In this provocative work, Alvin H. Rosenfeld contends that the proliferation of books, films, television programs, museums, and public commemorations related to the Holocaust has, perversely, brought about a diminution of its meaning and a denigration of its memory. Investigating a wide range of events and cultural phenomena, such as Ronald Reagan's 1985 visit to the German cemetery at Bitburg, the distortions of Anne Frank's story, and the ways in which the Holocaust has been depicted by such artists and filmmakers as Judy Chicago and Steven Spielberg, Rosenfeld charts the cultural forces that have minimized the Holocaust in popular perceptions. He contrasts these with sobering representations by Holocaust witnesses such as Jean Améry, Primo Levi, Elie Wiesel, and Imre Kertész. The book concludes with a powerful warning about the possible consequences of "the end of the Holocaust" in public consciousness.

Contents Robert S. Wistrich - Jewish "Otherness" in Historical Perspective Anthony Kauders - Liberalism, Multiculturalism, and Jewish Identity in the Federal Republic, 1945-1990 Nelly Las - Secularism, Feminism, and Antisemitism: The Islamic Veil in France Martina Libertad Weisz - Micro-physics of Otherness: Jews, Muslims, and Latin Americans in Today's Spain Suzanne Rutland and Sol Encel - Australian Multiculturalism: Immigration, Race, and Religion Micahel C. Kotzin - Pictures at an exhibition: Art Galleries, the Academy, and Anti-Israel Polemics Heidemarie Wawrsyn - Nazis in the Holy Land Jeffrey Herf - Nazi Broadcasts to the Middle East during the Holocaust Menahem Milson - A European Plot on the Arab Stage Robert S. Wistrich - Antisemitism: The European and Islamic Legacies Annexe: Interview with the Author

The present volume is being published on the sixty-ninth anniversary of the Farhūd, the pogrom committed by religious and nationalist Arabs against the Jews of Iraq on the Jewish holiday of Pentecost (Shavu‘ot), 1–2 June 1941. The Hebrew edition of this book was published in 1992 by the Research Institute of Babylonian Jewry in Or Yehuda, Israel . This volume is a revised version of the Hebrew edition. The title consists of papers on the pogrom and on the events leading up to it which were originally published in English, others which were written in Hebrew and now appear in English for the first time, and documents which have not been previously published, including an updated list of the names of victims of the Farhūd and a map indicating the places in Baghdad where rioters attacked Jews. This book thus provides the English reader with comprehensive and updated information on the Farhūd and constitutes a memorial to the innocent victims killed during these pogroms and whose only crime was that they were Jews.

« Le Retour de la question juive ? » D’entrée de jeu, un problème. S’agit-il de la « question » juive ou du « fait » juif ? Au fil des textes qui compoent ce volume de Perspectives, la réflexion oscille entre ces options et relance l’interrogation. Mais pour ce qui est du « retour », autre élément de notre titre, aucun doute, le sujet revient, redevient d’actualité. Mais sous quelles formes ? Des penseurs venus des horizons intellectuels les plus divers (philosophes, historiens, politologues ou psychanalystes) se sont penchés sur ce retour de la question juive. Question “éternelle”, comme le dit la carte postale qui orne la couverture de ce nouveau numéro de Perspectives, mais aussi, hélas, contemporaine.

Since the Holocaust, traces of memory are virtually all that remain in Poland today after more than eight hundred years of Jewish life there. This remarkable album, published on behalf of the Galicia Jewish Museum in Kraków, offers a sensitive way of looking at that past. Based entirely on arresting, present-day colour photographs of Polish Galicia, it shows how much of that past can still be seen today if one knows how to look and how to interpret what one sees. The traces of the Jewish past in Polish Galicia can be approached from many angles. Jewish life in Poland was in ruins after the Holocaust, and so too were most of its synagogues and cemeteries. Much evidence of ruin remains, but, astonishingly, there are also traces that bear witness to the great Jewish civilization that once flourished there—synagogues and cemeteries of astounding beauty in villages and small towns as well as in the larger cities. One can also see the exact locations where the Germans murdered the Jews of Galicia in the Holocaust: not only in the infamous death camps and ghettos, but also in fields, in forests, and in rivers. The Germans tried to destroy even the memory of the Jews in Poland, and to a very great extent they succeeded; then came forty years of communism, including the antisemitic campaign of 1968. But now that Poland is once again part of a multicultural Europe, the great Jewish civilization that once flourished on Polish lands is increasingly being memorialized, by local Poles as well as by foreign Jews. Synagogues and cemeteries are being renovated, monuments are being erected, museums are being set up, pilgrimages are taking place, festivals of Jewish culture are being organized, books about Jews are being published, and there are once again rabbis and kosher food. So the traces of memory include how the past is being remembered in Poland today, and the people doing the remembering. Given all these perspectives, the contact with contemporary realities involves a complex emotional journey: grief at a civilization in ruins; pride in its spiritual and cultural achievements; anger at its destruction; nostalgia for a past that is gone; hope for the future. Considering each element in turn and offering cultural insights and information to support each of these responses, the combination of photos and text in this book not only informs but also suggests both how to make sense of the past and how to discover its relevance for the present. The seventy-four photographs are all fully captioned, with additional detailed background notes to explain and contextualize them. The idea is to help people understand the Jewish civilization of Polish Galicia in its local context on the basis of what can still be seen there today. People who have family connections with Polish Galicia will find this an invaluable sourcebook on their own heritage, but its innovative approach to understanding the past will appeal to anyone concerned with questions of history, memory, and identity, and how photography can make the past accessible..

In the mid-1960s, Gomulka’s government adopted an antisemitic stance in consequence of which nearly 15,000 Jews left the country, effectively ending Jewish life in the country for over a decade. These events, long ignored by scholars, are now increasingly seen as an important step in the process that led to the collapse of communism. This volume illuminates the events that triggered the crisis, the crisis itself, and its consequences.

The focus is on how the Jews were affected by Polish independence in 1918. Other topics covered include Jan Blonski's article, 'The Poor Poles Look at the Ghetto'; Polish historiography on the privileges granted to the Jews; the decline of the kahal in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; the social perception of Jews in the eighteenth-century; representations of Jews in nineteenth-century literature; nineteenth-century synagogues; the Jewish Polish-language press in the interwar period; and antisemitic slogans in Endecja political campaigns.

Published in the year of the fiftieth anniversary of the Warsaw ghetto uprising, this volume has a special section with memoirs and other material dealing with aspects of Jewish life in Nazi-occupied Warsaw. Topics covered in other articles include the autobiographies of Salomon Maimon and Jakob Fromer, entitled 'From the Ghetto to Modern Culture'; Jan Czynski and the question of equal rights for all religious faiths; education of Jewish women in the nineteenth century; ritual slaughter as a political issue; and the Jewish press in Kraków in the inter-war years.

This unique volume, which is sure to engage the attention of both scholars and the general public, is an unparalleled cross-generational and international dialogue among eminent historians about three central aspects of the unfathomable enigma of the Holocaust. In the first section, beyond a seminal overview of sixty years of research, the writers reflect on historiography and historical thought ranging from contemporaries of the Third Reich to the ongoing discussion about the controversial role post-war West German historians played in Holocaust research. This is followed by a section focusing on social antisemitism until the 1950s and the German public’s awareness of the Holocaust, including the posture of the German Resistance Movement. The third major theme is the Jewish society, from its initial attempts to develop new forms of societal life under the Nazi regime until the brink of annihilation during the mass deportation from the Warsaw Ghetto to Treblinka. The concluding chapter sheds light on the unresolved tension between reflective personal memory and impersonal historical research of this dark period in human history.