what he had done and frantically called the publisher to omit his preface).

Here is an institute that finances revisionis activities offering $50,000 to anyone who could prove the existence of a gas chamber. A gentleman who had seen his entire family murdered accepted only to find that the conditions of "proof" were set so high that only a person who HAD been gassed could, in fact, prove the existence of a gas chamber.

Here is Jean-Paul Sartre's report on genocide--a report which omits the Armenian genocide so as not to offend the Pakistani and Turkish authorities.

Here is the origin of the book's title for those who would deny the Holocaust, "chose their target well: they are intent at striking a community in the thousand painful fibers that continue to link itself to its own past."

Here is the French Court struggling with the concept of "crimes against humanity" on December 20, 1985.

And here is the state of the French libraries. "Neither at the Sorbonne nor at the Bibliotheque Nationale can one find fundamental documentation concerning Auschwitz, which has to be consulted, for the most part, at the Centre de Documentation Juive Contemporaire, which itself is far from possessing all that it should."

It seems Vidal-Naquet is amply justified in concluding "Will the truth have the last word? How one would like to be sure of it....."

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Holocaust deniers, beware!, June 28, 2000

By 

Lucie Novak - See all my reviews

This review is from: Assassins of Memory (Paperback)

This book is an excellent summary of the holocaust and the controversies which have arisen around it in the past years. Everybody who has ever had any doubts about the holocaust should read this book to realize how dangerous is to deny a historical event for the collective memory of the people. Vidal-Naquet is brilliant in his sociological-discoursive method. A first-class historical treatise.

5.0 out of 5 stars Holocaust deniers, beware!, June 28, 2000

By 

Lucie Novak - See all my reviews

This review is from: Assassins of Memory (Paperback)

This book is an excellent summary of the holocaust and the controversies which have arisen around it in the past years. Everybody who has ever had any doubts about the holocaust should read this book to realize how dangerous is to deny a historical event for the collective memory of the people. Vidal-Naquet is brilliant in his sociological-discoursive method. A first-class historical treatise.