PDF Sister Citizen: Shame; Stereotypes; and Black Women in America by Melissa V. Harris-Perry in History

Description

When the Nazis forced most of Warsaw's Jews into the city's infamous ghetto during the Second World War; some 28;000 Jews either hid and never entered the Warsaw Ghetto; or escaped from it later in what Gunnar S. Paulsson calls 'the greatest prison-break in history'. This book - the first detailed treatment of Jewish escape and hiding during the Holocaust - tells the story of these hidden Jews of Warsaw. Using memoirs; diaries; testimonies and the records of Jewish and Polish organizations that helped the fugitives; Paulsson shows that after the 1942 deportations nearly a quarter of the ghetto's remaining Jews managed to escape and; despite appalling difficulties and dangers; more than 11;000 of them lived to see the end of the war. Connected by elaborate networks of which Poles; Germans and the Jews themselves were largely unaware; they formed what can aptly be called a secret city. Paulsson challenges many established assumptions. He shows that; despite the social gulf that separated Jews and Poles; enough private contacts existed to make escape on a large scale possible; without much help from the Polish or Jewish underground; that the much-reviled German; Polish and Jewish policemen; as well as Jewish converts and their families; were key in helping Jews escape; and that many more Poles helped than harmed the Jews; though most stayed neutral and often expressed antisemitic sentiments. He argues that the Jewish leadership was wrong to dismiss the possibility of escape; staking everything on a hopeless uprising. Paulsson's engrossing book offers a new perspective on Holocaust history. 'For many of us in this field it is difficult to imagine something new: the main lines of our understanding were sketched by some often formidable authors; many of whom lived through these terrible events. Paulsson manages to break new ground; however; with an intelligent; fresh; and independent-minded analysis.' Michael Marrus; Professor of Holocaust Studies; Toronto University 'the best; most complete examination we have to date of the texture of hiding and rescue in Nazi-occupied Warsaw - or anywhere in Nazi-occupied Europe' Lawrence Powell; Professor of History; Tulane University 'an important; formidable - and bound-to-be controversial - book' Berel Lang; Trinity College; Hartford Co-winner of the 1998 Fraenkel Prize in Contemporary History Gunnar S. Paulsson has been the senior historian of the Holocaust Exhibition Project Office at the Imperial War Museum; London; Koerner visiting fellow and lecturer at the Oxford Centre for Hebrew Jewish Studies; and Pearl Resnick fellow at the Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum. He is the son of a Holocaust survivor.