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Books > History > European history > From 1900 > Second World War
Volumes one and two of the Pulitzer Prize-winning tale of a mouse's experiences in Nazi-occupied Europe and in German concentration camps are housed in a sturdy box. Reprint.
Survival in Auschwitz: If This Is a Man is a book written by the Italian author, Primo Levi. It describes his experiences in the concentration camp at Auschwitz during the Second World War. Levi, then a 25-year-old chemist, spent 10 months in Auschwitz before the camp was liberated by the Red Army. Of the 650 Italian Jews in his shipment, Levi was one of only twenty who left the camps alive. The average life expectancy of a new entrant was three months. This truly amazing story offers a revealing glimpse into the realities of the Holocaust and its effects on our world.
In one of the darker aspects of Nazi Germany, churches and universities - generally respected institutions - grew to accept and support Nazi ideology. Robert P. Ericksen explains how an advanced, highly educated, Christian nation could commit the crimes of the Holocaust. This book describes how Germany's intellectual and spiritual leaders enthusiastically partnered with Hitler's regime, thus becoming active participants in the persecution of Jews, and ultimately, in the Holocaust. Ericksen also examines Germany's deeply flawed yet successful postwar policy of denazification in these institutions. Complicity in the Holocaust argues that enthusiasm for Hitler within churches and universities effectively gave Germans permission to participate in the Nazi regime.
'A lyrical, fascinating, important book. More than just a family story, it is an essay on belonging, denying, pretending, self-deception and, at least for the main characters, survival.' Literary Review 'Simon May's remarkable How to Be a Refugee is a memoir of family secrets with a ruminative twist, one that's more interested in what we keep from ourselves than the ones we conceal from others.' Irish Times The most familiar fate of Jews living in Hitler's Germany is either emigration or deportation to concentration camps. But there was another, much rarer, side to Jewish life at that time: denial of your origin to the point where you manage to erase almost all consciousness of it. You refuse to believe that you are Jewish. How to Be a Refugee is Simon May's gripping account of how three sisters - his mother and his two aunts - grappled with what they felt to be a lethal heritage. Their very different trajectories included conversion to Catholicism, marriage into the German aristocracy, securing 'Aryan' status with high-ranking help from inside Hitler's regime, and engagement to a card-carrying Nazi. Even after his mother fled to London from Nazi Germany and Hitler had been defeated, her instinct for self-concealment didn't abate. Following the early death of his father, also a German Jewish refugee, May was raised a Catholic and forbidden to identify as Jewish or German or British. In the face of these banned inheritances, May embarks on a quest to uncover the lives of the three sisters as well as the secrets of a grandfather he never knew. His haunting story forcefully illuminates questions of belonging and home - questions that continue to press in on us today.
The number of books and articles dealing with various aspects of World War II has increased at a phenomenal rate since the end of the hostilities. Perhaps no other chapter in this bloodiest of all wars has received as much attention as the Holo caust. The Nazis' program for the "Final Solution of the Jewish Question" - this ideologically conceived, diabolical plan for the physicalliquidation of European Jewry - has emerged as a subject of agonizing and intense interest to laypersons and scholars alike. The centrality of the Holocaust in the study of the Third Reich and the Nazi phenomenon is almost universally recognized. The source materials for many of the books published during the immediate postwar period were the notes and diaries kept by many camp and ghetto dwellers, who were sustained during their unbelievable ordeal by the unusual drive to bear witness. These were supplemented after the liberation by a large number of personal narratives collected from survivors alI over Europe. Understandably, the books published shortly after the war ended were mainly martyrological and lachrymological, reflecting the trauma of the Holocaust at the personal, individual level. These were soon followed by a considerable number of books dealing with the moral and religious questions revolving around the role ofthe lay and spiritual leaders of the doomed Jewish communities, especially those involved in the Jewish Councils, as well as God' s responsibility toward the "chosen people."
As her mother slipped into the darkness of old age, Lisa Appignanesi began to realise how little she knew of the reality behind the tales she had heard since childhood. She had shunned her parents' stories of war-time Poland, but now she set out to find the truth. In her quest she flew to Warsaw - imagining and revisiting a past she never knew. This is the moving story of the Jews who survived outside the camps, but it is also the author's own voyage of self-discovery - a family memoir of the rites of passage of emigration, childhood, and growing up an outsider in a closed community
Historians long have analyzed the emergence of the "final solution of the Jewish question" primarily on the basis of German documentation, devoting much less attention to wartime Jewish perceptions of the growing threat. Jurgen Matthaus fills this critical gap by showcasing the highly insightful reports compiled during the first half of World War II by two Geneva-based offices: those of Richard Lichtheim representing the Jewish Agency for Palestine and of Gerhart Riegner's World Jewish Congress office. Since the first days of war, Lichtheim's predictions of Jewish dead ran in the millions and increased progressively with the rising tide of Nazi rule over Europe. His and Riegner's perceptions of German anti-Jewish policy resulted from shared goals and personal experiences as well as from their bureaus' range of functions and the massive problems that impacted the gathering and communicating of information on the unfolding Holocaust in German-controlled Europe. Beyond the specifics of the wartime Geneva setting, these sources show how human cognition works in times of extreme crisis and contribute to a better understanding of the potential inherent in Jewish sources for gauging perpetrator actions. The reports and contextual information featured here reflect the first narratives on the Holocaust, their emergence, evolution, and importance for post-war historiography.
Alon Confino seeks to rethink dominant interpretations of the Holocaust by examining it as a problem in cultural history. As the main research interests of Holocaust scholars are frequently covered terrain - the anti-Semitic ideological campaign, the machinery of killing, the brutal massacres during the war - Confino's research goes in a new direction. He analyzes the culture and sensibilities that made it possible for the Nazis and other Germans to imagine the making of a world without Jews. Confino seeks these insights from the ways historians interpreted another short, violent and foundational event in modern European history - the French Revolution. The comparison of the ways we understand the Holocaust with scholars' interpretations of the French Revolution allows Confino to question some of the basic assumptions of present-day historians concerning historical narration, explanation and understanding.
"Anti-Semitism revisited in a wholly original way" Philippe Sands "Rippling with ideas on every page" Jewish Chronicle "Tackles the issue [of anti-semitism] from the perspective of a country where its manifestations have been more vicious and deadly" Financial Times Rabbi Delphine Horvilleur analyses the phenomenon of anti-semitism as it is viewed by those who endure it and who, through narration and literature, succeed in overcoming it. Jewish texts are replete with treatments of anti-semitism, of this endlessly paradoxical hatred, and of the ways in which Jews are perceived by others. But here, the focus is inverted: Anti-Semitism Revisited explores the hatred of Jews as seen through the lens of the sacred texts, rabbinical tradition and Jewish lore. Delphine Horvilleur gives a voice to those who are too often deprived of one, examining resilience in the face of adversity and the legacy of an ancient hatred that is often misunderstood. An engaging, hopeful and very original examination of anti-semitism: what it means, where it comes from, what are the ancient myths and tropes that are weaponised against Jewish people, and how do we take them apart. Translated from the French by David Bellos
One Sunday morning in October, Istvan and his wife Vera start their day as usual. They tidy their house; Vera makes a festive cake to put in the freezer and cuts fresh roses for a vase in the living room. That evening, after nearly fifty years of marriage, they lie down in the bed that they share and take their own lives. Having survived the tumult of twentieth-century Europe and after raising a family together, they could not accept the words 'until death do us part'. Vera and Istvan met at a recital in Budapest in 1940, and from that moment Vera knew that he was the man she would marry. A deep and abiding friendship grew between them. While sifting through the fragments of the family history in an attempt to understand this glamorous and enigmatic couple, their granddaughter Johanna Adorjan imagines their final day. Amid the family stories and portraits by friends, she dares to give voice to their never-mentioned experiences in the Holocaust and their escape from Hungary during the uprising of 1956. An Exclusive Love is both a love story and a journey of self-understanding, beautifully told and shot through with tender humour. It is a history at once personal and universal, a tale of memory, belonging and devotion.
Responding to the increasingly influential role of Hannah Arendt's political philosophy in recent years, Hannah Arendt and the Limits of Total Domination: The Holocaust, Plurality, and Resistance, critically engages with Arendt's understanding of totalitarianism. According to Arendt, the main goal of totalitarianism was total domination; namely, the virtual eradication of human legality, morality, individuality, and plurality. This attempt, in her view, was most fully realized in the concentration camps, which served as the major "laboratories" for the regime. While Arendt focused on the perpetrators' logic and drive, Michal Aharony examines the perspectives and experiences of the victims and their ability to resist such an experiment. The first book-length study to juxtapose Arendt's concept of total domination with actual testimonies of Holocaust survivors, this book calls for methodological pluralism and the integration of the voices and narratives of the actors in the construction of political concepts and theoretical systems. To achieve this, Aharony engages with both well-known and non-canonical intellectuals and writers who survived Auschwitz and Buchenwald concentration camps. Additionally, she analyzes the oral testimonies of survivors who are largely unknown, drawing from interviews conducted in Israel and in the U.S., as well as from videotaped interviews from archives around the world. Revealing various manifestations of unarmed resistance in the camps, this study demonstrates the persistence of morality and free agency even under the most extreme and de-humanizing conditions, while cautiously suggesting that absolute domination is never as absolute as it claims or wishes to be. Scholars of political philosophy, political science, history, and Holocaust studies will find this an original and compelling book.
In 1925, the three leading chemical firms in Germany - BASF, Bayer, and Hoechst - merged, together with some smaller firms, to become IG Farben. IG Farben became, like no other firm, synonymous with the participation of German industry in the most heinous crimes of the Nazi regime. This book deals in depth with one of IG Farben s leading factories, Hoechst, during the Third Reich. On the basis of long and meticulous archival research, including previously inaccessible company records, the author tries to describe and analyze the relationship between management and employees and the Nazi party and its organizations. The author shows the exclusion and persecution of employees, particularly Jewish employees. He traces the extent of Hoechst s involvement in the exploitation of forced labor, and its active participation in human experiments in several concentration camps. Throughout, he tries to shed light on the motivations of those responsible for this conduct.
The Stunning and Emotional Autobiography of an Auschwitz Survivor April 7, 1944-This date marks the successful escape of two Slovak prisoners from one of the most heavily-guarded and notorious concentration camps of Nazi Germany. The escapees, Rudolf Vrba and Alfred Wetzler, fled over one hundred miles to be the first to give the graphic and detailed descriptions of the atrocities of Auschwitz. Originally published in the early 1960s, I Escaped from Auschwitz is the striking autobiography of none other than Rudolf Vrba himself. Vrba details his life leading up to, during, and after his escape from his 21-month internment in Auschwitz. Vrba and Wetzler manage to evade Nazi authorities looking for them and make contact with the Jewish council in Zilina, Slovakia, informing them about the truth of the "unknown destination" of Jewish deportees all across Europe. This first-hand report alerted Western authorities, such as Pope Pius XII, Winston Churchill, and Franklin D. Roosevelt, to the reality of Nazi annihilation camps-information that until then had only been recognized as nasty rumors. I Escaped from Auschwitz is a close-up look at the horror faced by the Jewish people in Auschwitz and across Europe during World War II. This newly edited translation of Vrba's memoir will leave readers reeling at the terrors faced by those during the Holocaust. Despite the profound emotions brought about by this narrative, readers will also find an astounding story of heroism and courage in the face of seemingly hopeless circumstances.
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.
THE GRIPPING SAGA OF THE RISE AND FALL OF THE JAPANESE NAVAL AIR FORCE IN WORLD WAR II THROUGH THE CAREER OF ONE OF ITS BEST FIGHTER ACES Written by Martin Caidin from Saburo Sakai's own memoirs and journalist Fred Saito's extensive interviews with the World War II fighter pilot, Samurai! vividly documents the chivalry and valor of the combat aviator who time after time fought American fighter pilots and, with 64 kills, would survive the war as Japan's greatest living ace. Here are the harrowing experiences of one of Japan's greatest aces: from fighter pilot school -- where the harsh training expelled over half of his class -- to the thrilling early Japanese victories; from his incredible six hundred mile fight for life from Guadalcanal to his base in Rabaul, to the poignant story of the now-handicapped veteran's return to the air during the final desperate months of World War II.
When the real is so fantastic, what literary effects will succeed in making it credible and help readers to comprehend its human meaning? As recent world developments fully show us, several lessons of the Nazi Holocaust still remain to be learned. To respond meaningfully and ethically to the Holocaust, writers need to incorporate moral and emotional complexity, and one way they have done this is through using the techniques of the fantastic. The authors in this anthology of essays examine the usefulness of fantastic story-telling for exploring relevant philosophical and moral issues about the Holocaust. The present volume is interdisciplinary in scope, including print literature and film, animation, graphic novels, and various other media. The editors have sought essays that, while ranging in theoretical perspectives, engage in dialogue with one another, together producing a comprehensive whole. Examined are writers like JaneYolen and Art Spiegelman and such works as the sci-fi television series V (1983), Stephen King's novella Apt Pupil (1982), Guillermo del Toro's imaginative Pan's Labyrinth (2006), and Martin Scorsese's dark thriller Shutter Island (2010).
They were outnumbered and underrated. They were fresh from the training fields in America and ordered to fight an enemy that had rewritten the book of war and brutally controlled a continent and the air above it. But the men of the 56th fighter group had courage and, more importantly, they had the P-47 Thunderbolt. This is the incredible story of the U.S. 56th Fighter Group as told by one of its best pilots, Robert S. Johnson, who would rack up a score of twenty-eight kills against the Luftwaffe and become one of America¹s top aces‹one of a special breed of men who changed the course of history.
2015 was the seventieth anniversary of the end of World War Two, and, for Jews, the seventieth anniversary of the end of the worst Jewish catastrophe in diaspora history. After Genocide considers how, more than two generations since the war, the events of the Holocaust continue to haunt Jewish people and the worldwide Jewish population, even where there was no immediate family connection. Drawing from interviews with "ordinary" Jews from across the age spectrum, After Genocide focuses on the complex psychological legacy of the Holocaust. Is it, as many think, a "collective trauma"? How is a community detached in space and time traumatised by an event which neither they nor their immediate ancestors experienced?"Ordinary" Jews' own words bring to life a narrative which looks at how commonly-recognised attributes of trauma - loss, anger, fear, guilt, shame - are integral to Jewish reactions to the Holocaust.
The Frankfurt Auschwitz trial was the largest, most public, and most important trial of Holocaust perpetrators conducted in West German courts. Drawing on a wide range of archival sources, Devin O. Pendas provides a comprehensive history of this momentous event. Situating the trial in a thorough analysis of West German criminal law, this book argues that in confronting systematic, state-sponsored genocide, the Frankfurt court ran up against the limits of law. Because many of the key categories of German criminal law were defined with direct reference to the specific motives of the defendants, the trial was unable to adequately grasp the deep social roots and systematic character of Nazi genocide. Much of the trial's significance came from the vast public attention it captured, and this book provides a compelling account of the divided response to the trial among the West German public.
German Reparations and the Jewish World" has become a standard reference work since it was first published. Based extensively on archival sources, the author examines the difficult debate within the Jewish world whether it was possible to reach a material settlement with Germany so soon after Auschwitz. Concentrating on how the money was spent in rebuilding Jewish life, he also analyzes how the reparations payments transformed the relations bteween Israel and the diaspora, and between different Jewish political and ideological groups. This revised and expanded edition includes material on sensitive relief programmes from archives that have only recently been opened to researchers. In a new, extensive introductory essay the author reexamines the reparations, restitution and indemnification processes from the perspective of 50 years later.
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.
Deploying concepts of interpretation, liberation, and survival, esteemed literary critic Herbert Lindenberger reflects on the diverse fates of his family during the Holocaust. Combining public, family, and personal record with literary, musical, and art criticism, 'One Family's Shoah' suggests a new way of writing cultural history.
The Holocaust is a pervasive presence in British culture and society. Schools have been legally required to deliver Holocaust education, the government helps to fund student visits to Auschwitz, the Imperial War Museum's permanent Holocaust Exhibition has attracted millions of visitors, and Britain has an annually commemorated Holocaust Memorial Day. What has prompted this development, how has it unfolded, and why has it happened now? How does it relate to Britain's post-war history, its contemporary concerns, and the wider "globalisation" of Holocaust memory? What are the multiple shapes that British Holocaust consciousness assumes and the consequences of their rapid emergence? Why have the so-called "lessons" of the Holocaust enjoyed such popularity in Britain? Through analysis of changing engagements with the Holocaust in political, cultural and memorial landscapes over the past generation, this book addresses these questions, demonstrating the complexities of Holocaust consciousness and reflecting on the contrasting ways that history is used in Britain today. |
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