This book uses an empathic reading of Yiddish diarists’ feelings, evaluations, and assessments about persecutors in the Warsaw, Lodz, and Vilna ghettos to present an emotional history of persecution in the Nazi ghettos. It re-centers the daily experiences of psychological and physical violence that made up ghetto life and that ultimately led victims to use their diaries as a place of agency to question and attempt to maintain their own beliefs in pre-war Jewish and Enlightenment ethics and morality. Holocaust scholars and students, as well as people interested in personal narratives, interpersonal relations, and the problem of dehumanization during the Holocaust will find this study particularly thought-provoking. Essentially, this book highlights the benefits of reading with empathy and paying attention to emotions for understanding the experiences of people in the past, especially those facing tragedy and trauma.

"This book uses an empathic reading of Yiddish diarists' feelings, evaluations, and assessments about persecutors in the Warsaw, Lodz, and Vilna ghettos to present an emotional history of persecution in the Nazi ghettos. It re-centers the daily experiences of psychological and physical violence that made up ghetto life and that ultimately led victims to use their diaries as a place of agency to question and attempt to maintain their own beliefs in pre-war Jewish and Enlightenment ethics and morality. Holocaust scholars and students, as well as people interested in personal narratives, interpersonal relations, and the problem of dehumanization during the Holocaust will find this study particularly thought-provoking. Essentially, this book highlights the benefits of reading with empathy and paying attention to emotions for understanding the experiences of people in the past, especially those facing tragedy and trauma"--

The Allied Bombing of Central Italy examines the results of the Second World War Allied bombing campaign on Palestrina and Rome, Italy, and the long-term impact of the war on the mountainside town and on the Barberini family's art collection including the Nile Mosaic. It explores the history and cultural significance of Palestrina, its strategic setting, the recovery of the town, the restoration of the Nile Mosaic, which remains the largest Egyptian-style mosaic extant. A unique aspect of the destruction was that it uncovered a pagan temple, the Sanctuary of Fortuna. The bombing destroyed the homes built on its terraces but revealed the ancient structure buried beneath which had remained unseen for half a millennium. It took more than a decade for the mosaic to be restored and the Sanctuary of Fortuna established as a national archeological museum. The book explores the pressure by the Mussolini regime to control the Barberini family's art collection, the uses of cultural materials for propaganda purposes, the Allied use of airpower in the Italian theater of war, the postwar decision-making and recovery process. The book is one of the very few long-range studies of the war's impact on a single Italian town. It is suitable for academic seminars and an educated general audience.

This book is a study of Adolf Hitler in his role as military commander and strategist from the beginning of the Second World War until the end of 1942, examining in detail the campaign in southern Russia that year. The thesis challenges the post-war narrative of Hitler as a dilettante who was solely responsible for the strategic and operational errors that led to Germany’s defeat in the war. Instead, this research highlights that decisions made by Hitler with respect to such disparate themes as strategy, operations, logistics, intelligence, economics, air and naval power, and coalition warfare were generally sound if viewed from his perspective, even if they were not ultimately successful. It also gives an overview of his own ideas concerning all aspects of military affairs, such as intelligence, command, and morale. The careful analysis of Hitler’s decision-making process offers a unique contribution to Second World War scholarship and moves beyond a superficial understanding that the war’s outcome was a result of Hitler’s ineptitude as a military leader. Warlord Hitler will appeal to postgraduates and specialists in military history, as well as general readers interested in a deeper study of the Second World War.

This edited volume is a sequel to, and a development of, The Long Aftermath: Cultural Legacies of Europe at War, 1936-2016 (2016). It focuses on the six major European countries and states that remained officially neutral throughout the Second World War, namely Ireland, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the Vatican. Its transnational, comparative and interdisciplinary approach addresses complex questions pertaining to collective remembrance, national policies and politics, and intellectual as well as cultural responses to neutrality during and after the conflict. The contributions are from a broad range of scholars working across the disciplines of history, literature, film, media, and cultural studies. Their thought-provoking chapters challenge many assumptions about neutrality in the post-war European and global context, thereby filling a gap in the existing scholarship. Common themes that run through the volume include the intertwined and dynamic links between neutrality and moral responsibility during and after the Second World War, the importance of memory politics and popular culture in shaping collective memories, and the impact of the Holocaust in shifting traditional perspectives on neutrality since the 1990s. This volume will be of interest to undergraduates, postgraduates, scholars interested in the field of memory studies, as well as non-specialist readers.

This book chronicles the escapes attempted by Belgian soldiers and civilians from Nazi-occupied Europe during the Second World War. Insofar as is practical, the authors have tried to let the subjects speak for themselves by making extensive use of their testimonies preserved in archives in Belgium and the United Kingdom. The book begins with the stories of soldiers who managed to evade capture in the summer of 1940 and returned home, and the few that decided to continue the fight and joined the Allied forces in the United Kingdom. It also includes the prisoners of war who managed to escape from camps or Arbeitskommando inside the Reich and provides a detailed analysis of their narratives: their motivation for going on the run, their choices on when and how to travel, and the many obstacles they encountered along the way. Most escapees were content to return home, with some then joining resistance organisations, but a small minority were committed to joining the Allies, and further chapters recount their attempts to reach Spain and Switzerland, and the additional problems they encountered in those neutral states. Final chapters reflect on the penalties inflicted on prisoners of war who were recaptured and on the escapees’ struggle for recognition in the post-war world.

Reprint. Originally published: New York: Holocaust Library, c1978.

This book is a pioneering study of Yiddish and Polish-Jewish concentration camp and ghetto poetry. It reveals the impact of the immediacy of experience as a formative influence on perception, response, and literary imagination, arguing that literature that is contemporaneous with unfolding events offers perceptions different from those presented after the fact. Documented here is the emergence of poetry as the dominant literary form and quickest reaction to the atrocities. The authors shows that the mission of the poets was to provide testimony to their epoch, to speak for themselves and for those who perished. For the Jews in the condemned world, this poetry was a vehicle of cultural sustenance, a means of affirming traditional values, and an expression of moral defiance that often kept the spirit of the readers from dying. The explication of the poetry (which has been translated by the author) offer challenging implications for the field of critical theory, including shifts in literary practices—prompted by the growing atrocities—that reveal a spectrum of complex experimental techniques..

To Live with Hope, To Die with Dignity, based principally on materials created and activities conducted in the ghettos of Warsaw, Vilna, Lodz, Kovno, during the Holocaust, concerns itself with the stories of spiritual resistance during the Holocaust. Side by side with unspeakable persecution, suffering, and death were those who sought to rise above their calamitous situation.