CANR
WORK TITLE: LIVES RECLAIMED
WORK NOTES:
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE:
CITY: Birmingham
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COUNTRY: United Kingdom
NATIONALITY: English
LAST VOLUME: CA 210
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Born September 7, 1958, in London, England; son of Nathan Stephen and Joan Lillian Roseman; married (separated); children: three.
EDUCATION:Christ’s College, Cambridge, B.A. (honors), 1979; Cambridge University, M.A.; University of Warwick, Ph.D., 1987.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Warwick University, Coventry, England, seminar teacher in modern German history, 1980-81; Department of Modern Languages, Aston University, Birmingham, England, lecturer, 1984-89; Department of History, Keele University, Keele, Staffordshire, England, lecturer, 1989-94, senior lecturer, 1994-2000; University of Southampton, Southampton, England, professor of modern history, beginning 2000; Indiana University, Bloomington, adjunct professor, distinguished professor, Pat M. Glazer Chair in Jewish Studies.
MEMBER:German History Society, (committee member, 1988-93; treasurer, 1989-93).
AWARDS:German Academic Exchange Service Award, 1980, 1981-82; Leverhulme Trust Studentship, 1982-83; German Historical Institute grant, 1983-84; British Academy award, 1989; Goethe Institute grant, 1991, 1993; British Academy grant, 1991, 1995; DAAD research grant, 1991; Keele Research Award, 1994; French Embassy Grant, 1995; Royal Historical Society grant, 1995; History 2000 Award, 1997; Nuffield research grant, 1998; Alexander von Humboldt fellowship, 1998; Arts and Humanities Research Board grant, 2000; Frankel Prize, 2000, Wingate Literary Prize, Jewish Quarterly, 2000, and Mark Lynton History Prize, 2002, all for A Past in Hiding; Geschwister Scholl Prize, 2003.
WRITINGS
Contributor to books and periodicals. Author of forewords of books, including Approaching an Auschwitz Survivor: Holocaust Testimony and Its Transformations, Oxford University Press (New York, NY), 2009.
SIDELIGHTS
Historian Mark Roseman’s career as a teacher and scholar has led him to specialize in twentieth century German history, with emphasis on the Holocaust and the impact of war on society. He has published extensively on these topics and has gained a reputation for his ability to put a human face on the facts of history. His work has gained favorable critical attention from scholars in the field and is also accessible to the general reader. Roseman’s book, A Past in Hiding: Memorial and Survival in Nazi Germany has won awards internationally. He has served as a professor at the University of Southampton in England and as a distinguished professor at Indiana University, Bloomington.
Recasting the Ruhr, 1945-1958: Manpower, Economic Recovery and Labour Relations, published in 1992, grew out of Roseman’s dissertation work directed by Volker Berghan at the University of Warwick. This book is a close examination, divided into two parts, of the history of labor policies designed to restore the coal industry in the Ruhr mining district in Germany. Through extensive use of political and social archival material both in Germany and England, Roseman has revealed, in detail, aspects of the miners’ lives as well as the progress of labor relations. The first part of the book is concerned with the period immediately following the end of the war in 1945 until 1948. The mistrust that existed between German and British forces in addition to the competing plans of the other occupying nations is described, providing a full picture of the times. The second half of the book deals with the period from 1948 to 1958, the era of Ludwig Erhard’s economic policies. Roseman analyzes and evaluates what he labels the “social engineering” efforts to recruit and retain miners. Housing, entertainment and social values all were scrutinized by the authorities, and attempts were made to re-shape the miners’ lives in hopes of retaining a stable workforce. Traditional home designs were rejected and replaced with buildings that the authorities hoped would have more appeal to the miners. There were also attempts to instill attitudes that would increase greater productivity. It was a general effort to re-engineer the miners’ culture. The reasons for the failure of this experiment are clearly delineated.
Generations in Conflict: Youth Revolt and Generation Formation in Germany, 1770-1968 is a collection of essays that grew out of a conference held in 1991 that was formed around the study of generational conflict in Germany. As the editor, Roseman has put together and introduced a collection of essays from an international group of scholars that addresses various aspects of this topic. The majority of the essays are concerned with the period after 1918, with an emphasis on the generation educated in the Nazi era and their response to the allied occupation. Such titles as “The Ideal of Youth in Eighteenth-Century Germany,” “The Generation Conflict That Never Was: Young Labor in the Ruhr Mining Industry 1945-1957,” and “German Kriegskinder: Origins and Impact of the Generation of 1968,” demonstrate the scope of this collection devoted to the examination of the conflict of German youth and the established order.
The 2002 winner of the Mark Lynton History Prize, A Past in Hiding: Memorial and Survival in Nazi Germany is the story of Marianne Strauss, a young German Jew, who escaped being transported to a concentration camp with her family and then lived in Germany, aided by an underground resistance group, until the end of World War II. The story of how her experiences came to light is intriguing and forms an important part of the book. She remained virtually silent about her wartime experiences until the early 1980s when she wrote an article for a German periodical. Roseman saw the article, was interested, and met with her in 1989. Her reluctance to speak at any length remained intact, however, and Roseman left the interview with little information. He contacted her again five years later and this time she was more forthcoming. In the course of three interviews Roseman learned much of the painful, complex story that was to become the book. Marianne Strauss died in December of 1996. Upon her death Roseman, accompanied by her son, Vivian Ellenbogen, discovered an extensive collection of documents, including postcards, letters, diaries and official papers from her underground life. This is more than an account of her dramatic life during World War II. Through her diaries, letters and the interviews Roseman had with her, he shows the development of this complex woman. Booklist reviewer George Cohen called A Past in Hiding “an eloquent account of surviving the holocaust.”
In The Wannsee Conference and the Final Solution: A Reconsideration, Roseman traces the path of discussions between officials in the Nazi government that led to the Holocaust of World War II. The conference held at Wannsee on January 20, 1942 was attended by important figures in the Nazi regime, including chief of police Reinhold Heydrich. Hitler, himself, was absent. Roseman asserts that the meeting was organized to give Heydrich’s police complete power in the formation and execution of policies regarding the Jews and to assure the cooperation of the rest of the government departments. The author reminds us that in the beginning Hitler’s policies of harassment and discrimination were aimed at promoting Jewish emigration. In the course of the Wannsee conference, Heydrich presented a plan designed to eliminate all Jews by working them to death and killing those who did not succumb to the extreme conditions of forced labor. Roseman points out that although this conference was not the precise “moment of decision,” it was the first formal step toward genocide. The minutes of the conference are included at the end of the book. A Kirkus Reviews contributor called The Wannsee Conference and the Final Solution “A chilling keyhole glimpse of Nazi evil’s bureaucratic banality.”
Penguin Books released a version of The Wannsee Conference and the Final Solution called The Villa, The Lake, The Meeting: Wannsee and the Final Solution. A writer on the Speesh Reads website reviewed the latter, stating: “The Villa, The Lake, The Meeting is a sombre and thorough investigation into the background to the Wannsee meeting, what can be surmised about what happened at the meeting, and its later and wider consequences. Thoroughly recommended for anyone interested in finding out about not quite, as the title suggests, the origins of the Final Solution, but its later stage of development.” “Mark Roseman makes a scholarly and thorough contribution to the story of how the Holocaust was planned,” asserted Anthony Julius on the London Observer website.
Roseman collaborated with Jürgen Matthäus to write the 2010 book, Jewish Responses to Persecution. The volume is meant to be the first in a series and focuses on the years 1933 to 1938. Roseman and Matthäus examine personal ephemera and other documents from Jewish individuals living in Germany during those years in order to analyze how Jewish people were handling the increasing pressure on their community. Among the pieces of information cited in the book is a Bar Mitzvah letter send in 1935.
J.A. Drobnicki, critic in Choice, categorized Jewish Responses to Persecution as “recommended.” Referring to the sources cited in the book, Library Journal reviewer, Frederick Krome, suggested: “These documents restore human agency to German Jews and reveal the multifaceted reactions to Nazism.”
In Lives Reclaimed: A Story of Rescue and Resistance in Nazi Germany, Roseman chronicles the history of the Bund, a secretive socialist group that encouraged creative expression as a form of self-improvement. Members of the group were known to sing, dance, and meditate in the forest. When Hitler came to power, his administration deemed the group illegal. Bund members protected Jewish members and tried to help others who were sent to ghettos, putting their own lives in danger by doing so. They also attempted to maintain their ideology, even as they were forced into military service and made to participate in Nazi activities.
A Publishers Weekly writer described Lives Reclaimed as “thorough” and remarked: “Those seeking illumination of a little-discussed facet of Nazi-era German life will find it worthy.” Mark Knoblauch, contributor to Booklist, noted that the book brings up “compelling moral issues.” A Kirkus Reviews critic suggested that Roseman performed “meticulous research into personal papers and other primary material.” The same critic described the book as “a welcome addition to the literature of the Holocaust and Nazi Germany.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
American Historical Review, June, 1993, Raymond G. Stokes, review of Recasting the Ruhr, 1945-1958: Manpower, Economic Recovery and Labour Relations, pp. 899-900.
Booklist, February 15, 2001, George Cohen, review of The Past in Hiding: Memory and Survival in Nazi Germany, p. 1113; April 15, 2002 Jay Freeman, review of The Wannsee Conference and the Final Solution: A Reconsideration, p. 1379; June 1, 2019, Mark Knoblauch, review of Lives Reclaimed: A Story of Rescue and Resistance in Nazi Germany, p. 25.
Business History, July 1993, Frances M. B. Lynch, review of Recasting the Ruhr, 1945-1958: Manpower, Economic Recovery and Labour Relations, p. 122.
Central European History, 1992, John Gillingham, review of Recasting the Ruhr, 1945-1958: Manpower, Economic Recovery and Labour Relations, pp. 484-485.
Choice, November, 2010, J.A. Drobnicki, review of Jewish Responses to Persecution, p. 480.
Contemporary Review, May, 2002, review of The Villa, the Lake, the Meeting: Wannsee and the Final Solution, p. 316.
English Historical Review, June, 1997, Bob Moore, review of Generations in Conflict: Youth Revolt and Generation Formation in Germany, 1770-1968, p. 809.
Journal of Modern History, March, 1995, Diethelm Prowe, review of Recasting the Ruhr, 1945-1958: Manpower, Economic Recovery and Labour Relations, pp. 230-234; March, 1998, Michael H. Kater, review of Generations in Conflict: Youth Revolt and Generation Formation in Germany, 1770-1968, p. 224.
Journal of Social History, summer, 1997, Robert Wegs, review of Generations in Conflict: Youth Revolt and Generation Formation in Germany, 1770-1968, p. 1004.
Kirkus Reviews, March 1, 2002, review of The Wannsee Conference and the Final Solution: A Reconsideration, p. 31; July 1, 2019, review of Lives Reclaimed.
Library Journal, February 1, 2001, Randall L. Schroeder, review of A Past in Hiding: Memory and Survival in Nazi Germany, p. 108; April 1, 2002, Barbara Walden, review of The Wannsee Conference and the Final Solution, p. 125; March 15, 2010, Frederick Krome, review of Jewish Responses to Persecution, p. 111.
New Statesman, January 21, 2002, Joanna Bourke, review of The Wannsee Conference and the Final Solution, p. 52.
Publishers Weekly, November 27, 2000, review of A Past in Hiding: Memory and Survival in Nazi Germany, p. 61; March 4, 2002, review of The Wannsee Conference and the Final Solution, p. 65; May 27, 2019, review of Lives Reclaimed, p. 80.
ONLINE
Indiana University, Bloomington, Department of History, https://history.indiana.edu/ (August 19, 2019), author faculty profile.
London Observer, https://www.theguardian.com (January 27, 2002), Anthony Julius, review of The Villa, the Lake, the Meeting.
Rogers, Coleridge, and White, https://www.rcwlitagency.com/ (August 19, 2019), author profile.
Speesh Reads, https://speeshreads.com/ (September 30, 2018), review of The Villa, the Lake, the Meeting.
University of Southampton, http://www.soton.ac.uk/ (June 6, 2002), author faculty profile.
Mark Roseman
Distinguished Professor, Pat M Glazer Chair in Jewish Studies
Professor in History
Adjunct Professor in Germanic Studies
Department of History
marrosem@indiana.edu(812) 855-8325Weatherly Hall 234Office Hours
Campus
IU; IU Bloomington
Full Biography
I am a historian of modern Europe, with particular interests in the History of the Holocaust and in modern German history. My publications have covered a wide range of topics in German, European and Jewish history, including life-reform and protest in 1920s and 1930s Germany; Holocaust survival and memory; Nazi policy and perpetrators; the social impact of total war; post-1945 German and European reconstruction; generation conflict and youth rebellion; Jewish and other minorities in modern German history. I also have an interest in the comparative history of genocide. My current research projects include rethinking the meaning and role of race und Nazi rule, German Jewish experience of Nazi persecution, a history of resistance and rescue und Nazi rule, and a critical synthesis of recent work on Nazi perpetrators.
Résumé/CV
20th centuryRussian and Eastern European HistoryWestern European HistoryJewish HistoryState Violence and Human Displacement
Honors and Awards
2017 Guest Professor at the University of Jena
2016 Appointed by the US Holocaust Memorial Museum (with Alexandra Garbarini) to lead the Silberman Seminar for University Faculty
2010-11 Ina Levine Invitational Scholar at US Holocaust Memorial Museum
Geschwister Scholl Prize (2003)
Lucas Prize Project Mark Lynton prize (2002)
Jewish Quarterly's Wingate Literary Prize (2001)
Fraenkel prize (2000)
Alexander von Humboldt Fellowship (1998)
CV: https://history.indiana.edu/PDFs/CVs/RosemanMark.pdf
Mark Roseman
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Mark Roseman (born c. 1958) is an English historian of modern Europe with particular interest in The Holocaust. He received his B.A. at Christ's College, Cambridge, M.A at Cambridge, and his PhD at University of Warwick. As of 2007 he holds the "Pat M. Glazer Chair" of Jewish Studies at Indiana University (Bloomington).[1]
Awards[edit]
2001 Jewish Quarterly-Wingate Literary Prize, A Past in Hiding[2]
2002 Mark Lynton History Prize, A Past in Hiding[3]
2003 Geschwister-Scholl-Preis, In einem unbewachten Augenblick. Eine Frau überlebt im Untergrund.
Books[edit]
1992: Recasting the Ruhr 1945-1959: Manpower, Economic Recovery and Labour Relations. Oxford: Berg Publishers, ISBN 9780854966066.[4]
2001: A Past in Hiding: Memory and Survival in Nazi Germany. New York: Metropolitan Books, ISBN 9780805063264.
2002: The Villa, The Lake, The Meeting: Wannsee and the Final Solution. Harmondsworth: Penguin, ISBN 9780713995701.[4] [Published in the US as The Wannsee Conference and the Final Solution: A Reconsideration. New York: Metropolitan Books, ISBN 9780805068108.]
2019: Lives Reclaimed: A Story of Rescue and Resistance in Nazi Germany. New York: Metropolitan Books, ISBN 9781627797870.[5]
Mark Roseman is the author of A Past in Hiding and The Wannsee Conference and the Final Solution. He is the recipient of a number of prestigious prizes, including the Mark Lynton History Prize, the Fraenkel Prize in contemporary history, and one of Germany’s foremost literary prizes, the Geschwister Scholl Prize. He teaches at Indiana University, where he is a distinguished professor and director of the Jewish Studies program.
Mark Roseman
Mark Roseman is a leading historian of the Holocaust. He is the author of A Past in Hiding and The Wannsee Conference and the Final Solution. He is the recipient of a number of prestigious prizes including the Mark Lynton History Prize, the Fraenkel Prize in contemporary history, and one of Germany’s foremost literary prizes, the Geschwister Scholl Prize. He teaches at Indiana University where is a distinguished professor and director of the Borns Jewish Studies Program.
Bibliography:
The Wannsee Conference and the Final Solution: A Reconsideration (2000)
A Past in Hiding (2001)
Lives Reclaimed: A Story of Rescue and Resistance in Nazi Germany (2019)
Agent Name: Natasha Fairweather
QUOTED: "meticulous research into personal papers and other primary material."
"a welcome addition to the literature of the Holocaust and Nazi Germany."
Roseman, Mark LIVES RECLAIMED Metropolitan/Henry Holt (Adult Nonfiction) $30.00 8, 13 ISBN: 978-1-62779-787-0
A new history of the Bund, an "idealistic group of Germans who, in a small way, did something remarkable."
After the fall of the Third Reich, many Germans zealously asserted that they had never sympathized with the fascist regime; indeed, there were those few who truly resisted the scourge and even tried to rescue its victims. This history chronicles the significant contributions of one group, the Bund. Roseman (Director, Jewish Studies/Indiana Univ., The Wannsee Conference and the Final Solution, 2002, etc.), an award-winning historian of Nazi Germany, tells of a small group of leftist idealists that was established in the days of the Weimar Republic to improve humanity with lectures, exercise, pamphlets, and dance performances. Called simply the Bund, its "inspirational leader" was Artur Jacobs, who possessed "boundless optimism and self-confidence." He was not Jewish, but his wife was. After the mob outrages against German Jews on Kristallnacht, members of the Bund, even under the watchful eyes of the brown-shirted offenders, offered succor and sympathy, fruit and flowers to those eventually headed to the concentration camps. They also supplied lifesaving Bund houses for some Jews. Providing help was exceedingly difficult. Relatives of some of the group's adherents were in the Wehrmacht, there were constant and devastating air raids in the Ruhr homeland of the Bund, and rations were scarce. Not surprisingly, after the Allied victory in Europe, when reparations became available to proven victims of the Third Reich, Bundists, including Jacobs, lined up. Recounting their considerable trials, many, including Jacobs, exaggerated their wartime exploits and their suffering. With meticulous research into personal papers and other primary material, Roseman provides a singular footnote to the story of life in Hitler's Germany. Reflecting on the story of the Bund, readers may ask again: "What would I have done?"
A welcome addition to the literature of the Holocaust and Nazi Germany.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2019 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
Source Citation
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Roseman, Mark: LIVES RECLAIMED." Kirkus Reviews, 1 July 2019. Gale General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A591278902/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=a5bb5450. Accessed 13 Aug. 2019.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A591278902
QUOTED: "compelling moral issues."
* Lives Reclaimed: A Story of Rescue and Resistance in Nazi Germany.
By Mark Roseman.
Aug. 2019.352p. illus. Holt/Metropolitan, $30 (9781627797870). 943.086.
As the number of Holocaust survivors continues to dwindle, capturing the stories of j those who remain among us has become even more urgent. In the Ruhr Valley following the collapse of the Weimar Republic, a group of several hundred socialists gathered together in a "Bund" to promote discreet I but steadfast resistance to the nascent Nazi menace. They focused on members' physical culture and were almost cult-like in their attitudes toward colleagues' marriages and their advocacy of a very disciplined life. Nevertheless, they did respect individual thought and effort. Following the terrible events of Kristallnacht, the Bund offered quiet support and aid to Jews who were beginning to be deported from Germany. From simple gestures such as bringing Jewish families flowers to riskily providing false identity documents, they managed to shelter a number of their Jewish neighbors. As prize-winning historian Roseman (The Wannsee Conference and the Final Solution, 2002) notes, Bund members could aid only a few imperiled Jews, and the compromises they were forced to make raise compelling moral issues not easily resolved. A bibliography documents not only printed works, but also personal conversations and radio interviews.--Mark Knoblauch
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2019 American Library Association
http://www.ala.org/aboutala/offices/publishing/booklist/
Source Citation
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Knoblauch, Mark. "Lives Reclaimed: A Story of Rescue and Resistance in Nazi Germany." Booklist, 1 June 2019, p. 25+. Gale General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A593431403/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=71e1320c. Accessed 13 Aug. 2019.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A593431403
QUOTED: "thorough."
"Those seeking illumination of a little-discussed facet of Nazi-era German life will find it worthy."
Lives Reclaimed: A Story of Rescue and Resistance in Nazi Germany
Mark Roseman. Metropolitan, $30 (352p) ISBN 978-1-250-22106-3
In this thorough work, historian Roseman details the wartime history of the Bund, a German socialist group whose aim was to model the perfect society. Bund members met in the forests for meditation and communion with nature, lived in a communal lodge, discussed self-improvement, and worked to create a better world through choirs and dance. Labeled an illegal group in 1933 by Hitler's regime, the Bund sought to retain its ideals and integrity, but survival often meant making unpalatable choices: responding to military call-ups and watching members' children participate in Hitler Youth organizations. But Roseman argues the group should be acknowledged as rescuers; members of the Bund actively sheltered two of its Jewish members, and mailed hundreds of packages to Jewish families deported to the Theresienstadt ghetto. Closely analyzing diaries, coded correspondence, postwar speeches made by Bund leaders, and interviews, Roseman paints a picture of a group trapped by circumstances who were unable to do much but watch as their Jewish neighbors boarded transports to Auschwitz. As such, he may not convince readers that the Bund were great rescuers, rather than typical German citizens who had to look away to save themselves. The analytical bent of the text may make it too slow for some readers, but those seeking illumination of a little-discussed facet of Nazi-era German life will find it worthy. (Aug.)
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2019 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
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"Lives Reclaimed: A Story of Rescue and Resistance in Nazi Germany." Publishers Weekly, 27 May 2019, p. 80. Gale General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A587975271/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=873cfc2e. Accessed 13 Aug. 2019.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A587975271
QUOTED: "These documents restore human agency to German Jews and reveal the multifaceted reactions to Nazism."
Matthaus, Jurgen & Mark Roseman. Jewish Responses to Persecution, 1933-1946:. Vol. 1: 1933-1938. Rowman & Littlefield with U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. (Documenting Life and Destruction: Holocaust Sources in Context). 2009. c.422p, bibliog. index. ISBN 978-0-7591-1908-2. $39.95. HIST
In this first volume of a series documenting the Jewish responses to Nazism and the Holocaust, Matthaus (director, applied research, Ctr. for Advanced Holocaust Study, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum) and Roseman (Jewish studies, Indiana Univ.) follow the major trends in Holocaust historiography in their chapter organization, coveting everything from the rise of Nazism to survival strategies, immigration, and everyday life through the aftermath of Ktistallnacht. Each chapter starts with background information; then each document is framed, in Talmudic style, by the editor's contextual information and commentary. Since many previous documentary collections focus on material generated by the Nazis, the Jews have often appeared as passive figures who went to their doom without apparent resistance. Recent research, however, has revealed that Nazi ideology was often implemented in a haphazard and contradictory manner, and this volume demonstrates how this affected the Jewish response. VERDICT These documents restore human agency to German Jews and reveal the multifaceted reactions to Nazism. The focus on contemporaneous sources avoids the trap common in much of the memoir literature that assumes Jews knew the end result of Nazi terror.--Frederic Krome, Univ. of Cincinnati Clermont Coll.
Krome, Frederick
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2010 Library Journals, LLC. A wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
http://www.libraryjournal.com/
Source Citation
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Krome, Frederick. "Matthaus, Jurgen & Mark Roseman. Jewish Responses to Persecution, 1933-1946." Library Journal, 15 Mar. 2010, p. 111. Gale General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A223225637/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=6472ec67. Accessed 13 Aug. 2019.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A223225637
The Villa, the Lake, the Meeting: Wannsee and the Final Solution. Mark Roseman. Allen Lane: The Penguin Press. [pounds sterling]9.99. 152 pages. ISBN 0-71-399570-X. Prof. Roseman's short book is about the now famous meeting that took place in Berlin on 20 January 1942 when leading Nazi officials discussed how to effect a 'final solution' of the 'Jewish problem'. A 'protokol' of that meeting survived and seems to show that here was the germ of the 'final solution'. But, as the author points out, matters were not quite so clear cut. Historians have debated whether one can really date the 'final solution' from this one meeting so late in the war. The author therefore devotes two of the book's four chapters to the background to the meeting and two to the meeting itself. He accepts that 'Wannsee itself was not the moment of decision' but a 'signpost indicating that genocide had become official policy'. The meeting and its 'protokol' had 'cleared the way for genocide' based on established Nazi ideology which in it s turn was based on Hitler's Mein Kampf.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2002 Contemporary Review Company Ltd.
Source Citation
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"The Villa, the Lake, the Meeting: Wannsee and the Final Solution. (Reviews)." Contemporary Review, May 2002, p. 316. Gale General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A87148878/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=1b3956e0. Accessed 13 Aug. 2019.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A87148878
QUOTED: "recommended."
48-1241
DS134
2009-22613 CIP
Matthaus, Jurgen. Jewish responses to persecution: v.1: 1933-1938, by Jurgen Matthaus and Mark Roseman. AltaMira/United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, 2010. 469p index afp ISBN 0759119082, $39.95; ISBN 9780759119086, $39.95
In this first volume in a series, Matthaus (US Holocaust Memorial Museum; Atrocities on Trial, CH, Mar'09, 46-4064) and Roseman (Indiana Univ., Bloomington; The Wannsee Conference and the Final Solution: A Reconsideration, 2002) collect 200 documents that illustrate Jewish life in Germany under Nazi persecution prior to WW II. Following an introductory essay on Jews in Germany before 1933, the volume is organized into four chronological sections (e.g., "Subjects under Siege: September 1935 to December 1937"), each of which has three chapters (e.g., "Jewish Questions after Nuremberg"). Each section begins with a historical overview, and each chapter features a contextual overview. The documents (all translated into English) come from both published and unpublished sources and include excerpts from diaries, letters, government reports and contemporary newspaper articles and some photographs. Context and/or explanation is provided for each document, many of which pertain to ordinary people. A touching example comes from a 1935 Bar Mitzvah note from Max Rosenthal to his grandson Hans, in which Rosenthal wrote, "Memories are the only paradise from which we cannot be expelled." Other features include a list of abbreviations, bibliography, glossary, and chronology (1933-early 1939). Summing Up: Recommended. ** Upper-level undergraduates through faculty/researchers.--J. A. Drobnicki, York College, CUNY
Drobnicki, J.A.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2010 American Library Association CHOICE
http://www.ala.org/acrl/choice/about
Source Citation
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Drobnicki, J.A. "Matthaus, Jurgen. Jewish responses to persecution: v.1: 1933-1938." CHOICE: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries, Nov. 2010, p. 480. Gale General OneFile, http://link.galegroup.com/apps/doc/A249221161/ITOF?u=schlager&sid=ITOF&xid=23c29c69. Accessed 13 Aug. 2019.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A249221161
QUOTED: "Mark Roseman makes a scholarly and thorough contribution to the story of how the Holocaust was planned."
The day they toasted the Final Solution in brandy
Mark Roseman makes a scholarly and thorough contribution to the story of how the Holocaust was planned in The Villa, the Lake, the Meeting
Anthony Julius
Sun 27 Jan 2002 02.10 GMT
First published on Sun 27 Jan 2002 02.10 GMT
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The Villa, the Lake, the Meeting: Wannsee and the Final Solution
Mark Roseman
Allen Lane, Penguin Press £9.99, pp160
It was a grand Berlin villa on the shores of Lake Wannsee; the meeting was of 15 senior Nazis; it took place on 20 January 1942. The purpose of the meeting was to plan the more systematic murder of the Jews.
Not much was known about the meeting until 1947, when a 'protocol' was found. This protocol is something less than the minutes of the meeting (which have not been recovered). Until it was found, most of the participants denied having been there. Then they changed their story, but not by much. The document, says Mark Roseman in this thorough, scholarly book, is 'the most emblematic and programmatic statement of the Nazi way of doing genocide'.
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In the translation, contained in an appendix, the protocol fills a mere 10 pages. The meeting itself was less than two hours long. The measures taken against the Jews so far are set out; there is a head-count of the Jews left in Axis, neutral and enemy Europe (it anticipates having 11 million Jews under German control); the subject of what to do with partial Jews and Jews with military decorations or married to non-Jews is addressed, but inconclusively; a plan to 'evacuate' the Jews to the East is outlined. The language is bureaucratic and evasive. The invitation to the conference spoke of 'all necessary organisations and technical preparations for a comprehensive solution of the Jewish Question'.
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Murder is not mentioned; softer words substitute for harsh ones. But the true intentions of those present poke out from underneath this verbal blanket. The 'Final Solution' now meant the death of all European Jews. The confusion in Nazi racist thinking is there on the face of the document: is a person with a non-Jewish parent a Jew?; with one Jewish grandparent?
Roseman described the participants as 'serious, intelligent men', but the impression conveyed by the protocol is of a vicious and profound stupidity. These men were stupid to be taken in by racism's pseudo-science. They were stupid to think that they could conceal what they were doing by mere euphemism. They were morally stupid, too. Quite without the means to encompass the wickedness of their plans, smoking cigars and drinking cognac after the meeting. The stupidity was allied with an odious arrogance, always a disastrous combination and, on this occasion, it was a murderous one.
Every competent history of the Holocaust runs two narratives in parallel. The first narrative consists of what happened, where and when, to which groups of Jews. The second concerns who decided what would happen and when these decisions were taken. While every history, then, is about the relationship between killing decisions and killing actions, each has a bias toward the one narrative or the other. Implicit in those histories that tend toward the first narrative is this judgment: it does not much matter who precisely decided upon the genocide, because the collective guilt of the Nazis makes inconsequential such distinctions between individuals.
Implicit in the histories that emphasise the second narrative is a countering judgment: such questions are critical to any understanding of how the Holocaust could have happened. The interplay between Hitler and his various, competing subordinates, the careful plotting of the decisions and half-decisions, the sponsorship, let us say, of the Holocaust, cannot be ignored.
Holocaust historiography favours the first narrative over the second. That Jews were killed, in calculable yet unimaginable numbers, was established within months of the war's end. Details - important details - have added to that fact, but have not changed it in its essentials.
The Holocaust, says Roseman, 'is the best-documented mass murder in history'. But the narrative of the decisions to kill Jews is still under construction and may never be completed. Many records were destroyed; many commands on Jewish matters were not committed to writing (Hitler's, never, says Roseman); many participants were dead before they could be held to account; of those who survived to give evidence at trials, most lied.
Roseman's book is a contribution to this second narrative, and poses this question: what part was played by the Wannsee conference in the planning of the Holocaust? It was not, he concludes, the moment of decision, but it cleared the way for genocide.
Some historians think the Wannsee conference was the occasion when genocide was resolved; others that it recorded a step in a progress that had already begun. There is a broader disagreement, too, about whether the Holocaust was directed and planned from the outset, or was instead opportunistic, improvised and only loosely co-ordinated between a number of agencies.
Roseman takes a middle position, identifying an 'emerging syndrome of eager subordination, shared racist values and competitive co-operation in pursuit of those values'. It was, he argues, the war against the Soviet Union that put genocide on the Nazis' agenda. He relates the conference to the escalating measures against the Jews, tracing this trajectory in two chapters, from the 'extraordinarily violent and bloodthirsty language' of Mein Kampf to mass murder, and from mass murder to genocide. But he adds that there is no straight line to be drawn between Hitler's language of extermination and the genocidal plans of Wannsee.
Roseman is dismissive of Hitler's intelligence and character, while adamant that the radical measures taken were responsive to his wishes. He was a buffoon, but he was the buffoon in charge. Though 'he carefully concealed his involvement in the Jewish question', the Holocaust would not - could not - have taken place without him. Only when Hitler hesitated did policy stagnate. Hitler put anti-Semitism at the centre of Nazi policy, and made warfare and occupation the natural expression of that policy.
He ensured that 'humanitarian' impulses were to be eliminated in the execution of policy. 'Perhaps the last check' on genocide had fallen, Roseman speculates, when Hitler expressly overruled the army's humanitarian concerns in the Polish campaign. At Wannsee, humanitarianism was nowhere.
Lives Reclaimed: A Story of Rescue and Resistance in Nazi Germany.
Roseman, Mark (author).
Sept. 2019. 352p. illus. Holt/Metropolitan, $30 (9781627797870). 943.086.
REVIEW. First published June 1, 2019 (Booklist).
As the number of Holocaust survivors continues to dwindle, capturing the stories of those who remain among us has become even more urgent. In the Ruhr Valley following the collapse of the Weimar Republic, a group of several hundred socialists gathered together in a “Bund” to promote discreet but steadfast resistance to the nascent Nazi menace. They focused on members’ physical culture and were almost cult-like in their attitudes toward colleagues’ marriages and their advocacy of a very disciplined life. Nevertheless, they did respect individual thought and effort. Following the terrible events of Kristallnacht, the Bund offered quiet support and aid to Jews who were beginning to be deported from Germany. From simple gestures such as bringing Jewish families flowers to riskily providing false identity documents, they managed to shelter a number of their Jewish neighbors. As prize-winning historian Roseman (The Wannsee Conference and the Final Solution, 2002) notes, Bund members could aid only a few imperiled Jews, and the compromises they were forced to make raise compelling moral issues not easily resolved. A bibliography documents not only printed works, but also personal conversations and radio interviews.
— Mark Knoblauch
QUOTED: "The Villa, The Lake, The Meeting is a sombre and thorough investigation into the background to the Wannsee meeting, what can be surmised about what happened at the meeting, and its later and wider consequences. Thoroughly recommended for anyone interested in finding out about not quite, as the title suggests, the origins of the Final Solution, but its later stage of development."
Review: The Villa, The Lake, The Meeting. Wannsee and The Final Solution – Mark Roseman
Posted on 30/09/2018 by Speesh in History, Nazi Germany, Non Fiction, Second World War, The Holocaust
My version: Paperback
Genre: Non Fiction Nazis, the Final Solution, The Holocaust
First published: 2002
My copy:
Publisher: Penguin Books
Published: 2003
Bought
From the cover:
On 20 January 1942 the most murderous meeting in history took place.
Chaired by Reinhard Heydrich, one of the most feared men in Germany, it summoned top Nazi officials to a grand villa on the shore of Berlin’s Lake Wannsee in order to clarify ‘the Final Solution of the Jewish question.’ They ate good food, drank cognac and smoked cigars – and in less than two hours had effectively sentenced six million people to death.
Only one set of minutes from this secret meeting have survived, and argument has raged over its contents. Now Mark Roseman brilliantly unravels the macabre mystery of what has been called ‘the most shameful document of modern history.’
I have assembled a Pinterest Board within the Speesh Reads Pinterest site, for The Villa, The Lake, The Meeting. Pictures, and links to related articles to aid your appreciation of the book.
It was in March 1947, collecting information for the Nuremberg trials, that the staff of the US Prosecutor mad the discovery. Stamped Geheim Reichssache – ‘secret Reich matter’ – and tucked away in a German Foreign Office folder, were the minutes of a meeting. The meeting had involved fifteen top Nazi Civil Servants, SS and Party officials and had taken place on 20 January, 1942, in a grand villa on the shores of Lake Wannsee. The US officials had stumbled across the only surviving copy of the minutes, no.16 out of an original thirty.
The outside of the Wansee villa as it is today, a museum
Mark Rosenman argues very convincingly against some of the more hyperbolic rhetoric there has arisen around the Wannsee meeting’s place in the whole black catalogue of Nazi social and war crimes. In that he places it not at the start, nor in the middle nor at the end of the path towards all-out execution of the Jewish peoples. He puts it in its proper place. It seems to me, what he is saying that it was almost a way of Heydrich making sure that all the various departments involved in past present anf future aspects of what we now call The Holocaust could be shown to be culpable. By holding the meeting, and outlining the plans that already were in motion, or would come to be, as a consequence of current circumstances and the already in-motion plans, he made sure that all the various departments could not then or after an unsuccessful war, ever claim to have had no knowledge of the matter. As Eichmann first began his defence with. The ‘just following orders’ lowly official excuse. Which, when confronted with details of his active participation before during and after the meeting, he then acknowledged. In part, the meeting was the “if I’m going down for this, you are too” meeting.
It is partly this aim of making a case for collective guilt, and why they felt it necessary, that I haven’t fully got hold of yet. The facts are it happened. That you can not argue against. Why they felt the need to have wiggle room, of they were assured, or assured themselves of, winning, I’m still looking for. I came away with thinking it might be that in 1942, there were signs of resignation to a defeat (it was mentioned, at least privately), but that if they could rid Europe of the Jews, that victory and the acceptance of Nazi right, would follow.
Obviously, the “drank cognac and smoked cigars” is used in a headline grabbing way. These were real bastards gathered here, as ordinary bastards, planning this sort of thing, would have dines on monkeys brains and cockroaches. But the mundane, nothing special, nothing to see here aspect of the smoking cigars, etc, brings to the fore the important angle idea of how the Nazis saw this – at the time. They had had the idea so ingrained in them, and had ingrained it both themselves and willingly, that Jews were the thing that was stopping them from assuming their destiny, that it was necessary to treat the murders as a problem, a logistical problem, to solve. How to transport the Jews to be killed, how to stop them, and public sympathy from finding out, or sympathising with their plight, once they were at their ‘final’ destination, how to dispose of the Jews.
The Villa, The Lake, The Meeting is a sombre and thorough investigation into the background to the Wannsee meeting, what can be surmised about what happened at the meeting, and its later and wider consequences. Thoroughly recommended for anyone interested in finding out about not quite, as the title suggests, the origins of the Final Solution, but its later stage of development. A book that will stay with me forever.