Abstract
Before 1993 no European country had an official commemoration ceremony devoted to the Nazi genocide of European Jews. In the decade that followed, several European states institutionalized such a ceremony. By the turn of the century Holocaust recognition had become what Tony Judt called the “entry ticket” into Europe (Postwar: A History of Europe since 1945 [2005], p. 803). Rebecca Clifford's book seeks to explain why and how this happened. By looking at public Holocaust commemoration in post-Cold War France and Italy, Clifford explores the conflicts and debates that drove the creation of official commemorations in those two countries, both of which struggled with the memory of collaboration and occupation, and muffled their wartime traumas and responsibilities with myths of collective resistance.