Where was God when six million died? Over the last few decades this question has haunted both Jewish and Christian theologians. If God is all-good and all-powerful, how could he have permitted the Holocaust to take place? Holocaust Theology: A Reader provides a panoramic survey of the responses of over one hundred leading Jewish and Christian Holocaust thinkers. Beginning with the religious challenge of the Holocaust, the collection explores a wide range of thinking which seek to reconcile God's ways with the existence of evil. In addition, the book addresses perplexing questions regarding Christian responsibility and culpability during the Nazi era. Designed for general readers and students, the readings are arranged thematically and each one is divided into separate topics. For anyone who is troubled by the religious implications of the tragedy of the Holocaust, this collection of Holocaust theology provides a basis for discussion and debate: each reading is followed by several questions designed to stimulate this.

After World War II, the Girls Club of Brooklyn, New York, became both home and safe haven to orphaned teenagers who were Holocaust survivors. They are a small group, but taken together these women's stories represent the broad range of experiences that most Jews suffered during and after the Holocaust. Some endured the ghettos and camps. Some survived in hiding, with partisans, or in the remote far-eastern reaches of the Soviet Union. Consequently this collective, personal history-enriched with relevant information about places, people, events and issues-tells not only their story, but also the story of tens of thousands of child survivors. The work of scholars from various disciplines and genres provides background information and historical detail as this book traces the women's experiences from their childhood days in pre-war Europe to the present. Contrary to what early literature on child survivors predicted, they built successful lives in America.

Taking early 21st century Britain as a case study, Rethinking Holocaust Film Reception: A British Case Study presents an intervention into the scholarship on the representation of the Holocaust on film. Based on a study of audience responses to select films, Stefanie Rauch demonstrates that the reception of films about the Holocaust is a complex process that we cannot understand through textual analysis alone, but by also paying attention to individual reception processes. This book restores the agency of viewers and takes seriously their diverse responses to representations of the Holocaust. It demonstrates that viewers' interpretative resources play an important role in film reception. Viewers regard Holocaust films as a separate genre that they encounter with a set of expectations. The author highlights the implications of Britain's lessons-focused approach to Holocaust education and commemoration and addresses debates around the supposed globalization of Holocaust memory by unpacking the peculiar Britishness of viewers' responses to films about the Holocaust. A sense of emotional connection or its absence to the Holocaust and its memory speaks to divisions along ethnic, generational, and national lines.

How is it possible, after the Shoah, to declare one's faith in the God of Israel? Breaking the Tablets is David Weiss Halivni's eloquent and insightful response to this question. Halivni, Auschwitz survivor and one of the greatest Talmudic scholars of the past century, declares that at this time of God's near absence, Jews can still observe the words of the Torah and pray for God to come near again. Jews must continue to study the classic texts of rabbinic Judaism but now with greater humility, recognizing that even the greatest religious leaders and thinkers interpret these texts only as mere people, prone to human error. Breaking the Tablets is important reading for anyone who feels burdened by the question of how it is possible to believe in God and practice their religion.

Features a special section on the Hungarian German Jewish writer and theater director George Tabori and a Forum section on the 2016 film A German Life. Nexus is the official publication of the biennial German Jewish Studies Workshop, which was inaugurated at Duke University in 2009 and is now held at the University of Notre Dame. Together, Nexus and the Workshop constitute the first ongoing forum in North America for German Jewish studies. Nexus publishes innovative research in German Jewish Studies, introducing new directions, analyzing the development and definition of the field, and considering its place vis-a-vis both German Studies and Jewish Studies. Additionally, it examines issues of pedagogy and programming at the undergraduate, graduate, and community levels. Nexus 4 features a special section on the Hungarian German Jewish writer and theater director George Tabori; edited by Martin Kagel, this section includes both new documentary material and a number of trenchant scholarly articles. Additionally, the volume includes a Forum section (edited by Brad Prager) on the 2016 documentary film A German Life, an exploration of Kafka and childhood (Ritchie Robertson), and a provocative reassessment of Schindler's List (Eva Revesz). Contributors: Tobias Boes, Antje Diedrich, Norbert Otto Eke, Martin Kagel, Jennifer M. Kapczynski, Brad Prager, Eva Revesz, Ritchie Robertson, Robert Skloot, Kerstin Steitz, Donna Stonecipher, Lena Tabori, StanleyWalden, Valerie Weinstein. William Collins Donahue is the John J. Cavanaugh Professor of the Humanities at the University of Notre Dame, where he chairs the Department of German and Russian. Martha B. Helfer is Professor of German and an affiliate member of the Department of Jewish Studies at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. Special section editor Martin Kagel is A. G. Steer Professor of German at the University of Georgia.

Bringing together some of the last Holocaust survivor stories in living memory, After the Holocaust shares Jewish scholarship, activism, poetry, and personal narratives which tackle the changing face of human rights education in the 21st century. The collected voices draw on decades of research on Holocaust history to discuss education, broader human rights abuses, genocide, internment, and oppression. Advancing the dialogue between civic advocacy, public remembrance, and research, contributors discuss how the Holocaust is taught and remembered. By including additional perspectives on the context of Canadian antisemitism, the legacy of human rights abuses of Indigenous Peoples in Canada, and the internment of Japanese Canadians in World War II, After the Holocaust examines the ways the Holocaust changed thinking around human rights legislation and memorialization on a global scale. "The first- and second-generation survivor accounts are treasures-invaluable reflections that anchor this collection." - David MacDonald , author of The Sleeping Giant Awakens: Genocide, Indian Residential Schools, and the Challenge of Conciliation

From the French Revolution to Vatican II, the institutional Catholic Church has opposed much that modernity has offered men and women constructing their societies. This book focuses on the experiences of German Catholics as they have worked to engage their faith with their culture in the midst of the two world wars, the barbarism of the Nazi era, and the uncertainties and conflicts of the post-World War II world.

German Catholics have confronted and challenged their Church's anti-modernism, two lost wars, the Weimar Republic, the Nazi Third Reich, the Cold War, German reunification and the impulses of globalization. Catholic theologians and those others nurtured by Catholicism, who resisted Nazism to create their own private spaces, developed a personal and existential theology that bore fruit after 1945. Such theologians as Karl Rahner, Johannes Metz, and Walter Kasper, were rooted in their political experiences and in the renewal movement built by those who attended Vatican II. These theologians were sensitive to the horrors of the Nazi brutalization, the positive contributions of democracy, and the need to create a Catholicism that could join the conversation on human rights following World War II. This dialogue meant accepting non-Catholic religious traditions as authentic expressions of faith, which in turn required that the sacred dignity of every man, woman, and child had to be respected. By the twenty-first century, Catholic theologians had made furthering a human rights agenda part of their tradition, and the German contribution to Catholic theology was crucial to that development. The current Catholic milieu has been forged through its defensive responses to the Enlightenment, through its resistance to ideologies that have supported sanctioned murder, and through an extensive dialogue with its own traditions.

In focusing on the German Catholic experience, Dietrich offers a cultural approach to the study of the religious and ethical issues that ground the human rights paradigm that will be of particular interest to students of religion, historians, sociologists, and human rights specialists.

Through narrative analysis of the memoirs of six holocaust survivors from a single extended family, Trauma and Resilience in Holocaust Memoir: Strategies of Self-Preservation and Inter-Generational Encounter with Narrative examines strategies of self-preservation of young people exposed to violence and persecution at different ages and life stages. Through the lens of studying resilience in child development, this book describes the striking diversity of holocaust-era experiences and traces the arc of a remarkable global diaspora. Birnbaum argues that stories from the past can enhance understanding of the internal lives of today's young refugees and survivors of violent conflict. Exploring the socio-politics of narrative and memory, this book considers the ways that children of holocaust survivors may honor the past while also allowing a new generation to engage family history in a conversation with contemporary concerns.

Of the countless stories of resistance, ingenuity, and personal risk to emerge in the years following the Holocaust, among the most remarkable, yet largely overlooked, are those of the hundreds of Jewish deportees who escaped from moving trains bound for the extermination camps. In France, Belgium, and the Netherlands alone over 750 men, women and children undertook such dramatic escape attempts, despite the extraordinary uncertainty and physical danger they often faced. Drawing upon extensive interviews and a wealth of new historical evidence, Escapees gives a fascinating collective account of this hitherto neglected form of resistance to Nazi persecution.

Offering an up-to-date historical perspective which should enable readers to fathom how the brutal massacres of 800,000 Rwandese came to pass in 1994, this volume includes a new chapter that brings the analysis up to the end of 1996. Gerard Prunier probes into how the genocidal events in Rwanda were part of a deadly logic - a plan that served central political and economic interests - rather than a result of primordial tribal hatreds, a notion often invoked by the media to dramatize genocide.

In Conquest and Redemption, Gregg J. Rickman explains how the Nazis stole the possessions of their Jewish victims and obtained the cooperation of institutions across Europe in these crimes of convenience. He also describes how those institutions are being brought to justice, sixty years later, for their retention of their ill-gotten gains.

Rickman not only explains how the robbery was accomplished, tracked, stalled, and then finally reversed, but also clearly shows the ways in which robbery was inextricably connected to the murder of the Jews. The Nazis took everything from Jews--their families, their possessions, and even their names. As with the murder of Jews, the Nazis' robbery was an organized, institutionalized effort. Jews were isolated, robbed, and left homeless, regarded as parasites in the Nazis' eyes, and thus fair game. In short, the organized robbery of the Jews facilitated their slaughter.

How did the German people come to believe that it was permissible to isolate, outlaw, rob, and murder Jews? A partial explanation can be found in the Nazis' creation of a virtual religion of German nationalism and homogeneity that delegitimized Jews as a people and as individuals. This belief system was expressed through a complex structure of religious rules, practices, and institutions. While Nazi ideology was the guiding principle, how that ideology was formed and how it was applied is important to understand if one is to fully grasp the Holocaust.

Rickman painstakingly describes the structural composition and motivation for the plundering of Jewish assets. The Holocaust will always remain a memory of unequalled pain and suffering, but, as Rickman shows, the return of stolen goods to their survivors is a partial victory for the long aggrieved. Conquest and Redemption will be of interest to students and scholars in the history of the Holocaust and its aftermath.

This gripping memoir traces Brazilian-born American Julie Lindahl's journey to uncover her grandparents' roles in the Third Reich as she is driven to understand how and why they became members of Hitler's elite, the SS. Out of the unbearable heart of the story-the unclaimed guilt that devours a family through the generations-emerges an unflinching will to learn the truth. In a remarkable six-year journey through Germany, Poland, Paraguay, and Brazil, Julie uncovers, among many other discoveries, that her grandfather had been a fanatic member of the SS since 1934. During World War II, he was responsible for enslavement and torture and was complicit in the murder of the local population on the large estates he oversaw in occupied Poland. He eventually fled to South America to evade a new wave of war-crimes trials. The pendulum used by Julie's grandmother to divine good from bad and true from false becomes a symbol for the elusiveness of truth and morality, but also for the false securities we cling to when we become unmoored. As Julie delves deeper into the abyss of her family's secret, discovering history anew, one precarious step at a time, the compassion of strangers is a growing force that transforms her world and the way that she sees her family-and herself.

By 1944 a large part of Eastern Europe had already been liberated by the Red Army, and the Allied forces were continuing to move in from the west after success at Normandy. Yet, in Lower Silesia, Germany more than sixty new forced labor camps were established, adding to the approximately forty camps that already existed. The inmates were Jews from Hungary and Poland who had been deported from the Lodz ghetto or who had been included on the infamous "Schindler's List." These camps became satellites of the Gross-Rosen concentration camp and were the last to be liberated. Throughout their existence, the Gross-Rosen camp and its satellites had a special relationship. This is why, although the process of genocide was proceeding at top speed, some Jews were diverted from the gas chambers and sent to work at Gross-Rosen. Auschwitz-Birkenau was the main provider of inmate slave laborers for the Gross-Rosen armaments, munitions, and other factories owned by giant private enterprises, such as Krupp, I.G. Farben, and Siemens. Jewish inmates were also used in the construction of Hitler's secret headquarters in the local Eulen Mountains and the secret underground tunnels used to store weapons. This book adds greatly to our knowledge of the complexity of German policy toward the Jews and forced labor. It not only describes the daily life of Jewish slave laborers but also traces Reich economic policy and the big corporations that used forced labor.

Self-Portrait, with Parents and Footnotes is a story of movement. Moving from city to city characterized the author's growing up-from Poland to Belgium and from the East Coast to the West Coast of the United States. The book also moves between past and present. The authors' parents, Jews from Eastern Europe, lived through the Spanish Civil War, the Second World War, the post-war Communist world, and much migration in between. How were these events transmitted to their child, and what questions do they give rise to today? The book moves between straightforward story-telling and reflections on memory, on politics and religion, and on literature. It seeks the genesis of intellectual interests in personal story.

This book explores the Holocaust exhibition opened within the Imperial War Museum (IWM) in 2000; setting out the long and often contentious debates surrounding the conception, design, and finally the opening of an important exhibition within a national museum in Britain. It considers a process of memory-making through an assessment of Holocaust photographs, material culture, and survivor testimonies; exploring theories of cultural memory as they apply to the national museum context. Anchored in time and place, the Holocaust exhibition within Britain's national museum of war is influenced by, and reflects, an international rise in Holocaust consciousness in the 1990s. This book considers the construction of Holocaust memory in 1990s Britain, providing a foundation for understanding current and future national memory projects. Through all aspects of the display, the Holocaust is presented as meaningful in terms of what it says about Nazism and what this, in turn, says about Britishness. From the original debates surrounding the inclusion of a Holocaust gallery at the IWM, to the acquisition of Holocaust artefacts that could act as 'concrete evidence' of Nazi barbarity and criminality, the Holocaust reaffirms an image of Britain that avoids critical self-reflection despite raising uncomfortably close questions. The various display elements are brought together to consider multiple strands of the Holocaust story as it is told by national museums in Britain.

This book explores the nature of power in persons, groups, and nations by asking a question that we can understand in contemporary terms: what would Bill Gates do if he had Hitler's absolute power? It is a sociological question that exposes power as a tool of control over the powerless, not as a psychological trait or manners of personal interactions. With Hitler's power, any individual, group, or nation could become as crazy as Hitler or as cruel as the Nazis. Call from the Cave argues that the savage struggle for power, exemplified in the free market system of America-history's first and purest "natural" society-is in our very human nature. In the footsteps of the ancient Romans and the recent Nazis, we push on in every waking moment of our lives to expand our power and to control the souls and minds of other human beings to do our bidding. The book concludes that this is the very destiny of humanity we cannot escape.

This handbook is the most comprehensive and up-to-date single volume on the history and memory of the Holocaust in Britain. It traces the complex relationship between Britain and the destruction of Europe's Jews, from societal and political responses to persecution in the 1930s, through formal reactions to war and genocide, to works of representation and remembrance in post-war Britain. Through this process the handbook not only updates existing historiography of Britain and the Holocaust; it also adds new dimensions to our understanding by exploring the constant interface and interplay of history and memory. The chapters bring together internationally renowned academics and talented younger scholars. Collectively, they examine a raft of themes and issues concerning the actions of contemporaries to the Holocaust, and the responses of those who came 'after'. At a time when the Holocaust-related activity in Britain proceeds apace, the contributors to this handbook highlight the importance of rooting what we know and understand about Britain and the Holocaust in historical actuality. This, the volume suggests, is the only way to respond meaningfully to the challenges posed by the Holocaust and ensure that the memory of it has purpose.

Increasingly, German Studies programs include courses on the Holocaust, but suitable course materials are often difficult to find. Teachers in higher education will therefore very much welcome this volume that examines and reflects both the practical and theoretical aspects of teaching about the Holocaust. Though designed primarily by and for North American Germanists and German Studies specialists, this book will prove no less useful for teachers in other countries and associated disciplines. It presents and describes successful Holocaust-related courses that have been developed and taught at U.S. and Canadian colleges and universities, demonstrating the depth, breadth, and variety of such offerings, while remaining mindful of the instructor's special moral responsibilities. Reflecting as it does, the innovative Holocaust pedagogy in North American German and German Studies, this collection serves the needs of educators who wish to revise or update their existing Holocaust courses and of those who are seeking guidance, ideas, and resources to enable them to develop their first Holocaust course or unit.

In 1945, the day after liberation, Soviet soldiers in control of the Katowice camp in Poland asked Primo Levi and his fellow captive Leonardo De Benedetti to compile a detailed report on the sanitary conditions in Auschwitz. The result was 'Auschwitz Report', an extraordinary testimony and one of the first accounts of the extermination camps ever written. The report, published in a scientific journal in 1946, marked the beginnings of Levi's life-long work as writer, analyst and witness. In the subsequent four decades, Levi never ceased to recount his experiences in Auschwitz in a wide variety of texts, many of which are assembled together here for the first time. From early research into the fate of his companions to the deposition written for Eichmann's trial, from the 'letter to the daughter of a fascist who wants to know the truth' to newspaper and magazine articles, Auschwitz Testimonies is a rich mosaic of memories and critical reflections of great historic and human value. Underpinned by his characteristically clear language, rigorous method, and deep psychological insight, this collection of testimonies, reports and analyses reaffirms Primo Levi's position as one of the most important chroniclers of the Holocaust. It will find a wide readership, both among the many readers of Levi's work and among all those who wish to understand one of the greatest human tragedies of all time.

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.

A new gift edition of a modern classic, with supplemental photographs, speeches, letters, and essays
The Library of Congress called it "one of the ten most influential books in America," the" New York Times" pronounced it "an enduring work of survival literature," and "O, The Oprah Magazine" praised it as "one of the most significant books of the twentieth century." "Man's Search for Meaning" has riveted generations of readers with its descriptions of life in Nazi death camps and its lessons for spiritual survival. Viktor Frankl's classic tribute to coping with suffering and finding one's purpose continues to give readers solace and inspiration.
This attractive new hardcover gift edition will appeal to long-time admirers and first-time readers alike. Through photographs and supplemental writings, readers see the professional and personal sides of this beloved thinker. In a letter written upon his release from the camps, Frankl describes his pain upon learning that his parents and wife perished; in an essay, he gives hope to readers living in uncertain times; in a eulogy to his deceased colleagues, he speaks of man's capacity for evil and for good; and in a speech, he memorializes the anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi camps. With these writings, readers can gain a fuller understanding of Frankl's enduring lessons on perseverance and strength.

"A Wolf in the Attic: Even though she was only two, the little girl knew she must never go into the attic. Strange noises came from there. Mama said there was a wolf upstairs, a hungry, dangerous wolf . . . but the truth was far more dangerous than that. Much too dangerous to tell a Jewish child marked for death. ""One cannot mourn what one doesn't acknowledge, and one cannot heal if one does not mourn . . . "A Wolf in the Attic is a powerful memoir written by a psychoanalyst who was a hidden child in Poland during World War II. Her story, in addition to its immediate impact, illustrates her struggle to come to terms with the powerful yet sometimes subtle impact of childhood trauma.In the author's words: "As a very young child I experienced the Holocaust in a way that made it almost impossible to integrate and make sense of the experience. For me, there was no life before the war, no secure early childhood to hold in mind, no context in which to place what was happening to me and around me. The Holocaust was in the air that I breathed daily for the first four years of my life. I took it in deeply without awareness or critical judgment. I ingested it with the milk I drank from my mother's breast. It had the taste of fear and despair."Born during the Holocaust in what was once a part of Poland, Sophia Richman spent her early years in hiding in a small village near Lwow, the city where she was born. Hidden in plain sight, both she and her mother passed as Christian Poles. Later, her father, who escaped from a concentration camp, found them and hid in their attic until the liberation.The story of the miraculous survival of this Jewish family is only the beginning of their long journey out of the Holocaust. The war years are followed by migration and displacement as the refugees search for a new homeland. They move from Ukraine to Poland to France and eventually settle in America. A Wolf in the Attic traces the effects of the author's experiences on her role as an American teen, a wife, a mother, and eventually, a psychoanalyst. A Wolf in the Attic explores the impact of early childhood trauma on the author's: education career choices attitudes toward therapy, both as patient and therapist social interactions love/family relationships parenting style and decisions regarding her daughter religious orientationRepeatedly told by her parents that she was too young to remember the war years, Sophia spent much of her life trying to "remember to forget" what she did indeed remember. A Wolf in the Attic follows her life as she gradually becomes able to reclaim her past, to understand its impact on her life and the choices she has made, and finally, to heal a part of herself that she had been so long taught to deny.

"A Wolf in the Attic: Even though she was only two, the little girl knew she must never go into the attic. Strange noises came from there. Mama said there was a wolf upstairs, a hungry, dangerous wolf . . . but the truth was far more dangerous than that. Much too dangerous to tell a Jewish child marked for death. ""One cannot mourn what one doesn't acknowledge, and one cannot heal if one does not mourn . . . "A Wolf in the Attic is a powerful memoir written by a psychoanalyst who was a hidden child in Poland during World War II. Her story, in addition to its immediate impact, illustrates her struggle to come to terms with the powerful yet sometimes subtle impact of childhood trauma.In the author's words: "As a very young child I experienced the Holocaust in a way that made it almost impossible to integrate and make sense of the experience. For me, there was no life before the war, no secure early childhood to hold in mind, no context in which to place what was happening to me and around me. The Holocaust was in the air that I breathed daily for the first four years of my life. I took it in deeply without awareness or critical judgment. I ingested it with the milk I drank from my mother's breast. It had the taste of fear and despair."Born during the Holocaust in what was once a part of Poland, Sophia Richman spent her early years in hiding in a small village near Lwow, the city where she was born. Hidden in plain sight, both she and her mother passed as Christian Poles. Later, her father, who escaped from a concentration camp, found them and hid in their attic until the liberation.The story of the miraculous survival of this Jewish family is only the beginning of their long journey out of the Holocaust. The war years are followed by migration and displacement as the refugees search for a new homeland. They move from Ukraine to Poland to France and eventually settle in America. A Wolf in the Attic traces the effects of the author's experiences on her role as an American teen, a wife, a mother, and eventually, a psychoanalyst. A Wolf in the Attic explores the impact of early childhood trauma on the author's: education career choices attitudes toward therapy, both as patient and therapist social interactions love/family relationships parenting style and decisions regarding her daughter religious orientationRepeatedly told by her parents that she was too young to remember the war years, Sophia spent much of her life trying to "remember to forget" what she did indeed remember. A Wolf in the Attic follows her life as she gradually becomes able to reclaim her past, to understand its impact on her life and the choices she has made, and finally, to heal a part of herself that she had been so long taught to deny.