Overview

With its unique combination of primary sources and historical narrative, Jewish Responses to Persecution: 1944–1946, provides an important new perspective on Holocaust history. Covering the final year of Nazi destruction and the immediate postwar years, it traces the increasingly urgent Jewish struggle for survival, which included armed resistance and organized escape attempts. Shedding light on the personal and public lives of Jews, this book provides compelling insights into a wide range of Jewish experiences during the Holocaust. Jewish individuals and communities suffered through this devastating period and reflected on the Holocaust differently, depending on their nationality, personal and communal histories and traditions, political beliefs, economic situations, and other life history. The rich spectrum of primary source material collected, including letters, diary entries, photographs, transcripts of speeches and radio addresses, newspaper articles, drawings, and official government and institutional memos and reports, makes this volume an essential research tool and curriculum companion.

Full Product Details

Author:   Leah Wolfson
Publisher:   Rowman & Littlefield
Imprint:   Rowman & Littlefield
Volume:   Volume 5
Dimensions:   Width: 16.20cm , Height: 4.10cm , Length: 23.50cm
Weight:   1.061kg
ISBN:  

9781442243361

ISBN 10:   1442243368
Pages:   590
Publication Date:   13 August 2015
Audience:   College/higher education ,  Professional and scholarly ,  Tertiary & Higher Education ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Manufactured on demand  
We will order this item for you from a manufactured on demand supplier.

Table of Contents

Maps Readers’ Guide Abbreviations Introduction and Series Postscript PART I: THE “FINAL SOLUTION” AND THE END OF THE WAR Chapter One: The End of the War and the Last Throes of Genocide Resistance, Rescue, and Escape The Last Deportations, 1944–1945 The Final Days of the Concentration Camp System Moving Jews: Death Marches and the End of the War Chapter Two: Experiencing “Liberation” American Jewish Soldiers Encounter the Holocaust Responding to the Liberators: Liberation from the Perspective Chapter Three: Adjusting to Peace, Surviving Survival Emerging from the Holocaust: Finding a “Home” in Postwar Europe Surviving as Children, Reclaiming Childhood: Jewish Children after the War PART II: JEWS ON THE MOVE: FINDING AND DEFINING “HOME” IN THE POSTWAR ERA Chapter Four: Returning “Home”: Emigration and the Search for Postwar Normalcy Refugees and the Postwar Landscape: Borders, Citizenship, and Nationality Creating Homeland: Aspirations for Palestine The Other “Promised Land”: Refugees and Survivors in the United States A Home Elsewhere: Emigration outside Palestine and the United States Chapter Five: Jews and Displaced Persons Camps in Postwar Europe Jewish Involvement in DP Camp Administration The Daily Lives of Jewish DPs: Interpreting the Holocaust from the Inside Chapter Six: Citizenship, Nationhood, and Homeland: Jewish and Non-Jewish Encounters and the Zionist Ideal Imagining “Home:” Jewish Displaced Persons and Differing Visions of Zionism Between Tolerance and Antisemitism: Making a Home in the Diaspora PART III: TAKING STOCK, SEARCHING FOR JUSTICE Chapter Seven: The Search for Relatives Creating Lists of the Living and Lists of the Dead “Only Sad News to Report”: Survivor Letters to Family Outside Europe Searching for Jewish Children in the Postwar Period: The Organizational Process Picking Up and Moving On: Grappling with Decimated Families Chapter Eight: Punishing the Perpetrators Official Justice: Allied War Crimes Trials Coverage of Postwar Trials in the Jewish Press In Pursuit of Justice: Statements of the Victims Justice on the Local Level: Claims and Accusations Chapter Nine: Reclaiming Possessions Restitution in Theory and Practice: Legal Considerations The Conversation among Jewish Communal Organizations Restitution on the Local Level: Challenges and Roadblocks Personal Restitution Claims PART IV: FRAMING, DEFINING, AND REMEMBERING THE HOLOCAUST Chapter Ten: Making Memory: Early Memoirs and Reflections Early Histories of the Holocaust: An Emerging Field Between Nostalgia and Destruction: The Role of Yitzkor Memorial Books 3 Early Postwar Memoirs and Literary Reflections Unpublished Diaries and Memoirs in the Immediate Postwar Period Chapter Eleven: Commemorating the Victims: Memorializing the Holocaust Marking Graves: Commemorating the Dead In Situ Local Memories, Local Memorials: Memorializing Individual Communities Responding Religiously: The Formation of Post-Holocaust Theologies Emerging Centers of Jewish History and Documentation Memorial as National Identity: The Holocaust and Prestate Israel Chapter Twelve: The Survivors Speak: Collecting and Defining Postwar Testimony Interviewing the Victims: Jewish Historical Commissions Local Testimony Efforts: Interviewing Survivors in Their Former Homes “I Did Not Interview the Dead”: David Boder and the First Recorded Testimony List of Documents Bibliography Glossary Chronology Index About the Author

Reviews

A most welcome addition to an important series of source books on Jewish responses to the Holocaust. This concluding volume in the series offers a rich and wide-ranging set of documents that span the geographic, social, and ideological spectrum and are mindful of gender, class, and genre. This impressively contextualized collection of primary source material enriches our sense of this complex period. The book belongs on the shelves of all those teaching and researching the Holocaust and/or postwar Jewish and European history and culture. -- Sara R. Horowitz, York University

This impressive series provides a sense of the depth and diversity of contemporary Jewish documents while embedding them in explanatory narratives. . . . Volume V of the series aims to `trace and complicate' the final year of the war and the beginnings of the postwar period. Probing a relatively large amount of Yiddish sources, a substantial number in French and German, as well as a few from a host of other languages, the volume examines how writing and commemorative practices related to the Holocaust first developed. It de-centers iconic experiences in order to reveal just how fraught and complex liberation and survival really were, and how contested the meaning of key concepts such as liberation, home, and return remained shortly after the end of the Holocaust. * Yad Vashem Studies * A most welcome addition to an important series of source books on Jewish responses to the Holocaust. This concluding volume in the series offers a rich and wide-ranging set of documents that span the geographic, social, and ideological spectrum and are mindful of gender, class, and genre. This impressively contextualized collection of primary source material enriches our sense of this complex period. The book belongs on the shelves of all those teaching and researching the Holocaust and/or postwar Jewish and European history and culture. -- Sara R. Horowitz, York University Combining unpublished archival sources in several languages with cutting-edge scholarship, this collection breaks new ground in exposing a wide readership to primary documents that attest to the ambiguities of survival and liberation. Covering a remarkable spectrum of Holocaust experiences, the author does justice to differing Jewish outlooks and identities, sensitively illustrating challenging attempts to come to terms with loss and destruction and to find meaning in seemingly arbitrary survival. The volume opens an invaluable window onto the multifaceted ways in which Jews reflected, interpreted, and commemorated the Nazi genocide and what lessons survivors drew from their traumatic experiences in the immediate aftermath of World War II. -- Laura Jockusch, Brandeis University

This impressive series provides a sense of the depth and diversity of contemporary Jewish documents while embedding them in explanatory narratives... Volume V of the series aims to 'trace and complicate' the final year of the war and the beginnings of the postwar period. Probing a relatively large amount of Yiddish sources, a substantial number in French and German, as well as a few from a host of other languages, the volume examines how writing and commemorative practices related to the Holocaust first developed. It de-centers iconic experiences in order to reveal just how fraught and complex liberation and survival really were, and how contested the meaning of key concepts such as liberation, home, and return remained shortly after the end of the Holocaust. Yad Vashem Studies A most welcome addition to an important series of source books on Jewish responses to the Holocaust. This concluding volume in the series offers a rich and wide-ranging set of documents that span the geographic, social, and ideological spectrum and are mindful of gender, class, and genre. This impressively contextualized collection of primary source material enriches our sense of this complex period. The book belongs on the shelves of all those teaching and researching the Holocaust and/or postwar Jewish and European history and culture. -- Sara R. Horowitz, York University Combining unpublished archival sources in several languages with cutting-edge scholarship, this collection breaks new ground in exposing a wide readership to primary documents that attest to the ambiguities of survival and liberation. Covering a remarkable spectrum of Holocaust experiences, the author does justice to differing Jewish outlooks and identities, sensitively illustrating challenging attempts to come to terms with loss and destruction and to find meaning in seemingly arbitrary survival. The volume opens an invaluable window onto the multifaceted ways in which Jews reflected, interpreted, and commemorated the Nazi genocide and what lessons survivors drew from their traumatic experiences in the immediate aftermath of World War II. -- Laura Jockusch, Brandeis University

Author Information

Leah Wolfson is senior program officer and applied research scholar, Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Tab Content 6

Author Website:  

Customer Reviews

Recent Reviews

No review item found!

Add your own review!

Countries Available

All regions