Download or read book Confronting the Holocaust written by Theresa L. Ast and published by CreateSpace. This book was released on 2013-08 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During the Second World War American soldiers participated in the discovery and liberation of many Nazi concentration camps. This monograph deals with their experience in the concentration camps, what they saw and what they did, and the long-term affects of their experience. The author has drawn heavily on the oral histories and personal papers of approximately 500 World War II veterans, and on military documents from the National Archives in Washington DC and the United States Army Military History Institute in Harrisburg, PA. Though substantial information was available at high levels in the American government, and to a lesser extent in the national newspapers, little was done to inform the GIs about the existence or purpose of the concentration camps. American soldiers were not prepared emotionally or psychologically for the enormous human suffering and degradation they witnessed. Viewing the camp atrocities and being exposed to the full extent of Nazi barbarism was a watershed experience for many American soldiers. Many developed an all-consuming hatred for Germans, particularly the SS, which occasionally culminated in a "take no more prisoners" approach to warfare. Conversely, American GIs responded to the malnourished and filthy survivors with great compassion. They were horrified by the condition of the survivors, but, with few exceptions, did not ignore or reject them. They assisted the survivors in every way possible, often grief-stricken that they could not do more. Liberators faced homecoming difficulties and adjustments common to veterans. However, they were often isolated and marginalized by civilians who refused to acknowledge the camps. Some veterans suffered for years with severe trauma symptoms (similar to PTSD criteria) related to the atrocities witnessed in the camps. Many veterans acknowledge that camp liberation had a long-term impact upon their life. Many attribute their involvement in politics, charitable organizations, and community affairs to lessons learned in the camps, lessons about justice, equality, and generosity. Further, almost all liberators support public Holocaust education and many participate themselves by giving witness testimony to school classes, and community and religious organizations. Jewish American liberators' experience was different; after seeing the camps, many developed a heightened sense of their Jewish identify and a deeper commitment to Israel. The eyewitness testimony of the liberators confirms that already provided by survivors and contributes an additional perspective on the Nazi concentration camp system.
Download or read book Confronting the Silence A Holocaust Survivor s Search for God written by Walter Ziffer and published by Plunkett Lake Press. This book was released on 2019-08-10 with total page 141 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this memoir, Walter Ziffer, a Holocaust survivor born in Czechoslovakia in 1927, recounts his boyhood experiences, the Polish and later German invasions of his hometown, the destruction of his synagogue, his Jewish community’s forced move into a ghetto, and his 1942 deportation and ensuing experiences in eight Nazi concentration and slave labor camps. In 1945, Ziffer returned to his hometown, trained as a mechanic and later emigrated to the US where he converted to Christianity, married, graduated from Vanderbilt University with an engineering degree, worked for General Motors before becoming a Christian minister. He taught and preached in Ohio, France, Washington DC and Belgium. He later returned to Judaism and considers himself a Jewish secular humanist. “The compelling story of an unfolding life carried by an insatiable search for meaning.” — Mahan Siler, retired Baptist minister “In Walter Ziffer’s beautifully written new book, you will learn of Walter’s complex life journey, and you may experience, thanks to his skillfully told story and clearly articulated questions and insights, a sense of his presence, the presence of a great man who finds in his own story lessons important for the rest of us, especially now.” —Richard Chess, Director, The Center for Jewish Studies at UNC Asheville “A powerful and unique addition to the literature of the Holocaust. Walter Ziffer’s memoir not only recounts his own personal resilience and survival of the camps, but also his own unusual spiritual journey in which he both becomes a Christian minister while retaining his quintessential Jewish identity. This is a learned, well-crafted, and fascinating new dimension to this literature.” — Michael Sartisky, President Emeritus, Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities “The Holocaust portion [of this memoir]... is as true and chilling as a parent’s last words. His tale-telling prowess makes as strong a mental impression as it makes a factual one.” — Rob Neufeld, Asheville Citizen-Times
Download or read book Holocaust and Human Behavior written by Facing History and Ourselves and published by Facing History & Ourselves National Foundation, Incorporated. This book was released on 2017-03-24 with total page 734 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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
Download or read book Learning from the Germans written by Susan Neiman and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2019-08-27 with total page 432 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As an increasingly polarized America fights over the legacy of racism, Susan Neiman, author of the contemporary philosophical classic Evil in Modern Thought, asks what we can learn from the Germans about confronting the evils of the past In the wake of white nationalist attacks, the ongoing debate over reparations, and the controversy surrounding Confederate monuments and the contested memories they evoke, Susan Neiman’s Learning from the Germans delivers an urgently needed perspective on how a country can come to terms with its historical wrongdoings. Neiman is a white woman who came of age in the civil rights–era South and a Jewish woman who has spent much of her adult life in Berlin. Working from this unique perspective, she combines philosophical reflection, personal stories, and interviews with both Americans and Germans who are grappling with the evils of their own national histories. Through discussions with Germans, including Jan Philipp Reemtsma, who created the breakthrough Crimes of the Wehrmacht exhibit, and Friedrich Schorlemmer, the East German dissident preacher, Neiman tells the story of the long and difficult path Germans faced in their effort to atone for the crimes of the Holocaust. In the United States, she interviews James Meredith about his battle for equality in Mississippi and Bryan Stevenson about his monument to the victims of lynching, as well as lesser-known social justice activists in the South, to provide a compelling picture of the work contemporary Americans are doing to confront our violent history. In clear and gripping prose, Neiman urges us to consider the nuanced forms that evil can assume, so that we can recognize and avoid them in the future.
Download or read book Bitter Legacy written by Zvi Y. Gitelman and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 1997-11-22 with total page 358 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examines how over a million Jewish civilians were murdered by the Nazis and their local collaborators in the Soviet Union. Topics include Soviet Jewry before the Holocaust; the Holocaust of Ukrainian Jews; Jewish refuges from Poland in the USSR, 1939-1946; Jewish warfare and the participation of Jews in combat in the Soviet Union; Jewish-Lithuanian relations during World War II. Among the documents included are Nazi directives, Nazi actions, eyewitness accounts, and accounts of collaboration and resistance, and rescue. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
Download or read book Thinking about the Holocaust written by Alvin Hirsch Rosenfeld and published by . This book was released on 1997 with total page 358 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the still-unsettling perspective of half a century, 13 contributors evaluate Holocaust fallout from four vantage points: through historical writings, literature, and cinema; in relation to the Zionist movement and the state of Israel; and its impact on American Jewish life, and on European Jewry in the postwar period. The incisive articles result from meetings at Indiana University in 1995. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR
Download or read book The Failures of Ethics written by John K. Roth and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2015 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Failures of Ethics concentrates on the multiple shortfalls and shortcomings of thought, decision, and action that tempt and incite us human beings to inflict incalculable harm. Absent the overriding of moral sensibilities, if not the collapse or collaboration of ethical traditions, the Holocaust, genocide, and other mass atrocities could not have happened. Our senses of moral and religious authority have been fragmented and weakened by theaccumulated ruins of history and the depersonalized advances of civilization that have taken us from a bloody twentieth century into an immensely problematic twenty-first. Salvaging the fragmented condition of ethics,this book shows how respect and honor for those who save lives and resist atrocity, deepened attention to the dead and to death itself, and appeals for human rights and renewed spiritual sensitivity confirm that ethics contains and remains an irreplaceable safeguard against its own failures.
Download or read book Music in the Holocaust written by Shirli Gilbert and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2005-03-17 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Music in the Holocaust Shirli Gilbert provides the first large-scale, critical account of the role of music amongst communities imprisoned under Nazism. She documents a wide scope of musical activities, ranging from orchestras and chamber groups to choirs, theatres, communal sing-songs, and cabarets, in some of the most important internment centres in Nazi-occupied Europe, including Auschwitz and the Warsaw and Vilna ghettos. Gilbert is also concerned with exploring theways in which music - particularly the many songs that were preserved - contribute to our broader understanding of the Holocaust and the experiences of its victims. Music in the Holocaust is, at its core, a social history, taking as its focus the lives of individuals and communities imprisoned under Nazism.Music opens a unique window on to the internal world of those communities, offering insight into how they understood, interpreted, and responded to their experiences at the time.
Download or read book Confronting Devastation written by Ferenc Laczó and published by Azrieli Holocaust Survivor. This book was released on 2019 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An anthology of excerpts from twenty memoirs who survived the Holocaust in Hungary.
Download or read book Confronting Captivity written by Arieh J. Kochavi and published by Univ of North Carolina Press. This book was released on 2011-01-20 with total page 393 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How was it possible that almost all of the nearly 300,000 British and American troops who fell into German hands during World War II survived captivity in German POW camps and returned home almost as soon as the war ended? In Confronting Captivity, Arieh J. Kochavi offers a behind-the-scenes look at the living conditions in Nazi camps and traces the actions the British and American governments took--and didn't take--to ensure the safety of their captured soldiers. Concern in London and Washington about the safety of these POWs was mitigated by the recognition that the Nazi leadership tended to adhere to the Geneva Convention when it came to British and U.S. prisoners. Following the invasion of Normandy, however, Allied apprehension over the safety of POWs turned into anxiety for their very lives. Yet Britain and the United States took the calculated risk of counting on a swift conclusion to the war as the Soviets approached Germany from the east. Ultimately, Kochavi argues, it was more likely that the lives of British and American POWs were spared because of their race rather than any actions their governments took on their behalf.
Download or read book Nazi Germany written by Catherine A. Epstein and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2014-12-23 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nazi Germany: Confronting the Myths provides a concise and compelling introduction to the Third Reich. At the same time, it challenges and demystifies the many stereotypes surrounding Hitler and Nazi Germany. Creates a succinct, argument-driven overview for students by using common myths and stereotypes to encourage critical engagement with the subject Provides an up-to-date historical synthesis based on the latest research in the field Argues that in order to fully understand and explain this period of history, we need to address its seeming paradoxes – for example, questioning why most Germans viewed the Third Reich as a legitimate government, despite the Nazis’ criminality Incorporates useful study features, including a timeline, glossary, maps, and illustrations
Download or read book Anguished Hope written by Leonard Grob and published by Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing. This book was released on 2008-08-20 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Speaking from their respective disciplines in the humanities, theology, and education, thirteen Holocaust scholars -- both Jewish and Christian -- candidly address the challenges, risks, and possibilities embedded in the discouraging, long-lasting Palestinian-Israeli conflict. They also sharply critique the use of Holocaust terminology or imagery by the modern-day combatants -- on either side -- as trivialization of a unique and devastating event. Anguished Hope casts a powerful vision for a more peaceful future in the Middle East.Contributors: Rachel N. Baum David Blumenthal Margaret Brearley Britta Frede-Wenger Myrna Goldenberg Peter J. Haas Henry F. Knight Hubert Locke David Patterson Didier Pollefeyt Amy H. Shapiro
Download or read book The Genocide Contagion written by Israel W. Charny and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2016-07-15 with total page 253 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In The Genocide Contagion, Israel W. Charny asks uncomfortable questions about what allows people to participate in genocide—either directly, through killing or other violent acts, or indirectly, by sitting passively while witnessing genocidal acts. Charny draws on both historical and current examples such as the Holocaust and the Armenian Genocide, and presses readers around the world to consider how they might contribute to genocide. Given the number of people who die from genocide or suffer indirect consequences such as forced migration, Charny argues that we must all work to resist and to learn about ourselves before critical moments arise.
Download or read book The Crime and the Silence written by Anna Bikont and published by Macmillan + ORM. This book was released on 2015-09-15 with total page 557 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the National Jewish Book Award in the Holocaust category A monumental work of nonfiction on a wartime atrocity, its sixty-year denial, and the impact of its truth Jan Gross's hugely controversial Neighbors was a historian's disclosure of the events in the small Polish town of Jedwabne on July 10, 1941, when the citizens rounded up the Jewish population and burned them alive in a barn. The massacre was a shocking secret that had been suppressed for more than sixty years, and it provoked the most important public debate in Poland since 1989. From the outset, Anna Bikont reported on the town, combing through archives and interviewing residents who survived the war period. Her writing became a crucial part of the debate and she herself an actor in a national drama. Part history, part memoir, The Crime and the Silence is the journalist's account of these events: both the story of the massacre told through oral histories of survivors and witnesses, and a portrait of a Polish town coming to terms with its dark past. Including the perspectives of both heroes and perpetrators, Bikont chronicles the sources of the hatred that exploded against Jews and asks what myths grow on hidden memories, what destruction they cause, and what happens to a society that refuses to accept a horrific truth. A profoundly moving exploration of being Jewish in modern Poland that Julian Barnes called "one of the most chilling books," The Crime and the Silence is a vital contribution to Holocaust history and a fascinating story of a town coming to terms with its dark past.
Download or read book Guidelines for Teaching about the Holocaust written by United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and published by . This book was released on 1993 with total page 24 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This pamphlet is intended to assist educators who are preparing to teach Holocaust studies and related subjects.
Download or read book Confronting the Good Death written by Michael S. Bryant and published by University Press of Colorado. This book was released on 2022-09-15 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Years before Hitler unleashed the “Final Solution” to annihilate European Jews, he began a lesser-known campaign to eradicate the mentally ill, which facilitated the gassing and lethal injection of as many as 270,000 people and set a precedent for the mass murder of civilians. In Confronting the “Good Death” Michael Bryant analyzes the U.S. government and West German judiciary’s attempt to punish the euthanasia killers after the war. The first author to address the impact of geopolitics on the courts’ representation of Nazi euthanasia, Bryant argues that international power relationships wreaked havoc on the prosecutions. Drawing on primary sources, this provocative investigation of the Nazi campaign against the mentally ill and the postwar quest for justice will interest general readers and provide critical information for scholars of Holocaust studies, legal history, and human rights. Support for this publication was generously provided by the Eugene M. Kayden Fund at the University of Colorado.
Download or read book Human Adaptation to Extreme Stress written by John P. Wilson and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2013-11-11 with total page 407 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is one additional indication that a new field of study is emerging within the social sciences, if it has not emerged already. Here is a sampling of the fruit of a field whose roots can be traced to the earliest medical writings in Kahun Papyrus in 1900 B.C. In this document, according to Ilza Veith, the earliest medical scholars described what was later identified as hysteria. This description was long before the 1870s and 1880s when Char cot speculated on the etiology of hysteria and well before the first use of the term traumatic neurosis at the turn of this Century. Traumatic stress studies is the investigation of the immediate and long-term psychosocial consequences of highly stressful events and the factors that affect those consequences. This definition includes three primary elements: event, conse quences, and causal factors affecting the perception of both. This collection of papers addresses all three elements and collectively contributes to our understanding and appreciation of the struggles of those who have en dured so much, often with little recognition of their experiences.
