We kindly inform you that, as long as the subject affiliation of our 300.000+ articles is in progress, you might get unsufficient or no results on your third level or second level search. In this case, please broaden your search criteria.
A conversation between János Kőbányai and Gabrielle Sed-Rajna about Jewish culture
More...
The article if devoted to Prof. Israel Gutman, one of the most eminent Holocaust scholars. Dreifuss reconstructs Gutman’s life from the pre-war period, through his stay in the Warsaw ghetto and concentration camps, to his emigration to Palestine and the building of the state of Israel, where the novice kibbutz worker became a scholar who shaped the direction of Holocaust research at the Yad Vashem Institute and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Gutman’s scientific methodology postulated a focus on the life of Jews during the Holocaust, its reconstruction on the basis of Jewish sources, and explanation of personal dilemmas and complex social relations.
More...
Józef Kermisz (1907–2005) was a historian and an archivist who helped lay the foundations for Shoah research in Poland and Israel. In 1944 joined the Central Jewish Historical Commission where became the chief archivist. Since then his life has been devoted to retrieving wartime archival material. As archive director (in the Jewish Historical Institute in Poland and at Yad Vashem in Israel) he sought to develop an archive both for future historical research and for trials of suspected war criminal. He played a major role in discovering and preserving important documentation on the Shoah in Poland. Among his major professional achievements were preparing documentation for the prosecution in the Eichmann trial, and publishing Czerniakow’s diary and the full edition of the underground press of the Warsaw ghetto. He was one of the world’s leading experts on the Ringelblum Archive and other hidden Jewish documentation from the Holocaust. Kermisz left behind a legacy of a vast research infrastructure that he created and that will occupy scholars for generations.
More...
The article talks about the most important historical, sociological, and political science publications of the last couple of years on the subject matter of genocide in the 20th century. Buryła discusses the complex issues connected with a definition of genocide, the existing theories of the genesis of genocide, and the factors conducive to mass extermination or nations or social groups. These issues are presented against the background of the history of European colonialism and imperialism as well as the processes that gave rise to Western modernism.
More...
The article examines the state of the Holocaust historiography in Ukraine for the period of 2010 – beginning of 2014. The review analyzes activities of major research and educational organizations in Ukraine which have significant part of projects devoted to the Holocaust; main publications and discussions on the Holocaust in Ukraine, including publications of Ukrainian authors in academic European and American journals. The article illustrates contemporary tendencies and conditions of the Holocaust Studies in Ukraine, defines major problems and shows perspectives of the future development of the Holocaust historiography in Ukraine.
More...
New topics and formal solutions have been emerging during the last decade in the Polish literature which takes up the subject matter of the Holocaust. First of all, these texts echo the discussions triggered by Jan Tomasz Gross’ well-known publications, particularly by his book Neighbours. The voice of the “second generation,” whose representatives give testimony to growing up “in the shadow of Auschwitz,” can be clearly heard in the literary statements of that period. Interestingly enough, there have also been many publications addressed to children and young readers, who were told about the Holocaust in a mature way and with avoidance of simplifications or childishness. The subject matter of the Holocaust tends to be more and more boldly taken up by the popular literature genres, such as, legal fiction, crime novels, thrillers, some of which draw from the poetics of horror or psychological thriller. Not all of them can be deemed successful for some clearly border on kitsch. Nonetheless, they show the direction of the development of the literature that takes up the subject matter of the Holocaust in the context of the passing of the last witnesses and survivors.
More...
The historian Ruta Sakowska was one of the outstanding employees of the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw (Żydowski Instytut Historyczny, ŻIH), whose research worker she was from 1958 to 2011. Her main interest was in the history of the Jewish population in Warsaw during the Holocaust. While collecting materials for her doctoral thesis about the Warsaw ghetto, she came across Ringelblum’s Archive (ARG) in the ŻIH and then devoted the later years of her life to its editing. During my work on the new ARG inventory the author had the opportunity to cooperate with Doctor Ruta Sakowska and avail himself of her help. Last but not least, she is also to thank for the 1997 commencement of full editing of the ARG documents.
More...
The article is devoted to the influence of Czech literature and film about the Holocaust on the shaping of the Czech historical culture and Czech identity. The author distinguishes two important periods. Lasting from 1945 to 1948, the first one was a time when survivors produced works to tell others their true story. The second period, from the late 1950s to the late 1960s, was a time of the Czechoslovak New Wave. Often made by non-Jewish artists the-then films about the Holocaust, which were that movement’s pillar, individualised the Holocaust and did not offer clear-cut answers. Holocaust memory has not found a distinct place in Czech literature and film between 2000–2014, partly because of modern artists’ distance toward the old generation, their loose approach to the topic, and predominantly because of their ongoing search for their own values.
More...
The article regards broadly defined literature about the Holocaust as a testimony to the attitude of the Polish society toward the Jews, for even when it uses fiction it remains close to personal document literature. The knowledge these sources provide, both those produced during the occupation and afterwards, is usually dismissed by professional historians even though it says a lot about this topic. Speaking in the most general terms, it is anticipates the historians’ theses and reports. One of the phenomena it reflects is the anti-Semitism, which did not vanish with the advent of the Holocaust and could be seen in the dealings of blackmailers, informers, and szmalcowniks.
More...
This article discusses the life of Hersch Wasser (1910–1980), secretary of the “Oneg Shabbat” and the closest collaborator of Emmanuel Ringelblum. Wasser, an economist from Łódź, who was a key personality in the Underground Archive of the Warsaw Ghetto. He was the one who coordinated its activities and recorded both its collaborators and incoming documents. He was one of the creators of the press department of the “Oneg Shabbat”, which provided information on the Holocaust to the Polish and Jewish underground press. As a secretary of the Central Refugee Commission, he interviewed refugees arriving in the ghetto and supplied the Archive with information on the persecution of Jews outside Warsaw. After the end of the war, Wasser played a key role in unearthing the first part of the Underground Archive in September 1946 and in preparing their first catalogue. Simultaneously, between April and September 1947, Wasser took out about 140 documents from the collection and together with other documents relating to the Holocaust (altogether 244) sent them to YIVO in New York, seeing it as a way of safekeeping them in the face of a dificult situation in post-war Poland. He emigrated to Israel in 1950.
More...
The text presents four volumes of the series containing materials from the Ringelblum Archive that concern Warsaw Jews: vol. 5: Getto warszawskie. Życie codzienne [The Warsaw Ghetoo. Everyday Life], ed. Katarzyna Person (2011); vol. 7: Spuścizny [The Legacies], ed. Katarzyna Person (2012); vol. 11: Ludzie i prace „Oneg Szabat” [People and Works of the “Oneg Shabbat”], ed. Aleksandra Bańkowska and Tadeusz Epsztein (2013); vol. 12: Rada Żydowska w Warszawie (1939–1943) [The Jewish Council in Warsaw, 1939–1943], ed. Marta Janczewska (2014).
More...
The article explores motifs and symbols of Jewish tombstones found in Kurzeme, Western part of Latvia.
More...
It is the first time we publish the writing of Berel Lang, a well-known scholar who has long pondered the philosophical problems raised by the Holocaust. His essay examines the question why Jews did not think of revenge on a large scale after the Holocaust.
More...