Saul Friedlander

A great historian crowns a lifetime of thought and research by answering a question that has haunted us for more than 50 years: How did one of the most industrially and culturally advanced nations in the world embark on and continue along the path leading to one of the most enormous criminal enterprises in history, the extermination of Europe's Jews? Giving considerable emphasis to a wealth of new archival findings, Saul Friedlander restores the voices of Jews who, after the 1933 Nazi accession to power, were engulfed in an increasingly horrifying reality. We hear from the persecutors themselves: the leaders of the Nazi party, the members of the Protestant and Catholic hierarchies, the university elites, and the heads of the business community. Most telling of all, perhaps, are the testimonies of ordinary German citizens, who in the main acquiesced to increasing waves of dismissals, segregation, humiliation, impoverishment, expulsion, and violence.

Volume 1: The Years of Persecution 1933-1939

Nazi Germany and the Jews

With The Years of Extermination, Saul Friedländer completes his major historical work on Nazi Germany and the Jews. The book describes and interprets the persecution and murder of the Jews throughout occupied Europe. The enactment of German extermination policies and measures depended on the cooperation of local authorities, the assistance of police forces, and the passivity of the populations, primarily of their political and spiritual elites. This implementation depended as well on the victims’ readiness to submit to orders, often with the hope of attenuating them or of surviving long enough to escape the German vise. This multifaceted study—at all levels and in different places—enhances the perception of the magnitude, complexity, and interrelatedness of the many components of this history. Based on a vast array of documents and an overwhelming choir of voices—mainly from diaries, letters, and memoirs—Saul Friedländer avoids domesticating the memory of these unprecedented and horrific events. The convergence of these various aspects gives a unique quality to The Years of Extermination. In this work, the history of the Holocaust has found its definitive representation.

Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1939-1945

The Years of Extermination

Looks at that major aspects of Kafka's life—family, Judaism, love and sex, writing, illness and despair—and argues that, when reinserted in Kafka's letters and diaries, deleted segments lift the mask of "sainthood" frequently attached to the writer. 12,000 first printing.

The Poet of Shame and Guilt

Franz Kafka

A highly original and engaging appraisal of Kafka s life, work, legacy, and thought Franz Kafka was the poet of his own disorder. Throughout his life he struggled with a pervasive sense of shame and guilt that left traces in his daily existence in his many letters, in his extensive diaries, and especially in his fiction. This stimulating book investigates some of the sources of Kafka s personal anguish and its complex reflections in his imaginary world. In his query, Saul Friedlander probes major aspects of Kafka s life (family, Judaism, love and sex, writing, illness, and despair) that until now have been skewed by posthumous censorship. Contrary to Kafka s dying request that all his papers be burned, Max Brod, Kafka s closest friend and literary executor, editedand publishedthe author s novels and other works soon after his death in 1924. Friedlander shows that, when reinserted in Kafka s letters and diaries, deleted segments lift the mask of sainthood frequently attached to the writer and thus restore previously hidden aspects of his individuality."

Saul Friedländer

Four months before Hitler came to power, Saul Friedländer was born in Prague to a middle-class Jewish family . In 1939, seven-year-old Saul and his family were forced to flee to France, where they lived through the German Occupation, until his parents' ill-fated attempt to flee to Switzerland. They were able to hide their son in a Roman Catholic seminary before being sent to Auschwitz where they were killed. After an imposed religious conversion, young Saul began training for priesthood. The birth of Israel prompted his discovery of his Jewish past and his true identity. Friedländer brings his story movingly to life, shifting between his Israeli present and his European past with grace and restraint. His keen eye spares nothing, not even himself, as he explores the ways in which the loss of his parents, his conversion to Catholicism, and his deep-seated Jewish roots combined to shape him into the man he is today. Friedländer's retrospective view of his journey of grief and self-discovery provides readers with a rare experience: a memoir of feeling with intellectual backbone.

When Memory Comes

Kafka-Utanc ve Suclulugun Sairi

DIV Franz Kafka was the poet of his own disorder. Throughout his life he struggled with a pervasive sense of shame and guilt that left traces in his daily existenceâ€”in his many letters, in his extensive diaries, and especially in his fiction. This stimulating book investigates some of the sources of Kafkaâ€™s personal anguish and its complex reflections in his imaginary world. In his query, Saul FriedlÃ¤nder probes major aspects of Kafkaâ€™s life (family, Judaism, love and sex, writing, illness, and despair) that until now have been skewed by posthumous censorship. Contrary to Kafkaâ€™s dying request that all his papers be burned, Max Brod, Kafkaâ€™s closest friend and literary executor, edited and published the authorâ€™s novels and other works soon after his death in 1924. FriedlÃ¤nder shows that, when reinserted in Kafkaâ€™s letters and diaries, deleted segments lift the mask of â€œsainthoodâ€? frequently attached to the writer and thus restore previously hidden aspects of his individuality. /div

Saul Friedlander

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