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History, more precisely, the history that we are stirring up, is a stopped up toilet. We flush and flush, the shit still floats back up.' 1 Since February 2002 Paul Pokriefke, the narrator of Günter Grass's latest book, Im Krebsgang: Eine Novelle (Walking like a crab: a novella), has offered these words of wisdom to several hundred thousand readers who have made Grass's book an immediate bestseller in Germany. With plans for the book to be translated into no fewer than thirty-one languages, Pokriefke's insights will soon be available to an international audience. 2 Those who have followed Grass's writing for the last four decades or so might expect that the past that preoccupies him in Im Krebsgang is the history of National Socialism, mass murder, and German crimes against humanity. Grass, the winner of the Nobel prize for literature in 1999, acclaimed as 'the most important Germanlanguage writer of the later twentieth century', 3 is well known for his consistent commitment to making the Holocaust central to the collective memory of Germans. 'The incomprehensible and indefinable quality of Auschwitz has grown over time', commented Grass in 1990. Auschwitz remains an 'open wound' for Germans, 'a guilt My particular thanks go to the two anonymous referees and Lynn Mally, Klaus Naumann and Pertti Ahonen, whose critical comments made this a better article. John Connelly went above and beyond what might normally be expected of an editor, and at every stage he helped me to focus my argument. Useful as well were a range of critical responses from participants in seminars in the German Department at the University of California, Irvine, and at the Midwest German History Workshop at the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana. I am also grateful to Pertti Ahonen for making available to me his Ph.D.