More than fifty years after the Holocaust, European and other countries are confronting newly-emerging memories and guilt-filled ghosts from the past. The campaign for the restitution of Jewish property stolen during the Holocaust touched a raw nerve within European society and, together with the end of the Cold War and generational change, created a need to re-evaluate conventional historical truths. A group of experts joined together to review in this book how the issue was dealt with in different countries and how national myths must be re-examined.

There can be little doubt that the Holocaust was an event of major consequence for the twentieth century. While there have been innumerable volumes published on the implications of the Holocaust for history, philosophy, and ethics, there has been a surprising lack of attention paid to the theoretical and practical effects of the Shoah on biblical interpretation.

Strange Fire addresses the implications of the Holocaust for interpretation of the Hebrew Bible, bringing together a diverse and distinguished range of contributors, including Richard Rubenstein, Elie Wiesel, and Walter Brueggemann, to discuss theoretical and methodological considerations emerging from the Shoah and to demonstrate the importance of these considerations in the reading of specific biblical texts. The volume addresses such issues as Jewish and Christian biblical theology after the Holocaust, the ethics of Christian appropriation of Jewish scripture, and the rethinking of biblical models of suffering and sacrifice from a post-Holocaust perspective.

The first book of its kind, Strange Fire will establish a benchmark for all future work on the topic.

"Intelligently addresses several of the most important unresolved issues and controversies about altruism."
--"The Journal of Politics"

All but buried for most of the twentieth century, the concept of altruism has re-emerged in this last quarter as a focus of intense scholarly inquiry and general public interest. In the wake of increased consciousness of the human potential for destructiveness, both scholars and the general public are seeking interventions which will not only inhibit the process, but may in fact chart a new creative path toward a global community. Largely initiated by a group of pioneering social psychologists, early questions on altruism centered on its motivation and development primarily in the context of contrived laboratory experiments. Although publications on the topic have been considerable over the last several years, and now represent the work of representatives from many disciplines of inquiry, this volume is distinguished from others in several ways.

"Embracing the Other" emerged primarily as a response to recent research on an extraordinary manifestation of real-life altruism, namely to recent studies of non-Jewish rescuers of Jews during World War II. It is the work of a multi-disciplinary and international group of scholars, including philosophers, social psychologists, historians, sociologists, and educators, challenging several prevailing conceptual definitions and motivational sources of altruism. The book combines both new empirical and historical research as well as theoretical and philosophical approaches and includes a lengthy section addressing the practical implications of current thinking on altruism for society at large. The resultis a multi-textured work, addressing critical issues in varied disciplines, while centered on shared themes.

The first book-length study to critically examine the recent wave of Hitler biopics in German cinema and television. A group of international experts discuss films like "Downfall" in the context of earlier portrayals of Hitler and draw out their implications for the changing place of the Third Reich in the national historical imagination.

Surveying irreverent and controversial representations of the Holocaust - from Sylvia Plath and the Sex Pistols to Quentin Tarantino and Holocaust comedy - Matthew Boswell considers how they might play an important role in shaping our understanding of the Nazi genocide and what it means to be human.

During the first few days of the Spanish Civil War, women played an integral role in the spontaneous uprising that prevented the immediate success of the Nationalist coup. Around one thousand of these women went on to join the militias who fought at the front. Women also played an important role in the defense of cities, with another several thousand forming sections of the armed rearguard. Indeed, women s participation in the anti-fascist resistance constituted one of the greatest mass political mobilizations of women in Spain s history. Milicianas provides a comprehensive picture of what life was like for the women who fought during the first year of the civil war, focusing on how the women themselves viewed this experience. It demonstrates that the significance of the miliciana phenomenon lies in the fact that these women took up arms in relatively large numbers, were self-motivated, participated in combat equally with their male comrades, and played an extensive and sophisticated military role. By late 1936, attitudes towards women in combat began to change drastically, and by March 1937, the majority of milicianas had been removed from their combat positions. Though there existed a consensus around this issue among the male leadership of both the Republican government and left-wing political groups, female combatants viewed this turn of events differently. The majority of the milicianas had deep reservations about their recall from the front, and saw it as a retreat from the gains women had made during the war and revolution. Indeed, while the political leadership within the Republic presented numerous arguments for why it was necessary to remove women from combat, this book argues that the reason it was initially considered acceptable for women to fight, and then seen as undesirable eight months later, was connected to the course of the social revolution.

This handbook is the most comprehensive and up-to-date single volume on the history and memory of the Holocaust in Britain. It traces the complex relationship between Britain and the destruction of Europe's Jews, from societal and political responses to persecution in the 1930s, through formal reactions to war and genocide, to works of representation and remembrance in post-war Britain. Through this process the handbook not only updates existing historiography of Britain and the Holocaust; it also adds new dimensions to our understanding by exploring the constant interface and interplay of history and memory. The chapters bring together internationally renowned academics and talented younger scholars. Collectively, they examine a raft of themes and issues concerning the actions of contemporaries to the Holocaust, and the responses of those who came 'after'. At a time when the Holocaust-related activity in Britain proceeds apace, the contributors to this handbook highlight the importance of rooting what we know and understand about Britain and the Holocaust in historical actuality. This, the volume suggests, is the only way to respond meaningfully to the challenges posed by the Holocaust and ensure that the memory of it has purpose.

In this pioneering biography of a frontline Holocaust perpetrator, Alex J. Kay uncovers the life of SS Lieutenant Colonel Alfred Filbert, responsible as the first head of SS-Einsatzkommando 9, a mobile killing squad, for the murder of more than 18,000 Soviet Jews - men, women and children - on the Eastern Front. He reveals how Filbert, following the political imprisonment of his older brother, set out to prove his own ideological allegiance by displaying particular radicalism in implementing the orders issued by Hitler, Himmler and Heydrich. He also examines Filbert's post-war experiences, first in hiding and then being captured, tried and sentenced to life imprisonment. Released early, Filbert went on to feature in a controversial film in the lead role of an SS mass murderer. The book provides compelling new insights into the mindset and motivations of the men, like Filbert, who rose through the ranks of the Nazi regime.

Largely forgotten over the years, the seminal work of French poet, novelist and camp survivor Jean Cayrol has experienced a revival in the French-speaking world since his death in 2005. His concept of a concentrationary art-the need for an urgent and constant aesthetic resistance to the continuing effects of the concentrationary universe-proved to be a major influence for Hannah Arendt and other writers and theorists across a number of disciplines. Concentrationary Art presents the first translation into English of Jean Cayrol's key essays on the subject, as well as the first book-length study of how we might situate and elaborate his concept of a Lazarean aesthetic in cultural theory, literature, cinema, music and contemporary art.

In 1943, on orders from the German Air Ministry, young physicist Peter P. Wegener left the Russian front and reported to the Baltic village of Peenemunde. His assignment was to work at the supersonic wind tunnels of the rocket laboratories of the German Army. Here Wernher von Braun led a team that developed the V-2, the world's first large rocket-powered guided missile, and laid much of the groundwork for postwar rocket development.;In this book, Wegener recounts his experiences during Hitler's time, World War II, and his years at Peenemunde. He tells how he was working one night in August 1943 when the allies bombed the laboratories, but left the wind tunnels undamaged. The tunnels were moved to Bavaria, and Wegener was ordered to follow in 1944. After the war, the tunnels were moved again - this time to the United States, accompanied by the author and other German scientists. Shortly before the end of the war, Wegener visited Germany's underground V-2 production plant to retrieve archival material on aerodynamics that had been stored in caves for safekeeping.;He described the appalling history of the concentration camps where SS guards watched over inmates who toiled underground in inhuman conditions and often did not survive. A photo essay enhances this memoir.

As the Nazis swept across Europe during World War II, Jewish victims wrote diaries in which they grappled with the terror unfolding around them. Some wrote simply to process the contradictory bits of news they received; some wrote so that their children, already safe in another country, might one day understand what had happened to their parents; and some wrote to furnish unknown readers in the outside world with evidence against the Nazi regime.
Were these diarists resisters, or did the process of writing make the ravages of the Holocaust even more difficult to bear? Drawing on an astonishing array of unpublished and published diaries from all over German-occupied Europe, historian Alexandra Garbarini explores the multiple roles that diary writing played in the lives of these ordinary women and men. A story of hope and hopelessness, "Numbered Days" offers a powerful examination of the complex interplay of writing and mourning. And in these heartbreaking diaries, we see the first glimpses of a question that would haunt the twentieth century: Can such unimaginable horror be represented at all?

Growing up in Germany, Freddy Mayer witnessed the Nazis' rise to power. When he was sixteen, his family made the decision to flee to the United States - they were among the last German Jews to escape, in 1938. In America, Freddy tried enlisting the day after Pearl Harbor, only to be rejected as an "enemy alien" because he was German. He was soon recruited to the OSS, the country's first spy outfit before the CIA. Freddy, joined by Dutch Jewish refugee Hans Wynberg and Nazi defector Franz Weber, parachuted into Austria as the leader of Operation Greenup, meant to deter Hitler's last stand. He posed as a Nazi officer and a French POW for months, dispatching reports to the OSS via Hans, holed up with a radio in a nearby attic. The reports contained a gold mine of information, provided key intelligence about the Battle of the Bulge, and allowed the Allies to bomb twenty Nazi trains. On the verge of the Allied victory, Freddy was captured by the Gestapo and tortured and waterboarded for days. Remarkably, he persuaded the region's Nazi commander to surrender, completing one of the most successful OSS missions of the war. Based on years of research and interviews with Mayer himself, whom the author was able to meet only months before his death at the age of ninety-four, Return to the Reich is an eye-opening, unforgettable narrative of World War II heroism.

Reading a wide range of novels from post-war Germany to Israeli, Palestinian and postcolonial writers, The Politics of Jewishness in Contemporary World Literature is a comprehensive exploration of changing cultural perceptions of Jewishness in contemporary writing. Examining how representations of Jewishness in contemporary fiction have wrestled with such topics as the Holocaust, Israeli-Palestinian relations and Jewish diaspora experiences, Isabelle Hesse demonstrates the 'colonial' turn taken by these representations since the founding of the Jewish state. Following the dynamics of this turn, the book demonstrates new ways of questioning received ideas about victimhood and power in contemporary discussions of postcolonialism and world literature.

How does scale affect our understanding of the Holocaust? In the vastness of its implementation and the sheer amount of death and suffering it produced, the genocide of Europe's Jews presents special challenges for historians, who have responded with work ranging in scope from the world-historical to the intimate. In particular, recent scholarship has demonstrated a willingness to study the Holocaust at scales as focused as a single neighborhood, family, or perpetrator. This volume brings together an international cast of scholars to reflect on the ongoing microhistorical turn in Holocaust studies, assessing its historiographical pitfalls as well as the distinctive opportunities it affords researchers.

The testimonies of individuals who survived the Holocaust as children pose distinct emotional and intellectual challenges for researchers: as now-adult interviewees recall profound childhood experiences of suffering and persecution, they also invoke their own historical awareness and memories of their postwar lives, requiring readers to follow simultaneous, disparate narratives. This interdisciplinary volume brings together historians, psychologists, and other scholars to explore child survivors' accounts. With a central focus on the Kestenberg Holocaust Child Survivor Archive's over 1,500 testimonies, it not only enlarges our understanding of the Holocaust empirically but illuminates the methodological, theoretical, and institutional dimensions of this unique form of historical record.

Of the three categories that Raul Hilberg developed in his analysis of the Holocaust-perpetrators, victims, and bystanders-it is the last that is the broadest and most difficult to pinpoint. Described by Hilberg as those who were "once a part of this history," bystanders present unique challenges for those seeking to understand the decisions, attitudes, and self-understanding of historical actors who were neither obviously the instigators nor the targets of Nazi crimes. Combining historiographical, conceptual, and empirical perspectives on the bystander, the case studies in this book provide powerful insights into the complex social processes that accompany state-sponsored genocidal violence.

If Europe, Russia, and international bodies such as the U.N. and NATO end up playing a more prominent role in Iraq's immediate future, all parties, including the United States, would do well to revisit the lessons learned during the U.S.-led war in Kosovo in 1999. As a confrontation over Kosovo's final push for independence looms, this book offers seminal insight into the negotiations that took place between the United States and Russia in an effort to set the terms for ending the conflict. This study in brinksmanship and deception is an essential background for anyone trying to understand Russia's uneasy relations with the West. America's relationship with Russia has become increasingly important as Washington has engaged Moscow as a critical, but often prickly, ally in the war on terror. From smoky late-night sessions at dachas outside of Moscow to meetings in the White House Situation Room, Norris captures the feel of a war that repeatedly threatened to spin out of control. He offers a vivid portrait of some of the larger-than-life characters involved in the conflict, including U.S. president Bill Clinton, General Wesley Clark, Yugoslav president Slobodan Milosevic, and Russian president Boris Yeltsin. New information includes backstage efforts to open a direct negotiating channel between Milosevic and Washington at the height of the conflict. The book reaches a dramatic crescendo against the backdrop of the war's final days, when Russia unleashed a secret plan to push its forces into Kosovo, ahead of NATO peacekeepers.