Perpetrators in Holocaust Narratives

Perpetrators in Holocaust Narratives PDF Author: Joanne Pettitt
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319525751
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 150

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Book Description
This study provides a comprehensive analysis of representations of Holocaust perpetrators in literature. Such texts, often rather controversially, seek to undo the myth of pure evil that surrounds the Holocaust and to reconstruct the perpetrator in more human (“banal”) terms. Following this line of thought, protagonists frequently place emphasis on the contextual or situational factors that led up to the genocide. A significant consequence of this is the impact that it has on the reader, who is thereby drawn into the narrative as a potential perpetrator who could, in similar circumstances, have acted in similar ways. The tensions that this creates, especially in relation to the construction of empathy, constitutes a major focus of this work. Making use of in excess of sixty primary sources, this work explores fictional accounts of Holocaust perpetration as well as Nazi memoirs. It will be of interest to anyone working in the broad areas of Holocaust literature and/or perpetrator studies.

Perpetrators in Holocaust Narratives

Perpetrators in Holocaust Narratives PDF Author: Joanne Pettitt
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319525751
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 150

Get Book

Book Description
This study provides a comprehensive analysis of representations of Holocaust perpetrators in literature. Such texts, often rather controversially, seek to undo the myth of pure evil that surrounds the Holocaust and to reconstruct the perpetrator in more human (“banal”) terms. Following this line of thought, protagonists frequently place emphasis on the contextual or situational factors that led up to the genocide. A significant consequence of this is the impact that it has on the reader, who is thereby drawn into the narrative as a potential perpetrator who could, in similar circumstances, have acted in similar ways. The tensions that this creates, especially in relation to the construction of empathy, constitutes a major focus of this work. Making use of in excess of sixty primary sources, this work explores fictional accounts of Holocaust perpetration as well as Nazi memoirs. It will be of interest to anyone working in the broad areas of Holocaust literature and/or perpetrator studies.

Perpetrators

Perpetrators PDF Author: Guenter Lewy
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190661135
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 209

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Book Description
"Monsters exist, but they are too few in number to be truly dangerous. More dangerous are the common men, the functionaries ready to believe and to act without asking questions." Primo Levi's words disclose a chilling truth: assigning blame to hideous political leaders, such as Hitler, Himmler, and Heydrich, is necessary but not sufficient to explain how the Holocaust could have happened. These leaders, in fact, relied on many thousands of ordinary men and women who made the Nazi machine work on a daily basis--members of the killing squads, guards accompanying the trains to the extermination camps, civilian employees of the SS, the drivers of gas trucks, and the personnel of death factories such as Auschwitz. Why did these ordinary people collaborate and willingly become mass murderers? In Perpetrators: The World of the Holocaust Killers, Guenter Lewy tries to answer one of history's most disturbing questions. Lewy draws on a wealth of previously untapped sources, including letters and diaries of soldiers who served in Russia, the recollections of Jewish survivors, archival documents, and most importantly, the trial records of hundreds of Nazi functionaries. The result is a ghastly, extraordinarily detailed portrait of the Holocaust perpetrators, their mindset, and the motivations for their actions. Combining a rigorous historical analysis with psychological insight, the book explores the dynamics of participation in large-scale atrocities, offering a thought-provoking and timely reflection on individual responsibility for collective crimes. Lewy concludes that the perpetrators acted out of a variety of motives--a sense of duty, obedience to authority, thirst for career, and a blind faith in anti-Semitic ideology, among others. A witness to the 1938 Kristallnacht himself and the son of a concentration camp survivor, Lewy has searched for the reasons of the Holocaust out of far more than theoretical interest: it is a passionate attempt to illuminate a dismal chapter of his life--and of human history--that cannot be forgotten.

Perpetrating the Holocaust

Perpetrating the Holocaust PDF Author: Paul R. Bartrop
Publisher: ABC-CLIO
ISBN: 1440858969
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Weaving together a number of disparate themes relating to Holocaust perpetrators, this book shows how Nazi Germany propelled a vast number of Europeans to try to re-engineer the population base of the continent through mass murder. A comprehensive introductory essay, along with a detailed chronology, reference entries, primary sources, images, and a bibliography provide crucial information that readers need in order to understand Hitler's plan, as carried out through legislation and armed violence. The book also demonstrates that both within Nazi Germany, and in other parts of Europe, all sectors of society played a role in planning, facilitating, and executing the Final Solution. In addition to entries on nearly 150 perpetrators, the book includes 25 primary source documents, ranging from government memoranda to first-hand observations of Nazi killing activities to field reports from senior officers on the scene of Holocaust killing sites. Also included are excerpts from literary memoirs. Students and researchers will find these documents to be fascinating statements as well as excellent source material for further research.

Perpetrating the Holocaust

Perpetrating the Holocaust PDF Author: Paul R. Bartrop
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 419

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Book Description
Weaving together a number of disparate themes relating to Holocaust perpetrators, this book shows how Nazi Germany propelled a vast number of Europeans to try to re-engineer the population base of the continent through mass murder. A comprehensive introductory essay, along with a detailed chronology, reference entries, primary sources, images, and a bibliography provide crucial information that readers need in order to understand Hitler's plan, as carried out through legislation and armed violence. The book also demonstrates that both within Nazi Germany, and in other parts of Europe, all sectors of society played a role in planning, facilitating, and executing the Final Solution. In addition to entries on nearly 150 perpetrators, the book includes 25 primary source documents, ranging from government memoranda to first-hand observations of Nazi killing activities to field reports from senior officers on the scene of Holocaust killing sites. Also included are excerpts from literary memoirs. Students and researchers will find these documents to be fascinating statements as well as excellent source material for further research.

Representing Perpetrators in Holocaust Literature and Film

Representing Perpetrators in Holocaust Literature and Film PDF Author: Jenni Adams
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780853039594
Category : Criminals in literature
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
These essays analyze representations of the Holocaust perpetrators. In doing so, they explore what has until now held critics back from this topic, including moral and emotional distaste, the dangers of confusing understanding with exculpation, and the possibility of problematic identification.

The Holocaust in the East

The Holocaust in the East PDF Author: Michael David-Fox
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
ISBN: 0822979497
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 281

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Book Description
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.

Survivors, Victims, and Perpetrators

Survivors, Victims, and Perpetrators PDF Author: Joel E. Dimsdale
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 9780891163510
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 500

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Book Description
First published in 1980. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

The Holocaust in Three Generations

The Holocaust in Three Generations PDF Author: Gabriele Rosenthal
Publisher: Barbara Budrich
ISBN: 3866492820
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 401

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Book Description
Victims and Perpetrators What form does the dialogue about the family past during the Nazi period take in families of those persecuted by the Nazi regime and in families of Nazi perpetrators and bystanders? What impact does the past of the first generation, and their own way of dealing with it have on the lives of their children and grandchildren? What are the differences between the dialogue about the family past and the Holocaust in families of Nazi perpetrators and in families of Holocaust survivors? This book examines these questions on the basis of selected case studies.

Nazis after Hitler

Nazis after Hitler PDF Author: Donald M McKale
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1442213183
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 457

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Book Description
The stories of thirty war criminals who escaped accountability, from a historian praised for his “well written, scrupulously researched” work (The New York Times). This deeply researched book traces the biographies of thirty “typical” perpetrators of the Holocaust—some well-known, some obscure—who survived World War II. Donald M. McKale reveals the shocking reality that the perpetrators were rarely, if ever, tried or punished for their crimes, and nearly all alleged their innocence in Germany’s extermination of nearly six million European Jews. He highlights the bitter contrasts between the comfortable postwar lives of many war criminals and the enduring suffering of their victims, and how, in the face of exhaustive evidence showing their culpability, nearly all claimed ignorance of what was going on—and insisted they had done nothing wrong. “McKale ends the book with a haunting question: whether life would be different today if the Allies had pursued Holocaust criminals more aggressively after WWII. History buffs and students of the Holocaust will be fascinated.” ―Publishers Weekly “Gripping and important reading.” —Eric A. Johnson, author of What We Knew

Ordinary People as Mass Murderers

Ordinary People as Mass Murderers PDF Author: O. Jensen
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 0230583563
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 228

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Book Description
Since the 1990s scholars have focused heavily on the perpetrators of the Holocaust, and have presented a complex and diverse picture of perpetrators. This book provides a unique overview of the current state of research on perpetrators. The overall focus is on the key question that it still disputed: How do ordinary people become mass murderers?