Volume 22

Der jüdische Mai '68

Three Jewish activists played an important role during the events of May '68 in Paris: Daniel Cohn-Bendit, who as an individual has come to symbolize the events, Pierre Goldman, who until his murder in 1979 was the veritable Icon of the radical left in France, and André Glucksmann, who had earlier been enamored of Maoism, but in the mid-1970s helped to found the anti-totalitarian philosophical current termed the »New Philosophers.« Sebastian Voigt sketches the biographies of these three protagonists of the radical left in postwar France, looking at their political biographies through a prism of the history of memory. In this connection, he explores the generation of the parents, focusing on their history of experience in the interwar period. Such a historical retrospect then extends out from France into the life worlds of the Jews coming to France as immigrants and refugees from Germany, Poland and the Habsburg Empire. The communism, Zionism and anti-fascist activity of the generation of the parents and the armed resistance against the German occupation form the backdrop in the politics of memory against which the events of May '68 appear in a new light.