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Books > History > European history > From 1900
In 1961 Adolf Eichmann went on trial in Jerusalem for his part in the Nazi persecution and mass murder of Europe 's Jews. For the first time a judicial process focussed on the genocide against the Jews and heard Jewish witnesses to the catastrophe. The trial and the controversies it caused had a profound effect on shaping the collective memory of what became the Holocaust . This volume, a special issue of the Journal of Israeli History, brings together new research by scholars from Europe, Israel and the USA.
What does it mean to be Jewish? What is an anti-Semite? Why does the enigmatic identity of the men who founded the first monotheistic religion arouse such passions? We need to return to the Jewish question. We need, first, to distinguish between the anti-Judaism of medieval times, which persecuted the Jews, and the anti-Judaism of the Enlightenment, which emancipated them while being critical of their religion. It is a mistake to confuse the two and see everyone from Voltaire to Hitler as anti-Semitic in the same way. Then we need to focus on the development of anti-Semitism in Europe, especially Vienna and Paris, where the Zionist idea was born. Finally, we need to investigate the reception of Zionism both in the Arab countries and within the Diaspora. Re-examining the Jewish question in the light of these distinctions and investigations, Roudinesco shows that there is a permanent tension between the figures of the universal Jew and the territorial Jew . Freud and Jung split partly over this issue, which gained added intensity after the creation of the State of Israel in 1948 and the Eichmann trial in 1961. Finally, Roudinesco turns to the Holocaust deniers, who started to suggest that the Jews had invented the genocide that befell their people, and to the increasing number of intellectual and literary figures who have been accused of anti-Semitism. This thorough re-examination of the Jewish question will be of interest to students and scholars of modern history and contemporary thought and to a wide readership interested in anti-Semitism and the history of the Jews.
This book contains essays on Fascism, Nazism and the Holocaust by distinguished scholar Professor Dan Stone. It examines issues such as race science and the racial state, Nazi race ideology, slave labour, concentration camps, British reaction to the rise of Nazism and the Holocaust, the search for missing persons in the chaos of postwar Europe and the postwar revival of fascism. Though mainly focused on Nazi Germany, it also makes comparisons with other fascist movements and regimes in Romania and elsewhere. This book will be of great interest to scholars and students of antisemitism, fascism, Nazism, World War II, genocide studies and the Holocaust.
Memory in Hungarian Fascism: A Cultural History argues that fascist memory had a key role in the historical formation and later return of fascism. Tracing the trajectory of a perennial figure of fascist memory, the cult of Eszter Solymosi, from interwar Hungary through the Cold War West to contemporary Hungary, the book covers a century of fascism and offers a unique combination of fascism studies and memory studies. How did fascists challenge liberal memory after the First World War? How did the memory culture they created come to frame and feed the Second World War and the genocide? In what ways did fascist memory transform as they navigated the challenges of exile in a profoundly changed political landscape and tried to counter the postwar order? And what role did their legacy, carefully crafted for a post-Communist future, play as later neo-fascists rejected democratic transformation? Eventually, as fascist memory travelled across time and space, the book argues, it contributed to the political challenges that we face today. Based on a variety of unpublished sources, the book offers new insights for students of memory, Holocaust, fascism, and antisemitism studies, Jewish studies, Central and Eastern European history, and Hungarian studies.
The harrowing, moving and poignant account of one of the youngest survivors of Auschwitz: a girl who was only five years old when she was sent to an extermination camp, and was one of the few people who entered a gas chamber and lived to tell her story. 'I am a survivor. That comes with a survivor's obligation to represent one and half million Jewish children murdered by the Nazis. They cannot speak. So I must speak on their behalf.' With a special foreword by Sir Ben Kingsley. 'Every so often a book arrives that demands to be read' John Humphrys 'An unforgettable and deeply moving story' Jeremy Bowen AN INCREDIBLE STORY OF COURAGE, RESILIENCE AND SURVIVAL Tova Friedman was one of the youngest people to emerge from Auschwitz. After surviving the liquidation of the Jewish ghetto in Central Poland where she lived as a toddler, Tova was five when she and her parents were sent to a Nazi labour camp, and almost six when she and her mother were forced into a packed cattle truck and sent to Auschwitz II, also known as the Birkenau extermination camp, while her father was transported to Dachau. During six months of incarceration in Birkenau, Tova witnessed atrocities that she could never forget, and experienced numerous escapes from death. She is one of a handful of Jews to have entered a gas chamber and lived to tell the tale. As Nazi killing squads roamed Birkenau before abandoning the camp in January 1945, Tova and her mother hid among corpses. After being liberated by the Russians they made their way back to their hometown in Poland. Eventually Tova's father tracked them down and the family was reunited. In The Daughter of Auschwitz, Tova immortalizes what she saw, to keep the story of the Holocaust alive, at a time when it is in danger of fading from memory. She has used those memories that have shaped her life to honour the victims. Written with award-winning former war reporter Malcolm Brabant, this is an extremely important book. Brabant's thorough research has helped Tova recall her experiences in searing detail. Together they have painstakingly recreated Tova's extraordinary story about one of the worst ever crimes against humanity. 'I read this book with gratitude and urgency' Fergal Keane '[A] vividly written and compelling story' Lindsey Hilsum 'A truly remarkable book' Christine Lampard, Lorraine
History, Trauma and Shame provides an in-depth examination of the sustained dialogue about the past between children of Holocaust survivors and descendants of families whose parents were either directly or indirectly involved in Nazi crimes. Taking an autobiographical narrative perspective, the chapters in the book explore the intersection of history, trauma and shame, and how change and transformation unfolds over time. The analyses of the encounters described in the book provides a close examination of the process of dialogue among members of The Study Group on Intergenerational Consequences of the Holocaust (PAKH), exploring how Holocaust trauma lives in the 'everyday' lives of descendants of survivors. It goes to the heart of the issues at the forefront of contemporary transnational debates about building relationships of trust and reconciliation in societies with a history of genocide and mass political violence. This book will be great interest for academics, researchers and postgraduate students engaged in the study of social psychology, Holocaust or genocide studies, cultural studies, reconciliation studies, historical trauma and peacebuilding. It will also appeal to clinical psychologists, psychiatrists and psychoanalysts, as well as upper-level undergraduate students interested in the above areas.
This first volume explores Cunningham's strategy and operations from June 1940 to March 1942. Included here are the clash with the Italian Fleet off Calabria in July 1940 and the victory at Matapan in March 1941, together with the Fleet Air Arm attack on Taranto in November 1940.
In Hitler's Foreign Executioners, Heinrich Himmler's secret master plan for Europe is revealed: an SS empire that would have no place for either the Nazi Party or Adolf Hitler. His astonishingly ambitious plan depended on the recruitment of tens of thousands of 'Germanic' peoples from every corner of Europe, and even parts of Asia, to build an 'SS Europa'. This revised and fully updated book, researched in archives all over Europe and using first-hand testimony, exposes Europe's dirty secret: nearly half a million Europeans and more than a million Soviet citizens enlisted in the armed forces of the Third Reich to fight a deadly crusade against a mythic foe, Jewish Bolshevism. Even today, some apologists claim that these foreign SS volunteers were merely soldiers 'like any other' and fought a decent war against Stalin's Red Army. Historian Christopher Hale demonstrates conclusively that these surprisingly common views are mistaken. By taking part in Himmler's murderous master plan, these foreign executioners hoped to prove that they were worthy of joining his future 'SS Europa'. But as the Reich collapsed in 1944, Himmler's monstrous scheme led to bitter confrontations with Hitler - and to the downfall of the man once known as 'loyal Heinrich'.
To the British in 1945 the images of Bergen-Belsen concentration camp said everything necessary to illustrate and prove the extent of Nazi barbarity, yet the grim newsreel footage and radio reports did not tell the whole story. Over the following decades these potent representations became encrusted with myths and meanings that distorted the actuality of Belsen. Fifty years after the liberation of the camp, scholars and eyewitnesses can finally explore the extraordinary history of the camp, the experiences of the inmates and the work of the liberators. This volume presents the most authoritative recent scholarship on Belsen by British, American, German, French and Israeli historians. Drawing on documentary and oral sources in Yiddish, Hebrew, German, Dutch and French, often for the first time, it challenges many stereotypes about the camp, and reinstates the groups hitherto marginalised or ignored in accounts of the camp and its liberation.
To the British in 1945 the images of Bergen-Belsen concentration camp said everything necessary to illustrate and prove the extent of Nazi barbarity, yet the grim newsreel footage and radio reports did not tell the whole story. Over the following decades these potent representations became encrusted with myths and meanings that distorted the actuality of Belsen. Fifty years after the liberation of the camp, scholars and eyewitnesses can finally explore the extraordinary history of the camp, the experiences of the inmates and the work of the liberators. This volume presents the most authoritative recent scholarship on Belsen by British, American, German, French and Israeli historians. Drawing on documentary and oral sources in Yiddish, Hebrew, German, Dutch and French, often for the first time, it challenges many stereotypes about the camp, and reinstates the groups hitherto marginalised or ignored in accounts of the camp and its liberation.
This book is an important work in Holocaust literature and was originally published in Poland in 1967. Covering the years 1939-1945, it is the author's account of her experience growing up in the Warsaw ghetto and her eventual deportation to, imprisonment in, and survival of the Majdanek, Auschwitz, Ravensbruck, and Neustadt-Glewe camps. Since the old, the weak, and children were summarily executed by the Nazis in these camps, Mrs Birenbaum's survival and coming of age is all the more remarkable. Her story is told with simplicity and clarity and the new edition contains revisions made by the author to the original English translation, and is expanded with a new epilogue and postscripts that bring the story up to date and complete the circle of Mrs Birenbaum's experiences.
With a foreword by Jon Snow. In July 1936 insurgent Spanish troops organized a military coup to oust the elected Republican government in Madrid. The rebel generals expected to force a quick, clean regime change but they failed. The botched uprising turned into a bloody civil war. Hundreds of thousands died in a bitter conflict which tore the country apart and rapidly turned into the prelude for an even greater conflict yet to com--the Second World War. The siege of Madrid was the key battle of the war. The world watched and waited for the city to surrender as General Franco's Nationalist army, backed by Hitler and Mussolini, closed in on the Spanish capital. But Madrid did not fall. Madrilenos fought tooth and nail to defend their city. Helped by volunteers from fifty other countries--the International Brigades--they held out against all the odds until the end of the conflict in 1939. Despite its central role in twentieth-century history, the siege of Madrid is an episode largely hidden from today's visitor. There is no guide to the war sites and few clues for the inquisitive traveller who wants to know more. Frontline Madrid fills that gap. This unique guide book explains what life was like in the city under siege and what happened in the battlefield dramas. The simple to follow maps and diagrams make it easy to visit the frontline sites. The vividly written descriptions bring events and people compellingly to life. The role of prominent individuals, British and American--Orwell, Hemingway, John Cornford - is explored. Off the beaten track, from the University district in the city centre to the mountains of Guadarrama less than an hour away, the remains of the war in Madrid can still be found--gun emplacements, bunkers, trenches and occasional debris. Frontline Madrid retraces the footsteps of those who lived through the conflict to take the reader on a tour in time. The usual tourist traps are left far behind to enter the gripping world of a war which shaped modern European history.
Explaining Auschwitz and Hiroshima explores the way in which the main combatant societies of the World War II have interpreted and related that experience. Since 1945, debates in Germany about the past that would not fade away have been reasonably well-known.
A gripping memoir written by a 96-year-old Jewish Holocaust survivor about his escape from Nazi-occupied Poland in the 1930's and his adventures with the French Resistance during World War II In 1937, as the Nazi Party tightened its grip on the city of Danzig (now Gdansk, Poland), Justus Rosenberg's parents made the wrenching decision to send their son to Paris, where he would have the hope of finishing high school and going on to university in safety. He was sixteen years old, and he would not see his family again for sixteen years more. Even after war broke out in 1939, life in France was peaceful for a time-but when the Nazis pushed toward Paris in the spring of 1940, Justus was forced to flee south to Toulouse. There, a chance meeting put Justus in contact with Varian Fry, the American journalist who ran a refugee network that aided several thousand Jews in escaping Nazi Germany and the Holocaust. With his German background, understanding of French cultural, and fluency in several languages, including English, Justus was ideally positioned to thrive in Fry's network, coming to master an underworld of counterfeit documents, whispered passwords, black market currency, opportunistic gangsters, and clandestine mountain passes. Justus would spend the rest of the war working for Fry and later the French Resistance, helping to provide safe passage for many intellectuals and artists on the run from the Nazis, among them Hannah Arendt, Marc Chagall, Andre Breton, and Max Ernst. Along the way, he would have a number of close scrapes of his own: on one occasion, he was rounded up to be sent to a labor camp in Poland, and had to make a daring escape to save his life; on another, he narrowly survived after his jeep hits a landmine. An epic saga of survival, with the soul of a spy thriller, The Art of Resistance is also an uplifting story of personal triumph. (Several years after the war, Justus was finally able to track down his family, who he feared had died at the Nazis' hands.) As Justus writes, "I survived the war through a rare combination of good fortune, resourcefulness, optimism, and, most important, the kindness of many good people."
Originally published in 1985, this book provides an important insight into the principal aspects of the history of the policy and practice of political re-education from its origins to 1951. 'Political re-education' was the British alternative to the ideas put forward by the USA and the USSR in the common search for a post-war policy which would permanently prevent the resurgence of Germany for a third time as a hostile military power. It was adopted as Allied policy and remains one of the boldest and most imaginative policies in history for securing lasting peace. This book discusses the question of the place of this policy in the preservation of peace and the integration of Germany and Japan into the community of their historical enemies.
In February 1945, Israele Zolli, chief rabbi of Rome's ancient Jewish community, shocked his co-religionists in Italy and throughout the Jewish world by converting to Catholicism and taking as his baptismal name, Eugenio, to honor Pope Pius XII (Eugenio Pacelli) for what Zolli saw as his great humanitarianism toward the Jews during the Holocaust. Almost a half a century after his conversion, Zolli still evokes anger and embarrassment in Italy's Jewish community. This book is the first authoritative treatment of this astonishing story. What induced Zolli to embrace Catholicism will probably never be known. Nonetheless, by painstaking scholarly detective work, through interviews in Italy and elsewhere, through the unearthing of private papers not previous known to exist, and through the study of previous inaccessible archival materials, the authors have succeeded in explaining why Zolli left the Jewish fold and joined the Catholic Church. Like Zolli's rabbinical career, Pius XII's long pontificate tells us much about the Church of Rome and its relationship to the Jewish people, particularly with reference to the issue of conversion. The authors focus on the pontiff's World War II policies vis-a-vis the Jews, a subject that has been heatedly debated since Rolf Hochhuth's "The Deputy" was performed in the early 1960s. What Pacelli knew abut the extermination of the Jews and when he knew it, what he said and failed to say, are given special attention in this book. Through the examination of previous scholarship and primary materials (including Pius XI's encyclical on race and anti-Semitism, Pacelli's behavior is evaluated to determine if Zolli accurately gauged the Holy Father's efforts to save Jews. This saga of the two Eugenios will interest historians of the Second World War and the Holocaust and students of history alike.
'Through thick and thin, never separate. Stick together, guard each other, and live for one another.' As Hitler's war intensified, the Ovitz family would have good reason to stand by their mother's mantra. Descending from the cattle train into the death camp of Auschwitz, all twelve emerged in 1945 as survivors - the largest family to survive intact. What saved them? Ironically, the fact that they were sought out by the 'Angel of Death' himself - Dr Joseph Mengele. For seven of the Ovitzes were dwarfs - and not just any dwarfs, but a beloved and highly successful vaudeville act known as the Lilliput Troupe. Together, they were the only all-dwarf ensemble with a full show of their own in the history of entertainment. The Ovitzes intrigued Mengele, and amongst the thousands on whom he performed his loathsome experiments, they became his prize 'patients': 'You're something special, not like the rest of them.' It was this disturbing affection that saved their lives. After being plunged into the darkest moments in modern history, this remarkable troupe emerged with spirits undimmed, and went on to light up Europe and Israel, which offered them a new home, with their unique performances. Giants reveals their moving and inspirational story.
When Nazi Germany and fascist Italy were united, both had savage racial laws; Hitler and Mussolini viciously denounced the "Jewish manace". In the Second World War Jews who fell into the hands of the German army were consigned almost without exception for the death camps, not one Jew who came under the control of the Italian army ended there. The Italian officers protected not just Italian Jews, but Jewish refugees of every nationality. To the Germans, their actions were inexplicable and subversive. Yet the protectors of the Jews were no philo-Semites, nor were they great respecters of human life. Some of those same officers had sanctioned savage atrocities against Ethiopians and Arabs in the years before the war. They saved the Jews because it was unworthy and immoral to send them to death camps; to sustain morality they risked their careers, and sometimes, their lives. Only a handful of German officers protested; none of them took the same active steps as the Italians. Jonathan Steinberg unravels the motives and forces underpinning Nazism and fascism and offers an insight into the ambivalence inherent within their relationship.
Leon Leyson (born Leib Lezjon) was only ten years old when the Nazis invaded Poland and his family was forced to relocate to the Krakow ghetto. With incredible luck, perseverance and grit, Leyson was able to survive the sadism of the Nazis, including that of the demonic Amon Goeth, commandant of Plaszow, the concentration camp outside Krakow. Ultimately, it was the generosity and cunning of one man, a man named Oskar Schindler, who saved Leon Leyson's life, and the lives of his mother, his father, and two of his four siblings, by adding their names to his list of workers in his factory - a list that became world renowned: Schindler's List. This, the only memoir published by a former Schindler's List child, perfectly captures the innocence of a small boy who goes through the unthinkable. Most notable is the lack of rancour, the lack of venom, and the abundance of dignity in Mr Leyson's telling. The Boy on the Wooden Boxis a legacy of hope, a memoir unlike anything you've ever read.
She found the diary and brought the world a message of love and hope. It seems as if we are never far from Miep's thoughts....Yours, Anne For the millions moved by "Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl, " here at last is Miep's own astonishing story. For more than two years, Miep Gies and her husband helped hide the Franks from the Nazis. Like thousands of unsung heroes of the Holocaust, they risked their lives each day to bring food, news, and emotional support to the victims. From her own remarkable childhood as a World War I refugee to the moment she places a small, red-orange, checkered diary -- Anne's legacy -- in Otto Frank's hands, Miep Gies remembers her days with simple honesty and shattering clarity. Each page rings with courage and heartbreaking beauty.
Pitting fascists and communists in a showdown for supremacy, the Spanish Civil War has long been seen as a grim dress rehearsal for World War II. Francisco Franco's Nationalists prevailed with German and Italian military assistance-a clear instance, it seemed, of like-minded regimes joining forces in the fight against global Bolshevism. In Hitler's Shadow Empire Pierpaolo Barbieri revises this standard account of Axis intervention in the Spanish Civil War, arguing that economic ambitions-not ideology-drove Hitler's Iberian intervention. The Nazis hoped to establish an economic empire in Europe, and in Spain they tested the tactics intended for future subject territories. "The Spanish Civil War is among the 20th-century military conflicts about which the most continues to be published...Hitler's Shadow Empire is one of few recent studies offering fresh information, specifically describing German trade in the Franco-controlled zone. While it is typically assumed that Nazi Germany, like Stalinist Russia, became involved in the Spanish Civil War for ideological reasons, Pierpaolo Barbieri, an economic analyst, shows that the motives of the two main powers were quite different. -Stephen Schwartz, Weekly Standard |
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