Lawrence Langer in conversation with Ben Barkow.

The Wiener Holocaust Library is delighted to launch Professor Lawrence Langer's most recent book, The Afterdeath of the Holocaust. This book consists of ten essays that examine the ways in which language has been used to evoke what Langer calls the ‘deathscape’ and the ‘hopescape’ of the Holocaust. The chapters in this collection probe the diverse impacts that site visits, memoirs, survivor testimonies, psychological studies, literature and art have on our response to the atrocities committed by the Germans during the Second World War. Langer also considers the misunderstandings caused by erroneous, embellished and sentimental accounts of the catastrophe, and explores some reasons why they continue to enter public and printed discourse with such ease.

About the speakers:

Lawrence L. Langer is Emeritus Professor of English at Simmons University in Boston, USA and a renowned scholar of Holocaust literature.

Ben Barkow is the Chair of the Holocaust Survivors Friendship Association of Leeds and Chair of the UK Holocaust Memorial Foundation Academic Advisory Board. He was the Director of The Wiener Holocaust Library from 1998-2019.

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