In Reckonings: Legacies of Nazi Persecution and the Quest for Justice, Mary Fulbrook concentrates on the way that we—survivors, perpetrators, descendants, academics, non-academics, and so on—frame the Holocaust in our minds and our speech. Each of the three sections has a slightly different focus, but they all thoroughly discuss post-war silence, court proceedings, literature, museum exhibits, memorials, and conversation above all. I have to take my hat off to Fulbrook for tackling a topic that I would find impossible to write about. The atrocities of the Holocaust are such that the usual words—horrible, terrible, appalling, evil—don’t seem powerful enough to accurately describe what happened. But in Reckonings, she dives deep into the very question of how we do and do not talk about the holocaust...

Read the rest of my review at A Bookish Type. I received a free copy of this book from the publisher via Edelweiss.