A history of the Holocaust from 1933 to 1938 told from the Jewish perspective through period documents, annotations, and black-and-white photographs.

Published in association with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Jewish Responses to Persecution: Volume II, 1938–1940 is the second volume of the five-volume set within the series "Documenting Life and Destruction: Holocaust Sources in Context." This volume brings together in an accessible historical narrative a broad range of documents—including diaries, letters, speeches, newspaper articles, reports, Jewish identity cards, and personal photographs—from Jews in Nazi-dominated Europe and beyond Europe's borders. The volume skillfully illuminates the daily lives of a diverse range of Jews who suffered under Nazism, their coping strategies, and their efforts to assess the implications for the present and future of the persecution they faced during this period. Volume II begins with Kristallnacht in 1938 and continues through the Jewish flight out of Germany, the onset of World War II, the forced relocation of the Jews of Europe to the East, and the formation of Jewish ghettos, particularly in Poland. The twelve chapters, divided into four parts, track the trajectory of German expansion and anti-Jewish policies chronologically, attesting to a clear progression of persecution over time and space. At the same time, they reflect the vast differences in the responses of Jewish communities, groups, and individuals within and beyond the Germans' grasp, differences that resulted both from the unevenness of the Reich's policy toward Jews as well as the varied backgrounds, traditions, expectations, and life histories of Jews affected by German policy. This volume raises essential questions, such as: What was the spectrum of Jewish perceptions and actions under Nazi domination? How did Jews affected directly, or others standing on the outside, view the situation? In what ways were Jews able to influence their own fate under persecution? What role did Jewish tradition play in how the present and future were interpreted? The answers inherent in the documents are often varied or inconclusive; nonetheless these sources add considerably to our understanding of the Holocaust.

Published in association with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum 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.

Published in association with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Combining rich documentation selected from the five-volume series on Jewish Responses to Persecution, this text combines a carefully curated selection of primary sources together with basic background information to illuminate key aspects of Jewish life during the Holocaust. Many available for the first time in English translation, these letters, reports, and testimonies, as well as photographs and other visual documents, provide an array of first-hand contemporaneous accounts by victims. With its focus on highlighting the diversity of Jewish experiences, perceptions and actions, the book calls into question prevailing perceptions of Jews as a homogenous, faceless, or passive group and helps complicate students’ understanding of the Holocaust. While no source reader can comprehensively cover this vast subject, this volume addresses key aspects of victim experiences in terms of gender, age, location, chronology, and social and political background. Selected from vast archival collections by a team of expert scholars, this book provides a wealth of material for discussion, reflection, and further study on issues of mass atrocities in their historical and current manifestations. The book’s cover photograph depicts the 1942 wedding of Salomon Schrijver and Flora Mendels in the Jewish quarter of Amsterdam. Salomon and Flora Schrijver were deported via Westerbork to Sobibor where they were murdered on July 9, 1943. USHMMPA (courtesy of Samuel Schryver).

Published in association with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Jewish Responses to Persecution: 1941–1942 is the third volume in a five-volume set published in association with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum that offers a new perspective on Holocaust history. Incorporating historical documents and accessible narrative, this volume sheds light on the personal and public lives of Jews during a period when Hitler’s triumph in Europe seemed assured, and the mass murder of millions had begun in earnest. The primary source material presented here, including letters, diary entries, photographs, transcripts of speeches, newspaper articles, and official memos and reports, makes this volume an essential research tool and curriculum companion.

German Jews faced harsh dilemmas in their responses to Nazi persecution, partly a result of Nazi cruelty and brutality but also a result of an understanding of their history and rightful place in Germany. This volume addresses the impact of the anti-Jewish policies of Hitler's regime on Jewish family life, Jewish women, and the existence of Jewish organizations and institutions and considers some of the Jewish responses to Nazi anti-Semitism and persecution. This volume offers scholars, students, and interested readers a highly accessible but focused introduction to Jewish life under National Socialism, the often painful dilemmas that it produced, and the varied Jewish responses to those dilemmas.

What were Jews saying and doing about the followers of Jesus in the first two centuries? In this provocative and comprehensive study, Claudia Setzer argues persuasively that Jews saw the early followers of Jesus as Jews for some time after the Christians viewed themselves as separate from the larger Jewish communities. This book provides historical context and nuanced exegesis of texts that continue to be "trouble spots" in Jewish-Christian relations. It illuminates the diverse strands of early anti-Judaism while providing the reader with some surprises.

Anti-Semitism and the Holocaust surveys the history of the Holocaust whilst demonstrating the pivotal importance of the historical tradition of anti-Semitism and the power of discriminatory language in relation to the Nazi-led persecution of the Jews. The book examines varieties of anti-Semitism that have existed throughout history, from religious anti-Semitism in the ancient Roman Empire to the racial anti-Semitism of political anti-Semites in Germany and Austria in the late 19th century. Beth A. Griech-Polelle analyzes the tropes, imagery, legends, myths and stereotypes about Jews that have surfaced at these various points in time. Anti-Semitism and the Holocaust considers how this language helped to engender an innate distrust, dislike and even hatred of the Jews in 20th-century Europe. She explores the shattering impact of the First World War and the rise of Weimar Germany, Hitler's rhetoric and the first phase of Nazi anti-Semitism before illustrating how ghettos, SS Einsatzgruppen killing squads, death camps and death marches were used to drive this anti-Semitic feeling towards genocide. With a wealth of primary source material, a thorough engagement with significant Holocaust scholarship and numerous illustrations, reading lists and a glossary to provide further support, this is a vital book for any student of the Holocaust keen to know more about the language of hate which fuelled it.

This book explores the use of antisemitism by Britain's interwar fascists and the ways in which the country's Jews reacted to this, examining the two alongside one another for the first time and locating both within the broader context of contemporary events in Europe. Daniel Tilles challenges existing conceptions of the antisemitism of Britain's foremost fascist organisation, the British Union of Fascists. He demonstrates that it was a far more central aspect of the party's thought than has previously been assumed. This, in turn, will be shown to be characteristic of the wider relationship between interwar European fascism and antisemitism, a thus far relatively neglected issue in the burgeoning field of fascist studies. Tilles also argues that the BUF's leader, Sir Oswald Mosley, far from being a reluctant convert to the anti-Jewish cause, or simply a cynical exploiter of it, as much of the existing scholarship suggests, was aware of the role antisemitism would play in his fascist doctrine from the start and remained in control of its subsequent development. These findings are used to support the notion that, contrary to prevailing perceptions, Jewish opposition to the BUF played no part in provoking the fascists' adoption of antisemitism. Britain's Jews did, nevertheless, play a significant role in shaping British fascism's path of development, and the wide-ranging and effective anti-fascist activity they pursued represents an important alternative narrative to the dominant image of Jews as mere victims of fascism.

This expanded edition of the guide to major books in English on the Holocaust is organized into ten subject areas: reference materials, European antisemitism, background materials, the Holocaust years, Jewish resistance