Between Dignity and Despair: Jewish Life in Nazi Germany (Studies in Jewish History)

Amazon.com

As the old saying goes, hindsight is always 20-20; people looking back on the Holocaust and the events leading up to it often wonder why the Jews didn't flee Nazi Germany or why they put up with the prejudice and degradation inflicted upon them by the Nazis. From our perspective, 50 years later, it seems almost incredible that the victims of genocide didn't see it coming and made little effort to escape. But as Marion Kaplan makes clear in her powerful book, Between Dignity and Despair, the choices were much murkier at the time. The Jews didn't leave because Germany was their home and had been for centuries; like everyone else, they had responsibilities and commitments to family, jobs and communities that kept them there. Nor, in the early days of Hitler's regime, could the Jews of Nazi Germany have foreseen the terrible humiliations they would suffer or imagined the horror of the Final Solution.

Kaplan's sensitive narrative, supported by a host of letters, memoirs, and interviews, aims to give a balanced account of German Jewry under the Nazi regime. She convincingly shows how it was German society (indoctrinated by Nazi propaganda) that dealt the first crippling moral blow to the Jewish psyche, before any laws dictated their actions. The Jews succumbed to daily humiliations, ranging from little boys being maliciously teased for being circumcised to older Jews being treated like social pariah's by one-time friends who fell easily into the mindset of racial enmity. Hatred breeds hatred; slowly the German populace strangled the pride of the Jews, creating resentment, distrust and disharmony. Kaplan conveys a poignant, yet subtle message: the fundamental de-facto abandonment of decency and moral civility by the gentile Germans was the catalyst which allowed Nazi leadership to proceed with more aggressive policies that ultimately led to the Holocaust.

Book Description

Between Dignity and Despair draws on the extraordinary memoirs, diaries, interviews, and letters of Jewish women and men to give us the first intimate portrait of Jewish life in Nazi Germany. Kaplan tells the story of Jews in Germany not from the hindsight of the Holocaust, nor by focusing on the persecutors, but from the bewildered and ambiguous perspective of Jews trying to navigate their daily lives in a world that was becoming more and more insane. Answering the charge that Jews should have left earlier, Kaplan shows that far from seeming inevitable, the Holocaust was impossible to foresee precisely because Nazi repression occurred in irregular and unpredictable steps until the massive violence of Novemer 1938. Then the flow of emigration turned into a torrent, only to be stopped by the war. By that time Jews had been evicted from their homes, robbed of their possessions and their livelihoods, shunned by their former friends, persecuted by their neighbors, and driven into forced labor. For those trapped in Germany, mere survival became a nightmare of increasingly desperate options. Many took their own lives to retain at least some dignity in death; others went underground and endured the fears of nightly bombings and the even greater terror of being discovered by the Nazis. Most were murdered. All were pressed to the limit of human endurance and human loneliness. Focusing on the fate of families and particularly women's experience, Between Dignity and Despair takes us into the neighborhoods, into the kitchens, shops, and schools, to give us the shape and texture, the very feel of what it was like to be a Jew in Nazi Germany.

Customer Reviews:

Wonderfully informative.......2007-05-30

This book does a marvelous job of helping us to understand how such a thing as the Holocaust could occur in a supposedly "civil" society such as Germany in the mid-20th century. Kaplan shows us how the deprivations increased so incrementally that by the time people became aware of what was truly taking place, it was too late for many of them to rescue themselves. This book also reveals how the people of Germany came to accept what was happening to the Jewish people among them; even rejoicing in it, and it lifts the veil over our eyes of the day-to-day tribulations endured before the exterminations. Well done.

"Social Death".......2004-04-13

Marion Kaplan's, Between Dignity and Despair: Jewish Life in Nazi Germany, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998) is an in-depth study into the lives of Jewish people in Nazi Germany beginning with the takeover by Adolf Hitler in 1933. She concludes that not only were the physical lives of the Jewish people tormented and taken from them, the pervasiveness of the German government into everyday life led to emotional and physiological death of the Jews.
In developing the reader's mind to comprehend the lives of the Jews, Kaplan gives attention to little known details of Nazi Germany. As spoken about in chapter one, by establishing the Jews as social outcasts, they were removed from the rest of Germany. The new position of Jews in the public sphere affected their private lives as well. Focusing primarily on the role of women in the Jewish household, the challenges of dealing with new laws makes apparent the death beyond that of the physical means. Perhaps most intrusive to the emotional downfall of the Jews was the hostile environment they were forced to live in everyday. Faced with the torturous nature of school, Jewish children became aware of the plight of their families even as their parents tried to hide it from them. The November Pogrom of 1938 stifled the Jews politically, economically, and socially more intensely and more violently that ever before. By the official outbreak of World War II, Hitler had succeeded in massacring the Jews psychologically.
Throughout the book Marion Kaplan makes it very apparent that the destruction of Jews did not begin when war was declared in 1939 but instead in 1933. The affliction against the Jewish people deteriorated them emotionally and psychologically as well as physically. There is concrete evidence proposed in the book such as the staggering number of suicides, and the indifference to death among the Jews. The deceased were not criticized or blamed for their actions, but they were admired and envied signifying the loss of Jewish will to live.
Overall, Marion Kaplan's Between Dignity and Despair: Jewish Life in Nazi Germany is extremely well written. Through her frequent use of primary sources, the pain and distress of the Jews is more easily comprehended as the expressions of the suffering Jews appeal to the reader's emotions. Its exploration of little known details of Jewish life in Germany is useful not only to those studying the Holocaust, but also to all people. Kaplan makes it evident that acts of discrimination or the invasiveness into one's private life can profoundly destroy a person's pride. Ultimately, the destruction of the emotional and physiological conditions of people can occur as it did to the Jews in Nazi Germany.

Accurate Portrayal of the results of hatred.......2002-09-10

Missing in many Holocaust works are the experiences of common German Jews and what daily life for them became like after Hitler's rise to power in the early 1930s. One can read about the Nuremberg Laws or the November Pogrom but one can't get a real feel for how those laws impacted daily life except through memoirs and the testimony of common people. Marion Kaplan's book wonderfully fills the gap between history from the "top down" and history from the "bottom up."
This book makes you realize that stories of hiding and rescue weren't just an occasional thing that's celebrated by Hollywood in such things as Schindler's List, but they happend every day. Kaplan also makes it clear the incredible courage involved in hiding and also the courage of others who hid Jews during Hitler's reign of terror. One bone of contention among historians many times is also how popular were the anti-Semitic measures, with many historians asserting that the population at large really wasn't that bad. Kaplan's book destroys any myths that the German popluation didn't overwhelmingly approve of Hitler's anti-Semitic measures, even if they perhaps didn't see the conclusion of them coming in the "Final Solution." If a German didn't know about the anti-Semitic measures it's only because they willingly didn't pay attention or tried to delude themselves.
One interesting part that Kaplan writes about are the Jews who collaborated with the Nazis in cities as "Jew Hunters," including one Jewish woman who led the Gestapo to over 60 hidden Jews in a single day. Reading stories such as this, perhaps Hannah Arendt's frightening conclusion wasn't so far off in that without the help of the Jews many more could have been saved.
The one drawback to this book is that Kaplan focuses on memoirs and testimony exclusively from women and assumes much about the male Jewish population. This could have been a much better book if she had included memoirs from a wider selection of men rather than constantly referring to Klemperer's book.

Intersection between Jewish and Women's history.......2001-11-30

In Between Dignity and Despair, Kaplan sought to examine the everyday lives of Jewish people under the Nazi Regime. Many Holocaust historians tend to approach the Jewish history from the male perspective (as men were involved in politics). Kaplan sought to explain the importance of women's roles in the Jewish society and how Jewish women urged their husbands to leave Germany when the Nazi gained power and influence.

Kaplan also sought to explain what it felt like to be a Jew living under the Nazi regime and how they became isolated from the rest of the society. She also explained how by and large Germans participated in this persecution and by this she did not mean physical persecution but social persecution.

She gave special attention to the Jewish women and how the women tried to adapt to their new roles and the new situation. The women were able to provide mental and emotional support to their families when their husbands lost their jobs. It was indeed insightful to see how the women were able to cope and how they were the first group to realize the isolation that took place, mainly because of their interaction with neighbors, store owners, public officials, etc.

I would recommend this book for anyone who wants to learn more about the Jewish life under Nazi Germany and the focus here is not those who suffered under the concentration camps but the "ordinary people" who had to cope with their new situation.

Haunting and painful........2000-02-20

Between Dignity and Despair is haunting and painful. The statistics of the Holocaust and "sadistics" of its perpetrators can never capture the true cost in Human terms. History is more than a chronicle and analysis of events. It is also an understanding of the experiences of the people who lived through those events. These experiences do not lend themselves to quantitative assessment and validation. None-the-less, the stories and letters of the people who lived during that time are essential to our interpretation of the geopolitical, military and social events that have shaped our world.

The great question facing us today involves the "collective guilt" of the German people for the persecution and genocide of their Jewish neighbors. The frightening and logical extension of this question is: if such horrors can arise from the children "of the enlightenment," could it not also come from "the sons and daughters of liberty?" It is clear from these accounts that the society as a whole, actively and passively, participated in this process. When studied in Human terms, it is inconceivable that it could have happened any other way.

Cain, after murdering Able, asked of God "Am I my brother's keeper?" The response of the German people to the obvious disenfranchisement, persecution and suffering of the Jews seemed to be: "It depends on your definition of `brother.'" It teaches us that our high and noble beliefs such as equality, liberty, freedom, and brotherly love, are empty words if not applied universally. This lesson was painfully learned in 19th century America when the statement "all Men are created equal" was understood as only applying to those of White, Northern European ancestry.

Between Dignity and Despair is haunting and painful because within its pages we see our own demons and feel the fragility of our own Humanity. We also see to what extreme our quiet personal prejudices can lead us when they go unchecked by the better angels of our nature.

Ms Kaplan has contributed to our understanding of the horrors of systematic psychological terrorism practiced by the Nazis. No revisionist, seeking to absolve German society, can deny the conclusions drawn from the experiences she has documented. Her work is essential to an understanding of the Holocaust.

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About the representations of the holocaust in American life

Novick has said it all about the politics of the Holocaust!

a little note

The Preeminent Status of Jewish WWII Sufferings

Propaganda varies with the times

The Holocaust in American Life
Peter Novick
Manufacturer: Mariner Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0618082328

Amazon.com

In the first decades following World War II, Americans rarely discussed the Holocaust. Now, remembering the Holocaust has become a fundamental part of Jewish identity; gentiles, too, view the Holocaust as a touchstone of moral solemnity. In The Holocaust and American Life, Peter Novick asks why, and his answers are both sensible and shocking. He explains the immediate postwar silence about the Holocaust by reviewing the basics of cold war politics: just after the liberation of the concentration camps, Americans were called upon to sympathize with "gallant Berliners" who resisted the Soviets and built a wall against Communism--an "enormous shift from one set of alignments to another," Novick notes. Novick then leads readers through the series of events that brought the Holocaust to the forefront of American consciousness--the trial of Adolph Eichmann, the Six-Day War, the Carter administration's Israel policy, and the construction of the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C.

Among Novick's most controversial ideas is his assertion that American Jews spoke softly of the Holocaust at first because they didn't want to be seen as victims; later, Jews decided that victim status would work in their best political interest. Or, as Novick puts it, "Jews were intent on permanent possession of the gold medal in the Victimization Olympics." The Holocaust in American Life is as carefully researched and argued as it is polemical and probing. Novick does not suffer Holocaust deniers lightly, and he is empathic toward victims and survivors, but he has no tolerance for false sentiment. One wishes that more people would ask, as Novick does, what kind of a country would spend millions of dollars on a museum honoring European Jewish Holocaust victims instead of a monument to its own shameful history of black slavery. --Michael Joseph Gross

Book Description

Prize-winning historian Peter Novick illuminates the reasons Americans ignored the Holocaust for so long -- how dwelling on German crimes interfered with Cold War mobilization; how American Jews, not wanting to be thought of as victims, avoided the subject. He explores in absorbing detail the decisions that later moved the Holocaust to the center of American life: Jewish leaders invoking its memory to muster support for Israel and to come out on top in a sordid competition over what group had suffered most; politicians using it to score points with Jewish voters. With insight and sensitivity, Novick raises searching questions about these developments. Have American Jews, by making the Holocaust the emblematic Jewish experience, given Hitler a posthumous victory, tacitly endorsing his definition of Jews as despised pariahs? Does the Holocaust really teach useful lessons and sensitize us to atrocities, or, by making the Holocaust the measure, does it make lesser crimes seem "not so bad"? What are we to make of the fact that while Americans spend hundreds of millions of dollars for museums recording a European crime, there is no museum of American slavery?

Customer Reviews:

About the representations of the holocaust in American life.......2006-08-24

Before anything else, I'd like to comment on some previous (negative) reviews on this book, which said that it was, among other things, 'trite' and 'boring'. The word 'trite' in particular has been mentioned several times by previous reviewers. These 2 characterizations puzzle me, since they seem far from what anyone could say about 'The holocaust in American life'. Could this book be called controversial? Sure. Provocative? Perhaps. But trite and boring? No way. The book is interesting and fascinating. This just goes to show how, when lacking arguments, one can just accuse someone or something of being 'trite' and 'boring' and think they've expressed an opinion. What they have done in actuality is express a great big 'nothing'.

Other reviews mention inaccuracies in Novick's book, or accuse him of discussing the representations and discourses of the holocaust, and not the holocaust itself in its historical details. But surely they're missing the point: Novick is looking at the American collective memory of the holocaust, he's looking at the way the discourse around the holocaust is shaped today, including how it was shaped in the past and how and why it has changed. So one could say Novick is a historian of the present moment, interested in how certain ways of talking about the holocaust contribute to the shaping not only of Jewish identity, but also of the identity of the victim, of what suffering means, of what an atrocity is etc. I fail to understand why this is criticized by some reviewers. It seems to me a perfectly legitimate goal, to document the way a discourse is shaped, separately from the actual historical facts of the holocaust as it happened in the '40s.

Furthermore, what Novick does, he does very well. On a subject that is full of minefields and strong emotions, Novick manages to express his arguments clearly and persuasively. His main point (discussed by previous reviewers) is that the way the discourse around the holocaust is shaped in America today is far from self-evident: it was different in the past and could be different in the future. He stresses that a historical understanding of the events of world war 2 & of the holocaust do not lead to only one way of representing it and understanding it in today's culture.

The Holocaust as historical event is one thing. The Holocaust as discourse today, as representation in cultural life, is another. Novick discusses the second, and is very critical of the uniqueness, unrepresentability, incomprehensibility discourse that seems prevalent today. He is also critical of the emphasis on the identity of victim which seems central not only to Jewish Americans, but also to various other groups. His critique is not at all a conservative one, i.e. 'get over it and get on with things'. Far from it, he stresses the importance of memory and history. What he does is question the way this memory and history of the holocaust is shaped and implemented, especially when people end up comparing different historical instances of suffering, always putting the holocaust on top, as the instance of suffering par excellence. Novick insists that such an approach is not only meaningless but also morally problematic: because, as he says, even if there had been 2 or 3 genocides of equal horror before Hitler's one, we would still have to say that what happened in Europe in the '40s was terrible and unique in some ways, similar to other catastrophes in others; we would still have to remember it and fight against anything like it happening in the future. Because really- do we need something to be unique in order to fight against it? The idea of uniqueness, Novick argues, is often used to really talk about an hierarchy of catastrophes, with the Holocaust on top, which can really only serve other goals, far from the actual historical understanding of the Holocaust.

One important point to stress here: this idea of 'serving other goals' does not mean that there is any kind of conspiracy, any far fetched group which plans and plots about how the holocaust will be discussed. This couldn't be further from Novick's point. What he argues is rather more everyday. How all of us, you and I, discuss and understand the holocaust today, has to do with present needs and desires that we have: for example, the need to have a clear moral compass, a guide to show us what the absolute good and what the absolute evil is. It is to an understanding of these needs and desires of all of us that lead to certain ways of understanding the holocaust that Novick addresses his book.

All in all, Novick's book is interesting, thought-provoking and actually a quick and easy read. Its main points are explained well, and I think anyone interested in this subject would find it a very good read.

Novick has said it all about the politics of the Holocaust!.......2005-12-10

This excellent book could have only been written by an historian with ties to Judaism and much of it was destined to fall on deaf ears on both sides of the political/cultural divide. Being a non-Jew but interested in politics, this book seems to mesh well with other books that are nominally on the subject and my own experience. My favorite, aside from this one, is Culture of Critique by Kevin MacDonald which appears to have been received as a mixed blessing, like this one, by the "Jewish community" judging from some of the reviews and the author's comments in an update. It would be good to hear from Prof. Novick in this regard as both books appear to be well done academic works and the subsequent "debate" could add to the understanding of the controversial topic.

Several books could help a serious reader, and Paul Johnson's History of the Jews, especially the last part on Zion, is among others in that category. The Holocaust Industry by Norman G. Finkelstein, Salvation is from the Jews by Roy H. Schoeman and The Politics of Anti-Semitism by Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St. Clair are not academic works but provided this writer with some good background of the diversity of Jewish opinions on the subject.

a little note.......2005-09-27

It's a bit cowardly to get at Institute of Historical Review without offering the opportunity to retort. The generally modest Novick suddenly gets out of his way by calling them "fruitcakes", "nuts", "screwballs", "deniers" (while doubting the holocaust is surely NOT the same as denying it). When Novick mentions the collecting by one Mel Mermelstein of IHRs $50.000 offer for anyone who could prove any jews were gassed at Auschwitz, to actually "prove" IHR is no good, without giving any further notice of what took place in the courtroom from 1981 onwards (see for instance http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v14/v14n1p25_Okeefe.html), or of the fact that indeed no one to date has been able to prove any jews were gassed at all, the author seems to confirm that IHR maybe isn't as slanderous as he wants his readers to believe. And assuming the importance of Steven Spielberg's Schindler's List in "checking the denier menace" is simply hilarious.

The Preeminent Status of Jewish WWII Sufferings.......2005-03-17

Novick points out that tax money is being used to support Holocaust museums, and that emphasis on the Holocaust in American society is largely self-perpetuating, as there are thousands of full-time Holocaust professionals employed for its maintenance, transmission and dissemination. According to Novick (p.277), the closing of Holocaust institutions and the cessation of required Holocaust teaching in schools would create intolerable controversy.

Meanwhile, tokenism aside, the sufferings and deaths of millions of non-Jews in the hands of the Germans are given scant attention. Novick, a Jew himself, strongly rejects any notion of the uniqueness of Jewish deaths, and is especially critical of the notion, as he puts it (p. 9), of: "Your catastrophe, unlike ours, is ordinary; unlike ours is comprehensible; unlike ours is representable." Elie Wiesel has vulgarly equated the notion of expanding the Holocaust (to encompass the millions of Poles murdered by the Germans) with expanding the victims of the Crucifixion to include the two thieves executed with Jesus Christ (p. 219).

Whose sufferings are memorialized and whose are forgotten inescapably boils down to which group has power and influence. Novick frankly writes (p. 12): "When a high level of concern with the Holocaust became widespread in American Jewry, it was, given the important role that Jews play in American media and opinion-making elites, not only natural, but virtually inevitable that it would spread throughout the culture at large." Conversely, Novick recognizes (p. 233) that Poles and Ukrainians: "never had the political, cultural, or financial resources to press their case".

Novick rejects the notion that the belatedness of Holocaust preeminence stemmed from a trauma-induced temporary repression of the event in Jewish thinking. At one time, it was widely believed that any preeminent position given to Jewish losses would tend to increase anti-Semitism (pp. 121-122). Now the exact opposite is argued! Raphael Lemkin, the Polish Jew who coined the term genocide, thought of it in terms of the extermination of Poles and Russians no less than the Jews (p.100-101). Novick cites (p. 38) a 1944 statement from an American Jewish Committee staff memorandum , which states the following: "It should always be pointed our that Nazi tyranny does not discriminate between Jews and Poles." (sic) How ironic is this statement in the light of subsequent thinking and policy!

Novick could have made his case much stronger for the relative recency of Holocaust-dominated thinking by mentioning the many volumes of the TRIAL OF THE MAJOR WAR CRIMINALS (subsequently known as the Nuremberg trials). In it, there is an even-handed approach to German crimes against ALL conquered peoples, not just Jews.

Novick is candid about the very disproportionate involvement of Jews in Communism (p. 92, 302). He also cites Rabbi Eugene Borowitz (p. 109) about the fact that most Jews are agnostics, and he himself notes that Jews tend to be much less religious than Catholics and Protestants (p. 326). Funny how Polish cardinal Hlond was (and still is) raked over the coals as an anti-Semite simply for having made such statements back in 1936.

The relatively recent Judeocentric approach to WWII has completely reshaped our thinking. It is sobering to realize that, not so long ago, the question "Why didn't Poles save more Jews?" would have made about as much sense as "Why didn't Jews save more Poles?" (In fact, during the first 2 years of the German occupation of Poland, Germans were prone to murder Polish gentiles more frequently than Jews. In Soviet-conquered eastern Poland, many Jews, placed in high positions, were in a position to help Poles). All things considered, Novick displays a broad-based understanding of national sufferings when he discusses the Partitions of Poland and the Katyn Massacre of tens of thousands of Polish POW officers and intellectuals.

Novick is straightforward about the fact that most gentiles acted exactly as one would expect them to act under the circumstances of ruthless foreign occupation: "They kept their heads down and looked out for number one". Poles did not protest the killing of Jews by Germans because it was a nice way to get yourself and your family shot, and to get your house burned down (p. 247). And, although he does not mention the fact that Poles rescued many more Jews than Danes, he does acknowledge the fact that the low proportion of Polish Jews saved is accounted for by the nonassimilated state of Polish Jews compared with Danish Jews and the incomparably greater German brutality over Poles than Danes.

Novick mistakenly conflates Ukrainian collaborators with the much fewer (and unorganized) Polish ones, but does acknowledge that charges of collaboration are "often much too sweeping." (p. 223). Pointedly, Novick repudiates Elie Wiesel's frankly bigoted insinuation that the German Nazi death camps had been built in German-occupied Poland because of the reputed attitude of Poles to Jews. It was simply economics: The least distance that the largest number of Jews would have to be transported to their deaths.

Unfortunately, Novick does not go far enough in his analysis of Holocaust thinking. The reader must realize that it, in fact, has gone far beyond the preeminent status of the 5-6 million murdered Jews and the disappearance of the 2-3 million murdered Poles (including half of all educated Poles) down an Orwellian memory hole. Disproportionate attention has been given to the relatively small-scale Danish rescue of Jews and the acts of Oskar Schindler. In contrast, popular and educational Holocaust materials have yet to acknowledge the fact that the largest underground organization for saving Jews was the Polish Zegota. In fact, the Poles represent the nationality most honored at Yad Vashem for rescuing Jews, but one seldom sees this mentioned in popular-level Holocaust materials. It is difficult to escape the conclusion that Holocaust thinking, at least as far as materials for public consumption are concerned, has become distinctly anti-Polish.

Propaganda varies with the times.......2004-01-06

For an historian, Novick seems to be little interested in real history, but is rather fascinated by the ephemeral wish and wash of the propagandized masses. This book describes in exhausting detail how Americans, Jews and Gentile, have changed their perception over time of THE assumed genocide. Such a heterogeneous lot, needless to report, have reactions all over the ball-park.

More interestingly, he shows how the shifts that have occurred over time have been driven mostly by the concerns of national Jewish organizations to present an image to the gentiles that is deemed suitable for their current purposes. Immediately after the war their concern was to present Jews as a successful heroic people, getting on with their lives, and turning the desert green. Later on it was used by them to justify Israel's aggressive wars of occupation. Then, in all the rage for identity politics, with its requisite displays of historical victimization, to out-victim every other ethnie. Finally, most despicably, to "draw lessons" for school-children, suitable for bumper-stickers.

Novick's language describing all this is scholarly and temperate, but sometimes has a discernible edge. However, his talent as an historian and writer is lamentably wasted. He has produced, analogously speaking, a 400 page monograph on how the public's perception of alien abduction has changed since Goddard's invention of rockets. He describes how some have used their alien abduction to show how brave they are, surviving and going on with their lives. Some have used it in a campaign to accuse the government of a cover-up in which all of the uninvolved, un-abducted are complicit. And others have used it as a vehicle to go on the lecture circuit, write books of nonsense, and bring in some cash.

Perhaps most interesting is his discussion of the trend of organized Jewry toward making the holocaust a theological event, beyond any rational historical discussion or revision, as an ineffable, unique, illustration of the Jews' special relation to God. He disapproves of this, of course, but recognizes its inevitability.

A remarkable omission in the book is his almost total neglect of the story of how the holocaust is used in the eternal efforts of lawyers and other greedy organization men to successfully extract billions of dollars from the gentiles, mostly enriching themselves, and sullying the memories of the victims. Their essential argument: my suffering is unique and therefore greater than yours, so give me some money--you'll feel better. The silence around this phenomenon is thunderous.

One cannot be but a little disappointed in this otherwise praiseworthy effort to examine a modern delusion and its effects on the public psyche and politic. It would have been interesting to read here an account of how the legend itself has changed over the years, mostly due to the diligent efforts of real historians, who have gradually approached the truth with its revisions in the number of victims, the recognition that Dachau and Buchenwald were not extermination camps, and the discrediting of Simon Wiesenthal's hyperbolic tales of soap manufacture.

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5 stars for Witkin, 3 stars for the book

A highly recommended and welcome contribution to artbook and art history shelves

A must know artist for any figure painter

Jerome`s drawings on painting

Anyone can tell a story. Jerome makes you live it.

Life Lessons: The Art of Jerome Witkin
Sherry Chayat
Manufacturer: Syracuse University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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Lucian Freud, 1996-2005

ASIN: 0815608179

Book Description

Elucidates Witkin's success in rendering subjects in ways both immediate and powerfully universal.

As a master of realism, Jerome Witkin illustrates in his art the moral plight of everyday lives. His most complex and critically acclaimed works-intense, often disturbing scenes of the Holocaust-have earned him a growing international audience. This second edition of Life Lessons incorporates material from the past decade, including ten of his most important and provocative paintings. It brings the viewer in intimate contact with the dense interior landscapes of both people and places. Often regarded as belonging to an artistic pantheon including the work of Lucien Freud, Manet, Ingres, Goya, and Courbet, Witkin's paintings range from moody urban landscapes and penetrating portraits to intimate figure studies and vivid, psychologically charged tableaux, frequently referencing seminal moments in history.

Witkin's newer work includes an enormous six-panel exploration of Dachau's 1945 liberation (Entering Darkness, 2001)- his culmination of a twenty-year series on the Holocaust, regarded by critics as among the most compelling of paintings made on the subject.

Customer Reviews:

5 stars for Witkin, 3 stars for the book.......2006-12-14

We will take what we can get in regards to a tallent like Witkin. The essay alone is worth the price. It is really great to hear reasonable explanations for current art being produced. The big complaint I have is the size of the images. I have seen many of these painting in person and the tiny (and I do mean tiny) reproductions do not do it justice. I realize there are limitations, but Witkin deserves much better. The standard for great art books for me is Hausner's Heart Matters. That is a great art book. Big with lots of color images with enlargements through out. I would also agree, we need to see more of his drawings!

A highly recommended and welcome contribution to artbook and art history shelves.......2006-06-05

Now in its second edition, Life Lessons: The Art Of Jerome Witkin presents the insight of award-winning art critic and author Sherry Chayat into the marvelous oil paintings of artist and fine arts professor Jerome Witkin. Numerous illustrations of Witkin's oil paintings, many of which are in full color, reveal his passion for human figures in a variety of situations from mundane life to fantastic, otherworldly dialogues. The extensive text scrutinizes the history of individual artworks as well as common themes to Witkin's creations, which balance upon the fine line between contemporary realism and the nuances of artistic license. A highly recommended and welcome contribution to artbook and art history shelves.

A must know artist for any figure painter.......2003-12-13

Who's a hot figure painter? Eric Fischl, John Currin, Odd Nerdrum, Lucian Freud, Vincent Desiderio, and Jerome Witkin. Sorry if I missed anyone. If there is one living painter to rival the old masters, it is Jerome Witkin. He may not make the news like Currin, he may not whine like Odd Nerdrum, but he certainly is better. There are two types of quality figure painters. Those concerned with the conceptual side and those concerned with the perceptual. Jerome Witkin has nailed both concepts down better than any living painter. A beautiful blend of paying attention to complex and involved narratives that are so psychological, dramatic and emotional, you can feel the heat, combined with draftsmanship as a painter and drawer that will knock your socks off. A person who can draw is anyone with diligence and natural talent. Rather than capture likeness, he breathes life into his works, going beyond representation. Having experimented with abstract expressionism briefly, Jerome Witkin knows how to load his brush with excitement but with the precision of a surgeon. Anyone interested in powerful paintings as an artist or art lover, you are lucky to get this book. Your only regret is that there aren't more books that cover this top quality figure painter. Every painter I have shown this book to has been in awe. Enjoy.

Jerome`s drawings on painting.......2000-10-18

I had the opportunity to study with Jerome Witkin at Syracuse university. I found Mr. Witkin`s drawings more exciting, more indepth rich in color than his painting. Please if anyone makes a book on his work show alot more of his drawings.

Anyone can tell a story. Jerome makes you live it........1999-01-08

I was familiar with his twin brother, Joel-Peter, and his macabre work for some time, so I figured Jerome's would be of the same caliber. I was wrong. The attention to detail and the ability to not only tell a story, but to allow you to cry out in answer to what is occurring is spellbinding. Awesome. I was only dissappointed by the limited amount of work shown in this book. I demand to see more. I must see more.

The Life of an American Holocaust Survivor: Memories of the German Concentration Camps

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Offers an alternative perspective..
A Really Extraordinary Book, Worth Reading!!!

The Life of an American Holocaust Survivor: Memories of the German Concentration Camps
Dana Kent
Manufacturer: PublishAmerica
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books

Memoirs | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 1413791719

Customer Reviews:

Offers an alternative perspective.........2006-11-14

What is remarkable about this account is that most books cover the Jewish genocide that took place during the Holocaust. The Holocaust was so huge and greusome, it reached out beyond just one culture. People who suffered torture for years, like Mitchell Pawlak, make these accounts to their families (if they are still living), and movies also try to give us some idea of what happened there. This is an alternative perspective of a hell that some survived but many had to endure.

A Really Extraordinary Book, Worth Reading!!!.......2006-01-30

This book was one of the best accounts I have read of the turmoil and savagery suffered by the people in concentration camps. The remarkable courage of Mitchell makes for fascinating reading. The story of his survival makes me believe that angels do exist...and he must have had one watching over him throughout his experience.

Average customer rating:

a must for vanished Jewish East European comunities.
perfect

Last Jews of Radauti
Laurence Salzmann , and Ayse Gursan-Salzmann
Manufacturer: Doubleday
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

General | Europe | History | Subjects | Books

Romania | Europe | History | Subjects | Books

Customer Reviews:

a must for vanished Jewish East European comunities........1999-07-16

I was born in Radauti & fortunately left with my parents in 1959. It is a moving elegant book of a town that is usually not on the map. Wonderful pictures(Including my uncle & his family)Would love to have contact with auther as I am doing some reasearch on Radauti. I gave out all my copies of the book and would love to find a copy. Also would be interested in posters of Laurence's work.

perfect.......1999-04-18

I WOULD BE INTERESTED IN FINDING INFORMATION ON THE POSTERS OF LAURENCE SALZMANN. I BOUGHT " THE LAST JEWS OF RADAUTI " POSTER, IN A POSTER SHOP IN PHIL. PA IN 1984 more or less. I'D LIKE TO FIND OUT WERE I CAN SEE (and maybe buy ) HIS COLLECTION, REDEYE141@aol.com thank you

Call It English: The Languages of Jewish American Literature

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Call It English: The Languages of Jewish American Literature
Hana Wirth-Nesher
Manufacturer: Princeton University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Jewish | World Literature | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

Linguistics | Words & Language | Reference | Subjects | Books

All Titles | Qualifying Textbooks - Fall 2007 | Stores | Books

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ASIN: 0691121524

Book Description

Call It English identifies the distinctive voice of Jewish American literature by recovering the multilingual Jewish culture that Jews brought to the United States in their creative encounter with English. In transnational readings of works from the late-nineteenth century to the present by both immigrant and postimmigrant generations, Hana Wirth-Nesher traces the evolution of Yiddish and Hebrew in modern Jewish American prose writing through dialect and accent, cross-cultural translations, and bilingual wordplay.

Call It English tells a story of preoccupation with pronunciation, diction, translation, the figurality of Hebrew letters, and the linguistic dimension of home and exile in a culture constituted of sacred, secular, familial, and ancestral languages. Through readings of works by Abraham Cahan, Mary Antin, Henry Roth, Delmore Schwartz, Bernard Malamud, Saul Bellow, Cynthia Ozick, Grace Paley, Philip Roth, Aryeh Lev Stollman, and other writers, it demonstrates how inventive literary strategies are sites of loss and gain, evasion and invention.

The first part of the book examines immigrant writing that enacts the drama of acquiring and relinquishing language in an America marked by language debates, local color writing, and nativism. The second part addresses multilingual writing by native-born authors in response to Jewish America's postwar social transformation and to the Holocaust.

A profound and eloquently written exploration of bilingual aesthetics and cross-cultural translation, Call It English resounds also with pertinence to other minority and ethnic literatures in the United States.

American Dreams and Nazi Nightmares: Early Holocaust Consciousness and Liberal America, 1957-1965 (Brandeis Series in American Jewish History, Culture and Life)

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As always, superb work!
Draws Very Intriguing Connections

American Dreams and Nazi Nightmares: Early Holocaust Consciousness and Liberal America, 1957-1965 (Brandeis Series in American Jewish History, Culture and Life)
Kirsten Fermaglich
Manufacturer: Brandeis
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Sociologists | Professionals & Academics | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books

General | Americas | History | Subjects | Books

Social History | Historical Study | History | Subjects | Books
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ASIN: 1584655488

Book Description

To a great extent, Holocaust consciousness in the contemporary United States has become intertwined with American Jewish identity and with support for right-wing Israeli politics -- but this was not always the case. In this illuminating study, Kirsten Fermaglich demonstrates that in the late 1950s and early 1960s, many American Jewish writers and academics viewed the Nazi extermination of European Jewry as a subject of universal interest, with important lessons to be learned for the liberal reform of American politics.

Fermaglich analyzes the lives and writings of Stanley M. Elkins, Betty Friedan, Stanley Milgram, and Robert Jay Lifton, four social scientific thinkers whose work was shaped by a liberal perspective. For them, the Holocaust served as a critical frame of reference for a particular issue: Elkins on slavery's legacy, Friedan on the oppressions of domesticity, Milgram on the willingness to obey, and Lifton on war's survivors. In each case, these thinkers were deeply influenced by their Jewish backgrounds, whether by early encounters with antisemitism or by the profound sense that only fate and an ocean had spared them death in Hitler's Europe. Thus, each chose imagery from the concentration camps, albeit utterly devoid of a particular Jewish association, to illuminate themes that advanced liberal politics, including civil rights, the nuclear test ban, feminism, and Vietnam veterans' rights.

Rather than being offended by these authors' comparisons between American institutions and Nazi concentration camps, American audiences of all ethnic and religious backgrounds during the late 1950s and early 1960s generally cheered these authors' Nazi imagery and adopted it as part of their own political ideology. Fermaglich demonstrates that liberalism in the United States in the 1960s was more substantially shaped by the Holocaust than we have previously recognized.

Customer Reviews:

As always, superb work!.......2007-08-31

Dr. Fermaglich was my professor on American Jewish History when I was in college. To this day I consider her class to be one of my favorites. I was very glad to see her book on amazon and purchased it right away. I am not at all surprised of the fine quality of this book. Dr. Fermaglich really knows her subject and with every page, you do discover something new about Holocaust survivors in America. As always, strong and concise points throughout the book; very thorough research.

Thank you, professor, for sharing with us your knowledge again!

Draws Very Intriguing Connections.......2006-03-15

In four brief, well-researched chapters, Fermaglich shows how Stanley Elkins on slave personality, Betty Friedan on oppressed women, Stanley Milgram on obedience to authority, and Robert Jay Lifton on the psychology of survivors, drew an analogy between the Nazi experience and aspects of American society. Moreover, she demonstrates how these analogies, such as Freidan's between the concentration camp and the suburban home, proved to be extremely productive for other thinkers, in a host of ways and disciplines. Important conclusions are that these thinkers were part of a liberal moment that stressed universal values and the human condition. Even if they did not stress Jewish issues, Fermaglich intelligently indicates how these four thinkers were influenced by tensions in American Judaism, and how their work belies the now common view that thinking seriously about the Holocaust did not arrive until the late 1960s and early 1970s. A book full of intriguing connections between thinkers and ideas, ideas and social contexts.

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A memorial to those murdered

Life Death Memories
Thomas Hecht
Manufacturer: Transaction Publishers
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books

Jewish | Ethnic & National | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books

Ukraine | Europe | History | Subjects | Books

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Holocaust | History & Historical Fiction | Teens | Subjects | Books
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ASIN: 0967996015

Book Description

Thomas T Hecht was born in Busk Poland (East of Lwow on the Bug River) in 1929. (Busk is now in Ukraine.) As a boy and young man he experienced the German and, later the Soviet, occupation of Poland. His story is of the destruction of his town and most of its people by the Nazis and Soviets.

This memoir is unusual in that it is told from the viewpoint of a 12- or 13-year-old boy who always managed by one chance or another to avoid being captured by either occupation.

Customer Reviews:

A memorial to those murdered.......2002-06-07

Life Death Memories is the deeply personal and candid recollections of Thomas T. Hecht, a Jewish man who grew up in a Polish shetl during the murderous years of Hitler's horrific and genocidal "Final Solution". Hecht's village culture was obliterated in the wake of the Holocaust; scarce survivors and scarcer memories of it remain today. A memorial to those murdered and a powerful testimony to the human capacity for mass atrocity, Life Death Memories is a welcome addition to Holocaust Studies reference collections and not-to-be-missed powerful reading.

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In Quest for Life: Ave Pax
Lorraine Justman Wisnicki
Manufacturer: Xlibris Corporation
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

General | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books

Holocaust | Historical | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books

Women | Specific Groups | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books

Memoirs | Biographies & Memoirs | Subjects | Books

Anthologies | Poetry | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

General | Poetry | Literature & Fiction | Subjects | Books

American Jewish Life, 1920-1990: American Jewish History (American Jewish History, 4)

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American Jewish Life, 1920-1990: American Jewish History (American Jewish History, 4)
Jeffrey Gurock
Manufacturer: Routledge
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Library Binding

General | Americas | History | Subjects | Books

Social History | Historical Study | History | Subjects | Books

General | Religion & Spirituality | Subjects | Books

General | Judaism | Religion & Spirituality | Subjects | Books
ASIN: 0415919258

Book Description

This volume contains articles on Jewish life from 1920 to the present. Its entries include studies of the economy and migration in postwar America, the impact of Holocaust survivors on American Society and the reaction to gender stereotypes within American Culture.

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