“An Anne Frank who lived might have told us what she saw at Westerbork, Auschwitz, and Bergen-Belsen, and people might not have liked what she had to say…. With brutal honesty, she bursts treasured myths like the changing of Jewish names at Ellis Island and tackles international icons like Anne Frank, whose appeal, she posits, lies in her lack of a future. In People Love Dead Jews, Horn continues her exploration of “the strange and sickening ways in which the world’s affection for dead Jews shapes the present moment, leaning into the “distorted” public interest in past Jewish suffering, which she writes she had previously mistaken as a sign of respect for living Jews. Appropriately timed to confront the worrying rise in antisemitism, its unnerving title reflects Horn’s thesis that individuals both Jewish and non-Jewish are obsessed with selective memories of the past that focus on a “dejewing” process in many parts of the world without paying much attention to the Jewish present-which she calls a “profound affront to human dignity.”Ī Hebrew and Yiddish scholar and the author of five novels, Horn got an early start as a published writer: The essay she alludes to in her introduction about visiting concentration camps was originally printed in Hadassah Magazine when she was a teenager. People Love Dead Jews: Reports from a Haunted Presentĭara Horn’s new book is not for the faint-hearted.

Book dead jews