'I know no one ever believes us nowadays - everyone thinks we knew everything. We knew nothing. It was all a well-kept secret. We believed it. We swallowed it. It seemed entirely plausible'

Brunhilde Pomsel described herself as an 'apolitical girl' and a 'figure on the margins'. How are we to reconcile this description with her chosen profession? Employed as a typist during the Second World War, she worked closely with one of the worst criminals in world history: Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels. She was one of the oldest surviving eyewitnesses to the internal workings of the Nazi power apparatus until her death in 2017. Her life, mirroring all the major breaks and continuities of the twentieth century, illustrates how far-right politics, authoritarian regimes and dictatorships can rise, and how political apathy can erode democracy.

Compelling and unnerving, The Work I Did gives us intimate insight into political complexity at society's highest levels - at one of history's darkest moments.

This book explores how the women's orchestra at Auschwitz-Birkenau has been remembered in both media and popular culture since the end of the Second World War. In particular it focuses on Fania Fenelon's memoir, Playing for Time (1976), which was subsequently adapted into a film. Since then the publication has become a cornerstone of Holocaust remembrance and scholarship. Susan Eischeid therefore investigates whether it deserves such status, and whether such material can ever be considered reliable source material for historians. Using divergent source material gathered by the author, such as interviews with the other surviving members of the orchestra, this Pivot seeks to shed light on this period of women's history, and questions how we remember the Holocaust today.

The rich history of the German rabbinate came to an abrupt halt with the November Pogrom of 1938. The need to leave Germany became clear and many rabbis made use of the visas they had been offered. Their resettlement in Britain was hampered by additional obstacles such as internment, deportation, enlistment in the Pioneer Corps. But rabbis still attempted to support their fellow refugees with spiritual and pastoral care. The refugee rabbis replanted the seed of the once proud German Judaism into British soil. New synagogues were founded and institutions of Jewish learning sprung up, like rabbinic training and the continuation of "Wissenschaft des Judentums." The arrival of Leo Baeck professionalized these efforts and resulted in the foundation of the Leo Baeck College in London. Refugee rabbis now settled and obtained pulpits in the many newly founded synagogues. Their arrival in Britain was the catalyst for much change in British Judaism, an influence that can still be felt today.

A History of Modern Germany is a well-established text that presents a balanced survey of the last 150 years of German history, stretching from nineteenth-century imperial Germany, through political division and reunification, and into the present day. Beginning in the early 1870s and covering topics such as Wilhelmenian Germany, the World Wars, revolution, inflation and putsches, the Weimar Republic, the Federal Republic and the German Democratic Republic, the book offers a comprehensive overview of the entire period of modern German history. Fully updated throughout, this new edition details foreign policy, political and economic history and includes increased coverage of social and cultural history, and history 'from the bottom up', as well as containing a new chapter that brings it right up to the present day. The book is supported by full discussion of past and present historiographic debates, illustrations, maps, further readings and biographies of key German political, economic and cultural figures within the Im Mittelpunkt feature. Fully exploring the complicated path of Germany's troubled past and stable present, A History of Modern Germany provides the perfect grounding for all students of German history.

As the third and concluding volume of the series, this work examines the persecution of the Gypsy people in Hungary, Norway, Slovakia and Yugoslavia during World War II, together with Switzerland's policy towards refugees. It also looks at the intertwined fates of the Jews and the Gypsies. Included in the coverage is an overview of the events following 1945--reparations and the postwar trials. Various methodologies associated with research and writings about the Holocaust are also discussed.

How is it possible for people who were born in a time of relative peace and prosperity to suddenly discover war as a determining influence on their lives? For decades to speak openly of German suffering during World War II-to claim victimhood in a country that had victimized millions-was unthinkable. But in the past few years, growing numbers of Germans in their 40s and 50s calling themselves Kriegsenkel, or Grandchildren of the War, have begun to explore the fundamental impact of the war on their present lives and mental health. Their parents and grandparents experienced bombardment, death, forced displacement, and the shame of the Nazi war crimes. The Kriegsenkel feel their own psychological struggles-from depression, anxiety disorders, and burnout to broken marriages and career problems-are the direct consequences of unresolved war experiences passed down through their families. Drawing on interviews, participant observation, and a broad range of scholarship, Lina Jakob considers how the Kriegsenkel movement emerged at the nexus between public and familial silences about World War II, and critically discusses how this new collective identity is constructed and addressed within the framework of psychology and Western therapeutic culture.

The Coming of the Holocaust aims to help readers understand the circumstances that made the Holocaust possible. Peter Kenez demonstrates that the occurrence of the Holocaust was not predetermined as a result of modern history but instead was the result of contingencies. He shows that three preconditions had to exist for the genocide to take place: modern anti-Semitism, meaning Jews had to become economically and culturally successful in the post French Revolution world to arouse fear rather than contempt; an extremist group possessing a deeply held, irrational, and profoundly inhumane worldview had to take control of the machinery of a powerful modern state; and the context of a major war with mass killings. The book also discusses the correlations between social and historical differences in individual countries regarding the success of the Germans in their effort to exterminate Jews.

In the 1930s, Carl Goerdeler, the mayor of Leipzig and, as prices commissioner, a cabinet-level official, engaged in active opposition against the persecution of the Jews in Germany and in Eastern Europe. He did this openly until 1938 and then secretly in contact with the British Foreign Office. Having failed to change Hitler's policy against the Jews, Goerdeler joined forces with military and civil conspirators against the regime. He was hanged for treason on 2 February 1945. This book describes the actions of Carl Goerdeler, the German resistance leader who consistently engaged in efforts to protect the Jews against persecution. Using new evidence and thus far under-researched documents, including a memorandum written by Goerdeler at the end of 1941 with a proposal for the status of the Jews in the world, the book fundamentally changes our understanding of Goerdeler's plan and presents a new view of the German resistance to Hitler.

In 1944, members of the Sonderkommando-the "special squads," composed almost exclusively of Jewish prisoners, who ensured the smooth operation of the gas chambers and had firsthand knowledge of the extermination process-buried on the grounds of Auschwitz-Birkenau a series of remarkable eyewitness accounts of Nazi genocide. This careful and penetrating study examines anew these "Scrolls of Auschwitz," which were gradually recovered, in damaged and fragmentary form, in the years following the camp's liberation. It painstakingly reconstructs their historical context and textual content, revealing complex literary works that resist narrow moral judgment and engage difficult questions about the limits of testimony.

'Laurence Rees brilliantly combines powerful eye-witness testimony, vivid narrative and compelling analysis in this superb account' Professor Sir Ian Kershaw, author of Hitler: Hubris and Hitler: Nemesis 'In this fascinating study of two monsters, Rees is extraordinarily perceptive and original' Antony Beevor _____________________ Two tyrants. Each responsible for the death of millions. This compelling book on Hitler and Stalin - the culmination of thirty years' work - examines the two leaders during the Second World War, when Germany and the Soviet Union fought the biggest and bloodiest war in history. Hitler's charismatic leadership may contrast with Stalin's regimented rule by fear; and his intransigence later in the war may contrast with Stalin's change in behaviour in response to events. But as bestselling historian Laurence Rees shows, at a macro level, both were prepared to create undreamt-of suffering - in Hitler's case, most infamously the Holocaust - in order to build the utopias they wanted. Using previously unpublished, startling eyewitness testimony from soldiers, civilians and those who knew both men personally, Laurence Rees - probably the only person alive who has met Germans who worked for Hitler and Russians who worked for Stalin - challenges long-held popular misconceptions about two of the most important figures in history. This is a master work from one of our finest historians. _____________________ 'Coming from one of the world's experts on the Second World War, this is an important and original - and devastating - account of Hitler and Stalin as dictators. A must read' Professor Robert Service, author of Stalin: A Biography 'Impressive . . . well paced and well informed with an eye for telling anecdotes and colourful character sketches . . . Rees' decision to add personal stories to his narrative adds an important layer to our understanding of both the dictators themselves and their victims' Robert Gerwarth, The Daily Telegraph

Most accounts of the Holocaust focus on trainloads of prisoners speeding toward Auschwitz, with its chimneys belching smoke and flames, in the summer of 1944. This book provides a hitherto untold chapter of the Holocaust by exploring a prequel to the gas chambers: the face-to-face mass murder of Jews in Galicia by bullets. The summer of 1941 ushered in a chain of events that had no precedent in the rapidly unfolding history of World War II and the Holocaust. In six weeks, more than twenty thousand Hungarian Jews were forcefully deported to Galicia and summarily executed. In exploring the fate of these Hungarian Jews and their local coreligionists, A Summer of Mass Murder transcends conventional history by introducing a multitude of layers of politics, culture, and, above all, psychology-for both the victims and the executioners. The narrative presents an uncharted territory in Holocaust scholarship with extensive archival research, interviews, and corresponding literature across countries and languages, incorporating many previously unexplored documents and testimonies. Eisen reflects upon the voices of the victims, the images of the perpetrators, whose motivation for murder remains inexplicable. In addition, the author incorporates the long-forgotten testimonies of bystander contemporaries, who unwittingly became part of the unfolding nightmare and recorded the horror in simple words. This book also serves as a personal journey of discovery. Among the twenty thousand people killed was the tale of two brothers, the author's uncles. In retracing their final fate and how they were swept up in the looming genocide, A Summer of Mass Murder also gives voice to their story.

For decades, historians have debated how and to what extent the Holocaust penetrated the German national consciousness between 1933 and 1945. How much did "ordinary" Germans know about the subjugation and mass murder of the Jews, when did they know it, and how did they respond collectively and as individuals? This compact volume brings together six historical investigations into the subject from leading scholars employing newly accessible and previously underexploited evidence. Ranging from the roots of popular anti-Semitism to the complex motivations of Germans who hid Jews, these studies illuminate some of the most difficult questions in Holocaust historiography, supplemented with an array of fascinating primary source materials.

This is a long-awaited translation of a definitive account of the Republican Army in the Spanish Civil War. Michael Alpert examines the origins, formation and performance of the Republican Army and sets the Spanish Civil War in its broader military context. He explores the conflicts between communists and Spanish anarchists about how the war should be fought, as well as the experience of individual conscripts, problems of food, clothing and arms, and the role of women in the new army. The book contains extensive discussion of international aspects, particularly the role of the International Brigades and of the Soviet Russian advisers. Finally, it discusses the final uprising of professional Republican officers against the Government and the almost unconditional surrender to Franco. Professor Alpert also provides detailed statistics for the military forces available to Franco and to the Republic and biographies of the key figures on both sides.

The Holocaust Memorial Museum reveals and traces the transformation of ancient Jewish symbols, rituals, archetypes and narratives deployed in these sites. Demonstrating how cloaking the 'secular' history of the Holocaust in sacred garb, memorial museums generate redemptive yet conflicting visions of the meaning and utility of Holocaust memory.

Memory Work studies how Jewish children of Holocaust survivors from the English-speaking diaspora explore the past in literary texts. By identifying areas where memory manifests - Objects, Names, Bodies, Food, Passover, 9/11 it shows how the Second Generation engage with the pre-Holocaust family and their parents' survival.

Paris was home to one of the key European initiatives to document and commemorate the Holocaust, the Centre de documentation juive contemporaine . By analysing the earliest Holocaust narratives and their reception in France, this study provides a new understanding of the institutional development of Holocaust remembrance in France after the War.

W. H. Auden and Hannah Arendt belonged to a generation that experienced the catastrophic events of the mid-twentieth century, and they both sought to respond to the enormity of the novel phenomena they witnessed. "Regions of Sorrow" explores the remarkable affinity between their works. As incisive exponents and uncompromising proponents of the insuperable condition of plurality, Auden and Arendt give voice to an unexpected and inconspicuous messianism--a messianism in which contingency, frailty, and faultiness are neither rejected nor scorned but celebrated as the indispensable elements of what Auden calls "anxious hope."
Beginning with an examination of Arendt's "Origins of Totalitarianism" and Auden's "Age of Anxiety," which both conclude with meditations on Nazi terror, the author turns to an unprecedented presentation of Arendt's "Human Condition" in terms of Jewish-German messianism, and concludes with Auden's "In Praise of Limestone," which lays out the frail and faulty space in which messianism breaks free from apocalyptic forecasts.

Through case studies of prominent cultural products, this book takes a longitudinal approach to the influence and conceptualization of the Civil War in democratic Spain. Stafford explores the stories told about the war during the transition to democracy and how these narratives have morphed in light of the polemics about historical memory.

This book examines the human consequences (individual, social, cultural, and economic) of civil war and political repression in Castilleja del Campo, a town in southern Spain with barely more than 600 inhabitants today. The narrow geographical focus allows for a coherent chronological narrative with relevance to current public issues such as the unequal distribution of wealth, political polarisation, the violation of human rights, government surveillance of civilian populations, and extra-legal detentions, torture and executions. The declarations of eyewitnesses are complemented by personal documents, contemporary newspaper accounts, and documents from the town's municipal archive and other archives in the province of Seville. The work presents the events from the proclamation of the Second Spanish Republic in April 1931 onward from multiple points of view and analyses the interactions among a gallery of characters: Republican and pro-Franco mayors and councilmen; union leaders and affiliates; members of the fascist-inspired Spanish Falange; the schoolteacher; the priest; widows and orphans of the men who were shot; administrators and managers of the estates of the nobles; shaved women paraded through the streets; combatants; day labourers; civil guards; black marketeers; prisoners. Placing these characters and events in their provincial, regional, and national context, the town becomes a microcosm that reflects the experience of Spain during those traumatic years. Published in association with the Canada Blanch Centre for Contemporary Spanish Studies.

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"The essays probe the growing vocabulary of Holocaust imagery and address the various ways (in varied venues) that the Holocaust has been remembered, represented, and received."--"American Jewish History"

"This challenging collection of essays which also contains some stunning art work, should find a place in every library that deals with the memory of the Holocaust and its effects that transcend the generation."
--"Conservative Judaism"

"(Makes) a cogent case for a deeper, unmastered engagement with Holocause trauma."--"Journal of Jewish Studies"

Impossible Images brings together a distinguished group of contributors, including artists, photographers, cultural critics, and historians, to analyze the ways in which the Holocaust has been represented in and through paintings, architecture, photographs, museums, and monuments.

Exploring frequently neglected aspects of contemporary art after the Holocaust, the volume demonstrates how visual culture informs Jewish memory, and makes clear that art matters in contemporary Jewish studies. Accepting that knowledge is culturally constructed, Impossible Images makes explicit the ways in which context matters. It shows how the places where an artist works shape what is produced, in what ways the space in which a work of art is exhibited and how it is named influences what is seen or not seen, and how calling attention to certain details in a visual work, such as a gesture, a color, or an icon, can change the meaning assigned to the work as a whole.

Written accessibly for a general readership and those interested in art and art history, the volume also includes 20 colorplates from leading artists Alice Lok Cahana, Judy Chicago, Debbie Teicholz, and Mindy Weisel.

Commentary on memorials to the Holocaust has been plagued with a sense of "monument fatigue", a feeling that landscape settings and national spaces provide little opportunity for meaningful engagement between present visitors and past victims. This book examines the Holocaust via three sites of murder by the Nazis: the former concentration camp at Buchenwald, Germany; the mass grave at Babi Yar, Ukraine; and the razed village of Lidice, Czech Republic. Bringing together recent scholarship from cultural memory and cultural geography, the author focuses on the way these violent histories are remembered, allowing these sites to emerge as dynamic transcultural landscapes of encounter in which difficult pasts can be represented and comprehended in the present. This leads to an examination of the role of the environment, or, more particularly, the ways in which the natural environment, co-opted in the process of killing, becomes a medium for remembrance.

Leading international Holocaust scholars reflect upon their personal experiences and professional trajectories over many decades of immersion in the field. Changes are examined within the context of individual odysseys, including shifting cultural milieus and robust academic conflicts.

This volume explores post-2000s artistic engagements with Holocaust memory arguing that imagination plays an increasingly important role in keeping the memory of the Holocaust vivid for contemporary and future audiences.