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Books > Humanities > History > European history > From 1900 > Second World War
'Impossible to put down ... This is a book about coming out of hell, about great evil, about the triumph of the human spirit, and about the great goodness on the part of those who helped. One is left with hope, and admiration' Julia Neuberger, THE TIMES 'A story of human resilience, fortitude and victory that restores the readers' hope for mankind' SUNDAY TIMES 'This is the story of human beings sucked into a vortex of destruction in which family, identity, religion and culture were all ripped away. A sense of near-miraculous calm descends when the Boys finally arrive in Britain, when human fortitude finally prevails over absolute evil' David Cesarani, TLS In August 1945, the first of 732 child survivors of the Holocaust reached Britain. First settled in the Lake District, they formed a tightly knit group of friends whose terrible shared experience is almost beyond imagining. This is their story, which begins in the lost communities of pre-World War II central Europe, moves through ghetto, concentration camp and death march, to liberation, survival, and finally, fifty years later, a deeply moving reunion. Martin Gilbert has brought together the recollections of this remarkable group of survivors to tell their astonishing stories.
Immediately after World War II, there was little discussion of the Holocaust, but today the word has grown into a potent political and moral symbol, recognized by all. In Holocaust: An American Understanding, renowned historian Deborah E. Lipstadt explores this striking evolution in Holocaust consciousness, revealing how a broad array of Americans - from students in middle schools to presidents of the United States - tried to make sense of this inexplicable disaster, and how they came to use the Holocaust as a lens to interpret their own history. Lipstadt weaves a powerful narrative that touches on events as varied as the civil rights movement, Vietnam, Stonewall, and the women's movement, as well as controversies over Bitburg, the Rwandan genocide, and the bombing of Kosovo. Drawing upon extensive research on politics, popular culture, student protests, religious debates and various strains of Zionist ideologies, Lipstadt traces how the Holocaust became integral to the fabric of American life. Even popular culture, including such films as Dr. Strangelove and such books as John Hershey's The Wall, was influenced by and in turn influenced thinking about the Holocaust. Equally important, the book shows how Americans used the Holocaust to make sense of what was happening in the United States. Many Americans saw the civil rights movement in light of Nazi oppression, for example, while others feared that American soldiers in Vietnam were destroying a people identified by the government as the enemy. Lipstadt demonstrates that the Holocaust became not just a tragedy to be understood but also a tool for interpreting America and its place in the world. Ultimately Holocaust: An American Understanding tells us as much about America in the years since the end of World War II as it does about the Holocaust itself.
On October 14, 1943, Aleksandr "Sasha" Pechersky led a mass escape of inmates from Sobibor, a Nazi death camp in Poland. Despite leading the only successful prisoner revolt at a World War II death camp, Pechersky never received the public recognition he deserved in his home country of Russia. This story of a forgotten hero reveals the tremendous difference in memorial cultures between societies in the West and societies in the former Communist world. Pechersky, along with other Russian and Jewish inmates who had been prisoners of the Nazis, was considered suspect by the Russian government simply because he had been imprisoned. In this volume, Selma Leydesdorff describes the official silence in the Eastern Bloc about Pechersky's role in the Sobibor escape and how an effort was made to recognize his actions. The narrative is based on eyewitness accounts from people in Pechersky's life and a discussion of the mechanism of memory, mixing written sources with varied recollections and assessing the collisions of collective memory held by the East and the West. Specifically, this book critiques the ideological refusal of many societies to acknowledge the suffering of Jews at Sobibor. Offering fascinating insights into a crucial period of history, emphasizing that Jews were not passive in the face of German violence, and exploring the history of the Jews who fell victim to Stalinism after surviving Nazism, this is valuable reading for students and scholars of the Holocaust and the position of Jews under Communism.
A young political scientist re-visits a question which history has treated as settled and his researches lead him to the inescapable conclusion that none of the answers hold true! That question is 'How could the Holocaust happen?' and his response is an exploration of German society and its ingrained anti-semitism that demands a fundamental revision of our thinking about the years 1933-1945. Delving into materials unexplored by previous scholars, the author marshals new, shocking primary evidence - inc. extensive testimony from the actual perpetrators - to show that the killers were ordinary Germans who were not compelled to act as they did (they knew they could refuse without retribution) yet they killed willingly and zealously! And he shows why. HITLER'S WILLING EXECUTIONERS shatters previous accounts of the Holocaust and proves that ordinary Germans believed extermination of the jews to be both necessary and just!
How could the Holocaust have happened? How can people do such things to other people? Questions such as these have animated discussion of the Holocaust from our earliest awareness of what had happened. These questions have engaged the lay public as well as academics from many different fields. Psychologists have taken an active role in trying to understand and explain the motivation, thinking, and behavior of all those involved in and affected by the Holocaust. The present volume is, in part, an attempt to provide a kind of historical roadmap to the diverse psychological explanations and interpretations that have been developed by psychologists over the last several decades. While many psychological discussions of the Holocaust dismiss or diminish the significance of work that antedates the Milgram obedience experiments in the early 1960s, this book engages some of these earlier formulations in detail. It strives to be, in this sense, a more complete history of psychological thought on the Holocaust. As many psychologists now accept the idea that a comprehensive psychology of the Holocaust must include more than social influence, the book addresses the question, "What, then?" The answer can be found by looking both backward and forward in time. Gordon Allport's 1954 book The Nature of Prejudice remains one of the best psychological attempts to grapple with the Holocaust written, though that was not its primary purpose. In this volume, the reader will find both echoes of Allport and new ideas for ways psychologists can engage this profoundly important subject.
The Aftermath offers a perspective of how one who has lived with terror for years is able to avoid paralysis and move forward. It is a book about how people live with gnawing doubts and uncertainty concerning their past actions and inaction. It is a tale of the anguish they feel because of their first hand knowledge of the evil in their fellow human being which so unjustly struck and deprived them of what was rightly theirs. For a while the Holocaust survivor seems, in most ways, to be like you and I, they are also aware of their subterranean world which may afflict them without warning. The Aftermath offers the most comprehensive examination of the psychological impact of the Holocaust on survivors ever undertaken and covers the widest range of topics including: survivor guilt, the absence of mourning, the psychological characteristics of survivor families, a survivor's view of God, survivor's feelings about Germans as well as their own countrymen of origin, and the survivor's ongoing sense of vulnerability.
'The most important event in my life occurred before I was born,' one child of concentration camp survivors has observed. The Holocaust did not end with the liberation of survivors after the collapse of the Third Reich, for the legacy of their suffering extends to a generation that never faced an SS storm- trooper. With a rich blend of oral history, memoir, and psychological interpretation, Aaron Hass deepens our understanding of the price of that legacy for the second generation. What are the effects of growing up in the shadow of the Holocaust? Drawing on interviews and survey materials, Aaron Hass provides a vibrant account of the experiences of survivors' children. Now in their thirties and forties, these men and women describe their relationships with their parents and offer their perceptions of the impact of the Holocaust on their families. They give voice to memories and feelings about which some of them have never spoken before. Himself a child of survivors and a distinguished clinical psychologist, Hass writes about the lingering presence of the Holocaust in his own life as well.
What are the effects of growing up in the shadow of the Holocaust? Drawing on interviews and survey materials, Aaron Hass provides a vibrant account of the experiences of survivors' children. Now in their thirties and forties, these men and women describe their relationships with their parents and offer their perceptions of the impact of the Holocaust on their families. They give voice to memories and feelings about which some of them have never spoken before. A child of survivors himself and a distinguished clinical psychologist, Hass writes about the lingering presence of the Holocaust in his own life.
The complete story of the Wannsee Conference, the meeting that paved the way for the Holocaust. On 20 January 1942, fifteen men arrived for a meeting in a luxurious villa on the shores of the Wannsee in the far-western outskirts of Berlin. They came at the invitation of Reinhard Heydrich and were almost all high-ranking Nazi Party, government, and SS officials. The exquisite position by the lake, the imposing driveway up to the villa, culminating in a generously sized roundabout in front of the house, the expansive, carefully landscaped park, the generous suite of rooms that opened on to the park and the lake, the three-level terrace that stretched the entire garden side of the house, and the winter garden with its marble fountain, all give today's visitor to the villa a good idea of its owner's aspiration to build a sophisticated, almost palatial structure as a testament to his cultivation and worldly success. But the beauty of the situation stood in stark contrast to the purpose of the meeting to which the fifteen had come in January 1942: the 'Final Solution of the Jewish Question'. According to the surviving records of the meeting, items on the agenda included the precise definition of exactly which group of people was to be affected, followed by a discussion of how upwards of eleven million people were to be deported and subjected to the toughest form of forced labour, and following on from this a discussion of how the survivors of this forced labour as well as those not capable of it were ultimately to be killed. The next item on the agenda was breakfast.
Harnessing the Holocaust presents the compelling story of how the Nazi genocide of the Jews became an almost daily source of controversy in French politics. Joan Wolf argues that from the Six-Day War through the trial of Maurice Papon in 1997-98, the Holocaust developed from a Jewish trauma into a metaphor for oppression and a symbol of victimization on a wide scale. Using scholarship from a range of disciplines, Harnessing the Holocaust argues that the roots of Holocaust politics reside in the unresolved dilemmas of Jewish emancipation and the tensions inherent in the revolutionary notion of universalism. Ultimately, the book suggests, the Holocaust became a screen for debates about what it means to be French.
View the Table of Contents. "The essays probe the growing vocabulary of Holocaust imagery and address the various ways (in varied venues) that the Holocaust has been remembered, represented, and received."--"American Jewish History" "This challenging collection of essays which also contains some
stunning art work, should find a place in every library that deals
with the memory of the Holocaust and its effects that transcend the
generation." "(Makes) a cogent case for a deeper, unmastered engagement with Holocause trauma."--"Journal of Jewish Studies" Impossible Images brings together a distinguished group of contributors, including artists, photographers, cultural critics, and historians, to analyze the ways in which the Holocaust has been represented in and through paintings, architecture, photographs, museums, and monuments. Exploring frequently neglected aspects of contemporary art after the Holocaust, the volume demonstrates how visual culture informs Jewish memory, and makes clear that art matters in contemporary Jewish studies. Accepting that knowledge is culturally constructed, Impossible Images makes explicit the ways in which context matters. It shows how the places where an artist works shape what is produced, in what ways the space in which a work of art is exhibited and how it is named influences what is seen or not seen, and how calling attention to certain details in a visual work, such as a gesture, a color, or an icon, can change the meaning assigned to the work as a whole. Written accessibly for a general readership and those interested in art and art history, the volume also includes 20 colorplates from leading artists Alice Lok Cahana, Judy Chicago, Debbie Teicholz, and Mindy Weisel.
W. H. Auden and Hannah Arendt belonged to a generation that
experienced the catastrophic events of the mid-twentieth century,
and they both sought to respond to the enormity of the novel
phenomena they witnessed. "Regions of Sorrow" explores the
remarkable affinity between their works. As incisive exponents and
uncompromising proponents of the insuperable condition of
plurality, Auden and Arendt give voice to an unexpected and
inconspicuous messianism--a messianism in which contingency,
frailty, and faultiness are neither rejected nor scorned but
celebrated as the indispensable elements of what Auden calls
"anxious hope."
This is a comprehensive collection of readings from the work of Theodor Adorno, one of the most influential German thinkers of the twentieth century. What took place in Auschwitz revokes what Adorno termed the "Western legacy of positivity," the innermost substance of traditional philosophy. The prime task of philosophy then remains to reflect on its own failure, its own complicity in such events. Yet in linking the question of philosophy to historical occurrence, Adorno seems not to have abandoned his paradoxical, life-long hope that philosophy might not be entirely closed to the idea of redemption. He prepares for an altogether different praxis, one no longer conceived in traditionally Marxist terms but rather to be gleaned from "metaphysical experience." In this collection, Adorno's literary executor has assembled the definitive introduction to his thinking. Its five sections anatomize the range of Adorno's concerns: "Toward a New Categorical Imperative," "Damaged Life," "Administered World, Reified Thought," "Art, Memory of Suffering," and "A Philosophy That Keeps Itself Alive." A substantial number of Adorno's writings included appear here in English for the first time. This collection comes with an eloquent introduction from Rolf Tiedemann, the literary executor of Adorno's work.
The Diary of Bergen-Belsen is a unique, deeply political survivor's diary from the final year inside the notorious concentration camp. Hanna Levy-Hass, a Yugoslavian Jew, emerged a defiant survivor of the Holocaust. Her observations shed new light on the lived experience of Nazi internment. Levy-Hass stands alone as the only resistance fighter to record on her own experience inside the camps, and she does so with unflinching clarity and attention to the political and social divisions inside Bergen-Belsen.
Odilo Globocnik, a collaborator of Adolf Hitler and Heinrich Himmler, was responsible for the deaths of at least 1.5 million people in three Polish camps: Treblinka, Sobibor, and Belzec. Along with Rudolf Hoess, Globocnik may be named as one of the first industrial-style killers in history. Betraying his homeland by conspiring with Hitler to destroy Austria's independence, he then launched the Generalplan-Ost and played a pivotal role in Aktion Reinhardt, directing the entire program from November 1939 to September 1943, and writing letters to Hitler detailing goods looted from his victims. Globocnik's Lublin Distrikt's gulag was not merely a vehicle for a well-organized pogrom; it also involved creating a highly organized network of ghettos. By the winter of 1943 nearly all of the Lublin Distrikt's Jews had been exterminated, leaving only skilled laborers used in Globocnik's industrial conglomerates. His ethnic cleansing teams, assisted by Ukrainian policing units, also cleared the Polish peasant farmers from the Zamosc Lands. Very little has been published on Globocnik, with particular neglect of his early life, political career, and, most importantly, the four years he spent in Lublin. This authoritative biography details every aspect of his life from his ancestry to his suicide after being captured. Information has been researched from more than forty international archives, Globocnik's SS file, extensive interviews with his lover Irmgard Rickheim and others, a wealth of letters both personal and formal, internal memos and official reports of the SS, diaries, and reminisces from survivors. Includes rare photographs, many from the collection of Irmgard Rickheim.
Few lives shed more light on the complex relationship between Jews
and Christians during and after the Holocaust--or provide a more
moving portrait of courage--than Oswald Rufeisen's. A Jew passing
as a Christian in occupied Poland, Rufeisen worked as translator
for the German police--the very people who rounded up and murdered
the Jews--and repeatedly risked his life to save hundreds from the
Nazis. In this gripping biography, Nechama Tec, a widely acclaimed
writer on the Holocaust, recounts Rufeisen's remarkable
story.
The incorporation of German territories east of the Oder and Western Neisse rivers into Poland in 1945 was linked with the difficult process of an almost total exchange of population and involved the taking over of a region in which the Second World War had effected an enormous level of destruction. The contemporary term 'Polish Wild West' not only alluded to the reigning atmosphere of chaos and 'survival of the fittest' in the Polish-German borderland but was also associated with a new kind of freedom and the opportunity to start everything anew. The arrival in this region of Polish settlers from different parts of Poland led to Poles, Germans and Soviet soldiers temporarily coming into contact with one another. Living together in this war-damaged space was far from easy. On the basis of ego-documents, the author recreates the beginnings of the shaping of this new society, one affected by a repressive political system, internal conflicts and human tragedy. In distancing oneself from the until-recently dominant narratives concerning expellees in Germany or pioneers of the 'Recovered Territories' in Poland, Beata Halicka tells the story of the disintegration of a previous cultural landscape and the establishment of one which was new, in a colourful and vivid manner and encompassing different points of view.
W. H. Auden and Hannah Arendt belonged to a generation that
experienced the catastrophic events of the mid-twentieth century,
and they both sought to respond to the enormity of the novel
phenomena they witnessed. "Regions of Sorrow" explores the
remarkable affinity between their works. As incisive exponents and
uncompromising proponents of the insuperable condition of
plurality, Auden and Arendt give voice to an unexpected and
inconspicuous messianism--a messianism in which contingency,
frailty, and faultiness are neither rejected nor scorned but
celebrated as the indispensable elements of what Auden calls
"anxious hope."
In this riveting account, historian Stephen Ambrose continues where he left off in his #1 bestseller D-Day. Ambrose again follows the individual characters of this noble, brutal, and tragic war, from the high command down to the ordinary soldier, drawing on hundreds of interviews to re-create the war experience with startling clarity and immediacy. From the hedgerows of Normandy to the overrunning of Germany, Ambrose tells the real story of World War II from the perspective of the men and women who fought it.
Advance Praise for the Inextinguishable Symphony ""A Fascinating Insight into a Virtually Unknown Chapter of Nazi Rule in Germany, Made all the More Engaging through a Son's Discovery of His Own Remarkable Parents."" -Ted Koppel, ABC News ""An Immensely Moving and Powerful Description of those Evil Times. I couldn't Put the Book Down."" -James Galway ""Martin Goldsmith has Written a Moving and Personal Account of a Search for Identity. His is a Story that will Touch All Readers with Its Integrity. This is not about Exorcising Ghosts, but Rather Awakening Passions that no One Ever Knew Existed. This is a Journey Everyone should Take."" -Leonard Slatkin, Music Director National Symphony Orchestra ""For Years I've been Familiar with Martin Goldsmith's Musical Expertise. This Book Explains the Source of His Knowledge and His Passion for the Subject. In Tracking the Extraordinary Story of His Parents and the Jewish Kulturbund, Martin Unfolds a Little-Known Piece of Holocaust History, and Finds Depths in His Own Heart that Warm the Hearts of Readers."" -Susan Stamberg, Special Correspondent National Public Radio "" A] Strong and Painful Book, Well-Written, Well-Researched, Moving, and Very Instructive."" -Ned Rorem, Pulitzer Prize-Winning Composer
Uncompromisingly frank, "both brutal and beautifully written" (The Boston Globe), The Cap is an unconventional Holocaust memoir that defies all moral judgment and ventures into a soul blackened by the unforgiving cruelty of its surroundings. Roman Frister's memoir of his life before, during, and after his imprisonment in the Nazi concentration camps sparked enormous controversy and became an international best-seller. With bone-chilling candor, Frister illustrates how the impulse to live unhinges our comfortable notions of morality, blurring the boundary between victim and oppressor and leaving absolutely no room for martyrdom. By the time Roman Frister was sixteen, he had watched his mother murdered by an SS officer and he had waited for his father to expire, eager to retrieve a hidden half loaf of bread from beneath the dying man's cot. When confronted with certain death, he placed another inmate in harm's way to save himself. Frister's resilience and instinct for self-preservation -- developed in the camps -- become the source of his life's successes and failures. Chilling and unsentimental, The Cap is a rare and unadorned self-portrait of a man willing to show all of his scars. Reflected in stark relief are the indelible wounds of all twentieth-century European Jews. An exceptional and groundbreaking testimony, Roman Frister's "gut-wrenching memoir is a must-read." -- Kirkus Reviews
"This anthology does indeed offer a panoramic survey, and thus is a
valuable contribution to Holocaust literature.]" "Rabbi Dan Cohn-Sherbok has provided a much needed and indeed
"panoramic survey of Holocaust theology" (1) that offers a
comprehensive overview of excerpts from representative writings in
the field. "Holocaust Theology: A Reader" provides a fine,
comprehensive overview of the interpretive possibilities." ""Holocaust Theology: A Reader" should prove useful as an
introductory text which grapples with complex issues." Where was God during the Holocaust? And where has God been since? How has our religious belief been changed by the Shoah? For more than half a century, these questions have haunted both Jewish and Christian theologians. Holocaust Theology provides a panoramic survey of the writings of more than one hundred leading Jewish and Christian thinkers on these profound theological problems. Beginning with a general introduction to Holocaust theology and the religious challenge of the Holocaust, this sweeping collection brings together in one volume a coherent overview of the key theologies which have shaped responses to the Holocaust over the last several decades, including those addressing perplexing questions regarding Christian responsibility and culpability during the Nazi era. Each reading is preceded by a brief introduction. The volume will be invaluable to Rabbis and the clergy, students, scholars of the Holocaust and of religion, and all those troubled by the religious implications of the tragedy of the Holocaust. Contributors include LeoBaeck, Eugene Borowitz, Stephen Haynes, Abraham Joshua Heschel, Steven T. Katz, Primo Levi, Jacob Neusner, John Pawlikowski, Rosemary Radford Reuther, Jonathan Sarna, Paul Tillich, and Elie Wiesel.
This book offers the first comprehensive overview of Post-Holocaust Jewish theology, quoting extensively from and interpreting all of the significant American writings of the movement. Morgan's lucid analysis clarifies the background of the movement in the postwar period, its origins, its character, and its legacy for subsequent thinking, theological and otherwise. Among the authors whose work he considers are Hannah Arendt, Richard Rubenstein, Eliezer Berkowitz, Irving Greenberg, Arthur Cohen, Emil Fackenheim, Eli Wiesel and many others. Ultimately, Morgan's primary purpose is to tell the story of the movement, to illuminate its real, deep point, and to demonstrate its continuing relevance today.
Critical acclaim for William B. Breuer "A first-class historian."–Wall Street Journal For Top Tales of World War II "As evidenced time and again by the prolific Breuer, WWII continues to be a source of absorbing espionage tales. . . . This is a book for rainy days and long solitary nights by the fire. If there were a genre for cozy nonfiction, this would be the template."–Publishers Weekly "A perfect book for the curious and adventure readers and those who love exotic tales and especially history buffs who will be surprised at what they didn’t know. Recommended for nearly everyone."–Kirkus Reviews For Secret Weapons of World War II "Rip-roaring tales . . . a delightful addition to the niche that Breuer has so successfully carved out."–Publishers Weekly
British state-supported Holocaust remembrance has dramatically grown in prominence since the 1990s. This monograph provides the first substantial discussion of the interface between public Holocaust memory in contemporary Britain and the nation's changing religious-secular landscape. In the first half of the book attention is given to the relationships between remembrance activities and Jewish, Muslim, Christian, and post-Christian communities. Such relationships are far from monolithic, being entangled in diverse histories, identities, power-structures, and notions of 'British values'. In the book's second half, the focus turns to ways in which public initiatives concerned with Holocaust commemoration and education are intertwined with evocations and perceptions of the sacred. Three state-supported endeavours are addressed in detail: Holocaust Memorial Day, plans for a major new memorial site in London, and school visits to Auschwitz. Considering these phenomena through concepts of ritual, sacred space, and pilgrimage, it is proposed that response to the Holocaust has become a key feature of Britain's 21st century religious-secular landscape. Critical consideration of these topics, it is argued, is necessary for both a better understanding of religious-secular change in modern Britain and a sustainable culture of remembrance and national self-examination. This is the first study to examine Holocaust remembrance and British religiosity/secularity in relation to one another. As such, it will be of keen interest to scholars of Religious Studies, Jewish studies and Holocaust Studies, as well as the Sociology of Religion, Material Religion and Secularism. |
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