A shadow fell across Europe during Walter Benjamin's lifetime (1892–1940). That shadow can be called, variously, National Socialism, the Nazi Party, Fascism, the Holocaust or the Shoah. There are other names, but these are among the most significant. 'Shoah' can be translated as 'destruction' or 'catastrophe'. Walter Benjamin took his own life in the year in which the Nazi euthanasia programme was being rigorously implemented by medical staff and others. Benjamin, a German Jew, had been officially 'expatriated' by the Gestapo in May 1939, although he was already living in Paris. After the outbreak of war, Benjamin was placed in a French internment camp, first at the Stade Colombe in Paris, for ten days, and then at Vernuche. As is well known, Walter Benjamin did finally attempt to flee from Europe as Hitler moved his armies into Paris. In many respects, Benjamin's death was only the beginning of the story, as he slowly became mythologized, turned into an intellectual icon of the twentieth century. This book explores, first, a historical-theoretical approach to Benjamin situating him as a 'contrapuntal thinker' in Pieper's sense, and second, the question of form in Benjamin applied to examples in the visual arts and literary criticism. The impetus here is to provide an account of Benjamin that continually crosses antithetical critical domains.