Holocaust Rescue Revisited: An Unexplored Angle

Holocaust Studies, 2005

Holocaust Studies, 2016

Journal of Modern History, 2019

I am extremely grateful to my friend and colleague Jens Meierhenrich for reading an earlier version of this article and for helping me to reconceptualize it. My thanks too to the two anonymous reviewers, whose comments were very trenchant and insightful.

This talk will engage the misleading aspect of almost all discussion of what the Germans called the " Final Solution " of the so-called Jewish Problem by describing that project as limited to the European continent. Practically invariably the German effort to kill Jews is described in the literature as the attempt to kill the Jews of Europe. The most recent synthesis of Holocaust research, The Oxford Handbook of Holocaust Studies (Oxford, 2010), may serve as an example. Nowhere in its 776 pages is there the slightest awareness of the actual nature and scope of German plans. While killing all Jews in Europe was certainly a part of German plans, hopes, and actions, describing the intention that led to these events as limited to this objective both ignores the reality of the time and obscures one of the critical ways in which the Holocaust differs from other genocides. Obviously the systematic killing of Jews had to begin somewhere, that is, in specific localities. The evidence seems reasonably clear now that the spring of 1941 was the time when a general concept of killing Jews was decided on as a part of the planning of the war for Lebensraum (living space) in the

Humboldt Journal of Social Relations, 1986

An overview of the research on rescuers of Jews during the Holocaust.

The Psychoanalytic Quarterly, 2023

Although events from the last months of WWII played a crucial part in the Holocaust and how it has been remembered, only recently have scholars begun to give attention to this period. On the occasion of the 70th anniversary of the end of the war, this special issue of Dapim presents a first collection of articles, based on current and up-to-date research projects, on different aspects of what can be termed the ‘final stage’ of the Holocaust. The main questions that this issue discusses are: Was the ‘final stage’ a distinct and identifiable period in the unfolding of Nazi policies against the Jews? What characterized the suffering of Jews and other victims of the Nazis in this period, and which parameters affected their fates? What were the continuities and transformations that featured in this ‘final stage’ regarding the Nazi (anti-)Jewish policy?

White paper about how the important subject of rescue by the few leading Jewish rescuers, Jewish Wallenbergs, whose activism led to protection and rescue of hundreds of thousands often despite obstruction by some free world progressive Jewish leaders. The paper explains how Israel is determined not to provide appropriate recognition to such rescuers and also analyzes basic concepts related to rescue during the Holocaust.

Reviews in History, 2016

The 70th anniversary of the Allied victory over the Nazi regime and of the liberation of the camps led to a renewed interest in the Nazi rule over much of Europe and, even more so, in the Holocaust. Unsurprisingly, a number of new studies were and still are being published, many of which discuss the meaning that the Holocaust holds for us today. One of these studies is Dan Stone's The Liberation of the Camps, an important and insightful history of the long and protracted process of rehabilitation that the survivors of the camps faced after they were liberated from the hold of the SS. Dan Stone, Professor of Modern History at Royal Holloway, University of London, is a well-known expert in the field of Holocaust and comparative genocide studies. His latest book is largely based on survivor testimony, both written and oral, collected in the immediate postwar period (for example, by the American psychologist David P. Boder) when no 'Holocaust narrative' yet existed, and throughout the 70-year period since the liberation of the camps, when the understanding of the Holocaust, including that of the survivors, became increasingly differentiated and sophisticated. The survivor testimonies are complemented and contextualised by accounts from liberators and relief workers as well as official reports and documents by government agencies and relief organisations.

The Journal of Modern History, 2021

Next to barbed wire, the Auschwitz train station and rail lines are perhaps the most iconic and easily recognizable symbols of the Holocaust today. The cattle car is also an important item in the collection of many Holocaust museums, including the main exhibition of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, and there is scarcely a survival story that does not include some horrific memory of the train journey. Recalling most vividly a terrible thirst, survivor Primo Levi wrote about his train journey, noting "at every stop we clamoured for water, or even a handful of snow. .. two young mothers, nursing their children, groaned night and day, begging for water." In tightly packed cattle cars, with no place to sit, no place to stand, and no place to take care of basic human needs, the train journey was an assault on the human senses. For many survivors the journey seemed to take an eternity and then, as Levi describes in the opening pages of his memoir, it suddenly came to an abrupt and confusing end. Of the 650 people in his transport, fewer than one-fifth were alive two days after arriving at Auschwitz. Levi's was not an unusual story. Between October 1941 and November 1944, Jews from across Europe were transported to the five death camps in Poland-Chełmno, Bełżec, Sobibor, Treblinka, and Auschwitz-Birkenau. The vast majority of these people did not return. Ninety percent of Poland's 3.3 million Jews were killed in the death camps that opened in the spring and summer of 1942 and most of them were transported from the ghetto to the camp by train. In fact, more than half of all those deliberately murdered by the Germans during World War II went to their deaths on a train transport. The train marks an important moment in the history of the "Final Solution." Before the death camps of Poland were fully operational in the summer of 1942, mobile-SS and police units traveled in motorized vehicles over huge swaths of land in the occupied Soviet Union from the Baltic states to the Crimea to identify, round up, and kill their victims in open-air shootings. With the help of local militia and some civilians, German SS troops and police killed more than a million innocent people a few dozen at a time. In the summer of 1942, the train transformed and rationalized the killing process. No longer did perpetrators have to traverse the land seeking out their victims; they could now transport them in large numbers directly to stationary camps where they would be killed upon arrival en masse. Despite the central role of the railway system in this process, not a single railway employee, manager, scheduler, mechanic, or conductor was prosecuted by the Allies or Germans after the war.

2019

On May 2, 2019 all of Israel came to a standstill as sirens blared for two minutes throughout the country with no other noise. Vehicles remained parked as traffic lights turned and the people on the street could be seen unmoving, some staring off into the distance and some even crying with no words being spoken. This moment shows how the past is still remembered and while long gone, is still painful as it is meant to represent the six million Jewish people who lost their lives during the Holocaust. In this paper, I am going to go into detail about one of the largest recorded genocides known to man, the Holocaust. I will explain the rationale behind the laws and policies that allowed the persecution of millions, discuss the experiences of those involved from multiple points and examine the significance of the Holocaust as it pertains to then and now. While some parts of this paper may be distressing and disturbing at times to read, they are things that should be studied and remembered. By scrutinizing the principles behind Nazi actions, listening to the experiences of those who survived and understanding the meaningfulness of the Holocaust on today's world we can then construe why we must take steps to never repeat these atrocities and if there are those who do commit them, why we should stop them.

The Holocaust in American Life

Writing the History of Representations Between 1939 and 1945, many things happened to vast numbers of diverse and dispersed people. To talk in everyday life about all of them requires capacious words, representations which develop as events recede and gain their meaning only with the passage of time. An American soldier in 1944 might have described himself as storming the beaches of France or fighting in the outskirts of Caen. As a veteran twenty years later, he could say he fought in World War II. Peter Novick understands the centrality of representations in historical inquiry (pp. 220-1; cf. pp. 66, 68, 74). Collecting in one phrase an enormous mass of horrible events, 'the Holocaust' is such a representation. Novick boldly asserts ' "the Holocaust", as we speak of it today, was largely a retrospective construction, something that would not have been recognizable to most people at the time' (p. 20; cf. pp. 59, 116). This is the historical fact that he tackles in The Holocaust in American Life. The tone of this book is generally commensurate with its large ambitions. Bold and occasionally pugnacious debunker, Novick writes like somebody who wants to call a spade a spade. Nevertheless, his text is persistently punctuated by hesitations (pp. 166, 176, 183, 226, 232, 233, 257). He seems wary of hubris. He wants the reader to know that he knows when his way is blocked. Some barriers to historiography are unavoidable: documents are missing, witnesses are dead. Other impediments arise from the way the historian sets to the task. Every inquiry constitutes both an 'object' and its own peculiar impasse. I will argue thet Novick's project is blocked by the way he has chosen to investigate 'the Holocaust in American life'. To orient the discussion, consider that Americans today often use the word 'Holocaust' without clear reference to the

2020

Thirty years after the American mini-series "Holocaust" was first shown on West-German television and started what has come to be seen as a major turn in German memory culture regarding the Holocaust, the Cultures of History Forum has invited five historians, experts of contemporary history of Central Europe, who had never seen the series before to watch all four episode and discuss it. This is the protocol of the discussion.