Synopses & Reviews
In the courtroom and the classroom, in popular media, public policy, and scholarly pursuits, the Holocaust-its origins, its nature, and its implications-remains very much a matter of interest, debate, and controversy. Arriving at a time when a new generation must come to terms with the legacy of the Holocaust or forever lose the benefit of its historical, social, and moral lessons, this volume offers a richly varied, deeply informed perspective on the practice, interpretation, and direction of Holocaust research now and in the future. In their essays the authors-an international group including eminent senior scholars as well those who represent the future of the field-set the agenda for Holocaust studies in the coming years, even as they give readers the means for understanding today's news and views of the Holocaust, whether in court cases involving victims and perpetrators; international, national, and corporate developments; or fictional, documentary, and historical accounts.
Several of the essays-such as one on nonarmed "amidah" or resistance and others on the role of gender in the behavior of perpetrators and victims-provide innovative and potentially significant interpretive frameworks for the field of Holocaust studies. Others; for instance, the rounding up of Jews in Italy, Nazi food policy in Eastern Europe, and Nazi anti-Jewish scholarship, emphasize the importance of new sources for reconstructing the historical record. Still others, including essays on the 1964 Frankfurt trial of Auschwitz guards and on the response of the Catholic Church to the question of German guilt, bring a new depth and sophistication to highly charged, sharply politicized topics. Together these essays will inform the future of the Holocaust in scholarly research and in popular understanding.
About the Author
Jeffry M. Diefendorf is a professor of history at the University of New Hampshire.
Table of Contents
Theodore Zev Weiss
Foreword
Acknowledgments
Jeffry M. Diefendorf
Introduction
I. Rethinking Nazi Policies
Paul B. Jaskot
Concentration Camps and Cultural Policy: Rethinking the Development of the Camp System, 1936-41
Sybille Steinbacher
The Relationship of the Auschwitz Camp to the Outside Environment, Economy and Society
Richard Breitman
The Nazis and the Jews of Italy: New Sources on the Responsibility for the Holocaust in Italy
II. Resistance and Rescue
Yehuda Bauer
The Problem of Non-Armed Jewish Reactions to Nazi Rule in Eastern Europe
Jonathan Goldstein
Motivation in Holocaust Rescue: The Case of Jan Zwartendijk in Lithuania, 1940
Yehudi Lindeman
Against All Odds: Successes and Fialures of the Dutch Palestine Pioneers
Lenore J. Weitzman
Women of Courage: The Kashariyot (Couriers) in the Jewish Resistance During the Holocaust
III. German Scholars and the Holocaust
Patricia von Papen-Bodek
Anti-Jewish Research of the Institut zur Erforschung der Judenfrage in Frankfurt am Main between 1939 and 1945
Konrad Jarausch
Unasked Questions: The Controversy about Nazi Collaboration among German Historians
Devin Pendas
The Historiography of Horror: The Frankfurt Auschwitz Trial and the German Historical Imagination
IV. Historiography and the Challenges to Historians
Dan Michman
"Euphoria of Victory" as the Key: Situation Christopher Browning on the Map of Research on the "Final Solution of the Jewish Question"
Gerhard Weinberg
Browning and the Big Picture
Dariusz Stola
New Research on the Holocaust in Poland
Christian Gerlach
Some Recent Trends in German Holocaust Research
Susannah Herschel
Does Atrocity Have a Gender? Feminist Interpretations of the Women in the SS
V. Trials, Compensation, and Jewish Assets
Hilary Earl
Scales of Justice: History, Testimony, and the Einsatzgruppen Trial and Nuremburg
Rebecca Wittmann
Legitimating the Criminal State: Former Nazi Judges and the Distortion of Justice at the Frankfurt Auschwitz Trial, 1963-65
Constantin Goschler
German Compensation to Jewish Nazi Victims
Jonathan Steinberg
Compensation Cases and the Nazi Past: Deutsche Bank and Its Historical Legacy
Helen Junz
Holocaust-Era Assets: Globalization of the Issue
VI. Confronting the Past
Ian Buruma
The Innocent Eye: Childlike, Childish, and Children's Perspectives on The Holocaust
Jeffrey Herf
How and Why Did Holocaust Memory come to the United States A Response to Peter Novick's Challenge
Pieter Lagrou
Facing the Holocaust in France, Belgium, and the Netherlands
Suzanne Brown-Fleming
Excusing the Holocaust: German Catholics and the Sensation of Cardinal Aloisius Muench's "One World in Charity," 1946-59
James E. Young
Germany's Holocaust Memorial Problem—and Mine
Notes on Contributors