Learning from the Germans

Learning from the Germans PDF Author: Susan Neiman
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN: 0374715521
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 280

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Book Description
As an increasingly polarized America fights over the legacy of racism, Susan Neiman, author of the contemporary philosophical classic Evil in Modern Thought, asks what we can learn from the Germans about confronting the evils of the past In the wake of white nationalist attacks, the ongoing debate over reparations, and the controversy surrounding Confederate monuments and the contested memories they evoke, Susan Neiman’s Learning from the Germans delivers an urgently needed perspective on how a country can come to terms with its historical wrongdoings. Neiman is a white woman who came of age in the civil rights–era South and a Jewish woman who has spent much of her adult life in Berlin. Working from this unique perspective, she combines philosophical reflection, personal stories, and interviews with both Americans and Germans who are grappling with the evils of their own national histories. Through discussions with Germans, including Jan Philipp Reemtsma, who created the breakthrough Crimes of the Wehrmacht exhibit, and Friedrich Schorlemmer, the East German dissident preacher, Neiman tells the story of the long and difficult path Germans faced in their effort to atone for the crimes of the Holocaust. In the United States, she interviews James Meredith about his battle for equality in Mississippi and Bryan Stevenson about his monument to the victims of lynching, as well as lesser-known social justice activists in the South, to provide a compelling picture of the work contemporary Americans are doing to confront our violent history. In clear and gripping prose, Neiman urges us to consider the nuanced forms that evil can assume, so that we can recognize and avoid them in the future.

Learning from the Germans

Learning from the Germans PDF Author: Susan Neiman
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN: 0374715521
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 280

Get Book Here

Book Description
As an increasingly polarized America fights over the legacy of racism, Susan Neiman, author of the contemporary philosophical classic Evil in Modern Thought, asks what we can learn from the Germans about confronting the evils of the past In the wake of white nationalist attacks, the ongoing debate over reparations, and the controversy surrounding Confederate monuments and the contested memories they evoke, Susan Neiman’s Learning from the Germans delivers an urgently needed perspective on how a country can come to terms with its historical wrongdoings. Neiman is a white woman who came of age in the civil rights–era South and a Jewish woman who has spent much of her adult life in Berlin. Working from this unique perspective, she combines philosophical reflection, personal stories, and interviews with both Americans and Germans who are grappling with the evils of their own national histories. Through discussions with Germans, including Jan Philipp Reemtsma, who created the breakthrough Crimes of the Wehrmacht exhibit, and Friedrich Schorlemmer, the East German dissident preacher, Neiman tells the story of the long and difficult path Germans faced in their effort to atone for the crimes of the Holocaust. In the United States, she interviews James Meredith about his battle for equality in Mississippi and Bryan Stevenson about his monument to the victims of lynching, as well as lesser-known social justice activists in the South, to provide a compelling picture of the work contemporary Americans are doing to confront our violent history. In clear and gripping prose, Neiman urges us to consider the nuanced forms that evil can assume, so that we can recognize and avoid them in the future.

Holocaust and Human Behavior

Holocaust and Human Behavior PDF Author: Facing History and Ourselves
Publisher: Facing History & Ourselves National Foundation, Incorporated
ISBN: 9781940457185
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 734

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Book Description
Holocaust and Human Behavior uses readings, primary source material, and short documentary films to examine the challenging history of the Holocaust and prompt reflection on our world today

A Church Divided

A Church Divided PDF Author: Matthew D. Hockenos
Publisher: Indiana University Press
ISBN: 9780253110312
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 300

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Book Description
This book closely examines the turmoil in the German Protestant churches in the immediate postwar years as they attempted to come to terms with the recent past. Reeling from the impact of war, the churches addressed the consequences of cooperation with the regime and the treatment of Jews. In Germany, the Protestant Church consisted of 28 autonomous regional churches. During the Nazi years, these churches formed into various alliances. One group, the German Christian Church, openly aligned itself with the Nazis. The rest were cautiously opposed to the regime or tried to remain noncommittal. The internal debates, however, involved every group and centered on issues of belief that were important to all. Important theologians such as Karl Barth were instrumental in pressing these issues forward. While not an exhaustive study of Protestantism during the Nazi years, A Church Divided breaks new ground in the discussion of responsibility, guilt, and the Nazi past.

One By One By One

One By One By One PDF Author: Judith Miller
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1451684630
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 420

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Book Description
Six million Jews died in Europe, and the Holocaust lives on in the minds of those individuals who survived the worst genocide the world has ever known. One, by One, by One is a masterwork—a stark and haunting exploration of how people rationalize history, how rationalization gives birth to lies, how the victims are blamed, and history's horrors are forgotten.

History Flows through Us

History Flows through Us PDF Author: Roger Frie
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 135197226X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 303

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Book Description
History Flows through Us introduces a new dialogue between leading historians and psychoanalysts and provides essential insights into the nature of historical trauma. The contributors – German historians, historians of the Holocaust and psychoanalysts of different disciplinary backgrounds – address the synergy between history and psychoanalysis in an engaging and accessible manner. Together they develop a response to German history and the Holocaust that is future-oriented and timely in the presence of today’s ethnic hatreds. In the process, they help us to appreciate the emotional and political legacy of history’s collective crimes. This book illustrates how history and the psyche shape one another and the degree to which history flows through all of us as human beings. Its innovative cross-disciplinary approach draws on the work of the historian and psychoanalyst Thomas Kohut. The volume includes an extended dialogue with Kohut in which he reflects on the study of German history and the Holocaust at the intersection of history and psychoanalysis. This book demonstrates that the fields of history and psychoanalysis are each concerned with the role of empathy and with the study of memory and narrative. History Flows through Us will appeal to general readers, students and professionals in cultural history, Holocaust and trauma studies, sociology, psychoanalysis, psychotherapy and psychology.

Education in the Third Reich

Education in the Third Reich PDF Author: Gilmer W. Blackburn
Publisher: State University of New York Press
ISBN: 0791496805
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 229

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Book Description
In its determination to take absolute control, the Third Reich focused on the nation's youth, reserving for the schools the vital task of refashioning the German psyche. This book examines these propaganda efforts—one of the most radical and far-reaching experiments in educational history. The book focuses on the manipulation of the German past, one of the primary means of state intervention to ensure the triumph of the racial idea in history. It shows how textbooks written by National Socialists equalled or exceeded the most imaginative fiction, with an itinerary that extended from Valhalla and the Germania of Tacitus to the Prussia of Frederick the Great, before mounting to the pinnacle represented by the Third Reich. The primary source materials for this study consist of a broad, representative collection of history textbooks, primers, and books of readings containing historical instruction.

Hitler's Last Plot

Hitler's Last Plot PDF Author: Ian Sayer
Publisher: Da Capo Press
ISBN: 030692157X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 414

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Book Description
Revealed for the first time: how the SS rounded up the Nazis' most prominent prisoners to serve as human shields for Hitler in the last days of World War II In April 1945, as Germany faced defeat, Hitler planned to round up the Third Reich's most valuable prisoners and send them to his "Alpine Fortress," where he and the SS would keep the hostages as they made a last stand against the Allies. The prisoners included European presidents, prime ministers, generals, British secret agents, and German anti-Nazi clerics, celebrities, and officers who had aided the July 1944 bomb plot against Hitler--and the prisoners' families. Orders were given to the SS: if the German military situation deteriorated, the prisoners were to be executed--all 139 of them. So began a tense, deadly drama. As some prisoners plotted escape, others prepared for the inevitable, and their SS guards grew increasingly volatile, drunk, and trigger-happy as defeat loomed. As a dramatic confrontation between the SS and the Wehrmacht threatened the hostages caught in the middle, the US Army launched a frantic rescue bid to save the hostages before the axe fell. Drawing on previously unpublished and overlooked sources, Hitler's Last Plot is the first full account of this astounding and shocking story, from the original round-up order to the prisoners' terrifying ordeal and ultimate rescue. Told in a thrilling, page-turning narrative, this is one of World War II's most fascinating episodes.

Facing the Lion

Facing the Lion PDF Author: Simone Arnold
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780967936697
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Simone Arnold is an ordinary French schoolgirlspirited and stubborn. Then the Nazis march in, demanding complete conformity. Friends become enemies. Teachers spout Nazi propaganda. School officials recruit for the Hitler Youth. Simone'ss family refuses to hail Hitler as Germany'ss savior. They are Jehovah'ss Witnesses, and they reject Nazi racism and violence. The Nazi Lion makes them pay the price.

Beyond Berlin

Beyond Berlin PDF Author: Gavriel D. Rosenfeld
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
ISBN: 0472036319
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 332

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Book Description
Beyond Berlin breaks new ground in the ongoing effort to understand how memorials, buildings, and other spaces have figured in the larger German struggle to come to terms with the legacy of Nazism. The contributors challenge reigning views of how the task of "coming to terms with the Nazi Past" (Vergangenheitsbewältigung) has been pursued at specific urban and architectural sites. Focusing on west as well as east German cities—whether prominent metropolises like Hamburg, dynamic regional centers like Dresden, gritty industrial cities like Wolfsburg, or idyllic rural towns like Quedlinburg—the volume's case studies of individual urban centers provide readers with a more complex sense of the manifold ways in which the confrontation with the Nazi past has directly shaped the evolving form of the German urban landscape since the end of the Second World War. In these multidisciplinary discussions of important intersections with historical, art historical, anthropological, and geographical concerns, this collection deepens our understanding of the diverse ways in which the memory of National Socialism has profoundly influenced postwar German culture and society. Scholars and students interested in National Socialism, modern Germany, memory studies, urban studies and planning, geography, industrial design, and art and architectural history will find the volume compelling. Beyond Berlin will appeal to general audiences knowledgeable about the Nazi past as well as those interested in historic preservation, memorials, and the overall dynamics of commemoration.

Reckonings

Reckonings PDF Author: Mary Fulbrook
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019068125X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 694

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Book Description
Winner of the Wolfson History Prize 2019 Shortlisted for the 2019 Cundill History Prize From the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C. to the "stumbling stones" embedded in Berlin sidewalks, memorials to victims of Nazi violence have proliferated across the globe. More than a million visitors as many as killed there during its operation now visit Auschwitz each year. There is no shortage of commemoration of Nazi crimes. But has there been justice? Reckonings shows persuasively that there has not. The name "Auschwitz," for example, is often evoked to encapsulate the Holocaust. Yet focusing on one concentration camp, however horrific the scale of the crimes committed there, does not capture the myriad ways individuals became tangled up on the side of the perpetrators, or the diversity of experiences among their victims. And it can obscure the continuing legacies of Nazi persecution across generations and across continents. Exploring the lives of individuals across a spectrum of suffering and guilt each one capturing one small part of the greater story Mary Fulbrook's haunting and powerful book uses "reckoning" in the widest possible sense: to reveal the disparity between the extent of inhumanity and later attempts to interpret and rectify wrongs, as the consequences of violent reverberated through time. From the early brutality of political oppression and anti-Semitic policies, through the "euthanasia" program, to the full devastation of the ghettos and death camps, then moving across the post-war decades of selective confrontation with perpetrators and ever-expanding recognition of victims, Reckonings exposes the disjuncture between official myths about "dealing with the past" and the fact that the vast majority of Nazi perpetrators were never held accountable. In the successor states to the Third Reich East Germany, West Germany, and Austria prosecution varied widely and selective justice was combined with the reintegration of former Nazis. Meanwhile, those who had lived through this period, as well as their children, the "second generation," continued to face the legacies of Nazism in the private sphere - in ways often at odds with those of public remembrance and memorials. By following the various phases of trials and testimonies, from those immediately after the war through succeeding decades and up to the present, Reckonings illuminates the shifting accounts by which both perpetrators and survivors have assessed the significance of this past for subsequent generations, and calibrates anew the scales of justice.