University of North Carolina Press Unwanted Legacies: Sharing the Burden of Post-Genocide Generations (Modern Jewish History)

About the Author Gottfried Wagner studied musicology, philosophy, and German philology in Germany and Austria. He works internationally as a music historian and multimedia director. He has lived in Italy since 1983.Abraham J. Peck is the executive director of the Center for Catholic-Jewish Studies and professor in the department of history at Saint Leo University outside Tampa, Florida. He is the author of fourteen other books on the Holocaust and Judaism. Product Description null Review This discussion is nothing less than the coming together of different poles in the common quest for understanding. It is a masterful dual meditation on the evils men can do and how they can be overcome. Paul R. Bartrop, director, Center for Judaic, Holocaust, and Genocide Studies, Florida Gulf Coast University Gottfried Wagner and Abraham Peck, despite diametrically opposite backgrounds, have joined forces to provide a roadmap of understanding for succeeding generations. Their biographies alone, which dig deeply into Nazism and the pain of the Holocaust, make "Unwanted Legacies" must reading. Eugene DuBow, founding director, Berlin Office Ramer Institute, The American Jewish Committee"Unwanted Legacies," important in its own right, is a positive and hopeful starting point for all who wish to engage in meaningful dialogue with the other. Ideally, it will?indeed, it must?be read widely and discussed even more. ?Steven Leonard Jacobs, Aaron Aronov Endowed Chair of Judaic Studies, The University of Alabama This sensitively written book demonstrates conclusively that racial, religious, or ethnic prejudice is never genetic, and that any post-Holocaust German-Jewish reconciliation must be predicated on the absolute rejection of fanaticism and bigotry. Menachem Z. Rosensaft, adjunct professor of law, Cornell Law School; lecturer in law, Columbia Law School"For fifteen years, Gottfried Wagner and Abraham Peck, inheritors of the tragedies of the Second World War and the Holocaust/Shoah, engaged in a productive and meaningful dialogue of which "Unwanted Legacies" is among the fruits of their labors. Uncompromising in their honesty, their intersecting biographies have much to teach us, not only about the past, but about the present and future as well, most especially how those from different pasts can confront their own legacies: Germans and Jews, Palestinians and Israelis, Christians and Muslims, and others. Ultimately, "Unwanted Legacies", important in its own right, is a positive and hopeful starting point for all who wish to engage in meaningful dialogue with "the other." Ideally, it will--indeed, it must--be read widely and discussed even more.--Steven Leonard Jacobs, DHL, DD, Aaron Aronov Endowed Chair of Judaic Studies, University of AlabamaThe dialogue in which Wagner and Peck are engaged, given the uniqueness of their own words, is fascinating beyond question and much needed at the present moment where such important dialogical encounters are too quickly becoming increasingly rare.--Steven Jacobs, Aaron Aronov Endowed Chair of Judaic studies, University of Alabama