The quintessential Holocaust narrative The Diary of Anne Frank appeared in 1947, one year prior to the establishment of the Jewish State. Nevertheless, Israel and its art "waited" until the 1961 public indictment of a Nazi war-criminal to hesitantly begin to face the momentous catastrophe. The Zionist wish to forge a "New Jew" was in part responsible for this suppression. The understated short stories of Aharon Appelfeld (who will visit Penn in October) were the first to enter the modernist literary scene in the 1960s, followed in 1970 by the cryptic verse of Dan Pagis, a fellow child survivor. Only in 1988 did the Second Generation of survivors reveal themselves, when two Israeli-born pop singers broke the continuous practice of concealing the past and its emotional aftermath in the watershed documentary Because of That War. This course will follow and analyze the transformation of Israeli literature and cinema from instruments of suppression into means for processing this national trauma. While Israeli works constitute much of the course's material, European and American film and fiction play comparative roles. There will be six film screenings; the films will also be placed on reserve at the library for those students unable to attend the screenings. The content of this course changes from year to year, and therefore, students may take it for credit more than once.