“For the rare Jews of Poland who managed to survive the Holocaust, the very idea of a return to what had been one’s homeland might seem both physically and psychologically impossible, perhaps even absurd. Yet it is precisely this paradoxical journey that Mira Kimmelman undertakes with great dignity and generosity. In words that are both direct and intimate, she exposes the ambivalence of what it means to learn to live again after Auschwitz—to experience love, raise a family, and assume a steadfast place in the Jewish community of a new land. At the same time, she acknowledges the abyss of losses that can never be retrieved. Perhaps even more importantly, Mira reveals how the pain of a return is transformed into a new adventure of discovery and reconciliation to be shared with her sons, their families, and her readers for generations to come.”—Karen D. LevyProfessor of French StudiesUniversity of Tennessee “This book is written with intelligence, sensitivity, and eloquence. As a post-Holocaust memoir, it is an excellent volume, inasmuch as it brings out the scope of the Holocaust, its impact on future generations, and how it affects our understanding of past generations. The author explores and elucidates the problems of liberation from death and the return to life that forever confront Holocaust survivors.” —David Patterson Bornblum Chair in Judaic Studies University of Memphis “Life beyond the Holocaust brings to mind in its power to document painful memories Primo Levi’s The Reawakening. Ms. Kimmelman’s memoir is, above all, a beautiful love story of herself and her husband, Max. She writes in a vernacular style that evokes her experiences with specific details. Her book is alive ... and celebrates in good prose human values triumphing over radical evil.” —Hugh Nissenson

The work presented in the volume in fields of the humanities and social sciences is based on 1) the notion of the existence and the "describability" and analysis of a culture (including, e.g., history, literature, society, the arts, etc.) specific of/to the region designated as Central Europe, 2) the relevance of a field designated as Central European Holocaust studies, and 3) the relevance, in the study of culture, of the "comparative" and "contextual" approach designated as "comparative cultural studies." Papers in the volume are by scholars working in Holocaust Studies in Australia, Germany, Hungary, Israel, Serbia, the United Kingdom, and the US.

This book examines a range of public debates on the Nazi legacy in Germany since Schröder's SDP-Green coalition came to power in 1998. A central theme is the 'dialectic of normality' whereby references to Nazi past impact upon present normality. The book is a valuable resource for students of contemporary German politics, history and culture.

Two Jewish families, the Langs and the Ottenheimers, settled in the two separate parts of Suessen, District Goeppingen, in 1902. The Langs established a cattle business in Gross-Suessen, the Ottenheimers established a branch of their weaving business, headquartered in Goeppingen, in Klein-Suessen. Based primarily on archival sources, the study gives an insight into everyday rural Jewish life, persecution and deportation during the Holocaust, an American soldier's World War II experience, experiences of liberation from concentration camps, the reparations process and life after 1945.

Where was God during the Holocaust? And where has God been since? How has our religious belief been changed by the Shoah? For more than half a century, these questions have haunted both Jewish and Christian theologians. Holocaust Theology provides a panoramic survey of the writings of more than one hundred leading Jewish and Christian thinkers on these profound theological problems. Beginning with a general introduction to Holocaust theology and the religious challenge of the Holocaust, this sweeping collection brings together in one volume a coherent overview of the key theologies which have shaped responses to the Holocaust over the last several decades, including those addressing perplexing questions regarding Christian responsibility and culpability during the Nazi era. Each reading is preceded by a brief introduction. The volume will be invaluable to Rabbis and the clergy, students, scholars of the Holocaust and of religion, and all those troubled by the religious implications of the tragedy of the Holocaust. Contributors include Leo Baeck, Eugene Borowitz, Stephen Haynes, Abraham Joshua Heschel, Steven T. Katz, Primo Levi, Jacob Neusner, John Pawlikowski, Rosemary Radford Reuther, Jonathan Sarna, Paul Tillich, and Elie Wiesel.

How do schools worldwide treat the Holocaust as a subject? In which countries does the Holocaust form part of classroom teaching? Are representations of the Holocaust always accurate, balanced and unprejudiced in curricula and textbooks? This study, carried out by UNESCO and the Georg Eckert Institute for International Textbook Research, compares for the first time representations of the Holocaust in school textbooks and national curricula. Drawing on data which includes countries in which there exists no or little information about representations of the Holocaust, the study shows where the Holocaust is established in official guidelines, and contains a close textbook study, focusing on the comprehensiveness and accuracy of representations and historical narratives. The book highlights evolving practices worldwide and thus provides education stakeholders with comprehensive documentation about current trends in curricula directives and textbook representations of the Holocaust. It further formulates recommendations that will help policy-makers provide the educational means by which pupils may develop Holocaust literacy.

Beyond the Holocaust: An Immigrant’s Search for Identity is Sylvie Heyman’s personal narrative as a refugee, with her family, from Europe during World War II. It chronicles their journey to Brazil, the harrowing experiences as they were smuggled to Argentina, the challenges faced in those dictatorship countries and the final immigration to the United States of America when the author was a teenager. In the second part of the book, the author blends her personal experiences with scholarly theories about language, nationality, and identity to better understand the long-term struggles and challenges that immigrants face.

The Holocaust Short Story is the only book devoted entirely to representations of the Holocaust in the short story genre. The book highlights how the explosiveness of the moment captured in each short story is more immediate and more intense, and therefore recreates horrifying emotional reactions for the reader. The main themes confronted in the book deal with the collapse of human relationships, the collapse of the home, and the dying of time in the monotony and angst of surrounding death chambers. The book thoroughly introduces the genres of both the short story and Holocaust writing, explaining the key features and theories in the area. Each chapter then looks at the stories in detail, including work by Ida Fink, Tadeusz Borowski, Rokhl Korn, Frume Halpern, and Cynthia Ozick. This book is essential reading for anyone working on Holocaust literature, trauma studies, Jewish studies, Jewish literature, and the short story genre.

Despite the massive literature on the Holocaust, our understanding of it has traditionally been influenced by rather unsophisticated early perspectives and silence. This book summarizes and criticizes the existing scholarship on the subject and suggests new ways by which we can approach its study. It addresses the use of victim testimony and asks important questions: What function does recording the past serve for the victim? What do historians want from it? Are these two perspectives incompatible? It also examines the perpetrators of the Holocaust, and compares them to those responsible for other acts of genocide and ethnic cleansing in the early years of the twentieth century. In addition, it looks at the bystanders--examining the complexity and ambiguity at the heart of contemporary reaction.

The Diary of Samuel Golfard and the Holocaust in Galicia examines the contents and context of a rare diary written by a Jewish man from Nazi-occupied Poland. Serving as both a record and an artifact of Samuel Golfard's life, the diary details his attempt to make sense of and resist the event that ultimately destroyed him. Wendy Lower integrates photographs, newspaper articles, documents, and testimonies to create a more complete picture of Golfard's experiences and writings. She also traces the diary's own journey after Golfard's death, from 1943 Poland to the present day.