A series of numbers was tattooed on prisoners' forearms only at one location - the Auschwitz concentration camp complex. Children, parents, grandparents, mostly Jews but also a significant number of non-Jews scarred for life. Indelibly etched with a number into their flesh and souls, constantly reminding them of the horrors of the Holocaust. References to the Auschwitz number appear in artworks from the Holocaust period and onwards, by survivors and non-survivor artists, and Jewish and non-Jewish artists. These artists refer to the number from Auschwitz to portray the Holocaust and its meaning. This book analyzes the place that the image of the Auschwitz number occupies in the artist's consciousness and how it is grasped in the collective perception of different societies. It discusses how the Auschwitz number is used in public and private Holocaust commemoration. Additionally, the book describes the use of the Auschwitz number as a Holocaust icon to protest, warn, and fight against Holocaust denial.

Schindler's List meets The Sound of Music as best-selling New York Post investigative journalist Isabel Vincent delves into pre-World-War-II history to recover the amazing story of two British spinsters who masterminded a plan to spirit dozens of Jewish stars and personnel of the German and Austrian opera to England and save them from a terrible fate under the Third Reich. Will resonate with readers of The Nazi Officer's Wife and The Dressmakers of Auschwitz. A Secret Aria of Courage and Suspense Europe, 1937. Two British sisters, one a dowdy typist, the other a soon-to-be famous romance novelist. One shared passion for opera. With prospects for marriage and families of their own cut down by the scythe of World War I, the Cook sisters have thrown themselves into their love of music, with frequent pilgrimages to Germany and Austria to see their favorite opera stars perform.  But now with war clouds gathering and harassment increasing, the stars of Continental opera, many of whom are Jewish, face dark futures under the boot heel of the Nazis. What can two middle-aged British spinsters do about such matters? They can form a secret cabal right under Hitler's nose and get to work saving lives. Along with Austrian conductor Clemens Krauss (a favorite of Hitler, but quietly working with the Cooks) the sisters conspire to bring together worldwide opera aficionados and insiders in an international operation to rescue Jews in the opera from the horrific fate that everyone intuits is coming. By the time war does arrive, the Cooks and their operatives have plucked over two dozen Jewish men and women from the looming maw of the Holocaust and spirited them to safety in England. Packed with original research and vividly told with suspense, hope, and wonder by award-winning New York Post investigative journalist Isabel Vincent, author of nationally best-selling memoir Dinner with Edward, this singular tale reveals many new details of the seemingly naïve and oblivious Cook sisters' surreptitious bravery, daring, and passionate commitment as the two mount a successful rescue mission that saves dozens of lives and preserves the opera they love for another generation. “A profoundly moving history of vision, courage, love and commitment.�—Blanche Wiesen Cook, author of national bestseller Eleanor Roosevelt "A riveting, improbable, uplifting tale, made all the more exciting because it really happened!�—Opera great and 17-time Grammy Award winner Renée Fleming

Educators and students face many questions when exploring the history of the Holocaust. Both the harrowing historical narrative and its wider contemporary implications make the Holocaust an essential part of our education, whilst simultaneously bringing to the fore challenging questions of how best to recount such an event. This book addresses these crucial questions by exploring the way in which we teach and learn about the Holocaust. It demonstrates how we can dignify memories of the Holocaust by joining with resilient survivors, as well as how careful discussion and interpretation of definitions and appropriate representations can link the Holocaust to human rights and international law. It also highlights that understanding the Holocaust serves as a catalyst for the expansion of human rights and for genocide prevention. Throughout, Polgar applies sociological concepts that can help all of us to understand how the Holocaust has become both a particular concern for Jewish and European groups and also a basis for laws and practices that support universal human rights. Advocating for the inclusion of the Holocaust in multicultural education, this text will prove invaluable to students, researchers and educators alike.

The Holocaust is a pervasive presence in British culture and society. Schools have been legally required to deliver Holocaust education, the government helps to fund student visits to Auschwitz, the Imperial War Museum's permanent Holocaust Exhibition has attracted millions of visitors, and Britain has an annually commemorated Holocaust Memorial Day. What has prompted this development, how has it unfolded, and why has it happened now? How does it relate to Britain's post-war history, its contemporary concerns, and the wider "globalisation" of Holocaust memory? What are the multiple shapes that British Holocaust consciousness assumes and the consequences of their rapid emergence? Why have the so-called "lessons" of the Holocaust enjoyed such popularity in Britain? Through analysis of changing engagements with the Holocaust in political, cultural and memorial landscapes over the past generation, this book addresses these questions, demonstrating the complexities of Holocaust consciousness and reflecting on the contrasting ways that history is used in Britain today.

Originally published in 1969, this book discusses the many factors which atomised German society from 1870 onwards and thus assisted Nazi evil, and it shows that Hitler and Nazism were mere phenomena of a mass age. The author wrote with the twin qualifications as historian and survivor of the camps. To have lived through it and then dissect it as a scholar is an astonishing achievement and it is this achievement that this book records.

Based on recently discovered documents, The Jews Should Keep Quiet reassesses the hows and whys behind the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration's fateful policies during the Holocaust. Rafael Medoff delves into difficult truths: With FDR's consent, the administration deliberately suppressed European immigration far below the limits set by U.S. law. His administration also refused to admit Jewish refugees to the U.S. Virgin Islands, dismissed proposals to use empty Liberty ships returning from Europe to carry refugees, and rejected pleas to drop bombs on the railways leading to Auschwitz, even while American planes were bombing targets only a few miles away-actions that would not have conflicted with the larger goal of winning the war. What motivated FDR? Medoff explores the sensitive question of the president's private sentiments toward Jews. Unmasking strong parallels between Roosevelt's statements regarding Jews and Asians, he connects the administration's policies of excluding Jewish refugees and interning Japanese Americans. The Jews Should Keep Quiet further reveals how FDR's personal relationship with Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, American Jewry's foremost leader in the 1930s and 1940s, swayed the U.S. response to the Holocaust. Documenting how Roosevelt and others pressured Wise to stifle American Jewish criticism of FDR's policies, Medoff chronicles how and why the American Jewish community largely fell in line with Wise. Ultimately Medoff weighs the administration's realistic options for rescue action, which, if taken, would have saved many lives.

In this unusual Holocaust memoir, Rhodea Shandler gives a woman's view of life under the Nazis in Holland. She begins by describing her early life in a closely knit Jewish family in northern Holland. There was anti-Semitism, she explains, but it was of a low level, and the Jews with their strong ties to community managed to live relatively normal lives. Then everything began to change with Hitler's rise to power in 1933. Through it all, she tells of life ongoing and how she became a nursing student in Amsterdam. It was while she was working in an Amsterdam hospital on 9 May 1940, that an explosion was heard, and she looked up to watch German paratroopers landing to take control of the city. Over the next few years she describes how the community attempts to cope even as Jews are being deported before their very eyes. Finally in early 1943, she and her new husband decide that they must go into hiding in the countryside. With the help of the Underground, they find a "safe" farm, but their situation changes when Shandler discovers that she is pregnant. Some of the most moving parts of the story describe her preparations for the child's birth, even as their "friendly" family turns against them, fearful of the new dangers a baby will bring. Then on a bitterly cold day in December 1943 the baby is born, and Shandler is left with the difficult task of caring for the child in the midst of continuing Gestapo raids. Shandler's memoir ends with the family's decision after the war to emigrate to Canada, and for Shandler to write of her struggle to give birth to the new.

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.

Two works of autobiography. If This is a Man tells of Levi's experiences as a victim of the Holocaust, from his arrest by the Fascists in 1943 to the liberation of Auschwitz by the Russians. The Truce is the story of his eight-month journey back to Italy after he was liberated.

'With the moral stamina and intellectual pose of a twentieth-century Titan, this slightly built, duitful, unassuming chemist set out systematically to remember the German hell on earth, steadfastly to think it through, and then to render it comprehensible in lucid, unpretentious prose. He was profoundly in touch with the minutest workings of the most endearing human events and with the most contempible. What has survived in Levi's writing isn't just his memory of the unbearable, but also, in THE PERIODIC TABLE and THE WRENCH, his delight in what made the world exquisite to him. He was himself a magically endearing man, the most delicately forceful enchanter I've ever known'
- Philip Roth

The death of Primo Levi robs Italy of one of its finest writers ... One of the few survivors of the Holocaust to speak of his experiences with a gentle voice'
- Guardian

The remarkable memoir of Zuzana Ruzickova, Holocaust survivor and world-famous harpsichordist. 'Extraordinary' Sunday Times 'Compelling' Daily Telegraph Zuzana Ruzickova grew up in 1930s Czechoslovakia dreaming of two things: Johann Sebastian Bach and the piano. But her peaceful, melodic childhood was torn apart when, in 1939, the Nazis invaded. Uprooted from her home, transported from Auschwitz to Hamburg to Bergen-Belsen, bereaved, starved, and afflicted with crippling injuries to her musician's hands, the teenage Zuzana faced a series of devastating losses. Yet with every truck and train ride, a small slip of paper printed with her favourite piece of Bach's music became her talisman. Armed with this 'proof that beauty still existed', Zuzana's fierce bravery and passion ensured her survival of the greatest human atrocities of all time, and would continue to sustain her through the brutalities of post-war Communist rule. Harnessing her talent and dedication, and fortified by the love of her husband, the Czech composer Viktor Kalabis, Zuzana went on to become one of the twentieth century's most renowned musicians and the first harpsichordist to record the entirety of Bach's keyboard works. Zuzana's story, told here in her own words before her death in 2017, is a profound and powerful testimony of the horrors of the Holocaust, and a testament in itself to the importance of amplifying the voices of its survivors today. It is also a joyful celebration of art and resistance that defined the life of the 'first lady of the harpsichord'- a woman who spent her life being ceaselessly reborn through her music.

'A profound and documented analysis ... Bound to stir our minds and trouble our consciences' Chicago Tribune Hannah Arendt's authoritative and stunning report on the trial of German Nazi SS leader Adolf Eichmann first appeared as a series of articles in The New Yorker in 1963. This revised edition includes material that came to light after the trial, as well as Arendt's postscript commenting on the controversy that arose over her book. A major journalistic triumph by an intellectual of singular influence, Eichmann in Jerusalem is as shocking as it is informative - a meticulous and unflinching look at one of the most unsettling (and unsettled) issues of the twentieth century. With an introduction by Amos Elon 'Deals with the greatest problem of our time ... the problem of the human being within a modern totalitarian system' Bruno Bettelheim, The New Republic

The complete story of the Wannsee Conference, the meeting that paved the way for the Holocaust. On 20 January 1942, fifteen men arrived for a meeting in a luxurious villa on the shores of the Wannsee in the far-western outskirts of Berlin. They came at the invitation of Reinhard Heydrich and were almost all high-ranking Nazi Party, government, and SS officials. The exquisite position by the lake, the imposing driveway up to the villa, culminating in a generously sized roundabout in front of the house, the expansive, carefully landscaped park, the generous suite of rooms that opened on to the park and the lake, the three-level terrace that stretched the entire garden side of the house, and the winter garden with its marble fountain, all give today's visitor to the villa a good idea of its owner's aspiration to build a sophisticated, almost palatial structure as a testament to his cultivation and worldly success. But the beauty of the situation stood in stark contrast to the purpose of the meeting to which the fifteen had come in January 1942: the 'Final Solution of the Jewish Question'. According to the surviving records of the meeting, items on the agenda included the precise definition of exactly which group of people was to be affected, followed by a discussion of how upwards of eleven million people were to be deported and subjected to the toughest form of forced labour, and following on from this a discussion of how the survivors of this forced labour as well as those not capable of it were ultimately to be killed. The next item on the agenda was breakfast.

'A remarkable tale of survival, in which Jewish life in pre-war Poland and the atrocities of the Holocaust appear through an almost dreamlike lens of childhood memory' Jeremy Dronfield, bestselling author of The Boy Who Followed His Father into Auschwitz 'Mala's Cat is fresh, unsentimental and utterly unpredictable... This memoir, rescued from obscurity by the efforts of Mala Kacenberg's five children, should be read and cherished as a new, vital document of a history that must never be allowed to vanish' Julie Orringer for the New York Times 'It's an account of astounding courage and resourcefulness . . . The real miracle here is the vitality of Kacenberg's faith and determination' Mail on Sunday __________ Alone in a forest with only a cat for company - this is the deeply moving true story of one little girl's remarkable survival in the shadow of the Holocaust Growing up in the Polish village of Tarnogrod, on the fringes of a deep pine forest, Mala has the happiest childhood anyone could hope for. But, when the Nazis invade, her beloved village becomes a ghetto and family and friends are reduced to starvation. Taking matters into her own hands, she bravely removes her yellow star, and sneaks out to the surrounding villages for food. On her way back she receives a smuggled letter from her sister warning her to stay away: her loved ones have been rounded up for deportation. With only her cat, Malach, and the strength of the stories taught by her family, she must flee into the forest. Malach becomes her family, her only respite from loneliness, a guide and reminder to stay hopeful even in the darkness. With her guardian angel by her side, Mala must find a way to navigate the dangerous forests, outwit German soldiers and hostile villagers, to survive, against all the odds. __________ 'It's an account of astounding courage and resourcefulness . . . The real miracle here is the vitality of Kacenberg's faith and determination' Mail on Sunday

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.

Seven years after the death of his mother, Malka, Stanley A. Goldman traveled to Israel to visit her best friend during the Holocaust. The best friend's daughter showed Goldman a pamphlet she had acquired from the Israeli Holocaust Museum that documented activities of one man's negotiations with the Nazi's interior minister and SS head, Heinrich Himmler, for the release of the Jewish women from the concentration camp at Ravensbruck. While looking through the pamphlet, the two discovered a picture that could have been their mothers being released from the camp. Wanting to know the details of how they were saved, Goldman set out on a long and difficult path to unravel the mystery. After years of researching the pamphlet, Goldman learned that a German Jew named Norbert Masur made a treacherous journey from the safety of Sweden back into the war zone in order to secure the release of the Jewish women imprisoned at the Ravensbruck concentration camp. Masur not only succeeded in his mission against all odds but he contributed to the downfall of the Nazi hierarchy itself. This amazing, little-known story uncovers a piece of history about the undermining of the Nazi regime, the women of the Holocaust, and the strained but loving relationship between a survivor and her son.

"Debates on the Holocaust" is the first attempt to survey the development of Holocaust historiography for a generation. It analyses the development of history writing on the destruction of the European Jews from just before the end of the Second World War to the present day, and argues forcefully that history writing is as much about the present as it is the past. The book guides the reader through the major debates in Holocaust historiography and shows how all of these controversies are as much products of their own time as they are attempts to uncover the past. "Debates on the Holocaust" will appeal to sixth form and undergraduate students and their teachers, Holocaust historians and anyone interested in either the destruction of the European Jews or in the process by which we access and understand the past.

Rachel Meller was never close to her aunt Lisbeth, a cool, unemotional woman with a drawling Viennese-Californian accent, a cigarette in her hand. But when Lisbeth died, she left Rachel an intricately carved Chinese box with a sunflower clasp. Inside the box were photographs, letters and documents that led Rachel to uncover a story she had never known: that of a passionate Jewish teenager growing up in elegant Vienna, who was caught up by war, and forced to flee to Shanghai. Far from home, in a strange city, Lisbeth and her parents build a new life - a life of small joys and great hardship, surrounded by many others who, like them, have fled Hitler and the Nazis. 1930s Shanghai is a metropolis where the old rules do not apply - a city of fabulous wealth and crushing poverty, where disease is rife, and gangsters rub shoulders with rich emigres; where summer brings unspeakable heat, and winter is bitterly cold; and where European refugees build community and, maybe, a young woman can find love. Set against a backdrop of the war in the Far East, The Box with the Sunflower Clasp is a sweeping family memoir that tells the hidden history of the Jews of Shanghai. Rachel Meller writes with elegance and insight as she examines what it means to survive, and what the legacy of displacement and war might mean for the generation that comes afterwards.

After 1948, the 370,000 Jews of Romania who survived the Holocaust became one of the main sources of immigration for the new state of Israel as almost all left their homeland to settle in Palestine and Israel. Romania's decision to allow its Jews to leave was baldly practical: Israel paid for them, and Romania wanted influence in the Middle East. For its part, Israel was rescuing a community threatened by economic and cultural extinction and at the same time strengthening itself with a massive infusion of new immigrants. In this thoroughly updated edition, Radu Ioanid traces the secret history of the longest and most expensive ransom arrangement in recent times, a hidden exchange that lasted until the fall of the Communist regime. Drawing on a wealth of oral testimonies, recently declassified documents from the archives of the Romanian secret police, and newly available material from the government archives of Ukraine, Moldova, Russia, and Germany, Ioanid follows Israel's long and expensive ransom arrangement with Communist Romania. He uncovers the elaborate mechanisms that made it successful for decades, the shadowy figures responsible, and the secret channels of communication and payment. The book sheds new light on Romania's pre-fascist and fascist antisemitic legislation and its implementation. Ioanid explores in greater detail the physical destruction of Romania's Jewish and Roma communities, including the pogroms of Bucharest and Iasi as well as the deportations and the massacres from Bessarabia, Bukovina, and Transnistria. New chapters consider the forced labor of the Jews, persecution by the Protestant churches, and the decision-making process of the Antonescu government in its treatment of Jews and Roma. As suspenseful as a Cold-War thriller, his book tells the full, startling story of an unprecedented slave trade and its origins.