‘It's a realTotschlag-Argument’: the attribution of agency to the Holocaust among contemporary young German adults in a discourse of remembering and forgetting

Abstract

The Holocaust, a significant moral principle for contemporary Germany, is embedded in a politically and emotionally charged discourse of remembering and forgetting. German politicians and young German adults often perceive the Holocaust as a threat associated with guilt, and call it Totschlag-Argument, killer-phrase, or Keule, bludgeon. This paper analyses how the Holocaust is endowed with agency, and how demands to control its powers are aligned with this. Some young German adults used this narrative practice to position themselves in the German memory discourse, while others criticised it. This paper argues that agency attribution contributes to the mechanisms of forgetting by reducing the complexities of social and historical entanglements.