Everyday Silence and the Holocaust

1. Auflage 2024
ISBN: 978-1-032-61243-0
Verlag: Taylor & Francis

Buch, Englisch, 188 Seiten, Format (B × H): 156 mm x 234 mm, Gewicht: 445 g

Everyday Silence and the Holocaust examines Irene Levin’s experiences of her family’s unspoken history of the Holocaust and the silence that surrounded their war experiences as non-topics.

A central example of what C. Wright Mills considered the core of sociology – the intersection of biography and history – the book covers the process by which the author came to understand that notes found in her mother’s apartment following her death were not unimportant scribbles, but in fact contained elements of her mother’s biographical narrative, recording her parents’ escape from occupied Norway to unoccupied Sweden in late 1942. From the mid-1990s, when society began to open up about the atrocities committed against the Jews, so too did the author find that her mother and the wider Jewish population ceased to be silent about their war experiences and began to talk. Charting the process by which the author traced the family’s broader history, this book explores the use of silence, whether in the family or in society more widely, as a powerful analytic tool and examines how these silences can intertwine. This book provides insight into social processes often viewed through a macro-historical lens by way of analysis of the life of an "ordinary" Jewish woman as a survivor.

An engaging, grounded study of the biographical method in sociology and the role played by silence, this book will appeal to readers with an interest in the Holocaust and World War II, as well as in social scientific research methods. It will be of use to both undergraduate and postgraduate scholars in the fields of history, social science, psychology, philosophy, and the history of ideas.

The Open Access version of this book, available at http://www.taylorfrancis.com, has been made available under a Creative Commons [Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives (CC-BY-NC-ND)] 4.0 license.

Zielgruppe

Postgraduate and Undergraduate

Autoren/Hrsg.

Levin, Irene

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Weltgeschichte & Geschichte einzelner Länder und Gebietsräume Deutsche Geschichte Deutsche Geschichte: Holocaust
• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Soziologie Allgemein

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Preface Part I: Before the war Mother and father get married – a wedding and a shop The application for Norwegian citizenship Part II: During the war The living would envy the dead Three months in 1942 – the anti-Jewish policy is intensified Rumours begin to circulate The hunt for no. 490 and no. 301 The "Arian" policeman Mrs. Follestad starts organising the escape On the doorstep of the psychiatric clinic, 6 p.m. The arrest of Rubin Pinkowitz Refugees in Sweden 'Oj Gott wher kommt' Part III: After the war What did they come home to? Traces of grandfather in the archives Getting away from the memories Jewish voices in the public sphere Us and the others Self-reproach Mother breaks the silence Part IV: The language of silence: A postscript Appendix 1: Fatalities Appendix 2: Method

Über Autor(innen)

Irene Levin is Professor Emerita in social work at Oslo Metropolitan University. She has been co-editor of The Holocaust as Active Memory, Social Work and Sociology, and Families and Memories. She has also written Norwegian Jewish Women: Wartime Agency – Post-War Silence in Women and War, The Escape from Norway in Civil Society and the Holocaust, and Silence, Memory and Migration in Families and Migration.