Description
Book SynopsisWritten for students, specialists, and a general audience, Claudia Moscovici’s Holocaust Memories offers a series of more than sixty brief and informative reviews of Holocaust memoirs, fiction, histories and films.
Trade ReviewThe screen that portrays the horrors of the twentieth Century is fading more rapidly than its audience can bear. Claudia Moscovici’s book will go far to help keep it lit longer. -- Joseph Polak, Author of After the Holocaust the Bells Still Ring, Winner of the 2015 National Jewish Book Award
This book fills a present and mounting need for all readers interested in the Holocaust, including scholars and teachers. With the literature about that unprecedented crime becoming steadily more extensive, Claudia Moscovici's work offers a valuable and well-written guide to key works on various aspects of the Holocaust or on its entire history. -- Guy Stern, Distinguished Professor Emeritus, Wayne State University, Director, International Institute of the Righteous Holocaust Memorial Center Zekelman Family Center
Holocaust Memories is a morally urgent book, an encyclopedia of mourning, remembrance, and compassion, an invitation and a behest to keep memory alive and to resist unwaveringly any form of authoritarian temptation. It is particularly recommended to high school and college students, but also to a general audience. I learned a lot from it and I am convinced that many others will share my superlative endorsement. -- Vladimir Tismaneanu, Professor of Politics, University of Maryland (College Park), author of The Devil in History: Communism, Fascism, and Some Lessons of the Twentieth Century
A well-written series of book reviews that can be used as a solid tool for those who want to study the Holocaust. -- Radu Ioanid, author of The Holocaust in Romania and The Ransom of the Jews
Intended for a wide public and a new generation of readers, this bold and ambitious book forms an overview of the Holocaust from a myriad of sources—historical, philosophical, or literary works and films. More than sixty lucid and concise essays (usually two or three pages long) introduce various circumstances of human cruelty in Germany, Hungary, Romania, and Soviet Russia, but also in Cambodia and Rwanda. These focused readings comprise an invaluable source book for anyone seeking to understand the horrors of totalitarian regimes, constantly reminding us that moral courage must prevail over politics. -- Edward K. Kaplan, Kaiserman Professor in the Humanities Emeritus, Brandeis University, author a two-volume biography of Abraham Joshua Heschel (1907-1972)
Holocaust Memories provides a wealth of reviews and summaries of major memoirs, histories, biographies, novels and films related to the Holocaust. In the breadth of its coverage it provides an important and much-needed resource for teachers and students of all ages who are exploring the record of a tragedy so extensive and horrific it defies understanding. In bringing together testimonials and perspectives from many different voices and a range of genres, Moscovici provides a nuanced and multi-faceted approach that will allow readers to begin to register the unfathomable pain and loss brought about by the Nazis’ decimation of Jews, Gypsies, Poles and other groups. The clarity and vividness of the writing make the reviews intense, each capturing a sense of the impact of the source being described. And since the anthology also covers works about other genocides, such as those in China, Cambodia, and Rwanda, it underscores that genocide is not just a matter of history; it is sadly also a matter of the present. -- Natalie McKnight, Dean and Professor of Humanities, The College of General Studies, Boston University
The Holocaust is much more than a historical event; it is a continuing story playing out in the lives of survivors, their descendants, their communities and entire societies. It is a seminal presence that provokes reflection and alerts us to the risks of falling into the abyss of inhuman depravity—of what could happen because it did happen. In Holocaust Memories, Moscovici has given us a panoramic view of the Shoah and framed it with other modern genocides. This book is at once much broader than virtually any other work I know, deeper than most in its gentle insistence that we persist in wrestling with the most fundamental moral questions. Those questions are as pertinent today as they were in 1945. Holocaust Memories will be an invaluable resource as I write my own memoirs as a survivor. -- Martin Heisler, Professor Emeritus of Government and Politics, University of Maryland, College Park
Table of ContentsForeword by Rabbi Joseph Polak Introduction Preface: A Precedent for the Holocaust 1. Between Fanaticism and Terror: Hitler, Stalin and The Noise of Time 2. Elie Wiesel’s Night: Shedding Light Upon the Darkness 3. Bergen-Belsen and Four Perfect Pebbles 4. The Last Seven Months of Anne Frank by Willy Lindwer 5. Hazy Hints of Memory: After the Holocaust the Bells Still Ring 6. Survivors Club: A Family’s Legendary Tale 7. Levi’s Reflection on Humanity in Crisis: Survival in Auschwitz 8. Sarah’s Key and the Holocaust in France 9. The Holocaust in Hungary: Leni Yahil’s The Holocaust 10. A Holocaust Hero in Hungary: Wallenberg by Kati Marton 11. Imre Kertesz’s Fatelessness 12. Anti-Semitism in Hungary Today 13. Hannah Arendt’s The Origins of Totalitarianism: Why the Jews? 14. The Role of the Masses in The Origins of Totalitarianism 15. Beyond the Jewish Genocide: Inferno by Max Hastings 16. Hitler’s Ban on Modern Art: The “Degenerate Art” Exhibit 17. Saving European Art from the Nazis: The Monuments Men 18. The Holocaust in Austria and The Woman in Red 19. On the Anschluss: Becoming Alice 20. The Gypsy Holocaust: The Nazi Persecution of the Gypsies 21. Eichmann in Jerusalem: What is the Banality of Evil? 22. The Real Banality of Evil: Ordinary Men 23. Eichmann’s Extraordinary Evil: Eichmann Before Jerusalem 24. The Concentration Camp Commandants: Soldiers of Evil 25. The Auschwitz Kommandant: Arthur Wilhelm Liebehenschel 26. The Real Story of the Terezin Jewish Ghetto: I am a Star 27. The Wannsee Conference: Planning the Final Solution 28. America First 29. Quiet Neighbors by Allan A. Ryan 30. Action T 4: From “Euthanasia” to the Final Solution 31. Hitler’s Niece and Historical Fiction 32. An Unlikely Hero: Schindler’s List by Thomas Keneally 33. The Boy in the Striped Pajamas: An Instructive Fable 34. Unbroken: Forgiven but Never Forgotten 35. The 1936 Berlin Olympics: The Boys in the Boat 36. Manufacturing Death: Hell’s Cartel 37. Prosecuting War Crimes: The Nuremberg Trial 38. Kamikaze Warfare: Inferno 39. Hateful Words: Nazi Propaganda 40. A Cowardly Success: Bloodlands 41. Planning a Soviet Holocaust: Stalin’s Last Crime 42. Lebensraum: The Second World War 43. The Siege of Leningrad and Genocide by Starvation 44. The Murderous Einsatzgruppen (Task Forces) 45. Poland’s Plight: Gustaw Herling’s A World Apart 46. Children of the War Years: Witnesses of War 47. Sophie’s Choice: Holocaust Literature as Psychological Fiction 48. An Incredible Tale of Survival: Alicia, My Story 49. Revealing the Ugly Truth: The Holocaust in Romania 50. A Romanian Hero: The Memoirs of Wilhelm Filderman 51. Ion Antonescu: Hitler’s Forgotten Ally 52. Anti-Semitism in Romania: The Journal of Mihai Sebastian 53. Heroism in Hell: Resistance, the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising 54. Privilege and Persecution: The Diary of Mary Berg 55. Janusz Korczak: The King of the Children of the Warsaw Ghetto 56. The Pianist: The Extraordinary Story of Survival in Warsaw 57. Trapped in the Lodz Ghetto: The Cage 58. The Book Thief: Holocaust Literature as Best Seller 59. The Forgotten Holocaust: The Rape of Nanking 60. A Cataclismic War: Postwar, a History of Europe since 1945 61. The Cultural Revolution and The Great Leap Forward 62. The Killing Fields: Genocide in Cambodia 63. Genocide in Rwanda: Me Against My Brother 64. North Korea’s State of Terror: Nothing to Envy 65. Yad Vashem: “A Place and a Name” of Remembrance 66. An Impossible Conflict in Gaza: Rock the Casbah 67. Anti-Semitism Today and the Assault on Democratic Values 68. Would you Forgive the Nazi Perpetrator? The Sunflower 69. Could the Holocaust Happen Again? Nazi Hunter 70. Ethics Above Politics Conclusion: Judaic Studies and the Holocaust via Reviews Bibliography About the Author
