On a fateful day in May 1941, in Nazi-occupied Strasbourg, seventeen-year- old Pierre Seel was summoned by the Gestapo. This was the beginning of his journey through the horrors of a concentration camp.

For nearly forty years, Seel kept this secret in order to hide his homosexuality. Eventually he decided to speak out, bearing witness to an aspect of the Holocaust rarely seen. This edition, with a new foreword from gay-literature historian Gregory Woods, is an extraordinary firsthand account of the Nazi roundup and the deportation of homosexuals.

In the immediate aftermath of World War II, more than a quarter million Jewish survivors of the Holocaust lived among their defeated persecutors in the chaotic society of Allied-occupied Germany. "Jews, Germans, and Allies" draws upon the wealth of diary and memoir literature by the people who lived through postwar reconstruction to trace the conflicting ways Jews and Germans defined their own victimization and survival, comprehended the trauma of war and genocide, and struggled to rebuild their lives.

In gripping and unforgettable detail, Atina Grossmann describes Berlin in the days following Germany's surrender--the mass rape of German women by the Red Army, the liberated slave laborers and homecoming soldiers, returning political exiles, Jews emerging from hiding, and ethnic German refugees fleeing the East. She chronicles the hunger, disease, and homelessness, the fraternization with Allied occupiers, and the complexities of navigating a world where the commonplace mingled with the horrific. Grossmann untangles the stories of Jewish survivors inside and outside the displaced-persons camps of the American zone as they built families and reconstructed identities while awaiting emigration to Palestine or the United States. She examines how Germans and Jews interacted and competed for Allied favor, benefits, and victim status, and how they sought to restore normality--in work, in their relationships, and in their everyday encounters.

"Jews, Germans, and Allies" shows how Jews were integral participants in postwar Germany and bridges the divide that still exists today between German history and Jewish studies.

From Miracle to Miracle: A Story of Survival documents the true-life drama of a young Polish woman's story of survival during the Holocaust. Each chapter is narrated through the lens of her daughter, whose life was deeply impacted by her mother's experiences. This is the gripping account of a young Polish-Jewish woman and her determination to live through the horrors of the Holocaust. This narrative is told through the perspective of the survivor's daughter, whose childhood in America was impacted by her mother's stories, revealed in fragments at unexpected moments. As an adult, Alicia Fleissig Magal, the elder child of Nika Kohn Fleissig, began piecing these disconnected scenes together into a chronological record of her mother's many suspenseful escapes from death. The writing process became a cathartic and freeing experience for the author and enabled her to separate from the powerful presence of her heroic, artistic mother, allowing her to access her own inner strength. This is a story of empowerment, hope, and healing for all generations.

The Holocaust memoir of a Dutch family who evaded arrest and deportation by the Nazis. Told through letters, diaries, and interviews, and illustrated with photographs throughout, this detailed account brings a new perspective to one of history's most horrific chapters. During the Second World War, as the Nazis tightened their grip on the Netherlands, the Jewish population was slowly restricted from public life-everything from owning a bike to having a job was forbidden. Sensing the murderous consequences of deportation, Daphne Geismar's family-her parents, grandparents, aunts, and uncles-decided to separate and go into hiding. Parents and children were torn apart, living for years in isolation behind a church organ, below floorboards, or even in plain sight. While timelines and notes provide context, we hear the voices of young Mirjam, sent by her parents to live with a family of strangers; Judith whose braids were cut to make her look less Jewish; Nathan, taken in and given false papers by a Dutch soldier. Ordinary people whose collective story is one of resilience and resistance, survival and compassion. "This is an important book because many people don't know what took place in the Netherlands during the Nazi occupation....[The] fascinating story also highlights the courage of the rescuers involved in that dangerous undertaking. It is a story that must be told to inspire others never to give up even when it seems all is lost."-Mordecai Paldiel, Former Director, Righteous Among Nations, Yad Vashem For readers of history and memoirs, this family's story, Invisible Years, challenges readers to follow this example of resistance to inhumanity.

Of the many medical specializations to transform themselves during the rise of National Socialism, anatomy has received relatively little attention from historians. While politics and racial laws drove many anatomists from the profession, most who remained joined the Nazi party, and some helped to develop the scientific basis for its racialist dogma. As historian and anatomist Sabine Hildebrandt reveals, however, their complicity with the Nazi state went beyond the merely ideological. They progressed through gradual stages of ethical transgression, turning increasingly to victims of the regime for body procurement, as the traditional model of working with bodies of the deceased gave way, in some cases, to a new paradigm of experimentation with the "future dead."

Since the Holocaust, traces of memory are virtually all that remain of more than 800 years of Jewish life in Poland. Yet some of that past can still be found if one knows how and where to look. In this remarkable album, 74 stunning color photographs bear witness to the great Jewish civilization that once flourished here. The images record the sites of Jewish life and death, and the ways in which Jewish culture is being remembered today. Captions and detailed notes explain and contextualize the photographs. An invaluable sourcebook on the Jewish heritage of Polish Galicia, this album also illustrates how photographs can help us understand the past and discover its relevance for the present.

Mein Kampf is one of the most widely known and heavily quoted books of all time. It demonstrates both Hitler's ability to persuade and his ability to instill a sense of heroic destiny. When most people hear the title, Mein Kampf, their first reaction is a growing emotional outburst that finally erupts in a yell of anti-Semitism; however anyone who has read Mein Kampf knows there is much more to the work. It is a retrospective on history, politics, and a guide to achieving power from the point of view of Adolf Hitler. It has become a dictators' manual, which has been read by all major dictators since World War II including Sadam Hussein who patterned his political movement, the Ba'ath party, after the Nazi party. It is read by corporate CEO's and politicians who seek to use the lessons for both good and bad ends. The accuracy of the political parts of Mein Kampf was proven by Hitler's successful rise to power and by the rise of those who have followed his formula. Many people think Mein Kampf is a long diatribe against Jews and other races. The truth is that only a small part of Mein Kampf is anti-Semitic. The majority of the book involves Hitler's discussion of the German people's difficult times after the First World War, his political theories and his organization of the Nazi Party, and it includes an especially large number of attacks against his enemies. Mein Kampf covers a wide-scope that offers an interesting interpretation of politics, business, people, and foreign policy matters. To characterize it as simply a racist work is to oversimplify its message. Germany did not follow Hitler because he was a racist, they followed him because he promised a great future, and Mein Kampf is where he promised that great future. This modern, easy to read, truly complete and uncensored edition of Mein Kampf has been newly released which reveals more than any past translation.

Kurt and Sonja Messerschmidt met in Nazi Berlin, married in the Theresienstadt ghetto, and survived Auschwitz. In this book, they tell their intertwined stories in their own words. The text directly expresses their experiences, reactions, and emotions. The reader moves with them through the stages of their Holocaust journeys: persecution in Berlin, deportation to Theresienstadt and then to Auschwitz, slave labor, liberation, reunion, and finally emigration to the US. Kurt and Sonja saw the death of Jews every day for two years, but they never stopped creating their own lives. The spoken words of these survivors create a uniquely direct relationship with the reader, as if this couple were telling their story in their living room.

In this vivid memoir originally published in German, Anne Groschler (1888-1982) recounts her 1944 escape from the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp to Mandatory Palestine via "Transport 222", an exchange transport of 222 Jews for "Aryan" prisoners of war. In the most detailed contribution of the exchange ever published, Groschler paints an authentic picture of life before WWII amongst the upper echelons of German society, her ultimate persecution and escape to Holland where she was betrayed, the horrors of life in the Westerbork and Bergen-Belsen camps, and her eventual flight via "Transport 222" to Palestine. Written immediately after her liberation in 1944, this unique document captures a little-known chapter of Holocaust history.

Modernity has provided more than enough reason to give up believing in holiness, still we have learned that to give up the struggle to achieve it means that we become less human. As we leave the twentieth century, we discover new reasons to return to old faith. We rediscover an urgent need to defend the sacred, even as our understanding differs from our ancestors. We choose not to retreat from the world, but to struggle within it, to stain ourselves with sin even as we seek to establish the good. from Chapter 13, Humanity

The cataclysm of the Holocaust seems to forbid speech. Yet even in the heart of that darkness, sparks of sacredness were kept alive. From these sparks, Rabbi Edward Feld suggests, Jews and others can renew a faith and find a language that recovers the holy even after experiencing the reign of a Kingdom of Night unimaginable to previous generations.

In a voice that is engaging, often poetic, Rabbi Edward Feld helps the modern reader understand events that span almost 4,000 years of the history of Judaism and the Jewish people. With rare clarity, insight, and gentleness, he offers a thought-provoking yet accessible study of the way tragedy has shaped Jewish history and the self-understanding of Jews.

"The Spirit of Renewal" explores four key events that reshaped religious expression, two ancient and two modern: the Babylonian exile; the Bar Kochba revolution; the Holocaust; and the establishment of the State of Israel.

"The Spirit of Renewal" shows how, even under the most traumatic of circumstances, Judaism survives, renewing itself and flourishing again. This profound and wise meditation opens the way to a powerful new understanding of the nature of God and the spiritual life.

A "Washington Post "Notable Book
With a new chapter on eugenicist Madison Grant's "The Passing of the Great Race"
In this brilliant and original exploration of some of the formative influences in Adolf Hitler's life, Timothy Ryback examines the books that shaped the man and his thinking.
Hitler was better known for burning books than collecting them but, as Ryback vividly shows us, books were Hitler's constant companions throughout his life. They accompanied him from his years as a frontline corporal during the First World War to his final days before his suicide in Berlin. With remarkable attention to detail, Ryback examines the surviving volumes from Hitler's private book collection, revealing the ideas and obsessions that occupied Hitler in his most private hours and the consequences they had for our world.
A feat of scholarly detective work, and a captivating biographical portrait, "Hitler's Private Library" is one of the most intimate and chilling works on Hitler yet written.

Published in sixteen languages and winner of the prestigious Prix Goncourt, Andre Schwarz-Bart's The Last of the Just is considered by many the single greatest novel of the Holocaust. This classic work -- long unavailable in a trade edition -- is one of those few novels that, once read, is never forgotten.

On March 11, 1185, tn the old Anglican city of York, the Jews of the city were brutally massacred by their townsmen. As legend has it, God blessed the only survivor of this Medieval pogrom, Rabbi Yom Tov Levy, as one of the Lamed-vov, the thirty-six Just Men of Jewish tradition, a blessing which extended to one Levy of each succeeding generation. This terrifying and remarkable Legacy is traced over eight centuries, from the Spanish Inquisition, to expulsions from England, France, Portugal Germany, and Russia, and to the small Polish village of Zemyock, where the Levys settle for two centuries in relative peace. It is in the twentieth century that Ernie Levy emerges, the Last of the Just, in 1920s Germany, as Hitter's sinister star is on the rise and the agonies of Auschwitz loom on the horizon.

An inventive literary account of Cixous's remarkable journey to her mother's birthplace Winner, French Voices Award for Excellence in Publication and Translation For about eighty years, the Jonas family of Osnabruck were part of a small but vibrant Jewish community in this mid-size city of Lower Saxony. After the war, Osnabruck counted not a single Jew. Most had been deported and murdered in the camps, others emigrated if they could and if they managed to overcome their own inertia. It is this inertia and failure to escape that Helene Cixous seeks to account for in Osnabruck Station to Jerusalem. Vicious anti-Semitism hounded all of Osnabruck's Jews long before the Nazis' rise to power in 1933. So why did people wait to leave when the threat was so patent, so in-their-face? Drawn from the stories told to Cixous by her mother, Eve, and grandmother, Rosalie (Rosi), this literary work reimagines fragments of Eve's and Rosi's stories, including the death of Eve's uncle, Onkel Andre. Piecing together the story of Andreas Jonas from what she was told and from what she envisages, Cixous recounts the tragedy of the one she calls the King Lear of Osnabruck, who followed his daughter to Jerusalem only to be sent away by her and to return to Osnabruck in time to be deported to a death camp. Cixous wanders the streets of the city she had heard about all her life in her mother's and grandmother's stories, digs into its archives, meets city officials, all the while wondering if she should have come. These hesitations and reflections in the present, often voiced in dialogues staged with her own son or daughter, are woven with scenes from her childhood in Algeria and the half-remembered, half-invented stories of the Jonas family, making Osnabruck Station to Jerusalem one of the author's most intensely engaging books. This work received the French Voices Award for excellence in publication and translation. French Voices is a program created and funded by the French Embassy in the United States and FACE (French American Cultural Exchange).

Draw ing on an unprecedented range and variety of original research, "Hitler's Empire" sheds new light on how the Nazis designed, maintained, and lost their European dominion?and offers a chilling vision of what the world would have become had they won the war. Mark Mazower forces us to set aside timeworn opinions of the Third Reich, and instead shows how the party drew inspiration for its imperial expansion from America and Great Britain. Yet the Nazis? lack of political sophistication left them unequal to the task of ruling what their armies had conquered, despite a shocking level of cooperation from the overwhelmed countries. A work as authoritative as it is unique, "Hitler's Empire" is a surprising?and controversial? new appraisal of the Third Reich's rise and ultimate fall.

For the first time in 65 years, a modern, easy to understand, truly complete, accurate and uncensored edition of Mein Kampf has been released which reveals more than any past translation. Older translations altered passages, omitted passages, mistranslated Hitler's words, made some parts more sensational while concealing the true meaning in other parts of the book. If you have read one of these older translations of Mein Kampf, then you have not read the REAL Mein Kampf which is found only in this new special edition hardcover Ford Translation. Mein Kampf is often portrayed as nothing more than an Anti-Semitic work, however only 6% of it even talks about the Jews. The rest contains Hitler's ideas and beliefs for a greater nation plus his plan on how to accomplish that goal. The majority of the work involves Hitler's discussion of the German people's difficult times after the First World War, his political theories and his organization of the Nazi Party, as well as many attacks against his enemies which makes it a very interesting and moving story. Mein Kampf offers an interesting interpretation of politics, people, and foreign policy matters. To characterize it as simply a racist work is to oversimplify its message. Germany did not follow Hitler because he was a racist, they followed him because he promised a great future, and Mein Kampf is where he promised that great future. This Ford Translation offers: The most accurate translation ever produced. Phrases that are translated with precision and with no translator's bias. Uncommon words are replaced with more common and more meaningful terms. Any references to unfamiliar people, or places are explained in the text. This version is complete with all original passages and references restored, including passages omitted from other popular versions and passages censored by the Nazi government during the print history of the book. **This translation has corrected over 1000 errors which were present in past translations.** No English reader has been able to appreciate these subtleties in any previous English translation, not until the Ford Translation. This hardback version is also available in an audio format. Get your copy now and find out what deep desires truly drove Hitler.

This two-part volume combines an accessible overview of contemporary Jewish history with a unique dictionary of Holocaust terms. In addition to assessing the Holocaust specifically, Part 1 of the book discusses the history of European Jewry, anti-Semitism, the rise and fall of Nazism and fascism, World War II, and the postwar implications of the Holocaust. The authors also consider key historiographical and methodological issues related to the Holocaust.Part Two provides a complete dictionary of terms relating to the Holocaust culled from dozens of primary and secondary sources in a range of languages. Included here is a comprehensive set of tables on Aktionen, Aliya Bet, anti-Jewish legislation, anti-semitic organizations, collaboration, concentration camps, Fascism, the Third Reich, the Nazi Party, Jewish and non-sectarian organizations, publications, Judenr te, and resistance movements. Each table is prefaced by a descriptive overview of pertinent issues.Graphs, photographs, and documents supplement the text, and an extensive bibliography as well as separate person, place, and subject indexes make this unique work invaluable as a reference tool.

The impact of technology-enhanced mass death in the twentieth century, argues Zachary Braiterman, has profoundly affected the future shape of religious thought. In his provocative book, the author shows how key Jewish theologians faced the memory of Auschwitz by rejecting traditional theodicy, abandoning any attempt to justify and vindicate the relationship between God and catastrophic suffering. The author terms this rejection "Antitheodicy," the refusal to accept that relationship. It finds voice in the writings of three particular theologians: Richard Rubenstein, Eliezer Berkovits, and Emil Fackenheim.

This book is the first to bring postmodern philosophical and literary approaches into conversation with post-Holocaust Jewish thought. Drawing on the work of Mieke Bal, Harold Bloom, Jacques Derrida, Umberto Eco, Michel Foucault, and others, Braiterman assesses how Jewish intellectuals reinterpret Bible and Midrash to re-create religious thought for the age after Auschwitz.

In this process, he provides a model for reconstructing Jewish life and philosophy in the wake of the Holocaust. His work contributes to the postmodern turn in contemporary Jewish studies and today's creative theology.

Assassins of Memory is a passionate and painstaking look at one of the more curious realities of recent French cultural life: the prominence accorded to the phenomenon of revisionism. An attempt on the part of a tiny group of fanatics, often masquerading as scholars and researchers, to deny the existence of the gas chambers and horrors of Hitler's genocidal policies, revisionism is quietly gaining adherents.

This new verbatim play is based on the testimony of Hungarian Holocaust survivor Susan Pollack MBE, aged only thirteen when she was sent to the notorious Auschwitz -Birkenau in the summer of 1944. Interwoven with complementary narratives and layered with Holocaust history, this is a powerful new piece for Drama and History teachers alike. Commissioned by Europe's only specialist Holocaust theatre in education company, Kindness offers tremendous challenge to Drama students. It allows the stories of survivors, as well as the voices of some of the millions more who did not survive, to not be lost as living memory increasingly becomes becomes a history that must never be forgotten. "I sincerely felt very moved and grateful that the play so accurately represented my experiences, and the mood and political situation of the time is so accurately shown. It is most wonderful and I give you my legacy most willingly. Thank you so much." Susan Pollack MBE Duration: 60 minutes approximately Cast: 21 female / male, or 2 female and 2 male with multiroling Suitable for: Key Stage 3/4, BTEC, GCSE, A Level

This is the most comprehensive account of the Air Forces in Malta during Word War II. Malta was a vital base from which Allied aircraft could inflict serious damage on the crucial Axis supply route to Rommel in North Africa. In order to secure that route, the might of the Luftwaffe and Italian Air Forces were thrown together against the tiny island, affecting not just the defending servicemen and women, but the entire population. This book vividly describes how the fighters, bombers, torpedo, and reconnaissance aircraft of the RAF and FAA took the fight to the enemy and triumphantly succeeded with every odd stacked against them.

In 1941, three brothers witnessed their parents and two other siblings being led away to their eventual murders. It was a grim scene that would, of course, be repeated endlessly throughout the war. Instead of running or giving in to despair, these brothers -- Tuvia, Zus, and Asael Bielski -- fought back, waging a guerrilla war of wits against the Nazis.

By using their intimate knowledge of the dense forests surrounding the Belarusan towns of Novogrudek and Lida, the Bielskis evaded the Nazis and established a hidden base camp, then set about convincing other Jews to join their ranks. As more and more Jews arrived each day, a robust community began to emerge, a "Jerusalem in the woods."

After two and a half years in the woods, in July 1944, the Bielskis learned that the Germans, overrun by the Red Army, were retreating back toward Berlin. More than one thousand Bielski Jews emerged -- alive -- on that final, triumphant exit from the woods.

"Between Resistance and Martyrdom" is the first comprehensive historical study of the persecution of Jehovah's Witnesses during the Holocaust era. Refusing to perform military service under Germany's Third Reich due to their fundamental belief in nonviolence, Jehovah's Witnesses caught the attention of the highest authorities in the justice system, the police, and the SS.
Although persecuted and banned from practicing their beliefs by the Nazi regime in 1933, the Jehovah's Witnesses' unified resistance has been largely forgotten. Basing his work on a wide range of sources, including documents and archives previously unconsidered as well as critical analyses of Jehovah's Witness literature and survivor interviews, Detlef Garbe chronicles the Nazi's relentless persecution of this religious group before and during World War II.
The English translation of this important work features photographs not published in the German edition. These striking images bring a sense of individual humanity to this story and help readers comprehend the reality of the events documented. "Between Resistance and Martyrdom" is an indispensable work that will introduce an English-speaking audience to this important but lesser-known part of Holocaust history.

This book analyzes the role and function of an Italian deportation camp during and immediately after World War Two within the context of Italian, European, and Holocaust history. Drawing upon archival documents, trial proceedings, memoirs, and testimonies, Herr investigates the uses of Fossoli as an Italian prisoner-of-war camp for Allied soldiers captured in North Africa (1942-43), a Nazi deportation camp for Jews and political prisoners (1943-44), a postwar Italian prison for Fascists, German soldiers, and displaced persons (1945-47), and a Catholic orphanage (1947-52). This case study shines a spotlight on victims, perpetrators, Resistance fighters, and local collaborators to depict how the Holocaust unfolded in a small town and how postwar conditions supported a story of national innocence. This book trains a powerful lens on the multi-layered history of Italy during the Holocaust and illuminates key elements of local involvement largely ignored by Italian wartime and postwar narratives, particularly compensated compliance (compliance for financial gain), the normalization of mass murder, and the industrialization of the Judeocide in Italy.