Admitting the Holocaust by Lawrence L. Langer is a collection of essays
            
             about the Holocaust and how it is perceived in literature by our culture.
            
             Langer explores oral testimonies, diaries and fiction that consider the
            
             devastation of the Holocaust a central theme. He takes a look at human
            
             values in the light of that devastation. He exhibits the concern between
            
             literature and testimony. His hope is that the Holocaust experience will not
            
             be sentimentalized in the various forms of literature and media. Langer wants
            
             the Holocaust to be presented as "it really was -- evil."
            
             Throughout his book Langer makes reference to various other writers
            
             novels and articles about the death camps. He criticizes such authors as
            
             William Styron and Bernard Malamud. According to Langer ("Beyond
            
             Theodicy: Jewish Victims and the Holocaust" and "Malamud's Jews and
            
             the Holocaust Experience,"), "too many historical and cultural
            
             representations of the Nazis' murderers try, by portraying the Jewish victims
            
             as dignified martyrs, to introduce the notion of spiritual redemption into the
            
             accounts of atrocities that need to be confronted without moral
            
             oversimplification." He rejects the works of Malamud who found in
            
             suffering "a source or spiritual strength, a moral advantage."In the essays
            
             "A Tainted Legacy: Remembering the Warsaw Ghetto" and "Ghetto
            
             Chronicles: Life at the Brink" Langer criticizes accounts that present
            
             heroism, suffering and religious experience as a central theme. He writes:
            
             "Jews were destroyed by humans, not God ... in a historical, not religious,
            
             moment of suffering ... whether they chose or not, men died for nothing."
            
             He finds it unimaginable that any sane person could write, "It is a great
            
             privilege to have been chosen to bea...