Originally published in 1946, this volume, based on some of the evidence taken from captured German files and archives, discusses many questions concerning German policy and diplomatic manoeuvre during the Second World War. It offers a fascinating insight into the rise and fall of the Nazi state and represents a record, aimed at both the general reader and student of history of some of the first documents which were available in the aftermath of the World War 2.

Originally published in 1985, this book provides an important insight into the principal aspects of the history of the policy and practice of political re-education from its origins to 1951. 'Political re-education' was the British alternative to the ideas put forward by the USA and the USSR in the common search for a post-war policy which would permanently prevent the resurgence of Germany for a third time as a hostile military power. It was adopted as Allied policy and remains one of the boldest and most imaginative policies in history for securing lasting peace. This book discusses the question of the place of this policy in the preservation of peace and the integration of Germany and Japan into the community of their historical enemies.

Through analyses of three eventful years in Nazi Germany's history - the Kristallnacht pogrom, the invasion of Poland and the invasion of Soviet Russia - this book explores the violence of states. All three events were part of the Nazi colonial project and led to mass killings, eventually resulting in the systematic murder of Jews becoming a major war aim - one that Germany would pursue to the end, even when it became clear that the military conflict could no longer be won. Drawing on voluminous historical and sociological literature, as well as documentary and contemporary evidence, the author presents a new account of the phenomenon of extreme state violence as a special category of violence, in which the armed forces, maintained in a state of readiness, are used unnecessarily and excessively, often on thin pretexts, and, unlike coercive violence, only rarely for the purposes of carrying messages to the public. As such, it will appeal to scholars of sociology, history and anthropology concerned with mass and state violence.

Throughout the Second World War, the term 'Europe' featured prominently in National Socialist rhetoric. This book reconstructs what Europe stood for in National Socialist Germany, analyses how the interplay of its defining elements changed dependent on the war, and shows that the new European order was neither an empty phrase born out of propaganda, nor was it anti-European. Tying in with long-standing traditions of German European, voelkisch, and economic thinking, imaginations of a New Order became a central category in contemporary political and economic decision-making processes, justifying cooperation as well as exploitation, violence, and murder.

This book is a groundbreaking study of one of the greatest science fiction writers, the Polish master Stanislaw Lem. It offers a new direction in research on his oeuvre and corrects several errors commonly appearing in his biographies. The author painstakingly recreates the context of Lem's early life and his traumatic experiences during the Second World War due to his Jewish background, and then traces these through original and brilliant readings of his fiction and non-fiction. She considers language, worldbuilding, themes, motifs and characterization as well as many buried allusions to the Holocaust in Lem's published and archival work, and uses these fragments to capture a different side of Lem than previously known. The book discusses various issues concerning the writer's life, such as his upbringing in a Jewish, Zionist-minded family, the extensive relations between the Lem family and the elite of Lviv at that time, details of the Lem family killed during the German occupation and attempts to reconstruct what happened to Lem's parents and to the writer himself after escaping the ghetto. Part of the Studies in Global Genre Fiction series, this English translation of the Polish original, which has already been considered a milestone in Lem studies, offers a fresh perspective on the writer and his work. It will be an important intervention for scholars and researchers of Jewish studies, Holocaust literature, science fiction studies, English literature, world war studies, minority studies, popular culture, history and cultural studies.

This book shares the conclusions of a remarkable conference marking the centennial of Thessaloniki's incorporation into the Greek state in 1912. Like its Roman and Byzantine predecessors, Ottoman Salonica was the metropolis of a huge, multi-ethnic Balkan hinterland, a center of modernization/westernization, and the de facto capital of Sephardic Judaism. The powerful attraction it exerted on competing local nationalisms, including the Young Turks, gave it a paradigmatic role in the transition from imperial to national rule in southeastern Europe. Twenty-three articles cover the multicultural physiognomy of a 'Levantine' city. They describe the mechanisms for cultivating national consciousness (including education, journalism, the arts, archaeology, and urban planning), the relationship between national identity, religious identity, and an evolving socialist labor movement, anti-Semitism, and the practical issues of governing and assimilating diverse non-Greek populations after Greece's military victory in 1912. Analysis of this transformation extends chronologically through the arrival of Greek refugees from Turkey and the Black Sea in 1923, the Holocaust, the Greek civil war, and the new waves of migration after 1990. These processes are analyzed on multiple levels, including civil administration, land use planning, and the treatment of Thessaloniki's historic monuments. This work underscores the importance of cities and their local histories in shaping the key national narratives that drove development in southeastern Europe. Those lessons are highly relevant today, as Europe reacts to renewed migratory pressures and the rise of new nationalist movements, and draws lessons, valid or otherwise, from the nation-building experiments of the previous century.

This book is a groundbreaking study of one of the greatest science fiction writers, the Polish master Stanislaw Lem. It offers a new direction in research on his oeuvre and corrects several errors commonly appearing in his biographies. The author painstakingly recreates the context of Lem's early life and his traumatic experiences during the Second World War due to his Jewish background, and then traces these through original and brilliant readings of his fiction and non-fiction. She considers language, worldbuilding, themes, motifs and characterization as well as many buried allusions to the Holocaust in Lem's published and archival work, and uses these fragments to capture a different side of Lem than previously known. The book discusses various issues concerning the writer's life, such as his upbringing in a Jewish, Zionist-minded family, the extensive relations between the Lem family and the elite of Lviv at that time, details of the Lem family killed during the German occupation and attempts to reconstruct what happened to Lem's parents and to the writer himself after escaping the ghetto. Part of the Studies in Global Genre Fiction series, this English translation of the Polish original, which has already been considered a milestone in Lem studies, offers a fresh perspective on the writer and his work. It will be an important intervention for scholars and researchers of Jewish studies, Holocaust literature, science fiction studies, English literature, world war studies, minority studies, popular culture, history and cultural studies.

This book enables readers to learn about upstanders, partisans, and survivors from first-hand perspectives that reveal the many forms of resistance-some bold and defiant, some subtle-to the Nazis during the Holocaust. What did those who resisted the Nazis during the 1930s through 1945-known now as "the Righteous"-do when confronted with the Holocaust? How did those who resorted to physical acts of resistance to fight the Nazis in the ghettos, the concentration camps, and the forests summon the courage to form underground groups and organize their efforts? This book presents a comprehensive examination of more than 150 remarkable people who said "no" to the Nazis when confronted by the Holocaust of the Jews. They range from people who undertook armed resistance to individuals who risked-and sometimes lost-their lives in trying to rescue Jews or spirit them away to safety. In many cases, the very act of survival in the face of extreme circumstances was a form of resistance. This important book explores the many facets of resistance to the Holocaust that took place less than 100 years ago, providing valuable insights to any reader seeking evidence of how individuals can remain committed to the maintenance of humanitarian traditions in the darkest of times. Provides readers with insights into how and when resistance activities took place during the Holocaust-historical information that is both deeply saddening and inspirational Documents the myriad ways in which upstanders sought to minimize the worst effects of Nazi anti-Jewish measures Explains how those who came to be recognized as the Righteous among the Nations engaged in their life-saving work Supplies document introductions and scholarly analysis that help readers to better understand the primary source material as well as a comprehensive bibliography that serves as a gateway to further research

Genocide denial not only abuses history and insults the victims but paves the way for future atrocities. Yet few, if any, books have offered a comparative overview and analysis of this problem. Denial: The Final Stage of Genocide? is a resource for understanding and countering denial. Denial spans a broad geographic and thematic range in its explorations of varied forms of denial-which is embedded in each stage of genocide. Ranging far beyond the most well-known cases of denial, this book offers original, pathbreaking arguments and contributions regarding: competition over commemoration and public memory in Ukraine and elsewhere transitional justice in post-conflict societies; global violence against transgender people, which genocide scholars have not adequately confronted; music as a means to recapture history and combat denial; public education's role in erasing Indigenous history and promoting settler-colonial ideology in the United States; "triumphalism" as a new variant of denial following the Bosnian Genocide; denial vis-a-vis Rwanda and neighboring Congo (DRC). With contributions from leading genocide experts as well as emerging scholars, this book will be of interest to scholars and students of history, genocide studies, anthropology, political science, international law, gender studies, and human rights.

Shoah and Torah systematically takes up the task of reading the Shoah through the lens of the Torah and the Torah through the lens of the Shoah.The investigation rests upon (1) the metaphysical standing that the Nazis ascribed to the Torah, (2) the obliteration of the Torah in the extermination of the Jews, (3) the significance of the Torah for an understanding of the Shoah, and (4) the significance of the Shoah for an understanding of the Torah.The basis for the inquiry lies not in the content of a certain belief but in the categories of a certain mode of thought. Distinct from all other studies, this book is grounded in the categories of Jewish thought and Judaism-the categories of creation, revelation, and redemption-that the Nazis sought to obliterate in the Shoah.Thus, the investigation is itself a response to the Nazi project of the extermination of the Jews and the millennial testimony of the Jews to the Torah.

This volume showcases important new research on World War II memory, both in the Soviet Union and in Russia today. Through an examination of war remembrance in its various forms-official histories, school textbooks, museums, monuments, literature, films, and Victory Day parades-chapters illustrate how the heroic narrative of the war was established in Soviet times and how it continues to shape war memorialization under Putin. This war narrative resonates with the Russian population due to decades of Soviet commemoration, which continued virtually uninterrupted into the post-Soviet period. Major themes of the volume include the use of World War II memory for political legitimation and patriotic mobilization; the striking continuities between Soviet and post-Soviet commemorative practices; the place of Holocaust memorialization in contemporary Russia; Putin's invocation of the war to bolster national pride and international prestige; and the relationship between individual memory and collective remembrance. Authored by an international group of distinguished specialists, this collection is ideal for scholars of Russia across a range of disciplines, including history, political science, sociology, and cultural studies.

The Holocaust/Genocide Template in Eastern Europe discusses the "memory wars" in the course of the post-Communist re-narration of history since 1989 and the current authoritarian backlash. The book focuses specifically on how "mnemonic warriors" employ the "Holocaust template" and the concept of genocide in tendentious ways to justify radical policies and externalize the culpability for their international isolation and worsening social and economic circumstances domestically. The chapters analyze three dimensions: 1) the competing narratives of the "universalization of the Holocaust" as the negative icon of our era, on the one hand, and the "double genocide" paradigm, on the other, which focuses on "our own" national suffering under - allegedly "equally" evil - Nazism and Communism; 2) the juxtaposition of post-Communist Eastern Europe and Russia, reflected primarily in the struggle of the Baltic states and Ukraine to challenge Russian propaganda, a struggle that runs the risk of employing similarly distorting and propagandistic tropes; and 3) the post-Yugoslav rhetoric portraying one's own group as "the new Jews" and one's opponents in the wars of the 1990s as (akin to) "Nazis". Surveying major battle sites in this "memory war": memorial museums, monuments, film and the war over definitions and terminology in relevant public discourse, The Holocaust/Genocide Template in Eastern Europe will be of great interest to scholars of genocide, the Holocaust, historical memory and revisionism, and Eastern European Politics. This book was originally published as a special issue of the Journal of Genocide Research.

This anthology brings together eight chapters which examine the life of Jews in Southeast Europe through political, social and cultural lenses. Even though the Holocaust put an end to many communities in the region, this book chronicles how some Holocaust survivors nevertheless tried to restore their previous lives. Focusing on the once flourishing and colorful Jewish communities throughout the Balkans - many of which were organized according to the Ottoman millet system - this book provides a diverse range of insights into Jewish life and Jewish-Gentile relations in what became Greece, Yugoslavia, Romania and Bulgaria after World War II. Further, the contributors conceptualize the issues in focus from a historical perspective. In these diachronic case studies, virtually the whole 20th century is covered, with a special focus paid to the shifting identities, the changing communities and the memory of the Holocaust, thereby providing a very useful parallel to today's post-war and divided societies. Drawing on relevant contemporary approaches in historical research, this book complements the field with topics that, until now in Jewish studies and beyond, remained on the edge of the general research focus. This book was originally published as a special issue of Southeast European and Black Sea Studies.

The Holocaust is often described as beyond representation. Drawing on interdisciplinary perspectives, this ground-breaking collection of essays by leading international scholars takes the Scrolls of Auschwitz as its starting point. These powerful hand-written testimonies, which were buried in the grounds of the crematoria at Birkenau in 1944, seek to bear witness to mass murder from at its core. The accounts, which are often marginalized in studies of Holocaust testimony, are frequently highly literary and ask significant questions of the notion that Auschwitz cannot be attested to. The volume also includes a number of essays that consider other forms of testimony, in media such as film, literature and video, which have also been marginalized as they fail to conform to dominant ideas about the nature and structure of the event.

The White Terror was a movement of right-wing militias that for two years actively tracked down, tortured, and murdered members of the Jewish community, as well as former supporters of the short-lived Council Republic in the years following World War I. It can be argued that this example of a programme of virulent antisemitism laid the foundations for Hungarian participation in the Holocaust. Given the rightward shift of Hungarian politics today, this book has a particular resonance in re-examining the social and historical context of the White Terror.

The book investigates the rather neglected "intellectual" collaboration between National Socialist Germany and other countries, including views on knowledge and politics among "pro-German" intellectuals, using a comparative approach. These moves were shaped by the Nazi system, which viewed scientific and cultural exchange as part and parcel of their cultural propaganda and policy. Positive views of the Hitler regime among intellectuals of all sorts were indicative of a broader discontent with democracy that, among other things, represented an alternative approach to modernization which was not limited to the German heartlands. This book draws together international experts in an analysis of right-wing Europe under Hitler; a study which has gained new resonance amidst the wave of European nationalism in the twenty-first century.

The great majority of Holocaust scholarship concentrates heavily, if not almost completely, on the Final Solution from the German side. The distinctive feature of this book, both individually and as a collection, is its concentration on the Holocaust from a Judeo-centric point of view. The present essays make a unique contribution by exploring issues such as: the effect of events specifically on Jewish women and children; the character of the Nazi policy of slave labor in as much as this essential program resulted in different treatment with regard to Jews as compared to other workers; how the destruction of European Jewry has been responded to by Jewish thinkers; and how Jewish values, such as the well-known principle that "all Jews are responsible for each other," were exemplified and lived out during the war. The collection also includes an essay on Elie Wiesel, and another that explores the much discussed, very controversial issue of Jewish resistance, as well as several essays on philosophical and comparative issues raised by the Shoah.

The Jewish Orphanage in Leiden was the last one of eight such care homes to open its doors in the Netherlands before the Second World War. After spending almost 39 years in an old and utterly inadequate building in Leiden's city centre, the inauguration in 1929 of a brand-new building, shown on the front cover, was the start of a remarkably productive and prosperous period. The building still stands there, proudly but sadly, to this day: the relatively happy period lasted less than fourteen years. On Wednesday evening, 17th March 1943, the Leiden police, under German instructions, closed down the orphanage and delivered 50 children and nine staff to the Leiden railway station, from where they were brought to Transit Camp Westerbork in the north-east of the country. Two boys were released from Westerbork thanks to tireless efforts of a neighbour in Leiden; one young woman survived Auschwitz, and one young girl escaped to Palestine via Bergen-Belsen. The remaining 55 were deported to Sobibor - and not one of them survived. Some 168 children lived in the new building at one time or another between August 1929 and March 1943. This book reconstructs life in the orphanage based on the many stories and photographs which they left us. It is dedicated to the memory of those who perished in the Holocaust, but also to those who survived. Without them, this book could not have been written.

'Through thick and thin, never separate. Stick together, guard each other, and live for one another.' As Hitler's war intensified, the Ovitz family would have good reason to stand by their mother's mantra. Descending from the cattle train into the death camp of Auschwitz, all twelve emerged in 1945 as survivors - the largest family to survive intact. What saved them? Ironically, the fact that they were sought out by the 'Angel of Death' himself - Dr Joseph Mengele. For seven of the Ovitzes were dwarfs - and not just any dwarfs, but a beloved and highly successful vaudeville act known as the Lilliput Troupe. Together, they were the only all-dwarf ensemble with a full show of their own in the history of entertainment. The Ovitzes intrigued Mengele, and amongst the thousands on whom he performed his loathsome experiments, they became his prize 'patients': 'You're something special, not like the rest of them.' It was this disturbing affection that saved their lives. After being plunged into the darkest moments in modern history, this remarkable troupe emerged with spirits undimmed, and went on to light up Europe and Israel, which offered them a new home, with their unique performances. Giants reveals their moving and inspirational story.

Challenging the dominant narrative of the murder of European Jewry, Pete Kakel's small book is distinctive in a number of ways. Firstly, unlike most explanations which ignore, downplay, or undervalue the Holocaust's colonial dimensions, it places the Nazi colonial-imperial enterprise front-and-centre in understanding why the Holocaust happened. Additionally, while acknowledging the Holocaust's multiple causes, it identifies western-style colonialism/racial imperialism as the single most important contributor to the Holocaust's occurrence. And lastly, arguing that it is no longer tenable to restrict the term 'Holocaust' to the murder of European Jews, it suggests a broadening of the usage of 'Holocaust' to include the Nazi genocide of non-Jewish noncombatants by the Nazis and their collaborators.Within this paradigm, readers can understand the Holocaust as part of the emerging global histories of imperialism, colonialism, and genocide. Rather than an aberration or 'unique' event, Kakel locates the Holocaust as part of a continuum of western colonialism/racial imperialism, featuring genocidal violence against noncombatants, while also illuminating the Nazi Judeocide's terrible specificities.

This book-which is based on vast archival research and on a variety of primary sources-has filled a gap in Italy's historiography on Fascism, and in European and world history about concentration camps in our contemporary world. It provides, for the first time, a survey of the different types of internment practiced by Fascist Italy during the war and a historical map of its concentration camps. Published in Italian (I campi del duce, Turin: Einaudi, 2004), in Croatian (Mussolinijevi Logori, Zagreb: Golden Marketing - Tehnicka knjiga, 2007), in Slovenian (Fasisticna taborisca, Ljublana: Publicisticno drustvo ZAK, 2011), and now in English, Mussolini's Camps is both an excellent product of academic research and a narrative easily accessible to readers who are not professional historians. It undermines the myth that concentration camps were established in Italy only after the creation of the Republic of Salo and the Nazi occupation of Italy's northern regions in 1943, and questions the persistent and traditional image of Italians as brava gente (good people), showing how Fascism made extensive use of the camps (even in the occupied territories) as an instrument of coercion and political control.

Genocide has scarred human societies since Antiquity. In the modern era, genocide has been a global phenomenon: from massacres in colonial America, Africa, and Australia to the Holocaust of European Jewry and mass death in Maoist China. In recent years, the discipline of 'genocide studies' has developed to offer analysis and comprehension.
The Oxford Handbook of Genocide Studies is the first book to subject both genocide and the young discipline it has spawned to systematic, in-depth investigation. Thirty-four renowned experts study genocide through the ages by taking regional, thematic, and disciplinary-specific approaches. Chapters examine secessionist and political genocides in modern Asia. Others treat the violent dynamics of European colonialism in Africa, the complex ethnic geography of the Great Lakes region, and the structural instability of the continent's northern horn. South and North America receive detailed coverage, as do the Ottoman Empire, Nazi-occupied Europe, and post-communist Eastern Europe. Sustained attention is paid to themes like gender, memory, the state, culture, ethnic cleansing, military intervention, the United Nations, and prosecutions.
The work is multi-disciplinary, featuring the work of historians, anthropologists, lawyers, political scientists, sociologists, and philosophers. Uniquely combining empirical reconstruction and conceptual analysis, this Handbook presents and analyses regions of genocide and the entire field of 'genocide studies' in one substantial volume.

This interdisciplinary collection of primary and secondary readings encourages scholars and students to engage critically with current debates about the origins, implementation and postwar interpretation of the Holocaust.
Interdisciplinary content encourages students to engage with philosophical, political, cultural and literary debate as well as historiographical issues.
Integrates oral histories and testimonies from both victims and perpetrators, including Jewish council leaders, victims of ghettos and camps, SS officials and German soldiers.
Subsections can be used as the basis for oral or written exercises.
Whole articles or substantial extracts are included wherever possible.

In this gripping memoir, originally published in 1957, the Dutch author, codename 'Zip', recounts her extraordinary journey. A young fighter for the resistance during World War II, Zip is captured and held prisoner as part of the 'Night and Fog' unit, political prisoners who wait out the war in a crowded, secret cell. During their long days and nights, each creates a secret embroidery telling the story of their war, including when they are moved from place to place, writing each other's names in morse code out of contraband black thread. Upon liberation, Zip must find her way back to Holland with her three companions, scant belongings, and any food they can 'liberate' or are given by the goodwill of soldiers or villagers along the way. In cinematic, sweeping prose, Zip reveals all the details of the time, including the camaraderie of fellow political prisoners upon release: the Dutch prisoners of war who have kept their uniforms intact; the French p.o.w.s in threadbare yet debonair getups; the French women resistance fighters who break out in song ('La Marseillaise') to reunite a hungry mob; not to mention the Russian liberators, and the American soldiers. The world they enter has turned upside down. The jovial spirit and giddiness they share at being free is uplifting and unforgettable. An adroit, page-turning and heroic tale of humanity - after the darkness, there is so much light. The Walls Came Tumbling Down is a true World War II classic.