Holocaust Letters

Clara Dijkstra has a PhD in History from the University of Cambridge, UK.Charlie Knight is a Visiting Fellow at the School of Advanced Study, University of London, UK.Sandra Lipner is a Research Fellow at the UCL Centre for Collective Violence, Holocaust, and Genocide Studies, UK.Christine Schmidt is Deputy Director and Head of Research at The Wiener Holocaust Library, UK.

• Foreword Joachim Schlör (University of Southampton, UK)Editors’ Introduction1. Letters as Sources in Holocaust Studies Maria Ferenc (Jewish Historical Institute, Poland) and Shirli Gilbert (UCL, UK)Part 1 - Methodological Considerations2. Refugee Letters: Methodological considerations Hannah Holtschneider (University of Edinburgh, UK)3. ‘Flat objects’: Letters, material culture and embodied family history Christine Schmidt (The Wiener Holocaust Library, UK)4. ‘I no longer have the strength to think and yet’: Paul Léon’s letters from Drancy and Compiègne Xander Ryan (University of Reading, UK)5. Emotions as Societal Seismographs in the Letters of Heinrich and Annemarie Brenzinger Sandra Lipner (Royal Holloway, University of London, UK)6. Analysing the Role of the Narrator in Private Correspondences: War experiences narrated as spaces Sophie Bayer Blears (University of Edinburgh, UK)Part 2 - Letters in Holocaust Research7. The Experience of Jewish Motherhood in Drancy Clara Dijkstra (University of Cambridge, UK)8. The Piano, Lectures, and Business: Reflections of ordinary life and persecution in Hungarian labour service letters Barnabas Balint (University of Oxford, UK)9. To the Letter? The correspondence of the Jewish Committee for Relief Abroad and Anglo-Jewish Relief in North Africa and Europe, 1943-1945 Roxy Moore (Royal Holloway, University of London, UK)10. ‘My dearest Stella’: Witnessing the aftermath of the Holocaust in the letters of a British relief worker Rob Thompson (UCL, UK)Part 3 - Reflections on the Source11. Reading the Letter: Reflections on the researcher’s journey Charlie Knight (University of Southampton, UK)12. The Exhibition ‘Holocaust Letters’ at The Wiener Holocaust Library Sandra Lipner (Royal Holloway, University of London, UK) and Christine Schmidt (The Wiener Holocaust Library, UK)13. Never Together Again: Reconstructing a narrative Deborah Jaffé (Independent Scholar, UK) and Ricarda Vidal (Kings College London, UK)Part 4 - Letters in the Spotlight14. Dispatch from an Aryanised Business: Otto Poetsch writes to Leo Anker, Danzig, 31 August 1939 Joseph Cronin (Leo Baeck Institute London, UK)15. Briefaktion letters from Auschwitz-Birkenau Jennifer Putnam (Birkbeck College, University of London, UK)16. ‘She must have signed it in that yellow-star-world’: Mrs. Árpád Seres’s restitution letter Borbála Klacsmann (University College Dublin, Ireland)17. ‘Leb wohl, mein Lieber’: Examining familial dynamics in exile through the everydayness of the migrant love letter Elizabeth Lamle (University of Birmingham, UK)BibliographyIndex

This book provides a fascinating deep dive into Holocaust letters both as texts and material objects. The letters, which are all too often the last words of the Jewish victims, reveal how people were able to make sense of their suffering. The essays in this volume open up valuable new perspectives about the Holocaust.