Holocaust Archaeologies: Approaches and Future Directions aims to move archaeological research concerning the Holocaust forward through a discussion of the variety of the political, social, ethical and religious issues that surround investigations of this period and by considering how to address them. It considers the various reasons why archaeological investigations may take place and what issues will be brought to bear when fieldwork is suggested. It presents an interdisciplinary methodology in order to demonstrate how archaeology can (uniquely) contribute to the history of this period. Case examples are used throughout the book in order to contextualise prevalent themes and a variety of geographically and typologically diverse sites throughout Europe are discussed. This book challenges many of the widely held perceptions concerning the Holocaust, including the idea that it was solely an Eastern European phenomena centred on Auschwitz and the belief that other sites connected to it were largely destroyed or are well-known. The typologically , temporally and spatial diverse body of physical evidence pertaining to this period is presented and future possibilities for investigation of it are discussed. Finally, the volume concludes by discussing issues relating to the “re-presentation” of the Holocaust and the impact of this on commemoration, heritage management and education. This discussion is a timely one as we enter an age without survivors and questions are raised about how to educate future generations about these events in their absence.

In the summer of 2016 acclaimed archaeologist Richard Freund and his team made news worldwide when they discovered an escape tunnel from the Ponar burial pits in Lithunia. This Holocaust site where more than 100,000 people perished is usually remembered for the terrible devastation that happened there. In the midst of this devastation, the discovery of an escape tunnel reminds us of the determination and tenacity of the people in the camp and the hope they continued to carry. The Archaeology of the Holocaust takes readers out to the field with Freund and his multi-disciplinary research group as they uncover the evidence of the Holocaust, focusing on sites in Lithuania, Poland, and Greece in the past decade. Using forensic detective work, Freund tells the micro- and macro-histories of sites from the Holocaust as his team covers excavations and geo-physical surveys done at four sites in Poland, four sites in Rhodes, and 15 different sites in Lithuania with comparisons of some of the work done at other sites in Eastern Europe. The book contains testimonies of survivors, photographs, information about a variety of complementary geo-science techniques, and information gleaned from pin-point excavations. It serves as an introduction to the Holocaust and explains aspects of the culture lost in the Holocaust through the lens of archaeology and geo-science.

This book presents archaeological research from places of war, violence, protest and oppression of the 20th and the 21st century; sites where the material relics give a deep insight to fateful events - a shadow of war. Alongside renewed interest in National Socialism and the Holocaust, archaeological interest started in former concentration camps of the Nazi dictatorship. The focus was on the central places of the camps, such as the gas chambers, the crematoria, or execution sites, as well as prisoners' barracks and the parade ground. In many cases, these sites revealed forgotten and vanished structures, where archaeological excavations can offer the possibility for commemorating the victims. The research has since widened and includes other sites of Nazi dictatorship and the Second World War, as well as the First World War, the Cold War and locations of civil wars and civilian protest against state authorities and against companies and corporations in many parts of the world. In order to come to a comprehensive understanding contemporary archaeology must take a global perspective. Archaeological finds often shed light on daily life, revealing survival conditions in the internment camps; the lives of people and their fighting and dying on battlefields and in trenches. Likewise, the relics of politically active people in protest camps give an impression of their commitment in civilian protest. Sometimes material remains can help to tell an alternative or balancing narrative to the state's official recorded history. The enormous volume and diverse range of material culture presents challenges and opportunities. Through careful archaeological investigation, we can present different and new perspectives that are not recorded clearly in existing written, pictorial or oral archives. The merging and examination of all sources together is what enables us to understand the complexity of the history. This book will also present future directions in contemporary archaeology that will help bring the study focus beyond sites and assemblages of war and protest.

Digging through History follows rabbi and archaeologist Richard Freund's journey through some of the most fascinating archaeological sites of human history--including the mysterious Atlantis, Qumran and the Dead Sea Scrolls, and the long-buried Holocaust camp Sobibor. Each chapter takes readers through a different archaeological site, showing what we can learn about past religious life and religious faith through the artifacts found there, as well as what has given each site such strong "staying power" over time. Richard Freund and the research in Digging through History are featured in the National Geographic documentary Atlantis Rising, which premieres on National Geographic on Sunday, January 29, at 9/8 central. The documentary follows Oscar-winning executive producer James Cameron and Emmy-winning filmmaker Simcha Jacobovici as they investigate the myths and realities of Atlantis. Digging through History is the only book that details Freund's groundbreaking research on Atlantis that is featured in the film. A free app, "Archaeology Quest: Atlantis" is also available for iPhone and Android users who want to explore Freund's newest information on Atlantis.

How does scale affect our understanding of the Holocaust? In the vastness of its implementation and the sheer amount of death and suffering it produced, the genocide of Europe’s Jews presents special challenges for historians, who have responded with work ranging in scope from the world-historical to the intimate. In particular, recent scholarship has demonstrated a willingness to study the Holocaust at scales as focused as a single neighborhood, family, or perpetrator. This volume brings together an international cast of scholars to reflect on the ongoing microhistorical turn in Holocaust studies, assessing its historiographical pitfalls as well as the distinctive opportunities it affords researchers.

During the 1930s, in the build up to the Second World War, the Nazis established a band of specialists, the SS-Ahnenerbe, under the command of Heinrich Himmler and Hermann Wirth. Their aim was nothing less than to prove the superiority of the Aryan race, and with it the unique right of the German people to rule Europe. The occult figured as a key feature in many of these increasingly desperate quack research efforts. Part science, part espionage, and part fantasy. Archaeological expeditions were sent to Iceland, Tibet, Kafiristan, North Africa, Russia, the Far East, Egypt, and even South America and the Arctic. The Nazi Ancestral Heritage Societys chief administrator was Dr Wolfram Sievers, who cruelly conducted medical experiments on prisoners in concentration camps, and was responsible for the looting of historic artefacts considered Germanic for return to Germany. He rewarded those academics that took part with high military office, whilst those academics who contradicted or criticized the SS-Anenerbe were carted off to concentration camps where they faced certain death. This book tells the true history of the real life villains behind the Indiana Jones movies. Sometimes truth really is stranger than fiction!

Far reaching, intellectually rich, and passionately written, Unsettled takes the whole history of Western civilization as its canvas and places onto it the Jewish people and faith. With historical insight and vivid storytelling, renowned anthropologist Melvin Konner charts how the Jews endured largely hostile (but at times accepting) cultures to shape the world around them and make their mark throughout history—from the pastoral tribes of the Bronze Age to enslavement in the Roman Empire, from the darkness of the Holocaust to the creation of Israel and the flourishing of Jews in America. With fresh interpretations of the antecedents of today's pressing conflicts, Unsettled is a work whose modern-day reverberations could not be more relevant or timely.

Few scholarly fields have developed in recent decades as rapidly and vigorously as Holocaust Studies. At the start of the twenty-first century, the persecution and murder perpetrated by the Nazi regime have become the subjects of an enormous literature in multiple academic disciplines and a touchstone of public and intellectual discourse in such diverse fields as politics, ethics and religion. Forward-looking and multi-disciplinary, this handbook draws on the work of an international team of forty-seven outstanding scholars. The handbook is thematically divided into five broad sections. Part One, Enablers, concentrates on the broad and necessary contextual conditions for the Holocaust. Part Two, Protagonists, concentrates on the principal persons and groups involved in the Holocaust and attempts to disaggregate the conventional interpretive categories of perpetrator, victim, and bystander. It examines the agency of the Nazi leaders and killers and of those involved in resisting and surviving the assault. Part Three, Settings, concentrates on the particular places, sites, and physical circumstances where the actions of the Holocaust's protagonists and the forms of persecution were literally grounded. Part Four, Representations, engages complex questions about how the Holocaust can and should be grasped and what meaning or lack of meaning might be attributed to events through historical analysis, interpretation of texts, artistic creation and criticism, and philosophical and religious reflection. Part Five, Aftereffects, explores the Holocaust's impact on politics and ethics, education and religion, national identities and international relations, the prospects for genocide prevention, and the defense of human rights.

For many years, histories of the Holocaust focused on its perpetrators, and only recently have more scholars begun to consider in detail the experiences of victims and survivors, as well as the documents they left behind. This volume contains new research from internationally established scholars. It provides an introduction to and overview of Jewish narratives of the Holocaust. The essays include new considerations of sources ranging from diaries and oral testimony to the hidden Oyneg Shabbes archive of the Warsaw Ghetto; arguments regarding Jewish narratives and how they fit into the larger fields of Holocaust and Genocide studies; and new assessments of Jewish responses to mass murder ranging from ghetto leadership to resistance and memory.

Over the last seventy years, memories and narratives of the Holocaust have played a significant role in constructing Jewish communities. The author explores one field where these narratives are disseminated: Holocaust pedagogy in Jewish schools in Melbourne and New York. Bringing together a diverse range of critical approaches, including memory studies, gender studies, diaspora theory, and settler colonial studies, Anxious Histories complicates the stories being told about the Holocaust in these Jewish schools and their broader communities. It demonstrates that an anxious thread runs throughout these historical narratives, as the pedagogy negotiates feelings of simultaneous belonging and not-belonging in the West and in Zionism. In locating that anxiety, the possibilities and the limitations of narrating histories of the Holocaust are opened up once again for analysis, critique, discussion, and development.