Winner of the 2009 National Jewish Book Award in American Jewish Studies

Recipient of the 2010 Guggenheim Fellowship in Humanities-Intellectual & Cultural History

It has become an accepted truth: after World War II, American Jews chose to be silent about the mass murder of millions of their European brothers and sisters at the hands of the Nazis.

In this compelling work, Hasia R. Diner shows the assumption of silence to be categorically false. Uncovering a rich and incredibly varied trove of remembrances--in song, literature, liturgy, public display, political activism, and hundreds of other forms--We Remember with Reverence and Love shows that publicly memorializing those who died in the Holocaust arose from a deep and powerful element of Jewish life in postwar America. Not only does she marshal enough evidence to dismantle the idea of American Jewish "forgetfulness," she brings to life the moving and manifold ways that this widely diverse group paid tribute to the tragedy.

Diner also offers a compelling new perspective on the 1960s and its potent legacy, by revealing how our typical understanding of the postwar years emerged from the cauldron of cultural divisions and campus battles a generation later. The student activists and "new Jews" of the 1960s who, in rebelling against the American Jewish world they had grown up in "a world of remarkable affluence and broadening cultural possibilities" created a flawed portrait of what their parents had, or rather, had not, done in the postwar years. This distorted legacy has been transformed by two generations of scholars, writers, rabbis, and Jewish community leaders into a taken-for-granted truth.

"By Pure Luck" tells the remarkable story of how Fela Igielnik survived life in the Warsaw ghetto and the brutality of World War II. But more than that, it reveals the possibility of transforming even the darkest of experiences - starvation, forced labor and marches, institutionalized hatred - into opportunities for furthering education and understanding. Alternating between harrowing narrative and essayistic interpretation; written in a style that is at once childlike in perspective and scathingly mature in its interrogation of the absurdities of war and the consequences of intolerance and bigotry, "By Pure Luck" represents the culminating story of a young woman who managed to survive, even at times flourish, under six years of Nazi brutality as well as many years of uncertainty and unanswered questions. Retaining her humanity, through her efforts at recording the events of the Holocaust and tackling subjects such as post-War politics and the role of education in preventing further genocides, Fela Igielnik has left behind a remarkable document that teaches us that to remember is to educate.

Even seventy-five years after the end of World War II, the commemorative cultures surrounding the War and the Holocaust in Central, Eastern and South Eastern Europe are anything but fixed. The fierce debates on how to deal with the past among the newly constituted nation states in these regions have already received much attention by scholars in cultural and memory studies. The present volume posits that literature as a medium can help us understand the shifting attitudes towards World War II and the Holocaust in post-Communist Europe in recent years. These shifts point to new commemorative cultures shaping up 'after memory'. Contemporary literary representations of World War II and the Holocaust in Eastern Europe do not merely extend or replace older practices of remembrance and testimony, but reflect on these now defunct or superseded narratives. New narratives of remembrance are conditioned by a fundamentally new social and political context, one that emerged from the devaluation of socialist commemorative rituals and as a response to the loss of private and family memory narratives. The volume offers insights into the diverse literatures of Eastern Europe and their ways of depicting the area's contested heritage.

The untold story of the massacre named "Razzia" (Raid) which took place in January 1942, committed by the Hungarian Nazi forces in an occupied part of northern Serbia - Backa. This book unveils the most important details of the massacre, implicating the Hungarian regent (governor) Miklos Horthy. Besides murdering Serbs, Jews and Roma, Horthy had also committed numerous crimes over Ukrainians, Romanians, Ruthenians, Slovaks, Russians and Hungarian antifascists. The book primarily deals with the genocide committed in January 1942, where at least 12,763 civillians had been tossed into icy rivers Tisa and Danube. One of the main perpetrators, Sandor Kepiro, was released in Budapest court on July 18, 2011. He died in Budapest in September 3 of the same year.

Belzec was the prototype death camp and precursor of the killing centers of Sobibor and Treblinka. Secretly commissioned by the highest authority of the Nazi State, it acted outside the law of both civil and military conventions of the time. Under the code "Aktion Reinhardt," the death camp was organized, staffed and administered by a leadership of middle-ranking police officers and a specially selected civilian cadre who, in the first instance, had been initiated into group murder within the euthanasia program. Their expertise, under bogus SS insignia, was then transferred to the operational duties to the human factory abattoir of Belzec, where, on a conveyor belt system, thousands of Jews, from daily transports, entered the camp and after just two hours, they lay dead in the Belzec pits, their property sorted and the killing grounds tidied to await the next arrival. Over a period of just nine months, when Belzec was operational Galician Jewry was totally decimated: 500,000 lay buried in the 33 mass graves. The author takes the reader step by step into the background of the "Final Solution" and gives eyewitness testimony, as the mass graves were located and recorded. This is a publication of the "Yizkor Books in Print Project" of JewishGen, Inc 376 pages with Illustrations. Hard Cover

Jews began settling in RokiSkis in the late 17th Century. During the 19th Century, the town's importance as a regional commercial center increased with the completion of a railway line that connected it to the Baltic ports of Riga and Libau / Liepaja and to the interior of the Russian Empire. By 1897, the Jewish population had grown to 2,067, 75% of the town's population. There was a strong Chasidic presence in the RokiSkis area, which was unique to Lithuania. Prior to the Holocaust, about 3,500 Jews lived in RokiSkis. By the end of August 1941 nearly all were murdered.

In 1952, Jews from the area who had emigrated to South Africa before the war published a collection of Yiddish-language articles and related images under the title Yisker-bukh fun Rakishok un umgegnt (Memorial Book for Rokiskis and Environs). Countless hours of volunteer effort have been devoted to translating that work into English and recently to gathering additional materials that were not available when the original book was published.

Together, these translations, images, and new material provide English-speaking readers a composite picture of the history, culture, institutions, and daily lives of the Jews of the RokiSkis area and will be a lasting memorial to them.

"My Education Continues" tells the remarkable story of how Fela Igielnik survived life in the Warsaw ghetto and the brutality of World War II. But more than that, it reveals the possibility of transforming even the darkest of experiences - starvation, forced labor and marches, institutionalized hatred - into opportunities for furthering education and understanding. Alternating between harrowing narrative and essayistic interpretation; written in a style that is at once childlike in perspective and scathingly mature in its interrogation of the absurdities of war and the consequences of intolerance and bigotry, "My Education Continues" represents the culminating story of a young woman who managed to survive, even at times flourish, under six years of Nazi brutality as well as many years of uncertainty and unanswered questions. Retaining her humanity, through her efforts at recording the events of the Holocaust and tackling subjects such as post-War politics and the role of education in preventing further genocides, Fela Igielnik has left behind a remarkable document that teaches us that to remember is to educate.

This is the story of Chęciny, my hometown in southern Poland, and of the people who lived there between the two world wars of the 20th Century.

The Nazi invasion of Poland in October 1939 started World War II. Millions of Polish Jews died in the ensuing Holocaust, including 4,000 citizens of Chęciny, and 50 members of my family. I was lucky: my mother, brother, three sisters and I had joined my father in America in 1930. I finished high school in Chicago, went to college and graduated from the University of Illinois Medical School. I became a doctor and a psychiatrist, setting up a long and rewarding private practice in Los Angeles that spanned more than 50 years.

Like the wall paintings in Pompeii, which offer a glimpse into the daily life of that city before the volcano, I hope that these stories offer a glimpse into the daily life of my hometown before the Holocaust.

But most of all, this is the story of my family, and a tribute to my beloved Aunt Chana and her daughter, my cousin Rachel, whose courage and self-sacrifice saved Miriam - Chęciny's youngest survivor of the Holocaust - from the Nazi murderers.

This is my memoir - a true story about victims of World War II and their life in concentration camp, their fears and their dreams, their relations with others, and their struggle on a journey to make a home in exile. It is also a story of adventure, danger and death. Above all, however, it is my story, a story of very important part of my life - my youth. Those events took place a long time ago. The people are real and so are their names. I have told it with complete honesty as I saw it, observe it, and experienced it. In order to make reading of this book more interesting I wrote it in a form of a novel. Some of the words within quotation marks are not necessarily of the speaker, for they have been said a long time ago, and my recollection of them is not always accurate. In other words, I'm giving in this book only the general ideas of the speakers and not their exact words, except when speaker is yours truly. Never the less, this book is a true account of my life in exile and is should be regarded as such.

This is the first biography in English of a World War II heroine of the Greek resistance, who joined the British secret intelligence services (SIS) shortly after the German occupation of Athens and was betrayed, arrested and executed one month before the Germans' departure. She was a prosperous housewife with seven children, who had no experience in politics or military affairs, and yet she managed to build a formidable escape, espionage and sabotage organization that interacted with the highest levels of SIS agents in Occupied Greece. Book Presentation with Prof. Stylianos Perrakis (Concordia University), Prof. Stathis Kalyvas (University of Oxford), and Prof. Gonda van Steen (King's College London)

Based on the heart-breaking true story of Cilka Klein, Cilka's Journey is a million copy international bestseller and the sequel to the No.1 bestselling phenomenon, The Tattooist of Auschwitz 'She was the bravest person I ever met' Lale Sokolov, The Tattooist of Auschwitz In 1942 Cilka Klein is just sixteen years old when she is taken to Auschwitz-Birkenau Concentration Camp. The Commandant at Birkenau, Schwarzhuber, notices her long beautiful hair, and forces her separation from the other women prisoners. Cilka learns quickly that power, even unwillingly given, equals survival. After liberation, Cilka is charged as a collaborator by the Russians and sent to a desolate, brutal prison camp in Siberia known as Vorkuta, inside the Arctic Circle. Innocent, imprisoned once again, Cilka faces challenges both new and horribly familiar, each day a battle for survival. Cilka befriends a woman doctor, and learns to nurse the ill in the camp, struggling to care for them under unimaginable conditions. And when she tends to a man called Alexandr, Cilka finds that despite everything, there is room in her heart for love. Cilka's Journey is a powerful testament to the triumph of the human will. It will move you to tears, but it will also leave you astonished and uplifted by one woman's fierce determination to survive, against all odds. Don't miss Heather Morris's next book, Stories of Hope. Out now. - - - - - - - - 'Her truly incredible story is one to be read by everyone.' Sun 'Cilka's extraordinary courage in the face of evil and her determination to survive against the odds will stay with you long after you've finished reading this heartrending book.' Sunday Express 'Her courage and determination to survive makes for a heartrending read.' Daily Mirror

The Holocaust is one of the most intensively studied phenomena in modern history. The volume of writing that fuels the numerous debates about it is overwhelming in quantity and diversity. Even those who have dedicated their professional lives to understanding the Holocaust cannot assimilate it all.
There is, then, an urgent need to synthesize and evaluate the complex historiography on the Holocaust, exploring the major themes and debates relating to it and drawing widely on the findings of a great deal of research. Concentrating on the work of the last two decades, Histories of the Holocaust examines the "Final Solution" as a European project, the decision-making process, perpetrator research, plunder and collaboration, regional studies, ghettos, camps, race science, antisemitic ideology, and recent debates concerning modernity, organization theory, colonialism, genocide studies, and cultural history. Research on victims is discussed, but Stone focuses more closely on perpetrators, reflecting trends within the historiography, as well as his own view that in order to understand Nazi genocide the emphasis must be on the culture of the perpetrators.
The book is not a "history of the history of the Holocaust," offering simply a description of developments in historiography. Stone critically analyses the literature, discerning major themes and trends and assessing the achievements and shortcomings of the various approaches. He demonstrates that there never can or should be a single history of the Holocaust and facilitates an understanding of the genocide of the Jews from a multiplicity of angles. An understanding of how the Holocaust could have happened can only be achieved by recourse to histories of the Holocaust: detailed day-by-day accounts of high-level decision-making; long-term narratives of the Holocaust's relationship to European histories of colonialism and warfare; micro-historical studies of Jewish life before, during, and after Nazi occupation; and cultural analyses of Nazi fantasies and fears.

Christopher R. Browning's shocking account of how a unit of average middle-aged Germans became the cold-blooded murderers of tens of thousands of Jews-now with a new afterword and additional photographs. Ordinary Men is the true story of Reserve Police Battalion 101 of the German Order Police, which was responsible for mass shootings as well as round-ups of Jewish people for deportation to Nazi death camps in Poland in 1942. Browning argues that most of the men of RPB 101 were not fanatical Nazis but, rather, ordinary middle-aged, working-class men who committed these atrocities out of a mixture of motives, including the group dynamics of conformity, deference to authority, role adaptation, and the altering of moral norms to justify their actions. Very quickly three groups emerged within the battalion: a core of eager killers, a plurality who carried out their duties reliably but without initiative, and a small minority who evaded participation in the acts of killing without diminishing the murderous efficiency of the battalion whatsoever. While this book discusses a specific Reserve Unit during WWII, the general argument Browning makes is that most people succumb to the pressures of a group setting and commit actions they would never do of their own volition. Ordinary Men is a powerful, chilling, and important work with themes and arguments that continue to resonate today. "A remarkable-and singularly chilling-glimpse of human behavior...This meticulously researched book...represents a major contribution to the literature of the Holocaust."-Newsweek

This book offers a unique perspective on contemporary Polish cinema's engagement with histories of Polish violence against their Jewish neighbours during the Holocaust. Moving beyond conventional studies of historical representation on screen, the book considers how cinema reframes the unwanted knowledge of violence in its aftermaths. The book draws on Derridean hauntology, Didi-Huberman's confrontations with art images, Levinasian ethics and anamorphosis to examine cinematic reconfigurations of histories and memories that are vulnerable to evasion and formlessness. Innovative analyses of Birthplace (Lozinski, 1992), It Looks Pretty From a Distance (Sasnal, 2011), Aftermath (Pasikowski, 2012), and Ida (Pawlikowski, 2013) explore how their rural filmic landscapes are predicated on the radical exclusion of Jewish neighbours, prompting archaeological processes of exhumation. Arguing that the distressing materiality of decomposition disturbs cinematic composition, the book examines how Poland's aftermath cinema attempts to recompose itself through form and narrative as it faces Polish complicity in Jewish death.