Drawing on research from various historians, the author offers opinions on how to define and explain the Holocaust, comparison to other genocides, and the connection between the Holocaust and the establishment of Israel.
In this volume Yehuda Bauer describes the efforts made to aid European victims of World War II by the New York-based American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee. In this volume Yehudi Bauer describes the efforts made to aid European victims of World War II by the New York-based American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, American Jewry's chief representative abroad. Drawing on the mass of unpublished material in the JDC archives and other repositories, as well as on his thorough knowledge of recent and continuing research into the Holocaust, he focuses alternately on the personalities and institutional decisions in New York and their effects on the JDC workers and their rescue efforts in Europe. He balances personal stories with a country-by-country account of the fate of Jews through ought the war years: the grim statistics of millions deported and killed are set in the context of the hopes and frustrations of the heroic individuals and small groups who actively worked to prevent the Nazis' Final Solution. This study is essential reading for anyone who seeks to understand the American Jewish response to European events from 1939 to 1945. Bauer confronts the tremendous moral and historical questions arising from JDC's activities. How great was the danger? Who should be saved first? Was it justified to use illegal or extralegal means? What country would accept Jewish refugees? His analysis also raises an issue which perhaps can never be answered: could American Jews have done more if they had grasped the reality of the Holocaust?
A revised version of two courses of lectures delivered as part of the Broadcast University series of Israel Army Radio. Discusses the struggle of Jews for survival under Nazi rule, and attempts at aid and rescue by Jews in the Western democracies and Palestine, by foreign governments, and by "Righteous Gentiles". Emphasizes that the Nazis decided to murder all the Jews only in autumn 1940; until then no one could have foreseen the Holocaust to come. When the first reports of mass murder were received, they met with disbelief on the part of most Jews as well as non-Jews. This lack of awareness explains why the potential victims were slow to escape or resist; and, in conjunction with the prevalence of antisemitism and the political impotence of world and Palestinian Jewry, it also explains the failure of the outside world to come to their rescue. Among the topics covered are the search for countries of asylum; the Transfer Agreement; illegal immigration to Palestine; the ghettos and the Judenräte; the resistance groups and armed uprisings in the ghettos; Jewish partisans; underground rescue groups; negotiations with SS functionaries for Jewish lives; and the British Foreign Office's blocking of rescue proposals.
The author traces the roots of anti-Semitism that burgeoned through the ages and provides a comprehensive description of how and why the Holocaust occurred.
Examining Jewish resistance in the Holocaust, dismisses the view that the Jews went to their deaths "like sheep to the slaughter". In the early stages of the Holocaust, resistance was passive, mainly a struggle for physical survival in the ghettos. In later stages, Jews took to armed resistance: uprisings in ghettos, partisan warfare, etc. Dwells on the role of the Judenräte in the struggle for survival, and the dilemmas with which Jewish leaders were confronted.
This pioneering volume will interest scholars of eastern European history and Holocaust studies, as well as those with an interest in refugee and migration issues.
Rethinking Poles and Jews focuses on the role of Holocaust-related material in perpetuating anti-Polish images and describes organizational efforts to combat them. Without minimizing contemporary Polish anti-Semitism, it also presents more positive material on contemporary Polish-American organizations and Jewish life in Poland.
Since the end of World War II, the ongoing efforts aimed at criminal prosecution, restitution, and other forms of justice in the wake of the Holocaust have constituted one of the most significant episodes in the history of human rights and international law. As such, they have attracted sustained attention from historians and legal scholars. This edited collection substantially enlarges the topical and disciplinary scope of this burgeoning field, exploring such varied subjects as literary analysis of Hannah Arendt’s work, the restitution case for Gustav Klimt’s Beethoven Frieze, and the ritualistic aspects of criminal trials.
Although overshadowed in historical memory by the Holocaust, the anti-Jewish pogroms of the late 19th and early 20th centuries were at the time unrivaled episodes of ethnic violence. Incorporating newly available primary sources, this collection of groundbreaking essays by researchers from Europe, the United States, and Israel investigates the phenomenon of anti-Jewish violence, the local and transnational responses to pogroms, and instances where violence was averted. Focusing on the period from World War I through Russia's early revolutionary years, the studies include Poland, Ukraine, Belorussia, Lithuania, Crimea, and Siberia.