Shoah and Experience is a collection of essays offering important insights on the nature of Holocaust education with implications for Holocaust education development for future generations, in Israel and worldwide. Special attention is given to the evolving nature of contemporary multimedia society in which youth are inundated with stimuli of all kinds. Hence, consideration is given to the incorporation of multidimensional aspects of learning and experience in Holocaust education in order to enhance students' understanding on cognitive, emotional and moral levels. This book will help Holocaust educators and curriculum developers to design Holocaust education and attune it to the nature and the needs of the current generation. It is intended to prepare educators to initiate and lead programs and encounters designed to teach today's youth about the Holocaust from multiple perspectives.

This text presents a documented history of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee in the Soviet Union during the Second World War, the Holocaust and the immediate post-war years, up to the end of 1948. It centres upon the fate of Soviet Jewry under both Hitler and Stalin. The text features documents from the newly opening Russian Archives, primarily from the Russian State Archive and the former Archive of the Communist Party with insight of how Soviet and Stalinist policies towards Jews and the JAFC were shaped and the decision-making process involved.

Half a century after the collapse of the Nazi regime and the Third Reich, scholars from a range of fields continue to examine the causes of Nazi Germany. An increasing number of young Americans are attempting to understand the circumstances that led to the rise of the Nazi party and the subsequent Holocaust, as well as the implication such events may have for today as the world faces a resurgence of neo-Nazism, ethnic warfare, and genocide.
In the months following World War II, extensive psychiatric and psychological testing was performed on over 200 Nazis in an effort to understand the key personalities of the Third Reich and of those individuals who "just followed orders." In addressing these issues, the current volume examines the strange history of over 200 Rorschach Inkblot protocols that were administered to Nazi war criminals and answers such questions as:
* Why the long delay in publishing protocols?
* What caused such jealousies among the principals?
* How should the protocols be interpreted?
* Were the Nazis monsters or ordinary human beings?
This text delivers a definitive and comprehensive study of the psychological functioning of Nazi war criminals -- both the elite and the rank-and-file. In order to apply a fresh perspective to understanding the causes that created such antisocial behavior, these analyses lead to a discussion within the context of previous work done in social and clinical psychology. Subjects discussed include the authoritarian personality, altruism, obedience to authority, diffusion of responsibility, and moral indifference. The implications for current political events are also examined as Neo-Nazism, anti-Semitism, and ethnic hate are once again on the rise. While the book does contain some technical material relating to the psychological interpretations, it is intended to be a scholarly presentation written in a narrative style. No prior knowledge of psychological testing is necessary, but it should be of great benefit for those interested in the Rorschach Inkblot test, or with a special interest in psychological testing, personality assessment, and the history of psychology. It is also intended for readers with a broad interest in Nazi Germany.

Born in Hungary in 1927, Magda Hollander-Lafon was among the 437,000 Jews deported from Hungary between May and July 1944. Magda, her mother, and her younger sister survived a three-day deportation to Auschwitz-Birkenau; there, she was considered fit for work and so spared, while her mother and sister were sent straight to their deaths. Hollander-Lafon recalls an experience she had in Birkenau: "A dying woman gestured to me: as she opened her hand to reveal four scraps of moldy bread, she said to me in a barely audible voice, 'Take it. You are young. You must live to be a witness to what is happening here. You must tell people so that this never happens again in the world.' I took those four scraps of bread and ate them in front of her. In her look I read both kindness and release. I was very young and did not understand what this act meant, or the responsibility that it represented." Years later, the memory of that woman's act came to the fore, and Magda Hollander-Lafon could be silent no longer. In her words, she wrote her book not to obey the duty of remembering but in loyalty to the memory of those women and men who disappeared before her eyes. Her story is not a simple memoir or chronology of events. Instead, through a series of short chapters, she invites us to reflect on what she has endured. Often centered on one person or place, the scenes of brutality and horror she describes are intermixed with reflections of a more meditative cast. Four Scraps of Bread is both historical and deeply evocative, melancholic, and at times poetic in nature. Following the text is a "Historical Note" with a chronology of the author's life that complements her kaleidoscopic style. After liberation and a period in transit camps, she arrived in Belgium, where she remained. Eventually, she chose to be baptized a Christian and pursued a career as a child psychologist. The author records a journey through extreme suffering and loss that led to radiant personal growth and a life of meaning. As she states: "Today I do not feel like a victim of the Holocaust but a witness reconciled with myself." Her ability to confront her experiences and free herself from her trauma allowed her to embrace a life of hope and peace. Her account is, finally, an exhortation to us all to discover life-giving joy.

Against All Odds is the first comprehensive look at the 140,000 Jewish Holocaust survivors who came to America and the lives they have made here. William Helmreich writes of their experiences beginning with their first arrival in the United States: the mixed reactions they encountered from American Jews who were not always eager to receive them; their choices about where to live in America; and their efforts in finding marriage partners with whom they felt most comfortable--most often other survivors.

In preparation, Helmreich spent more than six years traveling the United States, listening to the personal stories of hundreds of survivors, and examining more than 15,000 pages of data as well as new material from archives that have never before been available to create this remarkable, groundbreaking work. What emerges is a picture that is sharply different from the stereotypical image of survivors as people who are chronically depressed, anxious, and fearful.

This intimate, enlightening work explores questions about prevailing over hardship and adversity: how people who have gone through such experiences pick up the threads of their lives; where they obtain the strength and spirit to go on; and, finally, what lessdns the rest of us can learn about overcoming tragedy.

This book deals with the work of fifteen young Jewish poets who were killed, died of wounds, or were executed in captivity while serving in the Red Army in the Second World War. All were young, all were poets, most were thoroughly assimilated into Soviet society whilst at the same time being rooted in Jewish culture and traditions. Their poetry, written mostly in Russian, Yiddish, and Ukrainian, was coloured by their backgrounds, by the literary and cultural climate that prevailed in the Soviet Union, and was deeply concerned with their expectation of impending death at the hands of the Nazis. The book examines the poets' backgrounds, their lives, their poetry and their deaths. Like the experiences and poetry of the British First World War poets, the lives and poems of these young Jewish poets are extremely interesting and deeply moving.

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 "fulfillment of a world view" or as a process of "cumulative radicalization, " these articles provide an overview of how situational elements and gradual processes of radicalization 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.

Explaining Auschwitz and Hiroshima explores the way in which the main combatant societies of the World War II have interpreted and related that experience. Since 1945, debates in Germany about the past that would not fade away have been reasonably well-known.

History Flows through Us introduces a new dialogue between leading historians and psychoanalysts and provides essential insights into the nature of historical trauma. The contributors - German historians, historians of the Holocaust and psychoanalysts of different disciplinary backgrounds - address the synergy between history and psychoanalysis in an engaging and accessible manner. Together they develop a response to German history and the Holocaust that is future-oriented and timely in the presence of today's ethnic hatreds. In the process, they help us to appreciate the emotional and political legacy of history's collective crimes. This book illustrates how history and the psyche shape one another and the degree to which history flows through all of us as human beings. Its innovative cross-disciplinary approach draws on the work of the historian and psychoanalyst Thomas Kohut. The volume includes an extended dialogue with Kohut in which he reflects on the study of German history and the Holocaust at the intersection of history and psychoanalysis. This book demonstrates that the fields of history and psychoanalysis are each concerned with the role of empathy and with the study of memory and narrative. History Flows through Us will appeal to general readers, students and professionals in cultural history, Holocaust and trauma studies, sociology, psychoanalysis, psychotherapy and psychology.

This unique research bibliography is offered in honor of Leo Eitinger of Oslo, Norway. Dr. Eitinger fled to Norway in 1939, at the start of the World War II. He was caught and deported to Auschwitz, where, among others, he operated on Elie Wiesel who has written the foreword to this volume. After the war, Eitinger became a pioneering researcher on a subject from which many shied away. His contributions to understanding of the experience of massive psychological trauma have inspired others to do similar work. His many books and papers are listed in this special volume of the acclaimed bibliographic series edited by Israel W. Charny of The Institute on the Holocaust and Genocide in Jerusalem. In order to acquaint users of this bibliography with the topic, two introductory articles are offered. The first is titled "Survivors and Their Families" and deals with the impact of the Holocaust on individuals. The second, "Psychiatry and the Holocaust," examines the general impact of the Holocaust on the field of psychiatry. Robert Krell writes that in general the psychiatric literature has reflected critically on the survivor due to preconceived notions held by many mental health professionals. For many years, the exploration of victims' psychopathology obscured the remarkable adaptation made by some survivors. The problems experienced by survivors and possible approaches to treatment were entirely absent from mainstream psychiatric textbooks such as the Comprehensive Textbook of Psychiatry throughout the 1960s and 1970s. Fifty years of observations about survivors of the concentration camps and other survivors of the Holocaust (in hiding, as partisans, in slave labor camps) has provided a new body of medical and psychiatric literature. This comprehensive bibliography contains a plethora of references to significant pieces of literature regarding the Holocaust and its effects on survivors. It will be of inestimable value to physicians, psychiatrists, psychologists, and social workers, along with historians, sociologists, and Holocaust studies specialists.

In this volume, scholars from the United States, Israel and Eastern Europe examine the history of the Holocaust on Soviet territory and its treatment in Soviet politics and literature from 1945 to 1991. Of special interest to researchers will be chapters on some of the major research sources for historical study, including census materials, memorial books, archives and recently released documents.

Although there is an immense amount of literature on the "final solution" - the Nazis' attempt to exterminate European Jews during the Second World War - many critical questions about the Holocaust still remain unaddressed. These collected essays set out to clarify the reasons for the attempted genocide of the Jews, and to provide new answers to this period of history which often seems inexplicable. The book draws on important new evidence, much of it from archives in Eastern Europe which have only recently become accessible. Contributors are among the leading experts in the field. The essays focus on the preconditions and antecedents for the "final solution" and the immediate origins of the decision to murder Europe's Jewish population. They consider, too, the impact of the German invasion of Russia in June 1941 on the evolution of a genocidal policy and the response of the peoples and governments in Germany, occupied Europe, the free world and the Jewish communities under the Nazis and in the West. The results of this study are often controversial, and challenge many accepted views.

Revised and Updated "Brilliantly reconstructs the degradation and drama of Sobibor. . . . A memorable and moving saga, full of anger and anguish, a reminder never to forget." -San Francisco Chronicle On October 14, 1943, six hundred Jews imprisoned in Sobibor, a secret Nazi death camp in eastern Poland, revolted. They killed a dozen SS officers and guards, trampled the barbed wire fences, and raced across an open field filled with anti-tank mines. Against all odds, more than three hundred made it safely into the woods. Fifty of those men and women managed to survive the rest of the war. In this edition of Escape from Sobibor, fully updated in 2012, Richard Rashke tells their stories, based on his interviews with eighteen of the survivors. It vividly describes the biggest prisoner escape of World War II. A story of unimaginable cruelty. A story of courage and a fierce desire to live and to tell the world what truly went on behind those barbed wire fences.

More than fifty years after its first publication, Doubleday's definitive edition of Anne Frank's famous diary generated an extraordinary amount of excitement when it was published in early 1995. Enthusiastically received by critics and readers alike, it reigned for nine weeks on The New York Times bestseller list and will remain for all time the version that millions of readers will cherish.In a handsome package with flaps, rough front, and printed endpapers, this Anchor trade paperback will be the perfect gift for anyone who seeks insight into the indestructible nature of the human spirit.

eBook available with sample pages: 0203214803

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.

An exploration of the development of Holocaust research in Israel, this book ranges from the consolidation of Holocaust research as an academic subject in the late 1940s to the establishment of Yad Vashem and beyond. Research on the story of historiography is often a work on books, on the "final products" that fill academic bookshelves yet, in Israeli Holocaust Research, Boaz Cohen illustrates that the evolution of holocaust research in Israel has a more human element to it. Drawing on knowledge gained through seven years of work in ten major archives in Israel, the author reveals a previously unseen picture of the development of Israeli Holocaust research "from below," and of the social and cultural forces influencing its character. In doing so, a new facet to the picture emerges, of the story beyond the archive and the people who see Holocaust research as their mission and responsibility. This book will be a fascinating addition to the study of Holocaust research and will be of particular interest to students of history, historiography and Jewish studies

In recent news coverage of the dramatic political events in Eastern Europe, Gypsies have been a favourite sidebar topic. Some of the stories have been truly horrifying, others are written condescendingly and to amuse; but what has become clear is how little we really know about this people. In a concerted effort to uncover the modern history of the Rom in Eastern Europe, the authors examine the Gypsy experience in Albania, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania and Yugoslavia, with special attention to the Nazi Holocaust as well as to the record of the forced settlement and education programmes instituted by communist regimes.

In recent news coverage of the dramatic political events in Eastern Europe, Gypsies have been a favourite sidebar topic. Some of the stories have been truly horrifying, others are written condescendingly and to amuse; but what has become clear is how little we really know about this people. In a concerted effort to uncover the modern history of the Rom in Eastern Europe, the authors examine the Gypsy experience in Albania, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania and Yugoslavia, with special attention to the Nazi Holocaust as well as to the record of the forced settlement and education programmes instituted by communist regimes.

"Testimony" examines the nature and function of testimony, witnessing and memory, both in their general relation to the acts of writing and of reading, and in their particular relation to the Holocaust. This book takes in the texts of Dostoevsky, Freud, Mallarme, Camus and de Man, videotaped testimonial life accounts of Holocaust survivors and also the film "Shoah" by Claude Lanzmann. "Testimony" defines the uniquely devastating aspect of the Holocaust as a radical crisis of witnessing an "unprecendented historical occurrence of ...an event eliminating its own witness". Drawing on their personal experience of receiving survivors' accounts, Felman and Laub present the first "theory of testimony": a radically new conception of the relationship between art and culture and the witnessing of historical events. This book should be of interest to undergraduates and academics of literary criticism, literary theory, film theory, psychoanalysis and modern history.

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.

Jewish armed resistance during the Holocaust has been amply documented, debunking the stereotypical view of the Jews as passive victims of Hitler and the Nazis. The stories of the revolts in a number of ghettos and camps have been told and retold. Jewish participation in partisan activities has been fully recorded. There is another form of resistance, spiritual in nature, which has yet to be fully documented. Spiritual resistance was expressed on an organized communal level, maintained to thwart the Nazi intention of dehumanizing their Jewish victims. The victims responded by initiating religious, educational, and cultural activities in an organized manner. These activities were both open and clandestine. In addition, many individuals expressed themselves through their writings. To Live with Hope, To Die with Dignity, based principally on materials created and activities conducted in the ghettos of Warsaw, Vilna, Lodz, Kovno, during the Holocaust, concerns itself with this particular aspect of the Holocaust tragedy.