Intellectuals at Auschwitz: Jean Amery and Primo Levi on the Mind and Its Limits

For Jean Améry, the uselessness of intellectual culture in the "borderline situation" of Auschwitz proved the essential incompetence of the intellect as such. For Primo Levi, the intellect served as a precious resource in dealing with the realities of the camp. Levi's debate with Améry, the author of this article argues, is of fundamental value for our understanding of the nature and function of the intellect. A comparison of Améry's spirited defiance of the conditions of existence at Auschwitz with Levi's reflective openness to these same conditions yields convincing evidence of the intellect's essentially social character. Unlike Levi, Améry lacked intellectual companionship at Auschwitz; his testimony therefore reflects the essential deformation the mind suffers when dialogical communion with others becomes impossible.

Quelle: http://hgs.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/short/29/3/353?rss=1

Hybrid Testimony and Moral Indictment: A Survivor’s Poetic Response to the Mauthausen Nazi Concentration Camp Experience

Poetry is rarely accorded the same testimonial and documentary status as diaries and memoirs, which have been largely accepted as subjective forms of historical accounts. The author of this article argues that more traditional forms of Holocaust survivor testimony and poetic forms do not have to be viewed as belonging to mutually exclusive categories. A close reading of Mauthausen concentration camp survivor Otto Hoffmann's 1945 collection of poems reveals the testimonial character of poetry, and attests to the survivor's effort to establish authority as a "moral witness."

Quelle: http://hgs.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/short/29/3/460?rss=1

Eyewitness to Genocide: The Operation Reinhard Death Camp Trials, 1955-1966

Quelle: http://hgs.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/short/29/3/478?rss=1

Next to Babi Yar: The Syrets Concentration Camp and the Evolution of Nazi Terror in Kiev

Drawing on the concept of the concentration camp, this examination of the history of the Syrets camp near Kiev traces the principle stages of Nazi terror, exploitation, and extermination in the occupied capital of the Ukraine. The author locates Syrets in the context of the evolving camp system of the Third Reich.

Quelle: http://hgs.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/short/29/3/431?rss=1

Holocaust Archaeologies: Approaches and Future Directions

Quelle: http://hgs.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/short/29/3/481?rss=1

La Revue nouvelle | 8/2015

Quelle: http://www.eurozine.com/journals/revuenouvelle/issue/2015-12-30.html

Il Mulino | 6/2015

Quelle: http://www.eurozine.com/journals/ilmulino/issue/2015-12-30.html

pARTisan | 29 (2015)

Intellectual resistance

Quelle: http://www.eurozine.com/journals/partisan/issue/2015-12-30.html

Reclaimed Pasts: Intermarriage and Remembrances of National Socialist Racial Stigmatization by Jewish and non-Jewish Spouses and Mischling Children

<span class="paragraphSection">One of the ways in which the National Socialist state sought to achieve its linked aims to consolidate German unity in preparation for war and to exclude Jews from every aspect of German life was by the reinterpretation of family histories using its taxonomy of difference. This effort is a less commonly recognized aspect of the Blood Protection Law and its subsequent clarifications; the orientation toward future marriage regulations required a revision of past marriages and what they meant. This article argues that post-war narratives from individuals whom the regime targeted because they were intermarried need to be read as reassertions of narrative authority that directly challenge the way National Socialism recast such families in German history. Specifically, the experiences were diverse and informed by memory as well as context. The article posits that the variability of memory is evident in the memoirs written by Heinz Freudenthal, who was Jewish and married to a non-Jewish woman; Brigitte Steiner, who was non-Jewish but married to a Jewish man; and Elsbeth von Ameln, who was the daughter of a man the state classified as Jewish and a non-Jewish woman.</span>

Quelle: https://academic.oup.com/leobaeck/article/61/1/183/2697254/Reclaimed-Pasts-Intermarriage-and-Remembrances-of?rss=1

Vagant | 4/2015

Quelle: http://www.eurozine.com/journals/vagant/issue/2015-12-30.html