Approaches to Auschwitz


Book Description

Distinctively coauthored by a Christian scholar and a Jewish scholar, this monumental, interdisciplinary study explores the various ways in which the Holocaust has been studied and assesses its continuing significance. The authors develop an analysis of the Holocaust's historical roots, its shattering impact on human civilization, and its decisive importance in determining the fate of the world. This revised edition takes into account developments in Holocaust studies since the first edition was published.




Approaches to Auschwitz, Revised Edition


Book Description

Distinctively coauthored by a Christian scholar and a Jewish scholar, this monumental, interdisciplinary study explores the various ways in which the Holocaust has been studied and assesses its continuing significance. The authors develop an analysis of the Holocaust's historical roots, its shattering impact on human civilization, and its decisive importance in determining the fate of the world. This revised edition takes into account developments in Holocaust studies since the first edition was published.




Holocaust Archaeologies


Book Description

Holocaust Archaeologies: Approaches and Future Directions aims to move archaeological research concerning the Holocaust forward through a discussion of the variety of the political, social, ethical and religious issues that surround investigations of this period and by considering how to address them. It considers the various reasons why archaeological investigations may take place and what issues will be brought to bear when fieldwork is suggested. It presents an interdisciplinary methodology in order to demonstrate how archaeology can (uniquely) contribute to the history of this period. Case examples are used throughout the book in order to contextualise prevalent themes and a variety of geographically and typologically diverse sites throughout Europe are discussed. This book challenges many of the widely held perceptions concerning the Holocaust, including the idea that it was solely an Eastern European phenomena centred on Auschwitz and the belief that other sites connected to it were largely destroyed or are well-known. The typologically , temporally and spatial diverse body of physical evidence pertaining to this period is presented and future possibilities for investigation of it are discussed. Finally, the volume concludes by discussing issues relating to the “re-presentation” of the Holocaust and the impact of this on commemoration, heritage management and education. This discussion is a timely one as we enter an age without survivors and questions are raised about how to educate future generations about these events in their absence.




Jewish Histories of the Holocaust


Book Description

For many years, histories of the Holocaust focused on its perpetrators, and only recently have more scholars begun to consider in detail the experiences of victims and survivors, as well as the documents they left behind. This volume contains new research from internationally established scholars. It provides an introduction to and overview of Jewish narratives of the Holocaust. The essays include new considerations of sources ranging from diaries and oral testimony to the hidden Oyneg Shabbes archive of the Warsaw Ghetto; arguments regarding Jewish narratives and how they fit into the larger fields of Holocaust and Genocide studies; and new assessments of Jewish responses to mass murder ranging from ghetto leadership to resistance and memory.




Microhistories of the Holocaust


Book Description

How does scale affect our understanding of the Holocaust? In the vastness of its implementation and the sheer amount of death and suffering it produced, the genocide of Europe’s Jews presents special challenges for historians, who have responded with work ranging in scope from the world-historical to the intimate. In particular, recent scholarship has demonstrated a willingness to study the Holocaust at scales as focused as a single neighborhood, family, or perpetrator. This volume brings together an international cast of scholars to reflect on the ongoing microhistorical turn in Holocaust studies, assessing its historiographical pitfalls as well as the distinctive opportunities it affords researchers.




The Holocaust


Book Description

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.




Approaches to Teaching Wiesel's Night


Book Description

Elie Wiesel is an internationally known author, human rights advocate, and lecturer. Night, his first book (1956 in Yiddish, 1958 in French, 1960 in English; a new English translation appeared in 2006), has become a classic memoir of a Jewish survivor of the Holocaust. The seventeen essays of this volume in the MLA series Approaches to Teaching World Literature examine the historical, cultural, and literary contexts of Wiesel's book as well as strategies for teaching it in the classroom. Part 1, "Materials," provides resources on the Jewish ghettos and concentration camps of World War II, on the Jewish faith and religious practices, on the genre of victims' diaries, on the critical reception of Night, on Wiesel's other work, and on available audiovisual materials. Part 2, "Approaches," addresses many subjects—among them, Wiesel's narrative techniques, the representation of Auschwitz, the use of different languages, the comparison of Wiesel with Primo Levi, the problems of memory and bearing witness, the Christian response to the Holocaust, and the challenge of teaching a grim and painful text to students.




(God) After Auschwitz


Book Description

The impact of technology-enhanced mass death in the twentieth century, argues Zachary Braiterman, has profoundly affected the future shape of religious thought. In his provocative book, the author shows how key Jewish theologians faced the memory of Auschwitz by rejecting traditional theodicy, abandoning any attempt to justify and vindicate the relationship between God and catastrophic suffering. The author terms this rejection "Antitheodicy," the refusal to accept that relationship. It finds voice in the writings of three particular theologians: Richard Rubenstein, Eliezer Berkovits, and Emil Fackenheim. This book is the first to bring postmodern philosophical and literary approaches into conversation with post-Holocaust Jewish thought. Drawing on the work of Mieke Bal, Harold Bloom, Jacques Derrida, Umberto Eco, Michel Foucault, and others, Braiterman assesses how Jewish intellectuals reinterpret Bible and Midrash to re-create religious thought for the age after Auschwitz. In this process, he provides a model for reconstructing Jewish life and philosophy in the wake of the Holocaust. His work contributes to the postmodern turn in contemporary Jewish studies and today's creative theology.




Disciplining the Holocaust


Book Description

Disciplining the Holocaust examines critics' efforts to defend a rigorous and morally appropriate image of the Holocaust. Rather than limiting herself to polemics about the "proper" approach to traumatic history, Karyn Ball explores recent trends in intellectual history that govern a contemporary ethics of scholarship about the Holocaust. She examines the scholarly reception of Goldhagen's Hitler's Willing Executioners, the debates culminating in Eisenman's Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe in Berlin, Lyotard's response to negations of testimony about the gas chambers, psychoanalytically informed frameworks for the critical study of traumatic history, and a conference on feminist approaches to the Holocaust and genocide. Ball's book bridges the gap between psychoanalysis and Foucault's understanding of disciplinary power in order to highlight the social implications of traumatic history.




Holocaust and Human Behavior


Book Description

Holocaust and Human Behavior uses readings, primary source material, and short documentary films to examine the challenging history of the Holocaust and prompt reflection on our world today




Recent Books