Jewish Responses to Persecution, 1933–1946: A Source Reader (Documenting Life and Destruction: Holocaust Sources in Context)

Editor: Jürgen Matthäus 

Editor: Emil Kerenji

Combining rich documentation selected from the five-volume series on Jewish Responses to Persecution, this text combines a carefully curated selection of primary sources with basic background information to illuminate key aspects of Jewish life during the Holocaust. Many available for the first time in English translation, these letters, reports, and testimonies, as well as photographs and other visual documents, provide an array of first-hand contemporaneous accounts by victims. With its focus on highlighting the diversity of Jewish experiences, perceptions, and actions, the book calls into question prevailing perceptions of Jews as a homogenous, faceless, or passive group and helps complicate students’ understanding of the Holocaust. While no source reader can comprehensively cover this vast subject, this volume addresses key aspects of victim experiences in terms of gender, age, location, chronology, and social and political background. Selected from vast archival collections by a team of expert scholars, this book provides a wealth of material for discussion, reflection, and further study on issues of mass atrocities in their historical and current manifestations.

Published in association with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Paperback

296 pages