Golden Harvest

Events at the Periphery of the Holocaust
Erscheinungsjahr 2016
ISBN: 978-0-19-061453-9
Verlag: Oxford University Press Inc

Buch, Englisch, 152 Seiten, Format (B × H): 128 mm x 198 mm, Gewicht: 213 g

It seems at first commonplace: a group photograph of peasants at harvest time, after hard work well done, resting contentedly with their tools behind the fruits of their labor. But when one finally notices the "crops" scattered in front of the group, what seemed innocent on first view become horrific skulls and bones. Where are we? Who are the people in the photograph, and what are they doing?

The starting point of Jan Tomasz and Irena Grudzinska Gross's Golden Harvest, this haunting photograph in fact depicts a group of peasants--"diggers"--atop a mountain of ashes at Treblinka, where some 800,000 Jews were gassed and cremated. The diggers are searching for gold and precious stones that Nazi executioners may have overlooked. The story captured in this grainy black-and-white photograph symbolizes the vast, continent-wide plunder of Jewish wealth that went hand-in-hand with the Holocaust.

The seizure of Jewish assets during World War II occasionally generates widespread attention when Swiss banks are challenged to produce lists of dormant accounts, or national museums are forced to return stolen paintings. But the theft of Europe's Jewish population was not limited to conquering armies, leading banks, or museums. It was perpetrated also by local people, such as those pictured in the photograph. Lyrical and often heartbreaking, A Golden Harvest takes readers across Europe as it exposes the economic ravaging of an entire society. Beginning with a simple group shot, the authors have written a moving book that evokes the depth and range, as well as the intimacy, of the Final Solution.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Gross, Jan Tomasz

Gross, Irena Grudzinska

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Jüdische Studien Geschichte des Judentums Antisemitismus, Pogrome, Shoah
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Europäische Geschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Deutsche Geschichte Deutsche Geschichte: Holocaust
• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Politische Gewalt Völkermord, Ethnische Säuberung, Kriegsverbrechen

Inhaltsverzeichnis

- Introduction

- The Photograph

- The Need to Name

- Taking over Jewish Property

- Photographs and Documentation of the Shoah

- The Grounds of Extermination Camps Immediately after the War

- The Bones

- The Death Camps and the Local Population

- Tending One's Garden

- Takeover of Jewish property by ordinary people

- About the killing of Jews

- The Kielce region

- "Thick description "

- Close-up of a murder scene

- Human agency

- The peripheries of the Holocaust

- Back to photography

- Conversations about Jewish property

- A certain kind of patriotism

- Hunting for Jews

- Jews and objects

- Schmaltzowanye

- Sheltering Jews for payment

- An exceptional case

- New rules and experts' opinions

- Where was the Catholic Church?

- Hypocrite lecteur, mon semblable, mon frère

- Afterword

- Index

Über Autor(innen)

Jan Tomasz Gross is Norman B. Tomlinson Professor of War and Society and Professor of History at Princeton University. He is the author of Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland, which was a finalist for the National Book Award.
Irena Grudzinska Gross is Research Scholar and Lecturer in the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures at Princeton University.