Washington Conference On Holocaust Era Assets November 30 December 3 1998

This collection of essays explores the impact that nationalism, capitalism, and socialism had on economics during the first half of the twentieth century. Focusing on Central Europe, contributors examine the role that businesspeople and enterprises played in Germany's and Austria's paths to the catastrophe of Nazism. Based on new archival research, the essays gathered here ask how the business community became involved in the political process and describes the consequences arising from that involvement. Particular attention is given to the responses of individual businesspeople to changing political circumstances and their efforts to balance the demands of their consciences with the pursuit for profit.

This volume explains the legal effects of state succession on cultural property. It discusses to what extent the practice and the theory of state succession reflect the evolution of the idea of cultural heritage in international law. It attempts to reconstruct the principles regulating interstate arrangements, contextualising them within a broad historical and geographical framework.

This volume widens the perspective of the roles that records play in society. As opposed to most writings in the discipline of archives and records management which view records from cultural, historical, and economical efficiency dimensions, this volume highlights that one of the most salient features of records is the role they play as sources of accountability—a component that often brings them into daily headlines and into courtrooms. Struggles over control, access, preservation, destruction, authenticity, accuracy, and other issues demonstrate time and again that records are not mute observers and recordings of activity. Rather, they are frequently struggled over as objects of memory formation and erasure. The 14 powerful case studies focus around four closely related themes—explanation, secrecy, memory, and trust. They demonstrate how records compel, shape, distort, and recover social interactions across space and time. The diverse range of case studies includes the ownership of the Martin Luther King, Jr. papers, the destruction of records on Nazi war criminals in Canada, the politics of documents in the Iran-Contra affair, the failure of records management in the U.S. Internal Revenue Service, the publication of tobacco company documents on the World Wide Web, access to records associated with the U.S. government's infamous Tuskegee syphilis study, the role of the U.S. National Archives in identifying assets looted by the Nazis in the wake of the Holocaust, the destruction of public records by the South African government during apartheid's final years, the construction of foreign relations of the U.S. documentary histories, the forgery corrupting recordkeeping systems, and the collapse of foreign indigenous commercial banks.

The murder of six million Jews during the Holocaust is a crime that has had a lasting and massive impact on our time. Despite the immense, ever-increasing body of Holocaust literature and representation, no single interpretation can provide definitive answers. Shaped by different historical experiences, political and national interests, our approximations of the Holocaust remain elusive. Holocaust responses—past, present, and future—reflect our changing understanding of history and the shifting landscapes of memory. This book takes stock of the attempts within and across nations to come to terms with the murders. Volume editors establish the thematic and conceptual framework within which the various Holocaust responses are being analyzed. Specific chapters cover responses in Germany and in Eastern Europe; the Holocaust industry; Jewish ultra-Orthodox reflections; and the Jewish intellectuals' search for a new Jewish identity. Experts comment upon the changes in Christian-Jewish relations since the Holocaust; the issue of restitution; and post-1945 responses to genocide. Other topics include Holocaust education, Holocaust films, and the national memorial landscapes in Germany, Poland, Israel, and the United States.

Provides a cutting-edge, nuanced, and multi-disciplinary picture of the Holocaust from local, transnational, continental, and global perspectives Holocaust Studies is a dynamic field that encompasses discussions on human behavior, extremity, and moral action. A diverse range of disciplines – history, philosophy, literature, social psychology, anthropology, geography, amongst others – continue to make important contributions to its scholarship. A Companion to the Holocaust provides exciting commentaries on current and emerging debates and identifies new connections for research. The text incorporates new language, geographies, and approaches to address the precursors of the Holocaust and examine its global consequences. A team of international contributors provides insightful and sophisticated analyses of current trends in Holocaust research that go far beyond common conceptions of the Holocaust’s causes, unfolding and impact. Scholars draw on their original research to interpret current, agenda-setting historical and historiographical debates on the Holocaust. Six broad sections cover wide-ranging topics such as new debates about Nazi perpetrators, arguments about the causes and places of persecution of Jews in Germany and Europe, and Jewish and non-Jewish responses to it, the use of forced labor in the German war economy, representations of the Holocaust witness, and many others. A masterful framing chapter sets the direction and tone of each section’s themes. Comprising over thirty essays, this important addition to Holocaust studies: Offers a remarkable compendium of systematic, comparative, and precise analyses Covers areas and topics not included in any other companion of its type Examines the ongoing cultural, social, and political legacies of the Holocaust Includes discussions on non-European and non-Western geographies, inter-ethnic tensions, and violence A Companion to the Holocaust is an essential resource for students and scholars of European, German, genocide, colonial and Jewish history, as well as those in the general humanities.