Soon there will be no living survivors of the Holocaust. How then can we remember this appalling, in one sense still incomprehensible, event in ways that do not lessen, distort, or misrepresent it? Or perhaps rather, as time passes and the last survivors pass away, how can we manage not to forget the Holocaust? What role can literature and film play here? To what extent, and in what ways, can aesthetics contribute to the representation of an issue in which the ethical aspect is so prominent?

The use of ‘we’ in these questions is not coincidental: it is important that we all remember, or at least make a serious attempt not to forget, the Holocaust. That this strong need is distinctly contemporary has been forcefully demonstrated by the recent terror attacks in Paris (January 9, 2015) and Copenhagen (February 15, 2015). Since, at least in part, these attacks targeted Jews, and since they can be linked to other antisemitic incidents, it comes as no surprise that many European Jews are planning to emigrate from the continent to whose culture and civilization they have so significantly contributed.

If, as I believe, literature and film can make a contribution to our attempt not to forget the Holocaust, this is because, using a range of aesthetic means, both media can focus on individuals’ experiences in ways that make an impact on the reader and on the viewer. In addition to being possessed of a value of its own, this kind of aesthetically created empathy may also serve to improve readers’ and viewers’ understanding of the Holocaust. To make this point is surely not to suggest that we do not need historical information about, and continuing historical research on, the Holocaust. Nor does it follow that the testimonies we already have will become less important. There are many contemporary writers who were children, adolescents, or adults during the Holocaust, and who have dealt with that experience in their works; there are also many survivors who have agreed to be interviewed, thus making it possible to record and preserve their stories.