The testimonies of individuals who survived the Holocaust as children pose distinct emotional and intellectual challenges for researchers: as now-adult interviewees recall profound childhood experiences of suffering and persecution, they also invoke their own historical awareness and memories of their postwar lives, requiring readers to follow simultaneous, disparate narratives. This interdisciplinary volume brings together historians, psychologists, and other scholars to explore child survivors' accounts. With a central focus on the Kestenberg Holocaust Child Survivor Archive's over 1,500 testimonies, it not only enlarges our understanding of the Holocaust empirically but illuminates the methodological, theoretical, and institutional dimensions of this unique form of historical record.

The Complete Black Book of Russian Jewryis a collection of eyewitness testimonies, letters, diaries, affidavits, and other documents on the activities of the Nazis against Jews in the camps, ghettoes, and towns of Eastern Europe. Arguably, the only apt comparism is to The Gulag Archipelago of Alexander Solzhenitsyn. This definitive edition of The Black Book, including for the first time materials omitted from previous editions, is a major addition to the literature on the Holocaust. It will be of particular interest to students, teachers, and scholars of the Holocaust and those interested in the history of Europe.

By the end of 1942, 1.4 million Jews had been killed by the Einsatzgruppen that followed the German army eastward; by the end of the war, nearly two million had been murdered in Russia and Eastern Europe. Of the six million Jews who perished in the Holocaust, about one-third fell in the territories of the USSR. The single most important text documenting that slaughter is The Black Book, compiled by two renowned Russian authors Ilya Ehrenburg and Vasily Grossman. Until now, The Black Book was only available in English in truncated editions. Because of its profound significance, this new and definitive English translation of The Complete Black Book of Russian Jewry is a major literary and intellectual event.

From the time of the outbreak of the war, Ehrenburg and Grossman collected the eyewitness testimonies that went into The Black Book. As early as 1943 they were planning its publication; the first edition appeared in 1944. During the years immediately after the war, Grossman assisted Ehrenburg in compiling additional materials for a second edition, which appeared in 1946 (in English as well as Russian).

Since the fall of the Soviet regime, Irina Ehrenburg, the daughter of Ilya Ehrenburg, has recovered the lost portions of the manuscript sent to Yad Vashem. The texts recovered by Ms. Ehrenburg include numerous documents that had been censored from the original manuscript, as well as items that had been hidden by the Grossman family. In addition, she verified and, where appropriate, corrected the accuracy of documents that had already appeared in earlier editions of The Black Book.

Catastrophic scenarios dominate our contemporary mindset. Catastrophic events and predictions have spurred new interest in re-examining the history of earlier disasters and the social and conceptual resources they have mobilized. The essays gathered in this volume reconsider the history and theory of different catastrophes and their aftermath. The emphasis is on the need to distance this process of reconsideration from previous teleological representations of catastrophes as an endpoint, and to begin considering their "operative" aspects, which unmask the nature of social and political structures. Among the essays in this volume are analyses, by leading scholars in their respective fields, concerning the role of catastrophes in theology, in the history of industrial accidents, in theory of history, in the history of law, in "catastrophe films", in the history of cybernetics, in post-Holocaust discussions of reparations, and in climate change.

For decades, historians have debated how and to what extent the Holocaust penetrated the German national consciousness between 1933 and 1945. How much did "ordinary" Germans know about the subjugation and mass murder of the Jews, when did they know it, and how did they respond collectively and as individuals? This compact volume brings together six historical investigations into the subject from leading scholars employing newly accessible and previously underexploited evidence. Ranging from the roots of popular anti-Semitism to the complex motivations of Germans who hid Jews, these studies illuminate some of the most difficult questions in Holocaust historiography, supplemented with an array of fascinating primary source materials.

Questions shape the Holocaust's legacy. 'What happened to ethics during the Holocaust? What should ethics be, and what can it do after the Holocaust?' loom large among them. Absent the overriding or moral sensibilities, if not the collapse or collaboration of ethical traditions, the Holocaust could not have happened. Its devastation may have deepened conviction that there is a crucial difference between right and wrong; its destruction may have renewed awareness about the importance of ethical standards and conduct. But Birkenau, the main killing center at Auschwitz, also continues to cast a disturbing shadow over basic beliefs concerning right and wrong, human rights, and the hope that human beings will learn from the past. This book explores those realities and the issues they contain. It does so not to discourage but to encourage, not to deepen darkness and despair but to face those realities honestly and in a way that can make post-Holocaust ethics more credible and realistic. The book's thesis is that nothing human, natural or divine guarantees respect for the ethical values and commitments that are most needed in contemporary human existence, but nothing is more important than our commitment to defend them, for they remain as fundamental as they are fragile, as precious as they are endangered.

My Hometown Concentration Camp tells the story of the young Bernard Offen's endurance and survival of the Krakow Ghetto and five concentration camps, including Plaszow and Auschwitz-Birkenau, until his liberation near Dachau by American troops in 1945. The author tells of his experiences in the ghetto and camps and how he set out, after the war, in search of his brothers, eventually finding them in Italy with the Polish Army. Having returned to the United States, Bernard Offen was drafted into the US Army to serve in the Korean War. After the war he founded his own business and had a family, both helping to restore a sense of normality to his life. This was the start of his own unique process of healing that led, ultimately, to his retirement and decision to dedicate his life to educating audiences around the world about his experiences during the Holocaust. Bernard Offen's story recounts his one-man journey across America, Europe, Israel and back to his native Poland, and his development as a filmmaker, educator and healer. My Hometown Concentration Camp will touch readers through the strength of the author's determination to attempt to confront and conquer the traumatic experiences he witnessed as a young man."

Gene A. Plunka argues that drama is the ideal art form to revitalize the collective memory of Holocaust resistance. Drama of and about the Holocaust can be staged worldwide, thereby introducing the Shoah to diverse audiences. Moreover, theatre affects audiences emotionally, subliminally, or intellectually (sometimes simultaneously) in a direct way that many other art forms cannot match. This comparative drama study examines a variety of international plays - some quite well-known, others more obscure - that focus on collective or individual defiance of the Nazis.

From interpretations of the Holocaust to fascist thought and anti-fascists' responses, and the problems of memorializing this difficult past, this essay collection tackles topics which are rarely studied in conjunction. As well as historical analyses of fascist and anti-fascist thinking, Stone analyses the challenges involved in writing history in general and Holocaust historiography in particular. Following an introductory essay on 'history and its discontents', the wide-ranging chapters deal with individual thinkers of very different sorts, such as Hannah Arendt, Rolf Gardiner, Jules Monnerot and Saul Friedlander, movements such as interwar rural revivalism, the contested translation of Mein Kampf, emigre anti-fascists' writings, and the relationship between memory and history, especially with respect to atrocities like genocide. This unique collection of essays on a wide variety of topics contributes to understanding the roots and consequences of mid-twentieth-century Europe's great catastrophe.

'That nickname . . .' '"Little bird." It wasn't mine. I found out later he gave it to every little girl that came in to be injected. "Little Bird" didn't mean anything. It was a trick. There were thousands of "little birds", just like me, all thinking they were the only one.' As a reporter, Jacques Peretti has spent his life investigating important stories. But there was one story, heard in scattered fragments throughout his childhood, that he never thought to investigate. The story of how his mother survived Auschwitz. In the few last months of the Second World War, thirteen-year-old Alina Peretti, along with her mother and sister, was one of thirteen thousand non-Jewish Poles sent to Auschwitz. Her experiences there cast a shadow over the rest of her life. Now ninety, Alina has been diagnosed with dementia. Together, mother and son begin a race against time to record her memories and preserve her family's story. Along the way, Jacques learns long-hidden secrets about his mother's family. He gains an understanding of his mother through retracing her past, learning more about the woman who would never let him call her 'Mum'.

"Ambiguous Memory" examines the role of memory in the building of a new national identity in reunified Germany. The author maintains that the contentious debates surrounding contemporary monumnets to the Nazi past testify to the ambiguity of German memory and the continued link of Nazism with contemporary German national identity. The book discusses how certain monuments, and the ways Germans have viewed them, contribute to the different ways Germans have dealt with the past, and how they continue to deal with it as one country. Kattago concludes that West Germans have internalized their Nazi past as a normative orientation for the democratic culture of West Germany, while East Germans have universalized Nazism and the Holocaust, transforming it into an abstraction in which the Jewish question is down played. In order to form a new collective memory, the author argues that unified Germany must contend with these conflicting views of the past, incorporating certain aspects of both views.

Providing a topography of East, West, and unified German memory during the 1980s and the 1990s, this work contributes to a better understanding of contemporary national identity and society. The author shows how public debate over such issues at Ronald Reagan's visit to Bitburg, the renarration of Buchenwald as Nazi and Soviet internment camp, the Goldhagen controversy, and the Holocaust Memorial debate in Berlin contribute to the complexities surrounding the way Germans see themselves, their relationship to the past, and their future identity as a nation. In a careful analysis, the author shows how the past was used and abused by both the East and the West in the 1980s, and how these approaches merged in the 1990s. This interesting new work takes a sociological approach to the role of memory in forging a new, integrative national identity.

The participation of German physicians in medical experiments on innocent people and mass murder is one of the most disturbing aspects of the Nazi era and the Holocaust. Six distinguished historians working in this field are addressing the critical issues raised by these murderous experiments, such as the place of the Holocaust in the larger context of eugenic and racial research, the motivation and roles of the German medical establishment, and the impact and legacy of the eugenics movements and Nazi medical practice on physicians and medicine since World War II. Based on the authors' original scholarship, these essays offer an excellent and very accessible introduction to an important and controversial subject. They are also particularly relevant in light of current controversies over the nature and application of research in human genetics and biotechnology.

."..the author has identified a significant and little examined subject for study, and displays a deep knowledge of it... Where previously the issue of Polish film and the Holocaust had been addressed in single articles or chapters on the depiction of the Holocaust in particular films, here, for the first time we have a history." Jeremy Hicks, University of London

During World War II Poland lost more than six million people, including about three million Polish Jews who perished in the ghettos and extermination camps built by Nazi Germany in occupied Polish territories. This book is the first to address the representation of the Holocaust in Polish film and does so through a detailed treatment of several films, which the author frames in relation to the political, ideological, and cultural contexts of the times in which they were created. Following the chronological development of Polish Holocaust films, the book begins with two early classics: Wanda Jakubowska's "The Last Stage" (1948) and Aleksander Ford's "Border Street" (1949), and next explores the Polish School period, represented by Andrzej Wajda's "A Generation" (1955) and Andrzej Munk's "The Passenger" (1963). Between 1965 and 1980 there was an "organized silence" regarding sensitive Polish-Jewish relations resulting in only a few relevant films until the return of democracy in 1989 when an increasing number were made, among them Krzysztof Kie lowski's "Decalogue 8" (1988), Andrzej Wajda's "Korczak" (1990), Jan Jakub Kolski's "Keep Away from the Window" (2000), and Roman Pola ski's "The Pianist" (2002). An important contribution to film studies, this book has wider relevance in addressing the issue of Poland's national memory.

Marek Haltof is Professor at Northern Michigan University in Marquette. His recent books include the "Historical Dictionary of Polish Cinema" (2007), "Australian Cinema: The Screen Construction of Australia" (in Polish, 2005), "The Cinema of Krzysztof Kie lowski: Variations on Destiny and Chance" (2004), and "Polish National Cinema" (2002).

This book presents the results of comprehensive research into the world's Jewish press during the Second World War and explores its stance in the face of annihilation of the Jewish people by the Nazi regime in Europe. The research is based on the major Jewish newspapers that were published in four countries Palestine, Britain, the United States, and the Soviet Union and in three languages Hebrew, Yiddish, and English. The Jewish press frequently described the situation of the Jewish people in occupied countries. It urged the Jewish leaders and institutions to act in rescue of their brethren. It protested vigorously against the refusal of the democratic leadership to recognize that the Jewish plight was unique because of the Nazi intention to annihilate Jews as a people. Yosef Gorny argues that the Jewish press was the persistent open national voice fighting on behalf of the Jewish people suffering and perishing under Nazi occupation."

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.

Although Christianity's precise influence on the Holocaust cannot be determined and the Christian churches did not themselves perpetrate the Final Solution, Robert Michael argues in "Holy Hatred" that the two millennia of Christian ideas and prejudices and their impact on Christians' behavior appear to be the major basis of antisemitism and of the apex of antisemitism, the Holocaust.

This book analyses the portrayals of the Holocaust in newspaper cartoons, educational pamphlets, short stories and graphic novels. Focusing on recognised and lesser-known illustrators from Europe and beyond, the volume looks at autobiographical and fictional accounts and seeks to paint a broader picture of Holocaust comic strips from the 1940s to the present. The book shows that the genre is a capacious one, not only dealing with the killing of millions of Jews but also with Jewish lives in war-torn Europe, the personal and transgenerational memory of the Second World War and the wider national and transnational legacies of the Shoah. The chapters in this collection point to the aesthetic diversity of the genre which uses figurative and allegorical representation, as well as applying different stylistics, from realism to fantasy. Finally, the contributions to this volume show new developments in comic books and graphic novels on the Holocaust, including the rise of alternative publications, aimed at the adult reader, and the emergence of state-funded educational comics written with young readers in mind. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Modern Jewish Studies.

On the outbreak of WWII Frank was appointed governor general of Poland. Heinrich Himmler was responsible for the extermination camps and Frank claimed he did not become aware of the mass killings until late in the war. Frank was captured in May 1945 and was accused of crimes against humanity at the Nuremberg War Crimes Trial. He said at his trial: "I myself have never installed an extermination camp for Jews, or promoted the existence of such camps; but if Adolf Hitler personally has laid that dreadful responsibility on his people, then it is mine too, for we have fought against Jewry for years; and we have indulged in the most horrible utterances." Hans Frank was found guilty and executed on October 1, 1946. This scholarly study from Martyn Housden examines Frank's career and complex character to shed light upon the Lebensraum project in the East and the carrying out of the Final Solution.

From 1978 1996 Holocaust denial emerged as a major concern for the liberal democracies of Europe and North America. This period also saw the first prosecutions of Holocaust deniers. But these prosecutions often ran into trouble. Holocaust Denial and the Law relates how courts in four countries (Canada, France, Germany and the United States) resolved the dilemmas posed by Holocaust denial litigation. It also describes how, in the United States, student editors had to decide whether to run ads denying the Holocaust. The book concludes that a given country's resolution of these dilemmas turns on its specific legal traditions and historical experiences. MARKET 1: Law; Politics of Religion; Jewish History

This volume explores post-2000s artistic engagements with Holocaust memory arguing that imagination plays an increasingly important role in keeping the memory of the Holocaust vivid for contemporary and future audiences.