Jurek Becker is one of the most important post-war German authors. His first novel, Jacob the Liar, already has the status of a classic of post-1945 European literature about the Holocaust and has been widely translated. This timely book traces the main events in Becker's unusual personal history: his childhood experiences in the Lodz Ghetto and in the concentration camps of Ravensbruck and Sachsenhausen, his life in the GDR, and his move to the West. The author reflects both on Becker's quest for his Jewish identity as well as on his achievements in terms of narrative technique, formal innovation and style. Examining Becker's treatment of the Holocaust in his novels and stories, the author highlights their central themes of hope as resistance to barbarity, the idea of memory, the inability of a survivor of the camps to overcome psychological scars, but also the provocative portrayal of Jews as oppressors who take revenge on their former persecutors. Becker's portrayal of life in former East Germany, the role of gender relations, the problems facing a writer under a socialist regime, and East-West German relations are also investigated.
As the first comprehensive assessment of Becker's life and work, this book will be essential reading for those interested in German and Holocaust literature, critical theory and German studies.

On the nights of November 9 and 10, 1938, rampaging mobs throughout Germany and the newly acquired territories of Austria and Sudetenland freely attacked Jews in the street, in their homes and at their places of work and worship. At least 96 Jews were killed and hundreds more injured, as many as 2,000 synagogues were burned, almost 7,500 Jewish businesses were destroyed, cemeteries and schools were vandalized, and 30,000 Jews were arrested and sent to concentration camps. This pogrom has come to be called "Kristallnacht," "the Night of Broken Glass."
Although numerous anti-Jewish regulations had been adopted prior to Kristallnacht, these measures had only imposed restrictions on German Jews' economic activity and occupational opportunities. Prior to Kristallnacht, the Jews had little reason to believe their physical safety was at risk. That all changed 70 years ago this coming November. The events of that night were the beginning of the Holocaust.
It is fitting that a book record the events of this seminal historical event on the occasion of the 70th anniversary of Kristallnacht. This book provides an account of the incidents immediately preceding the attacks on November 9-10, an oral history that provides a minute-by-minute and hour-by-hour account of what happened during the pogroms, and an analysis of the immediate aftermath and why the Holocaust can be dated from this evening.

Sent across the ocean by their parents and taken in by foster parents and distant relatives, approximately 1,000 children, ranging in age from fourteen months to sixteen years, landed in the United States and out of Hitler's reach between 1934 and 1945. Seventy years after the first ship brought a handful of these children to American shores, the general public and many of the children themselves remain unaware of these rescues, and the fact that they were accomplished despite powerful forces in and outside the government that did not want them to occur. This is the first published account, told in the words of the children and their rescuers, to detail this unknown part of America's response to the Holocaust. It will challenge the belief that Americans did nothing to directly and actively save Holocaust victims. Judith Tydor Baumel, Holocaust scholar and sister of two rescued children, provides an introduction explaining why, when, how, and where the rescues were carried out, who the heroes and heroines were, and which individuals and organizations placed almost insurmountable obstacles in their path. This account presents both recollections and experiences recorded at the time of the rescued children, their descendants, and their rescuers. The story demonstrates what a small group of determined people can do to change the course of history.

The essays in this book reflect on the significance of the Holocaust sixty years afterwards. In this time it has become embedded in collective memory This book explores the idea that even thought the tenets of Nazism--racism, dictatorship, expansionism --have become unacceptable in the western world, little has actually changed. Since 1945 crimes against humanity and human rights have occurred throughout the world. The Holocaust thus pre-figures a "death-drive" in contemporary culture: the idea that the ability to deliver death is the supreme expression of self-affirmation.

A crafted collection detailing western responses to the Balkan War We didn't know. For half a century, Western politicians and intellectuals have so explained away their inaction in the face of genocide in World War II. In stark contrast, Western observers today face a daily barrage of information and images, from CNN, the Internet, and newspapers about the parties and individuals responsible for the current Balkan War and crimes against humanity. The stories, often accompanied by video or pictures of rape, torture, mass graves, and ethnic cleansing, available almost instantaneously, do not allow even the most uninterested viewer to ignore the grim reality of genocide. And yet, while information abounds, so do rationalizations for non-intervention in Balkan affairs-the threshold of real genocide has yet to be reached in Bosnia; all sides are equally guilty; Islamic fundamentalism in Bosnia is a threat to the West; it will only end when they all tire of killing each other-to name but a few. In This Time We Knew, Thomas Cushman and Stjepan G. Mestrovic have put together a collection of critical, reflective, essays that offer detailed sociological, political, and historical analyses of western responses to the war. This volume punctures once and for all common excuses for Western inaction. This Time We Knew further reveals the reasons why these rationalizations have persisted and led to the West's failure to intercede, in the face of incontrovertible evidence, in the most egregious crimes against humanity to occur in Europe since World War II. Contributors to the volume include Kai Erickson, Jean Baudrillard, Mark Almond, David Riesman, Daniel Kofman, Brendan Simms, Daniele Conversi, Brad Kagan Blitz, James J. Sadkovich, and Sheri Fink.

Judged only as a World War Two survivor's chronicle, Millie Werber's story would be remarkable enough. Born in central Poland in the town of Radom, she found herself trapped in the ghetto at the age of fourteen, a slave laborer in an armaments factory in the summer of 1942, transported to Auschwitz in the summer of 1944, before being marched to a second armaments factory. She faced death many times; indeed she was certain that she would not survive. But she did.

Many years later, when she began to share her past with Eve Keller, the two women rediscovered the world of the teenage girl Millie had been during the war. Most important, Millie revealed her most precious private memory: of a man to whom she was married for a few brief months. He was--if not the love of her life--her first great unconditional passion. He died, leaving Millie with a single photograph taken on their wedding day, and two rings of gold that affirm the presence of a great passion in the bleakest imaginable time.

Hero Martyr Poet
The inspiring story of a remarkable life cut short.

I don t think Hannah wanted to die for the sake of having her memory exalted in history or to prove herself equal to a romantic image she conceived for herself. Her purpose wasn t to die. She died for her life s purpose. U.S. Senator John McCain, in "Why Courage Matters"

Hannah Senesh, poet and Israel s national heroine, has come to be seen as a symbol of Jewish heroism. Safe in Palestine during World War II, she volunteered for a mission to help rescue fellow Jews in her native Hungary. She was captured by the Nazis, endured imprisonment and torture, and was finally executed at the age of twenty-three.

Like Anne Frank, she kept a diary from the time she was thirteen. This new edition brings together not only the widely read and cherished diary, but many of Hannah s poems and letters, memoirs written by Hannah s mother, accounts by parachutists who accompanied Hannah on her fateful mission, and insightful material not previously published in English.

Described by a fellow parachutist as a spiritual girl guided almost by mysticism, Hannah s life has something of value to teach everyone. Now the subject of a feature-length documentary, Blessed Is the Match: The Life and Death of Hannah Senesh, Hannah s words and actions will inspire people from each generation to follow their own inner voices, just as she followed hers.

The Halbjuden of Hitler's Germany were half Christian and half Jewish but, like the rest of the Mischlinge (or "partial-Jews"), were far too Jewish in the eyes of the Nazis. Thus, while they were allowed for a time to coexist with the rest of German society, they were granted only the most marginal or menial jobs, restricted from marrying Aryans or even leading normal social lives, and sent eventually to forced-labor and concentration camps. More than 70,000 Germans were subjected to these restrictions and indignities, created and fostered by Hitler's morally bankrupt race laws, yet to this day few personal accounts of their experiences exist.

James Tent movingly recounts how these men and women from all over Germany and from all walks of life struggled to survive in an increasingly hostile society, even as their Jewish relatives were disappearing into the East. It draws on extensive interviews with twenty survivors, many of whom were teenagers when Hitler came to power, to show how "half Jews" coped with conditions on a day-to-day basis, and how the legacy of the hatred they suffered has forever lingered in their minds.

Tent provides gripping stories of life beneath the boot-heel of Nazi rule: a woman deemed unsuited for a career in nursing because the shape of her earlobes and breasts indicated she was not "racially suited," a man arrested for "race defilement" because he lived with an Aryan woman, and many others. Writing with a deep and abiding respect for his subjects, Tent shows how Nazi discrimination and persecution affected the lives of the Mischlinge beginning in 1933, and he tells how such treatment intensified through the later years of the war.

These testimonies offer rare insight into how Nazi persecution functioned at a very personal level. Tent's witnesses share experiences in school and problems in the workplace, where the best survival strategy was to find an unobtrusive niche in a nondescript job. They tell of obstacles to personal and romantic relationships. And they soberly remind us that by 1944 they too were rounded up for forced labor, certain to be the next victims of Nazi genocide.

"In the Shadow of the Holocaust" demonstrates the lengths to which the Nazis were willing to go in order to eradicate Judaism-a fanaticism that increased over time and even in the face of impending military defeat. These people mostly survived the Holocaust, yet they paid for their re-assimilation into German society by remaining silent in the face of haunting memories. This book breaks that silence and is a testament to human endurance under the most trying circumstances.

Convinced before the onset of Operation "Barbarossa" in June 1941 of both the ease, with which the Red Army would be defeated and the likelihood that the Soviet Union would collapse, the Nazi regime envisaged a radical and far-reaching occupation policy which would result in the political, economic and racial reorganization of the occupied Soviet territories and bring about the deaths of 'x million people' through a conscious policy of starvation. This study traces the step-by-step development of high-level planning for the occupation policy in the Soviet territories over a twelve-month period and establishes the extent to which the various political and economic plans were compatible.

A graduate of the Universities of Huddersfield and Sheffield in the UK, Alex J. Kay obtained his doctorate in Modern and Contemporary History in 2005 from Berlin's Humboldt University, where he has also given courses on early modern British history. Based in Berlin, he is currently working on a new book on anti-Semitism in late Weimar parliamentary politics.

..".a useful addition to Holocaust historiography and literature. It is accessible for students and teachers as well as the general reader. It provides a taste of what the world of Holocaust scholarship is actively engaged in--the constant exploration and understanding of the history of the murder of the Jews of Europe and the ongoing effect of these events on the world today. Hopefully, this book will stimulate others to read further and deeper." . H-German Few essays about the Holocaust are better known or more important than Primo Levi's reflections on what he called "the gray zone," a reality in which moral ambiguity and compromise were pronounced. In this volume accomplished Holocaust scholars, among them Raul Hilberg, Gerhard L. Weinberg, Christopher Browning, Peter Hayes, and Lynn Rapaport, explore the terrain that Levi identified. Together they bring a necessary interdisciplinary focus to bear on timely and often controversial topics in cutting-edge Holocaust studies that range from historical analysis to popular culture. While each essay utilizes a particular methodology and argues for its own thesis, the volume as a whole advances the claim that the more we learn about the Holocaust, the more complex that event turns out to be. Only if ambiguities and compromises in the Holocaust and its aftermath are identified, explored, and at times allowed to remain--lest resolution deceive us--will our awareness of the Holocaust and its implications be as full as possible. Jonathan Petropoulos is the John V. Croul Professor of European History and Director of the Gould Center for Humanistic Studies, at Claremont McKenna College. John Roth is that Edward J. Sexton Professor of Philosophy and Director of the Center for the Study of the Holocaust, Genocide, and Human Rights, at Claremont McKenna College.

"One strength of Carrier's book is the way he charts these debates, showing how they were symptomatic of a wider struggle over national memory. Another great strength of this book is its thorough and informative knowledge of theoretical literature on memory and memorials, a knowledge which Carrier - to his enormous credit - does not simply parade before us but actually applies to the objects of his study...a superb book."- European History Quarterly

" Carrier] argues convincingly that what really matters about these memorials is not so much the finished product as the social and political context in which they were mooted, conceived and built - and the empirical context in which they are subsequently interpreted... Another great strength of this book is its thorough and informative knowledge of theoretical literature on memory and memorials. - European History

"Carrier's analysis of the form and the multidimensional meaning of the monuments is insightful. One of the most important contributions of this book is its argument that sites of memory produce not only social consensus but also dialogue and competition between the victims." - German History

Since 1989, two sites of memory with respect to the deportation and persecution of Jews in France and Germany during the Second World War have received intense public attention: the Velo d'Hiver (Winter Velodrome) in Paris and the Monument for the Murdered Jews of Europe or Holocaust Monument in Berlin. Why is this so? Both monuments, the author argues, are unique in the history of memorial projects. Although they are genuine "sites of memory," neither monument celebrates history, but rather serve as platforms for the deliberation, negotiation and promotion of social consensus over the memorial status of war crimes in France and Germany. The debates over these monuments indicate that it is the communication among members of the public via the mass media, rather than qualities inherent in the sites themselves, which transformed these sites into symbols beyond traditional conceptions of heritage and patriotism.

On 7 November 1938, an impoverished seventeen-year-old Polish Jew living in Paris, obsessed with Nazi persecution of his family in Germany, brooding on revenge - and his own insignificance - bought a handgun, carried it on the Metro to the German Embassy in Paris and, never before having fired a weapon, shot down the first German diplomat he saw. When the official died two days later, Hitler and Goebbels used the event as their pretext for the state-sponsored wave of anti-Semitic violence and terror known as Kristallnacht, the pogrom that was the initiating event of the Holocaust. Overnight this obscure young man, Herschel Grynszpan, found himself world-famous, his face on front pages everywhere, and a pawn in the machinations of power. Instead of being executed, he found himself a privileged prisoner of the Gestapo while Hitler and Goebbels prepared a show-trial. The trial, planned to the last detail, was intended to prove that the Jews had started the Second World War. Alone in his cell, Herschel soon grasped how the Nazis planned to use him, and set out to wage a battle of wits against Hitler and Goebbels, knowing perfectly well that if he succeeded in stopping the trial, he would certainly be murdered. Until very recently, what really happened has remained hazy. Hitler's Scapegoat, based on the most recent research - including access to a heretofore untapped archive compiled by a Nuremberg rapporteur - tells Herschel's extraordinary story in full for the first time.

Meet Renee and Herta, two sisters who faced the unimaginable - together. This is their true story. RENEE: I was ten years old then, and my sister was eight. The responsibility was on me to warn everyone when the soldiers were coming because my sister and both my parents were deaf. I was my family's ears. As Jews living in 1940s Czechoslovakia, Renee, Herta and their parents were in immediate danger when the Holocaust came to their door. As the only hearing person in her family, Renee had to alert her parents and sister whenever the sound of Nazi boots approached their home so they could hide. But soon their parents were tragically taken away, and the two sisters went on the run, desperate to find a safe place to hide. Eventually they, too, would be captured and taken to the concentration camp Bergen-Belsen. Communicating in sign language and relying on each other for strength in the midst of illness, death and starvation, Renee and Herta would have to fight to survive the darkest of times. This gripping memoir, told in a vivid 'oral history' format, is a testament to the power of sisterhood and love, and now more than ever a reminder of how important it is to honour the past, and keep telling our own stories. A memoir of the Holocaust Perfect for those who want to learn more about the experiences of people during this period of time in history Written with Joshua M. Greene, a renowned Holocaust scholar.

The Yiddish Historians and the Struggle for a Jewish History of the Holocaust identifies the Yiddish historians who created a distinctively Jewish approach to writing Holocaust history in the early years following World War II. Author Mark L. Smith explains that these scholars survived the Nazi invasion of Eastern Europe, yet they have not previously been recognized as a specific group who were united by a common research agenda and a commitment to sharing their work with the worldwide community of Yiddish-speaking survivors. These Yiddish historians studied the history of the Holocaust from the perspective of its Jewish victims, focusing on the internal aspects of daily life in the ghettos and camps under Nazi occupation and stressing the importance of relying on Jewish sources and the urgency of collecting survivor testimonies, eyewitness accounts, and memoirs. With an aim to dispel the accusations of cowardice and passivity that arose against the Jewish victims of Nazism, these historians created both a vigorous defense and also a daring offense. They understood that most of those who survived did so because they had engaged in a daily struggle against conditions imposed by the Nazis to hasten their deaths. The redemption of Jewish honor through this recognition is the most innovative contribution by the Yiddish historians. It is the area in which they most influenced the research agendas of nearly all subsequent scholars while also disturbing certain accepted truths, including the beliefs that the earliest Holocaust research focused on the Nazi perpetrators, that research on the victims commenced only in the early 1960s, and that Holocaust study developed as an academic discipline separate from Jewish history. Now, with writings in Yiddish journals and books in Europe, Israel, and North and South America having been recovered, listed, and given careful discussion, former ideas must yield before the Yiddish historians' published works. The Yiddish Historians and the Struggle for a Jewish History of the Holocaust is an eye-opening monograph that will appeal to Holocaust and Jewish studies scholars, students, and general readers.

Since 1989, two sites of memory with respect to the deportation and persecution of Jews in France and Germany during the Second World War have received intense public attention: the Velo d'Hiver (Winter Velodrome) in Paris and the Monument for the Murdered Jews of Europe or Holocaust Monument in Berlin. Why is this so? Both monuments, the author argues, are unique in the history of memorial projects. Although they are genuine "sites of memory", neither monument celebrates history, but rather serve as platforms for the deliberation, negotiation and promotion of social consensus over the memorial status of war crimes in France and Germany. The debates over these monuments indicate that it is the communication among members of the public via the mass media, rather than qualities inherent in the sites themselves, which transformed these sites into symbols beyond traditional conceptions of heritage and patriotism.

The persecution and mass-murder of the Jews during World War II would not have been possible without the modern organization of division of labor. Moreover, the perpetrators were dependent on human and organizational resources they could not always control by hierarchy and coercion. Instead, the persecution of the Jews was based, to a large extent, on a web of inter-organizational relations encompassing a broad variety of non-hierarchical cooperation as well as rivalry and competition. Based on newly accessible government and corporate archives, this volume combines fresh evidence with an interpretation of the governance of persecution, presented by prominent historians and social scientists. Gerald D. Feldman was Professor of History and Director of the Institute of European Studies at the University of California, Berkeley. His special fields of interest were 20th-century German history, and he had a special interest in business history, most recently authoring a biography of Hugo Stinnes, participating in the history of the Deutsche Bank, and writing a history of the Allianz Insurance Company in the Nazi period. Wolfgang Seibel is Professor of Political Science at the University of Konstanz, Germany. Previous appointments include guest professorships at the Institute for Advanced Study, Vienna (1992), and the University of California at Berkeley (1994). He was also a temporary member of the School of Social Science (1989/90) and of the School of Historical Studies (2003) of the Institute of Advanced Study, Princeton. Currently (2004/2005) he is a fellow of the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin. His research is mainly devoted to issues of politics, public bureaucracy and non-governmental organizations.

Despite Adorno's famous dictum, the memory of the Shoah features prominently in the cultural legacy of the 20th century and beyond. It has led to a proliferation of works of representation and re-memorialization which have brought in their wake concerns about a 'holocaust industry' and banalization. This volume sheds fresh light on some of the issues, such as the question of silence and denial, of the formation of contemporary identities - German, East European, Jewish or Israeli, the consequences of the legacy of the Shoah for survivors and for the 'second generation,' and the political, ideological, and professional implications of Shoah historiography. One of the conclusions to be drawn from this volume is that the 'Auschwitz code,' invoked in relation to all 'unspeakable' catastrophes, has impoverished our vocabulary; it does not help us remember the Shoah and its victims, but rather erases that memory.

The name of the town, Brest-Litovsk, indicates its link with Lithuania. Although founded by the Slavs in 1017 and invaded by the Mongols in 1241, it became part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania in 1319, and in1569 it became the capital of the unified Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. The town is also known as "Brisk," in Yiddish to the Jews who lived and thrived there for six centuries. Jewish "Brisk" had an illustrious history; the famous Brisker Yeshivah attracted scholars from all over Europe. The list of Rabbis of Brest includes such famous rabbis as Solomon Luria and Joel Sirkes in earlier periods, the Katzenellenbogens, and three generations of the Soloveitchik dynasty in more recent times. Brest also produced Jacob Epstein the great Talmudist at the Hebrew University, Menachem Begin, and many other major religious, literary and political leaders. In 1923, Jews, made up 60% of Brest's population of 60,000. This book was written by Brest survivors and former residents from many countries who contributed their memories of their hometown as a record for future generations, and as testament and loving tribute to the innocent Victims of the Shoah. It is a must read for researchers of the town and descendants of "Briskers." Brest, Belarus is located at 52 06' North Latitude and 23 42' East Longitude 203 mi SW of Minsk. lternate names for the town are: Brest Belarussian], Brest Litovsk Russian], Brze Litewski Polish], Brze nad Bugiem Polish, 1918-39], Brisk Yiddish], Brasta Lithuanian], Brest Litowsk, Brisk Dlita, Brisk de-Lita, Brze -Litewsk, Brist nad Bugie, Bzheshch nad Bugyem, Biera cie

The Fragility of Law examines the ways in which, during the Second World War, the Belgian government and judicial structure became implicated in the identification, exclusion and killing of its Jewish residents, and in the theft - through Aryanization - of Jewish property. David Fraser demonstrates how a series of political and legal compromises meant that the infrastructure for antisemitic persecutions and ultimately the deaths of thousands of Belgian Jews was Belgian. Based on extensive archival research in Belgium, France, the United States and Israel, The Fragility of Law offers the first detailed exploration in English of this intriguing and virtually unexplored episode of Holocaust history. Belgian legal officials did not hesitate to invoke the provisions of international law found in the Hague Convention and those guarantees of individual freedom found in the national Constitution to oppose the demands of the German Occupying Authority. However, they remained largely silent when anti-Jewish persecution was at stake. Indeed, despite the 2007 official report of expert historians on Belgian state collaboration in the persecution of the country's Jewish population, the mythology of "passive collaboration" which has dominated Belgian historiography and accounts of the Holocaust in that country, must be radically rethought.