Conclusion: The Limits of Shared Experience

Abstract

The conclusion returns to the main themes of the book as discussed in the Introduction. Pulling these together, the chapter reiterates the book’s most important intervention, concerning the Jewish origins of crucial plans for European unity. The Jewish milieu and Jewish dilemma of marginalization were a crucial context for the emergence of the Pan-European Union, which is remembered as the progenitor of the EU. This genealogy has largely been forgotten because a Christian, conservative vision eclipsed these Jewish visions starting in the interwar period. The book challenges this forgetting of Jewish thinking on European unity in the wake of the destruction of Europe’s Jewish community in the Holocaust.