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JEWISH BOOK ANNUAL
German Reparations: A History o f the Negotiations
(Jerusalem,
1980; German edition,
Wiedergutmachung fu r Israel
: Stuttgart,
1980) is Nana Sagi’s study of the history o f the contacts and nego
tiations that led up to the Luxembourg Agreement between the
German Federal Republic, on the one hand, and the State o f Is
rael and the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against
Germany, on the other. The background o f the negotiations, the
deliberations themselves, the agreements and the struggle waged
for their approval form the content o f the study.
LITERARY RECORD
The Holocaust in literature is the topic presented by Sidra
DeKoven Ezrahi in
By Words Alone
(Chicago, 1980; pb 1982). The
au thor locates the literature along a five-stage continuum that
stretches from realism to myth. The first stage, documentary
literature, preserves a “sacred” attitude towards broad historical
processes. T h e second stage, defined as “concen tra tionary
realism,” also reflects the artist’s primary sense o f loyalty to fact.
In the next stage, the “survival novels,” the tyranny o f fact over
imagination is challenged through the use o f metaphor, fantasy
and memory. The fourth stage on the continuum relates to the
Holocaust as a Jewish tragedy, where collective Jewish history
and forms of memory rather than personal biography provide
the links between past and future. The final stage, and most rad i
cal fo rm o f th e a b so rp t io n o f th e h is to r ic a l ev en t in to
imagination, is the realm o f myth, where writers distill the ho r
rors o f history into the essential symbols o f violence, evil and
death. The last chapter of the book is a separate literary history of
the resonances of the Holocaust in American literature.
In
Spain, the Jews and Franco
(Philadelphia, 1982; Spanish edi
tion:
Espania, Franco y los Judios,
Madrid, 1983), Haim Avni ad
dresses a question that has long been a matter of controversy: the
role played by Spain regarding the Jews during World War II.
This investigation is viewed within the context o f Spain’s unique
relationship with the Jewish people since the Edict o f Expulsion
in 1492. It traces the impact o f this event upon the attitudes and
expectations of both the Spanish authorities and Jewish organi
zations regarding the rescue of the Jews, and tries to evaluate the
extent to which rescue opportunities were actually exploited.
Zionism and the history o f the renewal o f Jewish settlement in