The Holocaust and World War II: In History and In Memory is a thematic volume of nineteen articles based on papers presented at the 9th Middle Tennessee State University International Holocaust Studies Conference in October, 2009. It focuses on the connection between World War II and the Holocaust as it was lived as well as how it is remembered, commemorated and taught. It is interdisciplinary in terms of subject and content, and it explores a variety of methodological approaches to the topic, including historical analysis, pedagogy, oral testimony, literary criticism and museology. The volume features three articles written by the conference's featured speakers. Two of them were authored by the keynote speaker, internationally acclaimed historian Gerhard L. Weinberg. Arguably the world's foremost authority on WWII, Weinberg is the author of A World at Arms: A Global History of World War II and several other prize-winning books. He contributes "World War II: A Brief History" and an article titled "Roosevelt, Truman and the Holocaust" that evaluates the difficult decisions concerning the Holocaust made by two American presidents. The second featured speaker, Raffael Scheck, author of Hitler's African Victims: The German Army Massacres of Black French Soldiers in 1940, contributes an article titled "Racial Hatred: The German Army Massacres of Black French Soldiers in 1940" to this volume. Scheck's essay places the experiences of these black French African prisoners of war into the broader context of the treatment of black people by the Nazis. The remaining sixteen articles, contributed by prominent scholars from North America, Europe and Asia, represent a broad spectrum of disciplines, methodological approaches, and points of view concerning the Holocaust and the Second World War. The editors believe this anthology will be both an important acquisition for libraries and a useful tool for scholars, teachers, researchers and general readers interested in the World War II era as well as in the Holocaust.
About the Author: Dr Nancy E. Rupprecht is Chair of the Holocaust Studies Program and a Professor of History at Middle Tennessee State University, USA, where she formerly directed Women's Studies. She has edited or co-edited three thematic anthologies of essays in Holocaust Studies and published several articles and book reviews in the fields of German, Holocaust and European Women's history. Wendy Koenig is Associate Professor of Art History at North Central College in Naperville, Illinois, USA. She received her PhD in the History of Art from the Ohio State University and is the author of The Phenomenon of Interruption in the Visual Arts: A Comparison of Works by Daniel Libeskind, Gerhard Richter and Ilya Kabakov (2009). She co-edited the volume Holocaust Persecution: Responses and Consequences (2010) with Nancy E. Rupprecht.