The memory of the trauma of the Shoah in the building of European identity

Abstract

The trauma of the Shoah hads required decades to be elaborated collectively, resurfacing from the long remotion that has involved the jewish world. This tragic event  representa a foundational myth of European identity: it is an event that the world never wanted to see repeated, symbol of absolute evil. The author asks himself how judaism has survived this catastrophe and is entering the process of collective grieving. From an initial tendency to remove or deny the experience, and not be overcome by it, a gradual awareness of the event in order to integrate it into memory. The weaving of memories happened in the dialogue between generations: grief is an important moment of reconciliation and reconstruction of collective identity. Israel is placed between the East and the West, actually, it is East and West at the same time and for these characteristics it represents the living possibility for a historical, political, and moral composition of the conflicts which stain the region with blood.