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Intellectuals on Holocaust
“The Holocaust: Voices of Scholars” is a collection of 24 personal essays-reflections of eminent scholars and experts in research into the history of the Holocaust. Individuals, who for the greater part of their life have researched Extermination, write about their difficulties, questions, and most important points of reflection. They do so on the basis of their own experiences and thoughts, not avoiding criticism as well as creating new visions and demands for the future. The book was edited by Dr Jolanta Ambrosewicz-Jacobs, the director of the Holocaust Studies Center at Jagiellonian University in Cracow.
The new publication consists of three parts:
- Part one describes how the Holocaust is seen in the context of ethics and Jewish-Christian relations;
- Part two, the longest, deals with the current status of research into Extermination, shown from interesting and important perspectives, such as the psychiatric angle and the concept of collective memory;
- The final part is a kind of epilog, which tries to answer the question, if hope should be a part of humanity.
These essays are something much more than just a conventional and a dry enumeration of facts and provoke the reader to bring forward the fundamental questions related to personal responsibility for the contemporary world – noted Dr. Piotr M.A. Cywiński, director of the State Museum Auschwitz-Birkenau, in the introduction to the book. He wrote that there is a specific responsibility of researchers and those teaching the next generations about the Holocaust, so this collection of reflection and experience can play an important role in our collective sense of responsibility for today and tomorrow.
„The book presents the reflections of these scholars and public figures whose work involves the subject of the Holocaust. We asked them to write about difficulties they have faced, and we posed several questions to them: Do the analytical tools of the scholar, the researcher, the philosopher, the sociologist, the artist, prove weak or ineffective in dealing with the Holocaust? More than sixty years after the liberation of Auschwitz, are we intelectually and emotionally baffled by the genocide the Nazis commited there? If so, what are the paths taken to overcome this? How and why continue work on this most perplexing subject?” — wrote Dr. Jolanta Ambrosewicz-Jacobs in the introduction.
Szewach Weiss, former Israeli ambassador to Poland, wrote about the book: “The Holocaust put people in a situation that they should have never found themselves in. Because of this, it is difficult to ask questions on the subject and we should appreciate the work of those who do ask.”
Among the authors are eminent researchers and authorities from various countries: Yehuda Bauer, Michael Berenbaum, Eleonora Bergman, Ian Kershaw, Stanisław Krajewski, Zdzisław Mach, Dalia Ofer, Nechama Tec, Feliks Tych, Jonathan Webber, Elie Wiesel, Jan Woleński and Moshe Zimmermann.
The book issued by the State Museum Auschwitz-Birkenau and The Centre for Holocaust Studies of the Jagiellonian University in cooperation with Austeria Editing House is available from the Museum’s Internet bookshop.
Foreword by Piotr M.A. Cywiński
Introduction by Jolanta Ambrosewicz-Jacobs
I
Yehuda Bauer: Holocaust Research - A Personal Statement
John K. Roth: The Holocaust and the Failure(s) of Ethics
Ian Kershaw: Working on the Holocaust
John T. Pawlikowski: The Challenge of the Holocaust for a Christian Theologian
Zdzisław Mach: Poland's National Memory of the Holocaust and Its Identity in an Expanded Europe
II
Michael R. Marrus: Holocaust Research and Scholarship Today
Charles S. Maier: Holocaust Fatigue
Omer Bartov: My Twisted Way to Buczacz
Shimon Redlich: Some Remarks on the Holocaust by a Marginal Historian
Dan Michman: The Challenge of Studying the Shoah as Jewish History. Some Personal Reflections
Maria Orwid, Krzysztof Szwajca: Reflections on the Holocaust from a Psychiatric Perspective
Jonathan Webber: Auschwitz: Whose History, Whose Memory?
Nechama Tec: My Personal and Professional Journey to Holocaust Research
Dalia Ofer: My View Through Their Lens: The Personal and Collective in Writing about the Holocaust
Feliks Tych: A Witness and His Path to Research
Debórah Dwork: The Challenges of Holocaust Scholarship. A Personal Statement
Robert Jan van Pelt: Salvage
Michael Berenbaum: My Way to the Holocaust
Stanisław Krajewski: Speaking About the Holocaust in Today's Poland
Moshe Zimmermann: The Holocaust of the German Jews
Wolfgang Benz: Expulsion, "Ethnic Cleansing," Genocide
Jan Woleński: Executioners, Victims and Bystanders
III
Eleonora Bergman: Questions in the Polish Landscape
Elie Wiesel: Lift Your Eyes and Look at the Sky
About the Authors
"The Holocaust. Voices of Scholars" edited by Jolanta Ambrosewicz-Jacobs, Kraków 2009
Published by: Centrum Badań nad Holokaustem Uniwersytetu Jagiellońskiego, Międzynarodowe Centrum Edukacji o Auschwitz i Holokauście Państwowego Muzeum Auschwitz-Birkenau
297 s., 15 x 21 cm, hard cover
ISBN: 978-83-89129-88-8
