Holocaust Letters
Methodologies, Cases and Reflections
Holocaust Letters
Methodologies, Cases and Reflections
Description
Throughout the Holocaust, letters were sent in their millions, in a variety of different contexts and for a range of differing purposes. Holocaust Letters marks the first volume of its kind to examine collectively letter writing during this period. The book presents different methodological approaches to letters as texts, material objects and markers of memory, and outlines a range of different case studies using letters as sources in practice. Emerging from the exhibition of the same name held at The Wiener Holocaust Library (UK), the authors in this volume use letters to gain a deeper understanding of the Holocaust and the post-war period in Western and Central Europe, and transnational humanitarian efforts in the UK and North Africa.
Holocaust Letters also presents a series of short source critiques of individual letters and small collections of letters, with insightful analysis of a variety of different types of letters to be found throughout. In whatever form they occur, Holocaust-era letters are witness not only to what happened and to whom but contain valuable evidence of how and, crucially, why the events that came to be known as the Holocaust occurred.
Table of Contents
List of Contributor
Foreword Joachim Schlör
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Clara Dijkstra, Charlie Knight, Sandra Lipner and Christine Schmidt
1. The Exhibition Holocaust Letters at The Wiener Holocaust Library
Sandra Lipner and Christine Schmidt
2. Scholarship on Holocaust-era Letters: An Overview
Maria Ferenc and Shirli Gilbert
Part I: Nazi Germany
3. Analyzing the Role of the Narrator in Private Correspondences: The Third Reich Narrated as an Experience of (Post-)War Spaces
Sophie Bayer Blears
4. Emotions as Societal Seismograph: A Letter-based History of Emotions of the Third Reich
Sandra Lipner
5. Spotlight - Dispatch from an Aryanized Business: Otto Poetsch Writes to Leo Anker, Danzig, 31 August 1939
Joseph Cronin
Part II: Refugee and Migrant Letters from Germany
6. Refugee Letters: Methodological Considerations
Hannah Holtschneider
7. Reading the Letter: Reflections on the Researcher's Journey
Charlie Knight
8. Preserving a Family Archive and Reconstructing an Escape from Nazi Germany: A Dialogue in/on Translation
Deborah Jaffé and Ricarda Vidal
9. Spotlight - 'Leb wohl, mein Lieber': Examining Familial Dynamics in Exile through the Migrant Love Letter
Elizabeth Lamle
Part III: Occupied Europe
10. Letters from Drancy and the Experience of Jewish Motherhood
Clara Dijkstra
11. Reflections on Ordinary Life and Identity in Hungarian Labour Service Letters
Barnabas Balint
12. Spotlight - Briefaktion Postcards from the Theresienstadt Family Camp at Auschwitz-Birkenau
Jennifer Putnam
Part IV: Relief and Restitution
13. To the Letter? The Correspondence of the Jewish Committee for Relief Abroad and Anglo-Jewish Relief in North Africa and Europe, 1943-1945
Roxy Moore
14. 'My dearest Stella': Witnessing the Aftermath of the Holocaust in the Letters of a British Relief Worker
Rob Thompson
15. Spotlight - 'She must have signed it in that yellow-star-world': Mrs. Árpád Seres's Restitution Letter
Borbála Klacsmann
Index
Product details
| Published | Jan 22 2026 |
|---|---|
| Format | Ebook (Epub & Mobi) |
| Edition | 1st |
| Pages | 272 |
| ISBN | 9781350475366 |
| Imprint | Bloomsbury Academic |
| Illustrations | 11 bw illus |
| Publisher | Bloomsbury Publishing |
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