ebook img

Roads to Extinction: Essays on the Holocaust PDF

626 Pages·1980·16.723 MB·English
Save to my drive
Quick download
Download
Most books are stored in the elastic cloud where traffic is expensive. For this reason, we have a limit on daily download.

Preview Roads to Extinction: Essays on the Holocaust

ROADS TO EXTINCTION: ESSAYS ON THE HOLOCAUST CONFERENCE ON JEWISH SOCIAL STUDIES THE JEWISH PUBLICATION SOCIETY OF AMERICA New York and Philadelphia 5740 • 1980 wimp fiiifimiiU] îHJiHJiî ÏU Ecriiicriüi): iîîsviû ui) f})£ »DL ücijuur edited by ADA JUNE FRIEDMAN with an introduction by SALO WITTMAYER BARON Copyright © 1980 by The Jewish Publication Society of America and the Conference on Jewish Social Studies, Inc. All rights reserved First edition Manufactured in the United States of America Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Friedman, Philip, 1901-1960. Roads to extinction. Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Holocaust, Jewish (1939-1945)—Addresses, essays, lectures. I. Friedman, Ada June. II. Title. D810.J4F739 1980 940.53T503'924 79-89818 ISBN 0-8276-0170-0 Designed by Adrianne Onderdonk Dudden CONTENTS 353030 Foreword by jeannette m. baron | vii Preface by ada June friedman | ix Acknowledgments | xi Abbreviations | xiii Introduction by salo wittmayer baron | 1 1939-1945 Segregation and Brutal Discrimination part one 1 The Jewish Badge and the Yellow Star in the Nazi Era | 11 2 The Lublin Reservation and the Madagascar Plan: Two Aspects of Nazi Jewish Policy During the Second World War | 34 3 The Jewish Ghettos of the Nazi Era | 59 4 The Fate of the Jewish Book | 88 5 Aspects of the Jewish Communal Crisis in Germany, Austria, and Czechoslovakia During the Nazi Period | 100 6 Social Conflicts in the Ghetto | 131 7 The Karaites Under Nazi Rule | 153 8 Ukrainian-Jewish Relations During the Nazi Occupation | 176 1941-1945 Extermination part two 9 The Extermination of the Polish Jews During the German Occupation, 1939-1945 | 211 10 The Destruction of the Jews of Lwow, 1941—1944 \ 244 11 Crimes in the Name of “Science” | 322 12 Pseudo-Saviors in the Polish Ghettos: Mordechai Chaim Rumkowski of Lodz | 333 13 The Messianic Complex of a Nazi Collaborator in a Ghetto: Moses Merin of Sosnowiec \ 353 14 Jacob Gens: “Commandant” of the Vilna Ghetto \ 365 15 The Extermination of the Gypsies: Nazi Genocide of an Aryan People | 381 16 Jewish Resistance to Nazism | 387 17 “Righteous Gentiles” in the Nazi Era | 409 18 Was There an “Other Germany” During the Nazi Period? | 422 Methodological Problems part three 19 Polish Jewish Historiography Between the Two Wars 467 20 European Jewish Research on the Holocaust | 500 21 American Jewish Research and Literature on the Holocaust I 525 22 Preliminary and Methodological Aspects of Research on the Judenrat | 539 23 Problems of Research on the Holocaust: An Overview I 554 APPENDIX Outline of Program for Holocaust Research | 571 Index I 577 FOREWORD It has been a long-cherished hope of the board of directors of the Confer­ ence on Jewish Social Studies and the editors of its quarterly journal to publish a volume of the collected essays of Philip Friedman, “the father of the Jewish Holocaust literature.” This, we felt, would constitute a sig­ nificant service to the Jewish community. We are therefore pleased that such a volume is now a reality. The late Philip Friedman was uniquely qualified for his task, com­ bining, as he did, immediacy with sound historical methodology. He began his scholarly researches into the Holocaust just after World War II; himself a survivor of the catastrophe, he had the advantage of being personally acquainted with many of the persons involved in trying to keep the Polish Jewish communities alive during the Nazi occupation and could therefore obtain from them much important documentation as well as first-hand recollections. Later, when he served for two years as the educational director of the Displaced Persons camps in Germany, he had the oppor­ tunity to interview survivors and to elicit from them a great deal of oral and written information. Ultimately, an extensive archival collection he amassed was presented to the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research by his widow, Ada June Friedman, the editor of the present volume; there it has been used by numerous students of the great tragedy. The results of some of his labors over the years are presented here Roads to Extinction: Essays on the Holocaust | viii in sober essays that appear to us as a much-needed corrective to predom­ inantly emotional but often factually incorrect outpourings that mark so much Holocaust writing today. Like the editor of this volume, we also are indebted to all those persons who have given of their time and effort to lend to these diverse essays, written under varying circumstances over a span of years, a sense of unity and continuity. We are also grateful to those individuals and organ­ izations who have made this publication possible. We especially want to thank the Wurzweiler Foundation, Mr. Leon Jolson, the Memorial Founda­ tion for Jewish Culture, Mr. Benjamin Cohen, the J. M. Kaplan Fund, Inc., and several Conference directors for their generoufc contributions. Finally, we are happy to be able to publish this volume as a joint venture with The Jewish Publication Society of America. Jeannette M. Baron, President Conference on Jewish Social Studies PREFACE The history of the Holocaust has now become a vital part of general and Jewish scholarship. Indeed, within recent years this relatively new his­ torical discipline, of which the late Philip Friedman was a pioneer, has burgeoned, gaining the attention of an increasing number of researchers and the interest of a growing readership. The present volume contains a selection of essays and studies on the subject of the Holocaust written by Philip Friedman over a period of fifteen years, from 1945 to I960. In selecting the material for this collection, culled from approximately 200 bibliographical entries, the following criteria were considered: (1) to present those essays that are the most comprehensive and fundamental for the study of the Holocaust; (2) to include those which are of lasting value; (3) to show the author’s approach to the problems of the Holocaust and indicate his method of work. Many of the essays included in this volume are not readily accessible elsewhere. Only some were originally published in English. For the rest, they are to be found, in their original form, only in scattered journals and books in different parts of the world and published in various languages— Polish, Yiddish, and Hebrew. The present translations from Polish and Yiddish are my own. Considering that each language has its own idiom, the task for the translators was made doubly onerous as I tried, insofar as possible, to retain the original nuances. For the sake of uniformity, the translated material had to undergo a thorough stylistic revision. Much Roads to Extinction: Essays on the Holocaust | x repetitious material was deleted, except in a few cases where comprehen­ sion of the essay as a whole would have suffered. A constant problem in preparing the volume was the presentation of the footnotes. These, in some instances, are now dated in the sense that they were prepared at a time when research into the Holocaust was just beginning. Many documentary sources known today were not available to the author, and those existent were not yet published. I chose to reproduce the footnotes in their original form. However, many sources only frag- mentarily cited can be supplemented easily by the data in Guide to Jewish History Under Nazi Impact by Jacob Robinson and Philip Friedman (New York, 1960) and in the Bibliographical Series published jointly by YIVO and Yad Vashem, as well as in other handbooks. The idea to publish a collection of Philip Friedman’s studies and essays on the Holocaust was put forward right after his death in 1960 by Salo Wittmayer Baron, the author’s former teacher and lifelong friend. I am most grateful to Professor Baron for his unswerving belief in the importance of this project and for his efforts in bringing it to realization after so many years. I consider it a debt which can never be repaid. I am infinitely thankful to Jeannette M. Baron for her invaluable help and her personal dedication to the task of obtaining publication for the volume, as well as for her stimulating support and expert assistance in all the time- consuming stages of preparing the manuscript, including its final reading. I also wish to express my gratitude to the Board of Directors of the Con­ ference on Jewish Social Studies for their contribution toward the publica­ tion of this volume. I am truly obliged to the translators of the Hebrew essays. Theirs was a painstaking task requiring much familiarity with the subject matter and the linguistic subtleties of the original texts. I am grateful to Dalia Berman and Dr. Jane Gerber for their translations of essays 13 and 14; to Dr. Ber­ tram Schwarzbach for the translation of essay 12 and for linguistic and stylistic corrections in essay 11; and to Dr. Amiel Ungar, who translated essay 10, the longest in the volume. I also wish to express my sincerest thanks to Henry Sachs, my friend and colleague, for his expert help in the translation of some complicated German texts that are quoted in various essays and for his knowledgeable advice; and to Dina Abramowicz, the librarian of YIVO, for her ungrudging assistance. The copy editing and stylistic refinements are the work of Michelle M. Kamhi. I extend my deepest appreciation for her high degree of pro­ fessional competence. Above all, she must be commended for involving herself with so much interest, understanding, and compassion in the myriad details that comprise the painful subject of this book. Ada June Friedman

See more

The list of books you might like

Most books are stored in the elastic cloud where traffic is expensive. For this reason, we have a limit on daily download.