abstract: Approaches to Holocaust representation often take their cues from both academic and public discourse. General opinion demands serious engagement that depicts the full range of the brutality and inhumanity of the genocide and the victimization of targeted groups perpetrated by the National Socialists. Such a treatment is considered necessary to adequately represent the Holocaust for generations to come. The analysis of four texts will show that humor is not only appropriate but is also an important addition to Holocaust discourse. This study argues that humor plays an important role as a stylistic tool for discussing the Holocaust as well as for its remembrance and representation. Jurek Becker's novel Jakob der Lügner and Ruth Klüger's autobiography Weiter Leben: Eine Jugend are witness-texts by Jewish authors. Humor in these two works helps the authors engage and work their experiences. Klüger's autobiography also utilizes humor to critically engage in the discussion of Holocaust representation. This study also analyzes two non-witness Jewish texts: the stage play Mein Kampf by George Tabori and the feature film Mein Führer, die wirklich wahrste Wahrheit über Adolf Hitler by Dani Levy. These two works utilize overt humor to challenge established Holocaust representations. Drawing on ideas from Mikhail M. Bakhtin, Julia Kristeva, Giorgio Agamben, the core argument of this study demonstrates humor performs two main functions in the Holocaust literature and film chosen for this investigation. First, it restores a potential loss of dignity and helps victims endure the incomprehensible. Second, it challenges the prevailing truth and the established order. / Dissertation/Thesis / M.A. German 2013

Holocaust monuments are often catalysts in the ‘nationalization’ of the Holocaust – the process by which Holocaust memory is shaped by its national milieu. Between 2009 and 2011, the Parliament of Canada debated a bill which set out the guidelines for the establishment of a National Holocaust Monument (NHM), which ultimately became a federal Act of Parliament in early 2011. I examine the discourse generated by this bill to understand how the memory of the Holocaust is being integrated into the Canadian identity, and argue that the debate surrounding the NHM has been instrumental in the ‘Canadianisation’ of the Holocaust. I summarise my findings by placing them into dialogue with other national memories of the Holocaust, and identify three distinct features of Holocaust memory in Canada: a centrifugal trajectory originating in the Jewish community, a particular-universal tension rooted in multiculturalism, and a multifaceted memory comprising several conflicting – though not competing – narratives. Monuments de l’Holocauste sont souvent des catalyseurs de la «nationalisation» de l'Holocauste – le processus par lequel mémoire de l'Holocauste est formé par son milieu national. Entre 2009 et 2011, le Parlement du Canada a débattre un projet de loi qui crée les lignes directrices pour la mise en place d'un Monument national de l'Holocauste (MNH), qui est finalement devenu une loi fédérale du Parlement au début de 2011. J'examine le discours généré par ce projet de loi pour comprendre comment la mémoire de l'Holocauste est intégrée dans l'identité canadienne, et soutien que le débat entourant le MNH a joué un rôle déterminant dans la «canadianisation» de l'Holocauste. Je résume mes conclusions en les plaçant dans le dialogue avec d'autres mémoires nationales de l'Holocauste, et d'identifier trois caractéristiques distinctes de mémoire de l'Holocauste au Canada: une trajectoire centrifuge d’origine dans la communauté juive, une tension particulière-universelle enracinée dans le multiculturalisme, et une mémoire à multiples facettes comprenant plusieurs récits contradictories – mais pas compétitifs.

abstract: When the Warsaw Ghetto was demolished by German forces towards the end of World War II, there were few physical traces of the Ghetto left standing. As such, both historians and the public must look to other types of sources to understand what life and death were like for the inhabitants of the Ghetto, and how they have remembered their experiences within the Ghetto. These memories and representations of the Warsaw Ghetto can be found in memoir-style written works, and later, in films based on these works. This thesis will examine the ways in which the Warsaw Ghetto was represented by two authors who survived it, Władisław Szpilman and Marcel Reich-Ranicki, and how their memory of the Warsaw Ghetto is represented in the films based on their lives and survival, The Pianist, and Mein Leben: Marcel Reich-Ranicki. / Dissertation/Thesis / Masters Thesis History 2020

abstract: This thesis analyzes the unsettling presence of the Holocaust in Cynthia Ozick’s The Shawl (1980), Philip Roth’s The Ghost Writer (1979), and Nathan Englander’s What We Talk About When We Talk About Anne Frank (2013). Characters in these texts struggle to maintain a stable sense of what it means to be Jewish in America outside of a relationship to the Holocaust. This leaves the characters only able to form negative associations about what it means to live with the memory of the Holocaust or to over-identify so heavily with the memory that they can’t lead a normal life. These authors construct a re-formed memory of the Holocaust in ways that prompt a new focus on how permanently intertwined the Holocaust and Jewish identity are. In this context, re-formed means the way Jewish American writers have reconstructed the connection between Jewish identity and its relation to the Holocaust in ways that highlight issues of over-identification and negative identity associations. By pushing past the trope of unspeakability that often surrounds the Holocaust, these authors construct a re-formed memory that allows for the formation of Jewish American identity as permanently bound with constant Holocaust preoccupation, the memory of Anne Frank, and the Holocaust itself. The authors’ treatment of issues surrounding Jewish identity contribute to the genre of post-Holocaust literature, which focuses on re-forming the discussion about present day Jewish American connection to the Holocaust. Giving voice to the Holocaust in new ways provides an opportunity for current and future generations of Jewish Americans to again consider the continued importance of the Holocaust as a historical event within the Jewish community. In a world that is once again becoming increasingly anti-semitic as a result of the current political climate, white supremacist riots, desecration of Jewish grave sites, and shootings at temples, the discussion that these texts open up is increasingly important and should remain at the forefront of American consciousness. The research in this thesis reveals that through the process of Holocaust memory constantly being re-formed through the work of these Jewish American authors, its continued influence on Jewish American culture is not forgotten. / Dissertation/Thesis / Masters Thesis English 2020

abstract: Through the lens of a Jewish family in the early 20th century, histories of resilience, rescue, and resistance are shown. The Loewys were a Jewish family who migrated from Poland to Germany then France and ending up in the United States following World War II. In their travels they experienced many of which other Jewish experiences were, while also differentiating from the overall story. The family also experienced life as refugees and interns during the Holocaust. Arrested in Vichy following the Armistice between Germany and France, the Loewys were later granted their freedom which they used to help free others from the camp. One of the few stories of Jews rescuing Jews, the family began its life as resistors to the Vichy and German occupation. Participating in both passive and active resistance from 1940-1944, they witnessed the highs and lows of this new life. The end of the war saw the family make it to the United States beginning their next chapter as survivors of the Holocaust and the war. With the use of primary source material provided by the Loewys, along with scholarly work about the different periods, the story of the Loewys is one of resilience in the face of mounting adversity, rescuing of internes from camps, and resistance against an occupational force that furthers the research of the Jewish experience in the early 20th century. / Dissertation/Thesis / Masters Thesis History 2020

This thesis deals with post-war lives of eighteen respondents who were according to the Nuremberg Laws labeled as Jews or half-Jews. They have been imprisoned in concentration camps, they had to hide or emigrate during the World War II. This thesis focuses on their lives after the war. It traces their return, not/regaining of their property, reunification with their family and friends, or their post-war emigration. The thesis also centers around their lives after the communist regime came to power in Czechoslovakia, it was a regime that many Jewish survivors supported in the beginning. The thesis also concentrates on their lives during anti-Semitic purges in the 1950s to which many family members of the respondents fell victims. In the 1960s, borders were a bit more "open" and this was welcomed my many because most of the Jewish families had relatives and friends abroad. Lots of the respondents decided to emigrate after the 1968 invasion of Czechoslovakia. The following decades of normalization maintained the discourse of hidden anti-Semitism and restrictions of personal freedoms. Many respondents eagerly welcomed the Velvet Revolution. They were able to strengthen their own Jewish identity thanks to newly gained freedoms and emergence or re-creation of many Jewish organizations. Last but not...

The thesis points to the negative phenomenon of Holocaust denial, objective viewpoint of testimony, authenticity of photograph and background of historical consciousness in the context of postmodern situation. If we wanted to use objective testimony of photograph as a valid argument against Holocaust denial, we would have to declare the authenticity of photograph is invalid. The options of its manipulation, both content and meaning, are examined through semiotics of Peirce, mainly through trichotomy icon, index and symbol. In today's pluralistic time, the historical consciousness is proposed as a possible starting point of examination of historical sources, including photograph. Key words Photograph, authenticity, manipulation, Peirce, historical consciousness, Holocaust.

The Main goal of this thesis is the comparison of fates of the Jewish heroes in the Second world war. I will compare five selected proses written by Arnost Lustig. My focus will be on the fates of the Jewish women during the second world war and how this extreme experience affected their characters and moral believes. The source of the thesis will be the listed primary literature, which was selected to show the uniqueness and individuality of so strong experience, which the second world war and holocaust definitely was. Concurrently, it demonstrates the fact that under influence of their shared fate, are the heroes of the stories in many ways very similar. I will also focus on the questions regarding the dignity and morality and how the Jewish woman deals with their lost of personal and life assurances.

By the time anti-Jewish Nazi propaganda was widely analogizing Jews to rodents and other nonhuman animals in need of extermination, the accusation that Jewish people might be subhuman, or nonhuman, had been informing non-Jewish perceptions of the Jewish people for hundreds of years. As Jay Geller has detailed, casting Jews as lone wolves, or as rats or mice (and beyond), has a long and powerful history. Indeed, this insidious maneuver—dehumanize a threatening community through animalization in order to justify its oppression, or at times, extermination—is familiar to virtually every marginalized community and absolutely relies on consensus that the “natural” order places human beings above animals. This dissertation argues that post-Holocaust, Jewish American poets help us reconsider the boundaries of “human” and “animal” in the American imagination, ultimately creating an animal poetics that flips the script, demonstrating that yes, we are all animals, which demands not only a human commitment to justice and respect between cultures but also to ecological justice and respect between species. Through examining prominent animal poems by three Jewish American post-Holocaust poets, Gerald Stern, Adrienne Rich, and Maxine Kumin, this dissertation asks, “What does it mean to behave like a Jew when it comes to our ecological connections to other animal species?” and, more specifically, “What is the connection between post-Holocaust Jewish American poets, ecologically informed animal representation, and Jewishness?” My readings model a novel approach to these poets’ work by using Jewish traditions, such as teshuvah (an atonement ritual) and biblical prophecy, to illuminate layers of meaning in the poems that might otherwise have stayed shadowed, particularly for readers without ready access to a Jewish framework. Because these poets’ animal poems are best read as both ecological as well as Jewish, this dissertation makes a case for including animal poems by Stern, Rich, and Kumin in the syllabi and anthologies that represent American ecological literature and ecopoetry—and not just including them, in fact, but contextualizing them within a Jewish framework. All three poets suggest that behaving like a Jew, when it comes to nonhuman animals, means taking responsibility for our brutal humanity as well as our essential animality—which is at least as often noble and good as it is otherwise. By highlighting the value of a Jewish ecocritical lens, this dissertation suggests that there may be as many culturally situated versions of ecocriticism as there are cultures, which could increase our appreciation of our interconnection within and beyond our species. Further, by bringing a Jewish lens to these three Jewish poets’ animal poems, this dissertation situates Jewish animality specifically as a source of strength and wisdom. In so doing, this project defiantly counters millennia of efforts to dehumanize Jewish people, instead reminding that all human beings’ ability to thrive on this earth requires mutual respect between, and within, animal species. Ultimately, this dissertation argues that these Jewish American poets, who came into their adulthood and poetic expressions in the shadow of the Nazi Holocaust, light the way to a Jewish—and human—animal whose survival will not depend on random birthplace but on the dignifying interconnection of all animal species, and all the varieties therein. / English

This article explores how the Americanization of the Holocaust is in part responsible for the paradigm that the mention of the Holocaust is vital for a Jewish writer of postwar fiction to be taken seriously. In keeping with the need for people to find meaning in catastrophe, to derive humanity from inhumanity and order out of chaos, Jewish literature's apparent 'success' or international reach often depends on reflecting on the Holocaust as an empowering movement that pushed survivors and other Jews to feel a sense of unity and inclusiveness. By using the Holocaust to generate interest in audiences as opposed to educating the masses, the general perception of Jews as well as of the Jewish religion is reduced to nothing more than an acknowledgment of the traumatic historic event they endured. I argue that this perception of Jewish identity is disillusioned as well as destructive, and that survivor literature paints a more realistic image of what the Holocaust was like while still maintaining the Jewishness within the story. The aim of this article is to examine the trauma in Holocaust literature through the lens of Judaic studies, analyzing the way that it is written as well as providing an analysis of the trends in this postwar genre of writing from survivors and non-survivors. Being analyzed are the writings of Tadeusz Borowski and Cynthia Ozick; "This Way for Gas, Ladies & Gentlemen" and "Silence" by Borowski, and "Rosa" as well as "The Shawl" by Ozick. While Borowski's stories were developed based on his own personal experiences as a victim of the Holocaust, Ozick is an American-born Jewish woman whose stories correlate particularly well with Borowski's despite not having been through the traumatic experience herself. The goal in analyzing this type of literature is to bring to light the realities of the Holocaust and exactly how gruesome, inhumane and disturbing these events were and to contrast these images with more heavily edited and/or fictionalized literature, particularly the Americanized version of "The Diary of Anne Frank". When structured for entertainment purposes, fictional literature set in the time period of the Holocaust tends to develop unrealistic portrayals of the event itself and the Jewish population affected by it. The intention of this article to draw attention to the lack of Jewish identity and religion in postwar Holocaust literature, to challenge the accuracy in Holocaust retellings and to outline the destructiveness of both characteristics in this genre of literature to the general perception of Jewish people.