History : Oral History

Following the end of World War II, it was widely reported by the media that Jewish refugees found lives filled with opportunity and happiness in America. However, for most of the 140,000 Jewish Displaced Persons (DPs) who immigrated to the United States from Europe in the years between 1946 and 1954, it was a much more complicated story. Case Closed challenges the prevailing optimistic perception of the lives of Holocaust survivors in postwar America by scrutinizing their first years through the eyes of those who lived it. The facts brought forth in this book are supported by case files recorded by Jewish social service workers, letters and minutes from agency meetings, oral testimonies, and much more. Cohen explores how the Truman Directive allowed the American Jewish community to handle the financial and legal responsibility for survivors, and shows what assistance the community offered the refugees and what help was not available. She investigates the particularly difficult issues that orphan children and Orthodox Jews faced, and examines the subtleties of the resettlement process in New York and other locales. Cohen uncovers the truth of survivors’ early years in America and reveals the complexity of their lives as “New Americans.” more...

Price: $17.00

Indigenous histories not only challenge the content of conventional national and colonial histories inasmuch as they tell a different story, but they also challenge the nature of history itself… more...

Price: $28.00

Like many European Jews, Sam Iwry began his life in Poland, but at the age of ten fled with his family to Russia before World War I. At age 29, Iwry was forced to flee again - this time from the Soviets - and ended up in Shanghai, China, joining 20,000 Jewish refugees who were there. The story of the Diaspora caused by the Holocaust is well-known, but the Far Eastern dimension has come to light only very recently. Iwry is a magnificent storyteller who not only brings the harrowing details of flight and survival into vivid detail, but he is also an historian who deliberately places his own experiences into much wider context. This oral history sheds light on Jewish life in Eastern Europe during the inter-war period, the search for a safe haven from Nazis and Soviets, daily life in the Shanghai ghetto, and emigration to America. Iwry's story is both representative of the Jewish experience and also completely unique. more...

Price: $75.00

Robert G. Moeller powerfully conveys the complicated story of how West Germans recast the recent past after the Second World War. He rejects earlier characterizations of a postwar West Germany dominated by attitudes of "forgetting" or silence about the Nazi past. more...

Price: $15.95