Knowledge of the Mass Murder of Jewish People Possessed by Ordinary German

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gillian Yijing Liu
Keyword(s):  
Jewish People ◽  
Mass Murder ◽  
Primary Sources ◽  
Direct Result ◽  
Nazi Party ◽  
Secondary Sources ◽  
Nazi Ideology ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
High Degree ◽  
Second World

In 1933, the Nazi Party, led by Adolf Hitler, came to political power in Germany. As a direct result of the Nazi’s actions, approximately 6 million Jewish victims were killed. The Nazi Party members were undoubtedly responsible for these results, but were the non- party Germans? To answer this sensitive question, the extent of knowledge of these events must be investigated. To what extent did “ordinary” German civilians know about the extermination of Jews during the Holocaust in Berlin from 1942 to the end of the Second World War? The population must be categorized by those who knew about the Jewish deportations and murders, those who chose to know, those who chose not to know, and those who did not know. To investigate this idea, oral interviews were collected. They hold value as a first hand perspective, but have limitations of dishonesty and censorship of information. A large collection of survey information from 1985 was heavily considered, in addition to various secondary sources such as articles, videos, and books, and primary sources such as maps and photographs. After weighing probable statistics and popularity of Nazi ideology, evidence supports the idea that more Germans chose not to know about the extermination of Jews than any other extent, due to the high number of Nazi ideology supporters, high degree of terror propaganda, and indoctrinated youth. 

scholarly journals To the question of the relationship between the brothers of Sheptytskyi and the Jews

2020 ◽  
pp. 159-178
Author(s):  
Ivan Matkovskyy
Keyword(s):  
World View ◽  
Jewish People ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Personal Experiences ◽  
History Of ◽  
Deep Relationship ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Second World

The history of relations of the Sheptytskyj family and the Jewish people reaches back to those remote times when the representatives of the Sheptytskyi lineage held high and honorable secular and clerical posts, and the Jews, either upon invitation of King Danylo of Halych or King Casimir the Great, began to build up their own world in Halychyna. Throughout the whole life of Metropolitan Sheptytskyi and Blessed Martyr Klymentii, a thread of cooperation with the Jews is traceable. It should be noted that heroic deeds of the Sheptytskyi Brothers to save Jews during the Second World War were not purely circumstantial: they were preceded by a long-standing deep relationship with representatives of Jewish culture. In addition, the sense of responsibility of the Spiritual Pastor, as advocated by the Brothers, extended to all people of different religions and genesis with no exception. The world-view principles of Metropolitan Sheptytskyi are important for us in order to understand what was going on in the then society in attitude to the Jews. Also, of importance is the influence of the Metropolitan on Kasymyr Sheptytskyi, later Fr. Klymentii, because the Archbishop was not only his Brother, but also a church authority and the leader. And if from under the Metropolitan Sheptytskyi’s pen letters and pastorals were published, they were directives, instructions, edifications and explanations for the faithful and the clergy, and not at all, the products of His own reflections or personal experiences, which Archbishop Andrey wanted to share with the faithful. On the grounds of the available archive materials, an effort to reconstruct the chief moments of those relations was undertaken, aiming among others, to illustrate the fact that the saving of Jews during the Holocaust was not incidental, nor with any underlying reasons behind, but a natural manifestation of a good Christian tradition of «Love thy Neighbor», to which the Sheptytskyj were faithful. Keywords: Andrey Sheptytskyi, the Blessed Hieromartyr Klymentii Sheptytskyi, Jews, the Holocaust, Galicia, Righteous Among the Nations.

Bondage to the Dead: Poland and the Memory of the Holocaust

2000 ◽  
pp. 444-446
Author(s):  
Michael C. Steinlauf
Keyword(s):  
Primary Sources ◽  
Polish Literature ◽  
The People ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
The Press ◽  
Polish Society ◽  
Long Time ◽  
Sufficient Distance ◽  
Changing Attitudes ◽  
Second World

(Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 1997); pp. xiv + 190 + 28 illus. The author of this book is well known among Polish historians. Since 1983 he has visited Poland several times and studied Polish–Jewish relations on site. In his new book he undertakes the difficult task of analysing the changing attitudes of Polish society towards the Holocaust, until 1995. He is probably the best person to write such a book. The Polish and Jewish historians who spent the Second World War in Poland or who are living now in Poland seem the best situated for gathering sources. They are, however, significantly affected by past and contemporary debates over the problems discussed in this book, and it would be difficult for them to free themselves from their own personal experiences. Yet most of the scholars living abroad are too far from the primary sources. Michael Steinlauf, who was born in France, speaks all the necessary languages (Polish and Yiddish, notably), has spent a long time in Poland, and has many Polish friends. He is free from the most significant personal biases and, at the same time, has the necessary knowledge of Polish literature, the press, and the people. He can, therefore, understand the problems and has sufficient distance from Poland and her current hot quarrels to view them with a properly critical eye....

scholarly journals AN EXAMINATION OF THE POWER POLITICS IN THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS AND THE COMMENCEMENT OF THE SECOND WORLD WAR, 1918-1945

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-4
Author(s):  
EDIAGBONYA MICHAEL
Keyword(s):  
Second World War ◽  
League Of Nations ◽  
Primary Sources ◽  
World Peace ◽  
World War ◽  
Power Politics ◽  
Secondary Sources ◽  
The First World War ◽  
Second World ◽  
First World

This paper discusses the power politics in the League of Nations. It examines the League of Nations as a formal international organisation whose purpose was the maintenance of world peace. It analyse the gross oppression of the major European powers over the smaller nations, as well as engaging in bitter rivalry yet the League of Nations could not take decisive actions. The inability of the League of Nations to prevent the occurrence of the Second World War also came to focus. Data for the study was obtained through oral interview as primary sources and secondary sources such as books, newspapers, articles, theses, dissertation journals etc. It was found that the establishment of the League of Nations became an acceptable concept because of casualties and devastation associated with the First World War. It was demonstrated that the League of Nations later became a toothless bull dog because it could not prevent the constant violations of its covenant by the major European powers. It was also found that the second world could have been avoided if the organisation was proactive in handling the issues that led to the war. It concluded that the League of Nations lacked the cohesive force to adequately intervene in conflict and crises.

scholarly journals Polska literatura najnowsza i Holokaust – edukacyjny potencjał fikcji?

2020 ◽  
pp. 372-388
Author(s):  
Agnieszka Czyżak
Keyword(s):  
Mental Hospital ◽  
Main Part ◽  
Jewish People ◽  
Second World War ◽  
The Novel ◽  
World War ◽  
German Occupation ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
History Of ◽  
Second World

The article contains considerations regarding memory of the Holocaust in Polish contemporary prose and analyses the arguments for and against fictitious representations of theShoah. The author discusses the changes in treating fiction which narrates the history of Jewish people during the Second World War – from works of fiction published after the war (e.g. Wielki Tydzień by Jerzy Andrzejewski) to popular thrillers written in the 21st century. The main part of this article is devoted to a novel Tworki written by Marek Bieńczyk in 1999, telling a story of young people – Poles and Jews – employed in a mental hospital during German occupation. The novel was at the centre stage of discussion about relationship between fiction and the Shoah theme, yet the author of the article argues that it may serve as an important stepping stone in exemplifying history. This literary vision of the Holocaust (defined as “pastoral thriller”) shows educational possibilities of fiction.

Homo Holocaustus, or Autobiographical Female Experience of the Holocaust

2020 ◽  
Vol nr specjalny 1(2020) ◽  
pp. 275-292
Author(s):  
Natalia Żórawska-Janik ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Jewish People ◽  
Mass Murder ◽  
Traumatic Experience ◽  
Trauma Studies ◽  
Female Authors ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Characteristic Features ◽  
Jewish Descent ◽  
Year 2000

The aim of this paper is to present the motif of the Shoah in female autobiographcial prose after the year 2000. The paper shows that, in recent years, more and more female authors in the second and third post-Holocaust generations have been recording their traumatic experience, and that the reason for it lies in the social stigmatization of Jewish people. It is stressed here that the issues of the Holocaust are part and parcel of a cultural taboo and – similarly to female written prose – they are frequently ignored or evaluated negatively. The Holocaust issues are tackled by contemporary young writers of Jewish descent who – contrary to the previous generation authors – have not experienced the mass murder of Jews; nevertheless, they feel its effects today. This paper proves that the research into trauma studies is not really conducted in Poland, and paying attention to a female viewpoint is very rare. The examples referred to in the paper of the autobiographical novels by Ewa Kuryluk, Agata Tuszyńska, Roma Ligocka and Magdalena Tulli demonstrate that this kind of writing is becoming more and more important within the literature focused on the Shoah. Compared to the autobiographical fiction by Marek Bieńczyk, Jan Tomasz Gross and Michał Głowiński, female Holocaust stories are distinguished by their authenticity, emotionality, intimacy and honesty of narration. The stories are devoid of any pathos, and they highlight the figure of a mother. Moreover, their confessions are based on the physical feeling of the legacy which has remained in their hearts and minds after the trauma that their loved ones had to experience. An attempt to describe prose post-Holocaust prose is made in comparison to Jewish literature in Poland, drawing the reader’s attention to the characteristic features of these issues compared to the autobiographical works by men.

scholarly journals Special Section: Conceptualizations of the Holocaust in Germany, Poland, Lithuania, Belarus, and Ukraine: Historical Research, Public Debates, and Methodological Disputes. Foreword

2019 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
pp. 124-128
Author(s):  
Antony Polonsky
Keyword(s):  
Special Section ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Mass Murder ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Comparative Approach ◽  
The Past ◽  
System A ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
The Many ◽  
Second World

This article is part of the special cluster titled Conceptualizations of the Holocaust in Germany, Lithuania, Poland, and Ukraine since the 1990s, guest edited by Grzegorz Rossoliński-Liebe. This special section examines how debates on local participation in the mass murder of the Jews during the Second World War have evolved in Poland, Lithuania, Belarus, and Ukraine. The comparative approach adopted in this collection has highlighted the common problems in these four countries in coming to terms with the “dark past”—those aspects of the national past that provoke shame, guilt, and regret. Like the contributors to this collection I believe it is debate among historians that offers the best chance to move forward and that the intervention of politicians has had a clearly deleterious effect. This debate needs to be conducted in an open and collegial manner although we may differ strongly in our conclusions. We should always remember that the past cannot be altered. We can only accept the tragic and shocking events that have occurred and try to learn from them. This is a process that could begin in northeastern Europe only after the collapse of the communist system—a coming to terms with the many neglected and taboo aspects of the past in all four countries. The first stage of approaching such issues has usually been from a moral point of view—a settlement of long-overdue accounts, often accompanied by apologies for past behaviour. It seemed that we were reaching a second stage, where apologetics would increasingly be replaced by careful and detailed research based on archives and reliable first-hand testimony.

Genocidal Intent Before the Icty

2003 ◽  
Vol 52 (2) ◽  
pp. 447-462 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cécile Tournaye
Keyword(s):  
International Criminal ◽  
Jewish People ◽  
Second World War ◽  
International Criminal Law ◽  
Genocide Convention ◽  
Legal Interpretation ◽  
World War ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Rules And Principles ◽  
Second World

Several crimes recognized in international criminal law are intimately linked to the horrors of the holocaust. Persecution, extermination, and genocide are historically intertwined notions that in all minds refer to the ordeal of the Jewish people before and during the Second World War. This is particularly so with genocide. The 1948 Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (the ‘Genocide Convention’) is a legal answer to the holocaust. Yet, as any legal notion, genocide goes beyond the characterisation of a specific historical tragedy. It is fated to evolve through legal interpretation, which operates pursuant to certain rules and principles that only subsidiarily rely on the drafting history.

scholarly journals Stigma management and justifications of the self in denazification accounts

2018 ◽  
Vol 31 (1) ◽  
pp. 141-165 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dominic Detzen ◽  
Sebastian Hoffmann
Keyword(s):  
German Society ◽  
Primary Sources ◽  
Nazi Party ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Nazi Ideology ◽  
Past Behavior ◽  
State Apparatus ◽  
University Archives ◽  
Post War ◽  
The University

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to study how two accounting professors at a German university dealt with their denazification, a process carried out by the Allied Forces following the Second World War to free German society from Nazi ideology. It is argued that the professors carried a stigma due to their affiliation with a university that had been aligned with the Nazi state apparatus. Design/methodology/approach The paper uses Goffman’s work on “Stigma” (1963/1986) and “Frame Analysis” (1974/1986) to explore how the professors aimed to dismiss any link with the Nazi regime. Primary sources from the university archives were accessed with a particular focus on the professors’ post-war justification accounts. Findings The paper shows how the professors created a particular frame, which they supported by downplaying frame breaks, primarily their Nazi party memberships. Instead, they were preoccupied with what Goffman (1974/1986) terms “the vulnerability of experience,” exploiting that their past behavior requires context and is thus open to interpretation. The professors themselves provide this guidance to readers, which is a strategy that we call “authoring” of past information. Originality/value The paper shows how “counter accounts” can be constructed by assigning roles and powers to characters therein and by providing context and interpreting behavior on behalf of the readers. It is suggested that this “authoring” of past information is successful only on the surface. A closer examination unveils ambiguity, making this strategy risky and fragile.

Holocaust, the

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steven T. Katz
Keyword(s):  
Jewish History ◽  
Mass Murder ◽  
Process Theology ◽  
Strict Sense ◽  
Death Of God ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
Tragic Event ◽  
Second World ◽  
Working Out ◽  
Present Possibility

The specific, tragic event of the Holocaust – the mass murder of Jews by the Nazis during the Second World War – raises profound theological and philosophical problems, particularly problems about the existence of God and the meaning of Jewish existence. Among the thinkers who have tried to wrestle with the conceptual challenge posed by the destruction of European Jewry, three who have presented original arguments that can be termed, in a relatively strict sense, philosophical are Richard L. Rubenstein, Emil Fackenheim and Arthur A. Cohen. Rubenstein has formulated an argument that turns on the theological difficulties raised by the realities of the evil of Auschwitz and Treblinka in a world putatively created and ordered by a benign God. For him, such evil decisively refutes the traditional theological claim that a God possessed of goodness and power exists, and entails the conclusion that ‘there is no [traditional] God’. In working out this conceptual position, he uses an unsatisfactory empirical theory of verification concerning religious propositions and too narrow a notion of evidence, both historical and ethical, that ultimately undermines his counterclaims and ‘Death of God’ affirmations. Fackenheim seeks not to defend a religious ‘explanation’ of the Holocaust, but rather to provide a ‘response’ to it that maintains the reality of God and his continued presence in human, and particularly Jewish, history. To do so, he uses Martin Buber’s understanding of dialogical revelation, asserting that revelation is an ever-present possibility, and formulates his own moral-theological demand to the effect that after the Holocaust, Jewish survival is the ‘614th commandment’ (there are 613 commandments in classical Judaism). Fackenheim’s defence of this position, however, is philosophically problematic. Cohen provides a ‘process theology’ argument as an explanation of the Holocaust; that is, the Holocaust requires a revision in our understanding of God’s nature and action. It forces the theological conclusion that God does not possess the traditional ‘omni’ predicates; God does not intervene in human affairs in the manner taught by traditional Western theology. However, Cohen’s working out of a process theological position in relation to the Holocaust raises as many philosophical problems as it solves.

Nechama Tec Defiance: The Bielski Partisans

1998 ◽  
pp. 360-361
Author(s):  
Franklin Littell
Keyword(s):  
Jewish People ◽  
Second World War ◽  
The Other ◽  
Military Occupation ◽  
World War ◽  
Chief Of Staff ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
History Of ◽  
Women And Children ◽  
Second World

This chapter assesses Nechama Tec's book, Defiance: The Bielski Partisans, which introduces a new aspect to the history of the Holocaust period. The book details how several hundred men, women, and children in western Belorussia during the Second World War maintained a surviving and fighting community. These Jewish partisans were blessed with a gifted leader, Tuvia Bielski. Bielski emerged out of the chaos of war conditions and the assault on the Jewish people, an assault not only by the Germans but by some sectors of the peoples subject to their military occupation. Around him he gathered a triad of loyal and gifted aides: his brothers Asael and Zus, and his chief of staff Lazar Malbin. Their relationship with Russian partisan groups ranged from precarious to friendly, depending on the measure of overt antisemitism on the part of the other partisans. The Bielski group pursued a policy of harsh retribution towards villagers who collaborated with the Germans and helped to recapture Jews. The non-Jewish villagers came to respect the courage and efficiency of the Jewish partisans and there were fewer denunciations and safer roads as a result.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document