The First Holocaust


Book Description

Most people believe that roughly six million Jews were killed by National Socialist Germany during World War II in an event generally referred to as the Holocaust or the Shoah. But how long have we been hearing about this six-million figure? The most widely understood answer is that the six-million figure was established after the Second World War during the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg. Although it is true that the six-million figure was declared to be the indubitable truth at this tribunal, it is actually remarkably older. This book shows that the six-million figure dates back to the late 1800s, when Jewish pressure groups were targeting czarist Russia for its anti-Jewish stance, accusing Russia of oppressing and persecuting the six million Jews in Russia, and adopting a "solution" to its "Jewish question" which allegedly consisted of outright extermination. Claims that six million Jews in Europe were suffering to such a degree that millions had died already, while many more millions would face a lingering death, climaxed for the first time during fundraising campaign that started during the FIRST World War and reached its peak in the early and mid-1920s. The New York Times was the main vehicle for such propaganda, which also included well-known buzzwords such as "annihilation," "extermination" and even the term "holocaust." Although this sensational propaganda of Jewish suffering slowed down during the 1930s, it never completely ceased and received new momentum in the 1940s during the Second World War. As we all know today, this propaganda skyrocketed after Germany's total defeat, as the victorious powers of the Second World War seized upon the opportunity to take advantage of such propaganda and to increase its scope and impact. Don Heddesheimer's book reveals a Jewish-Zionist propaganda pattern that has been used since the late 1800s, first against czarist Russia, then in favor of the Soviet Revolution, next against Nazi Germany, and finally and ever since in favor of Israel. 5th edition of 2018.




Holocaust


Book Description

A reexamination of the narrative of genocide. Personal stories help audiences consider the cause, course, and consequences of this seminal period in world history. In Holocaust, historian James Bulgin presents a wealth of archival material--including emotive objects, newly commissioned photography, and previously unpublished personal testimony from those who were there--to examine the role of ideology and individual decision-making in the course of World War II and the Holocaust. The book is published to coincide with the opening of Imperial War Museums's groundbreaking new Second World War and Holocaust Galleries.




First Films of the Holocaust


Book Description

Most early Western perceptions of the Holocaust were based on newsreels filmed during the Allied liberation of Germany in 1945. Little, however, was reported of the initial wave of material from Soviet filmmakers, who were in fact the first to document these horrors. In First Films of the Holocaust, Jeremy Hicks presents a pioneering study of Soviet contributions to the growing public awareness of the horrors of Nazi rule. Even before the war, the Soviet film Professor Mamlock, which premiered in the United States in 1938 and coincided with the Kristallnacht pogrom, helped reinforce anti-Nazi sentiment. Yet, Soviet films were often dismissed or even banned in the West as Communist propaganda. Ironically, in the brief 1939-1941 period of Nazi and Soviet alliance, such films were also banned in the Soviet Union, only to be reclaimed after the Nazi attack on the Soviet Union in 1941, and suppressed yet again during the Cold War. Jeremy Hicks recovers much of the major film work in Soviet depictions of the Holocaust and views them within their political context, both locally and internationally. Overwhelmingly, wartime films were skewed to depict Soviet resistance, "Red funerals," and calls for vengeance, rather than the singling out of Jewish victims by the Nazis. Almost no personal testimony of victims or synchronous sound was recorded, furthering the disconnection of the viewer to the victims. Hicks examines correspondence, scripts, reviews, and compares edited with unedited film to unearth the deliberately hidden Jewish aspects of Soviet depictions of the German invasion and occupation. To Hicks, it's in the silences, gaps, and ellipses that the films speak most clearly. Additionally, he details the reasons why Soviet Holocaust films have been subsequently erased from collective memory in the West and the Soviet Union: their graphic horror, their use as propaganda tools, and the postwar rise of the Red Scare in the United States and anti-Semitic campaigns in the Soviet Union.




Holocaust Literature


Book Description

A comprehensive assessment of Holocaust literature, from World War II to the present day




KL


Book Description

The first comprehensive history of the Nazi concentration camps In a landmark work of history, Nikolaus Wachsmann offers an unprecedented, integrated account of the Nazi concentration camps from their inception in 1933 through their demise, seventy years ago, in the spring of 1945. The Third Reich has been studied in more depth than virtually any other period in history, and yet until now there has been no history of the camp system that tells the full story of its broad development and the everyday experiences of its inhabitants, both perpetrators and victims, and all those living in what Primo Levi called "the gray zone." In KL, Wachsmann fills this glaring gap in our understanding. He not only synthesizes a new generation of scholarly work, much of it untranslated and unknown outside of Germany, but also presents startling revelations, based on many years of archival research, about the functioning and scope of the camp system. Examining, close up, life and death inside the camps, and adopting a wider lens to show how the camp system was shaped by changing political, legal, social, economic, and military forces, Wachsmann produces a unified picture of the Nazi regime and its camps that we have never seen before. A boldly ambitious work of deep importance, KL is destined to be a classic in the history of the twentieth century.




The First Holocaust


Book Description

Most people believe that roughly six million Jews were killed by National Socialist Germany during World War II in an event generally referred to as the Holocaust or the Shoah. But how long have we known about this six million figure? The most frequent answer is that the six million figure was established after the Second World War during the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg.Although it is true that the six million figure was declared to be the indubitable truth at this tribunal, it is actually remarkably older. In this book, Don Heddesheimer shows that the six million figure dates back to a Jewish fund raising campaign that started during the FIRST World War and reached its peak in the mid-1920s. During those years, Jewish groups in the United States spread the rumor that millions of Jews in Europe were suffering to the degree that millions had died already, while many more millions would face a lingering death. The New York Times was the main vehicle for such propaganda, which even included well-known buzzwords like extermination, holocaust, and the now famous six million figure.Although this exaggerated propaganda of Jewish suffering slowed down during the 1930s, it never completely ceased and received new momentum in the 1940s during the Second World War. As we all know today, this propaganda skyrocketed after Germanys total defeat, as the victorious nations of the Second World War seized upon the opportunity to take advantage of such propaganda and to increase its scope and impact. Heddesheimers book clearly shows that the six million figure, together with extermination and holocaust claims, are Jewish-Zionist in nature and part of a propaganda pattern that started at the very dawn of the 20th century in order to promote Jewish political and financial goals, be it in Soviet Russia then or in Israel today. Since the end of World War Two, this propaganda has increased in intensity due to its political success and the lack of resistance.




The Holocaust


Book Description

The renowned historian weaves a definitive account of the Holocaust—from Hitler’s rise to power to the final defeat of the Nazis in 1945. Rich with eyewitness accounts, incisive interviews, and first-hand source materials—including documentation from the Eichmann and Nuremberg war crime trials—this sweeping narrative begins with an in-depth historical analysis of the origins of anti-Semitism in Europe, and tracks the systematic brutality of Hitler’s “Final Solution” in unflinching detail. It brings to light new source materials documenting Mengele’s diabolical concentration camp experiments and documents the activities of Himmler, Eichmann, and other Nazi leaders. It also demonstrates comprehensive evidence of Jewish resistance and the heroic efforts of Gentiles to aid and shelter Jews and others targeted for extermination, even at the risk of their own lives. Combining survivor testimonies, deft historical analysis, and painstaking research, The Holocaust is without doubt a masterwork of World War II history. “A fascinating work that overwhelms us with its truth . . . This book must be read and reread.” —Elie Wiesel, Nobel Peace Prizing–winning author of Night




Why?: Explaining the Holocaust


Book Description

Featured in the PBS documentary, "The US and the Holocaust" by Ken Burns, Lynn Novick and Sarah Botstein "Superbly written and researched, synthesizing the classics while digging deep into a vast repository of primary sources." —Josef Joffe, Wall Street Journal Why? explores one of the most tragic events in human history by addressing eight of the most commonly asked questions about the Holocaust: Why the Jews? Why the Germans? Why murder? Why this swift and sweeping? Why didn’t more Jews fight back more often? Why did survival rates diverge? Why such limited help from outside? What legacies, what lessons? An internationally acclaimed scholar, Peter Hayes brings a wealth of research and experience to bear on conventional views of the Holocaust, dispelling many misconceptions and challenging some of the most prominent recent interpretations.




Anxious Histories


Book Description

Over the last seventy years, memories and narratives of the Holocaust have played a significant role in constructing Jewish communities. The author explores one field where these narratives are disseminated: Holocaust pedagogy in Jewish schools in Melbourne and New York. Bringing together a diverse range of critical approaches, including memory studies, gender studies, diaspora theory, and settler colonial studies, Anxious Histories complicates the stories being told about the Holocaust in these Jewish schools and their broader communities. It demonstrates that an anxious thread runs throughout these historical narratives, as the pedagogy negotiates feelings of simultaneous belonging and not-belonging in the West and in Zionism. In locating that anxiety, the possibilities and the limitations of narrating histories of the Holocaust are opened up once again for analysis, critique, discussion, and development.




The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion


Book Description

"The Protocols of the Elders of Zion" is almost certainly fiction, but its impact was not. Originating in Russia, it landed in the English-speaking world where it caused great consternation. Much is made of German anti-semitism, but there was fertile soil for "The Protocols" across Europe and even in America, thanks to Henry Ford and others.