The Holocaust has never been so widely commemorated, but our understanding of the accepted narrative has rarely, if ever, been questioned.David Cesarani's sweeping reappraisal challenges accepted explanations for the anti-Jewish politics of Nazi Germany and the inevitability of the 'Final Solution'. The persecution of the Jews was not always the Nazis' central preoccupation, nor was it an inevitable process. Cesarani also reveals that in German-occupied countries it unfolded erratically, often due to local initiatives. Ghettos were improvised while the mass shooting of Jews during the invasion of Russia owed as much to the security situation as to anti-semitism.In this new interpretation, war is critical to the Jewish fate. Military failure denied the Germans opportunities to expel Jews into a distant territory and created a crisis of resources that led to starvation of the ghettos and intensified anti-Jewish measures. It was global war that eventually triggered genocide in Europe.Cesarani disputes the iconic role of railways, deportation trains and even Auschwitz, and reveals that plunder was more a cause of anti-Jewish feeling than a consequence of it. Using diaries and reports written in ghettos and camps, he exposes the extent of sexual violence and abuse of Jewish women by the Germans, their collaborators and, shockingly, by Jews themselves. But Cesarani also reveals the courage and ingenuity of those who struggled to evade capture and fought back wherever they could. And unlike previous histories, he follows the Jews' journey to the 'Displaced Persons' camps; camps which have so often been merely a footnote in the story but where Jews languished behind barbed wire for years after 'liberation'. This moving and dramatic account captures the fate of the Jews, the horror and the heroism, in their own words. Resting on decades of scholarship it is compelling, authoritative, and profoundly disturbing.
Using accessible archival sources, a team of historians reveal how much the USA, Britain, Switzerland and Sweden knew about the Nazi attempt to murder all the Jews of Europe during World War II.
The Holocaust has never been so widely commemorated, but our understanding of the accepted narrative has rarely, if ever, been questioned. David Cesarani's sweeping reappraisal challenges accepted explanations for the anti-Jewish politics of Nazi Germany and the inevitability of the 'final solution'.
Adolf Eichmann was at the centre of the Nazi genocide against the Jews of Europe between 1941 and 1945. He was directly responsible for transporting over 2 million Jews to their deaths in Auschwitz-Birkenau and other death camps. Yet he was an obscure figure until his sensational capture by the Israeli Secret Service in Argentina in 1960 and his subsequent trial in Jerusalem. This study is the first account of Eichmann's life to appear since the aftermath of his trial. It is a groundbreaking biography of one of the most fascinating of the Nazi leaders. Drawing on recently unearthed documents, David Cesarani shows how Eichmann became the Nazi Security Service's 'expert' on Jewish matters and reveals his initially cordial working relationship with Zionist Jews in Germany, despite his intense anti-Semitism. He explains how new research demonstrates that the massive ethnic cleansing Eichmann conducted in Poland in 1939-40 was the crucial bridge to his role in the deportation of the Jews. predisposed to mass murder, exploring the remarkable, largely unknown period in Eichmann's career when he learned how to become a perpetrator of genocide.
Lauded as a “great Jew,” excoriated by antisemites, and one of Britain’s most renowned prime ministers, Benjamin Disraeli has been widely celebrated for his role in Jewish history. But is the perception of him as a Jewish hero accurate? In what ways did he contribute to Jewish causes? In this groundbreaking, lucid investigation of Disraeli’s life and accomplishments, David Cesarani draws a new portrait of one of Europe’s leading nineteenth-century statesmen, a complicated, driven, opportunistic man. While acknowledging that Disraeli never denied his Jewish lineage, boasted of Jewish achievements, and argued for Jewish civil rights while serving as MP, Cesarani challenges the assumption that Disraeli truly cared about Jewish issues. Instead, his driving personal ambition required him to confront his Jewishness at the same time as he acted opportunistically. By creating a myth of aristocratic Jewish origins for himself, and by arguing that Jews were a superior race, Disraeli boosted his own career but also contributed to the consolidation of some of the most fundamental stereotypes of modern antisemitism.
Fifty years after W. W. II, the Holocaust is still continually in the news. Examining the Holocaust in our culture and in our psyches, Cesarani questions why, as the new millennium dawns, Jews and non-Jews alike remain so fascinated by it. Cesarani reviews not only what is thought to have happened under the Nazis but how Europe and America responded to the events both at the time and over the past fifty years. While other atrocities are forgotten, Cesarani shows how the Holocaust has been forced onto the world agenda. The subject of Jewish power is highly controversial - viz. the enormous fuss over Lawson publishing an article about Jews controlling Hollywood in the Spectator. It is a subject which can be tackled only by a serious Jewish academic who knows how to write for a lay audience. Looking at the power, politics and psychology of memory, Cesarani shows how, in the case of the Holocaust, memory has become news, entertainment, history and moral authority.
In May 1947 a sixteen-year-old Jewish activist named Alexander Rubowitz was abducted in broad daylight from the streets of Jerusalem. At the abduction scene, a gray hat was found, purportedly belonging to Major Roy Farran, a decorated World War II...
In charge of the logistical apparatus of mass deportation and extinction, Adolf Eichmann was at the center of the Nazi genocide against the Jews. He was personally responsible for transporting over two million Jews to their deaths in Auschwitz-Birkenau and other death camps. This is the first account of Eichmann's life to appear since the aftermath of his famous trial in 1961 and his subsequent execution in Jerusalem a year later. It reveals that the depiction of Eichmann as a loser who drifted into the ranks of the SS is a fabrication that conceals Eichmann's considerable abilities and his early political development. Drawing on recently unearthed documents, David Cesarani shows how Eichmann became the Reich's "expert" on Jewish matters and reveals his initially cordial working relationship with Zionist Jews in Germany, despite his intense anti-Semitism. Cesarani explains how the massive ethnic cleansing Eichmann conducted in Poland in 1939-40 was the crucial bridge to his later role in the mass deportation of the Jews. And Cesarani argues controversially that Eichmann was not necessarily predisposed to mass murder, exploring the remarkable, largely unknown period in Eichmann's early career when he first learned how to become an administrator of genocide. This challenging work deepens our understanding of Adolf Eichmann and offers fresh insights both into the operation of the Final Solution and the making of its most notorious perpetrator.
The Western world's responses to genocide have been slow, unwieldly and sometimes unfit for purpose. So argues David Patrick in this essential new contribution to the aid and intervention debate. While the UK and US have historically been committed to the ideals of human rights, freedom and equality, their actual material reactions are more usually dictated by geopolitical 'noise', pre-conceived ideas of worth and the media attention-spans of individual elected leaders. Utilizing a wide-ranging quantitative analysis of media reporting across the globe, Patrick argues that an over-reliance on the Holocaust as the framing device we use to try and come to terms with such horrors can lead to slow responses, misinterpretation and category errors - in both Rwanda and Bosnia, much energy was expended trying to ascertain whether these regions qualified for 'genocide' status. The Reporting of Genocide demonstrates how such tragedies are reduced to stereotypes in the media - framed in terms of innocent victims and brutal oppressors - which can over-simplify the situation on the ground. This in turn can lead to mixed and inadequate responses from governments. Reporting on Genocide also seeks to address how responses to genocides across the globe can be improved, and will be essential reading for policy-makers and for scholars of genocide and the media.
Adolf Eichmann est l’un des dignitaires nazis les plus tristement célèbres. Cette renommée, il la doit en partie à la médiatisation de son procès et au portrait brossé par Hannah Arendt. Incarnation de la « banalité du mal », il organisa, de 1941 à 1945, la déportation de masse et l’extermination des Juifs d’Europe. Méticuleux, assis à son bureau, il fut au cœur du génocide nazi. Méconnu des chasseurs de nazis au sortir de la guerre, il parvint à fuir en Argentine en 1950. Il y mena une vie paisible, jusqu’au mois de mai 1960 lorsqu’il fut enlevé par des agents du Mossad et amené en Israël. Évènement majeur de l’après-guerre, le « procès Eichmann », qui s’ouvrit à Jérusalem le 11 avril 1961, fut retransmis par de nombreuses chaînes de télévision à travers le monde. Eichmann fut pendu le 31 mai 1962. Dans cette biographie magistrale, la première depuis quarante ans, David Cesarani se penche sur la carrière d’Eichmann et s’interroge sur ce qui a pu conduire cet homme ordinaire à devenir un meurtrier de masse. En s’appuyant sur des documents découverts récemment, l’auteur bouscule certaines idées reçues et dépasse le préjugé selon lequel il aurait été « maléfique », « fou » ou bien un simple rouage de la machine de mort nazie. Avec brio et clarté, Cesarani explique comment Eichmann est progressivement devenu l’« expert » en questions juives et a été le complice de l’assassinat de millions de personnes. « Une biographie indépassable. » New York Times « Cesarani a écrit la biographie d’Eichmann la plus détaillée, complète et objective. » Library Journal
This book focuses on the nature and extent of social change, integration and identity transformation within the Jewish community of Britain during the interwar years. It probes the notion – widely articulated by Jewish communal leaders at this time – that the immigrant second generation (i.e. British and foreign-born children of Russian and Eastern European Jews who migrated to Britain in the late Victorian era up to the First World War) had ‘estranged’ themselves from their Jewishness, Jewish elders and peers and were fast assimilating into the British mainstream.The volume analyses the second generation’s developing outlooks and behavioural trends in a variety of environments, effectively charting the changes and continuities present therein. As a whole, the book sheds light on the varied ways in which this group developed new identities that both drew from and reflected their Jewish and British heritage.
The uses of shame (and shamelessness) in spheres that range from social media and consumerism to polarized politics and mass violence Today, we are caught in a shame spiral—a vortex of mutual shaming that pervades everything from politics to social media. We are shamed for our looks, our culture, our ethnicity, our sexuality, our poverty, our wrongdoings, our politics. But what is the point of all this shaming and countershaming? Does it work? And if so, for whom? In Shame, David Keen explores the function of modern shaming, paying particular attention to how shame is instrumentalized and weaponized. Keen points out that there is usually someone who offers an escape from shame—and that many of those who make this offer have been piling on shame in the first place. Self-interested manipulations of shame, Keen argues, are central to understanding phenomena as wide-ranging as consumerism, violent crime, populist politics, and even war and genocide. Shame is political as well as personal. To break out of our current cycle of shame and shaming, and to understand the harm that shame can do, we must recognize the ways that shame is being made to serve political and economic purposes. Keen also traces the rise of leaders on both sides of the Atlantic who possess a dangerous shamelessness, and he asks how shame and shamelessness can both be damaging. Answering this question means understanding the different types of shame. And it means understanding how shame and shamelessness interact—not least when shame is instrumentalized by those who are selling shamelessness. Keen points to a perverse and inequitable distribution of shame, with the victims of poverty and violence frequently being shamed, while those who benefit tend to exhibit shamelessness and even pride.
An examination of the literary and cinematic representations of brainwashing during the Cold War era. CIA operative who was a tireless campaigner against communism. it took hold quickly and became a means to articulate fears of totalitarian tendencies in American life. David Seed traces the assimilation of the notion of brainwashing into science fiction, political commentary, and conspiracy narratives of the Cold War era. He demonstrates how these works grew out of a context of political and socail events and how they express the anxieties of the time. The Manchurian Candidate. Seed provides new interpretations of writers such as Orwell and Burroughs within the history of psychological manipulation for political purposes, using declassified and other documents to contextualise the material. he explores the shifting view points of how brainwashing is represented, changing from an external threat to American values to an internal threat against individual American liberties by the U.S. government. will welcome this study.
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