Haunted City: Nuremberg and the Nazi Past

by Neil Gregor

Nuremberg―a city associated with Nazi excesses, party rallies, and the extreme anti-Semitic propaganda published by Hitler ally Julius Streicher―has struggled since the Second World War to come to terms with the material and moral legacies of Nazism. This book explores how the Nuremberg community has confronted the implications of the genocide in which it participated, while also dealing with the appalling suffering of ordinary German citizens during and after the war. Neil Gregor’s compelling account of the painful process of remembering and acknowledging the Holocaust offers new insights into postwar memory in Germany and how it has operated. Gregor takes a novel approach to the theme of memory, commemoration, and remembrance, and he proposes a highly nuanced explanation for the failure of Germans to face up to the Holocaust for years after the war. His book makes a major contribution to the social and cultural history of Germany.

Genres: World War II, Germany

336 pages, Hardcover

First published July 11, 2008

Reviews

[Lewis Weinstein]

I have high hopes for this book, which I will get from the Key West library later today. My wife and I visited the "Fascination and Terror" exhibit at the Nazi Documentation Center in Nuremberg last summer, and we were appalled. I'm curious to learn Professor Gregor's take on the exhibit.

If you want to know what I thought, see ...

http://lewweinsteinauthorblog.com/201...

I got the book and was very disappointed to learn that "Haunted City" deals only with events through 1968, even though it was published in 2008, after the "Fascination and Terror" exhibit had opened. Not a word on the exhibit which, to my mind, represents Nuremberg's latest and most frightening representation of its Nazi past.

[Ann Riley]

I just couldn't finish this; one of the very few I haven't finished after starting. It was too much like a text book and not very readable.

[Malcolm Davis · Rating 1 out of 5]

I visited Nuremberg some years ago and found it a fascinating place. This piqued my interest. However I found this book to be extremely boring and could not finish it.

[Cassie Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is about how ordinary Germans who had lived through the war and the Nazi period faced up to what they had done - or, in most cases, didn't face up to it. It tells you about memorials, museums and commemorations and about how Germans used those to focus on their own sufferings during the war and not on the people they had murdered in the Holocaust. It is an academic book but quite readable and contains some fascinating examples and is thought-provoking.

[Judy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Driest book I think I've ever read. Reads like a term paper and would have to be re-written in plain English for the average reader. Didn't get interesting to me until the last quarter of the book and it wasn't until the last chapter that the author discussed all of the monuments in Nuremberg from the Nazi period and what happened to the Congress building and Zeppelin Field. It is a fascinating city to visit though.

[Kim Freitas · Rating 2 out of 5]

As much as I enjoy reading on this topic, I just couldn't get into this book. It read with as much enthusiasm an a technical instruction manual. Very much like a PhD thesis paper. No personality to this book.