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Books > History > European history > From 1900
Chil Rajchman, a Polish Jew, was arrested with his younger sister in 1942 and sent to Treblinka, a death camp where more than 750,000 were murdered before it was abandoned by German soldiers. His sister was sent to the gas chambers, but Rajchman escaped execution, working for ten months under incessant threats and beatings as a barber, a clothes-sorter, a corpse-carrier, a puller of teeth from those same bodies. In August 1943, there was an uprising at the camp, and Rajchman was among the handful of men who managed to escape. In 1945, he set down this account, a plain, unembellished and exact record of the raw horror he endured every day. This unique testimony, which has remained in the sole possession of his family ever since, has never before been published in English. For its description of unspeakably cruelty, Treblinka is a memoir that will not be superseded. In addition to Rajchman's account, this volume includes the complete text of Vasily Grossman's 'The Hell of Treblinka', one of the first descriptions of a Nazi extermination camp; a powerful and harrowing piece of journalism written only weeks after the camp was dissolved. Introduction by Samuel Moyn, Professor of History at Columbia University and author of A Holocaust Controversy: The Treblinka Affair in Postwar France.
The inaugural title in a collaboration between the Wiener Library and Granta Books. These two pamphlets, 'Prelude to Pogroms? Facts for the Thoughtful' and 'German Judaism in Political, Economic and Cultural Terms' mark the first time that Alfred Wiener, the founder of the Wiener Holocaust Library, has been published in English. Together they offer a vital insight into the antisemitic onslaught Germany's Jews were subjected to as the Nazi Party rose to power, and introduce a sharp and sympathetic thinker and speaker to a contemporary audience. Tackling issues such as the planned rise of antisemitism and the scapegoating of minorities, these pamphlets speak as urgently to the contemporary moment as they provide a window on to the past.
Heda Margolius Kovaly (1919-2010) was a renowned Czech writer and translator born to Jewish parents. Her bestselling memoir, Under a Cruel Star: A Life in Prague, 1941-1968 has been translated into more than a dozen languages. Her crime novel Innocence; or, Murder on Steep Street based on her own experiences living under Stalinist oppression was named an NPR Best Book in 2015. In the tradition of Studs Terkel, Hitler, Stalin and I is based on interviews between Kovaly and award-winning filmmaker Helena Trestikova. In it, Kovaly recounts her family history in Czechoslovakia, starving in the deprivations of Lodz Ghetto, how she miraculously left Auschwitz, fled from a death march, failed to find sanctuary amongst former friends in Prague as a concentration camp escapee, and participated in the liberation of Prague. Later under Communist rule, she suffered extreme social isolation as a pariah after her first husband Rudolf Margolius was unjustly accused in the infamous Slansky Trial and executed for treason. Remarkably, Kovaly, exiled in the United States after the Warsaw Pact invasion in 1968, only had love for her country and continued to believe in its people. She returned to Prague in 1996. Heda had an enormous talent for expressing herself. She spoke with precision and was descriptive and witty in places. I admired her attitude and composure, even after she had such extremely difficult experiences. Nazism and Communism afflicted Heda's life directly with maximum intensity. Nevertheless, she remained an optimist. Helena Trestikova has made over fifty documentary films. Hitler, Stalin and I has garnered several awards in the Czech Republic and Japan. PRAISE FOR KOVALY'S INNOCENCE A luminous testament from a dark time, Innocence is at once a clever homage to Raymond Chandler, and a portrait of a city - Prague - caught and held fast in a state of Kafkaesque paranoia. Only a great survivor could have written such a book. - John Banville Innocence is an extraordinary novel ... in 1985, Kovaly produced a remarkable work of art with the intrigue of a spy puzzle, the irony of a political fable, the shrewdness of a novel of manners, and the toughness of a hard-boiled murder mystery ... Just as few will anticipate the many surprises and artful turns of Innocence, a book sure to dazzle and please a great many readers. - Tom Nolan, The Best New Mysteries, The Wall Street Journal Kovaly's skills as a mystery writer shines, as she uses suspense, hints, and suggestions to literally play with the reader's mind ... Innocence is an excellent novel for readers who are up for a challenging, intelligent, and complex story - one that paints a masterful picture of a bleak, Kafkaesque, and highly intriguing time, place, and cast of characters. - The New York Journal of Books Although not out of love for Hegel, Heda Margolius Kovaly makes a very Hegelian point: actions, as Hegel tells us in the section on Antigone in Phenomenology of Spirit - even seemingly small, meaningless actions - always reach beyond their intent; and the impossibility of foreseeing how the consequences will ripple outwards does not absolve us of guilt. As for innocence, the woman who went to hell twice wants her readers to know that there is no such thing. - The Times Literary Supplement
The powerful and bestselling memoir of a young Jewish pianist who survived the war in Warsaw against all odds. Made into a Bafta and Oscar-winning film. 'You can learn more about human nature from this brief account of the survival of one man throughout the war years in the devastated city of Warsaw than from several volumes of the average encyclopaedia' Independent on Sunday 'We are drawn in to share his surprise and then disbelief at the horrifying progress of events, all conveyed with an understated intimacy and dailiness that render them painfully close - riveting' Observer 'A book so fresh and vivid, so heartbreaking, and so simply and beautifully written, that it manages to tell us the story of horrendous events as if for the first time' Daily Telegraph
Drawing on hitherto neglected archival materials, Zohar Segev sheds new light on the policy of the World Jewish Congress (WJC) during the Holocaust. Contrary to popular belief, he can show that there was an impressive system of previously unknown rescue efforts. Even more so, there is evidence for an alternative pattern for modern Jewish existence in the thinking and policy of the World Jewish Congress. WJC leaders supported the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine but did not see it as an end in itself. They strove to establish a Jewish state and to rehabilitate Diaspora Jewish life, two goals they saw as mutually complementary. The efforts of the WJC are put into the context of the serious difficulties facing the American Jewish community and its representative institutions during and after the war, as they tried to act as an ethnic minority within American society.
The dramatic story of a Jewish child's rescue at Buchenwald and its use as propaganda in both East and united Germany. At the notorious Buchenwald concentration camp, communist prisoners organized resistance against the SS and even planned an uprising. They helped rescue a three-year-old Jewish boy, Stefan Jerzy Zweig, from certain death in the gas chambers. After the war, his story became a focus for the German Democratic Republic's celebration of its resistance to the Nazis. Now Bill Niven tells the true story of Stefan Zweig: what actually happened to him in Buchenwald, how he was protected, and at what price. He explores the (mis)representation of Zweig's rescue in East Germany and what this reveals about that country's understanding of its Nazi past. Finally he looks at the telling of the Zweig rescue story since German unification: a story told in the GDR to praise communists has become a story used to condemn them. Bill Niven is Professor of Contemporary German History at the Nottingham Trent University, UK.
"A Wolf in the Attic: Even though she was only two, the little girl knew she must never go into the attic. Strange noises came from there. Mama said there was a wolf upstairs, a hungry, dangerous wolf . . . but the truth was far more dangerous than that. Much too dangerous to tell a Jewish child marked for death. ""One cannot mourn what one doesn't acknowledge, and one cannot heal if one does not mourn . . . "A Wolf in the Attic is a powerful memoir written by a psychoanalyst who was a hidden child in Poland during World War II. Her story, in addition to its immediate impact, illustrates her struggle to come to terms with the powerful yet sometimes subtle impact of childhood trauma.In the author's words: "As a very young child I experienced the Holocaust in a way that made it almost impossible to integrate and make sense of the experience. For me, there was no life before the war, no secure early childhood to hold in mind, no context in which to place what was happening to me and around me. The Holocaust was in the air that I breathed daily for the first four years of my life. I took it in deeply without awareness or critical judgment. I ingested it with the milk I drank from my mother's breast. It had the taste of fear and despair."Born during the Holocaust in what was once a part of Poland, Sophia Richman spent her early years in hiding in a small village near Lwow, the city where she was born. Hidden in plain sight, both she and her mother passed as Christian Poles. Later, her father, who escaped from a concentration camp, found them and hid in their attic until the liberation.The story of the miraculous survival of this Jewish family is only the beginning of their long journey out of the Holocaust. The war years are followed by migration and displacement as the refugees search for a new homeland. They move from Ukraine to Poland to France and eventually settle in America. A Wolf in the Attic traces the effects of the author's experiences on her role as an American teen, a wife, a mother, and eventually, a psychoanalyst. A Wolf in the Attic explores the impact of early childhood trauma on the author's: education career choices attitudes toward therapy, both as patient and therapist social interactions love/family relationships parenting style and decisions regarding her daughter religious orientationRepeatedly told by her parents that she was too young to remember the war years, Sophia spent much of her life trying to "remember to forget" what she did indeed remember. A Wolf in the Attic follows her life as she gradually becomes able to reclaim her past, to understand its impact on her life and the choices she has made, and finally, to heal a part of herself that she had been so long taught to deny.
"A Wolf in the Attic: Even though she was only two, the little girl knew she must never go into the attic. Strange noises came from there. Mama said there was a wolf upstairs, a hungry, dangerous wolf . . . but the truth was far more dangerous than that. Much too dangerous to tell a Jewish child marked for death. ""One cannot mourn what one doesn't acknowledge, and one cannot heal if one does not mourn . . . "A Wolf in the Attic is a powerful memoir written by a psychoanalyst who was a hidden child in Poland during World War II. Her story, in addition to its immediate impact, illustrates her struggle to come to terms with the powerful yet sometimes subtle impact of childhood trauma.In the author's words: "As a very young child I experienced the Holocaust in a way that made it almost impossible to integrate and make sense of the experience. For me, there was no life before the war, no secure early childhood to hold in mind, no context in which to place what was happening to me and around me. The Holocaust was in the air that I breathed daily for the first four years of my life. I took it in deeply without awareness or critical judgment. I ingested it with the milk I drank from my mother's breast. It had the taste of fear and despair."Born during the Holocaust in what was once a part of Poland, Sophia Richman spent her early years in hiding in a small village near Lwow, the city where she was born. Hidden in plain sight, both she and her mother passed as Christian Poles. Later, her father, who escaped from a concentration camp, found them and hid in their attic until the liberation.The story of the miraculous survival of this Jewish family is only the beginning of their long journey out of the Holocaust. The war years are followed by migration and displacement as the refugees search for a new homeland. They move from Ukraine to Poland to France and eventually settle in America. A Wolf in the Attic traces the effects of the author's experiences on her role as an American teen, a wife, a mother, and eventually, a psychoanalyst. A Wolf in the Attic explores the impact of early childhood trauma on the author's: education career choices attitudes toward therapy, both as patient and therapist social interactions love/family relationships parenting style and decisions regarding her daughter religious orientationRepeatedly told by her parents that she was too young to remember the war years, Sophia spent much of her life trying to "remember to forget" what she did indeed remember. A Wolf in the Attic follows her life as she gradually becomes able to reclaim her past, to understand its impact on her life and the choices she has made, and finally, to heal a part of herself that she had been so long taught to deny.
Perfect for readers of Last Stop Auschwitz, The Volunteer and The Tattooist of Auschwitz 'This is an extraordinary biography. A gripping narrative that opens as derring-do wartime escape drama rapidly turns into a horror story about man's inhumanity to man...Important and unforgettable' JONATHAN DIMBLEBY The awe-inspiring and gripping true story of the young man who survived not one, but three concentration camps, only - in the final days of the war - to be bombed while aboard a Nazi prison boat. Stowed away on top of a train, twenty-year-old Wim Aloserij escapes the obligatory work camps in Nazi-ruled Germany in 1943. The young man from Amsterdam then goes into hiding on a farm - sleeping in a wooden chest hidden underground. But it's not to last. In the cover of night, Wim is captured during a raid and transported to the infamous Gestapo prison in Amsterdam. There, his life changes forever as he is thrown into the nightmare of the Holocaust and transported to Camp Amersfoort - the first of three concentration camps he must endure. Drawing on the lessons he learned as a child as the victim of an alcoholic and abusive father, Wim is forced to adapt quickly and urgently to his hellish surroundings. However, it is with the end of the war in sight, that Wim must draw on every last strength he has when he finds himself caught in the very centre of Allied-Nazi crossfire. At the age of 94, Wim finally felt ready to tell his incredible story, which he kept secret for most of his life. A true story of bravery, courage and resilience, The Last Survivor will leave you amazed by one young man's determination - against the odds - to survive.
The extraordinary German bestseller on the final days of the Third Reich One of the least understood stories of the Third Reich is that of the extraordinary wave of suicides, carried out not just by much of the Nazi leadership, but also by thousands of ordinary Germans, during in the war's closing period. Some of these were provoked by straightforward terror in the face of advancing Soviet troops or by personal guilt, but many could not be explained in such relatively straightforward terms. Florian Huber's remarkable book, a bestseller in Germany, confronts this terrible phenomenon. Other countries have suffered defeat, but not responded in the same way. What drove whole families, who in many cases had already withstood years of deprivation, aerial bombing and deaths in battle, to do this? In a brilliantly written, thoughtful and original work, Huber sees the entire project of the Third Reich as a sequence of almost overwhelming emotions and scenes for many Germans. He describes some of the key events which shaped the period from the First World War to the end of the Second, showing how the sheer intensity, allure and ferocity of Hitler's regime swept along millions. Its sudden end was, for many of them, simply impossible to absorb.
For decades, artists and architects have struggled to relate to the Holocaust in visual form, resulting in memorials that feature a diversity of aesthetic strategies. In Memory Passages, Natasha Goldman analyzes both previously-overlooked and internationally-recognized Holocaust memorials in the United States and Germany from the postwar period to the present, drawing on many historical documents for the first time. From the perspectives of visual culture and art history, the book examines changing attitudes toward the Holocaust and the artistic choices that respond to it. The book introduces lesser-known sculptures, such as Nathan Rapoport's Monument to the Six Million Jewish Martyrs in Philadelphia, as well as internationally-acclaimed works, such as Peter Eisenman's Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe in Berlin. Other artists examined include Will Lammert, Richard Serra, Joel Shapiro, Gerson Fehrenbach, Margit Kahl, and Andy Goldsworthy.Archival documents and interviews with commissioners, survivors, and artists reveal the conversations and decisions that have shaped Holocaust memorials. Memory Passages suggests that memorial designers challenge visitors to navigate and activate spaces to engage with history and memory by virtue of walking or meandering. This book will be valuable for anyone teaching-or seeking to better understand-the Holocaust.
In this revised edition of A Short History of the Spanish Civil War, Julian Casanova tells the gripping story of the Spanish Civil War. Written in elegant and accessible prose, the book charts the most significant events and battles alongside the main players in the tragedy. Casanova provides answers to some of the pressing questions (such as the roots and extent of anticlerical violence) that have been asked in the 70 years that have passed since the painful defeat of the Second Republic. Now with a revised introduction, Casanova offers an overview of recent historiographical shifts; not least the wielding of the conflict to political ends in certain strands of contemporary historiography towards an alarming neo- Francoist revisionism. It is the ideal introduction to the Spanish Civil War.
Still, what does that matter? I want to write, but more than that, I want to bring out all kinds of things that lie buried deep in my heart." Anne Frank The Diary of Anne Frank is the story of a 13=year-old Jewish girl and her family who are forced into hiding by the Nazis during World War II.
A new gift edition of a modern classic, with supplemental
photographs, speeches, letters, and essays
The Palgrave Handbook of Holocaust Literature and Culture reflects current approaches to Holocaust literature that open up future thinking on Holocaust representation. The chapters consider diverse generational perspectives-survivor writing, second and third generation-and genres-memoirs, poetry, novels, graphic narratives, films, video-testimonies, and other forms of literary and cultural expression. In turn, these perspectives create interactions among generations, genres, temporalities, and cultural contexts. The volume also participates in the ongoing project of responding to and talking through moments of rupture and incompletion that represent an opportunity to contribute to the making of meaning through the continuation of narratives of the past. As such, the chapters in this volume pose options for reading Holocaust texts, offering openings for further discussion and exploration. The inquiring body of interpretive scholarship responding to the Shoah becomes itself a story, a narrative that materially extends our inquiry into that history.
Of the many medical specializations to transform themselves during the rise of National Socialism, anatomy has received relatively little attention from historians. While politics and racial laws drove many anatomists from the profession, most who remained joined the Nazi party, and some helped to develop the scientific basis for its racialist dogma. As historian and anatomist Sabine Hildebrandt reveals, however, their complicity with the Nazi state went beyond the merely ideological. They progressed through gradual stages of ethical transgression, turning increasingly to victims of the regime for body procurement, as the traditional model of working with bodies of the deceased gave way, in some cases, to a new paradigm of experimentation with the "future dead."
Evil is sometimes thought to be incomprehensible and abnormal, falling outside of familiar historical and human processes. And yet the twentieth century was replete with instances of cruelty on a massive scale, including systematic torture, murder, and enslavement of ordinary, innocent human beings. These overwhelming atrocities included genocide, totalitarianism, the Holocaust, and the Holodomor. This Element underlines the importance of careful, truthful historical investigation of the complicated realities of dark periods in human history; the importance of understanding these events in terms that give attention to the human experience of the people who were subject to them and those who perpetrated them; the question of whether the idea of 'evil' helps us to confront these periods honestly; and the possibility of improving our civilization's resilience in the face of the impulses towards cruelty to other human beings that have so often emerged.
'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.
Despite over 20,000 published books on the Spanish civil war, it remains the case that the social and cultural dimensions of the conflict have been relatively under-researched. Ruptura focuses on how nationalism, and extremist conceptions and projects, defined daily life experiences in both the battlefield and civilian cities and towns. A principal objective is to demonstrate that the civil war was not a struggle waged between ideologies disconnected from the preoccupations and daily lives of the Spanish people. A tripartite division of the chapter contributions -- Construction of the war; Wartime experiences; Memory and legacies -- brings to light the climate of violence, the social and symbolic transformations resulting from political divergence, and the widespread uncertainty that shaped the behavior, attitudes, lifestyles, practices and experiences of both combatants and civilians. New theoretical approaches on so-called war studies are addressed and engaged with. Several contributions frame their analyses within the international context of radicalization and political violence of interwar Europe. However, attention to the European frame does not diminish the importance accorded throughout the volume to the events that occurred in Spain. Without an understanding of the development of extremist projects, ideologies and attitudes in their particular and international dimensions it is impossible to explain the atmosphere of severe social radicalization and the unprecedented levels of violence reached during and after the civil war. In present times, when the relationship of extremism and nationalism to civil war is once again at the heart of public discourse and a preoccupation of media and governments, an historical perspective on these questions could not be more timely or necessary. Published in association with the Canada Blanch Centre for Contemporary Spanish Studies.
"Anti-Semitism revisited in a wholly original way" Philippe Sands "Rippling with ideas on every page" Jewish Chronicle "Tackles the issue [of anti-semitism] from the perspective of a country where its manifestations have been more vicious and deadly" Financial Times Rabbi Delphine Horvilleur analyses the phenomenon of anti-semitism as it is viewed by those who endure it and who, through narration and literature, succeed in overcoming it. Jewish texts are replete with treatments of anti-semitism, of this endlessly paradoxical hatred, and of the ways in which Jews are perceived by others. But here, the focus is inverted: Anti-Semitism Revisited explores the hatred of Jews as seen through the lens of the sacred texts, rabbinical tradition and Jewish lore. Delphine Horvilleur gives a voice to those who are too often deprived of one, examining resilience in the face of adversity and the legacy of an ancient hatred that is often misunderstood. An engaging, hopeful and very original examination of anti-semitism: what it means, where it comes from, what are the ancient myths and tropes that are weaponised against Jewish people, and how do we take them apart. Translated from the French by David Bellos
As one of the most prolific writers of Hungarian literature, Gyula Krudy provides us with a collection of articles that display his intimate knowledge of Hungarian society. Written during the 1910s, `20s and `30s, Krudy provides us with a wistful and nostalgic image of the waning years of the Austro-Hungarian empire, with portraits of the Habsburgs, culminating in first hand reports in 1916, from Vienna on the funeral of Emperor Francis Joseph I, and from Budapest on the coronation of Charles IV, the last king of Hungary. Krudy's reports follow the bloodless democratic revolution of 1918, the Karolyi government and the short lived Soviet Republic, and present cameos of the leading political figures of the day such as Ferenc Kossuth, Mihaly Karolyi and Bela Kun.
SS Kommandant Rudolph Hoss (1900-1947) was history's greatest mass murderer, personally supervising the extermination of approximately two million people, mostly Jews, at the death camp in Auschwitz, Poland. "Death Dealer" is a new, unexpurgated translation of Hoss's autobiography, written before, during, and after his trial. This edition includes rare photos, the minutes of the Wannsee Conference (where the Final Solution was decided and coordinated), original diagrams of the camps, a detailed chronology of important events at Auschwitz-Birkenau, Hoss's final letters to his family, and a new foreword by Auschwitz survivor Primo Levi. "Death Dealer" stands as one of the most important--and chilling--documents of the Holocaust.
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 explores the Holocaust exhibition opened within the Imperial War Museum (IWM) in 2000; setting out the long and often contentious debates surrounding the conception, design, and finally the opening of an important exhibition within a national museum in Britain. It considers a process of memory-making through an assessment of Holocaust photographs, material culture, and survivor testimonies; exploring theories of cultural memory as they apply to the national museum context. Anchored in time and place, the Holocaust exhibition within Britain's national museum of war is influenced by, and reflects, an international rise in Holocaust consciousness in the 1990s. This book considers the construction of Holocaust memory in 1990s Britain, providing a foundation for understanding current and future national memory projects. Through all aspects of the display, the Holocaust is presented as meaningful in terms of what it says about Nazism and what this, in turn, says about Britishness. From the original debates surrounding the inclusion of a Holocaust gallery at the IWM, to the acquisition of Holocaust artefacts that could act as 'concrete evidence' of Nazi barbarity and criminality, the Holocaust reaffirms an image of Britain that avoids critical self-reflection despite raising uncomfortably close questions. The various display elements are brought together to consider multiple strands of the Holocaust story as it is told by national museums in Britain. |
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