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"Should the Holocaust remain darkly close to the center of Jewish writing?" Felstiner continued. "Which matters in the Holocaust shall we treat, and in what manner shall we treat them?"

The question that wasn't asked — who will write about the Holocaust when there are no more survivors to tell their stories? — was answered by the very nature of the panel. Representing three generations and three nationalities, none of the panelists was a survivor. Yet the Holocaust was central to each of the panelists' lives and writings.

In his soon-to-be-released book, "Heshel's Kingdom," South African-born Dan Jacobson explores the "turn of fate" through which his family survived the Holocaust. A professor at University College, London, Jacobson used adjectives such as "distressing" and "shattering" as he talked of the family history that has haunted him for years and of the research trip he took to Lithuania, his parents' birthplace.

In 1912, Jacobson's Lithuanian-born grandfather, a rabbi, was invited to head a congregation in Cleveland, Ohio. Horrified at the state of American Jewry, Heshel Malamed turned down the appointment and returned to Lithuania intending to stay there. A few years later he died, leaving a widow and nine children. The family had few resources, but relatives in South Africa raised the money for the family to emigrate there.

All of the aunts, uncles and cousins who remained in Lithuania died in the Holocaust.

"That is the turn of fate that had haunted me for so many years," said Jacobson. "Had my grandfather survived, had he been able to see his decision for the family through, then what happened to all the others would have happened to [my grandmother] and her nine children."

Author Jonathan Rosen, another panelist, told of being a child of 8 and asking his parents if they would like the messiah to come. His father, a Holocaust survivor who, at 13, lost his entire family, said yes. His middle class, Brooklyn-born mother said no, "it would ruin everything."

Rosen, culture editor of the Forward and a nationally published journalist, talked about this dichotomy and the confusion of growing up as an American under the shadow of the Holocaust. He recognizes the need to find some middle ground between obsession with and forgetting about the Holocaust.

His critically acclaimed first novel, "Eve's Apple," brings both worlds together in a story about a man dealing with his girlfriend's anorexia. In earlier drafts, the man was the son of a survivor. Who else would fall in love with the physical manifestations of this disease, Rosen asked. Although Rosen revised the book and changed the parents' background, he used Holocaust imagery portraying the protagonist as torn between desire and disgust in relation to the eating disorder.

Rosen talked about his two grandmothers, one of whom was shot during the war, and the other who died a year ago at 95.

"I have to do justice to both of my grandmothers," said Rosen. "I am the child of both."

Israeli-born novelist and National Jewish Book Award winner Nava Semel was passionate and emphatic as she discussed the role of the Holocaust in literature and its meaning to Israel. She described her quest as being to write about the Holocaust. Recently she has begun participating in a program to educate schoolchildren about the Shoah.

For her, there is no doubt that the Holocaust must continually be addressed, studied and written about. She talked of her personal transition when she discovered the full implications of her mother being a survivor. It was then that the Holocaust ceased being a ceremonial Holocaust for her and became a private Holocaust.

She warned of the danger of Israelis denying that the Holocaust is part of the fabric of their lives and pigeonholing it as a ceremonial remembrance.

"Israel distrusts the future and is afraid of her own past because it may pull her backward," said Semel. This, she said, was why for years, the Holocaust was ignored by Israelis until that "inevitable moment when one could no longer avoid facing the past. Writing about the shadow of the Holocaust is a rebellion against the rigid model of the neo-Israeli supposedly untainted by the past, coming to terms with the inner drum which echoed in the Israeli psyche but we pushed it aside and refused to listen."

The art of storytelling is the art of healing, said Semel. Her own storytelling has enabled her to embrace her mother's pain and loss and the scar her mother will carry for the rest of her life.

"Remembrance in Judaism is a religious mitzvah," said Semel, urging the audience to talk to survivors and get their stories before it is too late.

To illustrate the importance of carrying the Holocaust into the future, she told a story about Napoleon.

While conquering Russia he came upon a small shtetl and found the Jews sitting on the ground crying. When told that the people were crying over an event that had occurred 2,000 years before — the destruction of the Temple — Napoleon said, "People who cry over an event that occurred 2,000 years ago will never be erased from history."