The Holocaust and History: The Known, the Unknown, the Disputed, and the Reexamined

by Michael Berenbaum (Editor), Abraham J. Peck (Editor)

Overview

"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.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780253215291
Publisher:	Indiana University Press
Publication date:	07/02/2002
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	856
Product dimensions:	6.62(w) x 9.25(h) x (d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Michael Berenbaum is former Director of the Research Institute of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Among his publications are After Tragedy and Triumph: Modern Jewish Thought and the American Experience and The World Must Know.Abraham J. Peck teaches in the Department of History, University of Southern Maine. He is the author of Radicals and Reactionaries: The Crisis of Conservatism in Wilhelmine Germany and coeditor of Queen City Refuge: An Oral History of Cincinnati's Jewish Refugees from Nazi Germany.

Table of Contents

Part 1: Probing the Holocaust: Where We Are, Where We Need to Go
1. Sources and Their Uses
2. A Past That Will Not Go Away
3. The Holocaust: Where We Are, Where We Need to Go
4. The Holocaust: Where We Are, Where We Need to Go—A Comment

Part 2: Antisemitism and Racism in Nazi Ideology
5. The Use of Antisemitism in Nazi Wartime Propaganda
6. The Holocaust: A Very Particular Racism
7. Antisemitism and Racism in Nazi Ideology
8. Antisemitism, the Holocaust, and Reinterpretations of National Socialism

Part 3: The Politics of Racial Health and Science
9. Human Genetics and the Mass Murder of Jews, Gypsies, and Others
10. From Colonial Racism to Nazi Population Policy
11. The Cooperation of German Racial Hygienists and American Eugenicists before and after 1933

Part 4: The Nazi State: Leadership and Bureaucracy
12. Reinhard Heydrich and the Planning for the Final Solution
13. Plans for the Final Solution in Early 1941
14. State Policy and Corporate Involvement in the Holocaust
15. Civil Service and the Implementation of the Holocaust
16. Other Crimes of Adolf Hitler
Part 5: "Ordinary Men": The Sociopolitical Background
17. The T4 Killers
18. Ordinary Germans or Ordinary Men? A Reply
19. Complicity or Entanglement? Wehrmacht, War, and Holocaust
20. Amsterdam Police and the Persecution of the Jews
21. Ordinary Men or Ordinary Germans?

Part 6: Multiple Voices: Ideology, Exclusion, and Coercion
22. Neglected Holocaust Victims
23. "Slapping Up Spastics"
24. Final Solution of the Homosexual Question?
25. The Pink Triangle: Homosexuals as "Enemies of the State"
26. The Black Experience during the Holocaust

Part 7: Concentration Camps: Their Task and Environment
27. Auschwitz
28. Antechamber to Birkenau
29. Concentration Camps and the Non-Jewish Environment
30. Mauthausen, the Camps of the Shoah, and the Bystanders

Part 8: The Axis, the Allies, and the Neutrals
31. The Holocaust in Hungary
32. The Holocaust in Italy: Areas of Inquiry
33. Antonescu and the Jews
34. The Allies and the Holocaust
35. Surviving the Holocaust: The Situation in France
36. British Responses to the Plight of Jews in Europe, 1933-1945
37. Understanding the Success of Swedish Diplomacy in Budapest, 1944-1945
38. Refugees in Turkey
39. The Catholic Response to the Holocaust: Institutional Perspectives
40. The Ecclesiastical Final Solution: German Christian Movement and the Anti-Jewish Church

Part 9: Jewish Leadership, Jewish Resistance
41. The Armed Jewish Resistance in Eastern Europe
42. Remembering and Invoking 1789 during the Holocaust
43. The Jewish Underground Press in France and the Struggle to Expose the Nazi Secret of the Final Solution
44. Czech and Slovak Wartime Jewish Leadership

Part 10: The Rescuers
45. Reflections on Rescuers
46. The Rescuer Self
47. Rescuers of Jews during the Holocaust

Part 11: The Survivor Experience
48. "We're on Our Way, but We're Not in the Wilderness"
49. Jewish Displaced Persons and Refugees in Postwar Austria
50. The Cyprus Detainees, 1946-1949
51. Survivors of the Holocaust and the American Experience
52. Holocaust Survivors in Past and Present
53. Israeli Society and Recent Attitudes toward the Jews of Europe and Holocaust Survivors 54. History, Memory, and Truth: Defining the Place of the Survivor
Contributors
Index

Editorial Reviews

A huge and hugely significant collection of much of the best Holocaust scholarship to appear in the last half-century. This immense, one-volume tome is published in association with the US Holocaust Memorial Museum, where editor Berenbaum was formerly director of the Research Institute. Assisting him is Abraham Peck, the executive director of Houston's Holocaust Museum and the editor of two volumes in the series Archives of the Holocaust. Researchers of this controversial event argue here over the timing of the Nazi decision to commit genocide (Martin Broszat vs. Eberhard Jackel), the reasons why it happened, how unique the Holocaust was (Yehuda Bauer), and how ordinary the killers were (Gordon J. Horwitz and Daniel Jonah Goldhagen). Nazi policy was carried out differently in each country; thus, scholars examine the cases of victims, survivors, and perpetrators in Britain (Louise London), France (Susan S. Zuccotti), Hungary (Paul A. Levine and Randolph L. Braham), Italy (Meir Michaelis), Romania (Jean Ancel), and even Turkey (Mark Epstein). Despite the words þdisputed and reexaminedþ in the subtitle, the extent of the victim count isnþt questioned, nor are Holocaust deniers given a forum. However, the collection tolerates adamant differences of opinion and controversial theories, such as Gerhard L. Weinberg's defense of London's closing of Palestine to Jewish refugees and his contention that only "a tiny number" of Jews would have been rescued had the Western Allies bombed the gas chambers. The complexities of Holocaust survivors are well covered by Marjorie Allard, Dori Laub, Dalia Ofer, and Dina Porat. Non-Jewish victims and rescuers of the Holocaust are also wellrepresented. With this one weighty volume of 54 chapters (and extensive notes), a reader can learn how far Holocaust scholarship has progressed and what areas will be discussed for generations to come.

Kirkus Reviews