When the walls of the Warsaw Ghetto first went up in November 1940, Emmanuel Ringelblum was there. In the face of horrendous persecution and palpable danger, his goal was to create a written record of life in the Ghetto, not just the destitution and brutality of life under Nazi rule, but out of the shining acts of nobility and heroism by people under the most dire circumstances. From Inside the Ghetto, Ringelblum, a well-respected historian and archivist, compiled his journal recording daily life in the Ghetto, from its beginnings to the eve of the Ghetto uprising in April 1943. Using accounts and anecdotes from his many friends and neighbours, Ringelblum created a detailed, colourful, and emotional record of one of the most terrible epochs in human history. Notes from the Warsaw Ghetto is an unflinching, first-hand account of history unfolding before your very eyes.

Before his execution by the Nazis he managed to hide his writings, which were found in the razed ghetto after the war.

On the eve of Passover, April 19, 1943, Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto staged a now legendary revolt against their Nazi oppressors. Since that day, the deprivation and despair of life in the ghetto and the dramatic uprising of its inhabitants have captured the American cultural imagination. The Warsaw Ghetto in American Art and Culture looks at how this place and its story have been remembered in fine art, film, television, radio, theater, fiction, poetry, and comics. Samantha Baskind explores seventy years’ worth of artistic representations of the ghetto and revolt to understand why they became and remain touchstones in the American mind. Her study includes iconic works such as Leon Uris’s best-selling novel Mila 18, Roman Polanski’s Academy Award–winning film The Pianist, and Rod Serling’s teleplay In the Presence of Mine Enemies, as well as accounts in the American Jewish Yearbook and the New York Times, the art of Samuel Bak and Arthur Szyk, and the poetry of Yala Korwin and Charles Reznikoff. In probing these works, Baskind pursues key questions of Jewish identity: What links artistic representations of the ghetto to the Jewish diaspora? How is art politicized or depoliticized? Why have Americans made such a strong cultural claim on the uprising? Vibrantly illustrated and vividly told, The Warsaw Ghetto in American Art and Culture shows the importance of the ghetto as a site of memory and creative struggle and reveals how this seminal event and locale served as a staging ground for the forging of Jewish American identity.

During World War II, the Germans put the Jews in Nazi-occupied Poland into ghettos which restricted their movement and, most crucially for their survival, access to food. The Germans saw the Jews as 'useless eaters,' and denied them sufficient food for survival. The hunger which resulted from this intentional starvation impacted every aspect of Jewish life inside the ghettos. This book focuses on the Jews in the Łódź, Warsaw, and Kraków ghettos as they struggled to survive the deadly Nazi ghetto and, in particular, the genocidal famine conditions. Jews had no control over Nazi food policy but they attempted to survive the deadly conditions of Nazi ghettoization through a range of coping mechanisms and survival strategies. In this book, Helene Sinnreich explores their story, drawing from diaries and first-hand accounts of the victims and survivors. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

In the courtroom and the classroom, in popular media, public policy, and scholarly pursuits, the Holocaust-its origins, its nature, and its implications-remains very much a matter of interest, debate, and controversy. Arriving at a time when a new generation must come to terms with the legacy of the Holocaust or forever lose the benefit of its historical, social, and moral lessons, this volume offers a richly varied, deeply informed perspective on the practice, interpretation, and direction of Holocaust research now and in the future. In their essays the authors-an international group including eminent senior scholars as well those who represent the future of the field-set the agenda for Holocaust studies in the coming years, even as they give readers the means for understanding today's news and views of the Holocaust, whether in court cases involving victims and perpetrators; international, national, and corporate developments; or fictional, documentary, and historical accounts. Several of the essays-such as one on nonarmed "amidah" or resistance and others on the role of gender in the behavior of perpetrators and victims-provide innovative and potentially significant interpretive frameworks for the field of Holocaust studies. Others; for instance, the rounding up of Jews in Italy, Nazi food policy in Eastern Europe, and Nazi anti-Jewish scholarship, emphasize the importance of new sources for reconstructing the historical record. Still others, including essays on the 1964 Frankfurt trial of Auschwitz guards and on the response of the Catholic Church to the question of German guilt, bring a new depth and sophistication to highly charged, sharply politicized topics. Together these essays will inform the future of the Holocaust in scholarly research and in popular understanding.

First published in 2001. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

1930s Warsaw was a thoroughly cosmopolitan, even swinging city. Larger than Chicago, it was host to a rich Jewish cultural life. It seemed inconceivable that all this was about to be swept away, but then came the dark events of September 1939. As the Nazi invasion of Poland began, a ragtag army calling itself the Jewish Resistance Force fell into shape around the handsome, quick-witted Isaac Zuckerman. Impossibly daring, the JRF held out until the end of the war, by which time fewer than 100 of its members survived. ISAAC'S ARMY is the thrilling tale of the fortunes of the JRF's main participants, told in vivid prose that brilliantly creates an atmosphere febrile with danger, heroism and ingenuity – like Babel's Odessa Tales crossed with the Great Escape. In amongst the tragedy, ISAAC'S ARMY manages to be touching, entertaining, and even very funny, and ultimately a celebration of the resilience of the human spirit.

Tells story of Irena Sendler who organized the rescue of 2,500 Jewish children during World War II, and the teenagers who started the investigation into Irena's heroism.