The contributions to this volume not only indicate the intellectual vibrancy and diversity of cutting-edge research in Holocaust studies but also reflect multiple approaches to the necessary work of expanding the canon of research in the field and of adopting varied disciplinary perspectives, engaging with global perspectives as well as local studies.
This collection’s chapters manifest three broad categories: history, literature, and memory; at the same time, however, as the interdisciplinary nature of these chapters indicate, these categories should not be regarded as mutually exclusive or discrete. On the contrary, they overlap and intersect in compelling ways, demonstrating the dynamic character of contemporary Holocaust studies, which views history, narrative representation, and commemoration as mutually informative. Further, the contributors continue the recent trend in Holocaust studies whereby specific regional and national narratives are integrated into a more global approach to the event: Newer studies have continued to incorporate what was once termed the periphery into a more global examination of the experiences of Jewish refugees in flight to Latin America, Africa, and the Soviet Union. At the same time, very specific local studies deepen our knowledge of the mechanics of genocide, along with the experiences of refugees in flight, and the subsequent dimensions of Holocaust memory and representation.
Introduction, Erin McGlothlin and Avinoam Patt
I. Wartime History
Natalie Eppelsheimer, "Some Had a Farm in Africa: Holocaust Survivors as Settler-Colonists in Kenya”
Daniela Gleizer, “Refugees from Nazism and Holocaust Survivors in Mexico: Closed Doors and Contested Memories”
Elysa I. McConnell, “Building the Nation at the Periphery: Fascism, Italianization, and Racial Persecution in Italy’s Eastern Borderlands”
Jason Tingler, “A Vortex of Violence: Chełm at the Crossroads of Genocide and Mass Murder”
Idit Gil, “Ethics and Friendship in KZ Hessental: Josek Giser’s Diary and His Survival Efforts”
II. Literature and Testimony from the Postwar to the Contemporary
Ariane Santerre, “Transgressive Testimonies: French Survivors’ Early Writings on the Holocaust”
Naya Lekht, “Literary Monuments: Commemorating the Holocaust in the Soviet Union”
Jonathan Druker, “Monstrous Births and Mad Scientists: Allegories of Holocaust Trauma in Primo Levi’s Natural Histories”
Joanna Krongold, “‘Too Much Precedent’: Holocaust Allegory in Suzanne Collins’s Underland Chronicles”
III. Museums and Memorials
Anja Ballis, “Tour Guide Meets Tourist: Local and Global Perspectives of Guided Tours at European Concentration Camp Memorial Sites”
Sarah Kleinmann, “The Museum Representation of National Socialist Perpetrators in Germany and Austria”
Laurie A. Stein, “The State of Provenance Research in Museums: Evaluating Global and National Approaches and Responses”
Anna Duensing, “We Should Have Had a Nuremberg after the Civil War”: Understanding Nazism at the Frontlines of the Battle Over Confederate Monuments
Dan Leopard and Noah Shenker, "Pinchas-DiT: Simulation and the Imagined Future of Holocaust Survivor Memory”
Notes on Contributors