Appendix I

Saul Friedlander on
"Historical Conciousness"

         "Indeed the process involved in the molding of public memory is, theoretically at least, antithetical to that involved in the writing of history. Nonetheless, the representation of a recent and relevant past has to be imagined as a continuum: the constricts of public-collective memory find their place at one pole, and the dispassionate historical inquiries at the opposite pole. The closer one moves to the middle ground, that is to an attempt at general interpretation of the group's past, the more the two areas—distinct in their extreme forms become intertwined and interrelated. This middle ground may be defined as a specific category, that of historical consciousness. Public-collective memory manifests itself essentially in set commemorative rituals and dominant symbolic systems referring to the past of the group (street names, monuments, museums, etc.) and "dispassionate" historiography is restricted to periods distant in time or to those eras that have not lost immediate existential and ideological relevance to the present. Historical consciousness is the necessary conjunction of both extremes in any significant attempt at understanding, explicating, and representing the yesterday that affects the shaping of today. Incremental knowledge acquired by historical research is usually integrated within the general framework of the prevailing historical consciousness of a group and molded according to one of its extant frameworks of interpretation."