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July 2020 Vol. 57 No. 11

In Remaking Holocaust Memory, Steir-Livny (Sapir Academic College, Israel) makes an important contribution to scholarship on memory studies generally as well as on Holocaust memory specifically. Examining recent documentary films produced in Israel, the author explores the changing shape and significance of remembrance, highlighting its importance for identity and community. Steir-Livny opens with a strong contextual introduction that nicely frames the subsequent analysis. She helpfully locates third generation documentarians in the broader currents of Holocaust memory and filmmaking about the Shoah. She devotes the book's five chapters to specific themes: gender, Germany, victims' testimonies, representation, and perpetrators. She summarizes her findings in an epilogue. Throughout, Steir-Livny skillfully interweaves two broad perspectives: on the one hand, she elucidates what makes Holocaust memory in the 21st century unique; on the other, she puts 21st-century memory in dialogue with earlier iterations. In the process, she demonstrates the ways in which third generation documentarians continue the work of their forebears while complicating the contours of commemoration. Steir-Livny's book will be of great value to scholars of Holocaust studies, cinema studies, and memory.

--C. R. King, Columbia College Chicago

Summing Up: Highly recommended. Graduate students, researchers, faculty.