National Policy, Global Memory: The Commemoration of the Righteous from Jerusalem to Paris, 1942-2007

Since 1963, the state of Israel has awarded the title of Righteous among the Nations to individuals who risked their lives sheltering Jews during the Holocaust. This distinction remained solely an Israeli initiative until the late 1990s, when European governments began developing their own national categories, the most prominent of which was the Righteous of France, honoring those who protected Jews during the Vichy regime. In National Policy, Global Memory, Sarah Gensburger uses this dramatic episode to lend a new perspective to debates over memory and nationhood. In particular, she works to combine two often divergent disciplines-memory studies and political science-to study memory politics as a form of public policy.