Bension Varon has given the world two great gifts: the publication for the first time of the remarkable 1946 Buchenwald memoir of Hans Bergas and a riveting account of Bergas' equally remarkable life. Bergas, a highly secular German Jew, was first known to Bension Varon as the brother-in-law of his wife's uncle. Far transcending genealogical interest, Varon's painstaking research has revealed the many identities of Hans Bergas: an impassioned Social Democrat, who battled both fascist and communist threats to Germany's fledgling, interwar democracy; a member of the anti-Nazi Resistance in France, who aided other escapees of the Nazi regime; a victim of capture and savage torture by the Gestapo; a years-long "political" inmate in Buchenwald, active in the camp resistance; and a gifted chronicler of life in Buchenwald and the detail of Nazi depravity. In this volume, Bergas emerges like a lost treasure from history's attic, precious both in itself and for what it reveals about its troubled times.

This history of Italy's Jews under the shadow of the Holocaust examines the lives of five Jewish families: the Ovazzas, who propered under Mussolini and whose patriarch became a prominent fascist; the Foas, whose children included both an antifascist activist and a Fascist Party member, the DiVerolis who struggled for survival in the ghetto; the Teglios, one of whom worked with the Catholic Church to save hundreds of Jews; and the Schonheits, who were sent to Buchenwald and Ravensbruck.

Eva and Otto is a true story about German opposition and resistance to Hitler as revealed through the early lives of Eva Lewinski Pfister (1910–1991) and Otto Pfister (1900–1985). It is an intimate and epic account of two Germans—Eva born Jewish, Otto born Catholic—who worked with a little-known German political group that resisted and fought against Hitler in Germany before 1933 and then in exile in Paris before the German invasion of France in May 1940. After their improbable escapes from separate internment and imprisonment in Europe, Eva obtained refuge in America in October 1940 where she worked to rescue other endangered political refugees, including Otto, with the help of Eleanor Roosevelt. As revealed in recently declassified records, Eva and Otto later engaged in different secret assignments with the US Office of Strategic Services (OSS) in support of the Allied war effort. Despite their vastly different backgrounds, Eva and Otto gave each other hope and strength as they acted upon what they understood to be an ethical duty to help others threatened by fascism. The book provides a sobering insight into the personal risks and costs of a commitment to that duty. Their unusually beautiful writing—directed to each other in diaries and correspondence during two long periods of wartime separation—also reveals an unlikely and inspiring love story.

Mozart (1759-1791), in whose shadow Mr. Varon is shown above, was (together with Bach and Beethoven) one of the fathers of classical music. He was also a full contemporary of Adam Smith (1723-1790), father of classical economics.They died a year apart, and they both deserved and have been honored with statues. This book leaves no doubt about where Mr. Varon’s preferences lie, especially in his retirement. The book follows in substance and in spirit his last one titled Book Love: Twelve Essays on an Affair without End (2018). Mr. Varon lives and writes in Alexandria, Virginia and can be reached at [email protected]

Bension Varon is a Sephardic Jewa descendant of Jews expelled from Spain under the threat of conversion in 1492. He was born and grew up in Istanbul, Turkey, where he had two mother tongues: Turkish and Judeo-Spanish, the language of his ancestors. He became familiar with Hebrew and Greek and acquired fluency in French and English through both education and professional work, including in international organizations. Varon has lived as a multilingual most of his adult life, in harmony with his multicultural upbringing and vocation. This book describes the historical currents that made Istanbul a uniquely multicultural city, evident in its diversity of languages and the vibrancy of its cultural and linguistic exchanges. It paints a vivid picture of the sensibility, mores, and culture of Turkeys Sephardic community, grounded in the Judeo-Spanish language. It discusses the importance of language acquisition and use to both the authors own immigrant experience and to immigrant experiences more generally. Multilingualismknowledge of three or more languagesis not rare in much of the world. Varons case is special partly because of the mixture of his languages, which combines the Eastern (Turkish, Hebrew and Greek) and the Western (Spanish, French and English). One of his languages, Judeo-Spanish, is considered severely endangered by the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and is, therefore, given special attention by Varon, who retains a rare knowledge of it.

In this cogent, accessible biography, Andy Stafford offers a new picture of the man and his work, one that helps us to understand him even as it acknowledges the complexity presented by his restless interests and unorthodox career. Stafford argues that Barthes is best classified as a journalist, essayist, and critic, and he emphasizes the social preoccupations in his work—how Barthes continually worked to analyze the self and society, as well as the self in society. In doing so, Stafford paints a fascinating picture not just of Barthes, but of the entire intellectual scene of postwar France. As Barthes continues to find new readers today, this book will make the perfect introduction, even as it offers new avenues of thought for specialists.

The Afterlife of the Shoah in Central and Eastern European Cultures is a collection of essays by literary scholars from Germany, the US, and Central Eastern Europe offering insight into the specific ways of representing the Shoah and its aftereffects as well as its entanglement with other catastrophic events in the region. Introducing the conceptual frame of postcatastrophe, the collected essays explore the discursive and artistic space the Shoah occupies in the countries between Moscow and Berlin. Postcatastrophe is informed by the knowledge of other concepts of "post" and shares their insight into forms of transmission and latency; in contrast to them, explores the after-effects of extreme events on a collective, aesthetic, and political rather than a personal level. The articles use the concept of postcatastrophe as a key to understanding the entangled and conflicted cultures of remembrance in postsocialist literatures and the arts dealing with events, phenomena, and developments that refuse to remain in the past and still continue to shape perceptions of today’s societies in Eastern Europe. As a contribution to memory studies as well as to literary criticism with a special focus on Shoah remembrance after socialism, this book is of great interest to students and scholars of European history, and those interested in historical memory more broadly.