Auschwitz, Poland, and the Politics of Commemoration, 1945-1979, by Jonathan Huener

Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 2003. 326 pp. $44.95.

As I was finishing reading this fine book, I was in the process of negotiating the inscription for the entry to the new memorial that opened on June 2, 2004 at Belzec. The negotiations were conducted between Poles, Israelis, and American Jews, between men of two different generations and three different orientations to history and memory. Code words were being spoken: "Martyrdom," "Belzec death camp for Jews," "industrialized murder," and "Final Solution to the Jewish Question [Problem]." They meant different things to different people, different things in different languages. The Hebrew word for victim -- korban -- also has …