Podcast Summary: The Opinions – "We Need to Rethink How We Think About the Holocaust"

Host: EM Gessen | Guest: Marianna Hirsch
Date: October 31, 2025

Episode Overview

This episode of The Opinions delves into how the Holocaust has been invoked in contemporary discussions, particularly around Israel’s actions in Gaza. EM Gessen speaks with renowned scholar Marianna Hirsch about the transmission of Holocaust memory, the risks and ethics of comparisons to other atrocities, and the urgent need to rethink how the Holocaust is taught—especially as current crises unfold. The conversation explores the complexities of collective trauma, memory, identity, and the challenges of open academic discussion amidst political sensitivities.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Personal Journey into Holocaust Studies

[02:03–04:29]

• Hirsch’s Background:
  • Daughter of Romanian Holocaust survivors.
  • Initially avoided working on her own family’s history, drawn instead to avant-garde and feminist movements.
  • Became engaged with Holocaust memory in the mid-1980s, influenced by works like Art Spiegelman’s Maus and Toni Morrison’s Beloved.
  • Noted the phenomenon of second-generation memory: “I remembered moments from my parents, narratives from my parents’ histories more vividly than I remembered some of my own childhood memories.” (Hirsch, [03:30])

2. The Concept of Postmemory

[04:29–07:00]

• Definition:

  • “Postmemory” describes the way trauma and memory are transmitted so powerfully across generations that descendants experience them as if they were direct memories.
  • Operates through identification: “It could have been me.”
  • Postmemory is also shaped via media and culture, not only within families.
  • Broader relevance: This framework applies to other historical traumas, such as slavery, and is not unique to the Holocaust.

  “...we can actually feel as though we remember things that we haven’t ourselves experienced...The images that, you know, are particularly powerful are the ones that we also see in the media.”
  — Hirsch ([05:00])

3. Comparison, Uniqueness, and the Risk of Exceptionalism

[07:00–09:10]

• Debate over whether the Holocaust should be compared to other genocides or atrocities.

• Hirsch critiques the insistence on Holocaust “uniqueness”:

  “Not comparing them or not seeing them in relationship to each other can be extremely risky... The genocide in Gaza, which the exceptionalism of the Holocaust has fostered denial of other genocides. And I think that creates a real crisis.”
  — Hirsch ([08:00])

• The refusal to compare can obscure ongoing atrocities and prevent understanding interconnected histories.

4. Teaching the Holocaust: Methods and Pitfalls

[09:10–11:34]

• Currently, Holocaust education is widespread with new museums and mandated curricula.

• The core intentions are to foster understanding of mass violence and build empathy: “The never again for anyone idea, maybe that’s what students are supposed to be learning.”

• Hirsch warns of relying solely on identification and empathy in teaching. Overidentification can perpetuate intergenerational trauma and make history susceptible to misuse as propaganda.

• Advocates for contextualization—teaching the Holocaust alongside other historical phenomena, including the Nakba and the formation of Israel.

  “Personal identification and postmemory, as I conceived that this so powerful, it can also be easily misused. So I think how to prevent that kind of misuse...is to really create ways of thinking of it in the past, to contextualize it within other histories...”
  — Hirsch ([10:30])

5. Limits of Academic Freedom and Atmosphere on Campus

[11:34–15:00]

• Hirsch discusses the current climate at American universities, emphasizing:
  • Overwhelming focus on Jewish victimization can preclude critical analysis and comparison.
  • Adoption of definitions (e.g., IHRA) that categorize some criticism of Israel as antisemitism stifles open discussion.
  • “That conflation, it just kills thinking and creates fear among faculties and among students.” (Hirsch, [13:00])
• Shares personal experience: After discussing representations of violence in Gaza, Hirsch faced a formal complaint accusing her of discrimination, highlighting risks for educators.

6. Retreat from Teaching and Reflections on Course Content

[15:00–17:11]

• Hirsch has paused her own teaching because it’s “very, very difficult to create an atmosphere of trust in a classroom” given the restrictions and climate.
• Expresses regret for not integrating Palestine into testimony courses, acknowledging past curricular limitations.
• Aspires in future teaching to “write and think against militarism and the inevitability of war.”
• “There hasn’t been enough about Palestine … that was a really big failure.” (Hirsch, [17:11])

7. Making Controversial Analogies: Ghetto and Genocide as Process

[17:11–21:36]

• Gessen recounts their analogy: comparing Gaza to the Warsaw Ghetto and stating, “the ghetto is being liquidated.” This sparked public controversy and professional backlash, especially in Germany.
• Gessen’s reflection:

  “Genocide is a process … it evolves from setting the conditions … to eliminating the conditions for life gradually. So starvation is very much a part of this genocide.”
  — Gessen ([20:02])

8. Memory, Solidarity, and the Future

[21:36–22:26]

• Hirsch, asked about the future of memory-making in traumatic conflict, expresses hope:

  “I’m hoping that the kinds of solidarity networks that are being built right now, the activism, the attempt to make space for a Palestinian story and to imagine Palestinian life in the future, I hope that that will be part of the memory, the memory of solidarity and not only memory of devastation.”
  — Hirsch ([22:00])

Notable Quotes & Moments

• On postmemory's emotional power:

  “My own old childhood memories were somehow evacuated by the power of these memories that were not really memories because they were about experiences that I had not really lived through myself.”
  — Hirsch ([03:30])

• On the limits of empathy in teaching:

  “We need to foster empathy. But maybe not so much identification, but a little more distance and saying, it could have been me, but it was not me. This is in the past.”
  — Hirsch ([10:00])

• On academic constraints:

  “That conflation, it just kills thinking and creates fear among faculties and among students.”
  — Hirsch ([13:00])

• On historical analogies and resistance:

  “Gaza is a ghetto … and the ghetto is being liquidated… Genocide is a process.”
  — Gessen ([19:58–20:02])

Segmented Timeline

| Timestamp | Segment | |------------|---------------------------------------------------------------| | 00:45 | Introduction to the episode & main theme | | 02:03 | Hirsch on her journey to Holocaust studies | | 04:29 | Definition and impact of postmemory | | 07:00 | The controversy over comparing genocides | | 09:10 | Rethinking how the Holocaust should be taught | | 11:34 | Academic freedom and current university climates | | 15:00 | Suspension of teaching and personal incidents | | 17:11 | Revisiting teaching and the failure to include Palestine | | 19:05 | Use and backlash to controversial Holocaust analogies | | 21:36 | Future of memory and solidarity in the context of Gaza |

Summary Flow & Tone

This episode features a candid, reflective, and sometimes somber exchange between two scholars wrestling with the moral and practical demands of memory—especially as it shapes our responses to new violence. The tone is intellectual but deeply personal, marked by vulnerability about the speaker's limitations and fear for the future of critical thinking. Hirsch calls for a more relational and less exceptionalist approach to Holocaust memory—rooted in solidarity and open to the lessons of other histories—while Gessen illustrates the personal and professional cost of breaking taboos around analogy. The conversation ends on a hope for memory to be a tool for solidarity, not just pain.