Bringing the Dark Past to Light

Bringing the Dark Past to Light PDF Author: John-Paul Himka
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 1496210204
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 993

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Book Description
Despite the Holocaust's profound impact on the history of Eastern Europe, the communist regimes successfully repressed public discourse about and memory of this tragedy. Since the collapse of communism in 1989, however, this has changed. Not only has a wealth of archival sources become available, but there have also been oral history projects and interviews recording the testimonies of eyewitnesses who experienced the Holocaust as children and young adults. Recent political, social, and cultural developments have facilitated a more nuanced and complex understanding of the continuities and discontinuities in representations of the Holocaust. People are beginning to realize the significant role that memory of Holocaust plays in contemporary discussions of national identity in Eastern Europe. This volume of original essays explores the memory of the Holocaust and the Jewish past in postcommunist Eastern Europe. Devoting space to every postcommunist country, the essays in Bringing the Dark Past to Light explore how the memory of the "dark pasts" of Eastern European nations is being recollected and reworked. In addition, it examines how this memory shapes the collective identities and the social identity of ethnic and national minorities. Memory of the Holocaust has practical implications regarding the current development of national cultures and international relationships.

Bringing the Dark Past to Light

Bringing the Dark Past to Light PDF Author: John-Paul Himka
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 1496210204
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 993

Get Book Here

Book Description
Despite the Holocaust's profound impact on the history of Eastern Europe, the communist regimes successfully repressed public discourse about and memory of this tragedy. Since the collapse of communism in 1989, however, this has changed. Not only has a wealth of archival sources become available, but there have also been oral history projects and interviews recording the testimonies of eyewitnesses who experienced the Holocaust as children and young adults. Recent political, social, and cultural developments have facilitated a more nuanced and complex understanding of the continuities and discontinuities in representations of the Holocaust. People are beginning to realize the significant role that memory of Holocaust plays in contemporary discussions of national identity in Eastern Europe. This volume of original essays explores the memory of the Holocaust and the Jewish past in postcommunist Eastern Europe. Devoting space to every postcommunist country, the essays in Bringing the Dark Past to Light explore how the memory of the "dark pasts" of Eastern European nations is being recollected and reworked. In addition, it examines how this memory shapes the collective identities and the social identity of ethnic and national minorities. Memory of the Holocaust has practical implications regarding the current development of national cultures and international relationships.

The Burden of the Past

The Burden of the Past PDF Author: Anna Wylegala
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 0253046726
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 373

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Book Description
Essays on how chaos, totalitarianism, and trauma have shaped Ukraine’s culture: “A milestone of the scholarship about Eastern European politics of memory.” —Wulf Kansteiner, Aarhus University In a century marked by totalitarian regimes, genocide, mass migrations, and shifting borders, the concept of memory in Eastern Europe is often synonymous with notions of trauma. In Ukraine, memory mechanisms were disrupted by political systems seeking to repress and control the past in order to form new national identities supportive of their own agendas. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, memory in Ukraine was released, creating alternate visions of the past, new national heroes, and new victims. This release of memories led to new conflicts and “memory wars.” How does the past exist in contemporary Ukraine? The works collected in The Burden of the Past focus on commemorative practices, the politics of history, and the way memory influences Ukrainian politics, identity, and culture. The works explore contemporary memory culture in Ukraine and the ways in which it is being researched and understood. Drawing on work from historians, sociologists, anthropologists, psychologists, and political scientists, the collection represents a truly interdisciplinary approach. Taken together, the groundbreaking scholarship collected in The Burden of the Past provides insight into how memories can be warped and abused, and how this abuse can have lasting effects on a country seeking to create a hopeful future.

The Holocaust

The Holocaust PDF Author: David M. Crowe
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000463389
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 563

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Book Description
Now in its second edition, this book takes a fresh, probing look at one of the greatest human tragedies in modern history. Beginning with a detailed overview of the history of the Jews and their two-millennia-old struggle with the anti-Judaic and anti-Semitic prejudice and discrimination that set the stage for the Holocaust, David M. Crowe discusses the evolution of Nazi racial policies, beginning with the development of Adolf Hitler's anti-Semitic ideas, their importance to the Nazi movement in the 1920s and 1930s, and their expanding role in the evolution of German policies leading to the Final Solution in 1941 – the mass murder of Jews throughout Nazi-occupied Europe. The German program involved the creation of death camps like Auschwitz and Treblinka and mass murder sites throughout Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. While the Jews were the principal victims, other groups who were deemed racial or biological threats to Hitler’s goal of creating an Aryan-pure Europe were also targeted, including the Roma and the handicapped. This book discusses Nazi policies in each country in German-occupied Europe as well as the role of Europe’s neutrals in the larger German scheme-of-things. It also takes an in-depth look at liberation, Displaced Persons, the founding of Israel, and efforts throughout the western world to bring Nazi war criminals and their collaborators to justice. This second edition includes a new chapter on the importance of memory and the Holocaust, the evolution of interpretative Holocaust scholarship and media, recent controversies about national responsibility, and the work of Holocaust museums, archives, and libraries in Israel, Germany, Poland, and the United States to promote Holocaust education and memory. It concludes with the rise of Neo-Nazism, white nationalism, and other movements in Germany and the United States, and their relationship to questions about Holocaust memory and its lessons. Comprehensive and offering a detailed historical perspective, this is the perfect resource for those looking to gain a deep understanding of this tragedy.

Sasha Pechersky

Sasha Pechersky PDF Author: Selma Leydesdorff
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1351627198
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 252

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Book Description
Despite leading the only successful prisoner revolt at a World War II death camp, Aleksandr "Sasha" Pechersky never received the public recognition he deserved in his home country of Russia. This story of a forgotten hero reveals the tremendous difference in memorial cultures between societies in the West and societies in the former Communist world

Hitler and Nazi Germany

Hitler and Nazi Germany PDF Author: Jackson J. Spielvogel
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351003720
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 384

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Book Description
Hitler and Nazi Germany: A History is a brief but comprehensive survey of the Third Reich based on current research findings that provides a balanced approach to the study of Hitler’s role in the history of the Third Reich. The book considers the economic, social, and political forces that made possible the rise and development of Nazism; the institutional, cultural, and social life of the Third Reich; World War II; and the Holocaust. World War II and the Holocaust are presented as logical outcomes of the ideology of Hitler and the Nazi movement. This new edition contains more information on the Kaiserreich (Imperial Germany), as well as Nazi complicity in the Reichstag Fire and increased discussion of consent and dissent during the Nazi attempt to create the ideal Volksgemeinschaft (people’s community). It takes a greater focus on the experiences of ordinary bystanders, perpetrators, and victims throughout the text, includes more discussion of race and space, and the final chapter has been completely revised. Fully updated, the book ensures that students gain a complete and thorough picture of the period and issues. Supported by maps, images, and thoroughly updated bibliographies that offer further reading suggestions for students to take their study further, the book offers the perfect overview of Hitler and the Third Reich.

The Holocaust in South-Eastern Europe: Historiography, Archives Resources and Remembrance

The Holocaust in South-Eastern Europe: Historiography, Archives Resources and Remembrance PDF Author: Adina Babeş – Fruchter
Publisher: Vernon Press
ISBN: 1648891993
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 322

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Book Description
For many decades, the Holocaust in South-Eastern Europe lacked the required introspection, research and study, and most importantly, access to archives and documentation. Only in recent years and with the significant help of an emerging generation of local scholars, the Holocaust from this region became the focus of many studies. In 2018, under the European Holocaust Research Infrastructure umbrella, the Elie Wiesel National Institute for the Study of the Holocaust in Romania organized a workshop dedicated to Holocaust research, education and remembrance in South-Eastern Europe. The present volume is a natural continuation of the above-mentioned workshop with the aim of introducing the current state of Holocaust research in the region to different categories of scholars in the field of Holocaust studies, to students and—why not—to the general public. Our scope, not an exhaustive one, is to present a historical contextualization using archival resources, to display the variety of recordings of discrimination, destruction and rescue efforts, and to introduce the remembrance initiatives and processes developed in the region in the aftermath of the Holocaust.

Yellow Star, Red Star

Yellow Star, Red Star PDF Author: Jelena Subotić
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 1501742418
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 264

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Book Description
Yellow Star, Red Star asks why Holocaust memory continues to be so deeply troubled—ignored, appropriated, and obfuscated—throughout Eastern Europe, even though it was in those lands that most of the extermination campaign occurred. As part of accession to the European Union, Jelena Subotić shows, East European states were required to adopt, participate in, and contribute to the established Western narrative of the Holocaust. This requirement created anxiety and resentment in post-communist states: Holocaust memory replaced communist terror as the dominant narrative in Eastern Europe, focusing instead on predominantly Jewish suffering in World War II. Influencing the European Union's own memory politics and legislation in the process, post-communist states have attempted to reconcile these two memories by pursuing new strategies of Holocaust remembrance. The memory, symbols, and imagery of the Holocaust have been appropriated to represent crimes of communism. Yellow Star, Red Star presents in-depth accounts of Holocaust remembrance practices in Serbia, Croatia, and Lithuania, and extends the discussion to other East European states. The book demonstrates how countries of the region used Holocaust remembrance as a political strategy to resolve their contemporary "ontological insecurities"—insecurities about their identities, about their international status, and about their relationships with other international actors. As Subotić concludes, Holocaust memory in Eastern Europe has never been about the Holocaust or about the desire to remember the past, whether during communism or in its aftermath. Rather, it has been about managing national identities in a precarious and uncertain world.

Jewish Families in Europe, 1939-Present

Jewish Families in Europe, 1939-Present PDF Author: Joanna Beata Michlic
Publisher: Brandeis University Press
ISBN: 1512600113
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 308

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Book Description
This book offers an extensive introduction and 13 diverse essays on how World War II, the Holocaust, and their aftermath affected Jewish families and Jewish communities, with an especially close look at the roles played by women, youth, and children. Focusing on Eastern and Central Europe, themes explored include: how Jewish parents handled the Nazi threat; rescue and resistance within the Jewish family unit; the transformation of gender roles under duress; youth's wartime and early postwar experiences; postwar reconstruction of the Jewish family; rehabilitation of Jewish children and youth; and the role of Zionism in shaping the present and future of young survivors. Relying on newly available archival material and novel research in the areas of families, youth, rescue, resistance, gender, and memory, this volume will be an indispensable guide to current work on the familial and social history of the Holocaust.

Romania and the Holocaust

Romania and the Holocaust PDF Author: Simon Geissbühler
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 3838269241
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 273

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Book Description
From summer 1941 onwards, Romania actively pursued at its own initiative the mass killing of Jews in the territories it controlled. 1941 saw 13,000 Jewish residents of the Romanian city of Ia?i killed, the extermination of thousands of Jews in Northern Bukovina and Bessarabia by Romanian armed forces and local people, large-scale deportations of Jews to the camps and ghettos of Transnistria, and massacres in and around Odessa. Overall, more than 300,000 Jews of Romanian and Soviet or Ukrainian origin were murdered in Romanian-controlled territories during the Second World War. In this volume, a number of renowned experts shed light on the events, the contexts, and the aftermath of this under-researched and lesser-known dimension of the Holocaust. 75 years on, this book gives a much-needed impetus to research on the Holocaust in Romania and Romanian-controlled territories.

The Routledge Handbook of Memory Activism

The Routledge Handbook of Memory Activism PDF Author: Yifat Gutman
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 1000646297
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 575

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Book Description
This Handbook is the first systematic effort to map the fast-growing phenomenon of memory activism and to delineate a new field of research that lies at the intersection of memory and social movement studies. From Charlottesville to Cape Town, from Santiago to Sydney, we have recently witnessed protesters demanding that symbols of racist or colonial pasts be dismantled and that we talk about histories that have long been silenced. But such events are only the most visible instances of grassroots efforts to influence the meaning of the past in the present. Made up of more than 80 chapters that encapsulate the rich diversity of scholarship and practice of memory activism by assembling different disciplinary traditions, methodological approaches, and empirical evidence from across the globe, this Handbook establishes important questions and their theoretical implications arising from the social, political, and economic reality of memory activism. Memory activism is multifaceted, takes place in a variety of settings, and has diverse outcomes – but it is always crucial to understanding the constitution and transformation of our societies, past and present. This volume will serve as a guide and establish new analytic frameworks for scholars, students, policymakers, journalists, and activists alike.