Searching for Feelings: The Scrolls of Auschwitz and Son of Saul

Matters of Testimony: Interpreting the Scrolls of Auschwitzby Nicholas Chare & Dominic Williams

 

Nicholas Chare and Dominic Williams are the authors of Matters of Testimony: Interpreting the Scrolls of Auschwitz and recently published an article about the book on Slate’s blog, The Vault.
 
The Hungarian director László Nemes was moved by writings known as the Scrolls of Auschwitz to create the award-winning film Son of Saul. The Scrolls of Auschwitz comprise a variety of documents composed by members of the Sonderkommando, or Special Squad, a group of predominantly Jewish prisoners who were tasked with running the crematoria at Auschwitz-Birkenau. These writings were buried in the grounds of the crematoria in 1944. Between 1945 and 1980, eight caches of documents by five known authors were recovered. The writings have retrospectively become known as the Scrolls of Auschwitz, as this is how the historian Ber Mark’s book Megiles Oyshvits, which transcribes several of the manuscripts, was translated into English in 1985.

 

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Simulated Shelves: Browse December 2015 New Books!

We’re delighted to wrap up the year with a selection of latest releases from our core subjects of Anthropology, Cultural Studies, Environmental Studies, Film Studies, Genocide Studies, History, and Media Studies along with our New in Paperback titles.

 

ECOLOGICAL MIGRANTS
The Relocation of China’s Ewenki Reindeer Herders
Yuanyuan Xie
Foreword by Ping Hao

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Reading Hannah Arendt

Hannah Arendt

“There are no dangerous thoughts; thinking it-self is dangerous.” ― Hannah Arendt

 

Hannah Arendt (1906–1975) was one of the most influential political philosophers of the twentieth century. Born into a German-Jewish family, she was forced to leave Germany in 1933 and lived in Paris for the next eight years, working for a number of Jewish refugee organisations. In 1941 she immigrated to the United States and soon became part of a lively intellectual circle in New York. She held a number of academic positions at various American universities until her death in 1975. Read more about her life here.

Below, we’ve curated a reading list related to Hannah Arendt and her political philosophy from a selection of our books and journals.

 

 


 

 

The Legacy of Liberal JudaismThe Legacy of Liberal Judaism:
Ernst Cassirer and Hannah Arendt’s Hidden Conversation
Ned Curthoys

 

“Most readers will finish this work with a renewed appreciation of the continuing significance of the moral vision articulated by these exemplars of liberal Judaism.” · Choice

 

“The book then provides various interesting challenges to scholarship on Arendt, as well as the material on thinkers brought together here as part of the tradition of Liberal Judaism. All this make The Legacy of Liberal Judaism of relevance beyond an exclusively scholarly debate.” · Patterns of Prejudice

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Final Sale in Berlin: What Happened to Berlin’s Jewish Businesses?

Final Sale in Berlin

 

The following is a guest blog post written by Christoph Kreutzmüller, author of Final Sale in Berlin: The Destruction of Jewish Commercial Activity, 1930-1945, which is newly published this year.

The following is a guest blog post written by Paolo Gaibazzi, Social Anthropologist and Research Fellow at the Centre for Modern Oriental Studies (ZMO). Gaibazzi is also the author of Bush Bound: Young Men and Rural Permanence in Migrant West Africa. Below, Gaibazzi discusses how ‘staying put’ may shed light on current West African migrations. – See more at: http://berghahnbooks.com/blog/bush-bound-gaibazzi#sthash.xtLXufKN.dpuf

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Simulated Shelves: Browse August 2015 New Books

We’re delighted to offer a selection of latest releases from our core subjects of Anthropology, Film Studies, Genocide Studies, History, and Politics.

 

We are especially excited to announce the publication of Final Sale in Berlin, by Christoph Kreutzmüller.

“Christoph Kreutzmüller’s book is vigorously researched, elegantly structured and well-written, and succeeds in providing new information on a subject already exhaustively studied, namely ‘Aryanization’ and the destruction of business, that extends beyond the borders of Berlin.” · H-Soz-u-Kult

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FINAL SALE IN BERLIN
The Destruction of Jewish Commercial Activity, 1930-1945
Christoph Kreutzmüller
Translated from the German by Jane Paulick and Jefferson Chase

Click to read the Introduction!

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Simulated Shelves: Browse June 2015 New Books

We’re delighted to offer a selection of latest releases from our core subjects of Anthropology, Cultural Studies, Genocide Studies, History, Medical Anthropology, Museum Studies, Social Anthropology, Sociology, and Urban Studies, along with a selection of our New in Paperback titles.

We are especially excited to announce the publication of New Imaginaries, edited and translated by Marian J. Rubchak.

“Instead of pointing out how ‘different’ Ukrainian feminism/gender studies/women’s studies is from ‘Western’ (or other) feminisms, this volume has potential to contribute to our understanding of the exciting and complex ways that feminist thought travels as one of the most important ‘ideascapes’ (à la Appadurai) of our time.” · Sarah D. Phillips, Indiana University

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NEW IMAGINARIES
Youthful Reinvention of Ukraine’s Cultural Paradigm
Edited and Translated by Marian J. Rubchak
Foreword Martha Kichorowska Kebalo

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Simulated Shelves: Browse April 2015 New Books

We are delighted to present a selection of our newly published April 2015 titles from our core subjects of Anthropology, Educational Studies, Genocide Studies, History, Politics, Refugee & Migration Studies, and Theory & Methodology in Anthropology, along with a selection of our New in Paperback titles.

 

We are especially excited to announce the publication of WHAT IS EXISTENTIAL ANTHROPOLOGY? edited by Michael Jackson and Albert Piette

“This is a book whose time has come . . . Focusing on themes like contingency, the open-endedness of life projects, and the lived tension between emergent properties like security and freedom, existential anthropology attends to the human condition rather than just culture.” · Don Seeman, Emory University

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WHAT IS EXISTENTIAL ANTHROPOLOGY?
Edited by Michael Jackson and Albert Piette

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Observing 102nd Anniversary of Armenian Genocide

 

April 24 marks the 102nd anniversary of the Armenian Genocide, and tens of thousands are expected to march to commemorate the event.

In recognizing the significance of the occasion we would like to bring to your attention a small but select number of titles which deliver scholarly expertise and informed opinion around the subject.

 


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International Holocaust Remembrance Day

International Holocaust Remembrance Day, established by the United Nations General Assembly, is an international memorial day on 27 January commemorating the victims of the Holocaust. It commemorates the genocide that resulted in the death of an estimated 6 million Jews, 1 million Gypsies, 250,000 mentally and physically disabled people, and 9,000 homosexual men by the Nazi regime and its collaborators.

 

January 27th, 2015 also marks the 70th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazis’ most notorious concentration camp, Auschwitz, also known as Auschwitz-Birkenau. Most of about 1.1 million people that passed through the gates between 1940 and 1945 never left, many of them murdered in the camp’s gas chambers. Only some 200,000 are believed to have survived that fate. No one knows how many of the survivors remain alive today, but it’s a group that is dwindling as age takes its toll. To mark the liberation’s anniversary, about 300 former Auschwitz prisoners are travelling to Oświęcim, Poland, to pay tribute on Jan. 27 at Birkenau’s Gate of Death, the unloading ramp at the camp’s rail entrance.

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In honor of the UN’s Holocaust Remembrance Day, Berghahn has made several relevant journal articles freely available through a special virtual issue. You may access the issue through this link: bit.ly/Holocaust-Remembrance-Day

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Berhahn Books would also like to present a selection of relevant titles on the history of the Holocaust and Genocide Studies.

 

JEWISH HISTORIES OF THE HOLOCAUST
New Transnational Approaches
Edited by Norman J. W. Goda

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Simulated Shelves: Browse November’s New Books

We are delighted to present a selection of our newly published November titles from our core subjects of History, Media Studies, Medical Anthropology, Sociology and Urban Studies, along with a selection of our New in Paperback titles.

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U.S. FOREIGN POLICY AND THE OTHER
Edited by Michael Patrick Cullinane and David Ryan

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