The Holocaust: Readings and Interpretations raises important questions related to the study of the Holocaust and offers potential answers to these questions through interpretive essays from the field's leading scholars, many with differing opinions and points of view. The book emphasizes the complexity of the subject, while it seeks to provide an understanding of an historical event that for many people still defies comprehension.Although the attempted annihilation of European Jews by Hitler's Third Reich occurred between 1933 and 1945, the roots of antisemitism are at least two millennia old. Each of the book's nine chapters raises relevant questions regarding the Holocaust: its historical context, the factors which made it possible, its victims and perpetrators, responses to it by individuals, groups, and nations, issues of gender, and the philosophical and theological implications. The concluding section of the book explores the latest scholarship in the field through analysis and evaluation of the topics which attract historians today.
The Holocaust
Preface
CHAPTER 1. Understanding the Holocaust
The Holocaust: Unique or Universal?
Introduction
1.1 Henryk Grynberg, "Appropriating the Holocaust," Commentary (November 1982)
1.2 Alan S. Rosenbaum, "Introduction," in Alan S. Rosenbaum, ed., Is the Holocaust Unique?: Perspectives on Comparative Genocide (Westview Press, 1998)
The Holocaust: Explicable or Unfathomable?
Introduction
1.3 Yehuda Bauer, "Is the Holocaust Explicable?" Rethinking the Holocaust,(Yale University Press, 2001)
1.4 David Stern, "Imagining the Holocaust," Commentary (July 1976)
CHAPTER 2. Harbingers of the Holocaust
German Spiritual and Intellectual Roots
Introduction
2.1 George L. Mosse, from The Crisis of German Ideology: Intellectual Origins of the Third Reich (Schocken Books, 1981)
2.2 Emil Fackenheim, "Holocaust and Weltanschauung: Philosophical Reflections on Why They Did It?" Holocaust and Genocide Studies, no. 2 (1988)
The Violent Twentieth Century
Introduction
2.3 Richard L. Rubenstein, from The Cunning of History: Mass Death and the American Future (Harper & Row, 1975)
Post-War Trauma in Weimar Germany
Introduction
2.4 Rita Steinhardt Bottwinick, from A History of the Holocaust: From Ideology to Annihilation (Prentice Hall, 1996)
Anti-Semitism
Introduction
2.5 Klaus P. Fischer, from The History of an Obsession: German Judeophobia and the Holocaust (Continuum, 1998)
2.6 Omer Bartov, "Operation Barbarossa and the Origins of the Final Solution," in David Cesarani, ed., The Final Solution: Origins and Interpretations (Routledge, 1996)
CHAPTER 3. The Question of Responsibility
Adolf Hitler
Introduction
3.1 Eberhard Jackel, from Hitler in History (University Press of New England, 1984)
Bureaucracy and Bureaucrats
Introduction
3.2 Christopher R. Browning, from The Path to Genocide: Essays on Launching the Final Solution (Cambridge University Press , 1992)
3.3 Christopher R. Browning, from The Final Solution and the German Foreign Office: A Study of Referat D III of Abteilung Deutschland, 1940-1943 (Holmes & Meier, 1978)
The German Armed Forces
Introduction
3.4 Omer Bartov, "Professional Soldiers," in The German Army and Genocide: Crimes Against War Prisoners, Jews, and Other Civilians in the East, 1939@ndash@;1944 (New Press, 1999)
3.5 Inga Clendinnen, from Reading the Holocaust (Cambridge University Press, 1999)
German Big Business
Introduction
3.6 Peter Hayes, "Profits and Persecution: Corporate Involvement in the Holocaust," in Perspectives on the Holocaust: Essays in Honor of Raul Hilberg (Westview Press, 1995)
3.7 Neil Gregor, from Daimler-Benz in the Third Reich (Yale University Press, 1998)
"Ordinary Citizens"
Introduction
3.8 Robert Gallately, "`A Monstrous Uneasiness': Citizen Participation and Persecution of the Jews in Nazi Germany," in Peter Hayes, ed., Lessons and Legacies: The Meaning of the Holocaust in a Changing World (Northwestern University Press, 1991)
3.9 Eric Sterling, "Indifferent Accomplices," in Harry James Cargas, ed., Problems Unique to the Holocaust (University Press of Kentucky, 1999)
CHAPTER 4. Victims
Handicapped Citizens
Introduction
4.1 Henry Friedlander, from The Origins of Nazi Genocide: From Euthanasia to the Final Solution (University of North Carolina Press, 1995)
Jews
Introduction
4.2 John Weiss, from Ideology of Death: Why the Holocaust Happened in Germany (Ivan R. Dee, 1996)
Gypsies
Introduction
4.3 Sybil Milton, "Gypsies and the Holocaust," The History Teacher (August 1991)
4.4 Guenter Lewy, from The Nazi Persecution of the Gypsies (Oxford University Press, 2000)
Homosexuals and Lesbians
Introduction
4.5 Hans-Georg Stumke, "From the `People's Consciousness of Right and Wrong' to `the Healthy Instincts of the Nation': The Persecution of Homosexuals in Nazi Germany," in Michael Burleigh, ed., Confronting the Nazi Past: New Debates on Modern German History (St. Martin's Press, 1996)
4.6 Claudia Schoppman, "The Position of Lesbian Women in the Nazi Period," in Gunter Grau, ed., Hidden Holocaust: Gay and Lesbian Persecution in Germany, 1933-1945 (Fitzroy Dearborn, 1995)
CHAPTER 5. Righteous Words and Deeds
Resistance
Introduction
5.1 Yehuda Bauer, from The Jewish Emergence From Powerlessness (University of Toronto Press, 1979)
5.2 Nora Levin, "Resistance and Rescue: Jewish Partisan Groups During the Holocaust," Midstream (August/September 1988).
Rescue
Introduction
5.3 Gay Block and Malka Drucker, from Rescuers: Portraits of Moral Courage in the Holocaust (Holmes & Meier, 1992)
5.4 Nechama Tec, from Defiance: The Bielski Partisans--The Story of the Largest Armed Rescue of Jews by Jews During World War II (Oxford University Press, 1993)
CHAPTER 6. International Bystanders: The Vatican and the United States
Pope Pius XII and the Vatican
Introduction
6.1 Anthony Rhodes, from The Vatican in the Age of Dictators, 1922@ndash@;1945 (Hodder & Stoughton, 1973)
6.2 Guenter Lewy, from The Catholic Church and Nazi Germany (McGraw-Hill, 1964)
6.3 James Carroll, "The Holocaust and the Catholic Church," The Atlantic Monthly (October 1999)
6.4 Peter Gumpel, "Cornwell's Cheap Shot at Pius XII," Crisis (December 1999)
6.5 "We Remember: A Reflection on the Shoah," Official Vatican Statement on the Holocaust (March 1998)
6.6 Robert S. Wistrich, "The Pope, the Church, and the Jews," Commentary (April 1999)
The Roosevelt Administration and the United States
Introduction
6.7 Frank W. Brecher, "David Wyman and the Historiography of America's Response to the Holocaust: Counter-Considerations," Holocaust and Genocide Studies (Number 4, 1990)
CHAPTER 7. Women and the Holocaust
Gender as Holocaust Issue
Introduction
7.1 Myrna Goldenberger, "From a World Beyond: Women in the Holocaust," Feminist Studies, vol. 22, no. 3 (Fall 1996)
7.2 Lawrence Langer, "Gendered Suffering? Women in Holocaust Testimonies," in Dalia Ofer and Lenore J. Weitzman, eds., Women in the Holocaust (Yale University Press, 1998)
The Roles and Treatment of Jewish Women in Nazi Germany
Introduction
7.3 Marion Kaplan, "Keeping Calm and Weathering the Storm: Jewish Women's Responses to Daily Life in Nazi Germany, 1933@ndash@;1939," in Dalia Ofer and Lenore J. Weitzman, eds., Women in the Holocaust (Yale University Press, 1998)
7.4 Sibyl Milton, "Women and the Holocaust: The Case of German and German-Jewish Women," in Renate Bridenthal, Atina Grossman, and Marion Kaplan,, eds., When Biology Became Destiny: Women in Weimar and Nazi Germany (Monthly Review Press, 1984)
CHAPTER 8. Faith After Auschwitz
The Holocaust and the Jewish Covenant
Introduction
8.1 Steven T. Katz, from Post-Holocaust Dialogues: Critical Studies in Modern Jewish Thought (New York University Press, 1983)
8.2 Lawrence L. Langer, from Admitting the Holocaust (Oxford University Press, 1995)
Christianity and the Holocaust
Introduction
8.3 Eva Fleischner, "The Crucial Importance of the Holocaust for Christians," in Harry James Cargas, ed., When God and Man Failed: Non-Jewish Views of the Holocaust (Macmillan, 1981)
8.4 Franklin H. Littell, "Inventing the Holocaust: A Christian Perspective," Holocaust and Genocide Studies, vol. 9, no. 2 (Fall 1995)
CHAPTER 9. Unresolved Issues
War Crimes and War Criminals: The Legacy of the Nuremberg Trials
Introduction
9.1 Howard Ball, from Prosecuting War Crimes and Genocide: The Twentieth-Century Experience (University Press of Kansas, 1999)
Adolf Eichmann and the Post-Holocaust "Culture of Remembrance"
Introduction
9.2 Elie Wiesel, "Eichmann's Victims and the Unheard Testimony," Commentary (December, 1961)
9.3 Haim Gouri, "Facing the Glass Booth," in Geoffrey Hartman, ed., Holocaust Remembrance: The Shapes of Memory (Blackwell, 1994)
The Reparations Issue: Swiss Banks and German Corporations
Introduction
9.4 Alfred Lipson, "Swiss History in Focus," Midstream (December 1997)
9.5 Gregg J. Rickman, from Swiss Banks and Jewish Souls (Transaction, 1999)
9.6 Neil Gregor, "Daimler-Benz, Forced Labor and Compensation," Dimensions: A Journal of Holocaust Studies, vol. 13, no. 2 (1999)
CHAPTER 10. The Holocaust in the New Millennium
Combating Holocaust Deniers
Introduction
10.1 Deborah E. Lipstadt, "Deniers, Relativists, and Pseudo-Scholarship," Dimensions: A Journal of Holocaust Studies, vol. 6, no. 1 (1991)
Judging Holocaust Representations
Introduction
10.2 Alvin H. Rosenfeld, "The Americanization of the Holocaust," Commentary (June 1995)
The Role of Holocaust Survivors' Memories
Introduction
10.3 David Patterson, "The Twilight of Memory: Reflections on Holocaust Memoirs, Past, Present and Future," Dimensions: A Journal of Holocaust Studies, vol. 13, no. 1 (1999)
10.4 James E. Young, "Between History and Memory: The Uncanny Voices o f Historian and Survivor," in History and Memory; Passing Into History: Nazism and the Holocaust Beyond Memory (Indiana University Press, 1997)
The Role of the Holocaust in the Shaping of the New Century
Introduction
10.5 Peter Novick, from The Holocaust in American Life (Houghton Mifflin, 1999)
10.6 Yehuda Bauer, "A Past That Will Not Go Away," in Michael Berenbaum and Abraham J. Peck, eds., The Holocaust and History: The Known, the Unknown, the Disputed, and the Re-examined (Indiana University Press, 1998)
Bibliographic Essay
