This thesis investigates Stalin’s post-WW2 anti-cosmopolitan campaign by comparing the lives of two Soviet-Jewish artists. Zinovii Tolkachev was a Ukrainian artist and Pavel Antokol’skii a Moscow poetry professor. Tolkachev drew both Jewish and Socialist themes, while Antokol’skii created no Jewish motifs until his son was killed in combat and he encountered Nazi concentration camps; Tolkachev was at the liberation of Majdanek and Auschwitz. Both men were excoriated during the “anti-cosmopolitan” campaign. Using primary sources, I examine their art and the balance between Judaic and Soviet references, the accusations made and the connections between the attacks, the Holocaust, and Soviet paranoias of that era. While anti-Semitism played a role, I highlight the authorities’ reaction to their style and content. This moment in cultural policy was part of a continuum of reactions to World War II and included themes that went beyond the native anti-Semitism of the period.

This dissertation examines a key transformation in the history of Jewish nationalism in the 1940s - the decline of autonomist visions in Jewish national thought oriented toward Jewish life as a minority community in Eastern Europe, and the emergence of a Jewish ethnic-nation state in Palestine as the dominant mode of Jewish national expression. The main argument advanced in this dissertation is that this shift cannot be explained exclusively as a Jewish response to the Holocaust, but ought to situated as part of the larger process of the homogenization of the nation- state in East Central Europe during the war and in its immediate aftermath through genocide and ethnic cleansing, population transfers and the rejection of international norms regarding the protection of minorities. Drawing on a variety of archival and published sources in Hebrew, Yiddish and English, this study reconstructs the vibrant Jewish postwar planning scene in New- York, Palestine and London. From the start of the war tens of Jewish leaders and scholars, many whom had bee recent refugees from Europe, turned to plan for the Jewish future after the war. This dissertation examines how these Jewish leaders and thinkers grappled with the question of the future of the Jews as they debated whether Jews would be able reintegrate into Eastern Europe after the war, learned about the extermination of European Jewry and observed the ethnic transformation of the multiethnic East Central European landscape through wartime and postwar population transfers and ethnic cleansing.

The thesis analyses the child's perspective in the literary works of the holocaust literature - the novel The Painted Bird by Jerzy Kosinski, the short story Děti (Children) by Arnošt Lustig and the piece Noc (Night) by Elie Wiesel. We assume that the child's perspective is significant and totally different from the perspective of the adult narrator. The goal of the thesis is to define the characteristic elements in the narrative. First and foremost we seek to analyze the elements in the language, style and motifs of the texts. We also want to define what kinds of literary works are suitable to be denominated as literature written through the child's eyes. We divide the works into several groups according to the fact if the book is a fiction or a memoir. The main differences in using the child's perspective are between these two groups of literary works. In the thesis we first describe the holocaust as a historical event and then we go on with the description of the holocaust literature. In the other parts of the thesis we analyze the literary works mentioned above.

This paper examines the role and scope of the American public’s opinion on European Jews in the 1930’s and 1940’s. Significant attention is placed on several aspects of American politics and public perceptions at this time. The ideas that developed from the Great Depression through World War II on refugees and immigrants are closely scrutinized. The approach to this study focuses on sources from renowned Holocaust scholars including Raul Hilberg, David S. Wyman, Martin Gilbert, Henry Feingold, Hadley Cantril, Robert Divine, and Deborah E. Lipstadt to name a select few of the authors referenced. Several newspapers and journals such as the New York Times, St. Louis Post-Dispatch, The Washington Post, The Christian Century, The Nation, and the New Republic are referenced. The areas of focus are on public attitude, governmental involvement, Jewish leadership in the United States, and military capabilities. Conclusions of this study include apathy from participating parties, the inability to organize strong rescue support, and the refusal to lower the immigration restrictions of the time.

For centuries, people have been telling stories of the traumatic events in their lives in order to deal with the lasting effects of those traumas. This thesis will explore the way Gábor Schein applies this belief to his own writing by focusing on his protagonists’ connection with the Holocaust. In his novels, The Book of Mordechai and Lazarus, Schein uses the protagonists to reveal the process of recovery through storytelling. By applying the theory of narrative therapy to Schein’s writings, it becomes apparent how vital the moments of sharing are for those suffering from trauma. Schein’s protagonists have suffered several forms of mental and physical displacement, but they find a new home and sense of community with the people that they share their stories. Many studies have been done on the effect that trauma has on memory and how those memories, no matter how terrible they may be, can be shared with happiness. Schein’s protagonists engage in social sharing of their stories to build off of each other’s memories and regain a semblance of the community they lost.

Male-male sexual violence during the Holocaust is under-researched. Despite being a widespread occurrence in the Nazi concentration camps, very few accounts from primary sources are available of the sexual violence perpetrated against the Piepel: male Jewish children, adolescents, and young adults, by male Kapos or senior prisoner functionaries. Until now this phenomenon has been understood to be an exchange of sexual favours for food and protection, but little else was known. This study therefore aims to examine the dynamics of Kapo-Piepelsexual violence in the Auschwitz concentration camp through the perceptions of victims of, and witnesses, to this violence, within a framework of feminist theory, gender and masculinity theory, and group dynamics. Based on written accounts in the form of memoirs and oral testimony from audio-visual archives, this study finds that the Piepelwere forced into sexual relationships to survive; that the Kapos used them as sexual substitutes for women; and that survivors’ attitudes towards the Piepelhave become more sympathetic in more recently published ego-documents. This study therefore calls for a wider examination of this phenomenon, and of male-male sexual violence during the Holocaust, given the resultant improvement in attitudes towards these victims who for too long have not been heard due to the shame and stigma attached to being a male victim of rape.

The present study examines the promotion of Holocaust denial since 1945 with a particular focus on the works of David Irving. It specifically examines the contribution to Holocaust denial of Irving's ideological beliefs as expounded in his published works and his many public speeches. My thesis also presents evidence and an argument about Irving's crusade to promote Holocaust denial. This thesis will chart a changing consciousness about the established history of the Holocaust, in which conventional historical discussion is gradually losing ground. Deborah Lipstadt argues that these attacks on history and knowledge have the potential to alter the way established truth is transmitted from generation to generation. Lipstadt points out that according to some post-structuralist scholars no fact, no event, and no aspect of history any longer has any fixed meaning or content. Any truth can be retold. Any fact can be re-cast. Lipstadt defines this as bigotry. I tend to agree. This thesis will examine the genesis and context of holocaust denial. Here I shall evaluate significant contemporary denial writings and offer some perspectives about the controversy; I will consider general aspects of David Irving's background, personality and the major steps in his intellectual development; Irving will be examined as an author of historical books and an historian of the Second World War; examine Irving as a Holocaust denier; examine both Irving's political agenda, his propensity to associate with extreme right groups and individual and his alleged capacity to incite violence. / Master of Arts (Hons)

Thesis (Ph. D.)--State University of New York at Binghamton, Comparative Literature Department, 2005. / Includes bibliographical references.

<p>SAMMANFATTNING</p><p>Sedan Skola för bildning (1992) och Läroplan för de frivilliga skolformerna (Lpf 94) står värdegrunden i centrum för skolans och lärares uppdrag. I utformandet av värdegrundsarbetet har bland annat fokus riktats mot nynazism och främlingsfientliga tendenser i samhället. Dessa har sedan kopplats till antisemitism och Förintelsen genom statsminister Göran Persson och Forum för Levande historia. Därför är det relevant att undersöka hur värdegrundens koppling till Förintelsen gestaltas i undervisningen.</p><p>I uppsatsen fokuseras konstruktionen av Förintelsen i en lokal gymnasiekurs: Förintelsen — ett folkmord att förklara och förstå, 100 poäng. Förintelsen granskas utifrån det material lärarna använder i kursen, som sätts i relation till förintelseforskning, didaktik och konstruktion av undervisningens innehåll.</p><p>Med hjälp av en teoretisk förankring i kritisk diskursanalys och under användning av den kritiska diskursanalysens textanalytiska undersökningsmetod undersöks främst hur ”Förintelsen” konstrueras i förintelsekursernas textmaterial. Detta syfte konkretiseras i undersökningsfrågor som handlar om vilka aktörer och objekt som fokuseras respektive marginaliseras och vilka motiv till aktörernas handlingar texterna erbjuder. Frågorna undersöks främst med referens till texternas sanningsanspråk och den deliberation som möjliggörs respektive omöjliggörs.</p><p>Undersökningens resultat är framför allt att texterna innehåller en relativt tydlig konstruktion av ”Förintelsen” som en händelse som främst berör ”judar” och som motiveras av antisemitismen. Andra beskrivningar av offren förekommer endast undantagsvis och är således marginaliserade. Förövarna förblir även de relativt ogripbara, med andra ord beskrivs de som grupp eller som ideologi ("nazister" respektive "nazismen") som i sin tur främst definieras genom sin antisemitism. Detta innebär att deliberativa samtal om motiv, förklaringsmodeller och handlingsvägar i nuet försvåras.</p>

People are fascinated with death and disaster. One simply has to watch traffic slow to a crawl when passing a car accident to understand this. However, this fascination goes beyond the side of a highway and enters the realm of tourism. Today, numerous sites of death and disaster attract millions of visitors from all around the world: Auschwitz-Birkenau, Anne Frank's House, Graceland, Oklahoma City, Gettysburg, Vimy Ridge, the Somme, Arlington National Cemetery. The list grows each year as exhibited by the recent creation of an apartheid museum in Johannesburg, South Africa. Due to the increasing popularity of this tourism product, a small number of academics have begun studying the phenomenon. Leading the field are Lennon and Foley who labeled it Dark Tourism, Seaton who coined the term Thanatourism, and Rojek who developed the concept of Black Spots. However, despite ongoing study, there has been a paucity in understanding what actually motivates individuals to sites of dark tourism. Yet understanding motivation is imperative, particularly given the subject and sensitivity of these sites. Some are slowly decaying, and visitors play a large role in their preservation. Subsequently, without proper management, visitor influxes can further deteriorate sites or induce friction with the locals. Knowledge then, also provides administrators the necessary tools to properly manage the varying stakeholders. Although many feel an interest in death and disaster simply stems from morbidity, the range of factors involved extend from an interest in history and heritage to education to remembrance. To begin this study, a list of possible motivations was compiled. Then, to get a better comprehension of these motivations, visitors to the Holocaust Museum Houston were surveyed as a case study. As a commodified, synthetic site of death and atrocity, the museum fits the definitions of a dark tourism site as established by lead academics. Therefore, by asking visitors to the museum what motivated them to the site, the results will hopefully give some acumen into the wants and needs of certain stakeholders. Finally, this research sought to discover if motivation at the museum could shed light on motivation to other sites of dark tourism.