Richard Ehrlich: The Arolsen Holocaust Archive


Book Description

The first ever documentation of the formidable holdings of the largest archive on the Holocaust The Arolsen Holocaust Archive chronicles the history of the Nazi repository of voluminous prisoner records from World War II, capturing in excruciating exactitude the Nazi campaign to murder millions and eradicate European Jewry. Located in Bad Arolsen, Germany, and under the auspices of the International Red Cross, the International Tracing Service (ITS) was renamed the Arolsen Archives - International Center on Nazi Prosecution in 2019 and is one of the largest Holocaust archives in the world. The repository holds 17.5 million name cards, over 50 million documents and more than 16 miles of records and artifacts--all of which were out of reach for both survivors and scholars from its founding in 1943 until the ITS's opening to the public in 2007. New York-based photographer Richard Ehrlich (born 1938) is the first to record the interiors of the archives through photography, and thus to preserve the unspeakable atrocities it contains; his project forms part of permanent collections including the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC, Yad Vashem in Jerusalem and the Jewish Museum in Berlin. Notable images include documentation of Schindler's Listand Anne Frank's transport papers to Bergen-Belsen, as well as minute details of prisoner exploitation.




Holocaust Testimonies


Book Description

Annotation This important and original book is the first sustained analysis of the unique ways in which oral testimony of survivors contributes to our understanding of the Holocaust. Langer argues that it is necessary to deromanticize the survival experience and that to burden it with accolades about the "indomitable human spirit" is to slight its painful complexity and ambivalence.







Tracing and Documenting Nazi Victims Past and Present


Book Description

After World War II, tracing and documenting Nazi victims emerged against the background of millions of missing persons and early compensation proceedings. This was a process in which the Allies, international aid organizations, and survivors themselves took part. New archives, documentation centers and tracing bureaus were founded amid the increasing Cold War divide. They gathered documents on Nazi persecution and structured them in specialized collections to provide information on individual fates and their grave repercussions: the loss of relatives, the search for a new home, physical or mental injuries, existential problems, social support and recognition, but also continued exclusion or discrimination. By doing so, institutions involved in this work were inevitably confronted with contentious issues—such as varying political mandates, neutrality vs. solidarity with those formerly persecuted, data protection vs. public interest, and many more. Over time, tracing bureaus and archives changed methods and policies and even expanded their activities, using historical documents for both research and public remembrance. This is the first publication to explore this multifaceted history of tracing and documenting past and present.




DK Eyewitness Amsterdam


Book Description

Welcome to Amsterdam - a city where the past and present collide. Whether you want to cruise the narrow waterways, wonder at the works of the Old Masters in the Rijksmuseum, or cycle through the bulbfields, your DK Eyewitness travel guide makes sure you experience all that Amsterdam has to offer. Rich in heritage, Amsterdam's perfectly preserved 17th-century canal-side mansions invoke the city's former wealth. But Amsterdam is so much more than it's past. Bubbling with creativity and liberalism, the streets are awash with cutting-edge art, theatre and food. And while night owls flock to the buoyant bars and performance art venues, families will find a huge mix of attractions and activities that won't fail to keep the kids entertained. Our newly updated guide brings Amsterdam to life, transporting you there like no other travel guide does with expert-led insights, trusted travel advice, detailed breakdowns of all the must-see sights, photographs on practically every page, and our hand-drawn illustrations, which place you inside the city's iconic buildings and neighbourhoods. Our updated 2023 travel guide brings Amsterdam to life. Inside DK Eyewitness Amsterdam you will find: -A fully-illustrated top experiences guide: our expert pick of Amsterdam's must-sees and hidden gems. - Accessible itineraries to make the most out of each and every day. - Expert advice: honest recommendations for getting around safely, when to visit each sight, what to do before you visit, and how to save time and money. - Colour-coded chapters to every part of Amsterdam, from Central Canal Ring to the Museum Quarter, Plantage to Noord. - Practical tips: the best places to eat, drink, shop and stay. - Detailed maps and walks to help you navigate the region country easily and confidently. - Covers: Nieuwe Zijde, Oude Zijde, Central Canal Ring, Museum Quarter, Eastern Canal Ring, Jordaan and the Western Islands, Plantage, Noord, Beyond Amsterdam Touring the country? Try our DK Eyewitness The Netherlands. Want the best of Amsterdam in your pocket? Look out for our DK Eyewitness Top 10 Amsterdam. About DK Eyewitness: At DK Eyewitness, we believe in the power of discovery. We make it easy for you to explore your dream destinations. DK Eyewitness travel guides have been helping travellers to make the most of their breaks since 1993. Filled with expert advice, striking photography and detailed illustrations, our highly visual DK Eyewitness guides will get you closer to your next adventure. We publish guides to more than 200 destinations, from pocket-sized city guides to comprehensive country guides. Named Top Guidebook Series at the 2020 Wanderlust Reader Travel Awards, we know that wherever you go next, your DK Eyewitness travel guides are the perfect companion.




Eavesdropping on Hell


Book Description

This official government publication investigates the impact of the Holocaust on the Western powers' intelligence-gathering community. It explains the archival organization of wartime records accumulated by the U.S. Army's Signal Intelligence Service and Britain's Government Code and Cypher School. It also summarizes Holocaust-related information intercepted during the war years.




Anatomy of the Auschwitz Death Camp


Book Description

An authoritative account of the operation of the Auschwitz death camp.Ò. . . a comprehensive work that is unlikely to be overtaken for many years. This learnedvolume is about as chilling as historiography gets.Ó ÑWalter Laqueur, The New RepublicÒ. . . a vital contribution to Holocaust studies and a bulwark against forgetting.Ó ÑPublishers WeeklyÒRigorously documented, brilliantly written, organized, and edited . . . the most authoritativebook about a place of unsurpassed importance in human history.Ó ÑJohn K. RothÒNever before has knowledge concerning every aspect of Auschwitz . . . been made available in such authority, depth, and comprehensiveness.Ó ÑRichard L. RubensteinLeading scholars from the United States, Israel, Poland, and other European countries provide the first comprehensive account of what took place at the Auschwitz death camp. Principal sections of the book address the institutional history of the camp, the technology and dimensions of the genocide carried out there, the profiles of the perpetrators and the lives of the inmates, underground resistance and escapes, and what the outside world knew about Auschwitz and when.Published in association with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington, D.C.




Early Holocaust Memory in Sweden


Book Description

This book investigates the memory of the Holocaust in Sweden and concentrates on early initiatives to document and disseminate information about the genocide during the late 1940s until the early 1960s. As the first collection of testimonies and efforts to acknowledge the Holocaust contributed to historical research, judicial processes, public discussion, and commemorations in the universalistic Swedish welfare state, the chapters analyse how and in what ways the memory of the Holocaust began to take shape, showing the challenges and opportunities that were faced in addressing the traumatic experiences of a minority. In Sweden, the Jewish trauma could be linked to positive rescue actions instead of disturbing politics of collaboration, suggesting that the Holocaust memory was less controversial than in several European nations following the war. This book seeks to understand how and in what ways the memory of the Holocaust began to take shape in the developing Swedish welfare state and emphasises the role of transnational Jewish networks for the developing Holocaust memory in Sweden.




The Archive Thief


Book Description

In the aftermath of the Holocaust, Jewish historian Zosa Szajkowski gathered up tens of thousands of documents from Nazi buildings in Berlin, and later, public archives and private synagogues in France, and moved them all, illicitly, to New York. In The Archive Thief, Lisa Moses Leff reconstructs Szajkowski's story in all its ambiguity. Born into poverty in Russian Poland, Szajkowski first made his name in Paris as a communist journalist. In the late 1930s, as he saw the threats to Jewish safety rising in Europe, he broke with the party and committed himself to defending his people in a new way, as a scholar associated with the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research. Following a harrowing 1941 escape from France and U.S. army service, Szajkowski struggled to remake his life as a historian, eking out a living as a YIVO archivist in postwar New York. His scholarly output was tremendous nevertheless; he published scores of studies on French Jewish history that opened up new ways of thinking about Jewish emancipation, modernization, and the rise of modern antisemitism. But underlying Szajkowski's scholarly accomplishments were the documents he stole, moved, and eventually sold to American and Israeli research libraries, where they remain today. Part detective story, part analysis of the construction of history, The Archive Thief offers a window into the debates over the rightful ownership of contested Jewish archives and the powerful ideological, economic, and psychological forces that have made Jewish scholars care so deeply about preserving the remnants of their past.




Our Crime Was Being Jewish


Book Description

In the shouted words of a woman bound for Auschwitz to a man about to escape from a cattle car, “If you get out, maybe you can tell the story! Who else will tell it?” Our Crime Was Being Jewish contains 576 vivid memories of 358 Holocaust survivors. These are the true, insider stories of victims, told in their own words. They include the experiences of teenagers who saw their parents and siblings sent to the gas chambers; of starving children beaten for trying to steal a morsel of food; of people who saw their friends commit suicide to save themselves from the daily agony they endured. The recollections are from the start of the war—the home invasions, the Gestapo busts, and the ghettos—as well as the daily hell of the concentration camps and what actually happened inside. Six million Jews were killed in the Holocaust, and this hefty collection of stories told by its survivors is one of the most important books of our time. It was compiled by award-winning author Anthony S. Pitch, who worked with sources such as the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum to get survivors’ stories compiled together and to supplement them with images from the war. These memories must be told and held onto so what happened is documented; so the lives of those who perished are not forgotten—so history does not repeat itself. Skyhorse Publishing, along with our Arcade, Good Books, Sports Publishing, and Yucca imprints, is proud to publish a broad range of biographies, autobiographies, and memoirs. Our list includes biographies on well-known historical figures like Benjamin Franklin, Nelson Mandela, and Alexander Graham Bell, as well as villains from history, such as Heinrich Himmler, John Wayne Gacy, and O. J. Simpson. We have also published survivor stories of World War II, memoirs about overcoming adversity, first-hand tales of adventure, and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home.