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.

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.

On the outbreak of WWII Frank was appointed governor general of Poland. Heinrich Himmler was responsible for the extermination camps and Frank claimed he did not become aware of the mass killings until late in the war. Frank was captured in May 1945 and was accused of crimes against humanity at the Nuremberg War Crimes Trial. He said at his trial: "I myself have never installed an extermination camp for Jews, or promoted the existence of such camps; but if Adolf Hitler personally has laid that dreadful responsibility on his people, then it is mine too, for we have fought against Jewry for years; and we have indulged in the most horrible utterances." Hans Frank was found guilty and executed on October 1, 1946. This scholarly study from Martyn Housden examines Frank's career and complex character to shed light upon the Lebensraum project in the East and the carrying out of the Final Solution.

For decades the history of the US Military Tribunals at Nuremberg (NMT) has been eclipsed by the first Nuremberg trial-the International Military Tribunal or IMT. The dominant interpretation-neatly summarized in the ubiquitous formula of "Subsequent Trials"-ignores the unique historical and legal character of the NMT trials, which differed significantly from that of their predecessor. The NMT trials marked a decisive shift both in terms of analysis of the Third Reich and conceptualization of international criminal law. This volume is the first comprehensive examination of the NMT and brings together diverse perspectives from the fields of law, history, and political science, exploring the genesis, impact, and legacy of the twelve Military Tribunals held at Nuremberg between 1946 and 1949.

This book explores the memory of the Romanian Holocaust through transnational representations strongly rooted in a Romanian past of anti-Semitism, genocide, and violence. The essays in this volume discuss survivor testimonial accounts, letters, journals, and drawings, as well as literature and films in an effort to break the silence imposed by the Communist regime and debunk the denials of the Holocaust in Romania. What the survivors, writers (Paul Celan, Aharon Applefeld, Elie Wiesel, Norman Manea), artists, and film directors (Radu Mihaileanu, Radu Gabrea) present in this volume have in common is not just their Romanian heritage and their complicated relationship with Romania, but also an intense preoccupation with the memory of the Holocaust.

From 1978 1996 Holocaust denial emerged as a major concern for the liberal democracies of Europe and North America. This period also saw the first prosecutions of Holocaust deniers. But these prosecutions often ran into trouble. Holocaust Denial and the Law relates how courts in four countries (Canada, France, Germany and the United States) resolved the dilemmas posed by Holocaust denial litigation. It also describes how, in the United States, student editors had to decide whether to run ads denying the Holocaust. The book concludes that a given country's resolution of these dilemmas turns on its specific legal traditions and historical experiences. MARKET 1: Law; Politics of Religion; Jewish History

The first comprehensive history of the German Jews on the eve of Hitler's seizure of power, this book examines both their internal debates and their relations with larger German society. It shows that, far from being united, German Jewry was deeply divided along religious, political, and ideological fault lines. Above all, the liberal majority of patriotic and assimilationist Jews was forced to sharpen its self-definition by the onslaught of Zionist zealots who denied the "Germanness" of the Jews. This struggle for the heart and soul of German Jewry was fought at every level, affecting families, synagogues, and community institutions.Although the Jewish role in Germany's economy and culture was exaggerated, they were certainly prominent in many fields, giving rise to charges of privilege and domination. This volume probes the texture of German anti-Semitism, distinguishing between traditional and radical Judeophobia and reaching conclusions that will give no comfort to those who assume that Germans were predisposed to become "willing executioners" under Hitler. It also assesses the quality of Jewish responses to racist attacks. The self-defense campaigns of the Central Association of German Citizens of the Jewish Faith included publishing counter-propaganda, supporting sympathetic political parties, and taking anti-Semitic demagogues to court. Although these measures could only slow the rise of Nazism after 1930, they demonstrate that German Jewry was anything but passive in its responses to the fascist challenge.The German Jews' faith in liberalism is sometimes attributed to self-delusion and wishful thinking. This volume argues that, in fact, German Jewry pursued a clear-sighted perception of Jewish self-interest, apprehended the dangers confronting it, and found allies in socialist and democratic elements that constituted the "other Germany." Sadly, this profound and genuine commitment to liberalism left the German Jews increasingly isolated as the majority of Germans turned to political radicalism in the last years of the Republic. This full-scale history of Weimar Jewry will be of interest to professors, students, and general readers interested in the Holocaust and Jewish History.

Of all the controversies facing historians today, few are more divisive or more important than the question of how the Holocaust was possible. What led thousands of Germans – many of them middle-aged reservists with, apparently, little Nazi zeal – to willingly commit acts of genocide? Was it ideology? Was there something rotten in the German soul? Or was it – as Christopher Browning argues in this highly influential book – more a matter of conformity, a response to intolerable social and psychological pressure?

Ordinary Men is a microhistory, the detailed study of a single unit in the Nazi killing machine. Browning evaluates a wide range of evidence to seek to explain the actions of the "ordinary men" who made up reserve Police Battalion 101, taking advantage of the wide range of resources prepared in the early 1960s for a proposed war crimes trial. He concludes that his subjects were not "evil;" rather, their actions are best explained by a desire to be part of a team, not to shirk responsibility that would otherwise fall on the shoulders of comrades, and a willingness to obey authority.

Browning's ability to explore the strengths and weaknesses of arguments – both the survivors' and other historians' – is what sets his work apart from other studies that have attempted to get to the root of the motivations for the Holocaust, and it is also what marks Ordinary Men as one of the most important works of its generation.

During World War II Poland lost more than six million people, including about three million Polish Jews who perished in the ghettos and extermination camps built by Nazi Germany in occupied Polish territories. This book is the first to address the representation of the Holocaust in Polish film and does so through a detailed treatment of several films, which the author frames in relation to the political, ideological, and cultural contexts of the times in which they were created. Following the chronological development of Polish Holocaust films, the book begins with two early classics: Wanda Jakubowska's The Last Stage (1948) and Aleksander Ford's Border Street (1949), and next explores the Polish School period, represented by Andrzej Wajda's A Generation (1955) and Andrzej Munk's The Passenger (1963). Between 1965 and 1980 there was an "organized silence" regarding sensitive Polish-Jewish relations resulting in only a few relevant films until the return of democracy in 1989 when an increasing number were made, among them Krzysztof Kieslowski's Decalogue 8 (1988), Andrzej Wajda's Korczak (1990), Jan Jakub Kolski's Keep Away from the Window (2000), and Roman Polanski's The Pianist (2002). An important contribution to film studies, this book has wider relevance in addressing the issue of Poland's national memory.

Since its completion in 1955, Alain Resnais's Night and Fog (Nuit et Brouillard) has been considered one of the most important films to confront the catastrophe and atrocities of the Nazi era. But was it a film about the Holocaust that failed to recognize the racist genocide? Or was the film not about the Holocaust as we know it today but a political and aesthetic response to what David Rousset, the French political prisoner from Buchenwald, identified on his return in 1945 as the 'concentrationary universe' which, now actualized, might release its totalitarian plague any time and anywhere? What kind of memory does the film create to warn us of the continued presence of this concentrationary universe? This international collection re-examines Resnais's benchmark film in terms of both its political and historical context of representation of the camps and of other instances of the concentrationary in contemporary cinema. Through a range of critical readings, Concentrationary Cinema explores the cinematic aesthetics of political resistance not to the Holocaust as such but to the political novelty of absolute power represented by the concentrationary system and its assault on the human condition.

Holocaust Archaeologies: Approaches and Future Directions aims to move archaeological research concerning the Holocaust forward through a discussion of the variety of the political, social, ethical and religious issues that surround investigations of this period and by considering how to address them. It considers the various reasons why archaeological investigations may take place and what issues will be brought to bear when fieldwork is suggested. It presents an interdisciplinary methodology in order to demonstrate how archaeology can (uniquely) contribute to the history of this period. Case examples are used throughout the book in order to contextualise prevalent themes and a variety of geographically and typologically diverse sites throughout Europe are discussed. This book challenges many of the widely held perceptions concerning the Holocaust, including the idea that it was solely an Eastern European phenomena centred on Auschwitz and the belief that other sites connected to it were largely destroyed or are well-known. The typologically , temporally and spatial diverse body of physical evidence pertaining to this period is presented and future possibilities for investigation of it are discussed. Finally, the volume concludes by discussing issues relating to the "re-presentation" of the Holocaust and the impact of this on commemoration, heritage management and education. This discussion is a timely one as we enter an age without survivors and questions are raised about how to educate future generations about these events in their absence.

The noted historian and Litvak (Jews of Lithuanian heritage), Josef Rosin, presents the history of 50 Jewish towns in Lithuania. The book includes information about the founding of the settlements, their development into vibrant communities, and their ultimate destruction in the Shoah (Holocaust). This is Josefs third book, which brings to 102, the number of communities that he has documented. The thorough coverage shows the rich culture from which many American, South African and Israeli Jews of Litvak heritage can trace their history. This book is a rich resource for Litvak genealogists to extend their knowledge to understand the communities from which their ancestors came. This book is a valuable resource for libraries, synagogues and Litvak homes. Below is the list of towns with the Yiddish name first, and the Lithuanian name in parenthesis: Akmyan (Akmen), Anishok (Onukis), Erzhvilik (Ervilkas), Gelvan (Gelvonai), Girtegole (Girkalnis), Grinkishok (Grinkikis), Grishkabud (Grikabdis), Gudleve (Garliava), Kaltinan (Kaltinnai), Kamai (Kamajai), Krakinove (Krekenava), Kruzh (Kraiai), Kurshan (Kurnai), Laizeve (Laiuva), Leipun (Leipalingis), Loikeve (Laukuva), Ludvinove (Liudvinavas), Luknik (Luok), Maliat (Moltai), Miroslav (Miroslavas), Nemoksht (Nemakiai), Pashvitin (Pavitinys), Pikeln (Pikeliai), Plotel (Plateliai), Pumpyan (Pumpnai), Rasein (Raseiniai), Remigole (Ramygala), Riteve (Rietavas), Sapizishok (Zapykis), Shadeve (eduva), Shidleve (iluva), Siad (Seda), Srednik (Seredius), Survilishok (Survilikis), Svadushch (Svedasai), Trashkun (Troknai), Trishik (Trykiai), Tsaikishok (ekik), Tsitevyan (Tytuvnai), Vabolnik (Vabalninkas), Vaigeve (Vaiguva), Vainute (Vainutas), Vekshne (Viekniai), Velon (Veliouna), Vidukle (Vidukl), Yelok (Ylakiai), Yezne (Jieznas), Zharan (arnai), and Zhidik (idikai).

In the years before the Second World War, the Jews of Europe faced unprecedented fear and anguish as the noose of antisemitism gradually tightened around them. The murderous violence that would eventually overtake them, later called the Holocaust, has been impressively examined by historians, as has the steady persecution of the pre-war Jewish community under the Third Reich. Yet the spread of Jew-hatred across the Continent - and the alarming picture that journalism and first-hand accounts brought to other nations - has largely gone unexamined. Drawing on newspapers, magazines, diaries, diplomatic correspondence, organizational reports, and a wide variety of other sources, this history shines a spotlight on the years between Adolf Hitler's emergence as Chancellor of Germany and the advent of the Second World War. It recounts the ways in which European Jews navigated their world as darkness closed about, even as individuals and organizations tried fervently to command the world's attention and mobilize others to action.

On 18 July 1943, one-hundred and twenty Jews were transported from the concentration camp at Drancy to the Levitan furniture store building in the middle of Paris. These were the first detainees of three satellite camps (Levitan, Austerlitz, Bassano) in Paris. Between July 1943 and August 1944, nearly eight hundred prisoners spent a few weeks to a year in one of these buildings, previously been used to store furniture, and were subjected to forced labor. Although the history of the persecution and deportation of France's Jews is well known, the three Parisian satellite camps have been subjected to the silence of both memory and history. This lack of attention by the most authoritative voices on the subject can perhaps be explained by the absence of a collective memory or by the marginal status of the Parisian detainees - the spouses of Aryans, wives of prisoners of war, half-Jews. Still, the Parisian camps did, and continue to this day, lack simple and straightforward descriptions. This book is a much needed study of these camps and is witness to how, sixty years after the events, expressing this memory remains a complex, sometimes painful process, and speaking about it a struggle.

In the tradition of All Quiet on the Western Front, Elton E. Mackin's memoirs are a haunting portrayal of war as seen through the eyes of a highly decorated Marine Corps private who fought in every major World War I campaign in which the Marine Brigade participated - from Belleau Wood to the crossing of the Meuse on the eve of the Armistice. At age nineteen, Private Mackin joined the Marine Brigade's 1st Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment on beleaguered Hill 142, where the Marines were fighting as part of the U.S. Army's 2d Infantry Division. The call soon went out for volunteers to serve as runners, carrying messages from headquarters to the front lines or guiding attacking units to the jumpoff point. Mackin accepted the challenge and became a member of what frontline marines called the "suicide squad". He miraculously survived some of the most vicious fighting of the war without serious injury - other than to his psyche. His narrative, written in a style evocative of the heyday of American literature, the 1920s and 1930s, is certain to become a classic in its own right. Mackin shares with the reader not just the horrors of war, but the subtle little everyday experiences that make the life of the combat soldier both tolerable and soul-shattering. Suddenly We Didn't Want to Die is a book that will leave you wondering how anyone can emerge from battle with sanity intact.

A remarkable and compelling story about a Jewish boys coming of age during World War II, his survival, and ultimately, the transformation of his life as an American. Joseph Garays life story is an object lesson about perseverance in the face of seemingly insurmountable obstacles -- from the loss of his entire family in the concentration camps, to his survival in the Jewish Underground in Bratislava and elsewhere; from his joining the partisan underground and his enlistment in the Czechoslovakian division of the Romanian Red Army to fight the Nazis, to his meeting and marrying his wife. It is also a lesson about the remarkable acts of a single individual, Joseph Paserin, who protected Garay during those tumultuous war years despite grave risk to his own and his familys safety. The actions of Paserin ultimately enabled Garay to start anew in New York City -- to build a new family and to enjoy the safety and security of American freedom.

On 7 November 1938, an impoverished seventeen-year-old Polish Jew living in Paris, obsessed with Nazi persecution of his family in Germany, brooding on revenge - and his own insignificance - bought a handgun, carried it on the Metro to the German Embassy in Paris and, never before having fired a weapon, shot down the first German diplomat he saw. When the official died two days later, Hitler and Goebbels used the event as their pretext for the state-sponsored wave of anti-Semitic violence and terror known as Kristallnacht, the pogrom that was the initiating event of the Holocaust. Overnight this obscure young man, Herschel Grynszpan, found himself world-famous, his face on front pages everywhere, and a pawn in the machinations of power. Instead of being executed, he found himself a privileged prisoner of the Gestapo while Hitler and Goebbels prepared a show-trial. The trial, planned to the last detail, was intended to prove that the Jews had started the Second World War. Alone in his cell, Herschel soon grasped how the Nazis planned to use him, and set out to wage a battle of wits against Hitler and Goebbels, knowing perfectly well that if he succeeded in stopping the trial, he would certainly be murdered. Until very recently, what really happened has remained hazy. Hitler's Scapegoat, based on the most recent research - including access to a heretofore untapped archive compiled by a Nuremberg rapporteur - tells Herschel's extraordinary story in full for the first time.

Waitman Wade Beorn's The Holocaust in Eastern Europe provides a comprehensive history of the Holocaust in the region that was the central location of the event itself while including material often overlooked in general Holocaust history texts. First introducing Jewish life as it was lived before the Nazis in Eastern Europe, the book chronologically surveys the development of Nazi policies in the area over the period from 1939 to 1945. This book provides an overview of both the German imagination and obsession with the East and its impact on the Nazi genocidal project there. It also covers the important period of Soviet occupation and its effects on the unfolding of the Holocaust in Eastern Europe. This text also treats in detail other themes such as ghettoization, the Final Solution, rescue, collaboration, resistance, and many others. Throughout, Beorn includes detailed examples of the similarities and differences of the nature of the Holocaust in various regions, in the words of perpetrators, witnesses, collaborators, and victims/survivors. Beorn also illustrates the complex nature of the Holocaust by discussing the difficult subjects of collaboration, sexual violence, the use of slave labour, treatment of Soviet POWs, profiteering and others within a larger narrative framework. He also explores key topics like Jewish resistance, Jewish councils, memory, and explanations for perpetration, collaboration, and rescue. The book includes images and maps to orient the reader to the topic area. This important book explains the brutality and complexity of the Holocaust in the East for all students of the Holocaust and 20th-century Eastern European history.

"We will be judged in our own time and in the future by measuring the aid that we, inhabitants of a free and fortunate country, gave to our brethren in this time of greatest disaster." This declaration, made shortly after the pogroms of November 1938 by the Jewish communities in Sweden, was truer than anyone could have forecast at the time. Pontus Rudberg focuses on this sensitive issue - Jewish responses to the Nazi persecutions and mass murder of Jews. What actions did Swedish Jews take to aid the Jews in Europe during the years 1933-45 and what determined their policies and actions? Specific attention is given to the aid efforts of the Jewish Community of Stockholm, including the range of activities in which the community engaged and the challenges and opportunities presented by official refugee policy in Sweden.

This work deals with the integration of thousands of survivors of the Holocaust into Israeli society in the early years of the new State's existence. Among the issues discussed are: the ways in which the survivors were recruited into the defence forces and the role they played in the War of Independence, the settlement of the immigrants in towns and villages abandoned by Arabs during the war and the immigrant youth.

Following the horrors of Kristallnacht in November of 1938, frightened parents were forced to find refuge for their children, far from the escalating anti-Jewish violence. To that end, a courageous group of Belgian women organized a desperate and highly dangerous rescue mission to usher nearly 1,000 children out of Germany and Austria. Of these children, ninety-three were placed on a freight train, traveling through the night away from their families and into the relative safety of Vichy France. Ranging in age from five to sixteen years, the children along with their protectors spent a harsh winter in an abanoned barn with little food before eventually finding shelter in the isolated Chateau de la Hille in southern France. While several of the youngest children were safely routed to the United States, those who remained continued to be hunted by Nazi soldiers until finally smuggled illegally across the Swiss Alps to safe houses. Remarkably, all but eleven of the original ninety-three children survived the war due to the unrelenting efforts of their protectors and their own resilience. In The Children of La Hille, Reed narrates this stunning firsthand account of the amazing rescue and the countless heroic efforts of those who helped along the way. As one of the La Hille children, Reed recalls with poignant detail traveling from lice-infested, abandoned convents to stately homes in the foothills of the Pyrenees, always scrambling to keep one step ahead of the Nazis. Drawing upon survivor interviews, journals, and letters, Reed affectionately describes rousing afternoon swims in a nearby natural pond and lively renditions of Moliere plays performed for an audience of local farmers. He tells of heart-stopping near misses as the Vichy police roundups intensified, forcing children to hide in the woods to escape capture. The Children of La Hille gives readers an intimate glimpse of a harrowing moment in history, paying tribute to ordinary people acting in extraordinary ways.

In this ground-breaking book, based on archival and field research and previously unknown historical evidence, Maxim D. Shrayer introduces the work of Ilya Selvinsky, the first Jewish-Russian poet to depict the Holocaust (Shoah) in the occupied Soviet territories. In January 1942, while serving as a military journalist, Selvinsky witnessed the immediate aftermath of the massacre of thousands of Jews outside the Crimean city of Kerch, and thereafter composed and published poems about it. Shrayer painstakingly reconstructs the details of the Nazi atrocities witnessed by Selvinsky, and shows that in 1943, as Stalin's regime increasingly refused to report the annihilation of Jews in the occupied territories, Selvinsky paid a high price for his writings and actions. This book features over 60 rare photographs and illustrations and includes translations of Selvinsky's principal Shoah poems.