Bøger udgivet af Vallentine Mitchell & Co Ltd

Here Isabelle Seddon reveals the astonishing contributions made by British born Jewish women in the arts during the twentieth century. Some of the women you will meet here were well-known in their fields such as singer Amy Winehouse, and others whose names are less familiar, but whose contributions to their fields are no less notable such as Rebecca Solomon, a painter of social injustices. The intersection of gender, Jewishness, social status and education links the experiences of all of the women featured in this volume, across their varied cultural outputs and contributions from acting to musicianship, writing to art, sport to cookery. The persecution of the Jews across the ages, including the Holocaust, is one of the factors that ties many of these highly accomplished women together. This, alongside the legacies of immigrant and refugee backgrounds, motivated and inspired them to shape British culture in remarkable and fascinating ways.

This book is the result of a personal quest to understand more about Nick's family background in eastern Europe. It leads him to dig deeply into many of the big questions about modern Jewish history in Lithuania. Why were lots of Jewish people living in Lithuania in the late nineteenth century? Were their lives becoming difficult at that time and, if so, why was this? Why did some Jews emigrate? How did these people choose where to go and how did they make the move? What happened to their family and friends left behind, both during the First World War and in the inter-war period? Why and how were Lithuania's Jews murdered in the Holocaust and how has Lithuanian society tried to come to terms with this in the post-war world? Much modern Jewish history in Lithuania is terrible. About 96 per cent of the pre-war Jewish population was murdered in the Holocaust. But this book also reflects on some positive aspects of the Jewish experience in Lithuania: for many years Lithuania was a good place for Jews to live and that those who emigrated carried with them Jewish traditions and approaches to life and learning acquired while living in Lithuania. These stood them in good stead in the countries they moved to. It meant that many Lithuanian Jewish emigrants settled into their new homes and flourished remarkably quickly.

The book explores how history and politics were expressed in the war writings of Emanuel Ringelblum and Reuven Ben-Shem, inmates at the Warsaw Ghetto. Each produced different accounts in purpose and style, Ringelblum's diary was a historical record whereas Ben-Shem wanted to inform the world what had happened to his family. Despite political differences, Jewish history defined both men's personal identity, and they derived moral and political inspiration from it. The range of topics and how they were recorded reflects traditional approaches to appropriacy, focussing predominantly on the public sphere, leaving us to speculate the private. The book examines relationships between physical spaces in the Ghetto, and how they were conceived: how writing reflected the disruption of Jewish spaces by blurring boundaries between the private and public spheres resulting in abjection. The more Jews were crowded into the dwindling space, the more the private became public. Nizan's innovation is creating a model using historical records, philosophy and literature to understand the interactions between people, spaces and conditions in the Ghetto, and the effect on its inhabitants and outsiders.

Greek Jewry has a unique history in Europe. Greek Judaism is possibly the oldest faith on the continent. The Hellenized Romaniotes, the Sephardim from the western Mediterranean and the Ashkenazim from central Europe created a mosaic of communities across the country, each one with its own fascinating history and tradition. Thessaloniki, the ' Jerusalem of the Balkans', Ioannina, the capital of the Romaniotes, Larissa, Volos, Patra, Crete, Corfu, Rhodes, Athens, and many others. These Jewish communities, together but also individually, are an integral part of the Greece's rich history. This pioneering book presents a unique detailed historical overview of the history of Greek Jews from antiquity to the present day, including the period of the Shoah when nearly 90% of the community was annihilated. Beyond this historical landscape, the book also highlights the contributions of Greek Jews to the economic, cultural, intellectual and political life of the country, and reveals the golden times and the darkest days in the coexistence between Jews and Christians in Greece.

Rachel Bayvel covers some 1100 years of the more dramatic history of the Shapiros from the 11th century to 20th century. The Shapiro family gave the Jewish world such luminaries as Rabbi Natan Spiro from Krakow, the author of Megalleh Amukkot, and Rabbi Meir Shapiro, the founder of Daf Yomi - the page-a-day Talmud study programme. The Slavuta Printing Press which published the famous Slavuta Shas (Talmud), as well as the first edition of Tanya, existed for some 75 years (1791- 1866) and Rachel describes their changing fortunes. A chapter is dedicated to another member of the Shapiro family - Chava Shapiro (1878- 1943) - who also came from Slavuta and became one of the first women in the history of Hebrew literature. Several chapters are dedicated to Jewish life in the USSR during Stalin's time, covering the little known contributions of the Jews to Second World War efforts, as well as the periods when the entire existence of the Jewish community was under threat. The final section of the book is devoted to the lives of three, little known Jewish artists, namely: Yehuda Pen, the founder of the famous Vitebsk art school, and the teacher of Marc Chagall, Natan Altman and Anatoly Kaplan.

The first British Jewish chaplain, Reverend Francis Cohen, was appointed in 1892 and ministered in Britain. It was the creation of Reverend Michael Adler, DSO, for commissioned Jewish chaplains to serve alongside soldiers in the field in wartime. At the age of 46, from 1915, Adler spent over three years on the Western Front. Twenty Jewish chaplains served with the British Army in the First World War, and fifty-six Army and RAF chaplains, including twelve locally recruited in mandate Palestine, in the Second. They served in many of the vast theatres of both wars, travelling huge distances in search of widely dispersed Jewish soldiers. Jewish chaplaincy consolidated the integration of a minority faith into the British armed forces. This ground-breaking contribution to British, Jewish, religious and military history is based upon years of research in Victorian archives, military records and family papers. Here, Lewis reveals the colourful and untold story of the British Jewish ministry at war, as well as of its military service in peacetime. It is the story too of the many Jewish soldiers who, rarely if ever seeing a chaplain, brought each other such religious solace as they might.

Ruth Ravina's story is one of childhood under duress. She survived hunger, cold, solitude, existential boredom, and life-threatening situations. Born on April 7, 1937 in Warsaw, Poland, she was raised in Kozienice. In 1940, about a year after the German invasion, a ghetto was established in Kozienice, where Ruth was forced to witness executions. Escaping the Kozienice ghetto in the fall of 1942, she had to negotiate the exigencies of three forced labor camps in Poland - Pionki, Skarzysko-Kamienna, and Czestochowa - together with her mother and her cousin Sarah. Being hidden for the most part, Ruth was in constant fear of being caught and killed; children were essentially not allowed in these camps. Her father and most of her very large extended family perished in the Holocaust. Only she, her mother and her cousins Sarah and Rose survived. Though essentially Ruth's 'Invisible Holocaust', the work transcends the memoir form in its presentation of the author's metatexts, her own imperilled childhood in the war. Clearly secondary to Ruth's story, this material nevertheless complicates and intensifies the narrative without relativizing the Holocaust. This kind of dialogue between Jew and German has not taken place before in the Holocaust memoir as a genre. It shows the particular brutality children suffer in war, regardless of the ideological and political position they are forced to occupy.

Here, Letchworth-born Yanky Fachler explores a short-lived (1939- 1971) provincial Jewish congregation that boasted a communal infrastructure typical of much larger communities. Based during the war years around an estate built by Abba Bornstein, most of the community returned to London after the Second World War. The centre of gravity shifted to what former Talmud Torah headmaster Harry Leitner describes as the ' two pyramid houses on Sollershott East - the Sassoon/Feuchtwanger and Fachler homes.' Letchworth was home to the world-famous private Judaica library assembled by David Sassoon. His son, Rabbi Solomon Sassoon, made sure that Jewish children from across the religious spectrum attended the Talmud Torah educational programme after regular school hours. Several rabbinical luminaries were associated with Letchworth, including the communal rabbi, Asher Feuchtwanger, Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks, Rabbi Eliyahu Dessler, and Rabbi Eliyahu Lapian. Fachler describes a unique community where the orthodox coexisted harmoniously with the non-orthodox, Ashkenazi Jews lived side-by-side with Baghdadi Jews, and wealthy families rubbed shoulders with working class families.

Drawing on Henrietta Szold's letters and diary, extensive research, and historical sources of that time in Germany and Palestine, the book is a powerful narrative and spellbinding rescue story that brings to life one of the darkest and yet most inspirational chapters in Jewish history. Szold was seventy-three, founder of Hadassah, the Jewish Zionist women's organization, when she was appointed to direct Youth Aliyah, and over the next decade transported over 20,000 Jewish children from Nazi Europe to the safety of Palestine, a feat that she later considered the greatest triumph of her memorable career. David Ben-Gurion called Szold 'the greatest Jewish woman in 400 years.' Labyrinth is the unforgettable story of Szold's stamina and courage as she battled her greatest adversary, mass murderer Adolf Eichmann, for the lives of innocent children. Not only Szold, who made three perilous trips to Berlin during the 1930s under the watchful eye of the Gestapo, but also Hadassah operatives and members of Youth Aliyah stationed throughout Europe, who lived under constant danger, and many of whom gave their lives for the rescue mission. Szold would live in Palestine until her death in 1945.

The editors selected 58 images from noted collections consisting of vintage photography, propaganda posters, newsreel stills, etc. matching each to a poet, short story writer, plus features by essayists. Each writer uniquely interpreted these " silent witnesses" from the period creating new perspectives for our times. The book includes four parts: Part I covers the rise of Nazism and heightening antisemitism. Writers focus on key events such as the Beer Hall Putsch and the Berlin Olympics. Part II revolves around forced labor, ghettos, and extermination, dealing with such topics as death squads, the " final solution," and collaborators. Part III is all about escape, rescue, and resistance, including the Danish rescue of its Jewish population and the Warsaw ghetto uprising. Part IV deals with the aftermath, the liberation of concentration camp prisoners, the refugee crisis, and the Nuremberg trials. Together this diverse group, including writers of color, Christian, Jewish, Muslim, LGBTQ, prominent and emerging writers, have contributed a powerful body of work that challenges international trends of xenophobia and anti-democratic movements by using the power of art to portray truth.

In the mid-nineteenth century Giacomo Meyerbeer dominated the operatic world. The first Jewish composer to achieve international fame, he staged his grand operas in France. His second work, Les Huguenots, became the first opera to reach 1,000 performances at the Paris Opéra. He was born in Berlin in 1791 as Meyer Beer, the eldest son of Jacob and Amalia Beer. As European Jews emerged from the ghetto, his wealthy parents took a leading role in creating a more integrated Jewish identity. Jacob became a pioneer of Reform Judaism, while Amalia held a glittering musical salon. His brother Wilhelm built an observatory, where he and his scientific partner, Johann Mädler, made the first accurate maps of the moon and Mars. A milestone in the history of astronomy. Later Wilhelm became a railway entrepreneur, a banker and a politician. The youngest son Michael was a dramatist and poet who died at the age of 33. His third play was admired by Goethe, who staged it at Weimar. This biography reveals the story of a remarkable family who fought prejudice and intolerance to become role models for their contemporaries, and whose lives illuminate a crucial and formative period in German-Jewish history

A Fairy Tale Unmasked is two books in one. Part One is the story of Dieter Vaupel, a German high school teacher who, in 1983, uncovered a hidden past when he and his students began researching what happened in their town during the Nazi regime. The picturesque town of Hessisch Lichtenau was where thousands of slave laborers, including 1,000 women and girls from Auschwitz, were forced to work in one of the largest munitions factories in all of Europe. Vaupel and his students broke through the wall of silence surrounding this history and stood up to threats to leave the past alone. Then, amid further controversy, Vaupel and a group of townspeople contacted former forced workers and invited them to come back to Hessisch Lichtenau. In 1986, Blanka Pudler, who as a 15-year-old girl was sent from Auschwitz as a slave laborer, was one of those who returned. Part Two of A Fairy Tale Unmasked is Pudler's account of her enslavement, a story she would go on to tell to thousands of German schoolchildren. In honor of her efforts, in 2012 she was awarded the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany. Part One is written by journalist D.Z. Stone with the cooperation of Dieter Vaupel. Part Two is by Dieter Vaupel, based on his interviews with Blanka Pudler. This is an extraordinary collaboration that makes for compelling and captivating reading.

Of all the libels that have served as a means of incitement of hate against Jews, and as intellectual justification of anti-Semitism, the myth of the so-called 'Jewish Conspiracy' to gain domination of the whole world, as embodied in the forged Protocols of the Elders of Zion, is probably the most devious and the most dangerous. Previously only analyzed in academic, footnoted studies, the history of the Protocols is presented here by Judge Hadassa Ben-Itto in an eminently readable, fascinating account, telling the stories of the numerous people involved over the hundred years that the forgery has existed. Above all, this is the story of a judge who follows the Protocols into lawyers' chambers and into courtrooms in Switzerland, South Africa, Germany, the United States, and Russia, and presents the reader with a detailed critical analysis of legal proceedings which culminated in fascinating courtroom drama. The truth is revealed again and again, but the lie will not die.

From concentration camp to Olympic athlete this biography relates the extraordinary life story of Ben Helfgott, founder of the 45 Aid Society and tireless worker for reconciliation between Jews and Germany and Poland.