In the last half century, ways of thinking about the Holocaust have changed somewhat dramatically. In this volume, noted scholars reflect on how their own thinking about the Holocaust has changed over the years. In their personal stories they confront the questions that the Holocaust has raised for them and explore how these questions have been evolving. Contributors include John T. Pawlikowski, Richard L. Rubenstein, Michael Berenbaum, and Eva Fleischner.

On August 1, 1984, a group of Polish Carmelite nuns, with the approval of both church and government authorities, but apparently without any dialogue with members of the Polish or international Jewish community, moved into a building at the site of Auschwitz I. This establishment of a Roman Catholic convent in what was once a storehouse for the poisonous Zyklon B used in the gas chambers of the Nazi extermination center has sparked intense controversy between Jews and Christians. Memory Offended is as definitive a survey of the Auschwitz convent controversy as could be hoped for. But even more important than its thorough chronological record of events pertinent to the dispute, is the book's use of this particular controversy as a departure for reflection on fundamental issues for Jews and Christians and their relationships with each other. Essays by fourteen distinguished international scholars who represent diverse viewpoints within their Jewish and Christian traditions identify, analyze, and comment on the long-range issues, questions, and implications at the heart of the controversy. A recent interview with the internationally renowned Holocaust authority and survivor, Elie Wiesel, makes an important contribution to the ongoing discussion. The volume merits careful reading by all who seek to learn the lessons this controversy can teach both Christians and Jews.

In their introduction, editors Carol Rittner and John K. Roth define the meaning of the word covenant in both the Jewish and Christian religious traditions. They develop a compelling argument for the notion that the Christian concept of a new covenant between God and humanity, which supposedly superseded JudaisM's old covenant, formed the basis for the centuries-old anti-Jewish contempt that led to Auschwitz--the Nazi death camp where 1.6 million human beings, mostly Jews, were exterminated. The editors contend that the existence of a convent at this site offended memory. The vital issue of what constitutes a fitting Auschwitz memorial is addressed throughout the volume's three major divisions in which important thinkers, including Robert McAfee Brown and Richard L. Rubenstein, among others, investigate The History and Politics of Memory, The Psychology of Memory, and The Theology of Memory. Important tools for researchers are a chronology of events pertinent to the Auschwitz convent controversy, 1933-1990 and an appendix that contains many key documents relating to the controversy. Memory Offended will be an important resource in university and public libraries as well as in Holocaust courses, classes on Jewish Studies, twentieth-century history, and those that focus on interreligious issues.

The growing field of Holocaust studies confronts a world wracked by antisemitism, immigration and refugee crises, human rights abuses, mass atrocity crimes, threats of nuclear war, the COVID-19 (coronavirus disease 2019) pandemic, and environmental degradation. What does it mean to advance Holocaust studies-what are learning and teaching about the Holocaust for-in such dire straits? Vast resources support study and memorialization of the Holocaust. What assumptions govern that investment? What are its major successes and failures, challenges and prospects? Across thirteen chapters, Advancing Holocaust Studies shows how leading scholars grapple with those tough questions.

The growing field of Holocaust studies confronts a world wracked by antisemitism, immigration and refugee crises, human rights abuses, mass atrocity crimes, threats of nuclear war, the COVID-19 (coronavirus disease 2019) pandemic, and environmental degradation. What does it mean to advance Holocaust studies-what are learning and teaching about the Holocaust for-in such dire straits? Vast resources support study and memorialization of the Holocaust. What assumptions govern that investment? What are its major successes and failures, challenges and prospects? Across thirteen chapters, Advancing Holocaust Studies shows how leading scholars grapple with those tough questions.

Few scholarly fields have developed in recent decades as rapidly and vigorously as Holocaust Studies. At the start of the twenty-first century, the persecution and murder perpetrated by the Nazi regime have become the subjects of an enormous literature in multiple academic disciplines and a touchstone of public and intellectual discourse in such diverse fields as politics, ethics and religion. Forward-looking and multi-disciplinary, this handbook draws on the work of an international team of forty-seven outstanding scholars.
The handbook is thematically divided into five broad sections. Part One, Enablers, concentrates on the broad and necessary contextual conditions for the Holocaust. Part Two, Protagonists, concentrates on the principal persons and groups involved in the Holocaust and attempts to disaggregate the conventional interpretive categories of perpetrator, victim, and bystander. It examines the agency of the Nazi leaders and killers and of those involved in resisting and surviving the assault. Part Three, Settings, concentrates on the particular places, sites, and physical circumstances where the actions of the Holocaust's protagonists and the forms of persecution were literally grounded. Part Four, Representations, engages complex questions about how the Holocaust can and should be grasped and what meaning or lack of meaning might be attributed to events through historical analysis, interpretation of texts, artistic creation and criticism, and philosophical and religious reflection. Part Five, Aftereffects, explores the Holocaust's impact on politics and ethics, education and religion, national identities and international relations, the prospects for genocide prevention, and the defense of human rights.

This volume sheds light on the transformed post-Holocaust relationship between Catholics and Jews. Once implacable theological foes, the two traditions have travelled a great distance in coming to view the other with respect and dignity. Responding to the horrors of Auschwitz, the Catholic Church has undergone a "reckoning of the soul," beginning with its landmark document Nostra Aetate and embraced a positive theology of Judaism including the ongoing validity of the Jewish covenant. Jews have responded to this unprecedented outreach, especially in the document Dabru Emet. Together, these two Abrahamic traditions have begun seeking a repair of the world. The road has been rocky and certainly obstacles remain. Nevertheless, authentic interfaith dialogue remains a new and promising development in the search for a peace.

This volume sheds light on the transformed post-Holocaust relationship between Catholics and Jews. Once implacable theological foes, the two traditions have travelled a great distance in coming to view the other with respect and dignity. Responding to the horrors of Auschwitz, the Catholic Church has undergone a "reckoning of the soul," beginning with its landmark document Nostra Aetate and embraced a positive theology of Judaism including the ongoing validity of the Jewish covenant. Jews have responded to this unprecedented outreach, especially in the document Dabru Emet. Together, these two Abrahamic traditions have begun seeking a repair of the world. The road has been rocky and certainly obstacles remain. Nevertheless, authentic interfaith dialogue remains a new and promising development in the search for a peace.

The Death of God theologians represented one of the most influential religious movements that emerged of the 1960s, a decade in which the discipline of theology underwent revolutionary change. Although they were from different traditions, utilized varied methods of analysis, and focused on culture in distinctive ways, the four religious thinkers who sparked radical theology--Thomas Altizer, William Hamilton, Richard Rubenstein, and Paul Van Buren--all considered the Holocaust as one of the main challenges to the Christian faith. Thirty years later, a symposium organized by the American Academy of Religion revisited the Death of God movement by asking these four radical theologians to reflect on how awareness of the Holocaust affected their thinking, not only in the 1960s but also in the 1990s. This edited volume brings together their essays, along with responses by other noted scholars who offer critical commentary on the movement's impact, legacy, and relationship to the Holocaust.

Murder Most Merciful is a collection of insightful essays that consider Sigi Ziering's play, The Judgment of Herbert Bierhoff. In the play, Ziering tells the story of a loving father and his decision during the Holocaust to take the life of his beloved daughter to avoid her deportation. Scholars who have thought long and hard about the ethical implications of the Holocaust continue to grapple with the poignant questions Ziering raised. Commentary from the book's diverse contributors, including Holocaust survivors, scholars, rabbis, philosophers, and historians, results in an insightful and provocative moral and theological exchange. Murder Most Merciful will stimulate further debate on the crucial issues of martyrdom, euthanasia, and the guilt of the innocent. Ultimately, the judgment of Herbert Bierhoff is for the reader to make. The book appears in the Studies in the Shoah series as volume 28.

Few scholarly fields have developed in recent decades as rapidly and vigorously as Holocaust Studies. At the start of the twenty-first century, the persecution and murder perpetrated by the Nazi regime have become the subjects of an enormous literature in multiple academic disciplines and a touchstone of public and intellectual discourse in such diverse fields as politics, ethics and religion. Forward-looking and multi-disciplinary, this handbook draws on the work of an international team of forty-seven outstanding scholars. The handbook is thematically divided into five broad sections. Part One, Enablers, concentrates on the broad and necessary contextual conditions for the Holocaust. Part Two, Protagonists, concentrates on the principal persons and groups involved in the Holocaust and attempts to disaggregate the conventional interpretive categories of perpetrator, victim, and bystander. It examines the agency of the Nazi leaders and killers and of those involved in resisting and surviving the assault. Part Three, Settings, concentrates on the particular places, sites, and physical circumstances where the actions of the Holocaust's protagonists and the forms of persecution were literally grounded. Part Four, Representations, engages complex questions about how the Holocaust can and should be grasped and what meaning or lack of meaning might be attributed to events through historical analysis, interpretation of texts, artistic creation and criticism, and philosophical and religious reflection. Part Five, Aftereffects, explores the Holocaust's impact on politics and ethics, education and religion, national identities and international relations, the prospects for genocide prevention, and the defense of human rights.

"There's nothing available that I know of that comes as close to representing the range of Royce's works. . . . " -- John H Lavely

Defined by deliberation about the difference between right and wrong, encouragement not to be indifferent toward that difference, resistance against what is wrong, and action in support of what is right, ethics is civilization's keystone. The Failures of Ethics concentrates on the multiple shortfalls and shortcomings of thought, decision, and action that tempt and incite us human beings to inflict incalculable harm. Absent the overriding of moral sensibilities, if not the collapse or collaboration of ethical traditions, the Holocaust, genocide, and other mass atrocities could not have happened. Although these catastrophes do not pronounce the death of ethics, they show that ethics is vulnerable, subject to misuse and perversion, and that no simple reaffirmation of ethics, as if nothing disastrous had happened, will do. Moral and religious authority has been fragmented and weakened by the accumulated ruins of history and the depersonalized advances of civilization that have taken us from a bloody twentieth century into an immensely problematic twenty-first. What nevertheless remain essential are spirited commitment and political will that embody the courage not to let go of the ethical but to persist for it in spite of humankind's self-inflicted destructiveness. Salvaging the fragmented condition of ethics, this book shows how respect and honor for those who save lives and resist atrocity, deepened attention to the dead and to death itself, and appeals for human rights and renewed spiritual sensitivity confirm that ethics contains and remains an irreplaceable safeguard against its own failures.

In July 1943, the Gestapo arrested an obscure member of the resistance movement in Nazi-occupied Belgium. When his torture-inflicting interrogators determined he was no use to them and that he was a Jew, he was deported to Auschwitz. Liberated in 1945, Jean Amery went on to write a series of essays about his experience. No reflections on torture are more compelling. Amery declared that the victims of torture lose trust in the world at the "very first blow." The contributors to this volume use their expertise in Holocaust studies to reflect on ethical, religious, and legal aspects of torture then and now. Their inquiry grapples with the euphemistic language often used to disguise torture and with the question of whether torture ever constitutes a "necessary evil." Differences of opinion reverberate, raising deeper questions: Can trust be restored? What steps can we as individuals and as a society take to move closer to a world in which torture is unthinkable?

Defined by deliberation about the difference between right and wrong, encouragement not to be indifferent toward that difference, resistance against what is wrong, and action in support of what is right, ethics is civilization's keystone. The Failures of Ethics concentrates on the multiple shortfalls and shortcomings of thought, decision, and action that tempt and incite us human beings to inflict incalculable harm. Absent the overriding of moral sensibilities, if not the collapse or collaboration of ethical traditions, the Holocaust, genocide, and other mass atrocities could not have happened. Although these catastrophes do not pronounce the death of ethics, they show that ethics is vulnerable, subject to misuse and perversion, and that no simple reaffirmation of ethics, as if nothing disastrous had happened, will do. Moral and religious authority has been fragmented and weakened by the accumulated ruins of history and the depersonalized advances of civilization that have taken us from a bloody twentieth century into an immensely problematic twenty-first. What nevertheless remain essential are spirited commitment and political will that embody the courage not to let go of the ethical but to persist for it in spite of humankind's self-inflicted destructiveness. Salvaging the fragmented condition of ethics, this book shows how respect and honor for those who save lives and resist atrocity, deepened attention to the dead and to death itself, and appeals for human rights and renewed spiritual sensitivity confirm that ethics contains and remains an irreplaceable safeguard against its own failures.

Six Million Crucifixions examines the root causes of antisemitism in Christianity and how that prepared the soil for the secular antisemitism that culminated in the Holocaust. The book covers the last two thousand years of history, from the origins of this hatred all the way to the advent of modern antisemitism. It also covers the role of the Churches during the Third Reich, and the role of the Vatican in setting up escape routes for wanted war criminals after WWII. Six Million Crucifixions concludes by making the point that after the Second World War the Allies should have set up an international trial and put any and all clergymen who may have had a role in the defamation of and incitement against the Jewish people, as well as those who helped wanted Nazis escape Justice and other charges, on the dock.

"There's nothing available that I know of that comes as close to representing the range of Royce's works. . . . " -- John H Lavely

Collaborative effort by a number of the world's leading experts on the Holocaust. Lively, but not sensationalistic, this book is balanced but on the cutting edge of one of the most important debates in this field: how should Vatican policies during World War II be understood? Specifically, could Pope Pius XII have curbed the Holocaust by vigorously condemning the Nazi killing of Jews? Was Pius XII really 'Hitler's Pope', as John Cornwell's provocative book recently suggested? Or has he unfairly become a scapegoat when he is really deserving of canonization as a Roman Catholic saint instead? In Pope Pius XII and the Holocaust, well-informed scholars--including Michael Marrus, Michael Phayer, Richard L. Rubenstein and Susan Zuccotti--wrestle with these questions. The book has four main themes: (1) Pope Pius XII must be understood in his particular historical context. (2) Pope Pius XII put the well-being of the Roman Catholic Church--as he understood that well-being--first and foremost. (3) In retrospect, Pope Pius XII's priorities--understandable though they are--not only make him a problematic Christian leader but also raise important questions about post-Holocaust Christian identity. (4) Jewish and Christian memories of the Holocaust will remain different, but reconciliation can continue to grow. On all sides, relations between Christians and Jews can be improved by an honest facing of history and by continuing reflection about what post-Holocaust Christian and Jewish identities ought--and ought not--to mean.

Distinctively coauthored by a Christian scholar and a Jewish scholar, this monumental, interdisciplinary study explores the various ways in which the Holocaust has been studied and assesses its continuing significance. The authors develop an analysis of the Holocaust's historical roots, its shattering impact on human civilization, and its decisive importance in determining the fate of the world. This revised edition takes into account developments in Holocaust studies since the first edition was published.

On August 1, 1984, a group of Polish Carmelite nuns, with the approval of both church and government authorities, but apparently without any dialogue with members of the Polish or international Jewish community, moved into a building at the site of Auschwitz I. This establishment of a Roman Catholic convent in what was once a storehouse for the poisonous Zyklon B used in the gas chambers of the Nazi extermination center has sparked intense controversy between Jews and Christians. Memory Offended is as definitive a survey of the Auschwitz convent controversy as could be hoped for. But even more important than its thorough chronological record of events pertinent to the dispute, is the book's use of this particular controversy as a departure for reflection on fundamental issues for Jews and Christians and their relationships with each other. Essays by fourteen distinguished international scholars who represent diverse viewpoints within their Jewish and Christian traditions identify, analyze, and comment on the long-range issues, questions, and implications at the heart of the controversy. A recent interview with the internationally renowned Holocaust authority and survivor, Elie Wiesel, makes an important contribution to the ongoing discussion. The volume merits careful reading by all who seek to learn the lessons this controversy can teach both Christians and Jews.

In their introduction, editors Carol Rittner and John K. Roth define the meaning of the word covenant in both the Jewish and Christian religious traditions. They develop a compelling argument for the notion that the Christian concept of a new covenant between God and humanity, which supposedly superseded JudaisM's old covenant, formed the basis for the centuries-old anti-Jewish contempt that led to Auschwitz--the Nazi death camp where 1.6 million human beings, mostly Jews, were exterminated. The editors contend that the existence of a convent at this site offended memory. The vital issue of what constitutes a fitting Auschwitz memorial is addressed throughout the volume's three major divisions in which important thinkers, including Robert McAfee Brown and Richard L. Rubenstein, among others, investigate The History and Politics of Memory, The Psychology of Memory, and The Theology of Memory. Important tools for researchers are a chronology of events pertinent to the Auschwitz convent controversy, 1933-1990 and an appendix that contains many key documents relating to the controversy. Memory Offended will be an important resource in university and public libraries as well as in Holocaust courses, classes on Jewish Studies, twentieth-century history, and those that focus on interreligious issues.