Books

My grandfather would have shot me. A black woman discovers her family’s nazi past. – Jennifer Teege & Nikola Sellmair
When Jennifer Teege, a German-Nigerian woman, happened to pluck a library book from the shelf, she had no idea that her life would be irrevocably altered. Recognizing photos of her mother and grandmother in the book, she discovers a horrifying fact; Her grandfather was Amon Goeth, the vicious Nazi commandant chillinly depicted by Ralph Fiennes…
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The Making of an SS Killer. The Life of Colonel Alfred Filbert, 1905-1990 – Alex J. Kay
In this pioneering biography of a frontline Holocaust perpetrator, Alex J. Kay uncovers the life of SS Lieutenant Colonel Alfred Filbert, responsible as the first head of SS Task Force 9, a mobile killing squad, for the murder of more than 18,000 Soviet Jews – men, women and children – on the Eastern Front. He…
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The Right Wrong Man: John Demjanjuk and the Last Great Nazi War Crimes Trial – Lawrence Douglas
In 2009, Harper’s Magazine sent war-crimes expert Lawrence Douglas to Munich to cover the last chapter of the lengthiest case ever to arise from the Holocaust: the trial of eighty-nine-year-old John Demjanjuk. Demjanjuk’s legal odyssey began in 1975, when American investigators received evidence alleging that the Cleveland autoworker and naturalized US citizen had collaborated in…
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Justifying Genocide. Germany and the Armenians from Bismarck to Hitler – Stefan Ihrig
The Armenian Genocide and the Nazi Holocaust are often thought to be separated by a large distance in time and space. But Stefan Ihrig shows that they were much more connected than previously thought. Bismarck and then Wilhelm II staked their foreign policy on close relations with a stable Ottoman Empire. To the extent that…
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Genocide. New Perspectives on its Causes, Courses and Consequences – ed. Uğur Ümit Üngör
The twentieth century has been called, not inaccurately, a century of genocide. And the beginning of the twenty-first century has seen little change, with genocidal violence in Darfur, Congo, Sri Lanka, and Syria. Why is genocide so widespread, and so difficult to stop, across societies that differ so much culturally, technologically, and politically? That’s the…
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Germans and Jews since the Holocaust – Pól Ó Dochartaigh
From the very moment of the liberation of camps at Auschwitz, Belsen and Buchenwald, Germans have been held accountable for the crimes committed in the Holocaust. The Nazi regime unleashed the most systematic attempt in history to wipe out an entire people, murdering men, women and children for the simple ‘crime’ of being Jewish. After…
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The Armenian Genocide Legacy – edited by Alexis Demirdjian
On the centennial of the acts commonly referred to as the Armenian Genocide, academics and professionals from a variety of disciplines discuss the impact of the Genocide in their respective fields. In this volume, they assess why it still remains relevant to discuss the Genocide today, as well as its global ramifications and its equally…
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Holy Legionary Youth – Roland Clark
Founded in 1927, Romania’s Legion of the Archangel Michael was one of Europe’s largest and longest-lived fascist social movements. In Holy Legionary Youth, Roland Clark draws on oral histories, memoirs, and substantial research in the archives of the Romanian secret police to provide the most comprehensive account of the Legion in English to date. Clark…
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Das Lachen der Täter: Breivik u.a. Psychogramm der Tötungslust Klaus Theweleit
Vom Lachen der Killer wird in zahlreichen Fällen berichtet, aber selten wird es in seiner zentralen Bedeutung gedeutet – so die provokante These dieses Psychogramms. In den „Männerphantasien“ wagte Theweleit erstmals eine Beschreibung des gewalttätigen faschistischen Mannes und seines innerlich fragmentierten, äußerlich aber gepanzerten Körpers. Auf diese bahnbrechende Theorie greift er nun zurück, um die…
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The New Demons. Rethinking Power and Evil Today – Simona Forti
As long as we care about suffering in the world, says political philosopher Simona Forti, we are compelled to inquire into the question of evil. But is the concept of evil still useful in a postmodern landscape where absolute values have been leveled and relativized by a historicist perspective? Given our current unwillingness to judge…
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