339 EME 11 (3+4) pp. 339–343 Intellect Limited 2012 Explorations in Media Ecology Volume 11 Numbers 3 and 4 © 2012 Intellect Ltd Probe. English language. doi: 10.1386/eme.11.3-4.339_1 Keywords Holocaust The Shoah memory history film German history ProbE richard schaefer SUNY Plattsburgh Memory and morality abstract It has long been recognized that the Holocaust poses special challenges. On the one hand, historical research has accumulated a detailed and penetrating account of the events. On the other hand, efforts at understanding and commemorating these events transcend professional history and take shape in the public sphere. In the public sphere, however, memory of the Holocaust is shaped just as much by art and by fiction as by history. The influence of films on the Holocaust is especially impor- tant in this context to the extent that audiences take them to be, if not true, ulti- mately realistic depictions of past experience. This article challenges the notion that the memory of the Holocaust is best served by the effort to recreate experience, and argues that there are deeply moral implications of how the present uses its past. Historians generally insist on a very sharp division between history and memory. History is the critical sifting of evidence from the past in order to establish a reliable account of events; memory is the social use to which the past is put. History establishes the facts; memory the meaning of those facts for a specific audience. At least, that is the party line. But as any historian will tell you, the distinction between history and memory is much weaker than we like to admit. Historians are not solely interested in documenting who did what on such and such a day. Historians pursue specific projects because they are deeply committed to telling a certain kind of story, and to framing the past 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. EME_11.3&4_Probe_Schaefer_339-343.indd 339 7/26/13 9:54:10 AM Copyright Intellect Ltd 2013 Not for distribution