Choose an application

• Reference Manager
• EndNote
• RefWorks (Direct export to RefWorks)

Poetic, witty, and ever so faintly surreal, Sefer delicately explores the legacy of the Holocaust for the postwar generation, a generation for whom a devastating history has grown distant, both temporally and emotionally. The novel’s protagonist, Jan Sefer, is a psychotherapist living in Vienna—someone whose professional life puts him in daily contact with the traumas of others but who has found it difficult to address his own family background, especially his memories of his father. During a two-week trip to his father’s birthplace, Kraków—a visit he has long postponed—he begins to sort out some of his feelings and to connect with a past the memory of which is swiftly disintegrating. Much like memory itself, Sefer speaks to us obliquely, through the juxtaposition of images and vignettes rather than through the construction of a linear narrative. With its fragmentary structure and its preference for hints rather than explanations, the novel belongs to the realm of the postmodern, while it also incorporates subtle elements of magical realism. One of Poland’s best-known poets, Ewa Lipska is today a major figure in European literature. In their translation of Sefer, Lipska’s first novel, translators Barbara Bogoczek and Tony Howard deftly capture the poet’s unmistakable voice—cool and precise, gently ironic, and deeply humane.

Holocaust --- war

Choose an application

• Reference Manager
• EndNote
• RefWorks (Direct export to RefWorks)

This ePaper, History and Memory: lessons from the Holocaust, presents the original text of the Leçon inaugurale delivered by Professor Saul Friedländer on 23 September 2014 at the Maison de la Paix, which marked the opening of the academic year of the Graduate Institute, Geneva. The lecture highlights an original analysis of the evolution of German memory since the end of World War II and its consequences on the writing of history. Generations of historians have been particularly marked in a...

Holocaust, World war II

Choose an application

• Reference Manager
• EndNote
• RefWorks (Direct export to RefWorks)

The rich history of the German rabbinate came to an abrupt halt with the November Pogrom of 1938. The need to leave Germany became clear and many rabbis made use of the visas they had been offered. Their resettlement in Britain was hampered by additional obstacles such as internment, deportation, enlistment in the Pioneer Corps. But rabbis still attempted to support their fellow refugees with spiritual and pastoral care. The refugee rabbis replanted the seed of the once proud German Judaism into British soil. New synagogues were founded and institutions of Jewish learning sprung up, like rabbinic training and the continuation of "Wissenschaft des Judentums." The arrival of Leo Baeck professionalized these efforts and resulted in the foundation of the Leo Baeck College in London. Refugee rabbis now settled and obtained pulpits in the many newly founded synagogues. Their arrival in Britain was the catalyst for much change in British Judaism, an influence that can still be felt today.

Jewish Studies --- History --- Holocaust

Choose an application

• Reference Manager
• EndNote
• RefWorks (Direct export to RefWorks)

Thought necessarily reflects the times. Following the tragedy of the Holocaust, this fact became ever more clear. And it may be the reason postwar philosophical texts are so difficult to understand, since they confront incomprehensibly traumatic experiences. In this first English-language translation of any of his books, Miroslav Petříček—one of the most influential and erudite Czech philosophers, and a student of Jan Patočka—argues that to exist in the second half of the twentieth century and beyond, Western philosophy has had to rewrite its tradition and its discourse, radically transforming itself. Should philosophy be capable of bearing witness to the time, Petříček contends, this metamorphosis in philosophy is necessary. Offering an original Central European perspective on postwar philosophical discourse that reflects upon the historical underpinnings of pop culture phenomena and complex philosophical schools—including Adorno, Agamben, Benjamin, Derrida, Husserl, Kracauer, and many others—Philosophy en noir is a record of this transformation.

philosophy, 20th century, holocaust

Choose an application

• Reference Manager
• EndNote
• RefWorks (Direct export to RefWorks)

Any social and political arrangement depends on acceptance. If a substantial part of a people does not accept the authority of its rulers, then those can only remain in power by means of force, and even that use of force needs to be accepted to be effective. Gramsci called this acceptance of the socio-political status quo “hegemony.” Every stable state relies primarily on hegemony as a source of control. Hegemony works through the dissemination of values and beliefs that create acceptance and that serve the interests of the state and/or the ruling elite (the “hegemones”). Hegemony is most efficient if it remains invisible. A key hegemonic belief is the idea that there is no alternative to the current socio-political status quo or that the way things are is “natural.” The current hegemony – that is, the set of values and beliefs that bolster the current socio-political status quo – is a hegemony of psychopathy: it promotes “cultural psychopathy” and destroys empathy and compassion, thus threatening everything that makes us human. The hegemony of psychopathy is responsible for massive human suffering. It must be fought and replaced with a counter-hegemonic set of values and beliefs that promote compassion and care. Fighting hegemony requires fighting the “pillars” that support it. Most important among these are the mass media and culture industry, and mainstream economics. The former is responsible for a continuous stream of hegemonic propaganda; the latter – among others – for providing a pseudo-scientific justification for the false belief that there is no alternative. The Hegemony of Psychopathy concludes with some considerations on tactics and strategy in the struggle against the hegemony of psychopathy, but does not – and cannot – offer any concrete advice.

Holocaust --- psychology --- compassion --- massmedia --- ethics