Auschwitz

Reinhard Kleist' s graphic novel The Boxer tells the story of Holocaust survivor Harry Haft and his participation in forced boxing matches in Nazi concentration camps. Throughout the work, Kleist works against clear delineations of right and wrong by offering what I term 'nuancing gestures'. Haft is a morally complex protagonist who works against the image of the heroic and sanctimonious survivor, and Kleist identifies other characters that challenge comforting notions of good and bad. The work uses visual correspondences between panels to highlight cycles of interpersonal violence, showing how issues of complicity are carried forward later in life. Furthermore, the graphic novel depicts in vivid detail how traumatic intrusions disrupt Haft' s daily life. This article explores how The Boxer' s particular stylistic rendering of moral ambiguity, complicity, and the longer lasting effects of trauma raises new insights about how the medium of comics can navigate a sensitive and complex Holocaust narrative.

The Holocaust is often described as beyond representation. Drawing on interdisciplinary perspectives, this ground-breaking collection of essays by leading international scholars takes the Scrolls of Auschwitz as its starting point. These powerful hand-written testimonies, which were buried in the grounds of the crematoria at Birkenau in 1944, seek to bear witness to mass murder from at its core. The accounts, which are often marginalized in studies of Holocaust testimony, are frequently highly literary and ask significant questions of the notion that Auschwitz cannot be attested to. The volume also includes a number of essays that consider other forms of testimony, in media such as film, literature and video, which have also been marginalized as they fail to conform to dominant ideas about the nature and structure of the event.

The 6th volume of Chronicles of Terror is the second dedicated to the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp complex. Former inmates, male and female citizens of pre-war Poland as well as witnesses from other European nations, talk about the fate of the women and children interned at the camp. They reveal the details of the atrocious living conditions in the women s camp, the crimes committed by their German overseers, the experiments into mass sterilization and the extermination of Jews and prisoners of other nationalities, including children.

Evoking the personal testimonies of the Auschwitz-Birkenau prisoners gives a voice back to the individual victims of Nazi totalitarianism instead of reducing them to pure statistics. Their stories show the variety of their fates and the specifics of the experiences each one of them had to face.

The history of Auschwitz is hugely complex, and yet it seems that we often try to contain it, to reduce it to a single, essential message. This oversimplification is dangerous – it not only does a disservice to the past and its victims; it prevents us from a deeper understanding of why and how this was possible.
At a time of rising nationalism, xenophobia, racism, antisemitism, extremism and the polarisation of our societies; when the rule of law appears to be breaking down; when democratic institutions appear under threat, and we see a turn towards more autocratic and authoritarian rule, the need to look again at Auschwitz and what it means for our societies appears more urgent than ever.

Resumen: Partiendo de la pregunta clásica por el origen del mal y sus determinaciones, se trataría aquí de analizar las representaciones del mal en la obra de aquellos escritores (Littell, Amis, Sebald) que, en nuestros días, mucho después de Adorno, recurren a la categoría filosófica del mal ya cierta estética del horror como motivos genuinos del impulso literario.

Angesichts der todbringenden Gräuel, die Menschen anderen Menschen antun, kann jedes Feilen an sprachlichen Formulierungen obszön wirken und könnte der Schluss gezogen werden, dass nicht nur dieses sinnlos, sondern jede diesbezügliche Arbeit am Begriff oder Suche nach Genauigkeit zum Scheitern verurteilt ist und in Absurdität endet. Noch die unscheinbarste Anstrengung, einen angemessenen Stil zu finden, könnte von Adornos berühmtem Diktum affiziert sein, nach Auschwitz ein Gedicht zu schreiben sei barbarisch. Dabei sollte nicht vergessen werden, dass dieses ganz am Ende seines Aufsatzes Kulturkritik und Gesellschaft zu finden ist, in dem die Unmöglichkeit aufgezeigt werden soll, dass sich Kulturkritik als gesellschaftliche Funktion von der Abhängigkeit von der Gesellschaft und der mit ihr einhergehenden Korruption befreit. Damit wirft Adorno allerdings auch die Frage auf, ob seine fundamentale Kritik an der Kritik von dieser Unmöglichkeit betroffen ist. Nicht nur auf sinnliche Wirkung ausgerichtetes Wortspiel, Zeichenrätsel und sprachlich motivierte assoziative Überlagerung, sondern jede Art von Kunst und ihr Genuss kann hier unter Gedicht subsumiert werden. Kunst, die sich dem Erinnern an das Grauen und den Terror, die aus moralischem Versagen der Gesellschaft resultierten, widmen will, kann sich nur dadurch retten, dass sie als Intervention die kritische Funktion zu übernehmen sucht, die den sprachlichen Schablonen der Kulturkritik durch die gesellschaftliche Vereinnahmung unmöglich gemacht wurde oder wird. Daraus, nämlich dass sowohl Genuss als auch Verstehen unter Verdacht stehen, erklärt sich der Minimalismus der Kunstwerke, die Benjamin Kaufmann 2016 in Wien für eine Ausstellung ausgesucht hatte, um der Shoah zu gedenken, erklärt sich die Klarheit, der Grad an Abstraktion und die Reduktion der eingesetzten bildnerischen Mittel.

The role that Italy played in the Holocaust of the Jews of Thessaloniki has not been documented.  Jewish Greeks of Thessaloniki and other nearby locales did not benefit either by Italian or Spanish Diplomacy and the Diplomats.  The unfortunate indirect role that Italy played in the Annihilation of Jewish Greeks will be demonstrated.  The adaptability, along with the fortunes of war, and, consequently, its interpretation at will by the Spanish Administration, of the Spanish Citizenship (its rights and privileges) of Jewish Thessalonikians is also demonstrated.  It is regrettable that the self–evident and obvious duty of a Country – State to protect its own citizens had to be transubstantiated into and elevated to the realm of Humanity and Saving and Rescue.

Originally published in "I Ink, Therefore I Am," Wiley-Blackwell, ed. Robert Arp, 2012 (http://www.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-0470672064.html)

In this paper, I’ll explore tattooing not merely as a form of expression—it is that—but as a practice of writing or inscription, that is, as a praxis or creative labor that tells aspects or parts of the story of the person whose body is inscribed by/through the tattooing. Such practices, I’ll argue, are not rightly conceived in terms of the (dualistic) view that the body/skin is best conceived as that “text” upon which such a practice is performed, or even as a “canvas” upon which meanings are “painted.” Both, I think, offer an inadequately static view of tattooing as a practice. Tattoos, in other words, are never merely “there.” Rather, in telling their stories (stories partly told—however inadequately or incompletely—just in seeing them), they come to inform and are informed by a particular form of life. Like writing, tattooing is animated in being “read” by oneself or others; hence, the having of tattoos is more like engaging in an activity than claiming a possession, their meaning (s) subject to change in light of on-going experience. Tattooing tells a story, I’ll argue, whether we (can) see them, we “forget” them, are embarrassed by them, lie about them, flaunt them, or even have them removed. It’s not just that their stories are our stories, it’s that through them we take up a certain practice of writing, a certain way of inscribing who we are for ourselves and for others.

Over the last decade, there has been a growing tendency among Romani elites and organizations to participate in a globalized holocaust discourse to deal with processes of Romani identity formation. This article scrutinizes the consequences of this participation by focusing on debates about the role of the Nazi genocide of the Roma in these processes of identity formation, and by analyzing the exhibition on the extermination of the European Roma in the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum in particular. As we will see below, from this analysis arises the general question of how the processes of Romani identity formation in general, and their reliance on the Roma’s various histories of marginalization and persecution in particular, have to deal with their own specificity.

The study refers to a short comics regarding portraits of Sinti from Auswchitz-Birkenau, pictures by Dina Gottliebova-Babbitt. An author describes deliberate silences in the comic, a tendentious depiction of the whole tragic story. The article refers to three sides of the dispute - the artist (Dina Gottliebova), the Auschwitz Museum, as well as the Roma community. The dangers at the level of school education of young people associated with the one-sided and tendentious presentation of very difficult topics in works of popular culture are also indicated.

Salmen Gradowski, member of the Sonderkommando in Auschwitz, wrote a report about the mass murder of the Jews from the so called family camp in Birkenau. All those Jews came to Auschwitz from Theresienstadt. Translation from Yiddish into German.

The use of digital technologies and social media has become an increasingly significant means for engagement in many fields, and that of cultural heritage is no exception. Specifically, Holocaust museums have long been committed to providing historical and educational content to their audiences, and to this end digital communication channels and social media in particular figure among the means employed. Despite this, relatively few research studies have investigated the potential of Holocaust museums' use of social media as new memory ecologies.
This preliminary study investigates how three prominent Holocaust museums (Yad Vashem in Israel, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington D.C., and the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial and Museum in Poland) use Twitter, Facebook and Instagram to enhance knowledge and understanding of historical and remembrance events among the general public. Using a mixed-methods approach, we analysed the museums’ social media profiles on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram to investigate the topics and phrases that appear most often in the posted contents.
Through latent semantic analyses, we determined the words most frequently used by the three museums themselves and within the three social media channels. Additionally, we employed topic modelling to determine underlying themes. This approach allowed us to identify possible similarities and differences between the museums’ communication output and their social media channels. Moreover, to illustrate these potential similarities and differences, we also conducted 2-Mode network analyses.
Our results show that the museums’ use of each social media channel exhibits different types of topical foci. For example, Twitter posts specifically include terminology on the Auschwitz camp, Facebook communication is more centred on the “exhibition” and the “Nazi” regime, while on Instagram the combination of “holocaust” and “photo” can often be found. Furthermore, similarities were also found, namely that the topic of “Auschwitz” is omnipresent and that all museums appear to focus on the 1941–1945 timeframe. The study has implications for the kind of historical knowledge and contemporary information that Holocaust museums and memorials contribute to disseminating on their social media profiles.

זלמן גרדובסקי נולד ב1910 בסובאלקי שבפולין, בן למשפחה דתית, למד בישיבה המקומית, עבד ב,מינימרקט, המשפחתי והמשך כפקיד ממשלתי באזור. התחתן עם סוניה-שרה ועבר לעיר לונה. הוא היה חבר בית"ר ותכנן לעלות לארץ אך המלחמה קטעה את תוכניותיו. ב1942 נשלח ממחנה המעבר קיילבייסין לאושוויץ. בסלקציה נבחר לעבודה ומשפחתו הובלה לגזים. לאחר יומיים נבחר בסלקציה נוספת לזונדרקומנדו. הוא שהה שם כשנתיים.
במהלך הזמן השתפרו התנאים בקומנדו וחבריו יצר מחתרת שעסקה בפעילויות שנות. גרדובסקי היה ממנהיגי המחתרת ועסק ב2 מהחשובות בפעילויות שלה:
1. הנהגת המרד ב7 באוקטובר 1944 (כ' תשרי תש"ה, שבת חול המועד סוכות) בו מצא עם רוב חבריו את מותו לאחר פיצוץ אחד מהקרמטוריומים.
2. כתיבת רשימות חשאיות. עד כה נמצאו 6 כתבים כאלו המעידים על כך שעוד כתבים נכתבו. מביניהם שניים שייכים לגרדובסקי. כתב יד אחד נמצא ע"י ניצול הזונדרקומנדו והועבר לסובייטים משחררי המחנה. הטקסט פורסם ע,י בער מארק ביידיש, פולנית ואף תורגם לעברית בספר שאין להשיגו עוד - "מגילת אושוויץ". אך הקריאה מכתבי היד וכן התרגום לוקים בחסר - לכן טקסט זה תורגם מחדש.
כתב היד השני נמצא ע"י חיים צבי וולנרמן, שלא מצא מקורות למימון תרגום ופרסום הספר ולכן הוציאו ביידיש בהוצאה עצמית ב1977. גם חלק הזה תורגם, מתוך העתקות של כתב היד שכן רובו נגנב מוולנרמן אך הוא העתיקם קודם בכמה מחברות.
וולנרמן הוסיף מבוא על נסיבות מציאת כתב היד וכן מבוא מאת גיסו של גרדובסקי. אלו פורסמו ביידיש וגם הם תורגמו .
גרדובסקי אינו מתאר את מהלך האירועים בצורת דו"ח או יומן יומיומי, אלא בחר כמה אירועים רחבים שאותם הוא מתאר בשפה לירית ומלאת פאתוס.
החלק הראשון הוא המסע ממחנה המעבר בטרנספורט לאושוויץ; האפיזודות במסע מתארות מקרים ספציפיים ברגישות גדולה - אך זו הפשטה ולא דיווח של מקרה ועדות מסודרים.
החלק השני הוא קינה לירית שפונה אל הלבנה המביטה באלם על המתרחש באושוויץ;
החלק השלישי מתאר בהרחבה את חיסול ה"טרנספורט הצ'כי", קבוצה של נשים מ"מחנה המשפחות" שבו לא הפרידו את המשפחות והתנאים בו היו טובים יותר - הם שהו במחנה חחצי שנה ולכן חשבו שהם ימרדו, שכן הם לא היו בהלם ותנאיהם היו טובים. אך זה לא קרה. גרדובסקי מתאר את הבאתם שלב אחר שלב לגזים ואף את שריפת גופותיהם בפרוטרוט. לפני המוות הן שרות כמה הימנונים - התקווה, הימנון צ'כי, אינטרנציונאל, ושיר הפרטיזנים. גרדובסקי מתאר את הלוך הרוח של הנשים ואת דיבריהן כלפי הנאצים וכלפי חברי הקומנדו, את המיניות שלהן והבושה בעירום ועוד. הוא לא מתאר זאת כדו"ח אלא בדיבור כללי, אמנם כל פעם על דמות ספציפית אך היא חסרת שם ואין זו עדות אחד לאחד אלא הפשטה לירית.
החלק הרביעי הוא תיאור של סלקציה בתור הקומנדו שאף שחשבו חבריו שברגע כזה הם ימרדו-  הם מצאו עצמם משתוקים. גרדובסקי מתאר זאת שוב בלשון לירית עם תיאורים ספציפיים אך מופשטים.הוא מתאר את תחושת האכזבה והבגידה ומנסה להסביר מתי ואיך הם שותקו.
לכל אחד מהחלקים הנ"ל יש הקדמה ובה פניה למוצא ולקורא, לפרסם את הכתבים עם תמונתו של גרדובסקי ע"י כתובת של משפחה שלו בניו יורק, הצהרה על תכלית הכתיבה - שמישהו יבכה אותו ואת משפחתו וחבריו ועוד.
החלק החמישי הוא מכתב קצר הפונה אל המוצא על כך שיש עוד כתבים מוטמנים ושחלקם כבר אבדו כי הנאצים חפרו באזור הקרמטוריומים וכן רמז למרד הקרב ובא.

ליומן הוסיף המתרגם, אביחי צור, מבוא על תולדות כתב היד ועל התרגום וכן אחרית דבר המנתחת את היומן באופן ספרותי-תיאולוגי. ד"ר גדעון גרייף הוסיף לספר רקע היסטורי על תולדות הזונדרקומנדו בכלל ועל גרדובסקי והמרד בפרט.
הספר מלווה גם בקובץ תמונות - של גרדובסקי, של כתבי היד השונים ומוצאיהם/המפרסמים שלהם, של עבודת הקומנדו ושל אושוויץ לפני ואחרי המרד.

Talk held at the Agamben Workshop 2020, Erfurt.

The paper agrees with three claims Giorgio Agamben puts forwards in his book Remnants of Auschwitz: 1. There was no appropriate consideration of Auschwitz in philosophy. 2. Such a reflection would have significant impact on philosophy itself, especially in the field of ethics. 3. Language and its loss has to be a key topic in a consideration of Auschwitz. The paper will elaborate on all three claims and relate them to Agamben’s eschatological concept of “remnant” that is featured already in the title and is further developed in regard to his writings on Paul.
Agamben claims that reflecting on Auschwitz makes it necessary to give up certain ethical notions such as the idea of responsibility or the idea that communication itself already bears a universal normativity. Although he builds upon Saussure and Heidegger his claims regarding an “Ethica more Auschwitz demonstrate” are in accord with claims of Theodor W. Adorno, especially in regard of the muted suffering in the Nazi death camps.

Auschwitz ist im Laufe der letzten 70 Jahre nicht nur zur bekanntesten Gedenkstätte nationalsozialistischer Massenverbrechen, sondern auch zum Synonym für Völkermord und Holocaust avanciert. In der unmittelbaren Nachkriegszeit interessierte sich vor allem die polnische Gesellschaft für das ehemalige Lager. Bereits damals konkurrierten unterschiedliche Vorstellungen hinsichtlich der Gestaltung und Nutzung des Ortes. Seine historischen, politischen, religiösen und kulturellen Einordnungen waren und sind seither Gegenstand kontroverser Diskussionen.
Imke Hansen erzählt die Geschichte der Gedenkstätte und des Symbols Auschwitz-Birkenau in der ersten Nachkriegsdekade als Alltags- und Lokalgeschichte. Sie nimmt die Erlebnisse und Entscheidungen der Akteure in den Blick, die sich unmittelbar an der Gestaltung des Ortes beteiligten. Ihr Handeln konstituierte die Bilder und Bedeutungen, die unseren Umgang mit Auschwitz-Birkenau bis heute prägen.

Im Mittelpunkt des Beitrags steht die Frage, inwiefern Strukturen und Praxen der stationären Behindertenhilfe mit Adornos „Erziehung nach Auschwitz“ (1966/1971a) (neu) verstanden werden können. Dabei soll problematisiert werden, inwiefern pädagogisches Handeln in der Behindertenhilfe – hier vergegenständlicht am Beispiel des stationären Wohnens von Menschen mit geistiger Behinderung – sich oftmals in totalen Strukturrahmen, fremdbestimmenden Praxen sowie einer drohenden Institutionalisierung und Bürokratisierung vollzieht (siehe u.a. Trescher, 2017a, S. 161-162). Diese Strukturmerkmale können im Lichte dessen gelesen werden, was Adorno als „Prinzip von Auschwitz“ (Adorno, 1966/1971a, S. 93) charakterisiert und als  Ermöglichungsbedingungen totaler Herrschaft versteht. Hierdurch sollen
selbstredend keinesfalls die Praxen der Behindertenhilfe mit den nationalsozialistischen Verbrechen gleichgesetzt werden. Vielmehr sollen die Fremdbestimmung und tiefgreifend verflochtenen, oft subjektiv wirkmächtig werdenden Abhängigkeiten benannt werden, denen Menschen mit geistiger Behinderung im Alltag immer wieder gegenüberstehen. Dabei entsteht – auch wenn nicht intendiert bzw. gegenteilig intendiert – oft allein durch politischbürokratisch-formalisierte Abläufe ein Prinzip von (für das Subjekt) fremder
Herrschaft. Strukturen und Praxen der stationären Behindertenhilfe werden durch unterschiedliche Inanspruchnahmen und Interessen hervorgebracht, die sich teils ambivalent zueinander verhalten können.

In 1946, Rudolf Franz Ferdinand Höss, the longest serving commander of Auschwitz concentration camp, is awaiting trial in a Polish prison. Albert, a young and successful Polish investigation judge, is appointed to interrogate Hoss and get a perfect confession out of him. The encounter between the two men will unveil the frightening routine and banalization of evil that took place in the camp.
By introducing the use of Zyklon B in Auschwitz, Rudolf Höss carried out the most efficient mass killing process ever known, which claimed the lives of approximately 1.1 million people. The film is based on the memoirs Hoss wrote before his execution.

Retracing Aldo van Eyck's reflections on the in-between space concept and relating them to the design research about reconstruction in the monuments connected to the war events, common and recurrent aesthetic practices and architectural composition strategies emerge. The unexpected emptiness is similarly transfigured in some emblematic war and holocaust memorials, and through contributions about the “counter-monument” and “wararchitecture”, the reflection on the reenactment of memory reaches the recent National September 11 Memorial in New York.

O artigo busca problematizar o caráter ético do testemunho literário do escritor italiano Primo Levi sobre sua experiência nos campos de morte de Auschwitz. Sua narrativa sugere às ciências sociais chaves analíticas importantes para compreender melhor não só o universo concentracionário enquanto local de desubjetivação humana, mas também o papel da máquina nazista na constituição de figuras arquetípicas e de contornos mal definidos no interior dos campos. O objetivo deste texto é examinar o fenômeno da zona grigia, a figura paradigmática do Muselmann e o caso de Hurbinek. Esses casos alertam para o risco do julgamento precipitado dessas figuras – que parecem compor um espaço nebuloso de indeterminação moral – com medidas do presente, sem que se avalie, antes de tudo, as circunstâncias empíricas às quais foram submetidas. Primo Levi argumenta, nesse sentido, que é preciso sempre ter em vista os pontos cegos que definem as fronteiras das zonas cinzentas de eventos traumáticos, a partir dos quais condutas sociais tendem a se confundir em razão das estratégias de perpetradores em imputar culpa e responsabilidade às vítimas.

This book reassesses Primo Levi’s Holocaust texts in light of the posthumanist theories of Adorno, Levinas, Lyotard, and Foucault which together critique humanist notions of subjectivity, ethics, culture, and science. I argue that Levi positions himself as an exemplary subject of Western modernity who experiences and interprets Auschwitz through the lens of Enlightenment humanism. Even as Levi speaks for the victims, his texts suggest that Holocaust writing framed by humanist assumptions risks complicity with the murderous master narratives of Nazism that it seeks to overturn. My book explores the consequences of this potential complicity for the future of the humanist subject.
Reviewed in The Journal of the Association for the Study of Modern Italy. See https://doi.org/10.1080/13532944.2012.756706

The essay examines translation issues in Yitzak Katzenelson's "Dos lid funem oysgehargetn yidishen folk" and their implications for the interpretation of Shoah literature. It provides a new English translation of the first canto of "Dos lid" as well.

There was a terrible typographical error in the original posting: the Yiddish term for Auschwitz is "Oshventshim,"  comparable to the Polish Oświęcim, and not "Oshventshtim". I apologize for this mistake.

Antwort auf Jan-Heiner Tücks Interpretation der Erwählung Israels als „bleibende theologische Würde“.
Inhaltsübersicht:
1. Die These von der „Einzigartigkeit“ von Auschwitz – und was dahintersteckt.
2. „Auschwitz“ als Vereinnahmung durch die neozionistisch lancierte „Erinnerungskultur“.
3. Die bibelfremde Vereinnahmung des „Israel“-Begriffs.
4. Das Bürgerrecht des biblischen Israels und seine Bedingungen in der Torah.
5. Anmerkungen zur Geschichte des Judentums von der Zeitenwende bis heute.
6. Wissenschaftliche Fakten zum ethnischen Hintergrund heutiger Juden.
7. Die neutestamentliche Erfüllung der Sacharja-Weissagung vom „Augapfel Gottes“.
Schlussfolgerung.
(2021-06-22)

Jorge Semprún was no stranger to controversy, for at one point not only had he been accused of being a kapo for the communists who practically ran Buchenwald, he had also been accused of lying and outright manipulation when he wrote in The Long Voyage that the camp gates read "Arbeit Macht Frei" or 'work sets you free', rather than "Jedem Das Seine" or 'to each his own' as they in fact did. Why on earth would a contemporary of Primo Levi and Elie Wiesel do such a thing? Did the centrality of 'work' in "Arbeit Macht Frei" suit his political as well as personal vision of the lager? Who exactly was Jorge Semprún? Was he an exile turned activist? Was he a communist militant turned cabinet minister? Was he both a Marxist and a political chameleon? Every rerun of the now familiar debate on how to approach Holocaust writing provides an opportunity to address such questions, and the publication of a comprehensive new biography by Soledad Fox Maura titled Exile, Writer, Soldier, Spy (Arcade, 2018) shows that he was all of the above and more.

Memoirs written by Holocaust survivors and (in some cases) their testimonies retain a
salience unmatched by other historical sources. This article discusses one such memoir,
Olga Lengyel’s Five Chimneys, alongside her 1998 testimony, aiming to engage with
broader methodological issues relating to the history of the Holocaust, particularly those
about memory, narrative and textuality. Through a detailed discussion of certain moments shaping Olga Lengyel’s personal experience, both pre-and post-arrival in Auschwitz, the article captures the tensions and contradictions characterizing the harrowing story of one woman’s loss of family in the Holocaust.

Vivimos en una época cínica, como denuncia Peter Sloterdjik, y profundamente ideologizada con no-ideologías, como señala Slavoj Žižek. Una manera de atacar estos problemas es volviendo a la Razón desfachatada y burlona, a la crítica socarrona y la filosofía vital de los quínicos antiguos, como Diógenes de Sínope, el quinismo medieval franciscano, la sátira renacentista y, en general, la argumentación no demostrativa, sino propositiva, del arte en general.

Drehbuchkomplikation? – Lyrik nach Auschwitz. In: Darstellen, Vermitteln, Aneignen. Gegenwärtige Reflexionen des Holocaust, ed. Bettina Bannasch & Hans-Joachim Hahn. Göttingen: V&R unipress, Vienna University Press 2018 (=Poetik, Exegese und Narrative · Studien zur jüdischen Literatur und Kunst, vol. 10), pp.81-97.

The present work focuses on the underlying seminal causes of the Annihilation of Jewish Greeks in Bulgarian occupied Northern Greece, in particular the regions of Eastern Macedonia (the cities of Kavala, Serres and Drama) and Thrace (the cities of Alexandroupolis, Komotini and Xanthi), along with the Annihilation of their brethren of the cities of Didimoteixo, Nea Orestiada and Soufli of the Evros Prefecture of Thrace occupied by the Germans 70 years ago.  A definition of the Holocaust is given that broadens the term beyond its peak point that of the actual assassination of Jews by the Germans and some of their allies.  The definition includes all past historical events and practices that fermented the path to destruction of the European and North African Jewry during the World War II as well as the now and current state practices.  Starting milestones are the Preliminary Peace Treaty at San Stefano and the Peace Treaty at Berlin both of the year 1878, even though seeds of the later calamity were sowed much earlier:  The sum total of seemingly unrelated historic events led inexorably to the final act of the tragedy.  The root causes of the complicity of the Bulgarian governments of the time in the deportation of the Jewish inhabitants of the “New” Bulgarian territories are analyzed and, given the documentary and archival evidence presented, conclusions are reached.  Also, the nation states that were created in the wake of the First World War and the ensuing Peace Treaties are shown to be fraught with all those ingredients that fertilize the national psyche to accept as legitimate racist and exclusive policies along with anti-Semitic and prejudicial ones.  The distinction of Racial Anti–
Semitism versus the millennia old Religious one is emphasized.  Memory is an inseparable part of the Holocaust and, as such, it is both a means of Remembrance and a link with the past as well as instructive and educative for all generations and acts as a shield against Holocaust denial, revisionism and/or whitewashing of the past.