Many critics and some historians consider resistance in Nazi Germany as too little and too late. Few Germans were willing to take risks, and others began to oppose the Third Reich only when the end was in sight. However, despite the threat of prison, concentration camp, or death, there were many diverse groups from the academic, military, and spiritual sectors of society that challenged the Reich's harsh, unjust policies. This book represents the spectrum of these forms of resistance and illustrates the courage of those who dared to confront the Nazi government.
Fifty years after World War II, critical issues of this international conflict still haunt our society today in business, war crimes trials, and international relations. This text focuses on the historical issues of Christian rescue of Jews, resistance to Nazi oppression, and the plight of the refugee in light of current problems facing us. The essays in this book, from nationally and internationally-known scholars, reveal that the Holocaust was not only a Jewish tragedy but an epic human tragedy as well, one that has indelibly scarred the collective soul of twentieth-century society. As these scholars and witnesses provide insights into the historical context of World War II and the Holocaust, they also assist us in regulating the future behavior of ourselves, our country, and our world.
Through an analysis of a series of poignant films on the plight of the Native Americans, the controversial Armenian genocide, the Holocaust and its legacy, the killing fields of Cambodia, and the Hutu-sponsored massacres in Rwanda, the reader can grasp the driving mechanisms of genocide and ethnic cleansing.
"An exploration of how the Nazis harnessed and exploited the law to impose their will and how the law ultimately prevailed in the form of the Nuremberg war crime trials"--
Filming the End of the Holocaust considers how the US Government commissioned the US Signal Corps and other filmmakers to document the horrors of the concentration camps during the April-May 1945 liberation. The evidence of the Nazis' genocidal actions amassed in these films, some of them made by Hollywood luminaries such as John Ford and Billy Wilder, would go on to have a major impact at the Nuremberg Trials; they helped to indict Nazi officials as the judges witnessed scenes of torture, human experimentation and extermination of Jews and non-Jews in the gas chambers and crematoria. These films, some produced by the Soviets, were integral to the war crime trials that followed the Holocaust and the Second World War, and this book provides a thorough, close analysis of the footage in these films and their historical significance. Using research carried out at the Museum of Jewish Heritage, the US National Archives and the film collection at the National Center for Jewish Film at Brandeis University, this book explores the rationale for filming the atrocities and their use in the subsequent trials of Nazi officials in greater detail than anything previously published. Including an extensive bibliography and filmography, Filming the End of the Holocaust is an important text for scholars and students of the Holocaust and its aftermath.
