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The views of various American liberal intellectuals and Jewish writers on the Nazi death camps are discussed, starting with Lionel Trilling, a postwar New York literary critic, who addressed the issue of the death of the novel and the impotence of the mind in relation to the horror of the Nazi camps. The main part of the chapter is devoted to a discussion of the testimonies of three death camp survivors – Elie Wiesel, Primo Levi, and Jean Améry. Levi's viewpoint of the camps is not that of a religious Jew, but as a scientist and secular humanist, and he discusses the fact that normal prisoners (like Wiesel and Améry) were perhaps not in the best position to report on the camps, while those who held privileged positions (like himself) perhaps were.

From 1945 to 1965, the Holocaust and the Nazi destruction of European Jewry came to occupy the attention of a small number of intellectuals whose work would have a significant impact on post‐Holocaust Jewish thought. One of the most important, Raul Hilberg, was a political scientist by training, but his work was primarily historical; The Destruction of the European Jews, which appeared in 1961, meticulously examined the destruction process, but this massive and detailed work was rarely read. The most influential books were those of Hannah Arendt, Elie Wiesel, and Primo Levi; these writers provided powerful, important views of the death camps and the Nazi horrors, and they also introduced modes of discourse for describing and discussing the crimes perpetrated, the criminals, and the victims. This chapter is primarily devoted to a study of Arendt's examination of Nazism and totalitarianism, published in articles in the 1940s, and culminating in her tremendously important hook, The Origins of Totalitarianism, in 1951; discussion of various critiques of her work is also included. The writings of Elie Wiesel and Primo Levi are discussed in the next chapter.

In this chapter, and in the next four, an analysis and examination is made of the writings of the major American Jewish thinkers/theologians. The thinker addressed in this chapter is Richard Rubinstein, a prominent Jewish theologian, but not institutionally tied to one of the denominations of American Judaism; he was a Hillel rabbi and then an academic. Citations of each thinker's work earlier in the book are capitalized on in order to explore the theme of history and identity as it occurs in their work, and it is shown that these figures struggled with very deep and pressing problems not only about God and the Jewish people, and about human nature and moral purpose but also about the very nature of Jewish belief and its understanding of the world, history, God, and much else. They realized the dangers that accompanied their sensitivity to the Holocaust and their unconditional commitment to a honest and probing encounter with the death camps, and at the same time, they refused to abandon Judaism. In some ways, they appear like other intellectuals of the current era, who realize that we cannot transcend history nor can we be overwhelmed by it, but in other ways, they appear unlike them, for their sense of value and purpose arises out of the horror of the death camps.

In this chapter, and in Chs. 6–9, an analysis and examination is made of the writings of the major American Jewish thinkers/theologians. The thinker addressed in this chapter is Emil Fackenheim, a Jewish theologian and philosopher, who has radically changed his thinking since 1967. Citations of each thinker's work earlier in the book are capitalized on in order to explore the theme of history and identity as it occurs in their work, and it is shown that these figures struggled with very deep and pressing problems not only about God and the Jewish people, and about human nature and moral purpose but also about the very nature of Jewish belief and its understanding of the world, history, God, and much else. They realized the dangers that accompanied their sensitivity to the Holocaust and their unconditional commitment to an honest and probing encounter with the death camps, and at the same time, they refused to abandon Judaism. In some ways, they appear like other intellectuals of the current era, who realize that we cannot transcend history nor can we be overwhelmed by it, but in other ways, they appear unlike them, for their sense of value and purpose arises out of the horror of the death camps.

When anti-Semitism becomes untenable after the Holocaust is revealed toward the end of World War II, Faulkner himself revises The Sound and the Fury in an Appendix that strikingly demonizes his once beloved promiscuous heroine Caddy. He has her become involved with a German officer in Paris during World War II, and he does so in 1945 and 1946, just as the American public is reeling from the revelation of Nazi “death camps.” Thus, Faulkner's Appendix marks an end to the modernist promiscuity novel: with it, Faulkner distances himself from the casual anti-Semitism of his 1929 text and from a female sexual freedom he seemed to embrace or tolerate in Caddy. The outlook of the Appendix, with regard to women, dovetails with that of the military in the world wars. The Appendix is part of a growing backlash against the new woman of the post-World War I era; the promiscuous female is once again, as in the vamp story that became popular in the 1910s, a fiend.

This chapter focuses on two death camps, Treblinka and Auschwitz II-Birkenau, and on documentaries filmed on these locations. Differences between the two places, with the disappearance of Treblinka and the persistence of Auschwitz, are discussed in relation to documentaries bringing survivors and members of the postgeneration back to these places. The chapter also addresses rebellion and uprisings in these death camps.

In this chapter, and in Chs. 6–8, and 10, an analysis and examination is made of the writings of the major American Jewish thinkers/theologians. The thinker addressed in this chapter is Arthur Cohen, a prominent Jewish theologian, but not institutionally tied to one of the denominations of American Judaism; he was an editor and a novelist. Citations of each thinker's work earlier in the book are capitalized on in order to explore the theme of history and identity as it occurs in their work, and it is shown that these figures struggled with very deep and pressing problems not only about God and the Jewish people, and about human nature and moral purpose but also about the very nature of Jewish belief and its understanding of the world, history, God, and much else. They realized the dangers that accompanied their sensitivity to the Holocaust and their unconditional commitment to an honest and probing encounter with the death camps, and at the same time, they refused to abandon Judaism. In some ways, they appear like other intellectuals of the current era, who realize that we cannot transcend history nor can we be overwhelmed by it, but in other ways, they appear unlike them, for their sense of value and purpose arises out of the horror of the death camps.

In this chapter, and in Chs. 6, and 8–10, an analysis and examination is made of the writings of the major American Jewish thinkers/theologians. The thinker addressed in this chapter is Eliezer Berkovits, an orthodox Jewish theologian and philosopher. Citations of each thinker's work earlier in the book are capitalized on in order to explore the theme of history and identity as it occurs in their work, and it is shown that these figures struggled with very deep and pressing problems not only about God and the Jewish people, and about human nature and moral purpose but also about the very nature of Jewish belief and its understanding of the world, history, God, and much else. They realized the dangers that accompanied their sensitivity to the Holocaust and their unconditional commitment to an honest and probing encounter with the death camps, and at the same time, they refused to abandon Judaism. In some ways, they appear like other intellectuals of the current era, who realize that we cannot transcend history nor can we be overwhelmed by it, but in other ways, they appear unlike them, for their sense of value and purpose arises out of the horror of the death camps.

This chapter proposes, and illustrates, with the idea of gray zones, a more historically accurate conception of diabolical evil than the one rejected by Kant: the deliberate and successful pursuit of others’ moral corruption (as the serpent of Genesis does with Eve), rather than evil for evil's sake (Kant's view). Primo Levi described as “gray zones” the predicaments of prisoners in Nazi death camps who were selected to administer evils to other prisoners in exchange for reductions in or postponements of their own torture and who thereby faced choices between extreme suffering (or immediate and horrible death) and serious moral compromise; the deliberate creation of gray zones, this chapter argues, is a paradigm of diabolical evil. People in gray zones are forced to risk moral corruption in becoming implicated, by their own choices, in perpetrating on others’ evils that threaten to engulf themselves. Gray zones are marked by the presence of severe duress, combinations of evil and innocence, and lack of clarity of one's responsibilities, one's motivations, or what is morally justifiable, given one's options. Outsiders may be in no position to judge gray zone agents, but insiders face better and worse choices and sometimes hold each other accountable; refusing to abdicate responsibility for one's choices in a gray zone works to disrupt cycles of evil.

Herbert Lange chose Chełmno as the site to establish a death camp because it was centrally positioned in relation to the Jewish population of the Warthegau. Located some 60 kilometers northwest of Łodź, Chełmno is situated in a bend of the highway between Dąbie, six kilometers to the south, and Koło. This chapter discusses the establishment of the Chełmno camp, beginning with the arrival of the Sonderkommando to Chełmno, the construction of the camp, and the arrival of the first transport of victims. The extermination process began in early December 1941 with the liquidation of the Jewish populations of surrounding towns and villages. Among the first to be exterminated in Chełmno came directly from the Łodź ghetto, the second largest Jewish ghetto.

In this chapter, and in Chs. 6–7, and 9–10, an analysis and examination is made of the writings of the major American Jewish thinkers/theologians. The thinker addressed in this chapter is Irving Greenberg, an orthodox rabbi and deeply traditional figure, but also a bold and radical Jewish thinker. Citations of each thinkers work earlier in the book are capitalized on in order to explore the theme of history and identity as it occurs in their work, and it is shown that these figures struggled with very deep and pressing problems not only about God and the Jewish people, and about human nature and moral purpose but also about the very nature of Jewish belief and its understanding of the world, history, God, and much else. They realized the dangers that accompanied their sensitivity to the Holocaust and their unconditional commitment to an honest and probing encounter with the death camps, and at the same time, they refused to abandon Judaism. In some ways, they appear like other intellectuals of the current era, who realize that we cannot transcend history nor can we be overwhelmed by it, but in other ways, they appear unlike them, for their sense of value and purpose arises out of the horror of the death camps.

This chapter charts the sequence of Jewish and Roma mass killing from Operation Barbarossa in 1941 through to the collapse of the Hitler state in 1945. It follows the pattern of killing both in the Balkans and Soviet Russia, proposing that these represented a series of genocides, rather than simply one monolithic Holocaust. Nevertheless, by degrees, associated with the failure of Hitler's ultimate geopolitical goals, this extended into a comprehensive Europe-wide deportation of Jews to dedicated death camps in the rimlands. The chapter considers these camps, most infamously Auschwitz, and asks whether this relentless mass killing was a 'system' in its own right and the degree to which this embraced the Roma. It concludes by interrogating the erratic and problematic winding down of mass murder as Himmler covertly attempted to link the 'Jewish question' with his unsuccessful efforts to make a separate peace with the Western Allies.

This chapter looks at the testimony of Rudolf Reder, a survivor of Bełżec death camp. Bełżec murder camp was the first camp set up by Aktion Reinhard, an operation whose purpose was to dispose, in the least obtrusive manner, of the Jewish population of the General Government and adjacent countries under Nazi rule. Into this camp, Rudolf Reder was brought with one of the first transports of Jews from Lemberg caught during the great Aktion. Reder arrived in Bełżec at the height of the camp's activity. Because of his position as odd-job man, he was allowed considerable freedom of movement. He was therefore able to describe the camp, its installations, and its functioning in considerable detail. But his story is also the deeply harrowing account of someone who witnessed with horror the slaughter of innocents which went on day after day. And this, together with the relevant details which, without his description, might have remained forever obscure, make Reder's booklet, Bełżec (1946), a unique document of this terrible but little-known chapter in the history of the Holocaust.

This book sheds light on the little known but crucial chapter of the Holocaust with respect to concentration camps or extermination centers. Focusing on the Chełmno camp, it attempts to clarify misconceptions that surround the history of the death camp. Because of insufficient published research on the Chełmno death camp, the book introduces important sources that can provide a fuller understanding of Chełmno. These sources include eyewitness testimonies of camp staff, Jewish prisoners, and local residents; documents such as camp records, the Polish government's investigation of the Chełmno extermination camp, and academic and scholarly studies, research projects, personal memoirs, and fiction based on a meeting with a survivor of Chełmno.

Some 400 detention centers existed throughout Argentina during the dictatorship and of these there were half a dozen death camps, including the largest of the interior, La Perla, found on the outskirts of Córdoba. The death camp was the dictatorship’s most emblematic institution. Political prisoners were brought there, tortured, and most were killed. The camp functioned as a site of “waste disposal” a biopolitics different from the Nazi concentration camp. Tensions, cruelty, and occasional acts of heroism and humanity characterized the internal life of the camp.

Volksgemeinschaft is an idealized concept referring to the Germanic ethnic or national community. The members of this community enjoyed the economic gains under Hitler, but most remembered the past and feared another war. To gain support for Hitler’s military aggression, Goebbels tapped into fears of Bolshevism and a Jewish world conspiracy and propounded the Nazi racial ideology of extreme anti-Semitism. The “master race” and “slave” ideology led to the imprisonment and genocide of European Jews and others marked as racially inferior or handicapped. In need of manpower for armaments production and in other industries, the Germans used Jewish prisoners and Soviet POWS as slave labor in high-mortality working conditions. The regime also employed and abused foreign laborers living in Germany. Increasing numbers of labor camps, concentration camps, and death camps were added in Germany and occupied areas. Müller notes that German civilians definitely witnessed the presence of these prisoners and were drawn into the system, similarly to the Wehrmacht. Civilians feared the Gestapo, acquired a fatalistic view, and offered little support for a coup. For many, the Wehrmacht’s conspiracy and failed assassination attempt of 20 July 1944, Valkyrie, stands as a hopeful symbol of a rebellion of conscience.