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Books > Humanities > History > European history > From 1900 > Second World War
A prominent Viennese psychiatrist before the war, Viktor Frankl was
uniquely able to observe the way that both he and others in
Auschwitz coped (or didn't) with the experience. He noticed that it
was the men who comforted others and who gave away their last piece
of bread who survived the longest - and who offered proof that
everything can be taken away from us except the ability to choose
our attitude in any given set of circumstances. The sort of person
the prisoner became was the result of an inner decision and not of
camp influences alone. Only those who allowed their inner hold on
their moral and spiritual selves to subside eventually fell victim
to the camp's degenerating influence - while those who made a
victory of those experiences turned them into an inner triumph.
Frankl came to believe man's deepest desire is to search for
meaning and purpose. This outstanding work offers us all a way to
transcend suffering and find significance in the art of
living.'Viktor Frankl-is one of the moral heroes of the 20th
century. His insights into human freedom, dignity and the search
for meaning are deeply humanising, and have the power to transform
lives.'Chief Rabbi Dr Jonathan Sacks'
This collection of new essays examines third-generation Holocaust
narratives and the inter-generational transmission of trauma and
memory. This collection demonstrates the ways in which memory of
the Holocaust has been passed along inter-generationally from
survivors to the second-generation-the children of survivors-to a
contemporary generation of grandchildren of survivors-those writers
who have come of literary age at a time that will mark the end of
direct survivor testimony. This collection, in drawing upon a
variety of approaches and perspectives, suggests the rich and fluid
range of expression through which stories of the Holocaust are
transmitted to and by the third generation, who have taken on the
task of bearing witness to the enormity of the Holocaust and the
ways in which this pronounced event has shaped the lives of the
descendants of those who experienced the trauma first-hand. The
essays collected-essays written by renowned scholars in Holocaust
literature, philosophy, history, and religion as well as by
third-generation writers-show that Holocaust literary
representation has continued to flourish well into the twenty-first
century, gaining increased momentum as a third generation of
writers has added to the growing corpus of Holocaust literature.
Here we find a literature that laments unrecoverable loss for a
generation removed spatially and temporally from the extended
trauma of the Holocaust. The third-generation writers, in writing
against a contemporary landscape of post-apocalyptic apprehension
and anxiety, capture and penetrate the growing sense of loss and
the fear of the failure of memory. Their novels, short stories, and
memoirs carry the Holocaust into the twenty-first century and
suggest the future of Holocaust writing for extended generations.
The Polish Experience through World War II explores Polish history
through the lives of people touched by the war. The touching and
terrible experiences of these people are laid bare by
straightforward, first-hand accounts, including not only the
hardships of deportation and concentration and refugee camps, but
also the price paid by the officers killed or taken as prisoners
during WWII and the families they left behind. Ziolkowska-Boehm
reveals the difficulties of these women and children when, having
lost their husbands and fathers, their travails take them through
Siberia, Persia, India, and then Africa, New Zealand, or Mexico.
Ziolkowska-Boehm recounts the experiences of individuals who lived
through this tumultuous period in history through personal
interviews, letters, and other surviving documents. The stories
include Krasicki, a military pilot who was on of around 22 thousand
Polish killed in Katyn; the saga of the Wartanowicz family, a
wealthy and influential family whose story begins well before the
war; and Wanda Ossowska, a Polish nurse in Auschwitz and other
German prison camps. Placed squarely in historical context, these
incredible stories reveal the experiences of the Polish people up
through the second World War.
This is the only book from the perspective of the defendant who
emerged victorious. It features reviews on book pages of national
newspapers, and in history magazines. Deborah Lipstadt chronicles
her five-year legal battle with David Irving that culminated in a
sensational trial in 2000. In her acclaimed 1993 book "Denying the
Holocaust", Deborah Lipstadt called David Irving, a prolific writer
of books on World War II, "one of the most dangerous spokespersons
for Holocaust denial", a conclusion she reached after closely
examining his books, speeches, interviews, and other copious
records. The following year, after Lipstadt's book was published in
the UK, Irving filed a libel suit against Lipstadt and her UK
publisher, Penguin. Lipstadt prepared her defence with the help of
first-rate team of solicitors, historians, and experts. The
dramatic trial, which unfolded over the course of 10 weeks,
ultimately exposed the prejudice, extremism, and distortion of
history that defined Irving's work. Lipstadt's victory was
proclaimed on the front page of major newspapers around the world,
with the "Daily Telegraph" proclaiming that the trial did "for the
new century what the Nuremberg tribunals or the Eichmann trial did
for earlier generations." Part history, part real life courtroom
drama, "History On Trial" is Lipstadt's riveting, blow-by-blow
account of the trial that tested the standards of historical and
judicial truths and resulted in a formal denunciation of a
Holocaust denier, crippling the movement for years to come.
This is a unique, eye-witness account of everyday life right at the
heart of the Nazi extermination machine.
Slomo Venezia was born into a poor Jewish-Italian community
living in Thessaloniki, Greece. At first, the occupying Italians
protected his family; but when the Germans invaded, the Venezias
were deported to Auschwitz. His mother and sisters disappeared on
arrival, and he learned, at first with disbelief, that they had
almost certainly been gassed. Given the chance to earn a little
extra bread, he agreed to become a 'Sonderkommando', without
realising what this entailed. He soon found himself a member of the
'special unit' responsible for removing the corpses from the gas
chambers and burning their bodies.
Dispassionately, he details the grim round of daily tasks,
evokes the terror inspired by the man in charge of the crematoria,
'Angel of Death' Otto Moll, and recounts the attempts made by some
of the prisoners to escape, including the revolt of October
1944.
It is usual to imagine that none of those who went into the gas
chambers at Auschwitz ever emerged to tell their tale - but, as a
member of a 'Sonderkommando', Shlomo Venezia was given this
horrific privilege. He knew that, having witnessed the unspeakable,
he in turn would probably be eliminated by the SS in case he ever
told his tale. He survived: this is his story.
Published in association with the United States Holocaust
Memorial Museum.
A Hay Festival and The Poole VOTE 100 BOOKS for Women Selection One
of the most famous accounts of living under the Nazi regime of
World War II comes from the diary of a thirteen-year-old Jewish
girl, Anne Frank. Today, The Diary of a Young Girl has sold over 25
million copies world-wide; this is the definitive edition released
to mark the 70th anniversary of the day the diary begins. '12 June
1942: I hope I will be able to confide everything to you, as I have
never been able to confide in anyone, and I hope you will be a
great source of comfort and support' The Diary of a Young Girl is
one of the most celebrated and enduring books of the last century.
Tens of millions have read it since it was first published in 1947
and it remains a deeply admired testament to the indestructible
nature of the human spirit. This definitive edition restores thirty
per cent if the original manuscript, which was deleted from the
original edition. It reveals Anne as a teenage girl who fretted
about and tried to cope with her own emerging sexuality and who
also veered between being a carefree child and an aware adult. Anne
Frank and her family fled the horrors of Nazi occupation by hiding
in the back of a warehouse in Amsterdam for two years with another
family and a German dentist. Aged thirteen when she went into the
secret annexe, Anne kept a diary. She movingly revealed how the
eight people living under these extraordinary conditions coped with
hunger, the daily threat of discovery and death and being cut off
from the outside world, as well as petty misunderstandings and the
unbearable strain of living like prisoners. The Diary of a Young
Girl is a timeless true story to be rediscovered by each new
generation. For young readers and adults it continues to bring to
life Anne's extraordinary courage and struggle throughout her
ordeal. This is the definitive edition of the diary of Anne Frank.
Anne Frank was born on the 12 June 1929. She died while imprisoned
at Bergen-Belsen, three months short of her sixteenth birthday.
This seventieth anniversary, definitive edition of The Diary of a
Young Girl is poignant, heartbreaking and a book that everyone
should read.
Comics, the Holocaust and Hiroshima breaks new ground for history
by exploring the relationship between comics as a cultural record,
historiography, memory and trauma studies. Comics have a dual role
as sources: for gauging awareness of the Holocaust and through
close analysis, as testimonies and narratives of childhood emotions
and experiences.
Survivor Transitional Narratives of Nazi-Era Destruction: The
Second Liberation examines the historical circumstances that gave
rise in the 1960s to the first cohort of Nazi-era survivors who
massed a public campaign focusing on remembrance of Nazi racial
crimes. The survivors' decision to engage and disquiet a public
audience occurred against the backdrop of the Frankfurt Auschwitz
trial and the West German debate over the enforcement of statutory
limitations for prosecuting former Nazis. Dennis B. Klein focuses
on the accounts of three survivors: Jean Amery, an Austrian
ex-patriot who joined the Belgian Resistance during the war,
Vladimir Jankelevitch, a member of the French Resistance, and Simon
Wiesenthal, who dedicated his life after the war to investigating
Nazi crimes. As Klein argues, their accounts, in addition to acting
as a reminder of Nazi-era endemic criminality, express a longing
for human fellowshipThis contextual and interdisciplinary
interpretation illustrates the explanatory significance of
contemporary events and individual responses to them in shaping the
memory and legacy of Nazi-era destruction. It is essential reading
for students and scholars of the Nazi era and its legacy, genocide
studies, Jewish Studies, and the history of emotions.
The Fragility of Law examines the ways in which, during the Second
World War, the Belgian government and judicial structure became
implicated in the identification, exclusion and killing of its
Jewish residents, and in the theft - through Aryanization - of
Jewish property. David Fraser demonstrates how a series of
political and legal compromises meant that the infrastructure for
antisemitic persecutions and ultimately the deaths of thousands of
Belgian Jews was Belgian. Based on extensive archival research in
Belgium, France, the United States and Israel, The Fragility of Law
offers the first detailed exploration in English of this intriguing
and virtually unexplored episode of Holocaust history. Belgian
legal officials did not hesitate to invoke the provisions of
international law found in the Hague Convention and those
guarantees of individual freedom found in the national Constitution
to oppose the demands of the German Occupying Authority. However,
they remained largely silent when anti-Jewish persecution was at
stake. Indeed, despite the 2007 official report of expert
historians on Belgian state collaboration in the persecution of the
country's Jewish population, the mythology of "passive
collaboration" which has dominated Belgian historiography and
accounts of the Holocaust in that country, must be radically
rethought.
"An excellent introduction." . War in History ." . . the essays in
this volume, individually and as a whole, represent for the English
reader a valuable addition to scholarship on the emergence of
genocidal policies." . Journal of Jewish Studies "A very
interesting and valuable contribution to the debate on National
Socialism." . Osterreichische Zeitschrift fur Politikwissenschaft
Moving beyond the well-established problems and public discussions
of the Holocaust, this collection of essays, written by some of the
leading German historians of the younger generation, leaves behind
the increasingly agitated arguments of the last years and
substantially broadens, and in many areas revises, our knowledge of
the Holocaust. Unlike previous studies, which have focused on
whether the Holocaust could best be understood as the "fulfilment
of a world view or as a process of "cumulative radicalisation,"
these articles provide an overview of how situational elements and
gradual processes of radicalisation were variously combined with
ever-changing objectives and fundamental ideological convictions.
Focusing on the developments in Poland, the Soviet Union, Serbia,
and France the authors find that heretofore we have actually had
very little knowledge of many aspects of this history, particularly
with regards to the specific forces that motivated German policy in
the individual regions of Central and Eastern Europe. Thus the
National-Socialist extermination policy is not seen as a secret
undertaking but rather as part of the German conquest and
occupation policy in Europe. Ulrich Herbert is Professor of Modern
History at the University of Freiburg i. Br."
Using the framework of genocide, this volume analyzes the patterns
of persecution of the Roma in Nazi-dominated Europe. Detailed case
studies of France, Austria, Romania, Croatia, Ukraine, and Russia
generate a critical mass of evidence that indicates criminal intent
on the part of the Nazi regime to destroy the Roma as a distinct
group. Other chapters examine the failure of the West German State
to deliver justice, the Romani collective memory of the genocide,
and the current political and historical debates. As this revealing
volume shows, however inconsistent or geographically limited, over
time, the mass murder acquired a systematic character and came to
include ever larger segments of the Romani population regardless of
the social status of individual members of the community.
Although Auschwitz is probably the most well known of the Nazi
extermination camps, it is Treblinka which is the most notorious.
During the 13 months of its existence, 850,000 were robbed and
murdered within its precincts. This camp, along with Belzec and
Sobibor, also located in Poland, are often neglected and their
history little known, despite being the locations where the Germans
killed most of Europe's largest Jewish communities. Here, as
opposed to Auschwitz, people were not imprisoned for long periods
or exploited as labourers, but were killed off as quickly and
effectively as possible. This study by a Polish new generation
historian examines the structure and history of the camp.
The representation of the Holocaust in literature and film has
confronted lecturers and students with some challenging questions.
Does this unique and disturbing subject demand alternative
pedagogic strategies? What is the role of ethics in the classroom
encounter with the Holocaust? Scholars address these and other
questions in this collection.
The name of the town, Brest-Litovsk, indicates its link with
Lithuania. Although founded by the Slavs in 1017 and invaded by the
Mongols in 1241, it became part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania in
1319, and in1569 it became the capital of the unified
Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The town is also known as "Brisk,"
in Yiddish to the Jews who lived and thrived there for six
centuries. Jewish "Brisk" had an illustrious history; the famous
Brisker Yeshivah attracted scholars from all over Europe. The list
of Rabbis of Brest includes such famous rabbis as Solomon Luria and
Joel Sirkes in earlier periods, the Katzenellenbogens, and three
generations of the Soloveitchik dynasty in more recent times. Brest
also produced Jacob Epstein the great Talmudist at the Hebrew
University, Menachem Begin, and many other major religious,
literary and political leaders. In 1923, Jews, made up 60% of
Brest's population of 60,000. This book was written by Brest
survivors and former residents from many countries who contributed
their memories of their hometown as a record for future
generations, and as testament and loving tribute to the innocent
Victims of the Shoah. It is a must read for researchers of the town
and descendants of "Briskers." Brest, Belarus is located at 52 06'
North Latitude and 23 42' East Longitude 203 mi SW of Minsk.
lternate names for the town are: Brest Belarussian], Brest Litovsk
Russian], Brze Litewski Polish], Brze nad Bugiem Polish, 1918-39],
Brisk Yiddish], Brasta Lithuanian], Brest Litowsk, Brisk Dlita,
Brisk de-Lita, Brze -Litewsk, Brist nad Bugie, Bzheshch nad Bugyem,
Biera cie
Offering a cross-media exploration of Israeli media on Holocaust
Remembrance Day, one of Israel's most sacred national rituals, over
the past six decades, this fascinating book investigates the way in
which variables such as medium, structure of ownership, genre and
targeted audiences shape the collective recollection of traumatic
memories.
6 million Jews were murdered by the Nazis, but this is only half
the story. Doris Bergen reveals how the Holocaust extended beyond
the Jews to engulf millions of other victims in related programmes
of mas-murder. The Nazi killing machine began with the disabled,
and went on to target Afro-Germans, Gypsies, non-Jewish Poles,
French African soldiers, Soviet prisoners of war, homosexual men
and Jehovah's Witnesses. As Nazi Germany conquered more territories
and peoples, Hitler's war turned soldiers, police officers and
doctors into trained killers, creating a veneer of legitimacy
around vicious acts of ethnic cleansing and genocide. Using the
testimonies of both survivors and eyewitnesses, as well as a wealth
of rarely seen photographs, Doris Bergen shows the true extent of
the catastrophe that overwhelmed Europe during the Second World
War, in a gripping story of the lives and deaths of real people.
A collection of articles which offer an insight into the opinions
and attitudes of the German population, the East Europeans and the
Poles towards Jews during the period of Nazi persecution.
Historians are able to make important distinctions between various
periods, groups and regions. At the close of this study is a
selection of articles that deal with support for the Jews.
A collection of articles which offer an insight into the opinions
and attitudes of the German population, the East Europeans and the
Poles towards Jews during the period of Nazi persecution.
Historians are able to make important distinctions between various
periods, groups and regions. At the close of this study is a
selection of articles that deal with support for the Jews.
Ruth Kluger (1931 - 2020) passed away on October 5, 2020 in the
U.S. Born in Vienna and deported to Theresienstadt, she survived
Auschwitz and the Shoah together with her mother. After living in
Germany for a short time after the War, she immigrated to New York.
She was educated in the U.S. and received degrees in English
literature as well as her Ph.D. in German literature at the
University of California, Berkeley. She taught at several American
universities. She has numerous scholarly publications to her
credit, mostly in the fields of German and Austrian literary
history. She is also recognized as a poet in her own right, an
essayist, and a feminist critic. She returned to Europe, where she
was a guest professor in Goettingen and Vienna. Her memoir,
entitled weiter leben (1992), which she translated and revised in
an English parallel-text as Still Alive, was a major bestseller and
highly regarded autobiographical account of a Holocaust survivor.
It was subsequently translated into more than a dozen languages. It
has also generated a vigorous critical discussion in its own right.
Ruth Kluger received numerous prestigious literary prizes and other
distinctions. The present volume, The Legacy of Ruth Kluger and the
End of the Auschwitz Century, aims to honor her memory by assessing
critically her writings and career. Taking her biography and
writings as points of departure, the volume includes contributions
in fields and from perspectives which her writings helped to bring
into focus acutely. In the table of contents are listed the
following contributions: Sander L. Gilman, "Poetry and Naming in
Ruth Kluger's Works and Life"; Heinrich Detering, "'Spannung':
Remarks on a Stylistic Principle in Ruth Kluger's Writing"; Stephan
Braese, "Speaking with Germans. Ruth Kluger and the 'Restitution of
Speech between Germans and Jews'"; Irene Heidelberger-Leonard,
"Writing Auschwitz: Jean Amery, Imre Kertesz, and Ruth Kluger";
Ulrike Offenberg, "Ruth Kluger and the Jewish Tradition on Women
Saying Kaddish; Mark H. Gelber, "Ruth Kluger, Judaism, and Zionism:
An American Perspective"; Monica Tempian, "Children's Voices in the
Poetry of the Shoah"; Daniel Reynolds, "Ruth Kluger and the Problem
of Holocaust Tourism"; Vera Schwarcz, "A China Angle on Memory and
Ghosts in the Poetry of Ruth Kluger."
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