The State Antisemitism And Collaboration In The Holocaust

Based on original sources, this important new book on the Holocaust explores regional variations in civilians' attitudes and behavior toward the Jewish population in Romania and the occupied Soviet Union. Gentiles' willingness to assist Jews was greater in lands that had been under Soviet administration during the inter-war period, while gentiles' willingness to harm Jews occurred more in lands that had been under Romanian administration during the same period. While acknowledging the disasters of Communist rule in the 1920s and 1930s, this work shows the effectiveness of Soviet nationalities policy in the official suppression of antisemitism. This book offers a corrective to the widespread consensus that homogenizes gentile responses throughout Eastern Europe, instead demonstrating that what states did in the interwar period mattered; relations between social groups were not fixed and destined to repeat themselves, but rather fluid and susceptible to change over time.

This book explores regional variations in civilians' attitudes toward the Jewish population in Romania and the occupied Soviet Union.

European Mennonites and the Holocaust is one of the first books to examine Mennonite involvement in the Holocaust, sometimes as rescuers but more often as killers, accomplices, beneficiaries, and bystanders.

Few topics in modern history draw the attention that the Holocaust does. The Shoah has become synonymous with unspeakable atrocity and unbearable suffering. Yet it has also been used to teach tolerance, empathy, resistance, and hope. Understanding and Teaching the Holocaust provides a starting point for teachers in many disciplines to illuminate this crucial event in world history for students. Using a vast array of source materials—from literature and film to survivor testimonies and interviews—the contributors demonstrate how to guide students through these sensitive and painful subjects within their specific historical and social contexts. Each chapter provides pedagogical case studies for teaching content such as antisemitism, resistance and rescue, and the postwar lives of displaced persons. It will transform how students learn about the Holocaust and the circumstances surrounding it.

Silence has many causes: shame, embarrassment, ignorance, a desire to protect. The silence that has surrounded the atrocities committed against the Jewish population of Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union during World War II is particularly remarkable given the scholarly and popular interest in the war. It, too, has many causes—of which antisemitism, the most striking, is only one. When, on July 10, 1941, in the wake of the German invasion of the Soviet Union, local residents enflamed by Nazi propaganda murdered the entire Jewish population of Jedwabne, Poland, the ferocity of the attack horrified their fellow Poles. The denial of Polish involvement in the massacre lasted for decades. Since its founding, the journal Kritika: Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History has led the way in exploring the East European and Soviet experience of the Holocaust. This volume combines revised articles from the journal and previously unpublished pieces to highlight the complex interactions of prejudice, power, and publicity. It offers a probing examination of the complicity of local populations in the mass murder of Jews perpetrated in areas such as Poland, Ukraine, Bessarabia, and northern Bukovina and analyzes Soviet responses to the Holocaust. Based on Soviet commission reports, news media, and other archives, the contributors examine the factors that led certain local residents to participate in the extermination of their Jewish neighbors; the interaction of Nazi occupation regimes with various sectors of the local population; the ambiguities of Soviet press coverage, which at times reported and at times suppressed information about persecution specifically directed at the Jews; the extraordinary Soviet efforts to document and prosecute Nazi crimes and the way in which the Soviet state’s agenda informed that effort; and the lingering effects of silence about the true impact of the Holocaust on public memory and state responses.

“An excellent analysis of the slow, but steady, evolution of Romania from heavy Holocaust denial . . . toward a fair confrontation of its tragic past.” —Radu Ioanid, author of The Holocaust in Romania How is the Holocaust remembered in Romania since the fall of communism? Alexandru Florian and an international group of contributors unveil how and why Romania, a place where large segments of the Jewish and Roma populations perished, still fails to address its recent past. These essays focus on the roles of government and public actors that choose to promote, construct, defend, or contest the memory of the Holocaust, as well as the tools—the press, the media, monuments, and commemorations—that create public memory. Coming from a variety of perspectives, these essays provide a compelling view of what memories exist, how they are sustained, how they can be distorted, and how public remembrance of the Holocaust can be encouraged in Romanian society today. “While positive changes have taken place, a large gap exists between the historical facts and public knowledge about Romania and the Holocaust. This volume offers a fresh and nuanced understanding of the contemporary ‘battles of memory’ in postcommunist Eastern Europe.” —Diana Dumitru, author of The State, Antisemitism, and Collaboration in the Holocaust “An excellent and timely addition to European historiography. The book consists of eight chapters, most of them written by scholars affiliated with the Elie Wiesel Institute. It not only shows the challenges faced in remembering Romania’s involvement in the Holocaust, but provides an excellent comparative analysis with other countries in the region.” —Reading Religion

Examines the changes in representing collaboration, especially in the destruction of European Jewry, in the public discourse and the historiography of various countries In Europe. This book shows how representations and responses have been conditioned by national and political trends and constraints.

"International interest in Holocaust education has reached new heights in recent years. This historic event has long been central to cultures of remembrance in those countries where the genocide of the Jewish people occurred. But other parts of the world have now begun to recognize the history of the Holocaust as an effective means to teach about mass violence and to promote human rights and civic duty, testifying to the emergence of this pivotal historical event as a universal frame of reference. In this new, globalized context, how is the Holocaust represented and taught? How do teachers handle this excessively complex and emotionally loaded subject in fast-changing multicultural European societies still haunted by the crimes perpetrated by the Nazis and their collaborators? Why and how is it taught in other areas of the world that have only little if any connection with the history of the Jewish people? Holocaust Education in a Global Context will explore these questions."--page 10.