Between Auschwitz And Tradition

Argues that the Holocaust has caused a mutation of the world. Our new world is Planet Auschwitz, an unworld with satellites separate and incommunicable. In this new world, the forces of nihilism are at work - e.g. terrorism, mass murder. Face-to-face with this destruction process, its administrators, and its survivors, we mutations must rewrite everything that has been projectively written about us in the old world. The tendency to repression keeps us from thinking, binding us to cynicism and nostalgia. The response to this new world condition must be to remember the Holocaust - repression leads to indifference and destruction.

Taking groups of students To The Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum is a heavy responsibility, but it is a major contribution to citizenship if it fosters understanding of what Auschwitz stands for, particularly when the last survivors are at the end of their lives. it comes with certain risks, however. This pack is designed for teachers wishing to organise student visits to authentic places of remembrance, and For The guides, academics and others who work every day with young people at Auschwitz. There is nothing magical about visiting an authentic place of remembrance, and it calls for a carefully thought-out approach. To avoid the risk of inappropriate reactions or the failure to benefit from a large investment in travel and accommodation, considerable preparation and discussion is necessary before the visit and serious reflection afterwards. Teachers must prepare students for a form of learning they may never have met before. This pack offers insights into the complexities of human behaviour so that students can have a better understanding of what it means to be a citizen. How are they concerned by what happened at Auschwitz? is the unprecedented process of exclusion that was practised in the Holocaust still going on in Europe today? in what sense is it different from present-day racism and anti-Semitism? the young people who visit Auschwitz in the next few years will be witnesses of the last witnesses, links in the chain of memory. Their generation will be the last to hear the survivors speaking on the spot. The Council of Europe, The Polish Ministry of Education And The Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum are jointly sponsoring this project aimed at preventing crimes against humanity through Holocaust remembrance teaching.

The impact of technology-enhanced mass death in the twentieth century, argues Zachary Braiterman, has profoundly affected the future shape of religious thought. In his provocative book, the author shows how key Jewish theologians faced the memory of Auschwitz by rejecting traditional theodicy, abandoning any attempt to justify and vindicate the relationship between God and catastrophic suffering. The author terms this rejection "Antitheodicy," the refusal to accept that relationship. It finds voice in the writings of three particular theologians: Richard Rubenstein, Eliezer Berkovits, and Emil Fackenheim. This book is the first to bring postmodern philosophical and literary approaches into conversation with post-Holocaust Jewish thought. Drawing on the work of Mieke Bal, Harold Bloom, Jacques Derrida, Umberto Eco, Michel Foucault, and others, Braiterman assesses how Jewish intellectuals reinterpret Bible and Midrash to re-create religious thought for the age after Auschwitz. In this process, he provides a model for reconstructing Jewish life and philosophy in the wake of the Holocaust. His work contributes to the postmodern turn in contemporary Jewish studies and today's creative theology.

The impact of technology-enhanced mass death in the twentieth century, argues Zachary Braiterman, has profoundly affected the future shape of religious thought. In his provocative book, the author shows how key Jewish theologians faced the memory of Auschwitz by rejecting traditional theodicy, abandoning any attempt to justify and vindicate the relationship between God and catastrophic suffering. The author terms this rejection "Antitheodicy," the refusal to accept that relationship. It finds voice in the writings of three particular theologians: Richard Rubenstein, Eliezer Berkovits, and Emil Fackenheim. This book is the first to bring postmodern philosophical and literary approaches into conversation with post-Holocaust Jewish thought. Drawing on the work of Mieke Bal, Harold Bloom, Jacques Derrida, Umberto Eco, Michel Foucault, and others, Braiterman assesses how Jewish intellectuals reinterpret Bible and Midrash to re-create religious thought for the age after Auschwitz. In this process, he provides a model for reconstructing Jewish life and philosophy in the wake of the Holocaust. His work contributes to the postmodern turn in contemporary Jewish studies and today's creative theology.

Gathers eyewitness accounts by former prisoners, original camp documents, orders of the commandant, notes on medical experiments, secret messages smuggled out by prisoners, and brief profiles of the perpetrators

Examines the process by which the Jewish people came to be defined as an unwanted and surplus population, and were subjected to the radical solution of systematic, state-sponsored annihilation. Pt. 1 (pp. 21-89), "Early Historical Roots", focuses on the background to the Jews' pariah status in society, describing ancient anti-Judaism, the reasons for the anti-Jewish teachings of the Church, Luther's attacks on the Jews, and the rise of modern antisemitism, especially in France, since the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution. Pt. 2 (pp. 91-196), "The Nazis in Power", discusses Nazi antisemitic ideology and policy, the Final Solution, Jewish responses and resistance, and the experience of survivors. Pt. 3 (pp. 197-336), "Responses to the Holocaust", is devoted to immediate reactions (or failure to react) to Nazism and the Holocaust, especially by the Christian Churches and Western governments, and the complicity of members of academic disciplines, professions, and industry in Nazi crimes. Emphasizes that these responses were often rational in terms of power politics and cost-effective economics. also discusses literary responses and the challenge to traditional religious and moral norms posed by the Holocaust. Pt. 4 (pp. 337-364), "The Aftermath and the Future", considers the implications of the legacy of the Holocaust for the future. Revises his previous view that God is dead in the post-Holocaust world.

Speaking and understanding can both be thought of as forms of translation, and in this way every speaker is an exile in language—even in one's mother tongue. Drawing from the philosophical hermeneutics of Martin Heidegger and Hans-Georg Gadamer, the testimonies of the German Jews and their relation with the German language, Jacques Derrida's confrontation with Hannah Arendt, and the poetry of Paul Celan, Donatella Ester Di Cesare proclaims Auschwitz the Babel of the twentieth century. She argues that the globalized world is one in which there no longer remains any intimate place or stable dwelling. Understanding becomes a kind of shibboleth that grounds nothing, but opens messianically to a utopia yet to come.