Holocaust by Bullets Exhibit: Home
This guide is an overview of our gallery exhibit with exhibit information, library events, and related library resources.
Exhibit Description
The exhibition "Holocaust by Bullets 10 Years of Investigation" presents the results of Yahad-In Unum’s research in Eastern Europe. It also underscores the "Holocaust by Bullets" as a precursor and model for mass murder crimes today. The exhibit showcases the painstaking research uncovering the step-by-step nature of the crimes committed against Jews and Roma by the Nazi killing units. The exhibition is built around the five steps of the crime identified by Yahad-In Unum researchers based on eyewitness accounts:
1. The Arrest
2. The Road
3. The Undressing
4. The Shooting
5. The Looting
The steps are described through quotes from eyewitness testimonies and through archival photographs. A short summary defining each step and highlighting the criminal nature of the Holocaust by Bullets are provided on a separate introductory panel.
Library Events and Programming
Check out our upcoming events related to the exhibit! For event descriptions and registration details, click on each calendar entry below or check out our full list at lib.nova.edu/exhibits.
Exhibit Sponsors & Partners
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Related Library Resources
This is a selected list of books related to the exhibit topic. For more book recommendations, search the library catalog or ask a librarian for help.
Aftermath by
How does a nation recover from fascism and turn toward a free society once more? This internationally acclaimed revelatory history--"filled with first-person accounts from articles and diaries" (The New York Times)--of the transformational decade that followed World War II illustrates how Germany raised itself out of the ashes of defeat and reckoned with the corruption of its soul and the horrors of the Holocaust. Featuring over 40 eye-opening black-and-white photographs and posters from the period. The years 1945 to 1955 were a raw, wild decade that found many Germans politically, economically, and morally bankrupt. Victorious Allied forces occupied the four zones that make up present-day Germany. More than half the population was displaced; 10 million newly released forced laborers and several million prisoners of war returned to an uncertain existence. Cities lay in ruins--no mail, no trains, no traffic--with bodies yet to be found beneath the towering rubble. Aftermath received wide acclaim and spent forty-eight weeks on the best-seller list in Germany when it was published there in 2019. It is the first history of Germany's national mentality in the immediate postwar years. Using major global political developments as a backdrop, Harald Jähner weaves a series of life stories into a nuanced panorama of a nation undergoing monumental change. Poised between two eras, this decade is portrayed by Jähner as a period that proved decisive for Germany's future--and one starkly different from how most of us imagine it today.
ISBN: 9780593319741Publication Date: 2022-01-11
Book of the Disappeared by
Book of the Disappeared confronts worldwide human rights violations of enforced disappearance and genocide and explores the global quest for justice with forceful, outstanding contributions by respected scholars, expert practitioners, and provocative contemporary artists. This profoundly humane book spotlights our historic inhumanity while offering insights for survival and transformation.
ISBN: 9780472903252Publication Date: 2023-05-30
Cold Crematorium by
A lost classic of Holocaust literature translated for the first time--from journalist, poet and survivor József Debreczeni "As immediate a confrontation of the horrors of the camps as I've ever encountered. It's also a subtle if startling meditation on what it is to attempt to confront those horrors with words...Debreczeni has preserved a panoptic depiction of hell, at once personal, communal and atmospheric." --New York Times "A treasure...Debreczeni's memoir is a crucial contribution to Holocaust literature, a book that enlarges our understanding of 'life' in Auschwitz." --Wall Street Journal "A literary diamond...A holocaust memoir worthy of Primo Levi." --The Times of London "It should be required reading." --Jonathan Safran Foer, author of Everything Is Illuminated "A timely reminder of man's inhumanity to man." --Jung Chang, author of Wild Swans József Debreczeni, a prolific Hungarian-language journalist and poet, arrived in Auschwitz in 1944; had he been selected to go "left," his life expectancy would have been approximately forty-five minutes. One of the "lucky" ones, he was sent to the "right," which led to twelve horrifying months of incarceration and slave labor in a series of camps, ending in the "Cold Crematorium"--the so-called hospital of the forced labor camp Dörnhau, where prisoners too weak to work awaited execution. But as Soviet and Allied troops closed in on the camps, local Nazi commanders--anxious about the possible consequences of outright murder--decided to leave the remaining prisoners to die in droves rather than sending them directly to the gas chambers. Debreczeni recorded his experiences in Cold Crematorium, one of the harshest, most merciless indictments of Nazism ever written. This haunting memoir, rendered in the precise and unsentimental style of an accomplished journalist, is an eyewitness account of incomparable literary quality. The subject matter is intrinsically tragic, yet the author's evocative prose, sometimes using irony, sarcasm, and even acerbic humor, compels the reader to imagine human beings in circumstances impossible to comprehend intellectually. First published in Hungarian in 1950, it was never translated into a world language due to McCarthyism, Cold War hostilities and antisemitism. More than 70 years later, this masterpiece that was nearly lost to time will be available in 15 languages, finally taking its rightful place among the greatest works of Holocaust literature.
ISBN: 9781250290540Publication Date: 2024-01-23
The Counterfeit Countess by
The astonishing story of Dr. Josephine Janina Mehlberg--a Jewish mathematician who saved thousands of lives in Nazi-occupied Poland by masquerading as a Polish aristocrat--drawing on Mehlberg's own unpublished memoir. World War II and the Holocaust have given rise to many stories of resistance and rescue, but The Counterfeit Countess is unique. It tells the remarkable, unknown story of "Countess Janina Suchodolska," a Jewish woman who rescued more than 10,000 Poles imprisoned by Poland's Nazi occupiers. Mehlberg operated in Lublin, Poland, headquarters of Aktion Reinhard, the SS operation that murdered 1.7 million Jews in occupied Poland. Using the identity papers of a Polish aristocrat, she worked as a welfare official while also serving in the Polish resistance. With guile, cajolery, and steely persistence, the "Countess" persuaded SS officials to release thousands of Poles from the Majdanek concentration camp. She won permission to deliver food and medicine--even decorated Christmas trees--for thousands more of the camp's prisoners. At the same time, she personally smuggled supplies and messages to resistance fighters imprisoned at Majdanek, where 63,000 Jews were murdered in gas chambers and shooting pits. Incredibly, she eluded detection, and ultimately survived the war and emigrated to the US. Drawing on the manuscript of Mehlberg's own unpublished memoir, supplemented with prodigious research, Elizabeth White and Joanna Sliwa, professional historians and Holocaust experts, have uncovered the full story of this remarkable woman. They interweave Mehlberg's sometimes harrowing personal testimony with broader historical narrative. Like The Light of Days, Schindler's List, and Irena's Children, The Counterfeit Countess is an unforgettable account of inspiring courage in the face of unspeakable cruelty.
ISBN: 9781982189143Publication Date: 2024-01-23
Growing in the shadow of antifascism: Remembering the Holocaust in communist Eastern EuropeISBN: 9789633864364Publication Date: 2022
People Love Dead Jews: Reports from a Haunted Present by
Renowned and beloved as a prizewinning novelist, Dara Horn has also been publishing penetrating essays since she was a teenager. Often asked by major publications to write on subjects related to Jewish culture--and increasingly in response to a recent wave of deadly antisemitic attacks--Horn was troubled to realize what all of these assignments had in common: she was being asked to write about dead Jews, never about living ones. In these essays, Horn reflects on subjects as far-flung as the international veneration of Anne Frank, the mythology that Jewish family names were changed at Ellis Island, the blockbuster traveling exhibition Auschwitz, the marketing of the Jewish history of Harbin, China, and the little-known life of the "righteous Gentile" Varian Fry. Throughout, she challenges us to confront the reasons why there might be so much fascination with Jewish deaths, and so little respect for Jewish lives unfolding in the present. Horn draws upon her travels, her research, and also her own family life--trying to explain Shakespeare's Shylock to a curious ten-year-old, her anger when swastikas are drawn on desks in her children's school, the profound perspective offered by traditional religious practice and study--to assert the vitality, complexity, and depth of Jewish life against an antisemitism that, far from being disarmed by the mantra of "Never forget," is on the rise. As Horn explores the (not so) shocking attacks on the American Jewish community in recent years, she reveals the subtler dehumanization built into the public piety that surrounds the Jewish past--making the radical argument that the benign reverence we give to past horrors is itself a profound affront to human dignity.
ISBN: 9780393531572Publication Date: 2021-09-07
Plunder by
A New York Times Critics' Best Nonfiction Book of 2021 Canadian Jewish Literary Award for Biography From a gifted young writer, the story of his quest to reclaim his family's apartment building in Poland--and of the astonishing entanglement with Nazi treasure hunters that follows Menachem Kaiser's brilliantly told story, woven from improbable events and profound revelations, is set in motion when the author takes up his Holocaust-survivor grandfather's former battle to reclaim the family's apartment building in Sosnowiec, Poland. Soon, he is on a circuitous path to encounters with the long-time residents of the building, and with a Polish lawyer known as "The Killer." A surprise discovery--that his grandfather's cousin not only survived the war, but wrote a secret memoir while a slave laborer in a vast, secret Nazi tunnel complex--leads to Kaiser being adopted as a virtual celebrity by a band of Silesian treasure seekers who revere the memoir as the indispensable guidebook to Nazi plunder. Propelled by rich original research, Kaiser immerses readers in profound questions that reach far beyond his personal quest. What does it mean to seize your own legacy? Can reclaimed property repair rifts among the living? Plunder is both a deeply immersive adventure story and an irreverent, daring interrogation of inheritance--material, spiritual, familial, and emotional.
ISBN: 9781328506467Publication Date: 2021-03-16
Teaching about genocide: Insights and advice from secondary teachers and professors. Volume 2 by ISBN: 9781475847529Publication Date: 2019
White Freedom by
The racist legacy behind the Western idea of freedom The era of the Enlightenment, which gave rise to our modern conceptions of freedom and democracy, was also the height of the trans-Atlantic slave trade. America, a nation founded on the principle of liberty, is also a nation built on African slavery, Native American genocide, and systematic racial discrimination. White Freedom traces the complex relationship between freedom and race from the eighteenth century to today, revealing how being free has meant being white. Tyler Stovall explores the intertwined histories of racism and freedom in France and the United States, the two leading nations that have claimed liberty as the heart of their national identities. He explores how French and American thinkers defined freedom in racial terms and conceived of liberty as an aspect and privilege of whiteness. He discusses how the Statue of Liberty--a gift from France to the United States and perhaps the most famous symbol of freedom on Earth--promised both freedom and whiteness to European immigrants. Taking readers from the Age of Revolution to today, Stovall challenges the notion that racism is somehow a paradox or contradiction within the democratic tradition, demonstrating how white identity is intrinsic to Western ideas about liberty. Throughout the history of modern Western liberal democracy, freedom has long been white freedom. A major work of scholarship that is certain to draw a wide readership and transform contemporary debates, White Freedom provides vital new perspectives on the inherent racism behind our most cherished beliefs about freedom, liberty, and human rights.
ISBN: 9780691205366Publication Date: 2021-01-19
Women and Genocide by
The genocides of modern history-Rwanda, Armenia, Guatemala, the Holocaust, and countless others-and their effects have been well documented, but how do the experiences of female victims and perpetrators differ from those of men? In Women and Genocide, human rights advocates and scholars come together to argue that the memory of trauma is gendered and that women's voices and perspectives are key to our understanding of the dynamics that emerge in the context of genocidal violence. The contributors of this volume examine how women consistently are targets for the sexualized violence that serves as an instrument of ethnic cleansing, how female perpetrators take advantage of the new power structures, and how women are involved in the struggle for justice in post-genocidal contexts. By placing women at center stage, Women and Genocide helps us to better understand the nexus existing between misogyny and violence in societies where genocide erupts.
ISBN: 9780253033833Publication Date: 2018-04-10
This is a selected list of movies with scenes filmed in Florida. For more movie recommendations, search the library catalog or ask a librarian for help.
- 60 Minutes, The Betrayal, Part 1
in 60 Minutes (Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS), 2022), 13 mins - Crash Course Sociology, Episode 35, Racial/Ethnic Prejudice & Discrimination
presented by Nicole Sweeney, fl. 2012, in Crash Course Sociology, Episode 35 (Crash Course Sociology, 2021), 11 mins - Finding Your Roots, Season 8, Episode 4, Things We Don't Discuss
directed by Sabin Streeter, fl. 2005-2017; presented by Henry Louis Gates, Jr., 1950-; produced by Matthew Cesario, fl. 2017 and Natalia Warchol, fl. 2013, Kunhardt Films, Inkwell Media Inc. and McGee Media, in Finding Your Roots, Season 8, Episode 4 (Arlington, VA: Public Broadcasting Service, 2022), 52 mins - Finding Your Roots with Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Season 7, Episode 2, Against All Oddsdirected by Sabin Streeter, fl. 2005-2017; produced by Elizabeth Woller, fl. 2012, Kevin Burke and Natalia Warchol, fl. 2013, WETA Productions, Kunhardt Films, Inkwell Media Inc. and McGee Media, in Finding Your Roots with Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Season 7, Episode 2 (Arlington, VA: Public Broadcasting Service, 2021), 52 mins
- Rise of the Nazis, Season 4, Episode 1, Most Wanted
in Rise of the Nazis, Season 4, Episode 1 (BBC Worldwide, 2023), 58 mins - The Students of Umberto Primo
directed by Alessandra Maioletti, fl. 2022 (Jerusalem, Yerushalayim District: Go2Films, 2022), 1 hour 24 mins - US and the Holocaust, 1, “The Golden Door” (Beginnings-1938)
directed by Sarah Botstein, 1972-, Lynn Novick, 1962- and Ken Burns, 1953-; produced by Lynn Novick, 1962-, Sarah Botstein, 1972-, Mike Welt, fl. 2004 and Ken Burns, 1953-, Florentine Films, in US and the Holocaust, 1 (Arlington, VA: Public Broadcasting Service, 2022), 2 hours 8 mins - Viral: Antisemitism in Four Mutations
directed by Andrew Goldberg; produced by Diana Robinson, fl. 2020 and Andrew Goldberg, So Much Film (Arlington, VA: Public Broadcasting Service, 2020), 1 hour 22 mins - We Remember: Songs of Survivors
directed by Ilene Cutler and Tim Miller; produced by Ilene Cutler and Tim Miller, Big Chief Entertainment; performed by Michael Veitch, Jude Roberts, Kelleigh McKenzie and Elizabeth Clark (Arlington, VA: Public Broadcasting Service, 2022), 55 mins
