The SS Cavalry Brigade was a unit of the Waffen-SS that differed from other German military formations as it developed a 'dual role': SS cavalrymen both helped to initiate the Holocaust in the Soviet Union and experienced combat at the front.

Paths to Genocide examines the development of antisemitism from the beginnings of Christianity, through the Middle Ages, Reformation, Enlightenment and nineteenth century liberalism, nationalism and racism to the Holocaust. Focusing on major periods, places and problems in the history of European civilization, the book highlights historical contexts as it shows how religion, science, and socioeconomic forces all played a role in the evolution of antisemitism to its genocidal climax.

"A well-structured, ambitious collection of essays, it will certainly be an essential read for anyone interested in the anti-Jewish policies of National Socialist Germany and their long-term consequences for postwar Europe." . H-German The robbery and restitution of Jewish property are two inextricably linked social processes. It is not possible to understand the lawsuits and international agreements on the restoration of Jewish property of the late 1990s without examining what was robbed and by whom. In this volume distinguished historians first outline the mechanisms and scope of the European-wide program of plunder, before assessing the effectiveness and historical implications of post-war restitution efforts. Integrating the abundance of new research on the material effects of the Holocaust and its aftermath, a comparative perspective is offered on both robbery and restitution, examining developments in countries such as Germany, Poland, Italy, France, Belgium, Hungary and the Czech Republic. The international and interrelated nature of property confiscation initiated by Nazi Germany and its satellite states offers new insights into the functions and beneficiaries of state sanctioned robbery. Although the extent of implementation varied, Jewish spoils were used to boost support for anti-Jewish policies and prop up ailing war finances throughout Europe. Thus the combination of personal enrichment and state plunder were two sides of the same coin. The prolonged struggles over restitution issues are confronted in the second section of the book on the basis of eight national studies. Everywhere the solution of legal and material problems was intertwined with changing national myths about the war and conflicting interpretations of justice. Even those countries that pursued extensive restitution programs using rigorous legal means were unable to compensate or comprehend fully the scale of Jewish loss. Especially in Eastern Europe, it was not until the collapse of communism that even the concept of restoring some Jewish property rights became a viable option. The legacy of robbery and restitution offers both a model for redefining the practice of human rights and keys to understanding the lingering ghosts of antisemitism in countries where few Jews remain. Martin Dean is a Research Scholar at the Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM). He is the author of Collaboration in the Holocaust, published in association with the USHMM in 2000, and of several articles on the confiscation of Jewish property. From 1992 to 1997 he worked as Senior Historian for the Metropolitan Police War Crimes Unit. Constantin Goschler teaches modern history at the Humboldt-University, Berlin. He also taught at the universities of Prague, Jena and Bochum. His main fields of interest are transitional justice in the 20th century, history of science and the history of political ideas in the 19th century. He published several articles and books on restitution and indemnification for Nazi victims. Philipp Ther teaches modern Central and Eastern European History at the European University Frankfurt/Oder, Germany. His fields of interest are comparative nationalism studies, migrations and "ethnic cleansing," postwar social history of Central Europe and most recently the history of opera theatres in the long 19th century."

Although the Holocaust represents one of the worst atrocities in the history of mankind, it is thought of by many only in terms of statistics--the brutal slaughter of over 6 million lives. The art of those who suffered under the most unspeakable conditions and the art of those who reflect on the genocide remind us that statistics cannot tell the entire story. This important and diverse collection focuses on the art expression from the inferno, documenting the Holocaust through sketches of camp life drawn surreptitiously by victims on scraps of paper, and through contemporary paintings, sculpture, and personal reflections. From an informative and comprehensive perspective, this book evokes a powerful response to the 20th-century catastrophe.

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.

This edited collection delves into the horrors of November 1938 and to what degree they portended the Holocaust, demonstrating the varied reactions of Western audiences to news about the pogrom against the Jews. A pattern of stubborn governmental refusal to help German Jews to any large degree emerges throughout the book. Much of this was in response to uncertain domestic economic conditions and underlying racist attitudes towards Jews. Contrasting this was the outrage expressed by ordinary people around the world who condemned the German violence and challenged the policy of Appeasement being advanced by Great Britain and France towards Adolf Hitler's Nazi German government at the time. Contributors employ multiple media sources to make their arguments, and compare these with official government records. For the first time, a collection on Kristallnacht has taken a truly transnational approach, giving readers a fuller understanding of how the events of November 1938 were understood around the Western world.

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.

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.

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.

Appreciating the power of language, and how discriminatory words can have deadly consequences, is pivotal to our understanding of the Holocaust. Engaging with a wealth of primary sources and significant Holocaust scholarship, Anti-Semitism and the Holocaust traces the historical tradition of anti-Semitism to explore this in detail. From religious anti-Semitism in ancient Rome to racially-led anti-Semites focused on building superior nation-states in 19th-century Europe to Hitler's vitriolic attacks, Griech-Polelle analyzes how tropes and stereotypes incited suspicion, dislike and hatred of the Jews - and, ultimately, how this was used to drive anti-Semitic feeling toward genocide. Crucially, this 2nd edition sheds further light on the everyday experience of ordinary Germans and Jews under the Nazi regime, with new chapters examining the role of the Christian Churches in Hitler's persecution of the Jews and those who participated in rescue work and resistance more broadly. With new illustrations, a detailed glossary and up-to-date further reading suggestions and questions, this 2nd edition provides a concise and lucid survey of European Jewry, the Holocaust, and the language of anti-Semitism.

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.

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.

Ruth Kluger (1931 - 2020) passed away on October 5, 2020 in the U.S. Born in Vienna and deported to Theresienstadt, she survived Auschwitz and the Shoah together with her mother. After living in Germany for a short time after the War, she immigrated to New York. She was educated in the U.S. and received degrees in English literature as well as her Ph.D. in German literature at the University of California, Berkeley. She taught at several American universities. She has numerous scholarly publications to her credit, mostly in the fields of German and Austrian literary history. She is also recognized as a poet in her own right, an essayist, and a feminist critic. She returned to Europe, where she was a guest professor in Goettingen and Vienna. Her memoir, entitled weiter leben (1992), which she translated and revised in an English parallel-text as Still Alive, was a major bestseller and highly regarded autobiographical account of a Holocaust survivor. It was subsequently translated into more than a dozen languages. It has also generated a vigorous critical discussion in its own right. Ruth Kluger received numerous prestigious literary prizes and other distinctions. The present volume, The Legacy of Ruth Kluger and the End of the Auschwitz Century, aims to honor her memory by assessing critically her writings and career. Taking her biography and writings as points of departure, the volume includes contributions in fields and from perspectives which her writings helped to bring into focus acutely. In the table of contents are listed the following contributions: Sander L. Gilman, "Poetry and Naming in Ruth Kluger's Works and Life"; Heinrich Detering, "'Spannung': Remarks on a Stylistic Principle in Ruth Kluger's Writing"; Stephan Braese, "Speaking with Germans. Ruth Kluger and the 'Restitution of Speech between Germans and Jews'"; Irene Heidelberger-Leonard, "Writing Auschwitz: Jean Amery, Imre Kertesz, and Ruth Kluger"; Ulrike Offenberg, "Ruth Kluger and the Jewish Tradition on Women Saying Kaddish; Mark H. Gelber, "Ruth Kluger, Judaism, and Zionism: An American Perspective"; Monica Tempian, "Children's Voices in the Poetry of the Shoah"; Daniel Reynolds, "Ruth Kluger and the Problem of Holocaust Tourism"; Vera Schwarcz, "A China Angle on Memory and Ghosts in the Poetry of Ruth Kluger."

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.

Reined into the service of the Cold War confrontation, antifascist ideology overshadowed the narrative about the Holocaust in the communist states of Eastern Europe. This led to the Western notion that in the Soviet Bloc there was a systematic suppression of the memory of the mass murder of European Jews. Going beyond disputing the mistaken opposition between "communist falsification" of history and the "repressed authentic" interpretation of the Jewish catastrophe, this work presents and analyzes the ways as the Holocaust was conceptualized in the Soviet-ruled parts of Europe. The authors provide various interpretations of the relationship between antifascism and Holocaust memory in the communist countries, arguing that the predominance of an antifascist agenda and the acknowledgment of the Jewish catastrophe were far from mutually exclusive. The interactions included acts of negotiation, cross-referencing, and borrowing. Detailed case studies describe how both individuals and institutions were able to use anti-fascism as a framework to test and widen the boundaries for discussion of the Nazi genocide. The studies build on the new historiography of communism, focusing on everyday life and individual agency, revealing the formation of a great variety of concrete, local memory practices.

Comics, the Holocaust and Hiroshima breaks new ground for history by exploring the relationship between comics as a cultural record, historiography, memory and trauma studies. Comics have a dual role as sources: for gauging awareness of the Holocaust and through close analysis, as testimonies and narratives of childhood emotions and experiences.