A Past Without Shadow
Constructing the Past in German Books for Children

by Zohar Shavit

2005 | 216 x 138 | 336 pp
Hb: 0-415-96924-7
GBP: £60.00

A Past Without Shadow examines 50 years of German children's books in which the darkest horrors of the Third Reich have routinely remained hidden. The horrors of the Third Reich are systematically screened and filtered, allowing the darker, bleaker parts of history to escape illumination. Here Zohar Shavit explores 345 German books for children describing the Third Reich and the Holocaust, and finds a shocking distortion of the past: a recurrent narrative which suggests that the Germans themselves had no hand in the suffering inflicted on the Jews. These books, Shavit argues, have created the false historical lesson that the real victims of Hitler's crimes were the German people themselves. First published to great acclaim in Hebrew and now available in English, this book is a wake-up call for anyone concerned about German children's literature and its responsibility to past and future.

Acclaim for A Past Without Shadow

“...[S]imply fascinating. Where is Germany going if its children learn to remember
things that constitute a distortion and falsification of their past?”
—Elie Wiesel, author of Night

“Shavit's shocking research is a reminder that those who don't want to remember the
past may be paving the way for such tragedies in the future.”
—Joseph Lapid, Minister of Justice, Deputy Prime Minister, Jerusalem

“Zohar Shavit's book about the unique strategies employed by authors of children's
books in Germany in their presentation of the past image of the Third Reich is a
cultural bombshell and piques special interest.”
—Orit Prague, Maariv

“For many years Shavit has devoted herself to the image of the Shoah presented in
West German children's literature and has thus caused a growing disapproval.
Controversy is fierce — launched not only from the right wing and not only in
Germany but from the extreme left and in Israel as well...Shavit's insights are astounding
because they sound so crystal-clear, because they make sense and are
enlightening.”
—Michael Maier, Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung

“I have no doubt that this book will become a basic study in both the field of
children's literature as well as the analysis of postwar German society.”
—Omer Bartuv, Haaretz

Zohar Shavit is Professor at the Unit for Culture Research, Tel Aviv University. Her many books include Poetics of Children's Literature and several books in German on the History of Books for Jewish Children in the German-speaking world. Shavit is also known for her translations of American children's classics, among them her translation of E. B. White's Charlotte's Web, which received the Hans Christian Andersen Medal for distinguished translation.

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