Jewish Studies Commons^™

Wikipedia’S Intentional Distortion Of The History Of The Holocaust, Jan Grabowski, Shira Klein

History Faculty Articles and Research

This essay uncovers the systematic, intentional distortion of Holocaust history on the English-language Wikipedia, the world’s largest encyclopedia. In the last decade, a group of committed Wikipedia editors have been promoting a skewed version of history on Wikipedia, one touted by right-wing Polish nationalists, which whitewashes the role of Polish society in the Holocaust and bolsters stereotypes about Jews. Due to this group’s zealous handiwork, Wikipedia’s articles on the Holocaust in Poland minimize Polish antisemitism, exaggerate the Poles’ role in saving Jews, insinuate that most Jews supported Communism and conspired with Communists to betray Poles (Żydokomuna or Judeo–Bolshevism), blame …

The History Of Teaching The Holocaust In Public Secondary Schools In The United States, From The 1960s To The Present, Julia Highbury Spenser

Senior Projects Spring 2023

Senior Project submitted to The Division of Social Studies of Bard College.

Life Is Beautiful, Or Not: The Myth Of The Good Italian, Shira Klein

History Faculty Books and Book Chapters

"Life is Beautiful illustrates a popular misconception about Italy's role in the Holocaust. The film features the good Italian and the warped view that Italy treated Jews kindly in the late 1930s and during World War II. Historians have proven this claim to be grossly exaggerated, arguing that Italians persecuted Jews vigorously. Yet popular representations of the past-films, novels, museum exhibits, and websites-continue to give credence to the notion that Italians were overwhelmingly good to Jews. Although France and Germany cultivated similar self-acquitting myths in the decades immediately after the war, they eventually moved on to accept the more …

Saving Adele: A History Of The Portrait Of Adele Bloch-Bauer I, Ariel A. Furman

Quest

Individual Research Project

Research in progress for HIST 1302: United States History II

Faculty Mentor: Kyle Wilkison, Ph.D.

Nothing ruins an enriching intellectual experience quite like having it assigned. Consequently, Honors History 1302 students began by identifying their own passions and interests. They then chose topics of immediate and abiding personal interest and produced research projects that reflected that energy and commitment. Their research probed a marvelous variety of historical topics from culture, medicine, science, politics, and economics. They researched and wrote about anti-fascist American comic books during World War II, disturbing historic treatments for the mentally ill, advances in …

Through The Eyes Of Children: Social Oppression Under Nazi Rule From 1933 To 1938 Reflections Of Three Holocaust Survivors, Lauren Ashley Bradford

The Gettysburg Historical Journal

This paper discusses the experiences of three Berlin native child survivors of the Holocaust through analysis of their oral testimonies. Their unique voices help shed light on the various ways in which lives were forever changed for those who were legally identified as Jewish in Nazi Germany by way of social oppression. This paper highlights three key years that each survivor discussed at length in their testimonies: Hitler’s Chancellorship in 1933, the Nuremberg Laws in 1935, and Kristallnacht in 1938. Ultimately, this paper argues for the importance of these years and labels them as being a crucial part in the …

Summer Haven: The Catskills, The Holocaust, And The Literary Imagination (Jews Of Russia & Eastern Europe And Their Legacy), Holli Levitsky

Faculty Pub Night

No abstract provided.

A Female Adolescent Bystander's Diary And The Jewish Hungarian Holocaust, Gergely Kunt

CLCWeb: Comparative Literature and Culture

In his article "A Female Adolescent Bystander's Diary and the Jewish Hungarian Holocaust" Gergely Kunt analyzes the unpublished diary manuscript of Margit Molnár, a Hungarian Roman Catholic adolescent girl born in 1927 who kept a diary between 1941 and 1949. Kunt's analysis shows how Molnár viewed Jews, the persecution of Jews, and the anti-Jewish terror in Budapest. As the diary documents, Molnár's views of the Jews temporarily changed during the Arrow Cross's reign of terror in October 1944 when she received news of the Arrow Cross murdering Jews en masse in Budapest. However, once the war was over, Molnár's deep-seated …

Lechem Hara (Bad Bread), Lechem Tov (Good Bread): Survival And Sacrifice During The Holocaust, Carolyn S. Ellis

Carolyn Ellis

In Judaism, human nature is understood as existing on a spectrum between yetzer hara (evil inclination) and yetzer tov (good inclination). Jews struggle to suppress the yetzer hara and exercise the yetzer tov. Based on an oral history interview and co-created by a survivor of the Holocaust and a researcher, this story focuses on bread (lechem) and hunger in a Polish ghetto. The narrative encourages reflection about good and evil and about the tangled intermingling of the generosity of self-sacrifice and the instinctive drive for survival.