possm reviewed Jüdischer Widerstand in Europa by Dieter Bingen
You should read this book if you want to know about Jewish resistance in Europe 1933-1945.
4 stars
Each chapter is a paper by a different historian, so there's a lot of variation in the quality of the writing. The book is divided by geographic area, which makes sense: the conditions and forms of Jewish resistance did vary by area quite a lot, it turns out. The subject matter of Jewish life during national socialism is pretty grim, so it was a tough read at times, still the fact that the book is about resistance gives it a relatively optimistic focus. I especially liked the chapters that were about individual figures or groups. The chapters that focused more on the broader history were a little boring to me. The contextualization of the book in the discourse among historians (first two chapters) was very interesting. The art history and literary studies chapters in the last part were boring to me personally. The collection of yiddish resistance songs at the …
Each chapter is a paper by a different historian, so there's a lot of variation in the quality of the writing. The book is divided by geographic area, which makes sense: the conditions and forms of Jewish resistance did vary by area quite a lot, it turns out. The subject matter of Jewish life during national socialism is pretty grim, so it was a tough read at times, still the fact that the book is about resistance gives it a relatively optimistic focus. I especially liked the chapters that were about individual figures or groups. The chapters that focused more on the broader history were a little boring to me. The contextualization of the book in the discourse among historians (first two chapters) was very interesting. The art history and literary studies chapters in the last part were boring to me personally. The collection of yiddish resistance songs at the end, on the other hand, was a great, non-dry way to close the book.
I learned a lot from this book. It is an academic work that is exactly about what the title says - very straightforward. I knew what I was getting into, and got what I expected.