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Books > History > European history > From 1900
Whether it's a novel, memoir, diary, poem, or drama, a common
thread runs through the literature of the Nazi Holocaust--a motif
of personal testimony to the dearness of humanity. With that
perspective the expert authors of Encyclopedia of Holocaust
Literature undertake profiling 128 of the most influential first
generation authors who either survived, perished, or were closely
connected to the Holocaust. Arranged alphabetically by author, all
of the entries answer the same basic questions about the author and
his or her work: What is the nature of the author's literary
response to the Holocaust? What is his or her place in Holocaust
literature? What does the author's work contribute to an
understanding of the Holocaust? What is distinctive about the
author's work? What are some key moments in the author's life? What
issues does the author's work pose for the reader? To address these
questions, the entries are generally organized into three primary
divisions: (1) an opening section on why the author's work has a
significant or distinctive place in Holocaust literature, (2) a
second section containing information on the author's biography,
and (3) a critical examination of the highlights of the author's
work. In most cases, the third section is the longest, since the
focus of the encyclopedia is the literature, not the author.
The Encyclopedia is intended for all students and teachers of
the Holocaust, regardless of their levels of learning. Avenues for
further research are incorporated at the conclusion of each entry
and in a comprehensive bibliography of primary works of Holocaust
literature and a second bibliography of critical studies of
Holocaust literature.
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.
First English translation of the memoirs of Austrian Romani
Holocaust survivor, writer, visual artist, musician, and activist
Ceija Stojka (1933-2013), along with poems, an interview,
historical photos, and reproductions of her artworks. "Is this the
whole world?" This question begins the first of three memoirs by
Austrian Romani writer, visual artist, musician, and activist Ceija
Stojka (1933-2013), told from her perspective as a child interned
in three Nazi concentration camps from age nine to twelve. Written
by a child survivor much later in life, the memoirs offer insights
into the nexus of narrative and extreme trauma, expressing the full
spectrum of human emotions: fear and sorrow at losing loved ones;
joy and relief when reconnecting with family and friends; desire to
preserve some memories while attempting to erase others; horror at
acts of genocide, and hope arising from dreams of survival. In
addition to annotated translations of the three memoirs, the book
includes two of Stojka's poems and an interview by Karin Berger,
editor of the original editions of Stojka's memoirs, as well as
color reproductions of several of her artworks and historical
photographs. An introduction contextualizes her works within Romani
history and culture, and a glossary informs the reader about the
"concentrationary universe." Because the memoirs show how Stojka
navigated male-dominated postwar Austrian culture, generally
discriminatory to Roma, and the patriarchal aspects of Romani
culture itself, the book is a contribution not only to Holocaust
Studies but also to Austrian Studies, Romani Studies, and Women's
and Gender Studies.
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.
As World War II and the Nazi assault on Europe ended, some 25,000
Jews--entire families in some instances--walked out of the forests
of Eastern Europe. Based on numerous interviews with these
survivors, "Fugitives of the Forest" tells their harrowing and
heroic stories.
Despite an outpouring in recent years of history and cultural
criticism related to the Holocaust, Italian women's literary
representations and testimonies have not received their proper due.
This project fills this gap by analyzing Italian women's writing
from a variety of genres, all set against a complex historical
backdrop.
Covering the period between the Munich Agreement and the Communist
Coup in February 1948, this volume provides the first full account
of the Czechoslovak Government-in-Exile in London. In examining
attitudes towards the Jews during World War 2 and its aftermath Jan
Lani ek explores the notion that Czechoslovak treatment of the Jews
was shaped by resurgent Czech and Slovak nationalism/s caused by
the war and by the experience of the occupation by the German army.
He challenges the official history of Czechoslovak policy towards
the Jews between 1918 and 1948, which still presents Czechoslovakia
as an exceptional case study of an East-Central European state that
rejected antisemitism and treated the Jews decently. This
groundbreaking work offers a novel, provocative analysis of the
political activities and plans of the Czechoslovak exiles during
and after the war years, and of the implementation of the plans in
liberated Czechoslovakia after 1945.
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.
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.
Mordechai Gebirtig was one of the most influential and popular
writers of Yiddish songs and poems. Born in 1877, he became a
prolific poet and song writer, using everything he saw, heard and
knew about people. His legacy, therefore, is not only one of
melodies and lyrics, but also a treatise on Jewish life in Poland
under the benign neglect of the Austrians, the ever growing
hostility of the Poles, and finally, the terror of the Germans, who
destroyed the people, their culture, and, to a great measure, their
memory. Schneider's book for the first time brings his work to an
English-speaking audience, offering a collection of all of his
major works, complete with the scores, transliterated Yiddish text,
and English translation. Her book offers a rare insight into the
world of Eastern European Jews, their culture, and their music.
Gebirtig's most famous song Es Brent--It's Burning--was written
in response to a 1936 pogrom. It became a stirring hymn for the
survivors of the Holocaust, who felt that the words suited their
own situation very well. Gebirtig himself was shot in the Cracow
Ghetto in June 1942. Neither he nor any of his close family
survived the war. However, as this volume shows, his songs and
poems remain an enduring voice for a Jewish community nearly lost
to the Nazis. They constitute a precious legacy for anyone
interested in the world of Eastern Europe Jews, their culture, and
their music.
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.
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.
An intriguing analysis of how place constructs memory and how
memory constructs place, "Remembering the Holocaust" shows how
visiting sites such as Auschwitz shapes the transfer of Holocaust
memory from one generation to the next. Through the discussion of a
range of memoirs and novels, including "Landscapes of Memory" by
Ruth Kluger, "Too Many Men" by Lily Brett, " The War After" by Anne
Karpf and "Everything is Illuminated" by Jonathan Safran Foer,
"Remembering the Holocaust "reveals the pivotal yet complicated
role of place in each generation's writing about the Holocaust.This
book provides an insightful and nuanced investigation of the effect
of the Holocaust upon families, from survivors of the genocide to
members of the second and even third generations of families
involved. By deploying an innovative combination of generational
and literary study of Holocaust survivor families focussed on
place, "Remembering the Holocaust" makes an important contribution
to the field of Holocaust Studies that will be of interest to
scholars and anyone interested in Holocaust remembrance.
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.
This bold intervention into the debate over the memory and
post-memory of the Holocaust both scrutinises recent academic
theories of post-Holocaust trauma and provides a new reading of
literary and architectural memory texts related to the
Holocaust.
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