ISRAEL AUTHOR · HISTORY · JEWS
Saul Friedländer
Also known as: Saul Friedla?nder, saul friedlander
Most acclaimed
The Years of Persecution, 1933–1939 (Nazi Germany and the Jews, Volume 1)
Giving considerable emphasis to an immense array of recently published material and a wealth of new archival findings, Saul Friedlander describes and interprets the steadily increasing anti-Jewish persecution in Germany after the 1933 Nazi accession to power. He demonstrates the interaction between intentions and contingencies, between discernible causes and changing circumstances. Friedlander shows how Nazi ideological objectives and tactical policy decisions enhanced one another and always left an opening for ever more radical moves.
Franz Kafka
Looks at such major aspects of the author's life as family, Judaism, love and sex, writing, illness, and despair, and argues that, when reinserted in Kafka's letters and diaries, deleted segments lift the mask of "sainthood" frequently attached to him. "Franz Kafka was the poet of his own disorder. Throughout his life he struggled with a pervasive sense of shame and guilt that left traces in his daily existence -- in his many letters, in his extensive diaries, and especially in his fiction. This stimulating book investigates some of the sources of Kafka's personal anguish and its complex reflections in his imaginary world. In his query, Saul Friedländer probes major aspects of Kafka's life (family, Judaism, love and sex, writing, illness, and despair) that until now have been skewed by posthumous censorship. Contrary to Kafka's dying request that all his papers be burned, Max Brod, Kafka's closest friend and literary executor, edited and published the author's novels and other works soon after his death in 1924. Friedländer shows that, when reinserted in Kafka's letters and diaries, deleted segments lift the mask of "sainthood" frequently attached to the writer and thus restore previously hidden aspects of his individuality." -- Publisher's description.
The Years of Extermination, 1939–1945 (Nazi Germany and the Jews, Volume 2)
The enactment of the German extermination policies that resulted in the murder of six million European Jews depended upon many factors, including the cooperation of local authorities and police departments, and the passivity of the populations, primarily of their political and spiritual elites. Necessary also was the victims' willingness to submit, often with the hope of surviving long enough to escape the German vise. The Years of Extermination, the completion of Saul Friedlander's major historical opus on Nazi Germany and the Jews, explores the convergence of the various aspects of this most systematic and sustained of modern genocides. In this unparalleled work — based on a vast array of documents and an overwhelming choir of voices from diaries, letters, and memoirs — the history of the Holocaust has found its definitive representation.