Jewish and Romani Families in the Holocaust and its Aftermath
292 pages, 6 1/8 x 9 1/4
Paperback
Release Date:16 Oct 2020
ISBN:9781978819504
Hardcover
Release Date:16 Oct 2020
ISBN:9781978819511
Jewish and Romani Families in the Holocaust and its Aftermath
Edited by Eliyana R. Adler and Katerina Capková
Rutgers University Press
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.
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.
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.'
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.'
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.
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.
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.
Contents
Introduction: Why the Family?
Kateřina Čapková and Eliyana R. Adler
Part 1 - Family in Times of Genocide
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
Separation and Divorce in the Łódź and Warsaw Ghettos
Michal Unger
Narrating Daily Family Life in Ghettos under Nazi Occupation: Concepts and Dilemmas
Dalia Ofer
Uneasy Bonds: On Jews in Hiding and the Making of Surrogate Families
Natalia Aleksiun
Part II - Intervention of Institutions
Siblings in the Holocaust and its Aftermath in France and the United States: Rethinking the “Holocaust Orphan”?
Laura Hobson Faure
The Impact of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee’s Aid Strategy on the Lives of Jewish Families in Hungary, 1945–49
Viktória Bányai
‘For Your Benefit’: Military Marriage Policies, European Jewish War Brides, and the Centrality of Family, 1944–1950 Robin Judd
Part III - Rebuilding the Family after the Holocaust
‘Returning to Normality?’: The Struggle of Sinti and Roma Survivors to Rebuild a Life in Postwar Germany
Anja Reuss
‘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
‘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
The Postwar Migration of Romani Families from Slovakia to the Bohemian Lands: A Complex Legacy of War and Genocide in Czechoslovakia Helena Sadílková
Notes on Contributors
Acknowledgements
Introduction: Why the Family?
Kateřina Čapková and Eliyana R. Adler
Part 1 - Family in Times of Genocide
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
Separation and Divorce in the Łódź and Warsaw Ghettos
Michal Unger
Narrating Daily Family Life in Ghettos under Nazi Occupation: Concepts and Dilemmas
Dalia Ofer
Uneasy Bonds: On Jews in Hiding and the Making of Surrogate Families
Natalia Aleksiun
Part II - Intervention of Institutions
Siblings in the Holocaust and its Aftermath in France and the United States: Rethinking the “Holocaust Orphan”?
Laura Hobson Faure
The Impact of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee’s Aid Strategy on the Lives of Jewish Families in Hungary, 1945–49
Viktória Bányai
‘For Your Benefit’: Military Marriage Policies, European Jewish War Brides, and the Centrality of Family, 1944–1950 Robin Judd
Part III - Rebuilding the Family after the Holocaust
‘Returning to Normality?’: The Struggle of Sinti and Roma Survivors to Rebuild a Life in Postwar Germany
Anja Reuss
‘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
‘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
The Postwar Migration of Romani Families from Slovakia to the Bohemian Lands: A Complex Legacy of War and Genocide in Czechoslovakia Helena Sadílková
Notes on Contributors
Acknowledgements
