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Holocaust Holiday: One Family's Descent into Genocide Memory Hell
by Rabbi Shmuley BoteachIn this alternately humorous and horrifying memoir, a Jewish father schleps his reluctant children around Europe on a hard-charging tour of Holocaust sites and memorials in order to impress on them the profound evil of Hitler&’s war against the Jews and the importance of combatting genocide.In 2017, renowned author and celebrity rabbi, Shmuley Boteach, decided to take his family on a European holiday. But instead of seeing the sights of London or Paris, he took his reluctant—and at times complaining—children on a harrowing journey though Auschwitz, Treblinka, Warsaw, and many other sites associated with Hitler&’s genocidal war against the Jews. His purpose was to impress upon them the full horror of the Holocaust so they would know and remember it deep in their bones. In the process, he and his children learn a great deal about the scope and nature of the European genocide and the continuing effects of global hatred and anti-Semitism. The resulting memoir is an utterly unique blend of travelogue, memoir and history—alternately fascinating, terrifying, frustrating, humorous, and tragic. &“It is my honor to contribute a foreword to his important book, in which Rabbi Shmuley Boteach details the excruciating journey he took with his wife and children in the summer of 2017 to the killing fields of Europe, a pilgrimage which every person of conscience should attempt at least once in their lifetime. It is our universal obligation to dedicate ourselves to the memory of the martyred six million, just as it is our obligation to confront and defeat genocide wherever it rises.&” —From the foreword by Amb. Georgette Mosbacher
Holocaust Icons
by Oren Baruch StierThe Holocaust has bequeathed to contemporary society a cultural lexicon of intensely powerful symbols, a vocabulary of remembrance that we draw on to comprehend the otherwise incomprehensible horror of the Shoah. Engagingly written and illustrated with more than forty black-and-white images, Holocaust Icons probes the history and memory of four of these symbolic relics left in the Holocaust's wake. Jewish studies scholar Oren Stier offers in this volume new insight into symbols and the symbol-making process, as he traces the lives and afterlives of certain remnants of the Holocaust and their ongoing impact. Stier focuses in particular on four icons: the railway cars that carried Jews to their deaths, symbolizing the mechanics of murder; the Arbeit Macht Frei ("work makes you free") sign over the entrance to Auschwitz, pointing to the insidious logic of the camp system; the number six million that represents an approximation of the number of Jews killed as well as mass murder more generally; and the persona of Anne Frank, associated with victimization. Stier shows how and why these icons--an object, a phrase, a number, and a person--have come to stand in for the Holocaust: where they came from and how they have been used and reproduced; how they are presently at risk from a variety of threats such as commodification; and what the future holds for the memory of the Shoah. In illuminating these icons of the Holocaust, Stier offers valuable new perspective on one of the defining events of the twentieth century. He helps readers understand not only the Holocaust but also the profound nature of historical memory itself.
Holocaust Impiety in Literature, Popular Music and Film
by Matthew BoswellSurveying irreverent and controversial representations of the Holocaust - from Sylvia Plath and the Sex Pistols to Quentin Tarantino and Holocaust comedy - Matthew Boswell considers how they might play an important role in shaping our understanding of the Nazi genocide and what it means to be human.
The Holocaust In American Life
by Peter NovickThis “courageous and thought-provoking book” examines how the Holocaust came to hold its unique place in American memory (Foreign Affairs).Prize–winning historian Peter Novick explores in absorbing detail the decisions that moved the Holocaust to the center of American life. He illuminates how Jewish leaders invoked its memory to muster support for Israel, and how politicians in turn used it to score points with Jewish voters. With insight and sensitivity, Novick raises searching questions about these developments, their meaning, and their consequences. Does the Holocaust really teach useful lessons and sensitize us to atrocities, or, by making the Holocaust the measure, does it make lesser crimes seem “not so bad”? Have American Jews, by making the Holocaust the emblematic Jewish experience, given Hitler a posthumous victory, tacitly endorsing his definition of Jews as despised pariahs? What are we to make of the fact that while Americans spend hundreds of millions of dollars for museums recording a European crime, while comparatively little is done to memorialize American slavery?A New York Times Notable Book
The Holocaust in Bohemia and Moravia: Czech Initiatives, German Policies, Jewish Responses (War and Genocide #28)
by Wolf GrunerPrior to Hitler’s occupation, nearly 120,000 Jews inhabited the areas that would become the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia; by 1945, all but a handful had either escaped or been deported and murdered by the Nazis. This pioneering study gives a definitive account of the Holocaust as it was carried out in the region, detailing the German and Czech policies, including previously overlooked measures such as small-town ghettoization and forced labor, that shaped Jewish life. Drawing on extensive new evidence, Wolf Gruner demonstrates how the persecution of the Jews as well as their reactions and resistance efforts were the result of complex actions by German authorities in Prague and Berlin as well as the Czech government and local authorities.
The Holocaust in Central European Literatures and Cultures: Problems of Poetization and Aestheticization (Literature and Culture in Central and Eastern Europe #13)
by Reinhard IblerRelating the Holocaust to poetic and aesthetic phenomena has often been considered taboo, as only authentic testimony, documents, or at least 'unliterary', prosaic approaches were seen as appropriate. However, from the very beginning of Holocaust literature and culture, there were tendencies towards literarization, poetization, and ornamentalization. Nowadays, aesthetic approaches—also in provocative, taboo-breaking ways—are more and more frequently encountered and seen as important ways to evoke the attention required to keep the cataclysm alive in popular memory. The essays in this volume use examples predominantly from Polish, Czech, and German Holocaust literature and culture to discuss this controversial subject. Topics include the poetry of concentration camp detainees, lyrical poetry about the Holocaust, poetic tendencies in narrative literature and drama, ornamental prose about the Holocaust, and the devices and functions of aestheticization in Holocaust literature and culture.
The Holocaust in Czechoslovak and Czech Feature Films (Literatur Und Kultur Im Mittleren Und Östlichen Europa Ser. #19)
by Šárka SladovníkováŠárka Sladovníková analyzes the depiction of the Holocaust in Czechoslovak and Czech feature films and the relevant literary pretexts. While she charts the social and cultural framework in which the films were made and how this framework changed, she also focuses on the cinematic language, the composition of and narration in each film (e.g., the depiction of the war and the Shoah as a narratively closed versus a narratively open event), genre aspects of the films (e.g., the use of comedy and humor), and convention and innovation in presenting motifs and characters (the division of gender roles, the character of the “good German”). Particular attention is paid to the portrayal of stereotypes and countertypes in the films, where already well-known images, situations, and backdrops are repeated and which meet viewers’ expectations or, in contrast, which form countertypes and countersituations that go against the grain. Many of the films analyzed are adaptations of literary works. Therefore, this book is also a contribution to the rapidly developing field of adaptation studies.
The Holocaust in Greece
by Giorgos Antoniou A. Dirk MosesFor the sizeable Jewish community living in Greece during the 1940s, German occupation of Greece posed a distinct threat. The Nazis and their collaborators murdered around ninety percent of the Jewish population through the course of the war. This new account presents cutting edge research on four elements of the Holocaust in Greece: the level of antisemitism and question of collaboration; the fate of Jewish property before, during, and after their deportation; how the few surviving Jews were treated following their return to Greece, especially in terms of justice and restitution; and the ways in which Jewish communities rebuilt themselves both in Greece and abroad. Taken together, these elements point to who was to blame for the disaster that befell Jewish communities in Greece, and show that the occupation authorities alone could not have carried out these actions to such magnitude without the active participation of Greek Christians.
The Holocaust In Historical Context: Volume 1, The Holocaust and Mass Death Before the Modern Age
by Steven T. KatzWith this volume, Steven T. Katz initiates the provocative argument that the Holocaust is a singular event in human history. Unlike any previous work on the subject, The Holocaust in Historical Context maintains that the Holocaust is the only example of true genocide--a systematic attempt to kill all the members of a group--in history. <p><p> In a richly documented, subtly argued, and amazingly wide-ranging comparative historical and phenomenological analysis, Katz explores the philosophical and historiographical implications of the uniqueness of the Holocaust. After he establishes the nature of genocide, Katz examines other occasions of mass death to which the Holocaust is regularly compared from slavery in the ancient world to the medieval persecution of heretics, from the depopulation of the New World to the Armenian massacres during World War I, and from the Gulag to Cambodia. <p><p> In the first of three volumes, Katz, after setting the groundwork for his analysis with four chapters dealing with essential methodological issues, begins his comparative case studies with slavery in the ancient Greek and Roman world, and continues with such subjects as medieval antisemitism, the European witch craze, the medieval wars of religion, the medieval persecution of homosexuals, and the French campaign against Huguenots. <p><p>Throughout this investigation of pre-modern Jewish and non-Jewish history, Katz looks at the ways in which the Holocaust has precedents and parallels, and in what way it stands alone as a singular, highly distinctive historical event.
The Holocaust in Italian Culture, 1944-2010
by Robert S. C. GordonThe Holocaust in Italian Culture, 1944–2010 is the first major study of how postwar Italy confronted, or failed to confront, the Holocaust. Fascist Italy was the model for Nazi Germany, and Mussolini was Hitler's prime ally in the Second World War. But Italy also became a theater of war and a victim of Nazi persecution after 1943, as resistance, collaboration, and civil war raged. Many thousands of Italians—Jews and others—were deported to concentration camps throughout Europe. After the war, Italian culture produced a vast array of stories, images, and debate through which it came to terms with the Holocaust's difficult legacy. Gordon probes a rich range of cultural material as he paints a picture of this shared encounter with the darkest moment of twentieth-century history. His book explores aspects of Italian national identity and memory, offering a new model for analyzing the interactions between national and international images of the Holocaust.
Holocaust in Rovno: The Massacre at Sosenki Forest, November 1941
by Jeffrey BurdsIn November 1941, near the city of Rovno, Ukraine, German death squads murdered over 23,000 Jews in what has been described as the second Babi Yar. This meticulous and methodologically innovative study reconstructs the events at Rovno, and in the process exemplifies efforts to form a genuinely transnational history of the Holocaust.
The Holocaust in the Romanian Borderlands: The Arc of Civilian Complicity (Mass Violence in Modern History)
by Mihai I PoliecThis volume examines the changing role which ordinary members of society played in the state-sponsored persecution of the Jews in Bukovina and Bessarabia, both during the summer of 1941, when Romania joined the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union, and beyond. It establishes different patterns of civilian complicity and discusses the significance of the phenomenon in the context of the exterminatory campaign pursued by the Romanian military authorities against the Jews living in the borderlands.
The Holocaust in the Soviet Union (Comprehensive History of the Holocaust)
by Yitzhak AradPublished by the University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln, and Yad Vashem, JerusalemThe Holocaust in the Soviet Union is the most complete account to date of the Soviet Jews during the World War II and the Holocaust (1941–45). Reports, records, documents, and research previously unavailable in English enable Yitzhak Arad to trace the Holocaust in the German-occupied territories of the Soviet Union through three separate periods in which German political and military goals in the occupied territories dictated the treatment of the Jews. Arad&’s examination of the differences between the Holocaust in the Soviet Union compared to other European nations reveals how Nazi ideological attacks on the Soviet Union, which included war on &“Judeo-Bolshevism,&” led to harsher treatment of Jews in the Soviet Union than in most other occupied territories. This historical narrative presents a wealth of information from German, Russian, and Jewish archival sources that will be invaluable to scholars, researchers, and the general public for years to come.
The Holocaust in the Soviet Union: Studies and Sources on the Destruction of the Jews in the Nazi-occupied Territories of the USSR, 1941-45
by Lucjan Dobroszycki Jeffery S. GurockIn this volume, scholars from the United States, Israel and Eastern Europe examine the history of the Holocaust on Soviet territory and its treatment in Soviet politics and literature from 1945 to 1991. Of special interest to researchers will be chapters on some of the major research sources for historical study, including census materials, memorial books, archives and recently released documents.
The Holocaust in the Twenty-First Century: Contesting/Contested Memories (Routledge Studies in Cultural History)
by David M. Seymour Mercedes CaminoThis volume locates and explores historical and contemporary sites of contested meanings of Holocaust memory across a range of geographical, geo-political, and disciplinary contexts, identifying and critically engaging with the nature and expression of these meanings within their relevant contexts, elucidating the political, social, and cultural underpinnings and consequences of these meanings, and offering interventions in the contemporary debates of Holocaust memory that suggest ways forward for the future.
The Holocaust in Thessaloniki: Reactions to the Anti-Jewish Persecution, 1942–1943 (Routledge Jewish Studies Series)
by Leon SaltielThe book narrates the last days of the once prominent Jewish community of Thessaloniki, the overwhelming majority of which was transported to the Nazi death camp of Auschwitz in 1943. Focusing on the Holocaust of the Jews of Thessaloniki, this book maps the reactions of the authorities, the Church and the civil society as events unfolded. In so doing, it seeks to answer the questions, did the Christian society of their hometown stand up to their defense and did they try to undermine or object to the Nazi orders? Utilizing new sources and interpretation schemes, this book will be a great contribution to the local efforts underway, seeking to reconcile Thessaloniki with its Jewish past and honour the victims of the Holocaust. The first study to examine why 95 percent of the Jews of Thessaloniki perished—one of the highest percentages in Europe—this book will appeal to students and scholars of the Holocaust, European History and Jewish Studies.
The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering
by Norman G. FinkelsteinIt was not until the Arab-Israeli War of 1967, when Israel's evident strength brought it into line with US foreign policy, that memory of the Holocaust began to acquire the exceptional prominence it enjoys today. Leaders of America's Jewish community were delighted that Israel was now deemed a major strategic asset and, Finkelstein contends, exploited the Holocaust to enhance this new-found status. Their subsequent interpretations of the tragedy are often at variance with actual historical events and are employed to deflect any criticism of Israel and its supporters. Recalling Holocaust fraudsters such as Jerzy Kosinski and Binjamin Wilkomirski, as well as the demagogic constructions of writers like Daniel Goldhagen, Finkelstein contends that the main danger posed to the memory of Nazism's victims comes not from the distortions of Holocaust deniers but from prominent, self-proclaimed guardians of Holocaust memory. Drawing on a wealth of untapped sources, he exposes the double shakedown of European countries as well as legitimate Jewish claimants, and concludes that the Holocaust industry has become an outright extortion racket. Thoroughly researched and closely argued, The Holocaust Industry is all the more disturbing and powerful because the issues it deals with are so rarely discussed.
The Holocaust Is Over; We Must Rise From its Ashes
by Avraham BurgModern-day Israel, and the Jewish community, are strongly influenced by the memory and horrors of Hitler and the Holocaust. Burg argues that the Jewish nation has been traumatized and has lost the ability to trust itself, its neighbors or the world around it. He shows that this is one of the causes for the growing nationalism and violence that are plaguing Israeli society and reverberating through Jewish communities worldwide. Burg uses his own family history--his parents were Holocaust survivors--to inform his innovative views on what the Jewish people need to do to move on and eventually live in peace with their Arab neighbors and feel comfortable in the world at large. Thought-provoking, compelling, and original, this book is bound to spark a heated debate around the world.
Holocaust Journey: Travelling in Search of the Past
by Martin Gilbert&“A travelogue, spanning two weeks, of the essential sites of the Holocaust, by the venerable historian and author . . . [A] soul-searching trip&” (Kirkus Reviews). In 1996, prominent Holocaust historian Sir Martin Gilbert embarked on a fourteen-day journey into the past with a group of his graduate students from University College, London. Their destination? Places where the terrible events of the Holocaust had left their mark in Europe. From the railway lines near Auschwitz to the site of Oskar Schindler&’s heroic efforts in Cracow, Poland, Holocaust Journey features intimate personal meditations from one of our greatest modern historians, and is supported by wartime documents, letters, and diaries—as well as over fifty photographs and maps by the author—all of which help interweave Gilbert&’s trip with his students with the surrounding history of the towns, camps, and other locations visited. The result is a narrative of the Holocaust that ties the past to the present with poignancy and power. &“Gilbert . . . is a dedicated guide to this difficult material. We can be grateful for his thoroughness, courage and guidance.&” —Los Angeles Times Book Review
Holocaust Journey: Travelling In Search Of The Past
by Sir Martin GilbertIncludes a new foreword by Rob RinderWhat readers are saying about HOLOCAUST JOURNEY:'Brilliant ... A must read for everybody' ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐'Devastating' ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐'Fascinating, thought provoking and shocking' ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐'Everybody should read this' ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐'Informative and emotional' ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐In June 1996 Martin Gilbert took a group of students on a two-week journey across middle-Europe which encompassed all the major places in the Holocaust - from Wannsee where the extermination of the Jews was decreed, to the camps themselves, via deserted Jewish communities and synagogues as well as the sites of the ghettos and deportation.'The achievement of Gilbert's HOLOCAUST JOURNEY is to reduce to comprehensible, human terms of the scale of the genocide that to many is still unimaginable' LITERARY REVIEW'Filled with short, well-informed and often heart-rending accounts of the fate of the Jews' TLS'HOLOCAUST JOURNEY travels along the tracks of a history we would rather forget to the sites of wartime horror, and is also a moving excavation of the past' INDEPENDENT
Holocaust Journey: Travelling In Search Of The Past
by Sir Martin GilbertIncludes a new foreword by Rob RinderWhat readers are saying about HOLOCAUST JOURNEY:'Brilliant ... A must read for everybody' ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐'Devastating' ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐'Fascinating, thought provoking and shocking' ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐'Everybody should read this' ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐'Informative and emotional' ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐In June 1996 Martin Gilbert took a group of students on a two-week journey across middle-Europe which encompassed all the major places in the Holocaust - from Wannsee where the extermination of the Jews was decreed, to the camps themselves, via deserted Jewish communities and synagogues as well as the sites of the ghettos and deportation.'The achievement of Gilbert's HOLOCAUST JOURNEY is to reduce to comprehensible, human terms of the scale of the genocide that to many is still unimaginable' LITERARY REVIEW'Filled with short, well-informed and often heart-rending accounts of the fate of the Jews' TLS'HOLOCAUST JOURNEY travels along the tracks of a history we would rather forget to the sites of wartime horror, and is also a moving excavation of the past' INDEPENDENT
Holocaust Justice: The Battle for Restitution in America's Courts
by Michael J BazylerThe first book to tell the complete story of the American attempt at restitution for victims of the HolocaustThe Holocaust was not only the greatest murder in history; it was also the greatest theft. Historians estimate that the Nazis stole roughly $230 billion to $320 billion in assets (figured in today’s dollars), from the Jews of Europe. Since the revelations concerning the wartime activities of the Swiss banks first broke in the late 1990s, an ever-widening circle of complicity and wrongdoing against Jews and other victims has emerged in the course of lawsuits waged by American lawyers. These suits involved German corporations, French and Austrian banks, European insurance companies, and double thefts of art—first by the Nazis, and then by museums and private collectors refusing to give them up. All of these injustices have come to light thanks to the American legal system.Holocaust Justice is the first book to tell the complete story of the legal campaign, conducted mainly on American soil, to address these injustices. Michael Bazyler, a legal scholar specializing in human rights and international law, takes an in-depth look at the series of lawsuits that gave rise to a coherent campaign to right historical wrongs. Diplomacy, individual pleas for justice by Holocaust survivors and various Jewish organizations for the last fifty years, and even suits in foreign courts, had not worked. It was only with the intervention of the American courts that elderly Holocaust survivors and millions of other wartime victims throughout the world were awarded compensation, and equally important, acknowledgment of the crimes committed against them. The unique features of the American system of justice—which allowed it to handle claims that originated over fifty years ago and in another part of the world—made it the only forum in the world where Holocaust claims could be heard. Without the lawsuits brought by American lawyers, Bazyler asserts, the claims of the elderly survivors and their heirs would continue to be ignored.For the first time in history, European and even American corporations are now being forced to pay restitution for war crimes totaling billions of dollars to Holocaust survivors and other victims. Bazyler deftly tells the unfolding stories: the Swiss banks’ attempt to hide dormant bank accounts belonging to Holocaust survivors or heirs of those who perished in the war; German private companies that used slave laborers during World War II—including American subsidiaries in Germany; Italian, Swiss and German insurance companies that refused to pay on prewar policies; and the legal wrangle going on today in American courts over art looted by the Nazis in wartime Europe. He describes both the human and legal dramas involved in the struggle for restitution, bringing the often-forgotten voices of Holocaust survivors to the forefront. He also addresses the controversial legal and moral issues over Holocaust restitution and the ethical debates over the distribution of funds.With an eye to the future, Bazyler discusses the enduring legacy of Holocaust restitution litigation, which is already being used as a model for obtaining justice for historical wrongs on both the domestic and international stage.
The Holocaust Lady
by Ruth Minsky SenderA Simon & Schuster eBook. Simon & Schuster has a great book for every reader.
The Holocaust Memorial Museum: Sacred Secular Space (The Holocaust and its Contexts)
by Avril AlbaThe Holocaust Memorial Museum reveals and traces the transformation of ancient Jewish symbols, rituals, archetypes and narratives deployed in these sites. Demonstrating how cloaking the 'secular' history of the Holocaust in sacred garb, memorial museums generate redemptive yet conflicting visions of the meaning and utility of Holocaust memory.
Holocaust Memory and Britain’s Religious-Secular Landscape: Politics, Sacrality, And Diversity (Routledge Studies in Religion)
by David TollertonBritish state-supported Holocaust remembrance has dramatically grown in prominence since the 1990s. This monograph provides the first substantial discussion of the interface between public Holocaust memory in contemporary Britain and the nation’s changing religious-secular landscape. In the first half of the book attention is given to the relationships between remembrance activities and Jewish, Muslim, Christian, and post-Christian communities. Such relationships are far from monolithic, being entangled in diverse histories, identities, power-structures, and notions of ‘British values’. In the book’s second half, the focus turns to ways in which public initiatives concerned with Holocaust commemoration and education are intertwined with evocations and perceptions of the sacred. Three state-supported endeavours are addressed in detail: Holocaust Memorial Day, plans for a major new memorial site in London, and school visits to Auschwitz. Considering these phenomena through concepts of ritual, sacred space, and pilgrimage, it is proposed that response to the Holocaust has become a key feature of Britain’s 21st century religious-secular landscape. Critical consideration of these topics, it is argued, is necessary for both a better understanding of religious-secular change in modern Britain and a sustainable culture of remembrance and national self-examination. This is the first study to examine Holocaust remembrance and British religiosity/secularity in relation to one another. As such, it will be of keen interest to scholars of Religious Studies, Jewish studies and Holocaust Studies, as well as the Sociology of Religion, Material Religion and Secularism.