“Rationalizing Madness: Memory, Violence, and the Holocaust in the work of A. Dirk Moses”

In cooperation of the German-Israeli Society with the Research Network: „Experiences of Antisemitism in the Third Generation: On the Reactivation of Extreme Trauma among Descendants of Holocaust Survivors“, our Researcher Hendrik Hebauf held on 25.9.2025 at the Sigmund Freud Institute at the University of Frankfurt a lecture about “Rationalizing Madness: Memory, Violence, and the Holocaust in the work of A. Dirk Moses”.

Abstract of the Lecture:

“After A. Dirk Moses sparked the “catechism debate” in 2021 as part of the “Historians’ Dispute 2.0” in the German feuilleton, the historian and genocide scholar, who teaches in New York, was invited to Frankfurt am Main this summer for a research stay. His postcolonial positions are increasingly gaining traction at Goethe University. This shall be taken as an opportunity to critically examine the relationship between A. Dirk Moses’ political assertions regarding memory and his theory of violence, which is primarily outlined in “Problems of Genocide” and subsumed under the term “permanent security.” In particular, Moses’ interpretation of the Holocaust as a crime motivated by security considerations is the focus of attention. 

This interpretation not only stands on shaky historical ground, but also harbors the essential epistemological and methodological problem of Moses’ postcolonial theory of violence. This theory of violence must fail to recognize the fundamentals of the relationship between sociology and psychology, not least because it has inherited elements of Nazi guilt denial, in this case from SS Einsatzgruppen leader Otto Ohlendorf. Moses’ gesture of radical criticism of Germany’s coming to terms with its past in the service of national interests turns out to be its very own project of renewal. The rebellion on display is a conformist one that lapses into a conspiracy-prone interpretation of reality. Ohlendorf guilt denial is contained in it.”