Germany's changing historical memory of World War II and its aftermath, as reflected in the official and public remembrance of the German war dead, exposes an unresolved tension between a discourse of guilt and a discourse of national suffering and victimization. In Germany, under the auspices of the Allied occupation, remembrance honored the victims of the Nazis and those who had fought against the regime. After the partition of Germany, a new culture emerged, memorializing the civilian dead and fallen German soldiers. Despite the fierce ideological rivalry between East and West Germany, however, certain similarities existed. The political leaderships who shaped these cultures ceased to confront their citizens with the question of guilt and instead depicted the German people as victims. In Guilt, Suffering, and Memory —whose Israeli edition was awarded the Jacob Bahat Prize for best original book—Gilad Margalit discusses the official remembrance ceremonies for the German war dead, the memorials erected to commemorate them, the public discussions of these disparate cultures, and their treatment in postwar German literature and film.

The Jews of northern France, Germany, and England, known collectively as Ashkenazic Jewry, have commanded the attention of scholars since the beginnings of modern Jewish historiography. Kanarfogel examines the educational process in Ashkenaz, exploring whether there was a developed system of education, whether compensation for Torah study was permitted and what the social status of those who taught Torah was; in the first comprehensive study of the relationship between the educational institutions, leadership, and the communities in medieval Ashkenaz.

This book is the first Comprehensive study of the relationship between the eductional institutions and leadership and the communities in medieval Ashkenaz.

Pp. 98-179, "The Nazi Years", present an account by Rabbi Prinz (1902-1988) of his spiritual leadership in the Jewish community of Berlin under Nazi rule. His outspoken Zionism and advocacy of Jewish emigration expressed a minority opinion among German Jews. The popular sermons of Prinz, who was under Nazi surveillance, offered spiritual resistance, and his educational activities with youth and adults helped assimilated German Jews discover their Jewish identity. A farewell meeting for him held by the community was attended by Eichmann, whose report of the event apparently advanced his career. Prinz was expelled from Germany in 1937 and emigrated to the U.S. The editor occasionally corrects errors, such as dating, in Prinz's account, especially in regard to events affecting German Jews after Prinz emigrated.

As early as 1943, senior Nazi officials were making preparations for Germany’s defeat. Disillusioned by military setbacks and Hitler’s increasingly unhinged leadership, chief architects Bormann and Himmler headed a top secret program to lay the foundations for the Nazi party’s descent into the underground. The war, it seemed, was a lost cause; survival as a political entity, to fight another day, was now all that mattered. A system was concocted whereby a legitimate government would be infiltrated with dependable undercover Nazis, who would coordinate operations and policies in the party’s favor. From this position, it was decided that Nazis could recover their strength and prepare for another conflict – the Third World War

What does the unification of Germany really mean? In their stimulating exploration of that question, Andrei S. Markovits and Simon Reich sketch diametrically different interpretations that are frequently offered by commentators. One is that Germany, well aware of the Holocaust, has been "Europeanized" and is now prepared to serve as the capitalist and democratic locomotive that powers Europe. The other is that the proclivities behind Auschwitz have been suppressed rather than obliterated from the German psyche. Germany's liberal democracy was imposed by the allied victors, according to this view, and will one day dissolve, revealing the old expansionist tendencies to try to "Germanize" all of Europe. Markovits and Reich argue that benign contemporary assessments of Germany's postwar democracy, combined with admiration for the country's economic achievements, contribute to a German influence far greater than military might was able to achieve. Yet, at the same time, some Germans have internalized liberal and pacifist principles and now see their nation as powerless, simply a larger Switzerland. As a result, while the Germans have enormous influence and latitude, they have not taken responsibility for leadership. The prime reason for this gap between ideology and structure, Markovits and Reich suggest, lies in the politics of collective memory.