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.
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.
Among sources on the Holocaust, survivor testimonies are the least replaceable and most complex, reflecting both the personality of the narrator and the conditions and perceptions prevailing at the time of narration. Scholars, despite their aim to challenge memory and fill its gaps, often use testimonies uncritically or selectively-mining them to support generalizations. This book represents a departure, bringing Holocaust experts Atina Grossmann, Konrad Kwiet, Wendy Lower, J?rgen Matth?us, and Nechama Tec together to analyze the testimony of one Holocaust survivor. Born in Bratislava at the end of World War I, Helen "Zippi" Spitzer Tichauer was sent to Auschwitz in 1942. One of the few early arrivals to survive the camp and the death marches, she met her future husband in a DP camp, and they moved to New York in the 1960s. Beginning in 1946, Zippi devoted many hours to talking with a small group of scholars about her life. Her wide-ranging interviews are uniquely suited to raise questions on the meaning and use of survivor testimony. What do we know today about the workings of a death camp? How willing are we to learn from the experiences of a survivor, and how much is our perception preconditioned by standardized images? What are the mechanisms, aims, and pitfalls of storytelling? Can survivor testimonies be understood properly without guidance from those who experienced the events? This book's new, multifaceted approach toward Zippi's unique story combined with the authors' analysis of key aspects of Holocaust memory, its forms and its functions, makes it a rewarding and fascinating read.
Expounds a wide spectrum of problems of post-Holocaust theology: Christianity and Nazism; psychoanalytic interpretation of the connection between religion and the Final Solution; the religious meaning of the Holocaust; the Auschwitz convent controversy. Argues that Nazism as theory and practice was neither the ultimate expression of atheism nor a kind of neo-paganism; on the contrary, it was a monotheistic "anti-religion" which emerged as a rebellion against Christianity, but greatly used its ideas and images, especially that of the "mythological Jew", "Judas". Reveals the religiomythic element in the Holocaust (e.g. the perpetrators fulfilled a religious mission), which singles out this phenomenon from the other cases of genocide. ǂc (From the Bibliography of the Vidal Sassoon International Center for the Study of Antisemitism).
Reflections is a book of memories, but it is equally a book about memory. Speaking of herself as well as other Holocaust survivors, Agi Rubin notes: We survivors are a bundle of contradictions. We push away the past, and we are constantly drawn back to it. When we are here, we are also there. And when we are there, we are also here. "Survivors,"; Agi tells us, "are jugglers. Life goes on, death goes on, and survivors themselves go on-somewhere in between." What is it like to live within such contradictions? While most survivor memoirs end at liberation, Reflections follows the fate of Holocaust memories over the course of an entire life. Agi describes in detail her initial awakening and the journey home, being a young survivor in the giddy limbo of postwar, recreating lives and families in the United States, responding to the unanticipated surge of interest in the Holocaust in recent years. Throughout, the inner dialogue with memory deepens. "New experiences reflect old ones" says Agi. "They put them in a different light, or a different darkness." These reflections are the story this book tells about Auschwitz, memory, and a life recreated.
The incredible story of the Auschwitz-Birkenau tattooist and the woman he loved. Lale Sokolov is well-dressed, a charmer, a ladies' man. He is also a Jew. On the first transport of men from Slovakia to Auschwitz in 1942, Lale immediately stands out to his fellow prisoners. In the camp, he is looked up to, looked out for, and put to work in the privileged position of Tatowierer - the tattooist - to mark his fellow prisoners, forever. One of them is a young woman, Gita, who steals his heart at first glance. His life given new purpose, Lale does his best through the struggle and suffering to use his position for good. This story, full of beauty and hope, is based on years of interviews author Heather Morris conducted with real-life Holocaust survivor and Auschwitz-Birkenau tattooist Ludwig (Lale) Sokolov. It is heart-wrenching, illuminating, and unforgettable. 'Morris climbs into the dark miasma of war and emerges with an extraordinary tale of the power of love' - Leah Kaminsky
Taking groups of students To The Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum is a heavy responsibility, but it is a major contribution to citizenship if it fosters understanding of what Auschwitz stands for, particularly when the last survivors are at the end of their lives. it comes with certain risks, however. This pack is designed for teachers wishing to organise student visits to authentic places of remembrance, and For The guides, academics and others who work every day with young people at Auschwitz. There is nothing magical about visiting an authentic place of remembrance, and it calls for a carefully thought-out approach. To avoid the risk of inappropriate reactions or the failure to benefit from a large investment in travel and accommodation, considerable preparation and discussion is necessary before the visit and serious reflection afterwards. Teachers must prepare students for a form of learning they may never have met before. This pack offers insights into the complexities of human behaviour so that students can have a better understanding of what it means to be a citizen. How are they concerned by what happened at Auschwitz? is the unprecedented process of exclusion that was practised in the Holocaust still going on in Europe today? in what sense is it different from present-day racism and anti-Semitism? the young people who visit Auschwitz in the next few years will be witnesses of the last witnesses, links in the chain of memory. Their generation will be the last to hear the survivors speaking on the spot. The Council of Europe, The Polish Ministry of Education And The Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum are jointly sponsoring this project aimed at preventing crimes against humanity through Holocaust remembrance teaching.
In 1944, members of the Sonderkommando—the “special squads,” composed almost exclusively of Jewish prisoners, who ensured the smooth operation of the gas chambers and had firsthand knowledge of the extermination process—buried on the grounds of Auschwitz-Birkenau a series of remarkable eyewitness accounts of Nazi genocide. This careful and penetrating study examines anew these “Scrolls of Auschwitz,” which were gradually recovered, in damaged and fragmentary form, in the years following the camp’s liberation. It painstakingly reconstructs their historical context and textual content, revealing complex literary works that resist narrow moral judgment and engage difficult questions about the limits of testimony.
Speaking and understanding can both be thought of as forms of translation, and in this way every speaker is an exile in language—even in one's mother tongue. Drawing from the philosophical hermeneutics of Martin Heidegger and Hans-Georg Gadamer, the testimonies of the German Jews and their relation with the German language, Jacques Derrida's confrontation with Hannah Arendt, and the poetry of Paul Celan, Donatella Ester Di Cesare proclaims Auschwitz the Babel of the twentieth century. She argues that the globalized world is one in which there no longer remains any intimate place or stable dwelling. Understanding becomes a kind of shibboleth that grounds nothing, but opens messianically to a utopia yet to come.
Holocaust and Human Behavior uses readings, primary source material, and short documentary films to examine the challenging history of the Holocaust and prompt reflection on our world today
