The Holocaust and New World Slavery

A Comparative History

Steven T. Katz

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Year: 2019
• Topic: History
• eBook ISBN:
  9781108246194
• Subtopic: European History
• Index: History

This volume offers the first, in-depth comparison of the Holocaust and new world slavery. Providing a reliable view of the relevant issues, and based on a broad and comprehensive set of data and evidence, Steven Katz analyzes the fundamental differences between the two systems and re-evaluates our understanding of the Nazi agenda. Among the subjects he examines are: the use of black slaves as workers compared to the Nazi use of Jewish labor; the causes of slave demographic decline and growth in different New World locations; the main features of Jewish life during the Holocaust relative to slave life with regard to such topics as diet, physical punishment, medical care, and the role of religion; the treatment of slave women and children as compared to the treatment of Jewish women and children in the Holocaust. Katz shows that slave women were valued as workers, as reproducers of future slaves, and as sexual objects, and that slave children were valued as commodities. For these reasons, neither slave women nor children were intentionally murdered. By comparison, Jewish slave women and children were viewed as the ultimate racial enemy and therefore had to be exterminated. These and other findings conclusively demonstrate the uniqueness of the Holocaust compared with other historical instances of slavery.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-title
• Title page
• Copyright information
• Table of Contents
• List of Tables
• Preface
• Introduction
• 1 Understanding Black Slavery in the New World
• 2 The Middle Passage
• 3 Considering Slave Demography in the New World
• 4 Reproduction and Miscegenation
• 5 Breeding
• 6 The Conditions of Bondage: Basic Necessities
• 7 The Conditions of Bondage: Beyond Basic Necessities
• 8 Manumission
• 9 American Slave Law
• 10 Black Slavery and the Holocaust: Comparing the Fate of Women and Children
• 11 German Labor Needs and the Murder of Jewish Men and Women
• 12 Devaluing Jewish Labor
• 13 Rape and Rassenschande during the Holocaust
• 14 Murdering Jewish Children
• Conclusion
• Bibliography
• Index