The Holocaust A Reader

by Gigliotti, Simone; Lang, Berel

• ISBN13: 9781405113991
• ISBN10: 1405113995
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2005-01-28
• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell

Summary

This interdisciplinary collection of primary and secondary readings encourages scholars and students to engage critically with current debates about the origins, implementation and postwar interpretation of the Holocaust. Interdisciplinary content encourages students to engage with philosophical, political, cultural and literary debate as well as historiographical issues. Integrates oral histories and testimonies from both victims and perpetrators, including Jewish council leaders, victims of ghettos and camps, SS officials and German soldiers. Subsections can be used as the basis for oral or written exercises. Whole articles or substantial extracts are included wherever possible.

Author Biography

Simone Gigliotti is a lecturer in the History Program at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand, and a Fellow in the Department of History at the University of Melbourne, Australia. Previously, she taught at the University of the West Indies, Jamaica, and was a visiting scholar at the Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies, US Holocaust Memorial Museum, Washington DC.

Berel Lang is Professor of Humanities at Trinity College, Hartford, Connecticut. His many books include The Future of the Holocaust: Between History and Memory (1999) and Act and Idea in the Nazi Genocide (1990). His forthcoming book is Post-Holocaust: Interpretation, Misinterpretation, and the Claims of History.

Table of Contents

List of Maps	viii
Acknowledgments	ix
Chronology	xiii
Glossary	xix
Introduction	1	(8)
Simone Gigliotti
Berel Lang
Part I Preconditions: Nazism and the Turn from Anti-Judaism to Antisemitism	9	(76)
Introduction	11	(6)
Anti-Semites	17	(27)
Bernard Lewis
From Weimar to Hitler	44	(24)
Robert S. Wistrich
Nation and Race	68	(14)
Adolf Hitler
Nuremberg Law for the Protection of the German Blood and of the German Honour of 15 September 1935	82	(3)
Part II A Racial Europe: Nazi Population and Resettlement Policy	85	(86)
Introduction	87	(5)
The Setting	92	(32)
Henry Friedlander
Ghetto Formation	124	(19)
Raul Hilberg
From ``Ethnic Cleansing'' to Genocide to the ``Final Solution'': The Evolution of Nazi Jewish Policy, 1939--1941	143	(24)
Christopher R. Browning
Some Thoughts on the Treatment of the Alien Population in the East	167	(4)
Heinrich Himmler
Part III War and the Turn to Genocide	171	(62)
Introduction	173	(4)
The ``Commissar Decree,'' June 6, 1941	177	(4)
Affidavit of SS Gruppenfuhrer Otto Ohlendorf	181	(3)
Operation Barbarossa as a War of Conquest and Annihilation	184	(14)
Jurgen Forster
From Mass Murder to the ``Final Solution'': The Shooting of Jewish Civilians during the First Months of the Eastern Campaign within the Context of the Nazi Jewish Genocide	198	(22)
Peter Longerich
Savage War: German Warfare and Moral Choices in World War II	220	(13)
Omer Bartov
Part IV Whose ``Final Solution''? Revisiting Intentionalism and Functionalism	233	(74)
Introduction	235	(4)
Hitler's Reichstag Speech, January 30, 1939	239	(4)
Adolf Hitler
Minutes of the Wannsee Conference, January 20, 1942	243	(9)
Intentions and the ``Final Solution''	252	(12)
Berel Lang
A Controversy about the Historicization of National Socialism	264	(37)
Martin Broszat
Saul Friedlander
Justice Jackson's Report to the President on Atrocities and War Crimes, June 7, 1945	301	(6)
Robert H. Jackson
Part V Response and Testimony: At the Center of the Whirlwind	307	(80)
Introduction	309	(4)
Inside the Ghetto	313	(20)
Emmanuel Ringelblum
Notebook H	333	(15)
Oskar Rosenfeld
The Second Winter: October 29, 1942--March 18, 1943	348	(28)
Herman Kruk
Letters from Westerbork	376	(11)
Etty Hillesum
Part VI Genocide and the Holocaust	387
Introduction	389
United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, December 9, 1948	393	(5)
Defining Genocide as a Sociological Concept	398	(22)
Helen Fein
Is the Holocaust Simply Another Example of Genocide?	420	(28)
Mark Levene
Conceptual Blockages and Definitional Dilemmas in the ``Racial Century'': Genocides of Indigenous Peoples and the Holocaust	448
A. Dirk Moses