Fathoming The Holocaust

Fathoming the Holocaust represents the culmination of a singular effort to attempt to explain the Final Solution to the "Jewish Problem" in terms of a general theory of social problems construction. The book is comprehensive in scope, covering the origins and emergence of the Final Solution, wartime reaction to it, and the postwar memory of the genocide. It does so within the framework of a social problems construction, a perspective that treats social problems not as a condition but as an activity that identifies and defines problems, persuades others that something must be done about them, and generates practical programs of remedial action. Berger holds that social problems have a "natural history," that is, they evolve through a sequence of stages that entail the development and unfolding of claims about problems and the formulation and implementation of solutions. Fathoming the Holocaust is therefore a book that aims to advance sociological understanding of the Holocaust, not simply to describe its history, but to examine its social construction, that is, to understand it as a consequence of concerted human activity. In doing so, Berger hopes to encourage the teaching of the Holocaust in the social scientific curricula of higher education. In contrast to the extensive historical literature on the Holocaust, Berger offers a distinctly sociological approach that examines how the Holocaust was constructed--first as a social policy designed by the Nazis, implemented by functionaries, and resisted by its victims and opponents; later as several varying layers of historical memory. The scope of this book extends from the prewar through the contemporary periods, focusing on the societal issues governing the interpreting of these events in Israel, the German Federal Republic, and the United States. Berger's is a text with both large general interest and essential material for courses in social problems, European history, and Jewish studies. Ronald J. Berger, professor of sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, has previously published six books and numerous articles and book chapters. His earlier book on the Holocaust was a sociological account of his father and uncle's survival experiences.

This is a gripping cross-generational study that combines personal narrative and sociological analysis to provide an interpretive account of two brothers who survived the Holocaust.

Constructionism has become one of the most popular research approaches in the social sciences. But until now, little attention has been given to the conceptual and methodological underpinnings of the constructionist stance, and the remarkable diversity within the field. This cutting-edge handbook brings together a dazzling array of scholars to review the foundations of constructionist research, how it is put into practice in multiple disciplines, and where it may be headed in the future. The volume critically examines the analytic frameworks, strategies of inquiry, and methodological choices that together form the mosaic of contemporary constructionism, making it an authoritative reference for anyone interested in conducting research in a constructionist vein.

Surviving the Holocaust is a compelling sociological account of two brothers who survived the Holocaust in Nazi-occupied Poland. One brother, the author’s father, endured several concentration camps, including the infamous camp at Auschwitz, as well as a horrific winter death march; while the other brother, the author’s uncle, survived outside the camps by passing as a Catholic among anti-Semitic Poles, including a group of anti-Nazi Polish Partisans, eventually becoming an officer in the Soviet army. As an exemplary "theorized life history," Surviving the Holocaust applies concepts from life course theory to interpret the trajectories of the brothers’ lives, enhancing this approach with insights from agency-structure and collective memory theory. Challenging the conventional wisdom that survival was simply a matter of luck, it highlights the prewar experiences, agentive decision-making and risk-taking, and collective networks that helped the brothers elude the death grip of the Nazi regime. Surviving the Holocaust also shows how one family’s memory of the Holocaust is commingled with the memories of larger collectivities, including nations-states and their institutions, and how the memories of individual survivors are infused with collective symbolic meaning.

The program of extermination Nazis called the Final Solution took the lives of approximately six million Jews, amounting to roughly 60 percent of European Jewry and a third of the world's Jewish population. Studying the Holocaust from a sociological perspective, Ronald J. Berger explains why the Final Solution happened to a particular people for particular reasons; why the Jews were, for the Nazis, the central enemy. Taking a unique approach in its examination of the devastating event, The Holocaust, Religion, and the Politics of Collective Memory fuses history and sociology in its study of the Holocaust.Berger's book illuminates the Holocaust as a social construction. As historical scholarship on the Holocaust has proliferated, perhaps no other tragedy or event has been as thoroughly documented. Yet sociologists have paid less attention to the Holocaust than historians and have been slower to fully integrate the genocide into their corpus of disciplinary knowledge and realize that this monumental tragedy affords opportunities to examine issues that are central to main themes of sociological inquiry.Berger's aim is to counter sociologists who argue that the genocide should be maintained as an area of study unto itself, as a topic that should be segregated from conventional sociology courses and general concerns of sociological inquiry. The author argues that the issues raised by the Holocaust are central to social science as well as historical studies.

Examines textual representations of the consciousness of men responsible for committing Holocaust crimes.

Based on a unique research study, this volume examines the later life development of Holocaust survivors from Israel and the US. Through systematic interviews, the authors – noted researchers and clinicians – collected data about the lives of these survivors and how they compared to peers who did not share this experience. The orientation of the book synthesizes several conceptual approaches – gerontological and life span development, stress research, and traumatology, and also reflects the varied disciplines of the authors, spanning psychology, social work, and sociology. The result is a multi-faceted view of their subject with an understanding of the individual, society, and the interaction of the two, tempered by the authors’ own Holocaust experiences. Chapters cover a range of areas including stress and coping of these survivors, reviews of their heath and mental health, an examination of their social integration, as well as a review of the multiple predictors of psychological well-being and adaptation to aging. This book will be of interest to psychologists, social workers, sociologists, psychiatrists, and all those who study both trauma and aging.