Jewish and Romani Families in the Holocaust and its Aftermath

Published by Rutgers University Press 2021

Jewish and Romani Families in the Holocaust and its Aftermath

Edited by: Eliyana R. Adler and Katerina Capková
With contributions by: Eliyana R. Adler , Natalia Aleksiun , Viktoria Banyai , Laura Hobson Faure , Robin Judd , Dalia Ofer , Anja Reuss , Helena Sadílková , Joachim Schlör , Michal Unger , Sarah Wobick-Segev , Katerina Capková and Volha Bartash

https://doi.org/10.36019/9781978819542

Overview
Contents

About this book

Diaries, testimonies and memoirs of the Holocaust often include at least as much on the family as on the individual. Victims of the Nazi regime experienced oppression and made decisions embedded within families. Even after the war, sole survivors often described their losses and rebuilt their lives with a distinct focus on family. Yet this perspective is lacking in academic analyses.

In this work, scholars from the United States, Israel, and across Europe bring a variety of backgrounds and disciplines to their study of the Holocaust and its aftermath from the family perspective. Drawing on research from Belarus to Great Britain, and examining both Jewish and Romani families, they demonstrate the importance of recognizing how people continued to function within family units—broadly defined—throughout the war and afterward.

Author / Editor information

ELIYANA R. ADLER is an associate professor in the Department of History and Program in Jewish Studies at the Pennsylvania State University. Adler’s first book, In Her Hands: The Education of Jewish Girls in Tsarist Russia received the Heldt Prize for the Best Book in Slavic/Eastern European/Eurasian Women’s Studies in 2011. She co-edited volume 30 of Polin as well as Reconstructing the Old Country: American Jewry in the Post-Holocaust Decades and Jewish Literature and History: An Interdisciplinary Conversation. She is completing a project on Polish Jews who survived World War II in the un-occupied regions of the Soviet Union and starting a new one on memorial books.

KATEŘINA ČAPKOVÁ is a senior researcher at the Institute of Contemporary History in Prague, and teaches at Charles University and NYU in Prague. Her book Czechs, Germans, Jews? National Identity and the Jews of Bohemia received the Outstanding Academic Title of 2012 from Choice magazine. With Michal Frankl, she co-authored Unsichere Zuflucht, a book about refugees from Nazi Germany and Austria to Czechoslovakia. With Hillel J. Kieval she is co-editor of Prague and Beyond. Jews in the Bohemian Lands, a collective monograph on history of Jews in the Bohemian Lands from the early modern period up to present times. In 2016 she established Prague Forum for Romani Histories (http://www.romanihistories.usd.cas.cz/). Currently she is working on a project on entangled history of Jews and Roma in Central Europe in the 20th century.

Reviews

"Charting how both Jewish and Romani families dealt with Nazi persecution, this volume offers a long-overdue and innovative attempt to integrate the histories of these two racially persecuted groups."

— Ari Joskowicz, author of The Modernity of Others: Jewish Anti-Catholicism in Germany and France

"Charting how both Jewish and Romani families dealt with Nazi persecution, this volume offers a long-overdue and innovative attempt to integrate the histories of these two racially persecuted groups."

— Ari Joskowicz, author of The Modernity of Others: Jewish Anti-Catholicism in Germany and France

In an innovatively comparative and integrated framework, the diverse contributions to this groundbreaking volume examine the variety of intimate ties that Jews and Roma built and broke in their efforts to survive the onslaught of the Holocaust. This outstanding book should top the reading list of anyone interested in the effects of genocide on the most fundamental of human relationships.

— Benjamin Frommer, co-editor of Intermarriage from Central Europe to Central Asia: Mixed Families in the Age of Extreme

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
Introduction: Why the Family? Kateřina Čapková and Eliyana R. Adler Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
PART I Family in Times of Genocide
Chapter 1 The Romani Family before and during the Holocaust: How Much Do We Know? An Ethnographic-Historical Study in the Belarusian-Lithuanian Border Region Volha Bartash Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	17
Chapter 2 Separation and Divorce in the Łódź and Warsaw Ghettos Michal Unger Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	42
Chapter 3 Narrating Daily Family Life in Ghettos under Nazi Occupation: Concepts and Dilemmas Dalia Ofer Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	62
Chapter 4 Uneasy Bonds: On Jews in Hiding and the Making of Surrogate Families Natalia Aleksiun Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	85
PART II Intervention of Institutions
Chapter 5 Siblings in the Holocaust and Its Aftermath in France and the United States: Rethinking the “Holocaust Orphan”? Laura Hobson Faure Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	103
Chapter 6 The Impact of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee’s Aid Strategy on the Lives of Jewish Families in Hungary, 1945–1949 Viktória Bányai Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	115
Chapter 7 “For Your Benefit”: Military Marriage Policies, European Jewish War Brides, and the Centrality of Family, 1944–1950 Robin Judd Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	128
PART III Rebuilding the Family after the Holocaust
Chapter 8 “Return to Normality?”: The Struggle of Sinti and Roma Survivors to Rebuild a Life in Postwar Germany Anja Reuss Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	141
Chapter 9 “I Could Never Forget What They’d Done to My Father”: The Absence and Presence of Holocaust Memory in a Family’s Letter Collection Joachim Schlör Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	156
Chapter 10 “Looking for a Nice Jewish Girl . . .”: Personal Ads and the Creation of Jewish Families in Germany before and after the Holocaust Sarah E. Wobick-Segev Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	173
Chapter 11 The Postwar Migration of Romani Families from Slovakia to the Bohemian Lands: A Complex Legacy of War and Genocide in Czechoslovakia Helena Sadílková Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	190
Acknowledgments Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	219
Notes Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	221
Notes on Contributors Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	267
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	271

Language: English
Publisher: Rutgers University Press
Audience: College/higher education;
Pages
- Main content: 291
Keywords: Jewish Studies; Human Rights; History; Race; Ethnic Studies; Women's Studies; Anthropology; HISTORY Holocaust Genocide; Political Science; Emigration; Immigration; Jewish; Cultural; SOCIAL SCIENCE; Belarus; Great Britain; Testimonies; memoirs; Families; War; Survivors; United States; Israel; Romani families; Jewish Families

eBook

Published: October 16, 2020
ISBN: 9781978819542