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- Becker, Lior
(författare)
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A Mention to Those not Mentioned : Yizkor Books and Holocaust Memory 1943–2008
- 2022
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Yizkor books are communal memorial books commemorating Jewish communities destroyed in the Holocaust, produced as a result of communal activity. This study analyses the production and function of Yizkor books. It answers questions regarding who produced them, why, when, where and in which languages and discusses the roles the books played, and the memory they produced in relation to Jewish, Iraeli and American memory culture.This is the largest survey of Yizkor books to date, using more than 1,500 texts by Yizkor book publishers, editors and other important figures as primary sources, as well as thirty complete books, It provides new historical knowledge on the people who initiated and took part in the publication process, the kind of Holocaust memory produced, and how the composition of the editorial and publishing groups, , the languages of publication and the memory of the Holocaust contained in the books changed over time and place. The results are further developed and contextualized using theories on collective memory.This research demonstrates that the publishers and editors of Yizkor books were a significantly more heterogeneous group than previously claimed. Four groups of publishers are identified: landsmanschaftn, other organizations, individuals without an organization around them and schoolchildren. A wide variety of editors are distinguished, from professional Yizkor book editors, to professionals in other fields and people with no relevant background in editing, who took it on themselves to complete this difficult task. The reasons for publication vary, but included personal and familial connections, the guilt felt by survivors and the urge to tell the world what had happened.The study also analyses the intended functions of the books according to their authors. Most notably, the books were used as “places of memory”, as gravestones and memorial candles, and as a place to say the kaddish for the many victims whose time and place of death were unknown. In the context of the collective memory of the Holocaust, three main aspects are discussed: the significant place of the diaspora in the commemoration of the community, the prevalence of Zionism in the communities before the war and the idea of universal martyrdom for all victims of the Holocaust, regardless of the circumstances of their life and death.
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| 2. |
- Bortz, Olof, 1984-
(författare)
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"I wanted to know how this deed was done" : Raul Hilberg, the Holocaust and History
- 2017
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Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- Raul Hilberg was a pioneer of Holocaust studies and for many decades the Holocaust scholar par excellence. He embarked upon the study of the Nazi genocide after the war, and established the understanding of the Holocaust as a bureaucratically administered “destruction process,” carried out by men who were not different from the German population in general. The present study analyzes and contextualizes his understanding of the Nazi genocide and the Jewish victims’ response to it, as well as the reception of Hilberg’s magnum opus, The Destruction of the European Jews, in relation to scholarly, political and personal contexts. It shows that Hilberg’s major work was far more favorably received than previously believed and that the negative reactions to his thesis on Jewish reactions was a response to the positive reception of his book, as well as an expression of a wider shift in scholarly and popular perceptions of the behavior of Jewish victims during the Holocaust.Hilberg’s interest in bureaucracy allowed him to depart from the focus on the Nazi leadership and the interpretation of the Holocaust as a premeditated and centrally organized genocide. The connection to modernity made him interpret it as a form of ominous progress, carrying implications for modern societies in general, as opposed to the interpretation of Nazism and the Holocaust as a form of atavistic aberration. However, Hilberg’s emphasis on the modern character of the genocide also led to a form of veneration of its efficiency.Hilberg has been much criticized for his argument that the Jewish victims contributed to their own demise by repeating an outdated and historically conditioned reaction to persecution, which assisted the perpetrators. This study explores his thesis regarding the “Jewish reaction pattern,” as an integral part of his work, which he used as a contrast to what he regarded as the successful and future oriented destruction process. It moreover advances a novel interpretation of this controversial part of Hilberg’s research, seeing it as a call for political action emptied of its positive dimension, and a form of negative historiographical empowerment of the victims.
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