The Holocaust and European Societies Social Processes and Social Dynamics [Hardcover]

This book explores the Holocaust as a social process. Although the mass murder of European Jews was essentially the result of political-ideological decisions made by the Nazi state leadership, the events of the Holocaust were also part of a social dynamic. All European societies experienced developments that led to the social exclusion, persecution and murder of the continents Jews. This volume therefore questions Raul Hilberg?s category of the bystander. In societies where the political order expects citizens to endorse the exclusion of particular groups in the population, there cannot be any completely uninvolved bystanders. Instead, this book examines the multifarious forms of social action and behaviour connected with the Holocaust. It focuses on institutions and persons, helpers, co-perpetrators, facilitators and spectators, beneficiaries and profiteers, as well as Jewish victims and Jewish organisations trying to cope with the dynamics of exclusion and persecution. 

1. Beyond the Bystander: Social Processes and Social Dynamics in European Societies as Context for the Holocaust; Frank Bajohr and Andrea L?w.- PART I: JEWS IN THE GERMAN REICH AFTER 1933.- 2. Fading Friendships and the Decent German: Reflecting, Explaining and Enduring Estrangement in Nazi Germany, 19331938; Anna Ullrich.- 3. Living in an Abnormal Normality: The Everyday Relations of Jews and Non-Jews in the German-Dutch Border Region, 19331938; Froukje Demant.- 4. Economic Trust in the Racial State: A Case Study from the German Countryside; Stefanie Fischer.- 5. Life in Illegality Cost an Extortionate Amount of Money: Ordinary Germans and German Jews Hiding from Deportation; Susanna Schrafstetter.- PART II: CASE STUDIES FROM EASTERN, SOUTH-EASTERN AND CENTRAL EUROPE.- 6. Collaborators, Bystanders or Rescuers?: The Role of Local Citizens in the Holocaust in Nazi-Occupied Belarus;&lC%