Beginning with Marcel Ophus's documentary The Sorrow and the Pity (1970) there has been an attempt to question the idea of a totally unified, courageous and resistant wartime France. Even more startling have been the increasingly shocking revelations that the politics of collaboration were a mere extension of a deep-seated French anti-semitic tradition. In the shadow of these developments French writers and philosophers today are reflecting on the meaning of Jewish identity in the contemporary world.

Auschwitz and After analyses for the first time how the memory of Auschwitz and the collaboration continue to haunt the French. These critical evaluations are accompianed by provocative essays on the "jewish Question" and the politics of race as they have been studied by writers, historians, philosophers and film makers in postwar France.