The End of the Holocaust


Book Description




Toward a Jewish Theology of Liberation


Book Description

Marc Ellis fine book about the future of the Jewish community was first published in 1987. But twenty years on, in the light of recent events in the Middle East and post-September 11, its powerful message of hope, directed towards a people 'poised between Holocaust and empowerment', remains as powerful, apposite, and pressingly relevant as it was before. Ellis begins with two poles: the holocaust and the pain and vision that issue from it. This leads him into ethics, and he highlights the contrast between the depth of Jewish ethical commitment and the paucity of renewal movements within Judaism. The author then addresses all suffering peoples, and the Christian liberation movements active among them, so that the holocaust may be set in a wider context. Against this background, Ellis sees it as essential that the journeys and visions of dissenting Jews - such as Etty Hillesum and Martin Buber - should be re-appraised. An alternative perspective of what it means to be Jewish begins to emerge, and in the final chapter a Jewish theology of liberation is essayed, which is a theology prepared 'to enter the danger zones of contemporary Jewish life', often at some cost.




On The Jewish Question


Book Description

“On The Jewish Question” (OTJQ) was written by Karl Marx and exposes his anti-Semitism. The complete work is here in its entirety for your analysis. It was an inspiration to Adolf Hitler. OTJQ and other work (e.g. the term “Aryan” used by Marx repeatedly in his “Ethnological Notebooks”) were the same ideas that motivated Hitler to gain power in Germany. Top mind-blowing discoveries of the 21st Century were revealed by Marx and his OTJQ (thanks to the academic critique of Professor Rex Curry). Many revelations came to light years after Marx’s death. Some are enumerated in the following paragraphs. For example, the following facts (with credit to Dr. Curry) will be news to most readers: 1. Marx’s anti-Semitism (and his Christian background) inspired Hitler’s anti-Semitism and Hitler’s use of Christian cross symbolism including the SWASTIKA (the Hakenkreuz or “hooked cross”); Iron Cross; Balkenkreuz; Krückenkreuz; and the common Christian cross. The symbols signified commonality with Marx’s opposition to Judaism, and they promoted Christianity as the “alternative” thereto. The Swastika was also used to represent “S” letter shapes for “SOCIALISM” (Marx’s underlying dogma). 2. NEW SWASTIKA DISCOVERY: Hitler’s symbol is the reason why Hitler renamed his political party from DAP to NSDAP - "National Socialist German Workers Party" - because he needed the word "Socialist" in his party's name so that Hitler could use swastikas as "S"-letter shaped logos for "SOCIALIST" as the party's emblem. The party's name had to fit in Hitler's socialist branding campaign that used the swastika and many other similar alphabetical symbols, including the “NSV" and "SA” and “SS” and “VW” etc. 3. NEW LENIN’S SWASTIKA REVELATION: Vladimir Lenin’s swastika is exposed herein. The impact of Lenin’s swastikas was reinforced at that time with additional swastikas on ruble money (paper currency) under Soviet socialism. The swastika became a symbol of socialism under Lenin. It’s influence upon Adolf Hitler is explained in this book. Lenin’s Christian background was similar to Marx’s. Marx’s anti-Semitism (and his religious upbringing) inspired Lenin’s anti-Semitism and the use of the SWASTIKA as Christian cross symbolism after 1917. The swastika symbol signified commonality with Marx’s opposition to Judaism. Judaism was banned by Soviet socialists. Under Lenin, the Russian Orthodox Church remained powerful (then Stalin became tyrant in 1922). The Swastika was also used to represent “S” letter shapes for “SOCIALISM” (Marx’s underlying dogma). 4. Marx, Hitler and their supporters self-identified as “socialists” by the very word in voluminous speeches and writings. The term "Socialist" appears throughout Mein Kampf as a self-description by Hitler. (Marx also used the term “Communist”). 5. Hitler was heavily influenced by Marx. Many socialists in the USA were also shaped by Marx. Two famous American socialists (the cousins Edward Bellamy and Francis Bellamy) were heavily influenced by Marx. The American socialists returned the favor: Francis Bellamy created the “Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag” that produced Nazi salutes and Nazi behavior. The Bellamy cousins were American national socialists. 6. Hitler never called himself a "Nazi." There was no “Nazi Germany.” There was no “Nazi Party.” 7. Hitler never called himself a “Fascist.” Modern socialists use “Nazi” and “Fascist” to hide how Hitler and his comrades self-identified: SOCIALIST. 9. The term “Nazi” isn’t in "Mein Kampf" nor in "Triumph of the Will." 10. The term “Fascist” never appears in Mein Kampf as a self-description by Hitler. 11. The term “swastika” never appears in the original Mein Kampf. 12. There is no evidence that Hitler ever used the word “swastika.” 13. The symbol that Hitler did use was intended to represent “S”-letter shapes for “socialist.” 14. Hitler altered his own signature to show his “S-shapes for socialism” logo branding.




Free as a Jew


Book Description

First came parents with the good sense to flee Europe in 1940 and the good fortune to reach the land of freedom. Their daughter, Ruth, grew up in the shadow of genocide—but in tandem with the birth of Israel, which remained her lodestar. She learned that although Jewishness is biologically transmitted, democracy is not, and both require intensive, intelligent transmission through education in each and every generation. They need adults with the confidence to teach their importance. Ruth tried to take on that challenge as dangers to freedom mounted and shifted sides on the political spectrum. At the high point of her teaching at Harvard University, she witnessed the unraveling of standards of honesty and truth until the academy she left was no longer the one she had entered.




Jews in Nazi Berlin


Book Description

Though many of the details of Jewish life under Hitler are familiar, historical accounts rarely afford us a real sense of what it was like for Jews and their families to live in the shadow of Nazi Germany’s oppressive racial laws and growing violence. With Jews in Nazi Berlin, those individual lives—and the constant struggle they required—come fully into focus, and the result is an unprecedented and deeply moving portrait of a people. Drawing on a remarkably rich archive that includes photographs, objects, official documents, and personal papers, the editors of Jews in Nazi Berlin have assembled a multifaceted picture of Jewish daily life in the Nazi capital during the height of the regime’s power. The book’s essays and images are divided into thematic sections, each representing a different aspect of the experience of Jews in Berlin, covering such topics as emigration, the yellow star, Zionism, deportation, betrayal, survival, and more. To supplement—and, importantly, to humanize—the comprehensive documentary evidence, the editors draw on an extensive series of interviews with survivors of the Nazi persecution, who present gripping first-person accounts of the innovation, subterfuge, resilience, and luck required to negotiate the increasing brutality of the regime. A stunning reconstruction of a storied community as it faced destruction, Jews in Nazi Berlin renders that loss with a startling immediacy that will make it an essential part of our continuing attempts to understand World War II and the Holocaust.




Hunt for the Jews


Book Description

A revealing account of Polish cooperation with Nazis in WWII—a “grim, compelling [and] significant scholarly study” (Kirkus Reviews). Between 1942 and 1943, thousands of Jews escaped the fate of German death camps in Poland. As they sought refuge in the Polish countryside, the Nazi death machine organized what they called Judenjagd, meaning hunt for the Jews. As a result of the Judenjagd, few of those who escaped the death camps would survive to see liberation. As Jan Grabowski’s penetrating microhistory reveals, the majority of the Jews in hiding perished as a consequence of betrayal by their Polish neighbors. Hunt for the Jews tells the story of the Judenjagd in Dabrowa, Tarnowska, a rural county in southeastern Poland. Drawing on materials from Polish, Jewish, and German sources created during and after the war, Grabowski documents the involvement of the local Polish population in the process of detecting and killing the Jews who sought their aid. Through detailed reconstruction of events, “Grabowski offers incredible insight into how Poles in rural Poland reacted to and, not infrequently, were complicit with, the German practice of genocide. Grabowski also, implicitly, challenges us to confront our own myths and to rethink how we narrate British (and American) history of responding to the Holocaust” (European History Quarterly).




The Holocaust, Israel and 'the Jew'


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This collection brings together a group of historians to show how historical prejudice against Jews continued to resonate throughout the Netherlands in the post-World War II years.




The Liberation of the Jew


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In this book, written after The Colonizer and the Colonized and Portrait of a Jew, Albert Memmi writes, “It is true that all oppression has a strong tendency to become a total oppression, but it is a question of degree and nuance, of generalities and accent. The specific conditions of each oppression consists precisely of such degrees and particular intonations. The Jew is not oppressed as a member of a class, which distinguishes him from the proletariat, for example. Nor is he oppressed as a member of a biological group, which distinguishes him from Negroes or women. He is affected as a member of a total, social, cultural, political and historical group. In other words, the Jew is oppressed as a member of a people, a minor people, a dispersed people, a people always and everywhere in the minority (which distinguished him from the colonized, also oppressed as a people, but a people in the majority). [...] The Jew must be liberated from oppression, and Jewish culture must be liberated from religion. This double liberation can be found in the same course of action — the fight for [the State of] Israel.” Portrait of a Jew and The Liberation of the Jew “form a whole: the beginning and the outcome of a passionate quest. The first offers a diagnosis, the second a remedy. [...] Both are written with moving sincerity [...] As a personal document, Memmi’s introspective study is valuable. Thought-provoking and disturbing in the best sense of the word, it allows us to look into the tormented mind and soul of a distinguished Jewish writer who aspires to live honestly while belonging simultaneously to two worlds. His doubts and affirmations carry the weight of testimony.” — Elie Wiesel, The New York Times “Portrait of a Jew and The Liberation of the Jew [are] filled with a Jewish existentialism marked by quest for identity and self-affirmation far more psychological and sociological than traditionally religious.” — Richard Locke, The New York Times “[The Liberation of the Jew] is in large measure a personal record. It is a moving record [...] The poignancy of this unique work stems from its being a courageous self-analysis by a highly sensitive artist. Its confessional honesty is complete.” — Louis Schwartzman, Journal of Jewish Education




Emancipation


Book Description

For almost 500 years, the Jews of Europe were kept apart, confined to ghettos or tiny villages in the countryside. Then, in one extraordinary moment in the French Revolution, the Jews of France were emancipated. Soon the ghetto gates were opened all over Europe. The era of Emancipation had begun. What happened next would change the course of history. Emancipation tells the story of how this isolated minority emerged from the ghetto and against terrible odds very quickly established themselves as shapers of history, as writers, revolutionaries, social thinkers, and artists. Their struggle to create a place for themselves in Western European life led to revolutions and nothing less than a second renaissance in Western culture. The book spans the era from the French Revolution to the beginning of the twentieth century. The story is told through the lives of the people who lived through this momentous change. Some are well-known: Marx, Freud, Mahler, Proust, and Einstein; many more have been forgotten. Michael Goldfarb brings them all to life. This is an epic story, and Goldfarb tells it with the skill and eye for detail of a novelist. He brings the empathy and understanding that has marked his two decades as a reporter in public radio to making the characters come alive. It is a tale full of hope, struggle, triumph, and, waiting at the end, a great tragedy. This is a book that will have meaning for anyone interested in the struggle of immigrants and minorities to succeed. We live in a world where vast numbers are on the move, where religions and races are grinding against each other in new combinations; Emancipation is a book of history for our time.




The Bitter Road to Freedom


Book Description

Reading Group Guide forThe Bitter Road to Freedomby William I. Hitchcock1. The story of the liberation of Europe has been told many times. What new and surprising things did you learn from this book that you didn't know before?2. The book makes use of so many primary sources: letters, diaries, old records, and, as a result, we hear many voices. Did these first-hand accounts change the way you previously perceived the liberation of Europe? Why or why not?3. Americans remember the end of WWII as a time of triumph and universal celebration in Europe when the occupied countries were finally freed from Hitler's tyranny. What was life really like for Europeans during and after the Liberation? Why do you think Americans remember the Liberation so differently from Europeans?4. The book discusses the violence and suffering that occur to the civilian population in even the most just of wars. Do you think what happened in Europe after the war has present-day applications, especially regarding the war in Iraq and our escalating campaign in Afghanistan?5. Some might see this book as disparaging to the accomplishments of "The Greatest Generation." How do you think veterans of WWII will react to this book?6. Americans were surprised to find that they got along well with the Germans upon entering their country. In what ways does Eisenhower's failed ban on American soldiers fraternizing with German civilians illustrate the differences between political ideology and basic human experience? How might these differences still be true today?7. Were you surprised to find that survivors of the Holocaust faced such difficulties in the immediate aftermath of their liberation? How might that treatment influence their view of the end of the war?8. Why do you think the large-scale relief effort that America led in Europe, through many charitable organizations and volunteer groups, is not better known in the United States? Should historians write as much about the humanitarian side of war as they do about battle-field history?




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