In his most powerful and important book, renowned psychiatrist Robert Jay Lifton presents a brilliant analysis of the crucial role that German doctors played in the Nazi genocide. Now updated with a new preface, The Nazi Doctors remains the definitive work on the Nazi medical atrocities, a chilling expose of the banality of evil at its epitome, and a sobering reminder of the darkest side of human nature.

Most accounts of the Holocaust focus on trainloads of prisoners speeding toward Auschwitz, with its chimneys belching smoke and flames, in the summer of 1944. This book provides a hitherto untold chapter of the Holocaust by exploring a prequel to the gas chambers: the face-to-face mass murder of Jews in Galicia by bullets. The summer of 1941 ushered in a chain of events that had no precedent in the rapidly unfolding history of World War II and the Holocaust. In six weeks, more than twenty thousand Hungarian Jews were forcefully deported to Galicia and summarily executed. In exploring the fate of these Hungarian Jews and their local coreligionists, A Summer of Mass Murder transcends conventional history by introducing a multitude of layers of politics, culture, and, above all, psychology-for both the victims and the executioners. The narrative presents an uncharted territory in Holocaust scholarship with extensive archival research, interviews, and corresponding literature across countries and languages, incorporating many previously unexplored documents and testimonies. Eisen reflects upon the voices of the victims, the images of the perpetrators, whose motivation for murder remains inexplicable. In addition, the author incorporates the long-forgotten testimonies of bystander contemporaries, who unwittingly became part of the unfolding nightmare and recorded the horror in simple words. This book also serves as a personal journey of discovery. Among the twenty thousand people killed was the tale of two brothers, the author's uncles. In retracing their final fate and how they were swept up in the looming genocide, A Summer of Mass Murder also gives voice to their story.

This book tells the story of Krystyna Bierzynska, an acculturated Polish Jew, from her birth in Warsaw in 1928 up to the war's end in May 1945, when she was reunited with her brother, Dolek, an officer in the Polish II Corps. Bierzynska not only survived the Holocaust due in large part to the extraordinary efforts of her parents, blood relatives, and surrogate Christian family, but also served as a 16-year-old orderly in the 1944 Warsaw Uprising. Hers is a Warsaw story, a biography that demonstrates how, in urban interwar Poland, the lives of liberal educated Catholics and acculturated, unconverted Jews significantly overlapped. Co-creating the culture and developing the economy and industries of independent Poland, acculturated Jews at last dared to believe that they qualified as Polish citizens and patriots. Bierzynska's story details her experience of two very different Warsaws: a cosmopolitan oasis of high culture, modern amenities, and tolerance, and an occupied capital intoxicated and united by conspiracy, where the residents joined together to overthrow a common enemy.

The Nazi Holocaust is one of the most momentous events in human history. Yet, it remains on many levels a baffling and unfathomable mystery. By shunning simplistic 'explanations' Ronnie Landau has set out, in a clear, thought-provoking and enlightened fashion, to mediate betweeen this vast, often unapproachable subject and the reader who wrestles with its meaning. Locating the Holocaust within a number of different contexts - Jewish history, German history, genocide in the modern age, the larger story of human bigotry and the triumph of ideology over conscience - Landau penetrates to the very heart of its moral and historical significance. Deeply concerned lest the Holocaust, as a 'unique' phenomenon, be cordoned off from the rest of human history and ghettoized within the highly charged realm of 'Jewish experience', he is at pains to show that transmitting understanding of the Holocaust is about connecting with all humanity.Intended both for the general reader and for students and academics (especially in history, psychology, literature and the humanities), this work is an important breakthrough in the struggle to perpetuate the memory of a tragedy which the world is all too ready to forget.

.,."Two major sections deal with the Resistance and with concentration camp life; a shorter final section concerns re-entry into normal life by the survivors...." Library Journal

A story of survival, of love between mother and son and of enduring hope in the face of unspeakable hardship. An important read. The Boy Who Didn't Want to Die describes an extraordinary journey, made by Peter, a boy of five, through war-torn Europe in 1944 and 1945. Peter and his parents set out from a small Hungarian town, travelling through Austria and then Germany together. Along the way, unforgettable images of adventure flash one after another: sleeping in a tent and then under the sky, discovering a disused brick factory, catching butterflies in the meadows - and as Peter realises that this adventure is really a nightmare - watching bombs falling from the blue sky outside Vienna, learning maths from his mother in Belsen. All this is drawn against a background of terror, starvation, infection and, inevitably, death, before Peter and his mother can return home. Professor Peter Lantos is a Fellow of the Academy of Medical Sciences and in his previous life was an internationally renowned clinical neuroscientist. His memoir, Parallel Lines (Arcadia Books, 2006) was translated into Hungarian, German and Italian. Closed Horizon (Arcadia, 2012) was his first novel. Peter was awarded the British Empire Medal in 2020 for 'services to Holocaust education and awareness'. He is one of the last of the generation of survivors and this - his first book for children - will serve as a testimony to his experience. Peter lives in London.

"Motherlode: A Mosaic of Dutch Wartime Experience" is Carolyne Van Der Meer's creative reinterpretation through short stories, poems, and essays of the experiences of her mother and other individuals who spent their childhood in Nazi-occupied Holland or were deeply affected by wartime in Holland. The book documents the author's personal journey as she uncovers her mother's past through their correspondence and discussion and through research in the Netherlands. "Motherlode" also considers mother-daughter relationships and the effect of wartime on motherhood.

"Motherlode" is not about recording precise historical data; rather, it attempts to recover and interpret the complex emotions of the individuals growing up in wartime. The book is based on interviews with the author's mother and other Dutch Canadians, interviews with and letters from Canadian Jewish war veterans, and information provided by individuals with direct or indirect experience of the Dutch Resistance. The creative pieces explore "onderduik" (going into/being in hiding), life in an occupied country, the work of the Dutch Resistance, liberation, collective and individual cultural memory, and the way in which wartime childhoods shaped adulthood for these individuals.

This is the first musicological study entirely devoted to a comprehensive analysis of musical Holocaust representations in the Western art music tradition. Through a series of chronological case studies grounded in primary source analysis, Amy Lynn Wlodarski analyses the compositional processes and conceptual frameworks that provide key pieces with their unique representational structures and critical receptions. The study examines works composed in a variety of musical languages - from Arnold Schoenberg's dodecaphonic A Survivor from Warsaw to Steve Reich's minimalist Different Trains - and situates them within interdisciplinary discussions about the aesthetics and ethics of artistic witness. At the heart of this book are important questions about how music interacts with language and history; memory and trauma; and politics and mourning. Wlodarski's detailed musical and cultural analyses provide new models for the assessment of the genre, illustrating the benefits and consequences of musical Holocaust representation in the second half of the twentieth century.

The Polish Underground and the Jews, 1939-1945 examines one of the central problems in the history of Polish-Jewish relations: the attitude and the behavior of the Polish Underground - the resistance organization loyal to the Polish government-in-exile - toward the Jews during World War II. Using a variety of archival documents, testimonies, and memoirs, Zimmerman offers a careful, dispassionate narrative, arguing that the reaction of the Polish Underground to the catastrophe that befell European Jewry was immensely varied, ranging from aggressive aid to acts of murder. By analyzing the military, civilian, and political wings of the Polish Underground and offering portraits of the organization's main leaders, this book is the first full-length scholarly monograph in any language to provide a thorough examination of the Polish Underground's attitude and behavior towards the Jews during the entire period of World War II.

The United States and the Nazi Holocaust is an invaluable synthesis of United States policies and attitudes towards the Nazi persecution of European Jewry from 1933 to the modern day. The book weaves together a vast body of scholarship to bring students of the Holocaust a balanced overview of this complex and often controversial topic. It demonstrates that the United States' response to Nazism, the refugee crisis it provoked, the Holocaust, and its aftermath were-and remain to this day-intricately linked to the shifting racial, economic, and social status of American Jewry. Using a broad chronological framework, Barry Trachtenberg guides us through the major themes and events of this period. He discusses the complicated history of the Roosevelt administration's response to the worsening situation of European Jewry in the context of the ambiguous racial status of Jews in Depression and World War II-era America. He examines the post-war decades in America, and discusses how the Holocaust, like American Jewry itself, moved from the margins to the center of American awareness. This book considers the reception of Holocaust survivors, post-war trials, film, memoirs, memorials, and the growing field of Holocaust Studies. The reactions of the United States government, the general public, and the Jewish communities of America are all accounted for in this detailed survey.

The Sonderkommando of Auschwitz-Birkenau consisted primarily of Jewish prisoners forced by the Germans to facilitate the mass extermination. Though never involved in the killing itself, they were compelled to be "members of staff" of the Nazi death-factory. This book, translated for the first time into English from its original Hebrew, consists of interviews with the very few surviving men who witnessed at first hand the unparalleled horror of the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp. Some of these men had never spoken of their experiences before. Over a period of years, Gideon Greif interviewed intensively all Sonderkommando survivors living in Israel. They describe not only the details of the German-Nazi killing program but also the moral and human challenges they faced. The book provides direct testimony about the "Final Solution of the Jewish Problem," but it is also a unique document on the boundless cruelty and deceit practiced by the Germans. It documents the helplessness and powerlessness of the one-and-a-half million people, 90 percent of them Jews, who were brutally murdered in the gas chambers of Auschwitz-Birkenau.

Holocaust Memory in the Digital Age explores the nexus of new media and memory practices, raising questions about how advances in digital technologies continue to influence the nature of Holocaust memorialization. Through an in-depth study of the largest and most widely available collection of videotaped interviews with survivors and other witnesses to the Holocaust, the University of Southern California Shoah Foundation's Visual History Archive, Jeffrey Shandler weighs the possibilities and challenges brought about by digital forms of public memory. The Visual History Archive's holdings are extensive-over 100,000 hours of video, including interviews with over 50,000 individuals-and came about at a time of heightened anxiety about the imminent passing of the generation of Holocaust survivors and other eyewitnesses. Now, the Shoah Foundation's investment in new digital media is instrumental to its commitment to remembering the Holocaust both as a subject of historical importance in its own right and as a paradigmatic moral exhortation against intolerance. Shandler not only considers the Archive as a whole, but also looks closely at individual survivors' stories, focusing on narrative, language, and spectacle to understand how Holocaust remembrance is mediated.

When World War II broke out in Europe, the American army had no specialized division of mountain soldiers. But in the winter of 1939-40, after a tiny band of Finnish mountain troops brought the invading Soviet army to its knees, an amateur skier named Charles Minot "Minnie" Dole convinced the United States Army to let him recruit an extraordinary assortment of European expatriates, wealthy ski bums, mountaineers, and thrill-seekers and form them into a unique band of Alpine soldiers. These men endured nearly three years of grueling training in the Colorado Rockies and in the process set new standards for both soldiering and mountaineering. The newly forged 10th Mountain Division finally faced combat in the winter of 1945, in Italy's Apennine Mountains, against the seemingly unbreakable German fortifications north of the Gothic Line. There, they planned and executed what is still regarded as the most daring series of nighttime mountain attacks in U.S. military history, taking Mount Belvedere and the sheer, treacherous face of Riva Ridge to smash the linchpin of the German army's lines.
Drawing on unique cooperation from veterans of the 10th Mountain Division and a vast archive of unpublished letters and documents, The Last Ridge is written with enormous warmth, energy, and honesty. This is one of the most captivating stories of World War II, a blend of Band of Brothers and Into Thin Air. It is a story of young men asked to do the impossible, and succeeding.

"From the Hardcover edition.

'The Automaton' is based on a story told to Paolo Ventura as a child. It centres on an elderly, Jewish watchmaker living in the Venice ghetto in 1943, one of the darkest periods of the Nazi occupation and the rule of the fascist regime in Italy. The city where the watchmaker has lived his entire life, now desolate and fearful, is the stage on which the story unfolds. The old man decides to build an automaton (a robot), to keep him company while he awaits the arrival of the fascist police who will deport the last of the remaining Jews from the ghetto. Paolo Ventura is internationally known for the complex creative process he adopts. Having created the narrative script for the book, he then builds elaborate models and miniature figurines in his studio and incorporates them in what appear as almost film sets. These are then photographed and his final artworks are the photographs of these constructed tableaux. 'The Automaton' is a photographic narrative from beginning to end.

This book is a linguistic-cultural study of the emergence of the Jewish ghettos during the Holocaust. It traces the origins and uses of the term 'ghetto' in European discourse from the sixteenth century to the Nazi regime. It examines with a magnifying glass both the actual establishment of and the discourse of the Nazis and their allies on ghettos from 1939 to 1944. With conclusions that oppose all existing explanations and cursory examinations of the ghetto, the book impacts overall understanding of the anti-Jewish policies of Nazi Germany.

Stranded in Germany after the Second World War, 300,000 Holocaust survivors began to rebuild their lives while awaiting emigration. Brought together by their shared persecution, Jewish displaced persons forged a vibrant community, redefining Jewish identity after Auschwitz. Asserting their dignity as Jews, they practised Jewish rituals, created new families, embraced Zionism, agitated against British policies in Palestine, and tried to force Germans to acknowledge responsibility for wartime crimes. In Holocaust Survivors in Postwar Germany, Margarete Myers Feinstein uses survivor memoirs and interviews, allowing the reader to 'hear' the survivors' voices, focusing on the personal aspects of the transition to normalcy. Unlike previous political histories, this study emphasizes Jewish identity and cultural life after the war.

This book presents the results of comprehensive research into the world's Jewish press during the Second World War and explores its stance in the face of annihilation of the Jewish people by the Nazi regime in Europe. The research is based on the major Jewish newspapers that were published in four countries Palestine, Britain, the United States, and the Soviet Union and in three languages Hebrew, Yiddish, and English. The Jewish press frequently described the situation of the Jewish people in occupied countries. It urged the Jewish leaders and institutions to act in rescue of their brethren. It protested vigorously against the refusal of the democratic leadership to recognize that the Jewish plight was unique because of the Nazi intention to annihilate Jews as a people. Yosef Gorny argues that the Jewish press was the persistent open national voice fighting on behalf of the Jewish people suffering and perishing under Nazi occupation."

September 1939 - Nazi Austria turns on their Jews and the family Wacs flees Vienna, saving their lives. Destination: Shanghai; alien to them-different language, people, culture. Had they not escaped, one week later war broke out, and this family's fate might have been quite different. An Uncommon Journey addresses universal issues-persecution and the will to survive. This unique memoir by a sister and brother ten years apart shares different memories, often of the same events. The truth becomes a mosaic with many facets, creating a moving portrait of a family uprooted.

What was the extent of allied knowledge regarding the mass murder of Jews at Auschwitz during the Second World War? The question is one which continues to prompt heated historical debate, and Michael Fleming's important new book offers a definitive account of just how much the Allies knew. By tracking Polish and other reports about Auschwitz from their source, and surveying how knowledge was gathered, controlled and distributed to different audiences, the book examines the extent to which information about the camp was passed on to the British and American authorities, and how the dissemination of this knowledge was limited by propaganda and information agencies in the West. In a fascinating new study, the author reveals that the Allies had extensive knowledge of the mass killing of Jews at Auschwitz much earlier than previously thought; but the publicising of this information was actively discouraged in Britain and the US.

In the early morning hours of June 6, 1944, a small detachment of British airborne troops stormed the German defense forces and paved the way for the Allied invasion of Europe. Pegasus Bridge was the first engagement of D-Day, the turning point of World War II. This gripping account of it by acclaimed author Stephen Ambrose brings to life a daring mission so crucial that, had it been unsuccessful, the entire Normandy invasion might have failed. Ambrose traces each step of the preparations over many months to the minute-by-minute excitement of the hand-to-hand confrontations on the bridge. This is a story of heroism and cowardice, kindness and brutality -- the stuff of all great adventures.

This volume is a brief history of the Jewish community of Volodymyr-Volynsky, going back to its first historical mentions. It explores Jewish settlement in the city, the kahal, and the role of the community in the Vaad Arba Aratsot, and profiles several important historical figures, including Shelomoh of Karlin and Khane-Rokhl Werbermacher (the Maiden of Ludmir). It also considers the city's synagogues and Jewish cemetery, and explores the twentieth-century history of the community, especially during the Holocaust. Drawing on survivor eyewitness testimonies, the author pays tribute to the town's Righteous among the Nations and describes efforts to preserve the memory of its Jewish community, including the creation of the Piatydni memorial, and lists prominent Jews born in Volodymyr-Volynsky and natives of the city living abroad. This book will be of interest to historians of the Jewish communities and the Holocaust in Ukraine, as well as to the general reader.

Sociology is concerned with modern society, but has never come to terms with one of the most distinctive and horrific aspects of modernity - the Holocaust.

The book examines what sociology can teach us about the Holocaust, but more particularly concentrates upon the lessons which the Holocaust has for sociology. Bauman's work demonstrates that the Holocaust has to be understood as deeply involved with the nature of modernity. There is nothing comparable to this work available in the sociological literature.

The Coming of the Holocaust aims to help readers understand the circumstances that made the Holocaust possible. Peter Kenez demonstrates that the occurrence of the Holocaust was not predetermined as a result of modern history but instead was the result of contingencies. He shows that three preconditions had to exist for the genocide to take place: modern anti-Semitism, meaning Jews had to become economically and culturally successful in the post French Revolution world to arouse fear rather than contempt; an extremist group possessing a deeply held, irrational, and profoundly inhumane worldview had to take control of the machinery of a powerful modern state; and the context of a major war with mass killings. The book also discusses the correlations between social and historical differences in individual countries regarding the success of the Germans in their effort to exterminate Jews.

The second edition of this book frames the Holocaust as a catastrophe emerging from varied international responses to the Jewish question during an age of global crisis and war. The chapters are arranged chronologically, thematically, and geographically, reflecting how persecution, responses, and experience varied over time and place, conveying a sense of the Holocaust's complexity. Fully updated, this edition incorporates the past decade's scholarship concerning perpetrators, victims, and bystanders from political, national, and gendered perspectives. It also frames the Holocaust within the broader genocide perspective and within current debates on memory politics and causation. Global in approach and supported by images, maps, diverse voices, and suggestions for further reading, this is the ideal textbook for students of this catastrophic period in world history.