Thousands of young Jews were orphaned by the Nazi genocide in the German-occupied Soviet Union and struggled for survival on their own. This book weaves together oral histories, video testimonies, and memoirs produced in the former Soviet Union to show how the first generation of Soviet Jews, born after the foundation of the USSR, experienced the Nazi genocide and how they remember it in a context of social change following the dissolution of the USSR in 1991. The 1930s, a period when the notion interethnic solidarity and social equality were promoted and a partly lived reality, were formative for a cohort of young Jews. Soviet policies of the time established a powerful framework for the ways in which survivors of the genocide understood, survived, and represent their experience of violence and displacement. The book demonstrates that the young Soviet Jews' struggle for survival, and its memory, was shaped by interethnic relationships within the occupied society, German annihilation policy, and Soviet efforts to construct a patriotic unity of the Soviet population. Age and gender were crucial factors for experiencing, surviving, and remembering the Nazi genocide in Soviet territories, an element that Anika Walke emphasizes by investigating the individual and collective efforts to save peoples' lives, in hiding places and partisan formations, and how these efforts were subsequently erased in the construction of the Soviet war portrayal. Pioneers and Partisans demonstrates how the Holocaust unfolded in the German-occupied Soviet territories and how Soviet citizens responded to it. The book does this work through oral histories of atrocities and survival during the German occupation in Minsk and a number of small towns in Eastern Belorussia such as Shchedrin, Slavnoe, Zhlobin, and Shklov. Following particular individuals' stories, framed within the broader historical and cultural context, this book tells of repeated transformations of identity, from Soviet citizen in the prewar years, to a target of genocidal violence during the war, to barely accepted national minority in the postwar Soviet Union.

The memoir of Helen Weinberg depicts the plight of a young woman who hailed from Kremenitz, Poland. Separated from her family during World War Two, she was imprisoned, beaten, starved and tortured. This story is told using her own words from stories, essays and poetry translated from Yiddish and Polish, and serve as a guide through the different periods of her life. The pen and paper were her catharsis for the emotional torture she endured and provide a window into her soul. PRAISE FOR WHITE ANGEL "This book is a wonderful tribute to the multifaceted life of an extraordinary grandmother. Written by P'nina Seplowitz with great respect and much love, it traces the story of a woman who was exposed to the most horrific manifestations of human cruelty and who emerged with powerful strength to create a new world, who responded to the assault of death with an outpouring of life. The book is warm, touching and beautifully written; it will inspire its readers, young and not so young alike." - RABBI JACOB J. SCHACTER, Yeshiva University "White Angel is a thought provoking work of Holocaust literature. Helen Weinberg's remarkable story elicits the sorrowful burden of a broken nation and the glimmer of hope that existed with the establishment of the State of Israel. White Angel is an essential staple for any home or school." - RABBI DOV LIPMAN, Member Israeli Knesset "P'nina Seplowitz does a terrific job of telling an inspirational, yet tragic story, through the eyes of her heroic grandmother. This book is a must read for all those looking to be inspired by the strength of the human spirit." - RABBI STEVEN BURG, Simon Wiesenthal Center

Offers a comprehensive treatment of Holocaust education, blending introductory material, broad perspectives and practical teaching case studies. This work shows how and why pupils should learn about the Holocaust.>

The Holocaust continues to be a defining event for understanding not only the course of history during the 20th century but the course of human events in general. Perhaps the most contentious issue is that of how the Holocaust continues to be understood, explained, and appropriated. The chapters focus on questions arising from the Holocaust and that have to do with the American understandings of the interrelated web of history, religion, and meaning. In addition, the contributors, from a variety of disciplines, express views that range across several dimensions of receptivity and both support and challenge other views of how the Holocaust should be commemorated and/or historically situated.

The chapters included in this volume demonstrate that the ongoing rethinking and integrating of memories and questions from and on the Holocaust result in ever-new ethical orientations and demands that continue to affect religious praxis and the work of historians. They deal both explicitly and implicitly with how the Holocaust has been understood or misunderstood. The contributors write from across the disciplinary boundaries of philosophy, theology, history, aesthetics, and political science and raise important ethical issues while providing fresh perspectives from both established and emerging scholars. This unique, cross-disciplinary approach is an essential addition to the literature on the Holocaust.

The questions posed by the Holocaust force faithful Christians to reexamine their own identities and loyalties in fundamental ways and to recognize the necessity of excising the Church's historic anti-Jewish rhetoric from its confessional core. This volume proposes a new framework of meaning for Christians who want to remain both faithful and critical about a world capable of supporting such evil. The author has rooted his critical perspective in the midrashic framework of Jewish hermeneutics, which requires Christians to come to terms with the significant other in their confessional lives. By bringing biblical texts and the history of the Holocaust face to face, this volume aims at helping Jews and Christians understand their own traditions and one another's.

What form does the dialogue about the family during the Nazi period take in the families of those persecuted by the Nazi regime and of Nazi perpertrators and accomplices? What impact does the past of the first generation, and their own way of dealing with it, have on the lives of their descendants? What are the structural differences between the dialogue about the Holocaust in families of perpetrators and those of the victims? This text examines these questions on the basis of selected case studies. It presents five families of survivors from Germany and Israel whose experiences of persecution and family histories after the liberation differ greatly. Two case studies of non-Jewish German families whose grandparents' generation are suspected of having perpretrated Nazi crimes illustrate the mechanisms operating in these families - those of passing the guilt on to the victims and creating the myth of being victims themselves - and give a sense of the psychological consequences these mechanisms have for the generations of their children and grandchildren.

In this updated edition, author Joseph Keysor addresses the growing trend among secularists to label Hitler as a Christian and therefore attribute the atrocities of the second world war to the Christian religion. Keysor does not settle for simply contrasting the Nazis' behavior with the Biblical record. He also examines the true sources of Nazi ideology which are anything but Christian: Wagner, Chamberlain, Haeckel, and Nietzsche, to name a few. Keysor does not shy away from discussing Christian anti-semitism (alleged and real) throughout history and discusses Martin Luther, medieval anti-semitism, and the behavior of the Roman Catholic church and other Christian denominations during the Holocaust in Germany. Joseph Keysor's well reasoned, well researched, and comprehensive defense of the Christian faith against modern accusations is a useful tool for scholars, pastors, and educators who are interested in the truth. "Hitler and Christianity" is a necessity in one's apologetics library, and secularists, skeptics, and atheists will be obliged to respond.

Shaping the minds of the future generation was pivotal to the Nazi regime in order to ensure the continuing success of the Third Reich. Through the curriculum, the elite schools and youth groups, the Third Reich waged a war for the minds of the young. Hitler understood the importance of education in creating self-identity, inculcating national pride, promoting 'racial purity' and building loyalty. Education in Nazi Germany examines how Nazism took shape in the classroom via school textbook policy, physical education and lessons on Nationalist Socialist heroes and anti-Semitism. Offering a compelling new analysis of Nazi educational policy, this book brings to the forefront an often-overlooked aspect of the Third Reich.

In this volume, the first English-language account of the underground Jewish resistance in Romania, I. C. Butnaru examines the efforts that resulted in some 300,000 Romanian Jews surviving the Holocaust. After detailing the rise of the fascist Iron Guards and the consequences of German domination, Butnaru describes the organization of the Jewish resistance movement, its various contacts within the government, and its activities. While emphasizing the role played by Zionist youth organizations which smuggled Jews from Europe and arranged illegal emigration, Butnaru also describes the role of Jewish parachutists from Palestine, the links between the resistance and the key international Jewish organizations, and even the links with the Gestapo. Waiting for Jerusalem is the most comprehensive study of the efforts to save the Jewish population of Romania, and, as such, will be of considerable use to scholars and students of the Holocaust and Eastern European Studies.

If you had a chance to speak to the Pope, what would you say? This is the question that 13 noted Holocaust scholars--Christians of various denominations and Jews (including some Holocaust survivors)--address in this volume. The Holocaust was a Christian as well as a Jewish tragedy; nonetheless, the Roman Catholic hierarchy has offered very little official discourse on the Church's role in it. These essays provide solid constructive criticism and make a major contribution to both Holocaust and Christian studies.

Essays mapping the history of relief parcels sent to Jewish prisoners during World War II. More than Parcels: Wartime Aid for Jews in Nazi-Era Camps and Ghettos edited by Jan Lani?ek and Jan Lambertz explores the horrors of the Holocaust by focusing on the systematic starvation of Jewish civilians confined to Nazi ghettos and camps. The modest relief parcel, often weighing no more than a few pounds and containing food, medicine, and clothing, could extend the lives and health of prisoners. For Jews in occupied Europe, receiving packages simultaneously provided critical emotional sustenance in the face of despair and grief. Placing these parcels front and center in a history of World War II challenges several myths about Nazi rule and Allied responses. First, the traffic in relief parcels and remittances shows that the walls of Nazi detention sites and the wartime borders separating Axis Europe from the outside world were not hermetically sealed, even for Jewish prisoners. Aid shipments were often damaged or stolen, but they continued to be sent throughout the war. Second, the flow of relief parcels-and prisoner requests for them-contributed to information about the lethal nature of Nazi detention sites. Aid requests and parcel receipts became one means of transmitting news about the location, living conditions, and fate of Jewish prisoners to families, humanitarians, and Jewish advocacy groups scattered across the globe. Third, the contributors to More than Parcels reveal that tens of thousands of individuals, along with religious communities and philanthropies, mobilized parcel relief for Jews trapped in Europe. Recent histories of wartime rescue have focused on a handful of courageous activists who hid or led Jews to safety under perilous conditions. The parallel story of relief shipments is no less important. The astonishing accounts offered in More than Parcels add texture and depth to the story of organized Jewish responses to wartime persecution that will be of interest to students and scholars of Holocaust studies and modern Jewish history, as well as members of professional associations with a focus on humanitarianism and human rights.