This book considers how women's experiences have been treated in films dealing with Nazi persecution. Focusing on fiction films made in Europe between 1945 and the present, this study explores dominant discourses on and cinematic representation of women as perpetrators, victims and resisters. Ingrid Lewis contends that European Holocaust Cinema underwent a rich and complex trajectory of change with regard to the representation of women. This change both reflects and responds to key socio-cultural developments in the intervening decades as well as to new directions in cinema, historical research and politics of remembrance. The book will appeal to international scholars, students and educators within the fields of Holocaust Studies, Film Studies, European Cinema and Women's Studies.

How to Write About the Holocaust is a contribution to ongoing debates in historiography and Holocaust studies. More specifically, it combines the theoretical framework that has developed in historiography in the last half a century with the demands of Holocaust representation. The first part of the book analyzes the newest trends in theory of history, focusing especially on postmodernism, starting from the works of the American historian and theorist Hayden White and tracing the genealogy of the postmodern influence in history both from an epistemological and from a political perspective. The second part continues by incorporating these theoretical developments into specific written examples on the Holocaust. By analyzing major works about it, including Saul Friedlander's and Dan Stone's histories of the Holocaust, the book attempts to answer questions like: what is the most appropriate way to write about the Holocaust and what can theory teach us about the practice of history? To conclude, the volume explores the connection between history and literature and asks if the distinction between fact and fiction has become outdated.

On June 22, 1941, the German invasion of the Soviet Union began. In a matter of days, the war reached the suburbs of Kaunas, Lithuania, where a young Jewish violinist, Yochanan Fein, led a happy childhood. On June 22, 1941, that childhood ended. In Boy with a Violin, Fein recounts his early life under Nazi occupation-his survival in the Kaunas Ghetto, the separation from his parents, his narrow escapes from death at the hands of Nazi officers, the harrowing stories of those he knew who did not survive, and the abhorrent conditions he endured while in hiding. He tells the tale of his rescuer, Jonas Paulavicius, the Lithuanian carpenter who sought to save the Jewish spirit. Paulavicius rescued those he believed could rebuild in the wake of the Holocaust, hiding engineers and doctors in his underground Noah's Ark. Among the sixteen he saved stood one fourteen-year-old violinist. Following liberation, Fein describes the aftermath of the war as survivors returned to what was left of their homes and attempted to piece together the fragmented remains of their lives. He recounts the difficulties of returning to some semblance of normal life in the midst of a complex political climate, culminating in his daring escape from Soviet Lithuania. In one of the darkest eras of human history, there were those who proved that the goodness of the human spirit survives against all odds. Boy with a Violin pays tribute to those who risked everything to save a life, and whose altruism crossed the boundaries of race and religion. In this first English translation of Boy with a Violin, Fein continues to offer his testimony to the strength of the human spirit.

Takes a broad perspective of the Holocaust, both in terms of the different groups involved as well as over time with coverage of both roots going back into biblical times and coming up to the present day increase in antisemitism and anti-Roma sentiment, allowing readers to get a long and deep perspective on the Holocaust. Offers the perfect long-view textbook for the numerous courses on the Holocaust. One of few textbooks on the Holocaust despite the numerous books on the subject, and very good at giving the long perspective that can be missing from other books.

Takes a broad perspective of the Holocaust, both in terms of the different groups involved as well as over time with coverage of both roots going back into biblical times and coming up to the present day increase in antisemitism and anti-Roma sentiment, allowing readers to get a long and deep perspective on the Holocaust. Offers the perfect long-view textbook for the numerous courses on the Holocaust. One of few textbooks on the Holocaust despite the numerous books on the subject, and very good at giving the long perspective that can be missing from other books.

This book discusses the active relationship among the mechanics of memory, visual practices, and historical narratives. Reflection on memory and its ties with historical narratives cannot be separated from reflection on the visual and the image as its points of reference which function in time. This volume addresses precisely that temporal aspect of the image, without reducing it to a neutral trace of the past, a mnemotechnical support of memory. As a commemorative device, the image fixes, structures, and crystalizes memory, turning the view of the past into myth. It may, however, also stimulate, transform, and update memory, functioning as a matrix of interpretation and understanding the past. The book questions whether the functioning of the visual matrices of memory can be related to a particular historical and geographical scope, that is, to Central and Eastern Europe, and whether it is possible to find their origin and decide if they are just local and regional or perhaps also Western European and universal. It focuses on the artistic reflection on time and history, in the reconstructions of memory due to change of frontiers and political regimes, as well as endeavours to impose some specific political structure on territories which were complex and mixed in terms of national identity, religion and social composition. The volume is ideal for students and scholars of memory studies, history and visual studies.

Max Edelman was just 17 when the Nazis took him to the first of five work camps, where his only hope of survival was to keep quiet and raise an emotional shield. After witnessing a German Shepherd kill a fellow prisoner, he developed a lifelong fear of dogs. Beaten into blindness by two bored guards, Max survived, buried the past, and moved on. But when he retired, he needed help. After a month of training, he received Calvin, a devoted chocolate Labrador retriever. Calvin guided Max safely through life, but he sensed Max's distance and reserve. Calvin grew listless and lost weight. Trainers intervened-but to no avail. A few days before Calvin's inevitable reassignment, Max went for a walk. A car cut into the crosswalk, and Calvin leapt forward, saving Max's life. Max's emotional shield dissolved. Calvin sensed the change and immediately improved, guiding Max to greater openness, trust, and engagement with the world. Here is the remarkable, touching story of a man who survived history and the dog that unlocked his heart.

In recent years, historical witnessing has emerged as a category of "museum object." Audiovisual recordings of interviews with individuals remembering events of historical importance are now integral to the collections and research activities of museums. They have also become important components in narrative and exhibition design strategies. With a focus on Holocaust museums, this study scrutinizes for the first time the new global phenomenon of the "musealization" of the witness to history, exploring the processes, prerequisites, and consequences of the transformation of video testimonies into exhibits.

There has been extensive research into the impact of the Holocaust on the children of survivors who immigrated to the US and Israel. But very little work in this space has looked at children whose parents fled Nazi persecution before the Holocaust. Even less attention has been paid to those who ended up in Britain from Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia and Hungary. What was the impact on this second generation? How have the lives of these ordinary people been shaped by their parents' dislocation? Using a series of interviews with members of the second generation, Breaking the Silence is a qualitative, interdisciplinary exploration how their lives were shaped by their parents escape from persecution. It offers an insight into how the exile and fear of persecution of the parents and the deaths/murder of unknown relatives has left this generation both bereft of memories and haunted by the past.

Few topics in modern history draw the attention that the Holocaust does. The Shoah has become synonymous with unspeakable atrocity and unbearable suffering. Yet it has also been used to teach tolerance, empathy, resistance, and hope. Understanding and Teaching the Holocaust provides a starting point for teachers in many disciplines to illuminate this crucial event in world history for students. Using a vast array of source materials-from literature and film to survivor testimonies and interviews-the contributors demonstrate how to guide students through these sensitive and painful subjects within their specific historical and social contexts. Each chapter provides pedagogical case studies for teaching content such as antisemitism, resistance and rescue, and the postwar lives of displaced persons. It will transform how students learn about the Holocaust and the circumstances surrounding it.

This book, first published in 1981, is a study of the social and political sources of amoral political rule in modern times. Only a moral indifference unparalleled in history made the Holocaust possible, and by linking the German imperial ambitions to the meaningless suffering and death in the concentration camps, the true significance of the Holocaust is revealed in all its horror. Understanding this requires an understanding of the social forces that produced a national amorality among Germany's elites. The author suggests three contributive causes: a marked ambiguity among Germans in their attitude towards social values; the development of a cadre characterized by status insecurity; and an inability to resolve internal conflict.

This book, first published in 1978, tells one of the great stories of World War 2. Alexander Ramati, one of the first war correspondents to enter Assisi after the Germans had been driven out, details Father Rufino's story of conducting 'Christian pilgrims' from Assisi to the port of Genoa, and helping them find documentation and accommodation in the city under the noses of the Germans. These people were, of course, Jewish refugees from Nazi persecution, saved from death by a priest and his colleagues.

The second edition of this book frames the Holocaust as a catastrophe emerging from varied international responses to the Jewish question during an age of global crisis and war. The chapters are arranged chronologically, thematically, and geographically, reflecting how persecution, responses, and experience varied over time and place, conveying a sense of the Holocaust's complexity. Fully updated, this edition incorporates the past decade's scholarship concerning perpetrators, victims, and bystanders from political, national, and gendered perspectives. It also frames the Holocaust within the broader genocide perspective and within current debates on memory politics and causation. Global in approach and supported by images, maps, diverse voices, and suggestions for further reading, this is the ideal textbook for students of this catastrophic period in world history.

The lens of apartheid-era Jewish commemorations of the Holocaust in South Africa reveals the fascinating transformation of a diasporic community. Through the prism of Holocaust memory, this book examines South African Jewry and its ambivalent position as a minority within the privileged white minority. Grounded in research in over a dozen archives, the book provides a rich empirical account of the centrality of Holocaust memorialization to the community's ongoing struggle against global and local antisemitism. Most of the chapters focus on white perceptions of the Holocaust and reveals the tensions between the white communities in the country regarding the place of collective memories of suffering in the public arena. However, the book also moves beyond an insular focus on the South African Jewish community and in very different modality investigates prominent figures in the anti-apartheid struggle and the role of Holocaust memory in their fascinating journeys towards freedom.

As the third and concluding volume of the series, this work examines the persecution of the Gypsy people in Hungary, Norway, Slovakia and Yugoslavia during World War II, together with Switzerland's policy towards refugees. It also looks at the intertwined fates of the Jews and the Gypsies. Included in the coverage is an overview of the events following 1945--reparations and the postwar trials. Various methodologies associated with research and writings about the Holocaust are also discussed.

This book is the translation of the Yizkor (Memorial) Book ( in Hebrew: Ayara be-lehavot; Pinkas Yampola, Pelekh Volyn- A City in Flames) of the destroyed Jewish Community of Yampol, Ukraine, written by the former residents who survived the Holocaust (Shoah) or emigrated before the war. It contains the history of the community in addition to descriptions of the institutions (synagogues, prayer houses), cultural activities, personalities (Rabbis, leaders, prominent people, characters) and other aspects of the town. It also describes the events of the Shoah in the town and lists the victims. All information is either first-hand accounts or based upon first-hand accounts and therefore serves as a primary resource for either research and to individuals seeking information about the town from which their parents, grandparents or great-grandparents had immigrated; this is their history The book was originally written in Hebrew and Yiddish in 1963, translated into English by volunteers in the Yizkor Book Project of JewishGen, Inc. and then published by the Yizkor-Books-In-Print Project. The town is also known as: Yampol Russian], Yampil Ukrainian], Yampola Yiddish], Jampol Pololish], Yambol, Yampol (Wolyn), Iampol, Jampil Yampol, Ukraine, in the District of Volhyn. 49 58' N 26 15' E, 191 mi West of Kyyiv Not to be confused with a larger Yampol, in Podolia, at 48 15' 28 17'].

This book is a case study into the affective history of Holocaust drama offering a new perspective on the impact of The Diary of Anne Frank, the pivotal 1950s play that was a turning point in Holocaust consciousness. Despite its overwhelming success, criticism of the Broadway makeover has been harsh, suggesting that the alleged Americanization would not do justice to the violence of the Holocaust or Anne Frank's budding Jewishness. This study revisits these issues by focusing on the play's European appropriation delving into the emotional intensity with which the play was produced and received. The core of the exploration is a history of the Dutch staging in ethnographic detail, based on unique archival material such as correspondence with Otto Frank, prompt books, original tapes, blueprints of the set and oral history. The microhistory of the first Dutch performance of the stage adaptation of Anne Frank's diary examines the staging in the context of the postwar hesitant development of publicly voiced Holocaust consciousness. Influenced by memory studies and affect theory, the emphasis is on the emotional impact of the drama on both the members of the cast and the audience and will be of great interest to students and scholars in theater and performance studies, memory studies, cultural history, Jewish studies, Holocaust studies and contemporary European history.

The author explores the complementary, fluid and contradictory nature of meaning-making processes in various contemporary interactional contexts. As such, it will appeal to social scientists with interests in memory studies, the Holocaust and interactional sociology.

British state-supported Holocaust remembrance has dramatically grown in prominence since the 1990s. This monograph provides the first substantial discussion of the interface between public Holocaust memory in contemporary Britain and the nation's changing religious-secular landscape. In the first half of the book attention is given to the relationships between remembrance activities and Jewish, Muslim, Christian, and post-Christian communities. Such relationships are far from monolithic, being entangled in diverse histories, identities, power-structures, and notions of 'British values'. In the book's second half, the focus turns to ways in which public initiatives concerned with Holocaust commemoration and education are intertwined with evocations and perceptions of the sacred. Three state-supported endeavours are addressed in detail: Holocaust Memorial Day, plans for a major new memorial site in London, and school visits to Auschwitz. Considering these phenomena through concepts of ritual, sacred space, and pilgrimage, it is proposed that response to the Holocaust has become a key feature of Britain's 21st century religious-secular landscape. Critical consideration of these topics, it is argued, is necessary for both a better understanding of religious-secular change in modern Britain and a sustainable culture of remembrance and national self-examination. This is the first study to examine Holocaust remembrance and British religiosity/secularity in relation to one another. As such, it will be of keen interest to scholars of Religious Studies, Jewish studies and Holocaust Studies, as well as the Sociology of Religion, Material Religion and Secularism.

While the role the United States played in France's liberation from Nazi Germany is widely celebrated, it is less well known that American Jewish individuals and organizations mobilized to reconstruct Jewish life in France after the Holocaust. In A "Jewish Marshall Plan," Laura Hobson Faure explores how American Jews committed themselves and hundreds of millions of dollars to bring much needed aid to their French coreligionists. Hobson Faure sheds light on American Jewish chaplains, members of the Armed Forces, and those involved with Jewish philanthropic organizations who sought out Jewish survivors and became deeply entangled with the communities they helped to rebuild. While well intentioned, their actions did not always meet the needs and desires of the French Jews. A "Jewish Marshall Plan" examines the complex interactions, exchanges, and solidarities created between American and French Jews following the Holocaust. Challenging the assumption that French Jews were passive recipients of aid, this work reveals their work as active partners who negotiated their own role in the reconstruction process.

"In this insightful book, Stephanie Homer interrogates how different genre conventions (memoir, autobiographical fiction and novels) influence the representation of the Kindertransport. Her theoretical approach is sophisticated, her selection of texts judicious and representative. Homer's contribution to the study of the reception history of the Kindertransport is important and timely." (Bill Niven, Professor of Contemporary German History, Nottingham Trent University) "An immensely valuable intervention into studies of Kindertransport representations, this book invites readers into the ambiguities of memory. With clarity and confidence, the book explores the liberating creative potential of autobiographical fiction and polyphonic fictional voices which have reimagined the places and perspectives on Kindertransport as a migratory experience and literary compulsion. The book makes an important contribution to our understanding of Kindertransport literature as a genuinely transnational genre of witnessing and re-witnessing." (Dr Simone Gigliotti, Senior Lecturer in Holocaust Studies, Royal Holloway, University of London) With the dwindling number of Kindertransportees alive today, the living memory of this rescue operation is being transformed into cultural memory, a trend noticeable in the publication of popular Kindertransport fiction since the beginning of the twenty-first century. This change in memory invites the following questions: how is the child refugee's experience remembered, represented and reimagined in literature? And, consequently, what understanding of the Kindertransport is being transmitted to the following generations? Drawing on understandings of genre, narratology and empathy, this book examines works in English, German and Dutch from three literary genres: memoirs and autobiographical fiction by Kindertransportees and recent fiction by authors with no first-hand experience of the Kindertransport. This study exposes the various conventions, tensions and reader expectations attached to each genre and how these influence the author's construction of the text and, in turn, the nature of the representation. This topical research engages in debates at the heart of current discussions on Holocaust and Kindertransport memory, such as the limits of representability, the "unspeakability" of trauma, and issues of ethics and aesthetics.

This is the extraordinary story of the author's twenty year quest to find gold coins which his father's family buried in their backyard in Poland just prior to being deported by the Nazis into concentration camps. His father survived the war but died when the author was a teenager, leaving him only with the knowledge that he had buried coins somewhere in Poland, and no information about his family. During his quest, Biederman uncovers many interesting and disturbing facts about his father and mother and their families, such as the fact that his father was the third person on Oskar Schindler's list and had a chance meeting with Adolph Hitler, and that his mother was selected as a cook for the infamous Dr. Josef Mengele. The book details the author's quest to unearth his family's past and his father's treasure and continues with his parent's amazing post-war years in Europe and their eventual arrival in North America.

In the spring of 1944, nearly 500,000 Jews were deported from the Hungarian countryside and killed in Auschwitz. In Budapest, only 150,000 Jews survived both the German occupation and dictatorship of the Hungarian National Socialists, who took power in October 1944. Zsuzsanna Ozsvath's family belonged among the survivors. This memoir begins with the the author's childhood during the Holocaust in Hungary. It captures life after the war's end in Communist-ruled Hungary and continues with her and her husband's flight to Germany and eventually the United States. Ozsvath's poignant story of survival, friendship, and love provides readers with a rare glimpse of an extraordinary journey.

The Holocaust in Hungary provides a comprehensive documentary account of one of the most brutal and effective killing campaigns in history. After Nazi Germany took control of Hungary late in World War II, Jews were rounded up with unprecedented speed and sent directly to Auschwitz. They would form the largest group of victims who perished in that camp. The complex interplay between German and Hungarian actors brought about the annihilation of a once-thriving Jewish community and the murder of hundreds of thousands of Jewish men, women, and children. The authors present extensive reports, testimonies, and other primary sources of these events accompanied by in-depth commentary that spans the years from the late 1930s to the fractured political landscape of postwar Hungary.

Holocaust Memory in the Digital Age explores the nexus of new media and memory practices, raising questions about how advances in digital technologies continue to influence the nature of Holocaust memorialization. Through an in-depth study of the largest and most widely available collection of videotaped interviews with survivors and other witnesses to the Holocaust, the University of Southern California Shoah Foundation's Visual History Archive, Jeffrey Shandler weighs the possibilities and challenges brought about by digital forms of public memory. The Visual History Archive's holdings are extensive-over 100,000 hours of video, including interviews with over 50,000 individuals-and came about at a time of heightened anxiety about the imminent passing of the generation of Holocaust survivors and other eyewitnesses. Now, the Shoah Foundation's investment in new digital media is instrumental to its commitment to remembering the Holocaust both as a subject of historical importance in its own right and as a paradigmatic moral exhortation against intolerance. Shandler not only considers the Archive as a whole, but also looks closely at individual survivors' stories, focusing on narrative, language, and spectacle to understand how Holocaust remembrance is mediated.