The Holocaust: Origins, Implementation, Aftermath

by Bartov; Omer

• ISBN13: 9780415150361
• ISBN10: 0415150361
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Nonspecific Binding
• Copyright: 2000-01-31
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

The Holocaust: Origins, Implementation, Aftermathoffers a critical and important study of the Holocaust. Complete with an introduction that summarizes the state of the field, this book contains major reinterpretations by leading Holocaust authors (including Levi, Burleigh and Goldhagen, among others) along with key texts on testimony, memory and justice after the catastrophe. The book challenges conventional interpretations and truths of the Holocaust, whether it has to do with the centrality of anti-Semitism, the importance of economic calculations or the timing of the decision on the "Final Solution." Three powerful texts provide readers with a close look at the psychology of a perpetrator, the attitude of the bystanders and the fate of the victims. Finally, there is an analysis of survivor's oral testimonies, a deeply revealing discussion on the limits of transmitting the experience of the camps to posterity and a powerful plea for the prosecution of crimes against humanity.

Table of Contents

Series editor's preface	vii
Acknowledgements	ix
Introduction	1	(18)
Omer Bartov
PART I Origins: antisemitism and scientific racism	19	(58)
The destruction of the European Jews: precedents	21	(22)
Raul Hilberg
Psychiatry, German society and the Nazi ``euthanasia'' programme	43	(20)
Michael Burleigh
Step by step: the expansion of murder, 1939--1941	63	(14)
Henry Friedlander
PART II Implementation: beyond intentionalism and functionalism	77	(156)
The extermination of the European Jews in historiography: fifty years later	79	(13)
Saul Friedlander
The planning intelligentsia and the ``Final Solution''	92	(14)
Gotz Aly
The Wannsee Conference, the fate of German Jews, and Hitler's decision in principle to exterminate all European Jews	106	(56)
Christian Gerlach
German soldiers and the Holocaust: historiography, research and implications	162	(23)
Omer Bartov
``Once again I've got to play general to the Jews'': from the war diary of Blutordenstrager Felix Landau	185	(19)
Ernst Klee
Willi Dressen
Volker Riess
Places far away, places very near: Mauthausen, the camps of the Shoah, and the bystanders	204	(15)
Gordon J. Horwitz
Under a cruel star: a life in Prague 1941-1968	219	(14)
Heda Margolius Kovaly
PART III Aftermath: testimony, justice, and denial	233	(59)
Redefining heroic behavior: the impromptu self and the Holocaust experience	235	(16)
Lawrence Lancer
The gray zone	251	(22)
Primo Levi
Remembering in vain: the Klaus Barbie trial and crimes against humanity	273	(19)
Alain Finkielkraut
Index	292