The Müselmann at the Water Cooler

The Müselmann at the Water Cooler PDF Author: Eli Pfefferkorn
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781618111579
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Winner of the 2012 Helen and Stan Vine Canadian Jewish Book Award in Holocaust Literature. A survivor of concentration camps and the Death March, Eli Pfefferkorn looks back on his Holocaust and post-Holocaust experiences to compare patterns of human behavior in extremis with those of ordinary life. What he finds is that the concentration camp Muselmann, who has lost his hunger for life and is thus shunned by his fellow inmates on the soup line, bears an eerie resemblance to an office employee who has fallen from grace and whose coworkers avoid spending time with him at the water cooler. Though the circumstances are unfathomably far apart, the human response to their situations is triggered by self-preservation rather than by calculated evil. By juxtaposing these two separate worlds, Pfefferkorn demonstrates that ultimately the human condition has not changed significantly since Cain slew Abel and the Athenians sentenced Socrates.

The Müselmann at the Water Cooler

The Müselmann at the Water Cooler PDF Author: Eli Pfefferkorn
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781618111579
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Winner of the 2012 Helen and Stan Vine Canadian Jewish Book Award in Holocaust Literature. A survivor of concentration camps and the Death March, Eli Pfefferkorn looks back on his Holocaust and post-Holocaust experiences to compare patterns of human behavior in extremis with those of ordinary life. What he finds is that the concentration camp Muselmann, who has lost his hunger for life and is thus shunned by his fellow inmates on the soup line, bears an eerie resemblance to an office employee who has fallen from grace and whose coworkers avoid spending time with him at the water cooler. Though the circumstances are unfathomably far apart, the human response to their situations is triggered by self-preservation rather than by calculated evil. By juxtaposing these two separate worlds, Pfefferkorn demonstrates that ultimately the human condition has not changed significantly since Cain slew Abel and the Athenians sentenced Socrates.

The Muselman at the Water Cooler

The Muselman at the Water Cooler PDF Author: Eli Pfefferkorn
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781936235520
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 250

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Book Description
In his memoir, The Muselmann at the Water Cooler, Eli Pfefferkorn encapsulates the human condition through his own experiences as a Holocaust survivor.

Unstoppable

Unstoppable PDF Author: Joshua M. Greene
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1647224381
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 364

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Book Description
Winner – Best of Los Angeles Award's "Best Holocaust Book - 2021" “A must-read that hopefully will be adapted for the screen. Greene lets Wilzig’s effervescent spirit shine through, and his story will appeal to a wide variety of readers.” - Library Journal Unstoppable is the ultimate immigrant story and an epic David-and-Goliath adventure. While American teens were socializing in ice cream parlors, Siggi was suffering beatings by Nazi hoodlums for being a Jew and was soon deported along with his family to the darkest place the world has ever known: Auschwitz. Siggi used his wits to stay alive, pretending to have trade skills the Nazis could exploit to run the camp. After two death marches and near starvation, he was liberated from camp Mauthausen and went to work for the US Army hunting Nazis, a service that earned him a visa to America. On arrival, he made three vows: to never go hungry again, to support the Jewish people, and to speak out against injustice. He earned his first dollar shoveling snow after a fierce blizzard. His next job was laboring in toxic sweatshops. From these humble beginnings, he became President, Chairman and CEO of a New York Stock Exchange-listed oil company and grew a full-service commercial bank to more than $4 billion in assets. Siggi’s ascent from the darkest of yesterdays to the brightest of tomorrows holds sway over the imagination in this riveting narrative of grit, cunning, luck, and the determination to live life to the fullest.

Lessons of the Holocaust

Lessons of the Holocaust PDF Author: Michael R. Marrus
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
ISBN: 144263006X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 211

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Book Description
Sixty years ago, the Holocaust had practically no visibility in examinations of the Second World War. Yet today it is understood to be not only one of the defining moments of the 20th century but also a touchstone in a quest for directions on how to avoid such catastrophes. This book challenges the notion that there are definitive lessons to be deduced from the destruction of European Jewry. Instead, it shows how its lessons are constantly challenged, debated, altered, and reinterpreted. -- Publisher description

War and Genocide

War and Genocide PDF Author: Doris L. Bergen
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1538178079
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 441

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Book Description
In examining one of the defining events of the twentieth century, Doris L. Bergen situates the Holocaust in its historical, political, social, cultural, and military contexts. Unlike many other treatments of the Holocaust, this revised, fourth edition discusses not only the persecution of Jews, but also other groups targeted by the Nazis: people with disabilities, Roma, queer people, Poles in leadership positions, Soviet POWs, and others deemed unwanted. In clear and eloquent prose, Bergen explores the two interconnected goals that drove the Nazi German program of conquest and genocide—purification of the so-called Aryan race and expansion of its living space—and invites readers to reflect on how the Holocaust connects to histories of violence around the world. Replete with firsthand accounts from victims, survivors, and eyewitnesses, this book is immediate, human, and eminently readable.

Stealth Altruism

Stealth Altruism PDF Author: Arthur B. Shostak
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351627775
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 308

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Book Description
Though it has been nearly seventy years since the Holocaust, the human capacity for evil displayed by its perpetrators is still shocking and haunting. But the story of the Nazi attempt to annihilate European Jewry is not all we should remember. Stealth Altruism tells of secret, non-militant, high-risk efforts by “Carers,” those victims who tried to reduce suffering and improve everyone’s chances of survival. Their empowering acts of altruism remind us of our inherent longing to do good even in situations of extraordinary brutality. Arthur B. Shostak explores forbidden acts of kindness, such as sharing scarce clothing and food rations, holding up weakened fellow prisoners during roll call, secretly replacing an ailing friend in an exhausting work detail, and much more. He explores the motivation behind this dangerous behavior, how it differed when in or out of sight, who provided or undermined forbidden care, the differing experiences of men and women, how and why gentiles provided aid, and, most importantly, how might the costly obscurity of stealth altruism soon be corrected. To date, memorialization has emphasized what was done to victims and sidelined what victims tried to do for one another. “Carers” provide an inspiring model and their perilous efforts should be recognized and taught alongside the horrors of the Holocaust. Humanity needs such inspiration.

The Death Marches

The Death Marches PDF Author: Daniel Blatman
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674059190
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 584

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Book Description
Co-winner of the Yad Vashem International Book Prize for Holocaust Research From January 1945, in the last months of the Third Reich, about 250,000 inmates of concentration camps perished on death marches and in countless incidents of mass slaughter. They were murdered with merciless brutality by their SS guards, by army and police units, and often by gangs of civilians as they passed through German and Austrian towns and villages. Even in the bloody annals of the Nazi regime, this final death blow was unique in character and scope. In this first comprehensive attempt to answer the questions raised by this final murderous rampage, the author draws on the testimonies of victims, perpetrators, and bystanders. Hunting through archives throughout the world, Daniel Blatman sets out to explain—to the extent that is possible—the effort invested by mankind’s most lethal regime in liquidating the remnants of the enemies of the “Aryan race” before it abandoned the stage of history. What were the characteristics of this last Nazi genocide? How was it linked to the earlier stages, the slaughter of millions in concentration camps? How did the prevailing chaos help to create the conditions that made the final murderous rampage possible? In its exploration of a topic nearly neglected in the current history of the Shoah, this book offers unusual insight into the workings, and the unraveling, of the Nazi regime. It combines micro-historical accounts of representative massacres with an overall analysis of the collapse of the Third Reich, helping us to understand a seemingly inexplicable chapter in history.

Survival In Auschwitz

Survival In Auschwitz PDF Author: Primo Levi
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 0684826801
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 196

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Book Description
A work by the Italian-Jewish writer, Primo Levi. It describes his arrest as a member of the Italian anti-fascist resistance during the Second World War, and his incarceration in the Auschwitz concentration camp from February 1944 until the camp was liberated on 27 January 1945.

Testimonial Montage

Testimonial Montage PDF Author: Sheila E. Jelen
Publisher: Lexington Books
ISBN: 1666907456
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 225

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Book Description
Testimonial Montage: A Family of Israeli Holocaust Testimonies from the Cracow Ghetto Resistance explores interconnected testimonies of four Holocaust survivors who were members of the Akiva youth group in Cracow, Poland, who participated in the ghetto resistance. Drawing on literary and photographic discourse, Jelen extracts the contours of personal narrative from the collective voice present in these interconnected testimonies. Attuned to stories of lost youth, sexual exploitation, and the dissolution of community and family, Jelen approaches Holocaust testimonies as one would members of a family with their shared experiences and common background, but also as individuals with their own unique voices. Departing from historical methodologies, Jelen models a different, wholistic approach to Holocaust testimonies, one which seeks to make sense of testimonies in the full breadth of their unfolding, across time, across space, and across genre.

Encountering the Nigerian State

Encountering the Nigerian State PDF Author: W. Adebanwi
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 0230109632
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 276

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Book Description
Thisvolume advances extant reflections on the state constituted as the Ur-Power in society, particularly in Africa.It analyzes how various agents within the Nigerian society'encounter' the state - ranging from the most routine form of contact to thespectacular. While many recent collections have reheated the old paradigms - of the perils of federalism; corruption; ethnicity etc, our focus here is on encounter , that is, the nuance and complexity of how the state shapes society and vice-versa.Through this, wedepart from the standard state versus society approach that proves so limiting in explaining the African political landscape.