The political culture of Israel viewed the Holocaust as the irrefutable argument justifying the Zionist solution to the "Jewish question", which had turned into a catastrophe. It also objectified this understanding of history through a massive co-optation and instrumentalization of the memory of the victims, as well as through a political-ideological way of dealing with the survivors. This major ideological pattern prevailed for many years in the hegemonic public discourse of the Israeli society. But was that also the case in its heterogeneous communities? Is the perception of the Holocaust and its memory similar in Israeli religious and secular communities, Ashkenazi and oriental communities, Jews and Arabs, old-established citizens and new immigrants? Indeed we can talk about the fragmentation of the Holocaust memory in Israeli society.

Moshe Zuckermann is a social scientist and a Professor of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Tel Aviv. Between 2000 and 2005 he headed the Institute for German History at Tel Aviv. He has published extensively on historical theory, philosophy, and memory culture. Zuckermann has established himself as a stark critic of Israel’s policies vis-à-vis the Palestinians.