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.

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.

In this riveting real-life thriller, Philippe Sands offers a unique account of the daily life of senior Nazi SS Brigadeführer Otto Freiherr von Wächter and his wife, Charlotte. Drawing on a remarkable archive of family letters and diaries, he unveils a fascinating insight into life before and during the war, as a fugitive on the run in the Alps and then in Rome, and into the Cold War. Eventually the door is unlocked to a mystery that haunts Wächter's youngest son, who continues to believe his father was a good man - what happened to Otto Wächter while he was preparing to travel to Argentina on the 'ratline', assisted by a Vatican bishop, and what was the explanation for his sudden and unexpected death?

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.

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.

'A breathtaking story' Daily Mail 'Extraordinary' The Telegraph on the Cook sisters Desperate circumstances can cause ordinary women to achieve extraordinary things. No one would have predicted such glamorous and daring lives for Ida and Louise Cook two decidedly ordinary women who lived quiet lives in the London suburbs. But throughout the 1930s, the remarkable sisters rescued dozens of Jews facing persecution and death. Ida's memoir of the adventures she and Louise shared remains as fresh, vital, and entertaining as the woman who wrote it. Even when Ida began to earn thousands as a successful romance novelist, the sisters directed every spare resource, as well as their considerable courage and ingenuity, towards saving as many as they could from Hitler's death camps.

Thomas Buergenthal is unique. Liberated from the death camps of Auschwitz at the age of eleven, in adulthood he became a judge at the International Court in The Hague. In his honest and heartfelt memoirs, he tells the story of his extraordinary journey - from the horrors of Nazism to an investigation of modern day genocide. Aged ten Thomas Buergenthal arrived at Auschwitz after surviving the Ghetto of Kielce and two labour camps, and was soon separated from his parents. Using his wits and some remarkable strokes of luck, he managed to survive until he was liberated from Sachsenhausen in 1945. After experiencing the turmoil of Europe's post-war years - from the Battle of Berlin, to a Jewish orphanage in Poland - Buergenthal went to America in the 1950s at the age of seventeen. He eventually became one of the world's leading experts on international law and human rights. His story of survival and his determination to use law and justice to prevent further genocide is an epic and inspirational journey through twentieth century history. His book is both a special historical document and a great literary achievement, comparable only to Primo Levi's masterpieces.

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.

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.

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.

For decades scholars have pored over Hitler's autobiographical journey/political treatise, debating if Mein Kampf has genocidal overtones and arguably led to the Holocaust. For the first time, Hitler's Mein Kampf and the Holocaust sees celebrated international scholars analyse the book from various angles to demonstrate how it laid the groundwork for the Shoah through Hitler's venomous attack on the Jews in his text. Split into three main sections which focus on 'contexts', 'eugenics' and 'religion', the book reflects carefully on the point at which the Fuhrer's actions and policies turn genocidal during the Third Reich and whether Mein Kampf presaged Nazi Germany's descent into genocide. There are contributions from leading academics from across the United States and Germany, including Magnus Brechtken, Susannah Heschel and Nathan Stoltzfus, along with totally new insights into the source material in light of the 2016 German critical edition of Mein Kampf. Hitler's views on Marxism, violence, and leadership, as well as his anti-Semitic rhetoric are examined in detail as you are taken down the disturbing path from a hateful book to the Holocaust.

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.

The first account of the August Trials, in which postwar Poland confronted the betrayal of Jewish citizens under Nazi rule but ended up fashioning an alibi for the past. When six years of ferocious resistance to Nazi occupation came to an end in 1945, a devastated Poland could agree with its new Soviet rulers on little else beyond the need to punish German war criminals and their collaborators. Determined to root out the "many Cains among us," as a Poznan newspaper editorial put it, Poland's judicial reckoning spawned 32,000 trials and spanned more than a decade before being largely forgotten. Andrew Kornbluth reconstructs the story of the August Trials, long dismissed as a Stalinist travesty, and discovers that they were in fact a scrupulous search for the truth. But as the process of retribution began to unearth evidence of enthusiastic local participation in the Holocaust, the hated government, traumatized populace, and fiercely independent judiciary all struggled to salvage a purely heroic vision of the past that could unify a nation recovering from massive upheaval. The trials became the crucible in which the Communist state and an unyielding society forged a foundational myth of modern Poland but left a lasting open wound in Polish-Jewish relations. The August Trials draws striking parallels with incomplete postwar reckonings on both sides of the Iron Curtain, suggesting the extent to which ethnic cleansing and its abortive judicial accounting are part of a common European heritage. From Paris and The Hague to Warsaw and Kyiv, the law was made to serve many different purposes, even as it failed to secure the goal with which it is most closely associated: justice.

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.

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.

During the Holocaust, 99 percent of all Jewish killings were carried out by members of state organizations. In this groundbreaking book, Stefan Kuhl offers a new analysis of the integral role that membership in organizations played in facilitating the annihilation of European Jews under the Nazis. Drawing on the well-researched case of the mass killings of Jews by a Hamburg reserve police battalion, Kuhl shows how ordinary men from ordinary professions were induced to carry out massacres. It may have been that coercion, money, identification with the end goal, the enjoyment of brutality, or the expectations of their comrades impelled the members of the police battalion to join the police units and participate in ghetto liquidations, deportations, and mass shootings. But ultimately, argues Kuhl, the question of immediate motives, or indeed whether members carried out tasks with enthusiasm or reluctance, is of secondary importance. The crucial factor in explaining what they did was the integration of individuals into an organizational framework that prompted them to perform their roles. This book makes a major contribution to our understanding of the Holocaust by demonstrating the fundamental role played by organizations in persuading ordinary Germans to participate in the annihilation of the Jews. It will be an invaluable resource for students and scholars of organizations, violence, and modern German history, as well as for anyone interested in genocide and the Holocaust.

A little girl is smuggled out of a Jewish ghetto. Two courageous women. And an inspirational story of survival. In 1941 at the height of World War II, in a Polish ghetto, a baby girl named Rachel is born. Her parents, Jacob and Zippa, are willing to do anything to keep her alive. They nickname her Lalechka. Just before Lalechka's first birthday, the Nazis begin to systematically murder everyone in the ghetto. Her father understands that staying in the ghetto will mean certain death for his child. In both desperation and hope, Lalechka's parents decide to save their daughter, no matter the cost. Zippa smuggles her outside the boundaries of the ghetto where her Polish friends, Irena and Sophia, are waiting. She entrusts their beloved Lalechka to them and returns to the ghetto to remain with her husband and parents - unaware of the fate that awaits her. Irena and Sophia take on the burden of caring for Lalechka during the war, pretending she is part of their family despite the grave danger of being discovered and executed. Holocaust Child is based on the unique journal written by Zippa during the annihilation of the ghetto, as well as on interviews with key figures in the story, rare documents, and authentic letters. It is a story of hope in the face of terror.

The Holocaust and Representations of Jews examines how prominent national exhibitions in Europe represent the Jewish minority and its cultural and religious self-understandings, historically and today, in particular in the context of the Holocaust. Insights from the New Museology are brought to the field of Jewish Studies through an exploration of the visual representation of Jewish history and Jewish identifications in the display of photographs. Drawing on case studies which focus on the Holocaust Exhibition at the Imperial War Museum in London and the permanent exhibition at the Jewish Museum Berlin, these themes become the prism through which aspects of historiography and the display of the 'otherness' of minorities are addressed. Casting new light on the issues surrounding the visual representation of Jews, the work of museum practitioners in relation to historical presentations and to the use of photographs in exhibitions, this book is an important contribution not only to the fields of Jewish Studies, Religion and History, but also to the study of the representation of minority-majority relations and the understanding of exhibition visits as an educational tool.

In 1939 all German Jews had to become members of a newly founded Reich Association. The Jewish functionaries of this organization were faced with circumstances and events that forced them to walk a fine line between responsible action and collaboration. They had hoped to support mass emigration, mitigate the consequences of the anti-Jewish measures, and take care of the remaining community. When the Nazis forbade emigration and started mass deportations in 1941, the functionaries decided to cooperate to prevent the "worst." In choosing to cooperate, they came into direct opposition with the interests of their members, who were then deported. In June 1943 all unprotected Jews were deported along with their representatives, and the so-called intermediaries supplied the rest of the community, which consisted of Jews living in mixed marriages. The study deals with the tasks of these men, the fate of the Jews in mixed marriages, and what happened to the survivors after the war.

How did the academy react to the rise, dominance, and ultimate fall of Germany's Third Reich? Did German professors of the humanities have to tell themselves lies about their regime's activities or its victims to sleep at night? Did they endorse the regime? Or did they look the other way, whether out of deliberate denial or out of fear for their own personal safety? The Betrayal of the Humanities: The University during the Third Reich is a collection of groundbreaking essays that shed light on this previously overlooked piece of history. The Betrayal of the Humanities accepts the regrettable news that academics and intellectuals in Nazi Germany betrayed the humanities, and explores what went wrong, what occurred at the universities, and what happened to the major disciplines of the humanities under National Socialism. The Betrayal of the Humanities details not only how individual scholars, particular departments, and even entire universities collaborated with the Nazi regime but also examines the legacy of this era on higher education in Germany. In particular, it looks at the peculiar position of many German scholars in the post-war world having to defend their own work, or the work of their mentors, while simultaneously not appearing to accept Nazism.

A crafted collection detailing western responses to the Balkan War We didn't know. For half a century, Western politicians and intellectuals have so explained away their inaction in the face of genocide in World War II. In stark contrast, Western observers today face a daily barrage of information and images, from CNN, the Internet, and newspapers about the parties and individuals responsible for the current Balkan War and crimes against humanity. The stories, often accompanied by video or pictures of rape, torture, mass graves, and ethnic cleansing, available almost instantaneously, do not allow even the most uninterested viewer to ignore the grim reality of genocide. And yet, while information abounds, so do rationalizations for non-intervention in Balkan affairs-the threshold of real genocide has yet to be reached in Bosnia; all sides are equally guilty; Islamic fundamentalism in Bosnia is a threat to the West; it will only end when they all tire of killing each other-to name but a few. In This Time We Knew, Thomas Cushman and Stjepan G. Mestrovic have put together a collection of critical, reflective, essays that offer detailed sociological, political, and historical analyses of western responses to the war. This volume punctures once and for all common excuses for Western inaction. This Time We Knew further reveals the reasons why these rationalizations have persisted and led to the West's failure to intercede, in the face of incontrovertible evidence, in the most egregious crimes against humanity to occur in Europe since World War II. Contributors to the volume include Kai Erickson, Jean Baudrillard, Mark Almond, David Riesman, Daniel Kofman, Brendan Simms, Daniele Conversi, Brad Kagan Blitz, James J. Sadkovich, and Sheri Fink.