Scholars of Jewish, European, and Israeli history as well as readers interested in issues of legal and social justice will be grateful for this detailed volume.

In Warsaw Ghetto Police, Katarzyna Person shines a spotlight on the lawyers, engineers, young yeshiva graduates, and sons of connected businessmen who, in the autumn of 1940, joined the newly formed Jewish Order Service. Person tracks the everyday life of policemen as their involvement with the horrors of ghetto life gradually increased. Facing and engaging with brutality, corruption, and the degradation and humiliation of their own people, these policemen found it virtually impossible to exercise individual agency. While some saw the Jewish police as fellow victims, others viewed them as a more dangerous threat than the German occupation authorities; both were held responsible for the destruction of a historically important and thriving community. Person emphasizes the complexity of the situation, the policemen's place in the network of social life in the ghetto, and the difficulty behind the choices that they made. By placing the actions of the Jewish Order Service in historical context, she explores both the decisions that its members were forced to make and the consequences of those actions. Featuring testimonies of members of the Jewish Order Service, and of others who could see them as they themselves could not, Warsaw Ghetto Police brings these impossible situations to life. It also demonstrates how a community chooses to remember those whose allegiances did not seem clear. Published in Association with the US Holocaust Memorial Museum.

The period of court absolutism and early capitalism extended from the end of the Renaissance to the Enlightenment. A new world view was created, along with a new type of individual possessing new economic orientations to the marketplace and new social attitudes deriving from such concerns. The unified political and religious world of medieval Europe broke into parts: national differentiation and religious options abounded. The autonomy of the nation-state created a need for new attitudes toward religious minorities, even despised ones such as the Jews. The court Jew phenomenon, as Selma Stern details, was inextricably linked to these larger developments, including the emancipation of Jews as a whole. Dr. Stern's work is an effort to reconstruct this unusual group of Jews who became politically and economically influential and through that mechanism were able to enhance Jewish community life as a whole. In his very existence the court Jew necessarily enlarged, beyond its original meaning, the concept of free expression in European societies. As the dominating idea of defending one church and one emperor collapsed under the weight of the new European system of power balances, a new conception of the Jew developed, one of a transforming agent in economic and political positions. With trade no longer condemned as sinful, collecting interest for loans no longer prohibited, and the merchant no longe'r compared to a thief, the Jewish money changer and tradesman came to be viewed in a more favorable light. In this new environment, the claims of Christianity remained supreme, but the rights of religious minorities were considered. At the time of the book's initial appearance, the Saturday Review hailed it as a "picturesque work giving evidence of great writing talent." The reviewer went on to note that "Dr. Stern's work provided exhaustive historical background of European Jewry—from 1650 to 1750—that period during which the modern European genius emerged." Dr. Stern's work relies heavily upon European archives up to 1938, when the advances of Nazism made further work impossible. As a result, what was started in Europe was completed in America.

Eliezer Gruenbaum (1908Ð1948) was a Polish Jew denounced for serving as a Kapo while interned at Auschwitz. He was the communist son of Itzhak Gruenbaum, the most prominent secular leader of interwar Polish Jewry who later became the chairman of the Jewish Agency's Rescue Committee during the Holocaust and Israel's first minister of the interior. In light of the father's high placement in both Polish and Israeli politics, the denunciation of the younger Gruenbaum and his suspicious death during the 1948 Arab-Israeli war add intrigue to a controversy that really centers on the question of what constitutesÑand how do we evaluateÑmoral behavior in Auschwitz. GruenbaumÑa Jewish Kapo, a communist, an anti-Zionist, a secularist, and the son of a polarizing Zionist leaderÑbecame a symbol exploited by opponents of the movements to which he was linked. Sorting through this Rashomon-like story within the cultural and political contexts in which Gruenbaum operated, Friling illuminates key debates that rent the Jewish community in Europe and Israel from the 1930s to the 1960s.

Warsaw was once home to the largest and most diverse Jewish community in the world. It was a center of rich varieties of Orthodox Judaism, Jewish Socialism, Diaspora Nationalism, Zionism, and Polonization. This volume is the first to reflect on the entire history of the Warsaw Jewish community, from its inception in the late 18th century to its emergence as a Jewish metropolis within a few generations, to its destruction during the German occupation and tentative re-emergence in the postwar period. The highly original contributions collected here investigate Warsaw Jewry’s religious and cultural life, press and publications, political life, and relations with the surrounding Polish society. This monumental volume is dedicated to Professor Antony Polonsky, chief historian of the new Warsaw Museum for the History of Polish Jews, on the occasion of his 75th birthday.

This four-volume set provides reference entries, primary documents, and personal accounts from individuals who lived through the Holocaust that allow readers to better understand the cultural, political, and economic motivations that spurred the Final Solution. The Holocaust that occurred during World War II remains one of the deadliest genocides in human history, with an estimated two-thirds of the 9 million Jews in Europe at the time being killed as a result of the policies of Adolf Hitler and Nazi Germany. The Holocaust: An Encyclopedia and Document Collection provides students with an all-encompassing resource for learning about this tragic event—a four-book collection that provides detailed information as well as multidisciplinary perspectives that will serve as a gateway to meaningful discussion and further research. The first two volumes present reference entries on significant individuals of the Holocaust (both victims and perpetrators), anti-Semitic ideology, and annihilationist policies advocated by the Nazi regime, giving readers insight into the social, political, cultural, military, and economic aspects of the Holocaust while enabling them to better understand the Final Solution in Europe during World War II and its lasting legacy. The third volume of the set presents memoirs and personal narratives that describe in their own words the experiences of survivors and resistors who lived through the chaos and horror of the Final Solution. The last volume consists of primary documents, including government decrees and military orders, propaganda in the form of newspapers and pamphlets, war crime trial transcripts, and other items that provide a direct look at the causes and consequences of the Holocaust under the Nazi regime. By examining these primary sources, users can have a deeper understanding of the ideas and policies used by perpetrators to justify their actions in the annihilation of the Jews of Europe. The set not only provides an invaluable and comprehensive research tool on the Holocaust but also offers historical perspective and examination of the origins of the discontent and cultural resentment that resulted in the Holocaust—subject matter that remains highly relevant to key problems facing human society in the 21st century and beyond.

Bringing together contributions from a diverse group of scholars, Volume XXX of Studies in Contemporary Jewry presents a multifaceted view of the subtle and intricate relations between Jews and their relationship to place. The symposium covers Europe, the Middle East, and North America from the 18th century to the 21st.