YAD VASHEM STUDIES XXXII

Martyrs' And Heroes' Remembrance Authority, 2004. Softcover, 503 pages, 8vo. "We devote nearly half of volume 32 of Yad Vashem Studies to various aspects of the Holocaust in [Hungary]. Six articles by both established and lesser-known scholars break new ground in Holocaust research and analysis. Randolph Braham reassesses rescue operations in Hungary, focusing on six major operations. He makes penetrating, critical observations on the motivations, objectives, strategies, and tactics of the Jewish, Hungarian, and German participants involved. Most importantly, Braham differentiates between what he sees as the myths and the realities that were related in many postwar accounts of the rescue of Jews in Hungary....László Karsai presents a first analysis of war crimes' trials in Hungary by the Hungarian People's Courts. ...Guy Miron and Anna Szalai look at Jewish reactions to the anti-Jewish laws passed in Hungary and, in the process, reveal a great deal about Hungarian Jewish identity on the eve of the Holocaust there. ...Three articles in this volume relate to Polish-Jewish relations and interactions before and during the Holocaust. Dariusz Libionka's analysis of the attitudes of the Polish Catholic intellectual press toward the Jews in the 1930s makes for devastating reading. ...Felicja Karay discusses the fascinating and strange case of the HASAG-Kielce forced-labor camp...Edward Kossoy tells the remarkable story of a group of 400 Jewish prisoners in the Gesiówka camp in Warsaw, who were liberated by a volunteer Polish force during the first days of the Polish uprising in Warsaw in August 1944....Three articles address the impact of new battlegrounds on the Holocaust as perceived from three different perspectives--the Germans, the Jews, and the Allies. Dan Michman returns to one of the best-known documents from the Holocaust--Heydrich's Schnellbrief--and asks the simple yet heretofore unaddressed question: why was it written? .... The late Raquel Hodara analyzes the activities and reactions of Polish Jewish women to the Nazis during the first months of the occupation. .... And finally, Nicholas Terry re-examines the level of information and comprehension of the Holocaust in British military intelligence circles during the first months of the systematic murder of the Jews. ...The volume concludes with five review articles on books by German, American, and Israeli authors. Joachim Neander reviews three new books on the SS economic administration and the forced labor that it employed; Yaacov Lozowick reviews Isabel Heinemann's book on the SS-Race and Resettlement Main Office; Judith Baumel reviews Nechama Tec's book on women, men, and the Holocaust; Michael Berenbaum reviews Dan Michman's book on Holocaust historiography from a Jewish perspective; and Nathan Cohen reviews the encyclopedia of Holocaust literature edited by Lillian Kremer. Two important aspects of the Holocaust that are highlighted in the contents of this volume--the Holocaust in Hungary and the individual--are reflected in the cover photos. Sándor Markovits's pocket watch individualizes fourteen Hungarian Jews from Simleul Silvaniei (Szilágysomlyó) whom the Nazis set out to murder in 1944, in their last-ditch effort to complete the "Final Solution. " In the background we see the faces of Hungarian Jews deported from the Carpathian Mountains to Birkenau at nearly exactly the same moment in history at which the Markovits family was deported. " Light wear. Small dent to bottom left corner of book. Otherwise, very good condition. (Holo2-20-11).