Of the 400,000 German-speaking Jews that escaped the Third Reich as refugees, approximately 16,000 ended up in Shanghai, China, as part of one of the more remote enclaves within the Jewish diaspora. The stories of the Shanghai Jews contain extremes of the suffering and endurance that defined the refugee experience. Nobody wanted to go to China, and because Shanghai was the last choice of refugees, those who went there had nowhere else left to go. They had endured every stage of escalating Nazi persecution, including the mass arrests during Kristallnacht, the real beginning of the Holocaust. This groundbreaking oral history volume is based on 20 years of interviews with over 100 former Shanghai refugees. It offers a moving and at times astonishing collective portrait of courage, culture shock, persistence, and enduring hope in the face of unimaginable hardships.

Since the end of World War II, the ongoing efforts aimed at criminal prosecution, restitution, and other forms of justice in the wake of the Holocaust have constituted one of the most significant episodes in the history of human rights and international law. As such, they have attracted sustained attention from historians and legal scholars. This edited collection substantially enlarges the topical and disciplinary scope of this burgeoning field, exploring such varied subjects as literary analysis of Hannah Arendt's work, the restitution case for Gustav Klimt's Beethoven Frieze, and the ritualistic aspects of criminal trials.

Combined for the first time here are Maus I: A Survivor's Tale and Maus II - the complete story of Vladek Spiegelman and his wife, living and surviving in Hitler's Europe. By addressing the horror of the Holocaust through cartoons, the author captures the everyday reality of fear and is able to explore the guilt, relief and extraordinary sensation of survival - and how the children of survivors are in their own way affected by the trials of their parents. A contemporary classic of immeasurable significance. 

The Handbook of Polish, Czech, and Slovak Holocaust Fiction aims to increase the visibility and show the versatility of works from East-Central European countries. It is the first encyclopedic work to bridge the gap between the literary production of countries that are considered to be main sites of the Holocaust and their recognition in international academic and public discourse. It contains over 100 entries offering not only facts about the content and motifs but also pointing out the characteristic fictional features of each work and its meaning for academic discourse and wider reception in the country of origin and abroad. The publication will appeal to the academic and broader public interested in the representation of the Holocaust, anti-Semitism, and World War II in literature and the arts. Besides prose, it also considers poetry and theatrical plays from 1943 through 2018. An introduction to the historical events and cultural developments in Poland, Czechoslovakia, Czech, and Slovak Republic, and their impact on the artistic output helps to contextualise the motif changes and fictional strategies that authors have been applying for decades. The publication is the result of long-term scholarly cooperation of specialists from four countries and several dozen academic centres.

This story of survival against all odds tells what befell Kurt Pick, an Austrian Jew, after he left his Vienna home and fled the Nazi persecution of his race. He was captured whilst attempting to walk across the German border into Belgium, but escaped and succeeded in being smuggled into Brussels, where he existed in constant fear, freezing cold and near starvation. In the summer of 1939 he was appointed Administrator of a camp for Jewish refugee families at Marneffe, near Brussels, becoming their official link with the outside world. When Germany invaded Belgium, the 600 residents were evacuated and joined the immense tide of refugees clogging the roads. Pick survived the air attacks and reached Avesnes, where he was mistaken for a spy, almost shot, and then nearly lynched by civilians. With the Germans now in occupation, he walked 100 miles back to Brussels. In 1942 he left to become a baker at a boarding school which he found was sheltering many Jews and was being used as a centre for the Resistance. When the Germans raided the school, he bluffed his way out and escaped to Liege. From that point Pick was permanently on the run until the Americans liberated Liege in September 1944. He survived, but was to discover that most of his family had perished.

What are you willing to do to survive? What are you willing to endure if it means you might live? 'Achingly moving, gives much-needed hope . . . Deserves the status both as a valuable historical source and as a stand-out memoir' Daily Express 'A story that needs to be heard' 5***** Reader Review Entering Terezin, a Nazi concentration camp, Franci was expected to die. She refused. In the summer of 1942, twenty-two-year-old Franci Rabinek - designated a Jew by the Nazi racial laws - arrived at Terezin, a concentration camp and ghetto forty miles north of her home in Prague. It would be the beginning of her three-year journey from Terezin to the Czech family camp in Auschwitz-Birkenau, to the slave labour camps in Hamburg, and finally to Bergen Belsen. Franci, a spirited and glamorous young woman, was known among her fellow inmates as the Prague dress designer. Having endured the transportation of her parents, she never forgot her mother's parting words: 'Your only duty to us is to stay alive'. During an Auschwitz selection, Franci would spontaneously lie to Nazi officer Dr Josef Mengele, and claim to be an electrician. A split-second decision that would go on to endanger - and save - her life. Unpublished for 50 years, Franci's War is an astonishing account of one woman's attempt to survive. Heartbreaking and candid, Franci finds the light in her darkest years and the horrors she faces instill in her, strength and resilience to survive and to live again. She gives a voice to the women prisoners in her tight-knit circle of friends. Her testimony sheds new light on the alliances, love affairs, and sexual barter that took place during the Holocaust, offering a compelling insight into the resilience and courage of ordinary people in an extraordinary situation. Above all, Franci's War asks us to explore what it takes to survive, and what it means to truly live. 'A candid account of shocking events. Franci is someone many women today will be able to identify with' 5***** Reader Review 'First-hand accounts of life in Nazi death camps never lose their terrible power but few are as extraordinary as Franci's War' Mail on Sunday 'Fascinating and traumatic. Well worth a read' 5***** Reader Review

For decades, historians have debated how and to what extent the Holocaust penetrated the German national consciousness between 1933 and 1945. How much did "ordinary" Germans know about the subjugation and mass murder of the Jews, when did they know it, and how did they respond collectively and as individuals? This compact volume brings together six historical investigations into the subject from leading scholars employing newly accessible and previously underexploited evidence. Ranging from the roots of popular anti-Semitism to the complex motivations of Germans who hid Jews, these studies illuminate some of the most difficult questions in Holocaust historiography, supplemented with an array of fascinating primary source materials.

While the Netherlands had often been thought of as a champion of racial and ethnic tolerance before and during the Second World War, more than 75% of Dutch Jews were killed and those returning after the war were met with subtle but tough anti-Jewish sentiments as they tried to reclaim their former lives. For most survivors, the negative reactions were unexpected and shocking. Before the war, Dutch Jews had become part of the fabric of Dutch life and society, so the obstacles they faced upon their return were particularly painful and difficult to handle. The sobering picture presented in this book, based on research in archives, survivor's memoirs, and interviews with survivors, examines and chronicles the experiences of repatriated Jews in the Netherlands and sheds light on the continuing uneasiness and sensitivities between Jews and non-Jews there today. In the aftermath of the Holocaust, survivors returned to their home countries not knowing what to expect. In the Netherlands, considered a more tolerant nation, returnees wondered how they would be received by their neighbors; what had happened to their homes, their businesses, and their possessions; and whether or not they would be welcomed back to their jobs or their schools. The answers to many of these questions are now more important than ever, as claims for restitution continue to be made. Hondius shows that survivors returning to the Netherlands were met with a revival in anti-Semitism around the issue of liberation and that many were forced to create two memories of the time: one around the rejoicing and displays of triumph that took place in public and the other around the secret discrimination and cruelty, dealt subtly, inthe private arenas of everyday life. The blinding effect of a long history of generally good Jewish/non-Jewish relations turns out to be a most tragic aspect of the history of the Holocaust and the Netherlands.

The Holocaust is a subject of enormous historical importance. The murder of approximately 6 million Jews stands apart as a perhaps the most horrendous episode in world history; in this fresh introduction, McDonough examines the racial war-within-a-war, outlining controversies and examining how it has been popularized and institutionalized.

6 million Jews were murdered by the Nazis, but this is only half the story. Doris Bergen reveals how the Holocaust extended beyond the Jews to engulf millions of other victims in related programmes of mas-murder. The Nazi killing machine began with the disabled, and went on to target Afro-Germans, Gypsies, non-Jewish Poles, French African soldiers, Soviet prisoners of war, homosexual men and Jehovah's Witnesses. As Nazi Germany conquered more territories and peoples, Hitler's war turned soldiers, police officers and doctors into trained killers, creating a veneer of legitimacy around vicious acts of ethnic cleansing and genocide. Using the testimonies of both survivors and eyewitnesses, as well as a wealth of rarely seen photographs, Doris Bergen shows the true extent of the catastrophe that overwhelmed Europe during the Second World War, in a gripping story of the lives and deaths of real people.

When German troops come to the small village of Belzyce, Poland, in 1939, nine-year-old Jakub Szabmacher's world is forever changed. At first the humiliations inflicted by the Germans seem small, but the conditions worsen until eventually Jakub's family and much of his village are murdered, and he is sent to various concentration camps in Poland and Germany, where he struggles to survive the terrible conditions of camp life. Finally liberated in 1945 from the concentration camp in Flossenburg, Germany, Jakub is befriended by American troops and with their help brought to the United States, where he takes the name Jack Terry. Coauthor Alicia Nitecki, whose grandfather was also imprisoned at Flossenburg, uses Terry's personal memories to tell young Jakub's story, as well as unpublished memoirs, private letters, and interviews with former inmates of the Flossenburg concentration camp and the townspeople of Belzyce and Flossenburg. Part history, part autobiography. "Jakub's World offers an anguished young boy's perspective on the Holocaust.

View the Table of Contents. Read the Introduction.

"Holocaust Restitution compiles a group of essays from leading authorities and participants in the Holocaust restitution movement. This book gathers different voices from across the Holocaust restitution movement and does an ex post facto review of the litigation. Holocaust Restitution presents an up-to-date analysis of the Holocaust restitution movement and presents the drama of Holocaust restitution from the perspective of almost all the major players, including plaintiff counsel, defense counsel, judges, diplomats, administrators, corporate defendants, and Jewish representatives. It also includes outside viewpoints from respected commentators, including historians, academics, and Holocaust survivors. It is remarkably comprehensive, does not shy away from controversy, and thoughtfully reflects on the Holocaust and its implications for future international human rights adjudication."
--"Stanford Journal of International Law"

aHolocaust Restitution compiles a group of essays from leading authorities and participants in the Holocaust restitution movement. This book gathers different voices from across the Holocaust restitution movement and does an ex post facto review of the litigation. Holocaust Restitution presents an up-to-date analysis of the Holocaust restitution movement and presents the drama of Holocaust restitution from the perspective of almost all the major players, including plaintiff counsel, defense counsel, judges, diplomats, administrators, corporate defendants, and Jewish representatives. It also includes outside viewpoints from respected commentators, including historians, academics, and Holocaust survivors.It is remarkably comprehensive, does not shy away from controversy, and thoughtfully reflects on the Holocaust and its implications for future international human rights adjudication.a
--"Stanford Journal of International Law"

"Bazyler and Alford have produced an essential tool for understanding the righteous struggle to win restitution for Holocaust victims and their heirs."
--Richard Z. Chesnoff, author of "Pack of Thieves: How Hitler & Europe Plundered the Jews & Committed The Greatest Theft In History"

"This excellent volume makes a significant contribution both to legal studies and to the history of the Holocaust. The editors deserve special praise for including chapters by Holocaust survivors, assuring that their often-forgotten voices are not lost within the great debate about Holocaust restitution."
--Marilyn J. Harran, Stern Chair in Holocaust History, Chapman University

"An invaluable text for students and scholars as well as a fascinating read for all those concerned with Holocaust and genocide issues in all disciplines and on behalf of all victims."
--Israel W. Charny, President, International Association of Genocide Scholars

"This unique collection is important in bringing together the perspectives of legal practitioners, activists, archivists and historians, negotiators, and survivors. It is remarkably comprehensive. . . . The editors have not shied away from controversy."
--David Cesarani, Research Professor in History, Royal Holloway, University of London

"If there is a 'final frontier' in understanding the Holocaust, it is the assessment of international litigation, compensation, and reparations claims. This extraordinary group ofcontributions thoughtfully reflects on the Holocaust, past and present, as well as what many would call 'imperfect justice.'"
--Stephen Feinstein, Professor of History and Director, Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies, University of Minnesota

"This collection of essays on Holocaust restitution litigation provides a wonderful overview of the subject. Bazyler and Alford have assembled the 'A list' and the result is a most authoritative and complete treatment."
--Professor William A. Schabas, Director, Irish Centre for Human Rights

Holocaust Restitution is the first volume to present the Holocaust restitution movement directly from the viewpoints of the various parties involved in the campaigns and settlements. Now that the Holocaust restitution claims are closed, this work enjoys the benefits of hindsight to provide a definitive assessment of the movement.

From lawyers and state department officials to survivors and heads of key institutes involved in the negotiations, the volume brings together the central players in the Holocaust restitution movement, both pro and con. The volume examines the claims against European banks and against Germany and Austria relating to forced labor, insurance claims, and looted art claims. It considers their significance, their legacy, and the moral issues involved in seeking and receiving restitution.

Contributors: Roland Bank, Michael Berenbaum, Lee Boyd, Thomas Buergenthal, Monica S. Dugot, Stuart E. Eizenstat, Eric Freedman and Richard Weisberg, Si Frumkin, Peter Hayes, Kai Henning, Roman Kent, Lawrence Kill and Linda Gerstel, Edward R. Korman, Otto Graf Lambsdorff, David A. Lash and Mitchell A. Kamin, Hannah Lessing and FiorentinaAzizi, Burt Neuborne, Owen C. Pell, Morris Ratner and Caryn Becker, Shimon Samuels, E. Randol Schoenberg, William Z. Slany, Howard N. Spiegler, Deborah Sturman, Robert A. Swift, Gideon Taylor, Lothar Ulsamer, Melvyn I. Weiss, Roger M. Witten, Sidney Zabludoff, and Arie Zuckerman.

The testimonies of individuals who survived the Holocaust as children pose distinct emotional and intellectual challenges for researchers: as now-adult interviewees recall profound childhood experiences of suffering and persecution, they also invoke their own historical awareness and memories of their postwar lives, requiring readers to follow simultaneous, disparate narratives. This interdisciplinary volume brings together historians, psychologists, and other scholars to explore child survivors' accounts. With a central focus on the Kestenberg Holocaust Child Survivor Archive's over 1,500 testimonies, it not only enlarges our understanding of the Holocaust empirically but illuminates the methodological, theoretical, and institutional dimensions of this unique form of historical record.

The Jewish Heroes of Warsaw: The Afterlife of the Revolt by Avinoam J. Patt analyzes how the heroic saga of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising was mythologized in a way that captured the attention of Jews around the world, allowing them to imagine what it might have been like to be there, engaged in the struggle against the Nazi oppressor. The timing of the uprising, coinciding with the transition to memorialization and mourning, solidified the event as a date to remember both the heroes and the martyrs of Warsaw, and of European Jewry more broadly. The Jewish Heroes of Warsaw includes nine chapters. Chapter 1 includes a brief history of Warsaw from 1939 to 1943, including the creation of the ghetto and the development of the Jewish underground. Chapter 2 examines how the uprising was reported, interpreted, and commemorated in the first year after the revolt. Chapter 3 concerns the desire for first-person accounts of the fighters. Chapter 4 examines the ways the uprising was seized upon by Jewish communities around the world as evidence that Jews had joined the struggle against fascism and utilized as a prism for memorializing the destruction of European Jewry. Chapter 5 analyzes how memory of the uprising was mobilized by the Zionist movement, even as it debated how to best incorporate the doomed struggle of Warsaw's Jews into the Zionist narrative. Chapter 6 explores the aftermath of the war as survivors struggled to come to terms with the devastation around them. Chapter 7 studies how the testimonies of three surviving ghetto fighters present a fascinating case to examine the interaction between memory, testimony, politics, and history. Chapter 8 analyzes literary and artistic works, including Jacob Pat's Ash un Fayer, Marie Syrkin, Blessed is the Match, and Natan Rapoport's Monument to the Ghetto Fighters, among others. As this book demonstrates, the revolt itself, while described as a ""revolution in Jewish history,"" did little to change the existing modes for Jewish understanding of events. Students and scholars of modern Jewish history, Holocaust studies, and European studies will find great value in this detail-oriented study.

Exploring five key texts from the emerging canon of second generation writing, this exciting new study" "brings together theories of autobiography, trauma, and fantasy to understand the how traumatic family histories are represented. In doing so, it demonstrates the continuing impact of familial and community Holocaust trauma, and the need for a precise, clearly developed theoretical framework in which to situate these works. This book will appeal to final year undergraduates and postgraduate students, as well as scholars in literary and Holocaust-related fields, and an audience with personal and professional interests in the 'second generation'.

How does scale affect our understanding of the Holocaust? In the vastness of its implementation and the sheer amount of death and suffering it produced, the genocide of Europe's Jews presents special challenges for historians, who have responded with work ranging in scope from the world-historical to the intimate. In particular, recent scholarship has demonstrated a willingness to study the Holocaust at scales as focused as a single neighborhood, family, or perpetrator. This volume brings together an international cast of scholars to reflect on the ongoing microhistorical turn in Holocaust studies, assessing its historiographical pitfalls as well as the distinctive opportunities it affords researchers.

This book is open access and available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. It is funded by Knowledge Unlatched. Filming the End of the Holocaust considers how the US Government commissioned the US Signal Corps and other filmmakers to document the horrors of the concentration camps during the April-May 1945 liberation. The evidence of the Nazis' genocidal actions amassed in these films, some of them made by Hollywood luminaries such as John Ford and Billy Wilder, would go on to have a major impact at the Nuremberg Trials; they helped to indict Nazi officials as the judges witnessed scenes of torture, human experimentation and extermination of Jews and non-Jews in the gas chambers and crematoria. These films, some produced by the Soviets, were integral to the war crime trials that followed the Holocaust and the Second World War, and this book provides a thorough, close analysis of the footage in these films and their historical significance. Using research carried out at the Museum of Jewish Heritage, the US National Archives and the film collection at the National Center for Jewish Film at Brandeis University, this book explores the rationale for filming the atrocities and their use in the subsequent trials of Nazi officials in greater detail than anything previously published. Including an extensive bibliography and filmography, Filming the End of the Holocaust is an important text for scholars and students of the Holocaust and its aftermath.

Faced with infectious diseases, starvation, lack of medicines, lack of clean water, and safe sewage, Jewish physicians practiced medicine under severe conditions in the ghettos and concentration camps of the Holocaust. Despite the odds against them, physicians managed to supply public health education, enforce hygiene protocols, inspect buildings and latrines, enact quarantine, and perform triage. Many gave their lives to help fellow prisoners. Based on archival materials and featuring memoirs of Holocaust survivors, this volume offers a rich array of both tragic and inspiring studies of the sanctification of life as practiced by Jewish medical professionals. More than simply a medical story, these histories represent the finest exemplification of a humanist moral imperative during a dark hour of recent history.

In Hitler's Shadow War, World War II scholar Donald McKale contends that Hitler's persecution and murder of the Jews, Slavs, and other groups was his primary effort during the war, not the conquest of Europe. According to McKale, Hitler and the Nazi leadership used the military campaigns of the war as a cover for a genocidal program that centered around the Final Solution. Hitler continued to commit extensive manpower and materials to this 'shadow war' even when Germany was losing the battles of the war's closing years. McKale explores the origins of the anti-Semitism that spread like wildfire through Germany before and during the Nazis' rise to power, and the failure of the Allies to perceive and stop the Holocaust even as they were defeating the Germans in combat.

In this riveting real-life thriller, Philippe Sands offers a unique account of the daily life of senior Nazi SS Brigadeführer Otto Freiherr von Wächter and his wife, Charlotte. Drawing on a remarkable archive of family letters and diaries, he unveils a fascinating insight into life before and during the war, as a fugitive on the run in the Alps and then in Rome, and into the Cold War. Eventually the door is unlocked to a mystery that haunts Wächter's youngest son, who continues to believe his father was a good man - what happened to Otto Wächter while he was preparing to travel to Argentina on the 'ratline', assisted by a Vatican bishop, and what was the explanation for his sudden and unexpected death?

The Nazis put a remarkable amount of effort into anti-Semitic propaganda, intending to bring ordinary Germans around to the destructive ideology of the Nazi party. Julius Streicher (1885-1946) spearheaded many of these efforts, publishing anti-Semitic articles and cartoons in his weekly newspaper, Der Sturmer, the most widely read paper in the Third Reich. Streicher won the close personal friendship of Hitler and Himmler, and drew deserved attacks from the world press. Bytwerk's biography examines Streicher's use of propaganda techniques, and the hate literature towards Jews that continued to appear after his death, bearing his influence.