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Author: Benno Weiser Varon Publisher: Plunkett Lake Press ISBN: Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 407
Book Description
In 1932, Benno Weiser was studying medicine in Vienna. During a brawl he rescued a fellow Jewish student by cracking the skull of a huge Nazi with two outsized metal keys, while some thirty Nazis watched. He considers this event his rite of passage — proving to himself that “Jews are no cowards.” Life would give him many an opportunity to prove it again. A Jewish Rambo? Not at all. Fellow Viennese remember him for making them laugh. He wrote, directed, and performed in literary cabarets. “All I could take along from Nazi Vienna,” writes Weiser Varon, “was my accent.” But he also exported his fighting spirit. As Ecuador’s first syndicated columnist, blending drama with satire, he dispensed faith to those who rooted for the Allies and heartburn to the powerful Nazi colony. The Axis powers sponsored seven weeklies to counteract his influence, there was an interpellation in parliament, a “promise” by the minister of the interior to shut him up, an op-ed duel with a Vichy diplomat. The New York Times, reporting on his struggle, called him one of Latin America’s best known columnists. In 1946 the World Zionist Organization drafted him into its campaign to convince the nations of Latin America of the justice of the Jewish fight for statehood. Varon’s niche in history is the U.N. Palestine Partition Resolution of 1947: with a colleague, he is credited for getting the decisive Latin American “yes” votes. In 1964 Golda Meir appointed him ambassador to a succession of Latin American countries. In 1970 Varon survived an assassination attempt by Palestinian terrorists in Asunción. In 1972 he retired from diplomacy, returned to journalism and started teaching at Boston University. Varon met Albert Einstein and Aleksandr Kerensky as well as the Who’s Who of Latin-American writers, painters, intellectuals, and statesmen such as Perón, Castro, the Somozas, Stroessner. He also placed second-best in a joke contest with Bob Hope and, together with his actress-wife, wrote a play, “A Letter to the Times,” which was produced in English and in Spanish. In this autobiography by a lifelong Zionist, many of Weiser Varon’s experiences as an émigré, a Jew or a diplomat — recounted with the wit of an entertainer — sound more like fiction than real life.
Author: Benno Weiser Varon Publisher: Plunkett Lake Press ISBN: Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 407
Book Description
In 1932, Benno Weiser was studying medicine in Vienna. During a brawl he rescued a fellow Jewish student by cracking the skull of a huge Nazi with two outsized metal keys, while some thirty Nazis watched. He considers this event his rite of passage — proving to himself that “Jews are no cowards.” Life would give him many an opportunity to prove it again. A Jewish Rambo? Not at all. Fellow Viennese remember him for making them laugh. He wrote, directed, and performed in literary cabarets. “All I could take along from Nazi Vienna,” writes Weiser Varon, “was my accent.” But he also exported his fighting spirit. As Ecuador’s first syndicated columnist, blending drama with satire, he dispensed faith to those who rooted for the Allies and heartburn to the powerful Nazi colony. The Axis powers sponsored seven weeklies to counteract his influence, there was an interpellation in parliament, a “promise” by the minister of the interior to shut him up, an op-ed duel with a Vichy diplomat. The New York Times, reporting on his struggle, called him one of Latin America’s best known columnists. In 1946 the World Zionist Organization drafted him into its campaign to convince the nations of Latin America of the justice of the Jewish fight for statehood. Varon’s niche in history is the U.N. Palestine Partition Resolution of 1947: with a colleague, he is credited for getting the decisive Latin American “yes” votes. In 1964 Golda Meir appointed him ambassador to a succession of Latin American countries. In 1970 Varon survived an assassination attempt by Palestinian terrorists in Asunción. In 1972 he retired from diplomacy, returned to journalism and started teaching at Boston University. Varon met Albert Einstein and Aleksandr Kerensky as well as the Who’s Who of Latin-American writers, painters, intellectuals, and statesmen such as Perón, Castro, the Somozas, Stroessner. He also placed second-best in a joke contest with Bob Hope and, together with his actress-wife, wrote a play, “A Letter to the Times,” which was produced in English and in Spanish. In this autobiography by a lifelong Zionist, many of Weiser Varon’s experiences as an émigré, a Jew or a diplomat — recounted with the wit of an entertainer — sound more like fiction than real life.
Author: Adolf Wimmer Publisher: McFarland ISBN: 9780786406685 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 194
Book Description
In March 1938, Hitler's troops invaded Austria, wildly cheered by thousands of spectators. Following the consequent annexation, a Greater Germany plebiscite recorded a 99 percent support for Austro-German unification under Hitler. By 1942, however, Allied leaders at Yalta had declared the annexed country the first victim of Nazi aggression, laying the groundwork for the suppression of Austria's collaboration in the Holocaust and establishing a grossly deficient culture of memory. Among the forgotten were the 130,000 Austrian Jews who escaped the work camps and gas chambers only to find themselves in unfamiliar lands among unsympathetic people. This book, rising out of Austria's Year of Recollection in 1988, contains the narratives of 27 ex-Austrian Jews who were forced into exile following the Anschlusz. Translated from the German by poet Ewald Osers, the book includes accounts of anti-Semitism before Hitler, the annexation, flight from the homeland, and life in exile.
Author: Harriet Pass Freidenreich Publisher: Indiana University Press ISBN: 0253109272 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 329
Book Description
Female, Jewish, and Educated presents a collective biography of Jewish women who attended universities in Germany or Austria before the Nazi era. To what extent could middle-class Jewish women in the early decades of the 20th century combine family and careers? What impact did anti-Semitism and gender discrimination have in shaping their personal and professional choices? Harriet Freidenreich analyzes the lives of 460 Central European Jewish university women, focusing on their family backgrounds, university experiences, professional careers, and decisions about marriage and children. She evaluates the role of discrimination and anti-Semitism in shaping the careers of academics, physicians, and lawyers in the four decades preceding World War II and assesses the effects of Nazism, the Holocaust, and emigration on the lives of a younger cohort of women. The life stories of the women profiled reveal the courage, character, and resourcefulness with which they confronted challenges still faced by women today.
Author: Lisa Silverman Publisher: Oxford University Press ISBN: 019979488X Category : History Languages : en Pages : 347
Book Description
The collapse of Austria-Hungary in 1918 left all Austrians in a state of political, social, and economic turmoil, but Jews in particular found their lives shaken to the core. Although Jews' former comfort zone suddenly disappeared, the dissolution of the Dual Monarchy also created plenty of room for innovation and change in the realm of culture. Jews eagerly took up the challenge to fill this void, and they became heavily invested in culture as a way to shape their new, but also vexed, self-understandings. By isolating the years between the World Wars and examining formative events in both Vienna and the provinces, Becoming Austrians: Jews and Culture between the World Wars demonstrates that an intensified marking of people, places, and events as "Jewish" accompanied the crises occurring in the wake of Austria-Hungary's collapse, with profound effects on Austria's cultural legacy. In some cases, the consequences of this marking resulted in grave injustices. Philipp Halsmann, for example, was wrongfully imprisoned for the murder of his father years before he became a world-famous photographer. And the men who shot and killed writer Hugo Bettauer and philosopher Moritz Schlick received inadequate punishment for their murderous deeds. But engagements with the terms of Jewish difference also characterized the creation of culture, as shown in Hugo Bettauer's satirical novel The City without Jews and its film adaptation, other texts by Veza Canetti, David Vogel, A.M. Fuchs, Vicki Baum, and Mela Hartwig, and performances at the Salzburg Festival and the Yiddish theater in Vienna. By examining the lives, works, and deeds of a broad range of Austrians, Lisa Silverman reveals how the social codings of politics, gender, and nation received a powerful boost when articulated along the lines of Jewish difference.
Author: Yoel Palgi Publisher: Plunkett Lake Press ISBN: Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 253
Book Description
In the spring of 1944, thirty-two young Palestinian Jews parachuted into Nazi-held Eastern Europe and the Balkans. Their goal was to encourage Jewish resistance where possible and to organize rescue schemes thwarting deportations to the death camps. Linking up in Yugoslavia and impelled by the hope that the Jews trapped in Hungary were still capable of fighting back, some of the volunteers set out for Budapest. Tragically, they were betrayed by their local guides, who turned out to be double agents also working for the Hungarian Fascists. The volunteers reached Budapest where the young woman volunteer, Hannah Szenes, was executed and another deported to a death camp. Into the Inferno is the remarkable first-hand account of this mission by the only member of the group who miraculously survived from among those who penetrated into Hungary. He endured imprisonment and torture both by the Gestapo and the Hungarian Fascists, escaped from a deportation train, and joined the Zionist youth rescue underground in Budapest. “In May 1944, Palgi was one of three Jews from Palestine who parachuted into Nazi-held Yugoslavia and headed for Hungary... His memoir... is an incredible account of this daring mission by its only survivor. Without a doubt, a vivid chronicle of bravery and compassion.” — George Cohen, Booklist “More than half a century has elapsed since [Yoel Palgi’s] paratrooper operations in occupied Europe. The world has appreciably changed since... Yet there are events, fragments of history, whose significance time and place do not alter. It seems that a special place in history is reserved for the story of this remarkable group of courageous Jews that did the impossible. It is vital that [this] story be told.” —Shimon Peres, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Foreign Affairs, Israel “Palgi describes in riveting human terms an excruciatingly painful piece of Israeli and world history, and does so with extraordinary psychological and ethical insight.” —Robert J. Lifton, author of The Nazi Doctors: Medical Killing and the Psychology of Genocide “This gripping account of a desperate rescue mission goes beyond conveying the horror of the Holocaust and the brutality of the Nazis. The rescuers worked within an ambiguity where every alliance was questionable and noble decisions could prove fatal. This is the illuminating story of a thoughtful man, driven by history to courageous improvisation and ethical struggle, acting and remembering in spite of uncertainty.” —Mary Catherine Bateson, author of Full Circles, Overlapping Lives “Yoel Palgi’s story is one of heroism, inner conflict and questioning. His readiness to go behind the Nazi lines to rescue the Jews of Hungary reflected his extraordinary courage. He paints a vivid picture of the danger of his effort both behind enemy lines and the emotional scars that were left after the war. This is a must-read for any student of the Holocaust.” — Dennis Ross, Director, Washington Institute for Near East Policy
Author: Ernest Heppner Publisher: Plunkett Lake Press ISBN: Category : History Languages : en Pages : 199
Book Description
After the Nazis took power, Heppner, a member of a privileged middle-class German Jewish family, suffered from constant anti-Semitism. But Kristallnacht, in November 1938, introduced a new level of Nazi horror: Heppner and his mother used the family’s resources to escape to Shanghai, the only city in the world that did not require a visa. Heppner was taken aback by experiences on the ocean liner that took him and other refugees to Shanghai: he was embarrassed and confounded when Egyptian Jews offered worn clothing to the Jewish passengers, he resented the edicts against Jewish passengers disembarking in any ports on the way, and he was unprepared for the poverty and cultural dislocation of the great city of Shanghai. But being self-reliant, energetic, and clever, Heppner found niches for his skills that enabled him to survive in a precarious fashion in Shanghai’s ghetto. In 1945, after the liberation of China, Heppner found a responsible position with the American forces in Nanjing. He and his wife, a fellow refugee he had met and married in Shanghai, arrived in the United States in 1947 with only eleven dollars but boundless hope and energy. “This inspiring memoir is a story of survival... The unique and traumatic experiences of tens of thousands of Jews who managed to escape for the ‘temporary’ haven of Shanghai are described with objectivity and clarity.” — Leonard H. D. Gordon, Shofar “The author describes in detail the sights and sounds of his adopted environment, the mingling of Jews and many nationalities, the choking stench and the humidity, the decadent, exotic underworld of criminals and beggars, the terror of air raids and Japanese guards, the rampant poverty and disease. The general tone, however, is positive, even inspiring, and behind all the experiences lurks a sense of adventure and simple good luck.” — Association of Jewish Libraries Newsletter “A fascinating and moving memoir that begins with [Heppner’s] childhood in Nazi Germany and moves briskly from one compelling scene to the next.” — Forward “Ernest G. Heppner’s Shanghai Refuge fills in the fragments... of this little-known Jewish community... His story is an odd mixture of defiance, courage, endurance and survival. His experience [is] fascinating.” — Michael Berenbaum, Director, U.S. Holocaust Research Institute “An important addition to the historical record of World War II, an autobiography of a remarkable man’s formative years, and a testimony to the power of community and human perseverance.” — Indianapolis Star “Heppner’s descriptions... ring true and carry conviction, especially when he recalls in evocative detail his day-to-day experiences in Nazi Germany. Similarly, his recollection of Shanghai, with its small, telling details of privations, indignities, anxieties, and horrors make maximum impact—from the rat in the bakery that he lifted up by its tail to the carnage following an American air raid.” — Bernard Wasserstein, author ofThe Secret Lives of Trebitsch Lincoln
Author: Benjamin B. Ferencz Publisher: Plunkett Lake Press ISBN: Category : History Languages : en Pages : 264
Book Description
“[T]his [2002] reprint of Benjamin B. Ferencz’s 1979 book on Jewish forced labor under the Third Reich and the attempt by various Jewish organizations to win compensation for former slave laborers from private corporations in West Germany after the war is very welcome... This book tells two related stories — as the subtitle indicates. The first is the story of the use of slave labor by German industry during the Third Reich. The second is the story of the dedicated individuals, many of them Jewish lawyers, most of them working for the various interrelated Jewish agencies created to administer the German government’s compensation to Jewish victims of the Holocaust, to win compensation from these firms... this book is as much a memoir as it is a history. It is a story told very much from the perspective of a participant, for Ferencz was the guiding light behind the efforts to win compensation... Constructed as a series of case studies, the book tells the story of five major firms or conglomerates (I.G. Farben, Krupp, the electric companies AEG, Telefunken, and Siemens, Rheinmetall Berlin A.G., and the Flick concern) and a number of smaller concerns. In each of his case studies, Ferencz intertwines the history of the firm’s use of slave labor with that of the efforts by survivor organizations and individual survivors to win compensation after the war... All in all, this book tells the story of great courage and determination by survivors and their allies to try to compel German companies to make at least partial amends for the use of slave labor during the war. Yet it is also a story of an equally determined refusal to see that past honestly, to own up to it, and to voluntarily try to make it right. As such... it will undoubtedly continue to serve as a valuable starting point for thinking about the efforts to make good again the harm done during the Third Reich.” — Devin O. Pendas, H-German “This short book is of extreme importance... This is a book to ponder.” — Martin Gilbert, The New York Times “[A] deeply disturbing book... Mr. Ferencz’s book is most impressive because it is meticulous in its evidence and exact in its sources, like a good lawyer’s brief. Nothing is left to the imagination.” — Leonard Silk, The New York Times “Ferencz, with fascinating clarity, supported by German documents, describes the exploitation and murder of human beings for German industrial profit... Less Than Slaves is a major contribution to Holocaust history.” — Josephine Z. Knopp, The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science “As Telford Taylor says in his impressive foreword, this is a ‘moving, melancholy, and altogether unique’ book.” — John H. E. Fried, The American Journal of International Law “Less Than Slaves is an appropriate title for a volume describing an industrial labor system in which the work became the means of execution. The book is a meticulously documented account of former Jewish laborers seeking compensation for the work they were forced to do for German industrialists. Benjamin B. Ferencz, an attorney specializing in international law was a war crimes investigator who later aided Jewish claimants. He describes how I.G. Farben, Krupp, AEG, Telefunken, Siemens, and Rheinmetall attempted to elude payment and morally exonerate themselves from responsibility for the slave labor system.” — Alan M. Kraut, The Business History Review “This is an essential book... Ferencz... served as American prosecutor at the Nuremberg trials and then director of the worldwide restitution action on behalf of Jewish survivors. His presentation of the painful procedure, the procrastination of officialdom, the remorselessness of the German companies and their lack of humaneness even after the war make one wonder about the decency of the human race.” — Vera Laska, Social Science “[T]he story [Ferencz] unfolds is not only remarkable, it is revolting... [a] grisly but unforgettable chronicle.” — Ronald Lewin, International Affairs
Author: Robert S. Wistrich Publisher: Plunkett Lake Press ISBN: Category : History Languages : en Pages : 814
Book Description
“Robert Wistrich’s exemplary scholarly analysis of the Viennese Jewish community in the 19th century is the first well-written, reliable study of its kind... gives elegant portraits of the crucial Jewish figures of the new Viennese politics at the turn of the century... focus[es] on the internal history of the highly diversified Jewish community... [Wistrich] analyzes effectively the genesis of Herzl’s Zionism from within the Viennese context. Although his sympathies for Zionism are clear, he is respectful of Jewish critics of Zionism. What is refreshing in his narrative is the absence of retrospective critical moralizing about assimilation and the remarkable participation of Jews in German culture. Assimilated Jewish aristocrats and intellectuals, even Jews who converted to Christianity, are presented with as much evenhandedness as those Viennese Jewish nationalists and traditionalist theologians whose mistrust of assimilation and acculturation as reliable defenses against prejudice seems to have been vindicated by the Holocaust. The Jews of Vienna in the Age of Franz Joseph is not merely a descriptive history of Viennese Jewry. It vindicates the centrality of Jewishness and anti-Semitism as dynamic and changing forces in the evolution of 19th-century Austro-German politics and culture... Mr. Wistrich’s poignant narrative reminds us that the struggle for civic equality, social acceptance and economic security by the Jews of 19th-century Vienna resulted, among other things, in a steady stream of diverse and unforgettable contributions to art, science and culture... Even if the hopes implicit in the political and social struggle of the Jews of Vienna before 1914 were dashed finally by the violence of Nazism, Mr. Wistrich’s book is a moving reminder of what high hopes they were.” — Leon Botstein, The New York Times Book Review “The excellence of his book lies... in the high quality of scholarship, the sensitivity to nuance, the desire to map the entire Jewish response to the crisis of the empire in all its complexity.” — Michael Ignatieff, New York Review of Books “Will be the standard work for some time to come... eminently readable.” — Peter Pulzer, London Review of Books “[A] monumental book which will be indispensible for a long time to come.” — Ritchie Robertson, German History “Wistrich draws all the strands of this complex story very clearly together... broadly conceived, his book has a compelling dramatic interest and is certain to remain a standard guide to its subject for a long time.” — Roger Morgan, Times Literary Supplement “A paradigm of fine Jewish historical writing and analysis... Wistrich builds his work by exhaustively treating the important trends and figures which Viennese Jewry produced.” — Sharon Fleisher, Jerusalem Post “... a veritable summa of the religious, cultural, and political history in which the Viennese Jews were the main agents of change during the decline of the Habsburg monarchy.” — Victor Karady, Liber
Author: Peter Fraenkel Publisher: Plunkett Lake Press ISBN: Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages :
Book Description
In this memoir, Fraenkel writes as a member of an enclosed minority: German Jew within a predominantly Lithuanian Jewish community which was part of a white settler community, itself a minority in a predominantly black African territory. A young settler reprimanded him for stepping out of the way of an African family on a narrow bush path: “Walk straight on. They must know who is the master in the land.” Fraenkel found himself whistling the Nazis’ anthem “Clear the streets for the brown battalions. The storm troopers are marching.” He was coming to learn the importance of not conforming. “A vivid account of a childhood in a middleclass, non-observant Jewish family in Nazi Germany, forced to emigrate to Zambia (then Northern Rhodesia) in 1939.” — Trevor Gundry, Jewish Chronicle “Peter Fraenkel... and his family emigrated in 1939 from Breslau to Northern Rhodesia, where he forged a successful career... in the Central African Broadcasting Service. Fraenkel was thus given the opportunity of using his undoubted skills as a broadcaster to help in the education of black people, using new methods of mass education... his sojourn in Northern Rhodesia came to an end in 1957, a few years after the country was refashioned by the British government as the Federation of Rhodesia and Nyasaland — a big mistake, Fraenkel thinks, and one that wasn’t undone until much later when the independent state of Zambia was created. His love affair with Africa came to an end, and he felt impelled to leave, because of his ‘dislike of racist politics in this bastion of white privilege’... Peter Fraenkel’s account of the 20 years in Northern Rhodesia is absorbing... there are riveting chapters on his activities as a somewhat subversive broadcaster, working together with like-minded whites and Blacks... The book is written in a very lively manner and there are countless anecdotes, many of them in direct speech... I recommend it strongly.” — Leslie Baruch Brent, Association of Jewish Refugees “The book bursts with life. Countries like these Central African territories are... far more exciting than countries with a settled structure. Here a new society is emerging. This excitement is lost in official reports and academic studies and one of Fraenkel’s achievements is that he conveys it in full measure. I know of no book which more vividly describes the variety and throb of a modern African township.” — Max Gluckman, The Observer “He brings out the formation of the new African metropolitan and rural societies... I know of no book which describes this surging varied vitality so well.” — Africa
Author: Charles Fenyvesi Publisher: Plunkett Lake Press ISBN: Category : History Languages : en Pages : 307
Book Description
“This is a beautiful book in many ways. Beautiful not only for its writing but also for its portrayal of decent, heroic gentiles during the Holocaust. I defy anyone reading this account of angels under the German occupation not to shed tears by the end of the book — beneficent tears of hope, joy and gratitude. When Angels Fooled the World tells of five individuals: Raoul Wallenberg, a Lutheran pastor, a janitor, a woman who worked in a municipal birth registry, and a journalist who happened to be the author’s uncle by marriage. All dared to go against the prevailing Nazi German policy and saved Jews from deportation and death... a unique blend of passionate engagement and clear, level-headed analysis of the crucial months in 1944 when the Germans and their Hungarian Arrow Cross supporters ruled the land. The book’s lambent prose, as well as its mixture of memoir and broad sweep of Hungarian-Jewish ambience and history, enhance its fascination and appeal.” — Sun Sentinel “This captivating writing by a noted Hungarian-American author and journal editor, himself a Holocaust survivor, focuses on Hungary during the Holocaust period and the outstanding courage of a group of Righteous Gentiles (viewed as “angels” of salvation) including, among others, the well-known Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg, who saved thousands of Jews with exit passports; a civil servant woman who provided Jews with certificates that they were Christians; and a Lutheran priest who saved Jewish children in a Christian orphanage. The book is based on historical facts, anecdotes, interviews, and the author’s family experiences and tribulations. Family photos and a relevant bibliography enhance this interesting volume.” — Multicultural Review
Author: Benno Weiser Varon
Author: Benno Weiser Varon
Author: Adolf Wimmer
Author: Harriet Pass Freidenreich
Author: Lisa Silverman
Author: Yoel Palgi
Author: Ernest Heppner
Author: Benjamin B. Ferencz
Author: Robert S. Wistrich
Author: Peter Fraenkel
Author: Charles Fenyvesi