History Commons^™

Film Review: Operation Finale, Melanie O'Brien

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

In 1960, the Israeli intelligence agency, Mossad, undertook an operation in Argentina to capture the architect of the Final Solution, Adolf Eichmann, and bring him to Israel to stand trial. Operation Finale [Chris Weitz, 2018] tells the story of this intelligence operation: the actions of and challenges for the agents involved, in a way that captures the banality of Eichmann’s personality before it was put on show for the world to see in his televised trial. Operation Finale is available on Netflix, rendering it a Holocaust film with an extraordinarily large reach.

New Perspectives On Kristallnacht: After 80 Years, The Nazi Pogrom In Global Comparison, Wolf Gruner, Steven J. Ross

Purdue University Press Book Previews

On November 9 and 10, 1938, Nazi leadership unleashed an unprecedented orchestrated wave of violence against Jews in Germany, Austria, and the Sudetenland, supposedly in response to the assassination of a Nazi diplomat by a young Polish Jew, but in reality to force the remaining Jews out of the country. During the pogrom, Stormtroopers, Hitler Youth, and ordinary Germans murdered more than a hundred Jews (many more committed suicide) and ransacked and destroyed thousands of Jewish institutions, synagogues, shops, and homes. Thirty thousand Jews were arrested and sent to Nazi concentration camps.

Volume 17 of the Casden Annual Review includes …

Eva And Otto: Resistance, Refugees, And Love In The Time Of Hitler, Tom Pfister, Kathy Pfister, Peter Pfister

Purdue University Press Books

Eva and Otto is a true story about German opposition and resistance to Hitler as revealed through the early lives of Eva Lewinski Pfister (1910–1991) and Otto Pfister (1900–1985). It is an intimate and epic account of two Germans—Eva born Jewish, Otto born Catholic—who worked with a little-known German political group that resisted and fought against Hitler in Germany before 1933 and then in exile in Paris before the German invasion of France in May 1940. After their improbable escapes from separate internment and imprisonment in Europe, Eva obtained refuge in America in October 1940 where she worked to rescue …

Starring Hitler! Adolf Hitler As The Main Character In Twentieth-First Century French Fiction, Marion Duval

Studies in 20th & 21st Century Literature

Adolf Hitler has remained a prominent figure in popular culture, often portrayed as either the personification of evil or as an object of comedic ridicule. Although Hitler has never belonged solely to history books, testimonials, or documentaries, he has recently received a great deal of attention in French literary fiction. This article reviews three recent French novels by established authors: La part de l’autre (The Alternate Hypothesis) by Emmanuel Schmitt, Lui (Him) by Patrick Besson and La jeunesse mélancolique et très désabusée d’Adolf Hitler (Adolf Hitler’s Depressed and Very Disillusioned Youth) by Michel Folco; all of which belong to the …

Bridging The Divide Through Graphic Novels: Teaching Non-Jews’ Holocaust Narratives To Jewish Students, Matt Reingold

SANE journal: Sequential Art Narrative in Education

The following paper considers how integrating Holocaust graphic novels that prominently feature non-Jewish characters can be effective in introducing Jewish students to new perspectives on contemporary understandings of the Holocaust. Drawing on the results of recent studies about rising anti-Semitism and Jews' concerns for their safety, feelings of insularity are understandably becoming more pervasive within the Jewish community. The author argues that in order to combat the negative aspects of this entrenchment, Jewish students need to be introduced to thoughtful and complex narratives that relate to historical anti-Semitic incidents which also model ways of building relationships between the disparate communities …

Hashtag Holocaust: Negotiating Memory In The Age Of Social Media, Erica Fagen

Doctoral Dissertations

This study examines the representation of Holocaust memory through photographs on the social media platforms of Flickr and Instagram. It looks at how visitors – armed with digital cameras and smartphones – depicted their experiences at the former concentration camps of Auschwitz-Birkenau, Dachau, Sachsenhausen, and Neuengamme. The study’s arguments are twofold: firstly, social media posts about visits to former concentration camps are a form of Holocaust memory, and secondly, social media allows people from all backgrounds the opportunity to share their memories online. Holocaust memory on social media introduces a new, digital kind of memory called “filtered memory.” This study …

Book Review: Unlikely Heroes: The Place Of Holocaust Rescuers In Research And Teaching, Stephanie Fagin-Jones

Heroism Science

Representing the first in a new series, Contemporary Holocaust Studies, from the University of Nebraska Press, this valuable book is the result of a collection of papers presented at the Sommerhauser Symposium on Holocaust Education in April 2017 at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. This biennial symposia, generously supported by third-generation survivor siblings Peter Sommerhauser and Eileen Sommerhauser-Putter, along with The University of Nebraska, focuses on the integration of research and teaching of Holocaust scholarship. The editors thus seek to address an urgent need to bring past and present academic knowledge on the subject of Holocaust rescue into the classroom …

My Journey As A Child Holocaust Survivor [Poster], University Of Northern Iowa. Center For Holocaust And Genocide Education.

Center for Holocaust and Genocide Education Documents

A poster announcing the presentation by Harold Kasimow on his experiences during the Holocaust.

A Question Of G-D: Jewish Theology And Memoirs Of The Holocaust, Rebecca Mcclellan

Honors College Theses

The Holocaust, the systematic murder of the European Jews by the Germans, had massive impacts on the religious beliefs of those Jews who survived it. Nazi authorities and their accomplices stripped Jews away from their homes, their families, and everything they knew. Forced to work under inhumane conditions, many came to question the God they had followed and the religion they had practiced. This thesis investigates the memoirs of five Jewish survivors to analyze the impact the Holocaust had on their faith.

Waging Rescue: Official Us Efforts To Save Jews During The Holocaust [Poster], University Of Northern Iowa. Center For Holocaust And Genocide Education.

Center for Holocaust and Genocide Education Documents

A poster announcing a presentation by Rebecca Erbelding on the official United States efforts to rescue Jews from the Holocaust.

Assessing The Impact Of Holocaust Education On Adolescents’ Civic Values: Experimental Evidence From Arkansas, Mathew Lee, Molly I. Beck

Education Reform Faculty and Graduate Students Publications

American adults overwhelmingly agree that the Holocaust should be taught in schools, yet few studies investigate the potential benefits of Holocaust education. We evaluate the impact of Holocaust education on several civic outcomes, including “upstander” efficacy (willingness to intervene on behalf of others), likelihood of exercising civil disobedience, empathy for the suffering of others, and tolerance of others with different values and lifestyles. We recruit students from two local high schools and randomize access to the Arkansas Holocaust Education Conference, where students have the chance to hear from a Holocaust survivor and to participate in breakout sessions with leading Holocaust …

Museum Websites And Restitution: Rediscovering Holocaust-Era Objects In The Digital Age, Gabriella Bloom

MA Theses

Under the Third Reich, Europe experienced one of the most far-reaching examples of plunder of cultural property in modern history. While the Allies succeeded in returning many objects and artworks towards the end of the war and initially following it, many objects remained missing and hidden. The late 1990s led to a resurgence of interest in Holocaust-Era looting, resulting in a rise of cases and litigation over previously plundered objects. As many looted artworks materialized in United States museums, museums began further researching their collections’ provenance and inputting this information online. Today, most major museums have a section of their …

In Spite Of You, We Live On: A Commemorative Painting, Goldie Gross

Publications and Research

This painting is the product of a Yiddish language independent study with Professor Debra Caplan. It depicts a war portrait of Hitler with a stumbling stone inscribed with the words "אויף צו להכעיס דיר לעבן מיר נאך" (in spite of you, we live on) in the center of his face. It is accompanied by an explanation of the painting.

On Writing And Righting History: The Stakes Of Holocaust Interpretation And Remembrance In Poland And The United States, Noa Gutow-Ellis

Honors Theses

This thesis explores the ways in which American Jews - and Americans more generally, by way of the Americanization of the Holocaust - have come to think about and understand Poland and how Poland has subsequently rejected their narratives. Historically, American Jewish cultural works have placed Poland as a geographic space, nation, and people at the center of stories of Jewish suffering in the Holocaust and World War II. In its quest to right and correct historical misunderstandings, this project looks at the ways Poland has worked to completely revise the historical narrative.

Through tracing historiographies of separateness between Jewish …