The Shadow and the Flame

This is a gripping account of the battles of small groups of survivors to shape the memory of the Holocaust. McAuley takes a vast historical theme and tells it as a story of fully drawn individuals. Moving, compelling, relevant to our times, and beautifully written * Simon Kuper *
In sensitively and accurately depicting the multi-faceted identities, complex personalities, and diverse voices of the men and women who first set out to chronicle the perpetration of the Hitlerian ‘Final Solution of the Jewish Question,’ James McAuley has successfully brought to life the critically important origins of the historiography of the Holocaust. At a time when the persecution, oppression, suffering and systematic genocide of European Jewry during World War II is far too often exploited and relativized, The Shadow and the Flame is certain to become required reading and an essential resource for scholars, theologians and students of history alike who seek to understand the purpose and significance of recording, preserving and perpetuating anguished and agonized memory * Menachem Rosensaft *
James McAuley has written an extraordinary book—one that I didn’t know could be written. The Shadow and the Flame is profoundly moving in its navigation of how the meaning of the Holocaust has been memorialized. It is essential reading * Edmund de Waal, author of The Hare With Amber Eyes *
At a time of surging antisemitism, this powerful book studies how Jewish thinkers memorialized the systematic extermination committed by Nazi Germany and its European collaborators. This challenging and insightful book grapples with the unmasterable legacy of the genocide of six million Jews while upholding the dignity of Jewish experience * Gary Bass, author of Judgment at Tokyo *

James McAuley is the author of The House of Fragile Things, which won the 2022 National Jewish Book Award. He is a journalist and former Paris correspondent for the Washington Post. His work has appeared in The Economist, Times Literary Supplement, New York Times, and New York Review of Books, among other publications. He holds a Ph.D. in French history from the University of Oxford, where he was a Marshall Scholar.

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