1st Edition

Surviving the Holocaust A Life Course Perspective

By Ronald Berger Copyright 2011
280 Pages
by Routledge

280 Pages
by Routledge

280 Pages
by Routledge

Surviving the Holocaust is a compelling sociological account of two brothers who survived the Holocaust in Nazi-occupied Poland.  One brother, the author’s father, endured several concentration camps, including the infamous camp at Auschwitz, as well as a horrific winter death march; while the other brother, the author’s uncle, survived outside the camps by passing as a Catholic among... Read more

1. Jewish Survival of the Holocaust  2. The Final Solution to the "Jewish Problem"  3. The Prewar and Early War Years in Poland 4. Death and Evasion 5. Surviving the Concentration Camps 6. Wartime Endings and New Beginnings 7. Life in the Promised Land  8. Collective Memories and the Politics of Victimization 9. Jewish Continuity and the Universality of Difference

Biography

Ronald J. Berger is Professor of Sociology at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater. He has published over a dozen books, including Fathoming the Holocaust: A Social Problems Approach, Hoop Dreams on Wheels: Disability and the Competitive Wheelchair Athlete, and Storytelling Sociology: Narrative as Social Inquiry (with Richard Quinney).

"By employing specific "tools of sociological analysis" derived from the life-course, agency-structure, and collective memory literatures, Berger takes the reader on a remarkable (and very personal) journey into holocaust survival research. Highly readable and solidly researched and argued, Surviving the Holocaust will be studied and discussed for some time by general as well as academic audiences."—Bob Wolensky, Sociology, University of Wisconsin–Stevens Point

"Surviving the Holocaust will contribute significantly to the literature on the Holocaust with its sociologically incisive account of human actions....An important work for both Holocaust scholars and sociologists."."—Keith Doubt, Sociology, Wittenberg University

"Using a life history approach, Ronald Berger has written a humane, insightful and sociologically sophisticated narrative of two Holocaust survivors, his father Michael and his uncle Sol. Berger is intent on encouraging readers to seek out the universal significance of the Holocaust"—Peter Kivisto, Sociology, Augustana College and University of Turku