A postwar history of antisemitism and representations of ‘the Jew’ includes the historiography of the Second World War and the Shoah. In the postwar Netherlands Abel Herzberg and particularly Jacques Presser and Loe de Jong slowly and partly – there would always be opposition – managed to get their historical views adopted through their publications and, in the case of De Jong, also through his prominent role in the media. Their views, incidentally, didn't always correspond. But from the mid-1960s, through communication with a substantial readership and a television audience that was susceptible to the subject, the Shoah would very gradually become a central part of the history of the Second World War. Before that, the persecution of Jews was a minor topic in the public debate and historiography. The ‘national story’ of occupation, collaboration and resistance was the main area of concern, the Jewish perspective was neglected. Even so, experiences of Jewish persecution during and after the war did get recorded in the form of verbal and written testimonies, and in 1940's and 1950’s, in the publications of respectively Sam de Wolff, Willy Kweksilber and Abel Herzberg – none of them being historians.

From the late 1980s, the Shoah was a focal point of collective memory in the Netherlands – and elsewhere in the West. From a symbol of Jewish suffering, ‘Auschwitz’ developed into a universal symbol of persecution and annihilation. As a result, Jewish survivors to a certain extent lost ownership of their history. In the same paradoxical manner – albeit in a different context – the Jewish testimonies at the Eichmann trial had not necessarily led to more empathy, but rather had been experienced as painful.

The academic representation of the Shoah is not disconnected from perceptions in society. Through their work and authority historians intervene in society, but they themselves are influenced by the overall cultural-historical developments of their time. This is evident in the case of the historiographical shift that J.C.H. (Hans) Blom (b. 1943), one of the successors of De Jong as director of the Netherlands Institute for War Documentation (niod) (1996-2007), brought about with his inaugural lecture in 1983.