Competing memories? : the Holocaust and colonial atrocities in German history

A new controversy has been polarising German history and public memory since 2020. Dubbed Historikerstreit 2.0 in reference to the 1986 debate on the uniqueness of the Holocaust, the dispute revolves around the memory politics of the Holocaust and of German colonialera atrocities, but it is also very much about how Germany deals with its xenophobic present and its attitude to Israel's current settlement policies. This discussion forum takes a broader view in order to contextualise the debate within the wider scope of contemporary German historiography and memory culture and introduce a nuanced assessment of the issues at stake to the Italian public, in a country which still struggles to own up to its antisemitic past, let alone its skewed postcolonial memory and racist present. [Publisher's text].