Essentials of Holocaust Education: Fundamental Issues and Approaches is a comprehensive guide for pre- and in-service educators preparing to teach about this watershed event in human history. An original collection of essays by Holocaust scholars, teacher educators, and classroom teachers, it covers a full range of issues relating to Holocaust education, with the goal of helping teachers to help students gain a deep and thorough understanding of why and how the Holocaust was perpetrated. Both conceptual and pragmatic, it delineates key rationales for teaching the Holocaust, provides useful historical background information for teachers, and offers a wide array of practical approaches for teaching about the Holocaust. Various chapters address teaching with film and literature, incorporating the use of primary accounts into a study of the Holocaust, using technology to teach the Holocaust, and gearing the content and instructional approaches and strategies to age-appropriate audiences. A ground-breaking and highly original book, Essentials of Holocaust Education will help teachers engage students in a study of the Holocaust that is compelling, thought-provoking, and reflective

The horror of the Holocaust lies not only in its brutality but in its scale and logistics; it depended upon the machinery and logic of a rational, industrialised, and empirically organised modern society. The central thesis of this book is that Art Spiegelman's comics all identify deeply-rooted madness in post-Enlightenment society. Spiegelman maintains, in other words, that the Holocaust was not an aberration, but an inevitable consequence of modernisation. In service of this argument, Smith offers a reading of Spiegelman's comics, with a particular focus on his three main collections: Breakdowns (1977 and 2008), Maus (1980 and 1991), and In the Shadow of No Towers (2004). He draws upon a taxonomy of terms from comic book scholarship, attempts to theorize madness (including literary portrayals of trauma), and critical works on Holocaust literature.

Of all the controversies facing historians today, few are more divisive or more important than the question of how the Holocaust was possible. What led thousands of Germans – many of them middle-aged reservists with, apparently, little Nazi zeal – to willingly commit acts of genocide? Was it ideology? Was there something rotten in the German soul? Or was it – as Christopher Browning argues in this highly influential book – more a matter of conformity, a response to intolerable social and psychological pressure?

Ordinary Men is a microhistory, the detailed study of a single unit in the Nazi killing machine. Browning evaluates a wide range of evidence to seek to explain the actions of the "ordinary men" who made up reserve Police Battalion 101, taking advantage of the wide range of resources prepared in the early 1960s for a proposed war crimes trial. He concludes that his subjects were not "evil;" rather, their actions are best explained by a desire to be part of a team, not to shirk responsibility that would otherwise fall on the shoulders of comrades, and a willingness to obey authority.

Browning's ability to explore the strengths and weaknesses of arguments – both the survivors' and other historians' – is what sets his work apart from other studies that have attempted to get to the root of the motivations for the Holocaust, and it is also what marks Ordinary Men as one of the most important works of its generation.

Even before Japan joined Nazi Germany in the Axis Alliance, its leaders clarified to the Nazi regime that the attitude of the Japanese government and people to the Jews was totally different than that of the official German position and that it had no intention of taking measures against the Jews that could be seen as racially motivated. During World War II some 40,000 Jews found themselves under Japanese occupation in Manchuria, China and countries of South East Asia. Virtually all of them survived the war, unlike their brethren in Europe. This book traces the evolution of Japan's policy towards the Jews from the beginning of the 20th century, the existence of anti-Semitism in Japan, and why Japan ignored repeated Nazi demands to become involved in the ""final solution"".

During the 1930s many Americans avoided thinking about war erupting in Europe, believing it of little relevance to their own lives. Yet, the Warner Bros. film studio embarked on a virtual crusade to alert Americans to the growing menace of Nazism.

Polish-Jewish immigrants Harry and Jack Warner risked both reputation and fortune to inform the American public of the insidious threat Hitler's regime posed throughout the world. Through a score of films produced during the 1930s and early 1940s-including the pivotal "Sergeant York"-the Warner Bros. studio marshaled its forces to influence the American conscience and push toward intervention in World War II.

Celluloid Soldiers offers a compelling historical look at Warner Bros.'s efforts as the only major studio to promote anti-Nazi activity before the outbreak of the Second World War.

A challenging interpretation both of the Holocaust and its wider context, and the Church of England's role during the period. This is the first book to consider the Anglican church's response to the Nazi persecution and then murder of Europe's Jews. Acting as a critique of the historiography of the 'bystanders' to the Holocaust, it reveals a community that struggled to understand the depravity of Nazi anti-semitism. The author outlines Anglican attitudes to war, anti-semitism and many related issues, demonstrating the extent and the limits of the Church's engagement with Europeanpolitics, and shows how Christian interpretations of Nazi persecution contributed to much wider assumptions about Germany and German history in Britain during the war years. He then moves on to the post-war world, indicating theimportant role played by the Church of England in forging memories of the Nazi era and especially the suffering of Europe's Jews. Overall, this book offers a challenging new interpretation of the Holocaust and its wider context, and of the history of the Church of England and its role in the intellectual life of the nation.Dr TOM LAWSON teaches in the Department of History, University of Winchester.

This book is the translation of the Yizkor (Memorial) Book of the destroyed Jewish Community of Rozhnyatov, 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 1974, 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 by these names: Rozhnyativ Ukrrainian], Ro niatow Polish], Rozhniatov Yiddish], Rozhnyatov Russian], Rozhantov, Rozhnyatuv, Rozintov, Roznatov, Roznitev, Rozhnitiv, Roznjativ It is located at longitude 48 56' N and latitude 24 10' E and is 302 miles WSW of Kyyiv (Kiev). Other towns covered in the book are Rozniatow, Perehinsko, Broszniow, Swaryczow, Dolina, Stanislawow, Stryj, and Lvov.

Over the decades, the Holocaust has remained a critical issue both historically and politically. This is due to the modernisation of anti-Semitism in the West, where accusations of ritual murder have long been passe and claims that the Holocaust was a hoax are de riguer, and to the government sanctions of anti-Semitism in the East in countries such as Iran. The purely scholarly problem of determining the number of victims, like other aspects of demography related to the Holocaust, have suddenly become closely embroiled in geopolitics and the phenomenon of Holocaust denial, which is now a context that has been forced upon it. This book is imbued with these connections and interrelationships. Avraham, Wolfgang Benz, Sergio Della Pergola, Mark Kupovetsky, Dieter Pohl, Aron Shneer, and the editors contribute their voices to the topic.

Slave Labor in Nazi Concentration Camps examines the slave labor carried out by concentration camp prisoners from 1942 and the effect this had on the German wartime economy. This work goes far beyond the sociohistorical 'reconstructions' that dominate Holocaust studies - it combines cultural history with structural history, drawing relationships between social structures and individual actions. It also considers the statements of both perpetrators and victims, and takes the biographical approach as the only possible way to confront the destruction of the individual in the camps after the fact. The first chapter presents a comparative analysis of slave labor across the different concentration camps, including Auschwitz, Buchenwald, and Dachau. The subsequent chapters analyse the similarities and differences between various subcamps where prisoners were utilised for the wartime economy, based on the example of the 86 subcamps of Neuengamme concentration camp, which were scattered across northern Germany. The most significant difference between conditions at the various subcamps was that in some, hardly any prisoners died, while in others, almost half of them did. This work carries out a systematic comparison of the subcamp system, a kind of study which does not exist for any other camp system. This is of great significance, because by the end of the war most concentration camps had placed over 80 percent of their prisoners in subcamps. This work therefore offers a comparative framework that is highly useful for further examinations of National Socialist concentration camps, and may also be of benefit to comparative studies of other camp systems, such as Stalin's gulags.

Teaching the Holocaust is an important but often challenging task for those involved in modern Holocaust education. What content should be included and what should be left out? How can film and literature be integrated into the curriculum? What is the best way to respond to students who resist the idea of learning about it? This book, drawing upon the latest research in the field, offers practical help and advice on delivering inclusive and engaging lessons along with guidance on how to navigate through the many controversies and considerations when planning, preparing, and delivering Holocaust education. Whether teaching the subject in History, Religious Education, English or even in a school assembly, there is a wealth of wisdom which will make the task easier for you and make the learning experience more beneficial for the student. Chapters include: The aims of Holocaust education Ethical issues to consider when teaching the Holocaust Using film and documentaries in the classroom Teaching the Holocaust through literature The role of online learning and social media The benefits and practicalities of visiting memorial sites With lesson plans, resources, and schemes of work which can be used across a range of different subjects, this book is essential reading for those that want to deepen their understanding and deliver effective, thought-provoking Holocaust education.

Teaching the Holocaust is an important but often challenging task for those involved in modern Holocaust education. What content should be included and what should be left out? How can film and literature be integrated into the curriculum? What is the best way to respond to students who resist the idea of learning about it? This book, drawing upon the latest research in the field, offers practical help and advice on delivering inclusive and engaging lessons along with guidance on how to navigate through the many controversies and considerations when planning, preparing, and delivering Holocaust education. Whether teaching the subject in History, Religious Education, English or even in a school assembly, there is a wealth of wisdom which will make the task easier for you and make the learning experience more beneficial for the student. Chapters include: The aims of Holocaust education Ethical issues to consider when teaching the Holocaust Using film and documentaries in the classroom Teaching the Holocaust through literature The role of online learning and social media The benefits and practicalities of visiting memorial sites With lesson plans, resources, and schemes of work which can be used across a range of different subjects, this book is essential reading for those that want to deepen their understanding and deliver effective, thought-provoking Holocaust education.

Since the end of Communism, Jews from around the world have visited Poland to tour Holocaust-related sites. A few venture further, seeking to learn about their own Polish roots and connect with contemporary Poles. For their part, a growing number of Poles are fascinated by all things Jewish. Erica T. Lehrer explores the intersection of Polish and Jewish memory projects in the historically Jewish neighborhood of Kazimierz in Krakow. Her own journey becomes part of the story as she demonstrates that Jews and Poles use spaces, institutions, interpersonal exchanges, and cultural representations to make sense of their historical inheritances.

Of the three categories that Raul Hilberg developed in his analysis of the Holocaust-perpetrators, victims, and bystanders-it is the last that is the broadest and most difficult to pinpoint. Described by Hilberg as those who were "once a part of this history," bystanders present unique challenges for those seeking to understand the decisions, attitudes, and self-understanding of historical actors who were neither obviously the instigators nor the targets of Nazi crimes. Combining historiographical, conceptual, and empirical perspectives on the bystander, the case studies in this book provide powerful insights into the complex social processes that accompany state-sponsored genocidal violence.

Beginning in 1950, the state of Israel prosecuted and jailed dozens of Holocaust survivors who had served as camp kapos or ghetto police under the Nazis. At last comes the first full account of the kapo trials, based on records newly declassified after forty years. In December 1945, a Polish-born commuter on a Tel Aviv bus recognized a fellow rider as the former head of a town council the Nazis had established to manage the Jews. When he denounced the man as a collaborator, the rider leapt off the bus, pursued by passengers intent on beating him to death. Five years later, to address ongoing tensions within Holocaust survivor communities, the State of Israel instituted the criminal prosecution of Jews who had served as ghetto administrators or kapos in concentration camps. Dan Porat brings to light more than three dozen little-known trials, held over the following two decades, of survivors charged with Nazi collaboration. Scouring police investigation files and trial records, he found accounts of Jewish policemen and camp functionaries who harassed, beat, robbed, and even murdered their brethren. But as the trials exposed the tragic experiences of the kapos, over time the courts and the public shifted from seeing them as evil collaborators to victims themselves, and the fervor to prosecute them abated. Porat shows how these trials changed Israel's understanding of the Holocaust and explores how the suppression of the trial records-long classified by the state-affected history and memory. Sensitive to the devastating options confronting those who chose to collaborate, yet rigorous in its analysis, Bitter Reckoning invites us to rethink our ideas of complicity and justice and to consider what it means to be a victim in extraordinary circumstances.

When the Allies tried German war criminals at the end of World War II they were attempting not only to punish the guilty but also to set down a history of Nazism and of what had happened in Europe. Yet as Donald Bloxham shows in this incisive new account the reality was that these proceedings failed: not only did the guilty often escape punishment but the final solution was largely written out of history in the post-war era.

Containing an almost entirely new selection of texts, this second edition of The Holocaust: Origins, Implementation, Aftermath presents a critical and important study of the Holocaust. Many of the pieces challenge conventional analyses and preconceived notions about the Holocaust, whether regarding genocidal precedents and the centrality of antisemitism, the relationship between ideological motivation and economic calculations, or the timing of the decision on the Final Solution. Starting with the background of the Holocaust and focusing on colonial violence, antisemitism and scientific racism as being at the root of the Final Solution, the book then examines the context of the decision to unleash the genocide of the Jews. Several powerful texts then provide readers with a close look at the psychology of a perpetrator, the fate of the victims - with a particular emphasis on the role of gender and the murder of children - and the impossible choices made by Jewish leaders, educators, and men recruited into the Nazi extermination apparatus. Finally, there is an analysis of survivors' testimonies and the creation of an early historical record, and an inquiry into post-war tribunals and the development of international justice and legislation with a view to the larger phenomenon of modern genocide before and after the Holocaust. Complete with an introduction that summarises the state of the field, this book contains major reinterpretations by leading Holocaust authors along with key texts on testimony, memory, and justice after the catastrophe. With brief discussions placing each essay in historical and scholarly context, this carefully selected compilation is an ideal introduction to the topic and essential reading for all students of the Holocaust.

Contemporary scholars in all disciplines have long recognized that the Shoah is a critical challenge to Christianity and Western civilization, as well as a watershed event in Jewish history. Steven L. Jacobs has completed two complementary works dealing with contemporary religious responses to the Shoah, one from the Christian perspective, the other from the Jewish perspective. This work focuses on the Christian responses to the Holocaust. Contents: Revisionism and Theology, Harry James Cargas; Evil and Existence: Karl Barth, Paul Tillich, Reinhold Niebuhr Revisited in Light of the Shoah, Alan Davies; Suffering, Theology, and the Shoah, Alice Lyons Eckardt; Mysterium Tremendum: Catholic Grapplings with the Shoah and its Theological Implications, Eugene J. Fisher; In the Presence of Burning Children: The Reformation of Christianity after the Shoah, Douglas K. Huenke; How the Shoah Affects Christian Belief, Thomas A. Idinopulos; A Contemporary Religious Response to the Shoah: The Crisis of Prayer, Michael McGarry; The Shoah: Continuing Theological Challenge for Christianity, John T. Pawlikowski; Theological and Ethical Reflections on the Shoah: Getting Beyond the Victimizer Relationship, Rosemary Radford Reuther; and Asking and Listening, Understanding and Doing: Some Conditions for Responding to the Shoah Religiously, John K Roth.

Flares of Memory is a collection of ninety-two stories written by over forty Jewish survivors and several US Army liberators about their experiences during the Holocaust. The stories collected in this volume were developed in a writing workshop led by Brostoff and Chamovitz for survivors of the Holocaust in the hope of preserving their memories for posterity. The contributors to this collection relate their recollections of being children, teenagers, and young adults during the Holocaust. Their individual experiences testify to the horror of the period as well as the moments of courage and luck that allowed them to survive while offering a tribute to the lives and cultures that were destroyed. The volume organizes the stories thematically into chapters, and includes a detailed timeline of the Holocaust, a map of concentration camps, and photographs of the contributors.

Classroom study of the Holocaust evokes strong emotions in teachers and students. Teaching, Learning, and the Holocaust assesses challenges and approaches to teaching about the Holocaust through history and literature. Howard Tinberg and Ronald Weisberger apply methods and insights of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning to examine issues in interdisciplinary teaching, with a focus on the community college setting. They discuss student learning and teacher effectiveness and offer guidance for teaching courses on the Holocaust, with relevance for other contexts involving trauma and atrocity.

In the fall of 1938, following Kristallnacht, the symphonic orchestra in Palestine cancelled the performance of Die Meistersinger von Nurnberg. No one could foresee that this would be the beginning of a never-ending boycott. The boycott began in a society struggling for its existence and collective identity; it continues in a well-established culture that maintains close ties with Germany and German culture, when numerous Israeli institutions are involved in commemorating the Holocaust. At present Wagner is known in Israel mainly as a symbol of the Holocaust. From the late twentieth-century Wagner is the only composer who aroused strong opposition when attempts were made to publicly play his music. Analysis of this controversy sheds light on the changes that have taken place in Israel -- from a pioneering to a traditional society, and from a socialist to a capitalistic one. In the Wagner Year "The Ring of Myths" appears in a revised edition, including interpretations from new perspectives on the place of the Holocaust in Israeli society and the processes of change until 2012.

"A meticulous and shattering investigation of eight horrific pictures..."-L'Arche In December 1941, on a shore near the Latvian city of Liepaja, Nazi death squads (the Einsatzgruppen) and local collaborators murdered in three days more than 2,700 Jews. The majority were women and children, most men having already been shot during the summer. The perpetrators took pictures of the December killings. These pictures are among the rare photographs from the first period of the extermination, during which over 800 000 Jews from the Baltic to the Black Sea were shot to death. By showing the importance of photography in understanding persecution, Nadine Fresco offers a powerful meditation on these images while confronting the essential questions of testimony and guilt. From the forward by Dorota Glowackay: Straddling the boundary between historical inquiry and personal reflection, this extraordinary text unfolds as a series of encounters with eponymic Holocaust photographs. Although only a small number of photographs are reproduced here, Fresco provides evocative descriptions of many well-known images: synagogues and Torah scrolls burning on the night of Kristallnacht; deportations to the ghettos and the camps; and, finally, mass executions in the killing fi elds of Eastern Europe. The unique set of photographs included in On the Death of Jews shows groups of women and children from Liepaja (Liepaja), shortly before they were killed in December 1941 in the dunes of Shkede (Skede) on the Baltic Sea. In the last photograph of the series, we see the victims' bodies tumbling into the pit.

This interdisciplinary study intergrates historiographical, literary and cultural methodologies in its focus on a little known corpus of testimonial accounts published by French women deported to Nazi camps. Comprising epistemological and literary analyses of the accounts and an examination of the construction of deportee identities, it will interest those working in the fields of modern French literature, genre, women's studies and the Holocaust.

Moving beyond the well-established problems and public discussions of the Holocaust, this collection of essays, written by some of the leading German historians of the younger generation, leaves behind the increasingly agitated arguments of the last years and substantially broadens, and in many areas revises, our knowledge of the Holocaust. Unlike previous studies, which have focused on whether the Holocaust could best be understood as the "fulfillment of a world view" or as a process of "cumulative radicalization, " these articles provide an overview of how situational elements and gradual processes of radicalization were variously combined with ever-changing objectives and fundamental ideological convictions.

Focusing on the developments in Poland, the Soviet Union, Serbia, and France the authors find that heretofore we have actually had very little knowledge of many aspects of this history, particularly with regards to the specific forces that motivated German policy in the individual regions of Central and Eastern Europe. Thus the National-Socialist extermination policy is not seen as a secret undertaking but rather as part of the German conquest and occupation policy in Europe.

In recent years, a lively debate has developed in Poland on the question of what responsibility the Poles share for the mass murder of the Jews, which took place largely on Polish soil. This debate was sparked off by the showing in Poland of Claude Lanzmann's film, Shoah , which revealed how deeply-rooted anti-Jewish prejudice could still be found in the Polish countryside. Anti-semitism is something which Poland has preferred to forget. But before the Second World War hostility to the Jews was widespread and this climate of pervasive anti-semitism may have facilitated the Nazis' murderous plans. But Poles now, with great courage, are facing this dark side of their past. This book, translated and edited by a leading British historian of Poland, Antony Polonsky, is a major contribution to the history of the Holocaust. It gathers together the most important contribution to the current debate, revealing the agony many Poles feel about their lack of action during the war.