Menu Expand
Microhistories of the Holocaust

Microhistories of the Holocaust

Claire Zalc | Tal Bruttmann

(2016)

Additional Information

Book Details

Abstract

How does scale affect our understanding of the Holocaust? In the vastness of its implementation and the sheer amount of death and suffering it produced, the genocide of Europe’s Jews presents special challenges for historians, who have responded with work ranging in scope from the world-historical to the intimate. In particular, recent scholarship has demonstrated a willingness to study the Holocaust at scales as focused as a single neighborhood, family, or perpetrator. This volume brings together an international cast of scholars to reflect on the ongoing microhistorical turn in Holocaust studies, assessing its historiographical pitfalls as well as the distinctive opportunities it affords researchers.


“This selection of mostly highly stimulating and well-researched case studies not only gives insight into the diversity of what we think of as the Holocaust, but also a sense of how differently we can go about studying this topic and past social life in general. There is much to be gained, therefore, from reading this collection not selectively, according to one’s own research interests, but as a whole. In this sense, this is a very effective publication and a great addition to the literature.” • H-Soz-Kult

“The contributions underline the extra value of microhistory, particularly for the study of relations and interactions between Jews and their non-Jewish fellow citizens. More generally, the volume demonstrates that the traditional tripartite division into victims, perpetrators, and bystanders is at least questionable. In most of the presented microstudies bystanders are absent, if not nonexistent. … The editors' main aim was to show through their collection of microstudies the complexity and diversity of the Holocaust. In this, they have succeeded admirably.” • H-Net Reviews

“This excellent volume not only displays an admirable thematic and geographic diversity, but also presents a range of interpretations of the methodology known as ‘microhistory.’ Together, the chapters provide a refreshing and important look at the genocide against the Jews, illuminating aspects and incidents that must, by definition, be overlooked by macrohistorical studies.” • Jonathan R. Zatlin, Boston University

“With historians in many countries turning increasingly to microhistory as an effective way to explore questions of human behavior and historical causation, now is the right time for this collection devoted to the Holocaust. The volume offers broad geographic and thematic coverage, provides examples of a variety of microhistorical approaches, and features the work of established scholars as well as younger colleagues engaged in innovative scholarship.” • Alan E. Steinweis, University of Vermont


Claire Zalc is a Research Professor (directrice de recherche) in history at the Institut d’histoire moderne et contemporaine, CNRS-ENS and at the EHESS. Among several publications, she recently edited "L'histoire de la Shoah face à ses sources", a special issue of Vingtième siècle. Revue d'histoire, 2018. She specializes in the history of immigration in twentieth-century France and the history of French Jews during World War II. She was awarded the CNRS Bronze Medal in 2013.


Tal Bruttmann is a researcher whose work focuses on the various anti-Jewish policies implemented in France between 1940 and 1944, as well as the “Final Solution.” He has published several books, the most recent of which was Auschwitz (La Découverte, 2015). He is currently working on a project about the “Auschwitz album” photos.

Table of Contents

Section Title Page Action Price
Microhistories of the Holocaust i
Title Page iii
Contents v
Illustrations and Tables viii
Acknowledgments x
Introduction: Toward a Microhistory of the Holocaust 1
Part I — Biographies, Groups, Transports, Ghettos: The Scales of Analysis 15
Chapter 1 — An Inconceivable Emigration: Richard Frank's Flight from Germany to Switzerland in 1942 17
Chapter 2 — Pursuing Escape from Vienna: The Katz Family's Correspondence 29
Chapter 3 — Moving Together, Moving Alone: The Story of Boys on a Transport from Auschwitz to Buchenwald 44
Chapter 4 — Dehumanizing the Dead: The Destruction of Thessaloniki's Jewish Cemetery 68
Chapter 5 — Reconstructing Trajectories of Persecution: Reflections on a Prosopography of Holocaust Victims 85
Chapter 6 — Microhistories, Microgeographies: Budapest, 1944, and Scales of Analysis 113
Part II — Face-to-Face: Victims and Perpetrators 129
Chapter 7 — Microhistory of the Holocaust in Poland: New Sources, New Trails 131
Chapter 8 — Jewish Slave Workers in the German Aviation Industry 151
Chapter 9 — The Devil in Microhistory: The \"Hunt for Jews\" as a Social Process, 1942–1945 171
Chapter 10 — On the Persistence of Moral Judgment: Local Perpetrators in Transnistria as Seen by Survivors and Their Christian Neighbors 190
Chapter 11 — Defiance and Protest: A Comparative Microhistorical Reevaluation of Individual Jewish Responses to Nazi Persecution 209
Chapter 12 — The Murder of the Jews of Ostrów Mazowiecka in November 1939 227
Chapter 13 — Échirolles, 7 August 1944: A Triple Execution 242
Chapter 14 — The Beginning—First Massacres against the Jews in the Romanian Holocaust: Level of Decision, Genocidal Strategy, and Killing Methods regarding the Dorohoi and Galati Pogroms, June–July, 1940 251
Part III — The Material for Shifting Scales: Sources between Testimonies and Archives 265
Chapter 15 — The Holocaust and Postwar Justice in Poland in Three Acts 267
Chapter 16 — The Small and the Good: Microhistory through the Eyes of the Witness—A Case Study 285
Chapter 17 — The Witness against the Archive: Toward a Microhistory of Christianstadt 300
Index 315