Soldiers of God in a secular world: Catholic theology and twentieth-century French politics

Abstract

text, and academic and journalistic studies, mostly in German. One of the strengths of the book is its rare collection of striking images of the Armenian genocide and of the two museums. The book also distinguishes itself from others by exploring theological and anthropological perspectives on memory-building initiatives after genocides. The book is unique in offering a deep exploration of the meaning of genocide memorials and memory rituals from the standpoint of nationalism, religious and sectarian transmission, and literary and architectural culture. Aside from the central comparison of the Armenian genocide and the Shoah, the theoretical approach seems to be not as comparative or analytical as some other approaches in the field of genocide studies. Future works in this field might further develop Dr. Kirsch’s analysis of the emergence of Armenian and Jewish memory of twentieth-century genocide to address the nineteenth century and the period before 1942 in the Jewish case, and the political and military contexts that shaped the place of memorials to great tragedies and triumphs in national and global cultures. The apparatuses of Armenian genocide memory and Armenian cultural transmission were arguably made possible, for example, by decisions and actions by the Russian, British, US, and French empires during the First World War, then by the Soviets and their allies especially prior to and during World War II, and finally by Soviet and post-Soviet leaders in the 1980s and 90s. While Dr. Kirsch describes the Zionist origins of Holocaust memory institutions in Israel, the foreign (US and Soviet, mainly) contributions to Israel’s history are not analyzed. Arguably, the two major blocs of the Cold War shaped, alongside larger religious movements and national identities, the character and biases of our historical memory. Had the United States rather than the Soviet Union collapsed to end the Cold War, a different archipelago of museums would dot the earth, and a different outcome to the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 would have prevented the Halabja Museum and the Halabja Martyrs’ Cemetery from taking their present form (Eccarius-Kelly, 2020).