A long-overdue study of the East German view of the Holocaust over the years 1946-1989. Stated Memory: East Germany and the Holocaust investigates communist Germany's attempt to explain the Holocaust within a framework that was at once German and Marxist. The book probes the contradictions and self-deceptionsarising from East Germany's official self-understanding as an enlightened, modern society in which Jewishness did not constitute "difference" or otherness. The study examines East German historiography of the Holocaust, includingits reflection in schoolbooks; analyzes East German concentration camp memorials; discusses the situation of Jews who remained in East Germany; and surveys East German cinematic and literary responses to the Nazi murder of the Jews. The book shows that regardless of the sincerity of the individuals involved in constructing these various forms of memory, the state attempted to orchestrate Holocaust discourse for its own purposes. Thomas C. Foxis professor of German at the University of Alabama. He has written extensively on East German literature and the Holocaust.

Perfect for readers of Last Stop Auschwitz, The Volunteer and The Tattooist of Auschwitz 'This is an extraordinary biography. A gripping narrative that opens as derring-do wartime escape drama rapidly turns into a horror story about man's inhumanity to man...Important and unforgettable' JONATHAN DIMBLEBY The awe-inspiring and gripping true story of the young man who survived not one, but three concentration camps, only - in the final days of the war - to be bombed while aboard a Nazi prison boat. Stowed away on top of a train, twenty-year-old Wim Aloserij escapes the obligatory work camps in Nazi-ruled Germany in 1943. The young man from Amsterdam then goes into hiding on a farm - sleeping in a wooden chest hidden underground. But it's not to last. In the cover of night, Wim is captured during a raid and transported to the infamous Gestapo prison in Amsterdam. There, his life changes forever as he is thrown into the nightmare of the Holocaust and transported to Camp Amersfoort - the first of three concentration camps he must endure. Drawing on the lessons he learned as a child as the victim of an alcoholic and abusive father, Wim is forced to adapt quickly and urgently to his hellish surroundings. However, it is with the end of the war in sight, that Wim must draw on every last strength he has when he finds himself caught in the very centre of Allied-Nazi crossfire. At the age of 94, Wim finally felt ready to tell his incredible story, which he kept secret for most of his life. A true story of bravery, courage and resilience, The Last Survivor will leave you amazed by one young man's determination - against the odds - to survive.

Fackenheim was one of the most philosophically serious, knowledgeable, and provocative contemporary Jewish thinkers. His original focus as a philosophical theologian was mainly on revelation, but in his later work he concerned himself primarily with the wide-ranging implications of the Holocaust. In this book, Kenneth Hart Green examines Fackenheim's intellectual trajectory and traces how and why he focused so intently on the Holocaust. He explores the deeper thought that Fackenheim developed about the Holocaust, which he construed as a cataclysmic event that ruptured history and one that also brought about a change in the very structure of being. As Green demonstrates, the Holocaust, according to Fackenheim's interpretation, changes how we view all things, from God to man to history. It also radically affects Judaism, Christianity, and philosophy, the major traditions that have shaped the Western world.

Anne Frank's The Diary of a Young Girl is an inspiring and tragic account of an ordinary life lived in extraordinary circumstances that has enthralled readers for generations. This Penguin Classics edition is edited by Otto H. Frank and Mirjam Pressler, translated by Susan Massotty, and includes an introduction by Elie Wiesel, author of Night. 'June, 1942: I hope I will be able to confide everything to you, as I have never been able to confide in anyone, and I hope you will be a great source of comfort and support.' In Amsterdam, in the summer of 1942, the Nazis forced teenager Anne Frank and her family into hiding. For over two years, they, another family and a German dentist lived in a 'secret annexe', fearing discovery. All that time, Anne kept a diary. Since its publication in 1947, Anne Frank's diary has been read by tens of millions of people. This Definitive Edition restores substantial material omitted from the original edition, giving us a deeper insight into Anne Frank's world. Her curiosity about her emerging sexuality, the conflicts with her mother, her passion for Peter, a boy whose family hid with hers, and her acute portraits of her fellow prisoners reveal Anne as more human, more vulnerable and more vital than ever. 'One of the greatest books of the twentieth century' Guardian 'A modern classic' Julia Neuberger, The Times

The extraordinary German bestseller on the final days of the Third Reich One of the least understood stories of the Third Reich is that of the extraordinary wave of suicides, carried out not just by much of the Nazi leadership, but also by thousands of ordinary Germans, during in the war's closing period. Some of these were provoked by straightforward terror in the face of advancing Soviet troops or by personal guilt, but many could not be explained in such relatively straightforward terms. Florian Huber's remarkable book, a bestseller in Germany, confronts this terrible phenomenon. Other countries have suffered defeat, but not responded in the same way. What drove whole families, who in many cases had already withstood years of deprivation, aerial bombing and deaths in battle, to do this? In a brilliantly written, thoughtful and original work, Huber sees the entire project of the Third Reich as a sequence of almost overwhelming emotions and scenes for many Germans. He describes some of the key events which shaped the period from the First World War to the end of the Second, showing how the sheer intensity, allure and ferocity of Hitler's regime swept along millions. Its sudden end was, for many of them, simply impossible to absorb.

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.

'Impossible to put down ... This is a book about coming out of hell, about great evil, about the triumph of the human spirit, and about the great goodness on the part of those who helped. One is left with hope, and admiration' Julia Neuberger, THE TIMES 'A story of human resilience, fortitude and victory that restores the readers' hope for mankind' SUNDAY TIMES 'This is the story of human beings sucked into a vortex of destruction in which family, identity, religion and culture were all ripped away. A sense of near-miraculous calm descends when the Boys finally arrive in Britain, when human fortitude finally prevails over absolute evil' David Cesarani, TLS In August 1945, the first of 732 child survivors of the Holocaust reached Britain. First settled in the Lake District, they formed a tightly knit group of friends whose terrible shared experience is almost beyond imagining. This is their story, which begins in the lost communities of pre-World War II central Europe, moves through ghetto, concentration camp and death march, to liberation, survival, and finally, fifty years later, a deeply moving reunion. Martin Gilbert has brought together the recollections of this remarkable group of survivors to tell their astonishing stories.

As the Nazis staged their takeover in 1933, instances of antisemitic violence began to soar. While previous historical research assumed that this violence happened much later, Hermann Beck counteracts this, drawing on sources from twenty German archives, and focussing on this early violence, and on the reaction of German institutions and the elites who led them. Before the Holocaust examines the antisemitic violence experienced in this period - from boycotts, violent attacks, robbery, extortion, abductions, and humiliating 'pillory marches', to grievous bodily harm and murder - which has hitherto not been adequately recognized. Beck then analyses the reactions of those institutions that still had the capacity to protest against Nazi attacks and legislative measures - the Protestant Church, the Catholic Church, the bureaucracies, and Hitler's conservative coalition partner, the DNVP - and the mindset of the elites who led them, to determine their various responses to flagrant antisemitic abuses. Individual protests against violent attacks, the April boycott, and Nazi legislative measures were already hazardous in March and April 1933, but established institutions in the German State and society were still able to voice their concerns and raise objections. By doing so, they might have stopped or at least postponed a radicalization that eventually led to the pogrom of 1938 (Kristallnacht) and the Holocaust.

Built in 1927, the German ocean liner SS Cap Arcona was the greatest ship since the RMS Titanic and one of the most celebrated luxury liners in the world. When the Nazis seized control in Germany, she was stripped down for use as a floating barracks and troop transport. Later, during the war, Hitler's minister, Joseph Goebbels, cast her as the "star" in his epic propaganda film about the sinking of the legendary Titanic. Following the film's enormous failure, the German navy used the Cap Arcona to transport German soldiers and civilians across the Baltic, away from the Red Army's advance. In the Third Reich's final days, the ill-fated ship was packed with thousands of concentration camp prisoners. Without adequate water, food, or sanitary facilities, the prisoners suffered as they waited for the end of the war. Just days before Germany surrendered, the Cap Arconawas mistakenly bombed by the British Royal Air Force, and nearly all of the prisoners were killed in the last major tragedy of the Holocaust and one of history's worst maritime disasters. Although the British government sealed many documents pertaining to the ship's sinking, Robert P. Watson has unearthed forgotten records, conducted many interviews, and used over 100 sources, including diaries and oral histories, to expose this story. As a result, The Nazi Titanic is a riveting and astonishing account of an enigmatic ship that played a devastating role in World War II and the Holocaust.

This book analyzes the role and function of an Italian deportation camp during and immediately after World War Two within the context of Italian, European, and Holocaust history. Drawing upon archival documents, trial proceedings, memoirs, and testimonies, Herr investigates the uses of Fossoli as an Italian prisoner-of-war camp for Allied soldiers captured in North Africa (1942-43), a Nazi deportation camp for Jews and political prisoners (1943-44), a postwar Italian prison for Fascists, German soldiers, and displaced persons (1945-47), and a Catholic orphanage (1947-52). This case study shines a spotlight on victims, perpetrators, Resistance fighters, and local collaborators to depict how the Holocaust unfolded in a small town and how postwar conditions supported a story of national innocence. This book trains a powerful lens on the multi-layered history of Italy during the Holocaust and illuminates key elements of local involvement largely ignored by Italian wartime and postwar narratives, particularly compensated compliance (compliance for financial gain), the normalization of mass murder, and the industrialization of the Judeocide in Italy.

The vast majority of studies of Hannah Arendt's thought are concerned with her as a political theorist. This book offers a contribution to rectifying this imbalance by providing a critical engagement with Arendtian ethics. Arendt asserts that the crimes of the Holocaust revealed a shift in ethics and the need for new responses to a new kind of evil. In this new treatment of her work, Arendt's best-known ethical concepts - the notion of the banality of evil and the link she posits between thoughtlessness and evil, both inspired by her study of Adolf Eichmann - are disassembled and appraised. The concept of the banality of evil captures something tangible about modern evil, yet requires further evaluation in order to assess its implications for understanding contemporary evil, and what it means for traditional, moral philosophical issues such as responsibility, blame and punishment. In addition, this account of Arendt's ethics reveals two strands of her thought not previously considered: her idea that the condition of 'living with oneself' can represent a barrier to evil and her account of the 'nonparticipants' who refused to be complicit in the crimes of the Nazi period and their defining moral features. This exploration draws out the most salient aspects of Hannah Arendt's ethics, provides a critical review of the more philosophically problematic elements, and places Arendt's work in this area in a broader moral philosophy context, examining the issues in moral philosophy which are raised in her work such as the relevance of intention for moral responsibility and of thinking for good moral conduct, and questions of character, integrity and moral incapacity.

For the sizeable Jewish community living in Greece during the 1940s, German occupation of Greece posed a distinct threat. The Nazis and their collaborators murdered around ninety percent of the Jewish population through the course of the war. This new account presents cutting edge research on four elements of the Holocaust in Greece: the level of antisemitism and question of collaboration; the fate of Jewish property before, during, and after their deportation; how the few surviving Jews were treated following their return to Greece, especially in terms of justice and restitution; and the ways in which Jewish communities rebuilt themselves both in Greece and abroad. Taken together, these elements point to who was to blame for the disaster that befell Jewish communities in Greece, and show that the occupation authorities alone could not have carried out these actions to such magnitude without the active participation of Greek Christians.

'An extraordinary book . . . vivid and heart-breaking' The Jewish Chronicle Through the discovery of a precious friendship album which belonged to 12-year-old Alie, a Jewish schoolgirl in Amsterdam, Claudia Carli has traced and preserved the lives of an entire class of girls, most of whom did not survive the War. Alie and her friends are brought touchingly and vividly to life, along with their writings, in this extraordinary book. Their everyday hopes, pleasures and longings are offset by the constant fear of a knock on the door, a missing friend from class, a family member taken away. Alie and her mother were to die in Sobibor in 1943. Alie's sister Gretha survived Auschwitz and kept her promise to her sister to preserve the friendship album so long as she hoped to live. This book will sit alongside Anne Frank's diary and The Cutout Girl as a unique window into occupied Amsterdam and the girls who will now never be forgotten.

This is a truly unique account of Nazi Germany at war and of one man's struggle against totalitarianism. A mid-level official in a provincial town, Friedrich Kellner kept a secret diary from 1939 to 1945, risking his life to record Germany's path to dictatorship and genocide, and to protest his countrymen's complicity in the regime's brutalities. Just one month into the war he notes how soldiers on leave spoke openly about the extermination of the Jews and the murder of POWs, while he also documents the Gestapo's merciless rule at home from euthanasia campaigns against the handicapped and mentally ill to the execution of anyone found listening to foreign broadcasts. This essential testimony of everyday life under the Third Reich is accompanied by a foreword by Alan Steinweis and the remarkable story of how the diary was brought to light by Robert Scott Kellner, Friedrich's grandson.

Out of the Holocaust recounts the plight of two Jewish-born orphans in Latvia and Germany during WWII. It is a tribute to the many brave individuals who cared for a large group of orphans on their journey through the war-torn land. It is also a testimony of God's love. May it be a spiritual igniter for you, especially during times of hardship.

In Hitler's Foreign Executioners, Heinrich Himmler's secret master plan for Europe is revealed: an SS empire that would have no place for either the Nazi Party or Adolf Hitler. His astonishingly ambitious plan depended on the recruitment of tens of thousands of 'Germanic' peoples from every corner of Europe, and even parts of Asia, to build an 'SS Europa'. This revised and fully updated book, researched in archives all over Europe and using first-hand testimony, exposes Europe's dirty secret: nearly half a million Europeans and more than a million Soviet citizens enlisted in the armed forces of the Third Reich to fight a deadly crusade against a mythic foe, Jewish Bolshevism. Even today, some apologists claim that these foreign SS volunteers were merely soldiers 'like any other' and fought a decent war against Stalin's Red Army. Historian Christopher Hale demonstrates conclusively that these surprisingly common views are mistaken. By taking part in Himmler's murderous master plan, these foreign executioners hoped to prove that they were worthy of joining his future 'SS Europa'. But as the Reich collapsed in 1944, Himmler's monstrous scheme led to bitter confrontations with Hitler - and to the downfall of the man once known as 'loyal Heinrich'.

The study of genocide and mass atrocity abounds with references to emotions: fear, anger, horror, shame and hatred. Yet we don't understand enough about how 'ordinary' emotions behave in such extreme contexts. Emotions are not merely subjective and interpersonal phenomena; they are also powerful social and political forces, deeply involved in the history of mass violence. Drawing on recent insights from philosophy, psychology, history, and the social sciences, this volume examines the emotions of perpetrators, victims, and bystanders. Editors Thomas Brudholm and Johannes Lang have brought together an interdisciplinary group of prominent scholars to provide an in-depth analysis of the nature, value, and role of emotions as they relate to the causes and dynamics of mass atrocities. The result is a new perspective on the social, political, and moral dimensions of emotions in the history of collective violence and its aftermath.

Despite the massive literature on the Holocaust, our understanding of it has traditionally been influenced by rather unsophisticated early perspectives and silences. This book summarises and criticises the existing scholarship on the subject and suggests new ways by which we can approach its study. It addresses the use of victim testimony and asks important questions: What function does recording the past serve for the victim? What do historians want from it? Are these two perspectives incompatible? The perpetrators of the Holocaust and the development of the murder process are closely examined. The book also compares the mentalities of the killers and the contexts of the killing with those in other acts of genocide and ethnic cleansing in the first half of the twentieth century, searching for an explanation within these comparisons. In addition, it looks at the bystanders to the Holocaust - considering the complexity and ambiguity at the heart of contemporary responses, especially within the western liberal democracies. Ultimately, this text highlights the essential need to place the Holocaust in the broadest possible context, emphasising the importance of producing high quality but sensitive scholarship in its study. -- .

Born in the Netherlands at a time when girls are to be housewives and mothers and nothing else, Hendrika de Vries is a "daddy's girl" until her father is deported from Nazi-occupied Amsterdam to a POW camp in Germany and her mother joins the Resistance. In the aftermath of her father's departure, Hendrika watches as freedoms formerly taken for granted are eroded with escalating brutality by men with swastika armbands who aim to exterminate those they deem "inferior" and those who do not obey. As time goes on, Hendrika absorbs her mother's strength and faith, and learns about moral choice and forced silence. She sees her hidden Jewish "stepsister" betrayed, and her mother interrogated at gunpoint. She and her mother suffer near starvation, and they narrowly escape death on the day of liberation. But they survive it all-and through these harrowing experiences, Hendrika discovers the woman she wants to become.

Ensure your students have access to the authoritative and in-depth content of this popular and trusted A Level History series. For over twenty years Access to History has been providing students with reliable, engaging and accessible content on a wide range of topics. Each title in the series provides comprehensive coverage of different history topics on current AS and A2 level history specifications, alongside exam-style practice questions and tips to help students achieve their best. The series: - Ensures students gain a good understanding of the AS and A2 level history topics through an engaging, in-depth and up-to-date narrative, presented in an accessible way. - Aids revision of the key A level history topics and themes through frequent summary diagrams - Gives support with assessment, both through the books providing exam-style questions and tips for AQA, Edexcel and OCR A level history specifications and through FREE model answers with supporting commentary at Access to History online (www.accesstohistory.co.uk) Anti-Semitism and the Holocaust This title covers the origins of anti-Semitism from the nineteenth century, and traces the events that took place in Germany from 1933 to 1945. The anti-Semitic views of Hitler are analysed as is the means by which these views shaped the racial state in the Third Reich. The impact of the Second World War and the events which led ultimately to the Final Solution are then assessed. All of these events are also considered within the wider historiographical debates which have surrounded this period of history, from questions on who should ultimately bear the blame, to issues of Holocaust denial.

This book is an original and comparative study of reactions in West and East Africa to the persecution and attempted annihilation of Jews in Europe and in former German colonies in sub-Saharan Africa during the Second World War. An intellectual and diplomatic history of World War II and the Holocaust, Africans and the Holocaust looks at the period from the perspectives of the colonized subjects of the Gold Coast, Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Kenya, Tanganyika, and Uganda, as well as the sovereign peoples of Liberia and Ethiopia, who wrestled with the social and moral questions that the war and the Holocaust raised. The five main chapters of the book explore the pre-Holocaust history of relations between Jews and Africans in West and East Africa, perceptions of Nazism in both regions, opinions of World War II, interpretations of the Holocaust, and responses of the colonized and sovereign peoples of West and East Africa to efforts by Great Britain to resettle certain categories of Jewish refugees from Europe in the two regions before and during the Holocaust. This book will be of use to students and scholars of African history, Holocaust and Jewish studies, and international or global history.