April 2010 -- New Resources

Presser, Dr. Jacob. Ashes in the Wind: The Destruction of Dutch Jewry. Trans. Arnold Pomerans. London: Souvenir Press, 2010.

“Beginning in 1940, 110,000 Jews were deported from the Netherlands to concentration camps. Of those, fewer than 6,000 returned. Using 15 years of research, Jacob Presser graphically recounts stories of persecution, life in the transit camps and the process of going into hiding.” –from book cover

Florence, Ronald. Emissary of the Doomed: Bargaining for Lives in the Holocaust. NY: Viking, 2010.

Until March 1944, the Jews of Hungary enjoyed relative physical security, although Hungary was an ally of the Axis powers. In fact, Hungarian Jews managed to save thousands of their brethren from other central and eastern European countries by smuggling them into (and sometimes out of) Hungary. When German troops invaded, they brought intense pressure on the Hungarian government to round up Jews and transport them for“resettlement.” Thus began a valiant if largely futile effort to rescue them. Florence, a historian and novelist, recounts this struggle in a riveting and intense work. At the center of the narrative is an unlikely hero. Joel Brand was a former communist, a committed Zionist, and physically unimpressive. Yet he brought great energy to efforts to bargain with Hungarian and German officials to “ransom” Jews, exchanging their lives for material aid for the Axis cause. He did so despite the opposition of the British and American governments, leaving a legacy of bitterness that still persists. This is a fine examination of one of the saddest episodes of the Holocaust. --Jay Freeman, Booklist.


Kassow, Samuel. Who Will Write Our History?: Rediscovering a Hidden Archive from the Warsaw Ghetto. NY: Vintage Books, 2007.

In 1940, in the Jewish ghetto of Nazi-occupied Warsaw, a clandestine and scholarly organization called the Oyneg Shabes was established by the Polish historian Emanuel Ringelblum to record the experiences of the ghetto’s inhabitants. For three years, members of the Oyneg Shabes worked in secret to chronicle the lives of hundres of thousands as they suffered starvation, disease, and the deportation by the Nazis. Shortly before the Warsaw ghetto was emptied and razed in 1943, the Oyneg Shabes buried thousands of documents from this massive archive in milk cans and tin boxes, ensuring that the voice and culture of a doomed people would outlast the efforts of their enemies to silence them. – From book cover.


Webber, Jonathan. Rediscovering Traces of Memory: The Jewish Heritage of Polish Galicia. Photographs by Chris Schwarz. Indianapolis: Oxford Indiana Univ. Press, 2009.

This beautiful book features photographs by Chris Schwarz, an acclaimed British photojournalist. His father’s origins in Lvov and his own interest in the Solidarity movement led him to Poland, where he teamed up with Joanthan Webber to work on the Traces of Memory Project. In 2004 he opened the Galicia Jewish Museum in Krakow to showcase his photographs as a way of bringing the story of the Jewish heritage in Polish Galicia to Poland and to the world. Schwarz died in 2007. – From book cover.