Jewish Histories of the Holocaust

New Transnational Approaches

Norman J.W. Goda

• Publisher: Berghahn Books
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9781785333439
• eBook ISBN: 9781782384427
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Holocaust History
• Index: History

For many years, histories of the Holocaust focused on its perpetrators, and only recently have more scholars begun to consider in detail the experiences of victims and survivors, as well as the documents they left behind. This volume contains new research from internationally established scholars. It provides an introduction to and overview of Jewish narratives of the Holocaust. The essays include new considerations of sources ranging from diaries and oral testimony to the hidden Oyneg Shabbes archive of the Warsaw Ghetto; arguments regarding Jewish narratives and how they fit into the larger fields of Holocaust and Genocide studies; and new assessments of Jewish responses to mass murder ranging from ghetto leadership to resistance and memory.

Table of contents

• Contents
• Illustrations
• Introduction
• Part I — Theoretical Overviews
• Chapter 1 — The Jewish Dimension of the Holocaust in Dire Straits? Current Challenges of Interpretation and Scope
• Chapter 2 — The Holocaust as a Regional History: Explaining the Bloodlands
• Part II — New Approaches to Jewish Leadership
• Chapter 3 — An Overwhelming Presence: Reflections on Mordechai Chaim Rumkowsky and His Place in Our Understanding of the Lodz Ghetto
• Chapter 4 — Similarity and Differences: A Comparative Study between the Ghettos in Bialystok and Kielce
• Part III — Documentation, Testimony, and Experience
• Chapter 5 — Diaries, Testimonies, and Jewish Histories of the Holocaust
• Chapter 6 — The Voice of Your Brother's Blood: Reconstructing Genocide on the Local Level
• Chapter 7 — "If He Knows to Make a Child…": Memories of Birth and Baby-Killing in Deferred Jewish Testimony Narratives
• Chapter 8 — "Why Didn't They Mow Us Down Right Away?": The Death-March Experience in Survivors' Testimonies and Memoirs
• Part IV — Rethinking Self-Help and Resistance
• Chapter 9 — Documenting Catastrophe: The Ringelblum Archive and the Warsaw Ghetto
• Chapter 10 — Integrating Self-Help into the History of Jewish Survival in Western Europe
• Chapter 11 — Jewish Communists in France During World War II: Resistance and Identity
• Chapter 12 — Freedom and Death: The Jews and the Greek Andartiko
• Part V — Aftermath: Politics, Aesthetics, and Memory
• Chapter 13 — Contested Memory: A Story of a Kapo in Auschwitz—History, Memory, and Politics
• Chapter 14 — Pressure Groups versus the American and British Administrations during and after World War II
• Chapter 15 — Traveling to Germany and Poland: Toward a Textual Montage of Jewish Emotions after the Holocaust
• Contributors
• Selected Bibliography
• Index