The Jewcatcher

The Jewcatcher PDF Author: Ethan Mordden
Publisher: iUniverse
ISBN: 0595516645
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 178

Get Book Here

Book Description
Adolf Hitler, the romantic poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, two young gay lovers, Claus von Stauffenberg and the other heroes of the July 20, 1944 plot to end the Nazi regime, the ancient Norse gods, and the Devil himself are among the many characters in this look at life in Germany during the Second World War. In a narrative both comic and terrifying, movie and theatre people, Nazis and resistance fighters, historical figures and the author's inventions interact in a jigsaw puzzle of a plot centered on life in Berlin. We see the gay bars of the Weimar Republic; the burning of the Reichstag; Josef Goebbels seducing a starlet; the anti-Semitic Kristallnacht riots; the "hospitals" in which the ailing are put to death; the Allied bombings; life in the Fuehrer Bunker, in which everyone waits for Fearless Leader finally to kill himself so they can make a run for it; the arrival of the Russians in a city of bomb craters and contentless facades; and the death, at last, of the Jewcatcher himself: Hitler.

The Jewcatcher

The Jewcatcher PDF Author: Ethan Mordden
Publisher: iUniverse
ISBN: 0595516645
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 178

Get Book Here

Book Description
Adolf Hitler, the romantic poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, two young gay lovers, Claus von Stauffenberg and the other heroes of the July 20, 1944 plot to end the Nazi regime, the ancient Norse gods, and the Devil himself are among the many characters in this look at life in Germany during the Second World War. In a narrative both comic and terrifying, movie and theatre people, Nazis and resistance fighters, historical figures and the author's inventions interact in a jigsaw puzzle of a plot centered on life in Berlin. We see the gay bars of the Weimar Republic; the burning of the Reichstag; Josef Goebbels seducing a starlet; the anti-Semitic Kristallnacht riots; the "hospitals" in which the ailing are put to death; the Allied bombings; life in the Fuehrer Bunker, in which everyone waits for Fearless Leader finally to kill himself so they can make a run for it; the arrival of the Russians in a city of bomb craters and contentless facades; and the death, at last, of the Jewcatcher himself: Hitler.

Stella

Stella PDF Author: Peter Wyden
Publisher: Anchor
ISBN: 0385471793
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 401

Get Book Here

Book Description
The story of Stella Goldschlag, whom Wyden knew as a child, and who later became notorious as a "catcher" in wartime Berlin, hunting down hundreds of hidden Jews for the Nazis. A harrowing chronicle of Stella's agonizing choice, her three murder trials, her reclusive existence, and the trauma inherited by her illegitimate daughter in Israel. 16 pages of B&W photographs.

Hitler's Jewish Soldiers

Hitler's Jewish Soldiers PDF Author: Bryan Mark Rigg
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 536

Get Book Here

Book Description
On the murderous road to "racial purity" Hitler encountered unexpected detours, largely due to his own crazed views and inconsistent policies regarding Jewish identity. After centuries of Jewish assimilation and intermarriage in German society, he discovered that eliminating Jews from the rest of the population was more difficult than he'd anticipated. As Bryan Rigg shows in this provocative new study, nowhere was that heinous process more fraught with contradiction and confusion than in the German military. Contrary to conventional views, Rigg reveals that a startlingly large number of German military men were classified by the Nazis as Jews or "partial-Jews" (Mischlinge), in the wake of racial laws first enacted in the mid-1930s. Rigg demonstrates that the actual number was much higher than previously thought-perhaps as many as 150,000 men, including decorated veterans and high-ranking officers, even generals and admirals. As Rigg fully documents for the first time, a great many of these men did not even consider themselves Jewish and had embraced the military as a way of life and as devoted patriots eager to serve a revived German nation. In turn, they had been embraced by the Wehrmacht, which prior to Hitler had given little thought to the "race" of these men but which was now forced to look deeply into the ancestry of its soldiers. The process of investigation and removal, however, was marred by a highly inconsistent application of Nazi law. Numerous "exemptions" were made in order to allow a soldier to stay within the ranks or to spare a soldier's parent, spouse, or other relative from incarceration or far worse. (Hitler's own signature can be found on many of these "exemption" orders.) But as the war dragged on, Nazi politics came to trump military logic, even in the face of the Wehrmacht's growing manpower needs, closing legal loopholes and making it virtually impossible for these soldiers to escape the fate of millions of other victims of the Third Reich. Based on a deep and wide-ranging research in archival and secondary sources, as well as extensive interviews with more than four hundred Mischlinge and their relatives, Rigg's study breaks truly new ground in a crowded field and shows from yet another angle the extremely flawed, dishonest, demeaning, and tragic essence of Hitler's rule.

The Jewish Quarterly

The Jewish Quarterly PDF Author:
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 1110

Get Book Here

Book Description


The Pope's Jews

The Pope's Jews PDF Author: Gordon Thomas
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 1250013550
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 334

Get Book Here

Book Description
This revelatory account of how the Vatican saved thousands of Jews during WWII shows why history must exonerate "Hitler's Pope" Accused of being "silent" during the Holocaust, Pope Pius XII and the Vatican of World War II are now exonerated in Gordon Thomas's newest investigative work, The Pope's Jews. Thomas's careful research into new, first-hand accounts reveal an underground network of priests, nuns and citizens that risked their lives daily to protect Roman Jews. Investigating assassination plots, conspiracies, and secret conversions, Thomas unveils faked documentation, quarantines, and more extraordinary actions taken by Catholics and the Vatican. The Pope's Jews finally answers the great moral question of the War: Why did Pope Pius XII refuse to condemn the genocide of Europe's Jews?

Jews, Germans, and Allies

Jews, Germans, and Allies PDF Author: Atina Grossmann
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400832748
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 414

Get Book Here

Book Description
In the immediate aftermath of World War II, more than a quarter million Jewish survivors of the Holocaust lived among their defeated persecutors in the chaotic society of Allied-occupied Germany. Jews, Germans, and Allies draws upon the wealth of diary and memoir literature by the people who lived through postwar reconstruction to trace the conflicting ways Jews and Germans defined their own victimization and survival, comprehended the trauma of war and genocide, and struggled to rebuild their lives. In gripping and unforgettable detail, Atina Grossmann describes Berlin in the days following Germany's surrender--the mass rape of German women by the Red Army, the liberated slave laborers and homecoming soldiers, returning political exiles, Jews emerging from hiding, and ethnic German refugees fleeing the East. She chronicles the hunger, disease, and homelessness, the fraternization with Allied occupiers, and the complexities of navigating a world where the commonplace mingled with the horrific. Grossmann untangles the stories of Jewish survivors inside and outside the displaced-persons camps of the American zone as they built families and reconstructed identities while awaiting emigration to Palestine or the United States. She examines how Germans and Jews interacted and competed for Allied favor, benefits, and victim status, and how they sought to restore normality--in work, in their relationships, and in their everyday encounters. Jews, Germans, and Allies shows how Jews were integral participants in postwar Germany and bridges the divide that still exists today between German history and Jewish studies.

Ziegfeld

Ziegfeld PDF Author: Ethan Mordden
Publisher: Macmillan
ISBN: 1429951524
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 384

Get Book Here

Book Description
Any girl who twists her hat will be fired! – Florenz Ziegfeld And no Ziegfeld girl ever did as she made her way down the gala stairways of the Ziegfeld Follies in some of the most astonishing spectacles the American theatergoing public ever witnessed. When Florenz Ziegfeld started in theater, it was flea circus, operetta and sideshow all rolled into one. When he left it, the glamorous world of "show-biz" had been created. Though many know him as the man who "glorified the American girl," his first real star attraction was the bodybuilder Eugen Sandow, who flexed his muscles and thrilled the society matrons who came backstage to squeeze his biceps. His lesson learned with Sandow, Ziegfeld went on to present Anna Held, the naughty French sensation, who became the first Mrs. Ziegfeld. He was one of the first impresarios to mix headliners of different ethnic backgrounds, and literally the earliest proponent of mixed-race casting. The stars he showcased and, in some cases, created have become legends: Billie Burke (who also became his wife), elfin Marilyn Miller, cowboy Will Rogers, Bert Williams, W. C. Fields, Eddie Cantor and, last but not least, neighborhood diva Fanny Brice. A man of voracious sexual appetites when it came to beautiful women, Ziegfeld knew what he wanted and what others would want as well. From that passion, the Ziegfeld Girl was born. Elaborately bejeweled, they wore little more than a smile as they glided through eye-popping tableaux that were the highlight of the Follies, presented almost every year from 1907 to 1931. Ziegfeld's reputation and power, however, went beyond the stage of the Follies as he produced a number of other musicals, among them the ground-breaking Show Boat. In Ziegfeld: The Man Who Created Show Business, Ethan Mordden recreates the lost world of the Follies, a place of long-vanished beauty masterminded by one of the most inventive, ruthless, street-smart and exacting men ever to fill a theatre on the Great White Way : Florenz Ziegfeld.

Our Courage – Jews in Europe 1945–48

Our Courage – Jews in Europe 1945–48 PDF Author: Kata Bohus
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110653079
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 348

Get Book Here

Book Description
After the Shoah, Jewish survivors actively took control of their destiny. Despite catastrophic and hostile circumstances, they built networks and communities, fought for justice, and documented Nazi crimes. The essays, illustrations, and portraits of people and places contained in this volume are informed by a pan-European perspective. The book accompanies the first special exhibition at the re-opened Jewish Museum in Frankfurt. German edition

Home After Fascism

Home After Fascism PDF Author: Anna Koch
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 0253066972
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 318

Get Book Here

Book Description
Home after Fascism draws on a rich array of memoirs, interviews, correspondence, and archival research to tell the stories of Italian and German Jews who returned to their home countries after the Holocaust. The book reveals Jews' complex and often changing feelings toward their former homes and highlights the ways in which three distinct national contexts--East German, West German, and Italian--shaped their answers to the question, is this home? Returning Italian and German Jews renegotiated their place in national communities that had targeted them for persecution and extermination. While most Italian Jews remained deeply attached to their home country, German Jews struggled to feel at home in the "country of murderers." Yet, some retained a sense of belonging through German culture and language or felt attached to a specific region or city. Still others looked to the future; socialist and communists of Jewish origin hoped to build a better Germany in the Soviet Occupied Zone. In all three postwar states, surviving Jews fought against persistent antisemitism, faced the challenge of recovering lost homes and possessions, struggled to make sense of their persecution, and tried to find ways to reclaim a sense of belonging. Wide ranging and moving, Home after Fascism enriches our understanding of Jews' homecoming experiences after 1945. It reveals the deep affection and persistent love people feel for their homes, the suffering that comes with losing them, and the challenges of a return.

Anatomy of a Genocide

Anatomy of a Genocide PDF Author: Omer Bartov
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 145168455X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 459

Get Book Here

Book Description
Winner of the Yad Vashem International Book Book Prize for Holocaust Research “A substantive contribution to the history of ethnic strife and extreme violence” (The Wall Street Journal) and a cautionary examination of how genocide can take root at the local level—turning neighbors, friends, and family against one another—as seen through the eastern European border town of Buczacz during World War II. For more than four hundred years, the Eastern European border town of Buczacz—today part of Ukraine—was home to a highly diverse citizenry. It was here that Poles, Ukrainians, and Jews all lived side by side in relative harmony. Then came World War II, and three years later the entire Jewish population had been murdered by German and Ukrainian police, while Ukrainian nationalists eradicated Polish residents. In truth, though, this genocide didn’t happen so quickly. In Anatomy of a Genocide, Omer Bartov explains that ethnic cleansing doesn’t occur as is so often portrayed in popular history, with the quick ascent of a vitriolic political leader and the unleashing of military might. It begins in seeming peace, slowly and often unnoticed, the culmination of pent-up slights and grudges and indignities. The perpetrators aren’t just sociopathic soldiers. They are neighbors and friends and family. They are also middle-aged men who come from elsewhere, often with their wives and children and parents, and settle into a life of bourgeois comfort peppered with bouts of mass murder. For more than two decades Bartov, whose mother was raised in Buczacz, traveled extensively throughout the region, scouring archives and amassing thousands of documents rarely seen until now. He has also made use of hundreds of first-person testimonies by victims, perpetrators, collaborators, and rescuers. Anatomy of a Genocide profoundly changes our understanding of the social dynamics of mass killing and the nature of the Holocaust as a whole. Bartov’s book isn’t just an attempt to understand what happened in the past. It’s a warning of how it could happen again, in our own towns and cities—much more easily than we might think.