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The great majority of Holocaust scholarship concentrates heavily, if not almost completely, on the Final Solution from the German side. The distinctive feature of this book, both individually and as a collection, is its concentration on the Holocaust from a Judeo-centric point of view. The present essays make a unique contribution by exploring issues such as: the effect of events specifically on Jewish women and children; the character of the Nazi policy of slave labor in as much as this essential program resulted in different treatment with regard to Jews as compared to other workers; how the destruction of European Jewry has been responded to by Jewish thinkers; and how Jewish values, such as the well-known principle that "all Jews are responsible for each other," were exemplified and lived out during the war. The collection also includes an essay on Elie Wiesel, and another that explores the much discussed, very controversial issue of Jewish resistance, as well as several essays on philosophical and comparative issues raised by the Shoah.
List of contents
Introduction
1. On the Holocaust and Comparative History
2. Mass Death Under Communist Rule and the Limits of Otherness
3. Auschwitz and the Gulag: A Study in Dissimilarity
4. Children in Auschwitz and the Gulag
5. On the Definition of Genocide and the Issue of Uniqueness
6. Exploring the Holocaust and Comparative History
7. Extermination Trumps Production: On the Issues of Jews as Slave Laborers
8. The Murder of Jewish Children during the Holocaust
9. Thoughts on the Intersection of Rape and Rassenschande during the Holocaust
10. Irving Greenberg on History and Halakha: The Implications of the Holocaust
11. Exploring the Concept of Kol Yisrael Arevim Zeh L'Zeh
12. Thinking about Jewish Resistance during the Holocaust
13. Elie Wiesel: The Man and His Legacy
14. The Issue of Confirmation and Disconfirmation in Jewish Thought after the Shoah
15. Jewish Theologians Respond to the Holocaust
Index
About the author
Steven T. Katz holds the Alvin J. And Shirley Slater Chair in Jewish Holocaust Studies at Boston University. A prolific author, he is the editor of Modern Judaism and has published numerous works on the Holocaust and Jewish philosophy, including Post-Holocaust Dialogues: Studies in 20th Century Jewish Thought, which won a 1984 Jewish Book Award; Historicism, the Holocaust and Zionism: Critical Studies in Modern Jewish Thought and History; and The Holocaust in Historical Context, vol. 1, selected by the American Association of Publishers as the "Outstanding book of 1994 in the category of philosophy and religion." He served for seven years as Academic Advisor to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, a consortium of 35 countries and a wide group of NGOs.
Summary
The distinctive feature of this book, both individually and as a collection, is its concentration on the Holocaust from a Judeo-centric point of view.
