Microhistories of the Holocaust

Claire Zalc is a Research Professor (directrice de recherche) in history at the Institut d’histoire moderne et contemporaine, CNRS-ENS and at the EHESS. Among several publications, she recently edited "L'histoire de la Shoah face à ses sources", a special issue of Vingtième siècle. Revue d'histoire, 2018. She specializes in the history of immigration in twentieth-century France and the history of French Jews during World War II. She was awarded the CNRS Bronze Medal in 2013.

Acknowledgments

List of tables

List of photos



Introduction: Towards a Microhistory of the Holocaust

Claire Zalc and Tal Bruttmann



PART I: BIOGRAPHIES, GROUPS, TRANSPORTS, GHETTOS: THE SCALES OF ANALYSIS



Chapter 1. An Inconceivable Emigration. Richard Frank’s flight from Germany to Switzerland in 1942

Christoph Kreutzmüller



Chapter 2. Pursuing Escape from Vienna: The Katz Family’s Correspondence

Melissa Jane Taylor



Chapter 3. Moving Together, Moving Alone: The Story of Boys on a Transport from Auschwitz to Buchenwald

Kenneth Waltzer



Chapter 4. Dehumanizing the Dead. The Destruction of Thessaloniki’s Jewish Cemetery

Leon Saltiel



Chapter 5. Reconstructing Trajectories of Persecution: Reflections on a Prosopography of Holocaust Victims

Nicolas Mariot and Claire Zalc



Chapter 6. Microhistories, Microgeographies: Budapest, 1944 and Scales of Analysis

Tim Cole



PART II: FACE-TO-FACE: VICTIMS AND PERPETRATORS



Chapter 7. Microhistory of the Holocaust in Poland: New Sources, New Trails

Jan Grabowski



Chapter 8. Jewish Slave Workers in the German Aviation Industry

Daniel Uziel



Chapter 9. The Devil in Microhistory: The “Hunt for Jews” as a Social Process, 1942-1945

Tomasz Frydel



Chapter 10. On the Persistence of Moral Judgment: Local Perpetrators in Transnistria as Seen by Survivors and Their Christian Neighbors

Vladimir Solonari



Chapter 11. Defiance and Protest. A Comparative Microhistorical Reevaluation of Individual Jewish Responses to Nazi Persecution

Wolf Gruner



Chapter 12. The Murder of the Jews in Ostrów Mazowiecka in November 1939

Markus Roth



Chapter 13. Échirolles, August 7 1944: a Triple Execution

Tal Bruttmann



Chapter 14. The Beginning: First Massacres against the Jews in the Romanian Holocaust. Level of Decision, Genocidal Strategy and Killing Methods regarding Dorohoi and Galati Pogroms, June-July, 1940

Alexandru Muraru



PART III: THE MATERIAL FOR SHIFTING SCALES: SOURCES BETWEEN TESTIMONIES AND ARCHIVES



Chapter 15. The Holocaust and Postwar Justice in Poland in Three Acts

Andrew Kornbluth



Chapter 16. The Small and the Good: Microhistory Through the Eyes of the Witness. A Case Study

Hannah Pollin-Galay



Chapter 17. The Witness against the Archive: towards a Microhistory of Christianstadt

Jeffrey Wallen



Bibliography

Index