Synagogues Without Jews


Book Description

Through words and more than 300 exquisite photographs, Synagogues Without Jews tells the engaging histories of over thirty Jewish communities across Europe that thrived before WWII. Beautiful full colour photographs and architectural drawings bring back the past splendor of these synagogues and once again we can see why they were the pride and joy of their congregations.




A World Without Jews


Book Description

A groundbreaking reexamination of the Holocaust and how Germans understood their genocidal project: “Insightful [and] chilling.” —Kirkus Reviews Why exactly did the Nazis burn the Hebrew Bible everywhere in Germany on November 9, 1938? The perplexing event has not been adequately accounted for by historians in their large-scale assessments of how and why the Holocaust occurred. In this gripping new analysis, Alon Confino draws on an array of archives across three continents to propose a penetrating new assessment of one of the central moral problems of the twentieth century. To a surprising extent, Confino demonstrates, the mass murder of Jews during the war years was powerfully anticipated in the culture of the prewar years. The author shifts his focus away from the debates over what the Germans did or did not know about the Holocaust and explores instead how Germans came to conceive of the idea of a Germany without Jews. He traces the stories the Nazis told themselves—where they came from and where they were heading—and how those stories led to the conclusion that Jews must be eradicated in order for the new Nazi civilization to arise. The creation of this new empire required that Jews and Judaism be erased from Christian history, and this was the inspiration—and justification—for Kristallnacht. As Germans entertained the idea of a future world without Jews, the unimaginable became imaginable, and the unthinkable became real. “At once so disturbing and so hypnotic to read . . . Deserves the widest possible audience.” —Open Letters Monthly




Modernism Without Jews?


Book Description

Nowhere else have Jews contributed so massively and consequentially to the general culture than in Germany. From Mendelssohn to Marx, from Freud to Einstein, Jewish contributions to secular German thought have been both wide-ranging in scope and profound in their impact. But how are these intellectual innovations contributions to European Jewish culture? How are they to be defined as Jewish? Scott Spector argues for a return to the actual subjects of German-Jewish history as a way to understand them and their worlds. By engaging deeply with the individual as well as with the literary or philosophical character of the text, Spector offers a fresh view of the presumed contradictions, uncertainties, and paradoxes that underlie the project of Jewish participation in culture. Spector forges a new definition of what modernist creativity means in our understanding of German-Jewish culture.




Germany Without Jews


Book Description




Anti-Semitic Stereotypes Without Jews


Book Description

Anti-Semitic sentiments are seen here as reflecting deep-seated, irrational responses to the Jewish people, rooted in the teachings of the church and exploited by men who needed an outlet for religious, social, and economic frustrations.




Night Without End


Book Description

Three million Polish Jews were murdered in the Holocaust, wiping out nearly 98 percent of the Jewish population who had lived and thrived there for generations. Night Without End tells the stories of their resistance, suffering, and death in unflinching, horrific detail. Based on meticulous research from across Poland, it concludes that those who were responsible for so many deaths included a not insignificant number of Polish villagers and townspeople who aided the Germans in locating and slaughtering Jews. When these findings were first published in a Polish edition in 2018, a storm of protest and lawsuits erupted from Holocaust deniers and from people who claimed the research was falsified and smeared the national character of the Polish people. Night Without End, translated and published for the first time in English in association with Yad Vashem, presents the critical facts, significant findings, and the unmistakable evidence of Polish collaboration in the genocide of Jews.




Life is Beautiful, But Not for Jews


Book Description

Roberto Benigni's romantic comedy Life is Beautiful enjoyed tremendous success everywhere it was shown. In addition to winning almost every possible film award, including three Oscars, lavish praise and film reviews, it grossed over a quarter of a billion dollars—the most profitable Italian movie ever. Very few have questioned the movie—until now. With sharp, uncompromising logic and eye-opening insight, Niv analyzes the film and its script scene-by-scene to show why Life is Beautiful is very far from being the innocent, charming, and heartwarming film it appears to be. The author argues that the film not only lends support to the central arguments of Holocaust deniers, but is actually a quasi-theological, Christian parable which seeks to justify the extermination of Jews in the 20th century as divine punishment for the sin of the crucifixion of Jesus two thousand years ago. Life is Beautiful, But Not for Jews is a riveting book that simply and concisely raises some important and complex ideas about film and psychology in post-Holocaust civilization. It also serves as an elementary course in the appreciation of films and artistic texts in general and in deciphering their deeper meanings, teaching the reader to more clearly grasp the hidden significance of cultural processes. This is the first English translation of the Hebrew text.




Jews Without Money


Book Description

This landmark work presaged the so-called literature of the proletarian thirties, and is the quintessential novel of poor Jews. Michael Gold's Jews Without Money tells the story of Jewish poverty in one ghetto, that of New York. The same story could have been told in hundreds of other ghettoes scattered all over the world, especially in Europe, prior to the rise of Nazism. The book went through fifteen printings upon its publication in 1930 and was translated into every major language in the western world. The appearance of the book at this time is ironic as well as timely. In his introduction to the 1935 printing, Gold himself offers the reason why: "It has become necessary now in America to fight against fascist lies. Recently, groups of anti-Semitic demagogies have appeared in this country. They are like Hitler, telling the hungry American people that capitalism is Jewish and that an attack on the Jews is the best way of restoring prosperity. What folly. What criminal deception and bloody fraud. And there are signs that this oldest of swindles will grow in America." Sixty years after this utterance one can say that Gold was indeed prophetic. But the politics of the age--this or any other--dissolve in the face of a brilliant set of vignettes about growing up on the Lower East Side during the heyday of Jewish life there in the 1920s. Here we find a world of struggle--Jews against Gentiles, Jews against each other, a universe of gangsters and rabbis, men and women, children and adults--all told in the first person vernacular of a boy growing to manhood dedicated to making clear his love of a long-suffering mother. The races and religions may differ, but the themes are universal.




How the Jews Defeated Hitler


Book Description

One of the most common assumptions about World War II is that the Jews did not actively or effectively resist their own extermination at the hands of the Nazis. In this powerful book, Benjamin Ginsberg convincingly argues that the Jews not only resisted the Germans but actually played a major role in the defeat of Nazi Germany. The question, he contends, is not whether the Jews fought but where and by what means. True, many Jews were poorly armed, outnumbered, and without resources, but Ginsberg shows persuasively that this myth of passivity is solely that--a myth. Instead, the Jews resisted strongly in four key ways: through their leadership role in organizing the defense of the Soviet Union, their influence and scientific research in the United States, their contribution to allied espionage and cryptanalysis, and their importance in European resistance movements. In this compelling, cogent history, we discover that Jews contributed powerfully to Hitler's defeat.




The City Without Jews


Book Description

Content In the aftermath of World War One, Austria faces a severe economic crisis. Unemployment. Fear of decline. However, some people argue that the problem sits deeper. For them, the country's soul is at stake. Finally, people are fed up and demand a solution. And they get what they want. They get their hero. His name is Chancellor Dr. Schwertfeger. The Aryan messiah elected by the masses offers a simple but radical solution: "Out with the Jews!" A word and a blow and soon the whole country celebrates the day the last Jew left Austria. The whole country? No, not everybody is happy. Lives are shattered. Friends, families, and lovers torn apart. And to make matters worse, the economy is not picking up. The gap left by the Jewish exodus is greater than expected. In this time of turmoil, one man is prepared to make a stand. Leo is one of the exiled and had to leave his loved one behind. Now, he is ready to fight for the love of his life and to die for his home country! Will the lovers be reunited? And what will become of Austria? About the Author and the Book With this satirical book, Hugo Bettauer was fighting the violent Anti-Semite movements of the 1920s. But little did he know! He was right and wrong at the same time. He was right, the Anti-Semites were aiming at a final solution to the so called Jewish question. Yet, we all know the course of history - exiling the Jews was not enough for the NAZIs. The converted Christian Hugo Bettauer did not live to witness this human tragedy. After a failed attempt at moving to the US, the Austrian stayed in his home country where he worked as an author and as a correspondent for American newspapers. He wrote one of the first stories about a serial killer, wrote movie scripts, and published a magazine campaigning for progressive ideas such as impunity for homosexuals and women's rights. His articles caused so much sensation that he was taken to court, his magazine was seized and Mr. Bettauer received death threats. On 20th March 1925, Hugo Bettauer was shot and killed by a member of the NAZI party. The killer was released from a psychiatric clinic only 18 months after committing the crime. What is there to learn from this story? It is more than just a piece of history. It was prophetic at the time of its release and its prophetic voice is still valid. As it seems, the demagogues, the dictators, the racists, the fascists, the haters of human rights, the terrorists and Anti-Semites are present here and now, the world over.