Today e-mail, Facebook, and Twitter are sometimes used to spread hateful messages and slurs masking as humor. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries postcards served this purpose. The images collected in this volume make it painfully clear that anti-Semitic propaganda did not simply begin with the Nazis. Nor was it the sole province of politicians, journalists, and rabble-rousers. One of the most virulent forms of anti-Semitism during this time was spread by quite ordinary people through postcards. Of the millions of postcards exchanged during their heyday of 1890 through 1920, a considerable percentage carried the anti-Semitic images that publishers churned out to meet public demand, reflecting deep-seated attitudes of society.

Over 250 examples of such postcards, largely from the pre-Holocaust era, are reproduced here for the first time--selected, translated, and historically contextualized by one of the world's foremost postcard collectors. Although representing but a small sample of the many thousands that were in print, these examples nonetheless offer a disturbing glimpse--one shocking to the modern sensibility--into the many permutations of anti-Semitism eagerly circulated by millions of people. In so doing, they help us to better understand a phenomenon still pervasive today.

A young Polish diplomat turned cavalry officer, Jan Karski joined the Polish Underground movement in 1939. He became a courier for the Underground, crossing enemy lines to serve as a liaison between occupied Poland and the free world. In 1942, Jewish leaders asked him to carry a desperate message to Allied leaders: the news of Hitler's effort to exterminate the Jews of Europe. To be able to deliver an authentic report, Karski twice toured the Warsaw Ghetto in disguise and later volunteered to be smuggled into a camp that was part of the Nazi murder machine. Carrying searing tales of inhumanity, Karski set out to alert the world to the emerging Holocaust, meeting with top Allied officials and later President Roosevelt, to deliver his descriptions of genocide. Part spy thriller and part compelling story of moral courage against all odds, Karski is the first definitive account of perhaps the most significant warning of the impending Holocaust to reach the free world.

"This learned volume is about as chilling as historiography gets." Walter Laqueur, The New Republic

..". a one-volume study of Auschwitz without peer in Holocaust literature." Kirkus Reviews

..". a comprehensive portrait of the largest and most lethal of the Nazi death camps... serves as a vital contribution to Holocaust studies and a bulwark against forgetting." Publishers Weekly

More than a million people were murdered at Auschwitz, of whom 90 percent were Jews. Here leading scholars from around the world provide the first comprehensive account of what took place at Auschwitz."

The haunting true stories of over 350 Holocaust survivors in their own words. In the shouted words of a woman bound for Auschwitz to a man about to escape from a cattle car, "If you get out, maybe you can tell the story! Who else will tell it?" Our Crime Was Being Jewish contains 576 vivid memories of 358 Holocaust survivors. These are the true, insider stories of victims, told in their own words. They include the experiences of teenagers who saw their parents and siblings sent to the gas chambers; of starving children beaten for trying to steal a morsel of food; of people who saw their friends commit suicide to save themselves from the daily agony they endured. The recollections are from the start of the war-the home invasions, the Gestapo busts, and the ghettos-as well as the daily hell of the concentration camps and what actually happened inside. Six million Jews were killed in the Holocaust, and this hefty collection of stories told by its survivors is one of the most important books of our time. It was compiled by award-winning author Anthony S. Pitch, who worked with sources such as the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum to get survivors' stories compiled together and to supplement them with images from the war. These memories must be told and held onto so what happened is documented; so the lives of those who perished are not forgotten-so history does not repeat itself.

Did we "know" the gas chambers were there? Could we have destroyed them? Why didn't we bomb?

For decades, debate has raged over whether the Allies should have bombed the gas chambers at Auschwitz and the railroads leading to the camp, thereby saving thousands of lives and disrupting Nazi efforts to exterminated European Jews. Was it truly feasible to do so? did failure to do so simply reflect a callous indifference to the plight of the Jews or was it a realistic assessment of a plan that could not succeed? In this volume, a number of eminent historians address and debate those very questions.

Published in association with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, this is the first paperback edition of a book that has been widely hailed by critics and cited by Kirkus Reviews as "the definitive resource for understanding this deeply troubling episode in the twentieth century's greatest horror." Prominent scholars such as Sir Martin Gilbert, Walter Laqueur, Michael Berenbaum, Gerhard Weinberg, and Williamson Murrag offer a diverse array of mutually supporting and competing perspectives on the subject. In the process, they shed important light on how much knowledge of Auschwitz Allied intelligence actually had and on what measures the Allies might have taken to halt the killing.

The book is also rich in documentary evidence--including the correspondence of Churchill, Roosevelt, Cordell Hull, Anthony Eden, and John McCloy--that reveals just how much these men knew about the situation and what they thought about its potential resolution. It also includes a selection of the most important documents and aerial reconnaissance photos from 1944 exploring the feasibility of an air strike.

Ultimately, these contributions show that the dilemma over Auschwitz was far more complex than criticisms of inaction would suggest. The Bombing of Auschwitz is an unusual volume that confronts life-and-death questions and addresses a matter of enduring interest for all readers of World War II and Holocaust history.

Opened in April 1993, on the fiftieth anniversary of the Warsaw ghetto uprising, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., summons all who enter its portals to rise to an important and extraordinary challenge: to remember and immortalize the 6 million Jews and millions of other Nazi victims of World War II - Gypsies, Poles, homosexuals, the handicapped, Jehovah's Witnesses, political and religious dissidents, Soviet prisoners of war - who were murdered in the most horrifying event of our time: the Holocaust. The World Must Know depicts the evolution of the Holocaust comprehensively, as it is presented in the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum - the living memorial to the victims of the Holocaust that tells a story the world must know in the most moving and powerful visual and verbal way. Drawing on the museum's artifacts and its extensive eyewitness testimony collection, the second largest in the world, and including over 200 photographic images from the museum's collections, The World Must Know details the four major historical participants: the perpetrator, the bystander, the rescuer, and, above all, the victim. The World Must Know journeys back to a time when Jewish culture thrived in Europe, to family Shabbat dinners and joyous Passover celebrations where the lighting of the candles was done before unshuttered windows, and proceeds to that point when the most unspeakable evil in history began, and then bears witness to the most horrifying shattering of innocent lives. Starting with the rise of nazism, The World Must Know reveals the human stories of the Holocaust, documenting the range of psychological extremes from the evil of the Nazi doctors whostaffed the death camps and determined "who shall live and who shall die", to the nobility of ordinary citizens, like those in the village of Le Chambon-sur-Lignon, France, who risked their own lives by offering their homes as havens to refugee Jews, to the horror of entire families as they received sudden orders to pack up only what they could carry, leave their homes, and report to a train station for "resettlement in the East", a euphemism for deportation to Auschwitz, Treblinka, Sobibor, and other death or concentration camps. The powerful and evocative images in The World Must Know tell the stories of hope and death - the grim reality of the ghettos, the mass murders of the mobile killing units, the concentration camps, and the death camps, as well as the brave and heart-wrenching stories of resistance and rescue, through which we see the human necessity for - and the ultimate power of - personal choice. More than a catalogue of the museum's exhibit, The World Must Know is a study and exploration of the Holocaust that fulfills the commandment from those who perished, which seared the souls of those who survived: Remember. Do not let the world forget. This is a significant contribution to our understanding of the history of the Holocaust that will not only memorialize the past by educating the generations that follow but also transform the future by sensitizing those who will shape it. That is the challenge to, and the responsibility of, all survivors everywhere.

Gauleiters Robert Wagner and Joseph Buerckel, the German administrative heads of the States of Baden and the Pfalz/Saar, sought to be the first to make their territories Judenrein (free of Jews). They engineered a massive westward expulsion of over 6,500 Jews to Camp de Gurs, located in unoccupied Vichy France. The event became known as the Wagner-Buerckel Aktion and was offered by the Gauleiters as their gift to the Fuehrer in October 1940. The relocation of Jews to the Gurs internment camp became an intermediate step when the infamous ?Final Solution? was pronounced at the Wannsee Conference in January 1942. This Nazi annihilation program triggered yet a second round of transports that would move the incarcerated Jews from Gurs to the Parisian suburb of Drancy, an assembly point where the victims faced a final deportation to the death camp of Auschwitz. The story of this little known tragedy is told by the author who delves into the background of the historical events that led to the Aktion. He recounts the impact of this cataclysm on the area surrounding his boyhood residence in Germany and relates the tribulations and ultimate fate encountered by nearly seven-hundred members of his widely located family in the State of Baden.

"A huge and hugely significant collection of much of the best Holocaust scholarship to appear in the last half-century." Kirkus Reviews

..". magnificent... surely among the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum s] greatest achievements to date.... The range of the essays is nothing short of breathtaking." Jerusalem Post

Fifty-four chapters by the world s most eminent Holocaust researchers probe topics such as Nazi politics, racial ideology, leadership, and bureaucracy; the phases of the Holocaust from definition to expropriation, ghettoization, deportation, and the death camps; Jewish leadership and resistance; the role of the Allies, the Axis, and neutral countries; the deeds of the rescuers; and the impact of the Holocaust on survivors."

Winner of the National Jewish Book Award, 2017This is an indispensable publication on the life and work of the great Polish-Jewish-American artist-activist Arthur Szyk. A master of miniature painting and calligraphy, Szyk (1894-1951) brought his unmistakable style to subjects as diverse as biblical stories, literary classics, and political cartoons. This powerful, striking book is one for all art enthusiasts and collectors, students of World War II and Holocaust history, and the art world in general, as well as a vital tool for educators. Irvin Ungar is the curator of The Arthur Szyk Society in Burlingame, CA. Michael Berenbaum is director of the Sigi Ziering Institute at the American Jewish University in Los Angeles, CA. Tom L. Freudenheim is an art historian. Steven Heller is the author of The Daily Heller. James Kettlewell is an art historian.

This Conference Volume contains new and original research by genocide and holocaust scholars and commemorates a series of significant anniversaries, as well: 100 years since the beginning of the Armenian Genocide; 80 years since the Barmen Declaration; 75 years since the beginning of World War II; 70 years since the uprising at Auschwitz. Other topics under discussion include: Holocaust Education for Future Generations, Personal Experiences, as well as New Forms of antisemitism. Founded by Franklin H. Littell and Hubert G. Locke in 1970, The Annual Scholars' Conference on the Holocaust and the Churches provides an invaluable forum for scholars to report the latest findings in Holocaust research, ensuring the lessons of the Holocaust remain relevant for today's world. As the first Conference bringing together Christian and Jewish scholars to examine the lessons of the Holocaust and its message for contemporary society forty-four years ago, the ASC is the oldest continuing conference of its kind in North America and remains the only one to include discussions of the role and responsibilities of the Churches, the Universities, the large Corporations and the Professions (medicine, law and media). The continuing goal of the ASC is to aspire to the continuum of respecting the past, with a realistic involvement of the present, in order that we preserve a future that retains the dignity and integrity of every human person. Table of Contents Acknowledgements In Memorium Elisabeth M. Maxwell: Marcia Sachs Littell Introduction: Michael Berenbaum Part I: The Armenian Experience: 100 Years Later Richard H. Dekmejian Pioneers of Risk Assessment: The Armenian Genocide, Jewish Holocaust & Early Warning Systems Rubina Peroomian The Symbiotic Relationships between Turks and Armenians: A Macabre Outcome Obstructing Healing and Reconciliation Sona Haroutyunian Kaleidoscopic History: Translation and Representation of the Armenian Genocide in Literature and Film Part II: Past or Future? Richard L. Rubenstein The Armenian Genocide as Jihad David Patterson From Hitler to Jihadist Jew Hatred: Influences and Parallels Shimon Samuels The Abuse of Memory as a Fig Leaf for Hate: Why Have the Lessons of the Holocaust not Contained Contemporary Anti-Semitism? Part III: The Event Karen Franklin Against the Odds: American Jews & the Rescue of Europe's Refugees, 1933-1941; Researching the Mayer Lehman Charity Fund Yitzchak Kerem The Role of Greek Jews in the Sonderkommando Revolt in Birkenau Gideon Greif 70 Years After: The Contribution of the Sonderkommando Research to the Understanding and Interpretation of the "Final solution" in Auschwitz-Birkenau Diane Plotkin Medics and Survivors: Emergency Care Administered by the Liberators Part IV: The Aftermath Harold Marcuse The Origin and Reception of Martin Niemoller's quotation, "First they came for the communists " Joan Peterson Against Forgetting: Another Look at Heinrich Boll's Billiards at Half-Past Nine Harriet Tamen Business as Usual: SCNF, Money and Morality Part V: Personal Experiences and Education Mehnaz Afridi Acknowledging the 'Other' in Suffering: Reconciliation in Jewish-Muslim relations? Harriet Sepinwall Holocaust Education for Future Generations: The Role of a Catholic University Sarah Valente The Emergence of Holocaust Memoirs and the Future of Holocaust Education in Brazil Ludmilla Leibman A Course on "The Holocaust and Music" at Boston University Contributors Index"

The story of American Jewry is inextricably entwined with the awesome defeat of the Holocaust and the rebirth of the state of Israel. However, for Michael Berenbaum, and others of his generation, whose adult consciousness included the war in Lebanon and the Palestinian Uprisings, the tale is more anguished, for the Jewish People are now divided, uncertain about the implications of the past and the direction of their future. Berenbaum explores the Jewish identity of this generation, the first to mature after tragedy and triumph. He probes the Holocaust's impact on Jewish consciousness and the imprint of American culture on Jewish identity. Challenging Zionism's conventional assumptions, he details American Jews' changing relationship to Israel as he examines the tensions created within Jewish tradition between a history of victimization and the empowerment of Jews. While demonstrating that the security of victory is one step from the anguish of victims, even when the victors have recently emerged from the fire, Berenbaum holds out the hope of liberation for Judaism, maintaining that five thousand years of history, with its chapter of Holocaust and empowerment, provide a unique foundation upon which to build a future. Michael Berenbaum is Hymen Goldman Professor of Theology at Georgetown University and Project Director of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC. He is the author or editor of several books, including The Vision of the Void: Theological Reflections on the Works of Elie Wiesel and The Holocaust: Religious and Political Implications (with John Roth).

The Jehovah's Witnesses endured intense persecution under the Nazi regime, from 1933 to 1945. Unlike the Jews and others persecuted and killed by virtue of their birth, Jehovah's Witnesses had the opportunity to escape persecution and personal harm by renouncing their religious beliefs. The vast majority refused and throughout their struggle, continued to meet, preach, and distribute literature. In the face of torture, maltreatment in concentration camps, and sometimes execution, this unique group won the respect of many contemporaries. Up until now, little has been known of their particular persecution.

The sheets of paper are as brittle as fallen leaves; the faltering handwriting changes from page to page; the words, a faded brown, are almost indecipherable. The page are filled with recipes. Each is a memory, a fantasy, a hope for the future. Written by undernourished and starving women in the Czechoslovakian ghetto/concentration camp of Terezin (also known as Theresienstadt), the recipes give instructions for making beloved dishes in the rich, robust Czech tradition. Sometimes steps or ingredients are missing, the gaps a painful illustration of the condition and situation in which the authors lived. Reprinting the contents of the original hand-sewn copybook, In Memory's Kitchen: A Legacy from the Women of Terezin is a beautiful memorial to the brave women who defied Hitler by preserving a part of their heritage and a part of themselves. Despite the harsh conditions in the Nazis' "model" ghetto - which in reality was a way station to Auschwitz and other death camps - cultural, intellectual, and artistic life did exist within the walls of the ghetto. Like the heart-breaking book ... I never saw another butterfly ... which contains the poetry and drawings of the children of Terezin, the handwritten cookbook is proof that the Nazis could not break the spirit of the Jewish people.

The story of American Jewry is inextricably entwined with the awesome defeat of the Holocaust and the rebirth of the state of Israel. However, for Michael Berenbaum, and others of his generation, whose adult consciousness included the war in Lebanon and the Palestinian Uprisings, the tale is more anguished, for the Jewish People are now divided, uncertain about the implications of the past and the direction of their future. Berenbaum explores the Jewish identity of this generation, the first to mature after tragedy and triumph. He probes the Holocaust's impact on Jewish consciousness and the imprint of American culture on Jewish identity. Challenging Zionism's conventional assumptions, he details American Jews' changing relationship to Israel as he examines the tensions created within Jewish tradition between a history of victimization and the empowerment of Jews. While demonstrating that the security of victory is one step from the anguish of victims, even when the victors have recently emerged from the fire, Berenbaum holds out the hope of liberation for Judaism, maintaining that five thousand years of history, with its chapter of Holocaust and empowerment, provide a unique foundation upon which to build a future. Michael Berenbaum is Hymen Goldman Professor of Theology at Georgetown University and Project Director of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC. He is the author or editor of several books, including The Vision of the Void: Theological Reflections on the Works of Elie Wiesel and The Holocaust: Religious and Political Implications (with John Roth).

"I was brave, but without Mama I would die alone. She in turn was afraid that I would die of cold and hunger. Her thoughts were of me. 'Mirele, are you all right?' she asked. 'Let me rub your feet a little.' "

Even Elie Wiesel, the Nobel Prize winning survivor of Auschwitz and Buchenwald, struggles with the question: Why didn't the Jews fight back? And finally, in view of the circumstances--even now, who would believe what was happening?--he concludes that the question is "not why all the Jews did NOT fight, but how do many of them DID. Tormented, beaten, starved, where did they find the strength--spiritual and physical--to resist?" In fact, over

10,000 German Jews--34 percent of the refugee population between the ages of eighteen and forty--fought in the allied armies of World War II.

This book honors those European-born Jewish combat veterans of World War II--refugees from the Nazi regime in Germany and Austria who faced their persecutors by joining the Allied Forces in a fight against the country of their birth. These twenty-seven interviews take readers into the unique and harrowing experience of German and Austrian Jews who served as Allied soldiers in North Africa and Europe--brave men and one woman whose service restored a sense of dignity and allowed them to rise above their former victimization at the hands of Nazi oppressors. All burned with anger at the Germans who had subjected them, often as young children, to cruelty in everyday life in their hometowns, and to ridicule in the national media. As soldiers who knew the language and psychology of the enemy better than any of their comrades, they struck back with new-found pride against the rampant injustice that had annihilated their families, destroyed their prospects, and subjected many of them to the worst forms of physical abuse, both random and terrifying. In "The Enemy I Knew" they tell their stories, and the world is richer for their heroic acts, and for their testimony.

Richard L. Rubenstein was the first American Jewish thinker to theologically probe into the events of the Holocaust in Europe. Both the man and his writings dared to question and confront institutional religion and conventional Jewish thought. This volume stands out as a study of, an understanding of, and a tribute to Rubenstein and his work. It offers a wide array of original essays by 38 contributors, from former students to colleagues. Because these contributors write from personal connections with the main or his writings, What Kind of God? provides readers with an enlightened understanding and appreciation of Richard L. Rubenstein.

In the shouted words of a woman bound for Auschwitz to a man about to escape from a cattle car, "If you get out, maybe you can tell the story! Who else will tell it?" Our Crime Was Being Jewish contains 576 vivid memories of 358 Holocaust survivors. These are the true, insider stories of victims, told in their own words. They include the experiences of teenagers who saw their parents and siblings sent to the gas chambers; of starving children beaten for trying to steal a morsel of food; of people who saw their friends commit suicide to save themselves from the daily agony they endured. The recollections are from the start of the war the home invasions, the Gestapo busts, and the ghettos as well as the daily hell of the concentration camps and what actually happened inside. Six million Jews were killed in the Holocaust, and this hefty collection of stories told by its survivors is one of the most important books of our time. It was compiled by award-winning author Anthony S. Pitch, who worked with sources such as the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum to get survivors' stories compiled together and to supplement them with images from the war. These memories must be told and held onto so what happened is documented; so the lives of those who perished are not forgotten so history does not repeat itself. Skyhorse Publishing, along with our Arcade, Good Books, Sports Publishing, and Yucca imprints, is proud to publish a broad range of biographies, autobiographies, and memoirs. Our list includes biographies on well-known historical figures like Benjamin Franklin, Nelson Mandela, and Alexander Graham Bell, as well as villains from history, such as Heinrich Himmler, John Wayne Gacy, and O. J. Simpson. We have also published survivor stories of World War II, memoirs about overcoming adversity, first-hand tales of adventure, and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.