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Roaming the countryside in caravans, earning their living as musicians, peddlers, and fortune-tellers, the Gypsies and their elusive way of life represented an affront to Nazi ideas of social order, hard work, and racial purity. They were branded as "asocials," harassed, and eventually herded into ...

Roaming the countryside in caravans, earning their living as musicians, peddlers, and fortune-tellers, the Gypsies and their elusive way of life represented an affront to Nazi ideas of social order, hard work, and racial purity. They were branded as "asocials," harassed, and eventually herded into concentration camps where many thousands were killed. But until now the story of their persecution has either been overlooked or distorted. In The Nazi Persecution of the Gypsies, Guenter Lewy draws upon thousands of documents--many never before used--from German and Austrian archives to provide the most comprehensive and accurate study available of the fate of the Gypsies under the Nazi regime. Lewy traces the escalating vilification of the Gypsies as the Nazis instigated a widespread crackdown on the "work-shy" and "itinerants." But he shows that Nazi policy towards Gypsies was confused and changeable. At first, local officials persecuted gypsies, and those who behaved in gypsy-like fashion, for allegedly anti-social tendencies. Later, with the rise of race obsession, Gypsies were seen as a threat to German racial purity, though Himmler himself wavered, trying to save those he considered "pure Gypsies" descended from Aryan roots in India. Indeed, Lewy contradicts much existing scholarship in showing that, however much the Gypsies were persecuted, there was no general program of extermination analogous to the "final solution" for the Jews. Exploring in heart-rending detail the fates of individual Gypsies and their families, The Nazi Persecution of the Gypsies makes an important addition to our understanding both of the history of this mysterious people and of all facets of the Nazi terror.

This work shows how interviews help child survivors of the Jewish experience during World War II. It is unique in that it features different aspects of the interviewer-interviewee relationship. The contributions are personal as well as analytical in nature, and the narrative is an informed ...

This work shows how interviews help child survivors of the Jewish experience during World War II. It is unique in that it features different aspects of the interviewer-interviewee relationship. The contributions are personal as well as analytical in nature, and the narrative is an informed psychological analysis. The work should be of interest to Holocaust centers, researchers, oral historians, psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, sociologists, and trauma researchers as well as survivors.

In this major and comprehensive work, hailed by Le Monde as a "monumental study", Hermann Langbein shatters the myth that all prisoners of concentration camps during World War II passively let themselves be slaughtered. A prisoner himself and one of the leaders of resistance at Auschwitz, Langbein ...

In this major and comprehensive work, hailed by Le Monde as a "monumental study", Hermann Langbein shatters the myth that all prisoners of concentration camps during World War II passively let themselves be slaughtered. A prisoner himself and one of the leaders of resistance at Auschwitz, Langbein painstakingly documents the detailed account of the history of the camps and the story of resistance. Spanning the initial years to the chaotic weeks before liberation, Against All Hope is the first systematic presentation of organized resistance. Deeply moving, it is an unforgettable testament to the resilience and determination of the human spirit. As the camps were being established, Langbein examines the composition of the initial prisoners; a mixture of political prisoners (Reds), convicted criminals (Greens), Jews, and "anti-socials" and reveals the brutal struggle for camp domination between the Reds and Greens. With analytic detail, he presents the history and nature of the individual camps and the inmate self-government. In "The Actors", Langbein recognizes for the first time the various inmate groups, Germans, Austrians, Poles, Russians, Communists, Socialists, Jehovah's Witnesses, Gypsies and Jews, and how they related to resistance. Langbein portrays the incredible impossibility of resistance against the all-powerful total domination of the Nazi camp administration. The prisoners were to be morally broken, psychically disabled, and even physically destroyed. To resist against this systematic demoralization, its isolation from the rest of the world, and its intention to exterminate, was inconceivable. Through chronic malnutrition, beatings, torture, and the permanent terrorism ofthe SS, the prisoners were led to believe "there is only one way out of here: through the chimney". And yet, resistance, individual initiatives and organized action, to aid fellow inmates, to escape, to revolt, to thwart manag