Authors: Donald Bloxham, Tony Kushner
ISBN-13: 9780719037795, ISBN-10: 0719037794
Format: Paperback
Publisher: Manchester University Press
Date Published: July 2005
Edition: (Non-applicable)
Donald Bloxham is Lecturer in Twentieth Century History at the University of Edinburgh.
Tony Kushner is Marcus Sieff Professor of Jewish Studies at the University of Southampton.
Despite the massive literature on the Holocaust, our understanding of it has traditionally been influenced by rather unsophisticated early perspectives and silence. This book summarizes and criticizes the existing scholarship on the subject and suggests new ways by which we can approach its study. It addresses the use of victim testimony and asks important questions: What function does recording the past serve for the victim? What do historians want from it? Are these two perspectives incompatible? It also examines the perpetrators of the Holocaust, and compares them to those responsible for other acts of genocide and ethnic cleansing in the early years of the twentieth century. In addition, it looks at the bystanders--examining the complexity and ambiguity at the heart of contemporary reaction.
1 | The victims : dealing with testimony | 16 |
2 | Perpetrators and perpetration part I : ideology and interpretation | 61 |
3 | Perpetrators and perpetration part II : radicalism and participation | 113 |
4 | The bystanders : towards a more sophisticated historiography | 176 |