This is Reading List #23, a selection of recent Holocaust-related news stories and links from around the internet.

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Reading list #23

This is Reading List #23, a selection of recent Holocaust-related news stories and links from around the internet.

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You can help The Holocaust Reader grow by subscribing and sharing: You can subscribe to receive each new post direct to your inbox simply by entering your address in the box to the right (beneath this article on mobile devices). Holocaust Reader is also now on Patreon and Buy Me A Coffee – your donations are crucial to covering the cost of running the site. Also, you can follow @HolocaustReader on twitter. And if you like this article, why not share it on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram? Your help reaching new readers would be greatly appreciated!

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Recent research by the New York-based Claims Conference has found that there are still around 245,000 Holocaust survivors still alive (AP). The vast majority were children at the time of the Nazi genocide, and today 49% live in Israel. The survey found that the median age of survivors is 86; the minimum age would have to be 78.

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Holocaust survivors in Britain have criticised the proposed UK Holocaust memorial, planned for a park next to the Houses of Parliament in London (BBC News). 98-year-old Auschwitz survivor Anita Lasker-Wallfisch delivered a withering dismissal of the proposals for a learning centre on the site to a British parliamentary committee, asking MPs, “what are we learning now that we haven’t learned in 80 years? We shouldn’t kill each other? Good idea”. The use of the site has caused controversy since plans were unveiled in 2016, on the grounds of cost and design.

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A series of clandestine photographs showing German Jews in Breslau awaiting deportation in 1943 has been made public, after they were found in a collection of old pictures (The Guardian). The photos were taken secretly by Albert Hadda, an architect who had access to the area of the city where Jews were being held before being transported east where they were murdered. Despite the tragedy of the events documented, the pictures also reveal the mundanity of much the process leading up to the murder of Germany’s Jews, with people standing around in an orderly manner with their gathered belongings, unaware of the fate that awaited them.

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Literary scholar Lawrence Langer, who dedicated his life to the study of the Holocaust, has died aged 94 (New York Times ($)). Langer was known for his work on Holocaust literature, but he also conducted many interviews with survivors. He was critical of attempts to draw moral lessons from the events of the Nazi genocide and questioned what use conventional language could really be when faced with the unimaginable horror of what happened. Langer was born in the Bronx, New York, in 1929; a defining experience which set him on his ultimate academic path came in the 1960s, when he visited the the remains of Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria and wandered the site alone. The obituary end quoting Langer’s 1998 book Preempting the Holocaust: “All Holocaust art is built on a mountain of corpses, so that it can never be an act of celebration.”

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The stories of John Fieldsend, 92 and Ruth Schwiening, 88, who arrived in Britain as refugees in 1939, are told to mark Holocaust Memorial Day (BBC News). Fieldsend remembers the sound of Hitler’s voice blasting antisemitic rants around the streets of Dresden via loudspeaker; he later learned that his parents had been murdered by the Nazis. Schwiening was only three years old when she arrived, and received a surprise when her mother, who had been able to flee Europe only after her daughter, appeared at the house of her foster family shortly after.

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If you have seen a relevant article that could be included in next week’s reading list, why not get in touch via the contact page, or on Twitter, @holocaustreader?

Inclusion of articles on this list does not necessarily indicate endorsement of opinions expressed within them.

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