Jewish Histories of the Holocaust: New Transnational Approaches(19 Making Sense of History)

For many years, histories of the Holocaust focused on its perpetrators, and only recently have more scholars begun to consider in detail the experiences of victims and survivors, as well as the documents they left behind. This volume contains new research from internationally established scholars. It provides an introduction to and overview of Jewish narratives of the Holocaust. The essays include new considerations of sources ranging from diaries and oral testimony to the hidden Oyneg Shabbes archive of the Warsaw Ghetto; arguments regarding Jewish narratives and how they fit into the larger fields of Holocaust and Genocide studies; and new assessments of Jewish responses to mass murder ranging from ghetto leadership to resistance and memory.

Table of Contents:
List of Illustrations Introduction Norman J.W. Goda PART I: THEORETICAL OVERVIEWS Chapter 1. The Jewish Dimension of the Holocaust in Dire Straits? Current Challenges of Interpretation and Scope Dan Michman Chapter 2. The Holocaust as Regional History: Explaining the Bloodlands Timothy Snyder PART II: NEW APPROACHES TO JEWISH LEADERSHIP Chapter 3. An Overwhelming Presence: Reflections on Mordechai Chaim Rumkowski and His Place in Our Understanding of the Łódź Ghetto Gordon Horwitz Chapter 4. Similarity and Differences: A Comparative Study between the Ghettos in Białystok and Kielce Sara Bender PART III: DOCUMENTATION, TESTIMONY, AND EXPERIENCE Chapter 5. Diaries, Testimony, and Jewish Histories of the Holocaust Alexandra Garbarini Chapter 6. The Voice of Your Brother’s Blood: Biography of the Town of Buczacz Omer Bartov Chapter 7. “If He Knows How to Make a Child”: Memories of Birth and Baby-Killing in Jewish Testimony Narratives Sara Horowitz Chapter 8. “Why Didn’t They Mow Us Down Right Away?” The Death March Experience in Survivors’ Testimonies and Memoirs Daniel Blatman PART IV: RETHINKING SELF-HELP AND RESISTANCE Chapter 9. Documenting Catastrophe: The Ringelblum Archive and the Warsaw Ghetto Samuel Kassow Chapter 10. Integrating Self-Help into the Narrative of Survival in Western Europe Bob Moore Chapter 11. Jewish Communists in France During World War II: Resistance and Identity Renée Poznanski Chapter 12. Freedom and Death: The Jews and the Greek Andartiko Steven Bowman PART V: AFTERMATH: POLITICS, AESTHETICS, AND MEMORY Chapter 13. Contested Memory: A Story of a Kapo In Auschwitz Tuvia Friling Chapter 14. Pressure Groups in the American and British Administrations During and After World War II Arieh J. Kochavi Chapter 15. Travelling to Germany and Poland: Toward a Textual Montage of Jewish Emotions After the Holocaust Michael Meng Selected Bibliography List of Contributors Index

About the Author :
Norman J.W. Goda is the Norman and Irma Braman Professor of Holocaust Studies at the University of Florida. His publications include Tomorrow the World: Hitler, Northwest Africa and the Path Towards America (1998); Tales from Spandau: Nazi Criminals and the Cold War (2007); and The Holocaust: Europe, the World, and the Jews (2013).

Review :
“In the new history, research has been redirected from the perpetrator to the victims, and the goal is to find the authentic Jewish voice. As a consequence, personal diaries, note books, and memoirs have gained a status that traditional historians have not previously imparted to them. Good index and select bibliography. Highly Recommended.” · Choice “…provides an excellent model in how to interweave multiple contexts and multiple sources: by studying interethnic relations in local and regional frameworks, by exploring the infl uence of non-Jewish cultural contexts, and by broadening chronological scopes not limited only to the history of antisemitism.” · Slavic Review “Norman Goda’s Jewish Histories of the Holocaust is an extraordinarily rich collection of essays that brings together an impressive range of Holocaust scholars. Many of the articles represent introductory ways into an individual author’s wider body of work on their particular aspect of the Holocaust’s Jewish history.” · German History “Goda has done a first class service to the field…This history surveys a remarkably broad range of victim experiences in Holocaust history, moving Europe’s Jews from objects of the Holocaust ‘to center stage.’ Viewing perpetrators through their victim’s eyes brings into focus the tragic inability of many victims to ‘suspend their disbelief’ about the perpetrators while also presenting new perspectives for compassion toward those faced with ‘choiceless choices,’ as Lawrence Langer described them.” · Nathan Stoltzfus, Florida State University “…for historiographical reasons and because of difficulties with sources, Jewish perspectives on the Holocaust have been neglected or marred by substantial gaps. The authors seek to remedy that situation, either through historiographical critiques, through case studies using Jewish sources, through addressing topics previously avoided for psychological reasons, or through their own reset of perspectives.” · Richard Breitman, American University