Anne Frank

Anne Frank's The Diary of a Young Girl is the most widely read text about the Holocaust, yet it reveals only one example of the tragic consequences of the Nazi policy to eliminate the Jews. This casebook enriches Anne Frank's remarkable personal account with a variety of historical documents that illuminate the political and social context of anti-Semitism in Germany and the Holocaust. It includes an account of the Frank family's life in Germany before emigrating to Holland; first-person accounts of Anne's last seven months in deportation and concentration camps; other Holocaust narratives in the form of memoirs, letters, and children's diaries; an excerpt from Zlata's Diary, the story of a young girl caught in the war in Bosnia which has been compared to Anne Frank's; official Nazi pronouncements on "The Final Solution" to the Jews; and newspaper reports and editorials of the horrific events occurring between 1939 and 1945. All of these materials will help the student to better understand the historical context of Anne's experience, and the teacher to select appropriate materials to sensitize students to this period in history.

Between 1940 and 1945, 110,000 of the 140,000 Dutch Jews were deported to the death camps in Eastern Europe. 80% never returned. In Anne Frank and After the authors focus on two main questions: how exactly did this happen, and how has Dutch literature come to terms with this appalling event? In the book's final chapter they analyze the relationship between history and the literature of the Holocaust. Does literature add to what we know or does it actually distort historical evidence? Based on the work of leading historians of the period, the book examines literary works from Gerard Durlacher, Anne Frank, W.F. Hermans, Harry Mulisch, Gerard Reve and many others. "With its well-chosen quotations (many appearing for the first time in print), presented in a clear and illuminating historical setting, Anne Frank and After is must reading for all who want to go beyond Anne Frank for a more rounded picture of wartime Holland and its Jews." (Holocaust and Genocide Studies--January 1998)

Focusing on the way Jewish history -- particularly the Holocaust -- and tradition inform postwar Canadian and American Jewish literature, A House of Words offers innovative readings of the works of such influential writers as Saul Bellow, Leonard Cohen, Eli Mandel, Mordecai Richler, Chava Rosenfarb, Philip Roth, and Nathanael West. Norman Ravvin highlights the concerns that these disparate writers share as Jewish writers as well as places their work in the context of the broader traditions of multiculturalism, post-colonial writing, and critical theory.

Arguing that Jewish North American writing is too commonly discussed as part of the mainstream, neglecting the Jewish aspects of the works, Ravvin places the writing of Bellow, Richler, Cohen, West, Mandel, Roth, and Rosenfarb within the Jewish context that the works demand. Ravvin depicts a Jewish cultural landscape within which postwar writers contend with community and identity, continuity and loss, and highlights the way this particular landscape is entangled with broader literary and cultural traditions. He considers Bellow and West alongside apocalyptic narratives, discusses Cohen in relation to the counterculture, examines Mandel's postmodern view of history, and looks at autobiography and ethics in Roth and Rosenfarb.

At once scholarly and poetic, A House of Words will appeal to the general reader of Canadian, American, and Jewish literature and history, as well as to specialists in these fields.

This unique and absorbing book looks at the ways in which images and memories of war have emerged and endured in the twentieth century. Through a number of studies by the leading experts in the field, ranging from the construction of memorials through to film and personal testimonies, the complex identities of war memories and their social, cultural and political significances are thoroughly discussed.War and Memory in the Twentieth Century explores differing ways in which memories of conflicts are constructed from a multitude of perspectives and representations, including:· the written and spoken word· cinematic and film images· photography· monuments and memorials· museums· rituals and public celebrationThe book also discusses how memories of war differ between nations and individuals, and between proximity and distance in time. Wide-ranging and original, individual essays cover topics such as Anne Frank, British war crimes, the Gulf War in British popular culture, German memory and identity, and popular film. This truly interdisciplinary and wide-ranging book will be of interest to the general reader as well as students and academics of history, war and society, political science, cultural studies and media studies.Contributors include:Tony Kushner, Southampton University; David Cesarani, Southampton University; Bernice Archer, Essex University; Jane Leonard, Queens University, Belfast; Lucy Noakes, Sussex University; Margaretta Joly, Sussex University; Catherine Moriarty, Sussex University; Bill Kidd, Stirling University; Sue Harper, Portsmouth University; Martin Shaw, Sussex University; Jeffrey Walsh, Manchester Metropolitan University; Barry Doyle, Durham University; Gerd Knischewski, Portsmouth University.