Jewish History

This study explores an important Hasidic manuscript rediscovered among the papers of Abraham Joshua Heschel at Duke University. The text, first noted by Heschel in the 1950s, is a collection of sermons by the famed tzaddik Judah Aryeh Leib Alter of Ger (d. 1905). These homilies are significant because they were transcribed by one of his disciples, in many cases capturing them in the original Yiddish. Comparing this alternative witness to Alter's own Hebrew version (called Sefat emet), printed shortly after his death, reveals substantive differences in the sermons' development, structure, and themes. But the manuscript's importance extends beyond a critical new perspective on Alter's teachings. It offers a snapshot of the processes behind the formation of Hasidic books, and calls for scholars to consider the unavoidable divergences between Hebrew and Yiddish, between orality and textuality, and the transmission of ideas from a teacher to his disciples, vectors of change that inhabit all Hasidic literature.

The seven branched lampstand within a church was thus a symbol of Christ and his Church. In theological terms, it had nothing to do with Jews – except to supersede them. This is a very important point in dealing with the Petersberg Lampstand, and all Christian lampstands.
— The biblical lampstand in Christian contexts was not a Jewish »menorah« as some today would call it, but the lampstand of Christ Jesus. It is a mistake, then, to refer to the Christian lampstand as
a menorah, as I myself did in The Menorah: From the Bible to Modern Israel. This use of Jewish terminology, drawn from the Hebrew Scriptures for Christian lampstands, wipes away what is distinctly Christian in these lamps and what is distinctly Jewish about the menorah. While such elision may be comforting in our own world,
it takes away from the history of both communities, asserting
false closeness between the majority and the minority in medieval (and modern) Europe. When adopted by contemporary Christians
– Evangelicals and sometimes Catholics and mainline Protestants –
it is for their own theological and cultural purposes in their own search for a »usable history«.19 In Germany it is all the more complex, a facet of the regrettably not-yet-complete postwar rapprochement between Christians and Jews. My sense is that the next steps require us to reassert and celebrate the distinctive in each community, even as we continue to seek out all that Jews and Christians share(d).

Scholars who study the Jews of the Southern United States often struggle to understand how Jewish identity affected the way in which Jews presented themselves, the way in which outsiders viewed them, and the extent to which they felt integrated into society. Many scholars believe that Jewish religious practice was not just adapted, but sacrificed, as part of the process of integration into Southern life and culture. Looking specifically at the region of the Lower Mississippi, this thesis offers a different approach to understanding Judaism in the context of adaptation and integration. This thesis begins with a historical review of the role of Jews as merchants in the United States and how social and economic factors in the early and mid-19th century encouraged their entry into American society as peddlers, creating the "typical peddler profile. More specifically, the thesis examines why the Lower Mississippi was a unique and advantageous setting during this time period for Jewish merchants. This thesis argues that in the Lower Mississippi during the early and mid-19th century, Jewish religious practices and spaces were not sacrificed, but rather reconceptualized. Judaism became integrated into the merchant profession, manifested through economic and familial networks that allowed Jews to practice their Judaism even in the most remote of locales. Judaism was also intertwined with the liminal position of Jews within Lower Mississippian society: not black, yet not seen as fully white, allowing Jews to sell to a customer base that was both black and white. With their economic and familial networks and adaptive Jewish practices, the Jews of the Lower Mississippi were able to become fully participating, though distinct, members of the larger society while maintaining a form of Judaism.

The twelfth and thirteenth centuries witnessed an explosion of Christian interest in the meaning and workings of the natural world—a "discovery of nature" that profoundly reshaped the intellectual currents and spiritual contours of European society—yet to all appearances, the Jews of medieval northern Europe (Ashkenaz) were oblivious to the shifts reshaping their surrounding culture. Scholars have long assumed that rather than exploring or contemplating the natural world, the Jews of medieval Ashkenaz were preoccupied solely with the supernatural and otherworldly: magic and mysticism, demonology and divination, as well as the zombies, werewolves, dragons, flying camels, and other monstrous and wondrous creatures that destabilized any pretense of a consistent and encompassing natural order.

In _A Remembrance of His Wonders_, David I. Shyovitz disputes this long-standing and far-reaching consensus. Analyzing a wide array of neglected Ashkenazic writings on the natural world in general, and the human body in particular, Shyovitz shows how Jews in Ashkenaz integrated regnant scientific, magical, and mystical currents into a sophisticated exploration of the boundaries between nature and the supernatural. Ashkenazic beliefs and practices that have often been seen as signs of credulity and superstition in fact mirrored—and drew upon—contemporaneous Christian debates over the relationship between God and the natural world. In charting these parallels between Jewish and Christian thought, Shyovitz focuses especially upon the mediating role of polemical texts and encounters, which served as mechanisms for the transmission of religious doctrines, scientific facts, and cultural mores. Medieval Jews' preoccupation with the apparently "supernatural" reflected neither ignorance nor intellectual isolation, but rather a determined effort to understand nature's inner workings and outer limits, and to integrate and interrogate the theologies and ideologies of the broader European Christian society.

תקופת המלוכה והכהונה בארץ ישראל לעולם משמשת או נקודת שיא בתולדות העם היהודי ובמימוש הייעוד שלו או נקודת זינוק בדרך להשגתו מחדש. תקופה זו לא שינתה ממעמדה למרות השינויים התרבותיים העמוקים שעברו על ישראל לאורך שנות הגולה ולמרות השינויים ביחס לגולה. גם השינויים בעצם ההגדרה של הזהות היהודית, שינוי יעדיה והתמורות שחלו בנקודת המבט ההיסטוריוסופיה של המחשבה היהודית, גם אלו לא ערערו את מעמדה. אמנם השחג התכנים שיוחסו לעבד הארץ־ישדאלי בהתאם לנקודת ההשקפה, ברם צורת ההתייחסות העקרוני לא שונתה; כל בחינה מחודשת של הקיום הבראשיתי בארץ ישראל באה לשמש גיבוי ואסמכת
להגדרה חדשה של הזהות היהודית ולתפיסה היסטוריוסופיה חדשה. ׳לגיטימציה מהפכנית׳ היא אכן המטווה רבת־הרבדים ורבת־המשמעויות שברקע מיקוד הזיכרון היהודי בתקופות בית ראשון ובית שני עוצמתו של המיקוד ההיסטורי בארץ ישראל וההתמדה בו נעוצים בשני גורמים. הראשון נובע מהקיים והעומד, הוא הגרעין הבלתי משתנה של המהות היהודית, שההתייחסות ההיסטורית והתודעה ההיסטורית אימננטיות לה; והשני נובע הן מן המאפיינים של מהפכת התרבות שהתחוללה בציבוריות היהודית החל מראשית תקופת האמנציפציה בשלהי המאה השמונה־עשרה, והן מן הגורמים לה.

This article focuses on the precariousness of everyday life of half-Jews during the Nazi-regime in Vienna. Marriages between Jews and non-Jews as well as the presence of their half-Jewish children represented an antagonism that was a permanent threat to the integrity of the Nazi regime. According to the Nuremberg Laws, half-Jews were either defined as Mischlinge of the first degree or as Geltungsjuden, depending on their denomination. Even though they were in most cases exempt from deportation, the plans to include them in the Final solution were never fully given up. Particularly during the last years of the war – after the majority of the Austrian Jewish population had been deported – the protection of half-Jews became more precarious and even trivial infractions against Nazi laws could lead to imprisonment and deportation.

The expanding sugar trade linking Portugal, Brazil, and the Netherlands in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries required enforcement mechanisms to guarantee that overseas agents would act honestly and diligently. While the recent literature emphasizes that multiple mechanisms were substitutes in addressing this problem, this article highlights that merchants chose different mechanisms to govern distinct types of transactions and explains why. A reputational mechanism relying on social and economic constraints within an ethnic diaspora governed more complex and higher-value arrangements. A different mechanism linking economic incentives to professional reputations across the diasporas plying this trade route predominated in simpler and smaller transactions. Finally, long-distance and transnational judicial enforcement supplemented these two reputational mechanisms. Capable of matching the value and complexity of transactions with the attributes of governing mechanisms, merchants were able to diversify their transactions, expand the market for agents, better allocate agents to tasks, and stimulate competition among them. The resulting decrease in agency costs was critical in such a significantly competitive market as the sugar trade. Evolving institutional choice thus reinforced the expansion of trade. These hypotheses are corroborated by data from a prosopography of merchants of Jewish origin, derived from notarial records from Oporto and Amsterdam, and from Inquisition files. A t the turn of the sixteenth century, Europe experienced rapidly growing urban populations and dependence on trade for supplies of staple products, while overseas possessions contributed to a surging output of marketable commodities, including sugar. Brazil was turned into the first large-scale plantation economy and became the world's main sugar producer, with Amsterdam emerging as its main distribution and refining centre. Most of the Brazilian sugar trade was intermediated by merchants in Portugal, and traders of Jewish origin scattered along this trade route played a prominent role in the sugar trade. The rapid expansion, growing complexity, and increasing integration of these markets required traders to be confident that the parties with whom they were considering working would not cheat, renege on, or neglect their commitments.

The vast majority of Holocaust victims and survivors were Ashkenazim. Their main language was Yiddish. Yiddish is very close to German, the main difference being that the former is written in Hebrew letters, while the latter in Latin ones. Postwar Europe' s moral foundation is Holocaust remembrance. But this remembrance to be effective, it must be active in the absence of Holocaust survivors. A way to ensure that could be the novel school and university subject of Yiddish for reading purposes. As a result, researchers and interested Europeans would start reading documents and books in Yiddish again. Germany' s premiere cultural organization, Goethe-Institut, is uniquely well-placed and morally obligated to facilitate the relaunch, popularization and cultivation of the skill to read Yiddish-language sources and publications for both the sake of research and for pleasure.

What is the worst nightmare anyone in academia could have, finding out that someone else has stolen your topic or plagiarized you? Even worse, knowing it was done because you are a woman. Idea theft is a huge problem in academia, and women are often the victims of these thefts by the much more powerful men in the profession. However, while an idea is undeveloped, it is much more brazen in academia to steal ideas and topics that are published and well-publicized. Publishing is supposed to ensure an academic's work is protected; well, that is what I thought. A woman without a doctorate can just be trampled on, published or not.

Mit den Begriffen Gedächtnis, Geld und Gesetz wird die Diskussion um das Verhalten der Schweiz im Zweiten Weltkrieg in einen größeren historischen und theoretischen Zusammenhang gestellt. In den hektischen Wendungen der öffentlichen Auseinandersetzung wird oft vergessen, wie sehr das Geld beziehungsweise die Geldmetaphorik Geschichtsbilder dominiert und wie stark die sogenannte Vergangenheitsbewältigung in den Sog der Verrechtlichung geraten ist. Der Sammelband stellt diese Vorgänge zur Diskussion. Er geht auf die national unterschiedlichen Pathosformeln und Mythenbildungen ein, die sich im Umgang mit unabgeschlossener Geschichte zeigen und die der Gedenkpolitik ihr Gepräge geben. Die Funktion von Recht und Geld in bezug auf Krieg, Nationalsozialismus und Shoah steht dabei ebenso zur Debatte wie Verlaufsformen, Kontinuitäten und Brüche in der rechtlichen, ökonomischen und kulturellen Aufarbeitung der Vergangenheit.

Rabbi Yoel Teitelbaum was born in 1887 to his father Rabbi Hanania Yom-Tov Lipa Teitelbaum, chief rabbi of Sighet, the capital of Maramureş County, Hungary. The father was a Rebbe to his Hasidim, headed the local yeshiva, and was one of the top leaders of Hungarian Orthodoxy. During his childhood, Rabbi Yoel was known as a prodigy but was not destined to continue the family’s Hasidic or rabbinic dynasty, as this role was reserved for his older brother - Rabbi Haim Tzvi. At seventeen, soon after his father’s death and the ordination of his older brother as his successor, the newlywed Rabbi Yoel and his wife were forced to leave Sighet.

They settled in nearby Satmar (Satu Mare) where Rabbi Yoel began gathering a small group of disciples. Several years later he was elected as chief rabbi of the remote village Orshiva, but during World War I he returned to Satmar and established a small yeshiva, dividing his time between Satmar and Orshiva. In 1926 he was elected as chief rabbi of Kroly (Carei) in Transylvania, Romania and two years later he was elected chief rabbi of Satmar. This appointment faced substantial public opposition and it took Rabbi Yoel six years of fierce and scandalous struggle until he eventually took office in 1934. During that waiting period he also tried to run for a rabbinate office in other communities, including that of the Edah Haredit (the ultra-Orthodox community) of Jerusalem.

Rabbi Yoel was known to have a stubborn, controversial and argumentative personality. Wherever he wanted to serve, public debates arose and the newspapers accused him in using improper means during the election process. At the same time, he was also known as a religious zealot, and several extremist Orthodox groups acknowledged him as their spiritual leader. Following his ordination as chief rabbi of Satmar, Rabbi Yoel gained an important leadership role among the extreme-Orthodox, and became known for his unwavering opposition to modernity, Zionism and even to the ultra-Orthodox party Agudat Israel. In the late 1930s, after a long public campaign, he was elected to the leadership of the Central Bureau of the Orthodox Jewish communities of Transylvania. In that position he was able to influence the lives of over one hundred and fifty thousand religious Jews in that region.

In his personal life, Rabbi Yoel suffered a series of tragedies. After losing his father at an early age, he was expelled from his hometown, Sighet. He and his wife could not give birth to a son, and two of their three daughters died young and childless. His chronically ill wife died soon thereafter, as well as Rabbi Yoel’s mother and brother. He married again, but although his wife was young and healthy, she too did not bear him any children. Following this second marriage, Rabbi Yoel and his only daughter became estranged and they hardly spoke until she died, also at a young age. This surviving daughter was also barren meaning that Rabbi Yoel had no grandchildren to succeed him.

During World War II Rabbi Yoel was involved in various rescue operations for refugees who fled Poland. As danger grew, he sought to get a certificate that will allow him and his close family to immigrate to Palestine. Failing that, he abandoned his community and escaped along with a small group of friends from Satmar, but was caught and sent to the ghetto of Cluj. He was spared from being sent to Auschwitz as he was included in the small group saved by Zionist activist Israel Kasztner’s rescue train. He and the rest of the passengers were taken to Bergen-Belsen, where they were detained for a few months. Later the group was released to Switzerland where Rabbi Yoel stayed for a few months. He did not return to lead and to comfort the survivors that returned to Satmar after the Holocaust, nor did he join the relief operations conducted by other rabbis in the refugee camps in Germany.

After his stay in Switzerland, Rabbi Yoel decided to settle in Jerusalem. The leaders of the ultra-Orthodox community, who were aware of his aggressive and argumentative personality, shunned away from him. As a result, the institutions he established failed and he was on the verge of bankruptcy. His only hope to repay his tremendous debt was by raising funds in the United States. Humiliated and destitute Rabbi Yoel was forced to travel to the land he always considered the most hostile and spiritually dangerous environment for Orthodox Jews.

After arriving in the United States, it became clear to Rabbi Yoel that he will never be able to raise enough funds to save his institutions in Jerusalem. Having no place to return to, he decided to settle in New York. Oddly enough, it was in this notorious “New World” that Rabbi Yoel was able not only to establish his own congregation, but also to significantly expand and develop it. Within a few years he attracted a large circle of supporters and devotees and created a congregation which, he claimed, resembled that of an East-European “Shtetel.”

However, in order to succeed in his mission, Rabbi Yoel had to apply significant un-traditional innovations that were inconceivable in the East-European “Shtetel.” He established a Hasidic education system, including one for girls, which introduced secular teachings and summer camps. He also encouraged his followers to go to work or to establish their own small businesses. His delegates cooperated with government and municipal officials who helped the poor Hasidim to get public housing, professional training and social benefits. That innovative spirit was one of the main reasons his Hasidic court grew rapidly and prospered economically. Rabbi Yoel used funds gathered by his adherents to support the Eda Haredit in Jerusalem, and in 1952, just a few years after he was forced to leave Jerusalem, he returned triumphant to be declared president of the Edah Haredit.

One of the reasons for Rabbi Yoel’s unparalleled success, beyond his personal charisma and leadership qualities, was his anti-Zionist and Extreme Orthodox ideology. His views were published in two major books, Va-Yoel Moshe – published in the late 1950s, and Al Ha-Geula Ve-Al Ha-Temura – published after the Six Days War. These books were re-printed numerous times, and new editions are still being printed to this day. The radical ideas expressed in these books still affect and guide the Satmar Hasidic court and some of the other Hungarian courts, as well as some marginal groups of zealots, also known as Neturei Karta.

At the time of his death, in 1979 and still today, Rabbi Yoel was undoubtedly one of the most recognized and influential Jewish leaders in the post-Holocaust era. His community had tens of thousands of Hasidim and the education system he established was amongst the largest in the Jewish world outside Israel. Ideas expressed by Rabbi Yoel have influenced the rest of Orthodox society and thus the Jewish society in general. Today, about forty years after his death, the “Satmar” trademark is still strong and still synonymous with religious zealotry. The spiritual and practical foundations laid by Rabbi Yoel continue to fuel the ever-growing expansion of the Satmar Hasidic court that today has more than a hundred thousand followers worldwide.

Il contributo affronta, tramite l'utilizzo di fonti archivistiche, il ruolo svolto dagli ebrei di Messina nel commercio degli schiavi in Sicilia tra tardomedioevo e prima età moderna. L'obiettivo è una prima ricostruzione dell'inserimento di alcuni componenti della comunità giudaica peloritana nel lucroso traffico di questa preziosa "merce umana" e dell'atteggiamento dell'aljama nei confronti di importanti problematiche come la redenzione degli ebrei ridotti in schiavitù.

ערב רב: פנים וחוץ בוויכוח הפרנקיסטי הוא ספר מרתק וחדשני החושף את סיפורה הייחודי של התנועה הפרנקיסטית, תנועה יהודית אפיקורסית שצמחה בפולין והתפשטה במרכז אירופה במחצית השנייה של המאה ה-18.

בעיני רוב היהודים פרנק היה 'משיח שקר' ידוע לשמצה. בעיני נוצרים נאורים ומיסיונרים מילנריסטים היה יהודי-נוצרי ואדם חופשי בדעותיו, שלו קשרים מסתוריים והוא משתמש במגיה ובמאגרי עושר סודיים. עבור מאמיניו היה למבשר שחרור מן המסגרות המקובלות המדכאות של מגדר, הלכה, מעמד, משטר ודת.

התנועה הפרנקיסטית עוררה הדים והיתה סלע מחלוקת גם בקרב גורמים דתיים ופוליטיים לא יהודיים: יוזף השני, קתרינה הגדולה, גתה, קזנובה ואחרים. תורותיו של יעקב פרנק, מנהיג התנועה, הציבו אתגר בפני היהדות הנורמטיבית, אך גם בפני האסלאם וזרמים בנצרות. הספר מברר מחלוקות פנימיות ביהדות המודרנית אך דן גם ביחסים בין יהודים לסביבתם במאות ה-18–ה-19.

ערב רב מבוסס על מקורות פנימיים שחיברו פרנק ומאמיניו, על מקורות יהודיים פולמוסיים אנטי פרנקיסטיים, ועל מקורות שכתבו גורמים לא יהודיים בני הזמן. דרכו המוקצנת של יעקב פרנק עוררה עניין רב בו ובתנועתו, ולקורא מוגש ניתוח מעמיק של פרשה היסטורית ייחודית זו.
המחבר, ד"ר פאבל מצ'ייקו מן האוניברסיטה העברית בירושלים, חוקר את תולדות היהודים בפולין-ליטא בעת החדשה. נולד בוורשה וקיבל תואר דוקטור מאוניברסיטת אוקספורד. פרסומיו הרבים זיכו אותו בפרסים, במלגות ובמענקי מחקר רבים. שימש מרצה אורח באוניברסיטאות שונות, בארצות הברית, בצרפת, בגרמניה ובפולין.

This paper will explore a lesser known and underexplored member of the nineteenth century Haskalah, Mattityahu Strashun (1817–1885) from Vilna, Lithuania, and his personal relationship to Wissenschaft des Judentums scholars such as Leopold Zunz (1794–1886) and Shlomo Yehudah Rapoport (Shir, 1790–1867) and its effect on his scholarship. I will outline Strashun's methods of study by locating him within the historical and cultural world in which he was born and lived. I argue that three distinct contemporaneous movements influenced his scholarly achievements: the Russian Haskalah, Strashun's local intellectual circle that embraced the teachings and methods of R. Eliyahu ben Solomon Zalman of Vilna (Vilna Gaon, 1720–1797), and Wissenschaft des Judentums. I will demonstrate that each of these three – with particular focus on the influence of Wissenschaft des Judentums and its leading scholars – are apparent in Strashun's scholarship and worldview. Additionally, I will provide examples of correspondence between Strashun and leaders of the Wissenschaft des Judentums that illuminate his personal relationships with these scholars.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a case for the Exodus mentioned in the Hebrew Bible as a historical event. In an academic environment where most people simply ignore certain parts of the Bible due to the so-called "supernatural" aspects, debates like this ultimately go around in circles more than necessary. The first body paragraphs of this paper, therefore, tackle the stigmas which keep the Exodus from being considered as a serious topic from which history can be determined in one way or another, beginning with a supposed lack of archaeological evidence which, ironically, is rather comparable to what is only slightly more available for the Scythians as compared to the Hebrews. The rest of the papers deals in various historical, linguistic, cultural, geographical, and literary contexts  from which the historicity of the event in question can be sufficiently determined in either the affirmative or negative. The coherence of the arguments made herein will be left up to all the qualified scholars in related fields to determine.

ר' יואל טייטלבוים – הרבי מסאטמר – היה אחד הרבנים הידועים והמשפיעים ביותר בעולם היהודי, ואף מעבר לו, בתקופה שלאחר השואה. הוא הצליח להקים את אחת החצרות החסידיות הגדולות ביותר דווקא בארצות הברית, מדינה שבה המודרנה, החופש האישי והמתירנות המינית היוו את ההפך המוחלט של השמרנות החסידית המסורתית. אחת הסיבות להצלחתו המפתיעה הייתה כי בניגוד למרבית הרבנים בני דורו, אימץ ר' יואל השקפה אנטי-ציונית קיצונית שהאשימה בגלוי את הציונות באחריות לפרוץ השואה ולתוצאותיה החמורות. לדבריו, חטא הציונות, המהווה כפירה בבורא עולם, היה כה חמור, עד כי לאל לא נותרה כל ברירה מלבד להעניש את עמו בעונש החמור ביותר – השואה.
מאמר זה יבחן את ההשערה לפיה השקפותיו האנטי-ציוניות של ר' יואל, ובמיוחד אלו הנוגעות להאשמת הציונות באחריות לשואה, הושפעו מן הצעדים, ההחלטות והאירועים אותן עשה או חווה בתקופת מלחמת העולם השנייה ומן הצורך להסביר אותן לחסידיו. חלקו הראשון של המאמר ידון בחייו הפרטיים ובפעילותו הציבורית של ר' יואל בין השנים 1937—1945 כפי שבאו לידי ביטוי בביוגרפיות שנכתבו אודותיו, בעיתונות התקופה ובמסמכים ארכיוניים. החלק השני יסקור את הביקורת על התנהלותו המפוקפקת, הן ברמה האישית והן ברמה הציבורית, ובסופו תוצגנה הדרכים השונות בהן ניסו ר' יואל עצמו, ובעקבותיו גם כותבי תולדותיו, לטשטש, להצדיק ולתרץ בדיעבד את מעשיו השנויים במחלוקת בתקופה קשה זו.

Im Gegensatz zu den Aktivitäten der Einsatzgruppen, die nach dem
Angriff auf die Sowjetunion am 22. Juni 1941 in Hunderten von Orten
Massenerschießungen von Juden durchgeführt haben, ist die Geschichte
der bereits im September 1939, nach dem Angriff auf Polen, operierenden Einsatzgruppen weniger bekannt. Die Herausgeber dieses Bandes versuchen, das zu ändern, indem sie sämtliche Berichte dieser Einheiten in einem durchaus gut edierten Band präsentieren. Damit zeigen sie unter anderem, dass beim Angriff auf Polen die Juden nicht das einzige Hauptziel des Terrors der Deutschen waren, sondern in etwa demselben Maße wie diese Polen und andere nichtdeutsche Zivilisten verfolgt und ermordet wurden. Die Angreifer haben sich besonders vor den polnischen Nationalisten und der katholischen Kirche gefürchtet.
Durch das Studium dieser Dokumente wird auch deutlich, dass der Judenmord erst nach einigen Monaten zur Hauptaufgabe der Besatzungspolitik geworden ist, wobei man den Einfluss des rassistischen Antisemitismus auf die Wahrnehmung des Kriegsgeschehens und das Handeln der Einheiten bereits im Herbst 1939 nicht unterschätzen sollte. Die Zahl der nach dem Angriff auf Polen ermordeten Zivilisten war zwar deutlich geringer als jener, die knapp zwei Jahre später von den in den sowjetischen Gebieten operierenden Einsatzgruppen erschossen wurden, sie war jedoch trotzdem erschreckend hoch. Die Herausgeber gehen davon aus, dass bis Frühjahr 1940 über 60.000 Personen im besetzen Polen ermordet wurden und dass die in sieben Einsatzgruppen hinter der Wehrmacht wirkenden etwa 2.700 Funktionäre an diesem Mord maßgeblich beteiligt waren.

Monday 11 January 2021, 19:00 Israel Time

Sword and Buckler in Hebrew Letters: Traces of Early Illuminated German Fight Books in Jewish Manuscripts
Prof. Sara Offenberg
Department of the Arts, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev

Two manuscripts produced in early fourteenth-century German lands reflect similar iconography of fighting with Sword and Buckler (small round shield); one is the well-known fencing manual, Leeds, Royal Armouries, MS I. 33, produced ca. 1320, and the other is a Hebrew manuscript of the Bible, Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France héb. 9, made in 1304, that will be the focus of this paper. I wish to demonstrate that the iconography of the masorah figurata was adapted from German Fechtbücher (fencing manuals), which are books of instructions, usually with illustrations, detailing the fencing arts. First, I relate to the realia of Jews bearing arms and Jewish fencing masters. Afterward I discuss the iconography of the fighting figures; subsequently, after examining the texts that make up the micrography, I reach a broader conclusion regarding the reason the patron commissioned this work and the meaning of the scene. This lecture intends to demonstrate how Hebrew illuminated manuscripts can shed more light on the study of fight books iconography.

Dorothee Wein, Volker Mall und Harald Roth dokumentieren 62 Jahre nach Ende der NS-Barbarei erstmals den Bau des Militärflughafens bei Hailfingen/Tailfingen, auf dessen Gelände später das Außenlager des KZ Natzweiler im Elsass errichtet wurde. Doch sie zeigen noch mehr. Sie folgen den Spuren von 1945 bis heute und beschreiben den Umgang der Justiz und der Bevölkerung mit den Verbrechen, die im Zusammenhang mit dem Bau des Flugplatzes und im KZ-Hailfingen/Tailfingen passierten.

"English summary: The interpretation of Dutch Jewish Council Records

The main question in this thesis is: how do we interpret historical documents if we do not know the exact context in which they were created? It is a basic question for researchers and it will be all the more important in the digital age if we want to secure digital sustainability. The problem is demonstrated from the example of the Jewish Council Records that are part of the Information Bureau archives, at the Red Cross in The Hague. On these paper index cards a large amount of personal and procedural information was recorded by staff of the Jewish Council during the occupation of the Netherlands. On the appr. 180000 cards nearly every individual Jewish person was registered individually. After the war, the same card system was used by the Netherlands Red Cross as a basis for tracing the victims and to determine their fate.

Recreating the context
If we want to read the information on the cards and understand the meaning of the scribbled notes, we have to recreate the procedures that created these records. The card in itself is only the end product of a complicated chain of administrative events in a paper bureaucracy. The procedures changed many times and were scarcely documented. This means that the paper network has to be reconstructed, that existed when the records were created. The implication is that all the archives that may hold key-information have to be analysed. In that way the context of the Jewish Council records can be reconstructed. Context is required to interpret the information on these records. There are two layers of context. The first is the archives of the Information Bureau of the Red Cross and consists of deportation lists, personal files and other collections that were connected tot the Jewish Council Records after the war. The second level are the external archives that hold context information are scattered all over the Netherlands, but are mainly at NIOD-Amsterdam, National Archives the Hague and in local municipal archives.

How to obtain robust digital sustainability
To obtain robust digital sustainability, a detailed analysis of the interconnection of all these files is necessary. This analysis should be part of the meta-data. The paper bureaucratic network has to be reconstructed, and the remaining context-carriers have to indentified. Isolated digitisation of complex systems like the Jewish Council Records will lead to digital representations that cannot be interpreted. This is in fact what happened already, when microfilmed copies of the Jewish Council Records were transferred to ITS-Arolsen in the 1950’s. This organisation provided copies to Yad Vashem. Now all these microfilms are digitised and made available to institutions like the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. These ‘orphaned’ digital files have no metadata attached about the creation, history and interrelations with other archives. Researchers will not be able to use the full potential of these files, because the context-environment was lost.
It is also argued that the new historian of the paperless information age will not understand the way a paper bureaucracy works. If this problem is not addressed, misunderstandings will arise interpreting the products of a paper bureaucracy: deportation list and file-card etc.

The thesis provides a detailed description of all the interrelations between internal (in the Red Cross Information Bureau archives) and external archives. It also analyses the way the German occupying authorities exerted their rule over the information that was provided to the Jewish council. The German authorities were conducting a war against the Jews and used their power to restrict the communication of the Jewish council and to destabilise the day-to-day practice of the Jewish council."