The Victims of Slavery, Colonization and the Holocaust: A Comparative History of Persecution

Description

This book provides a sophisticated investigation into the experience of being exterminated, as felt by victims of the Holocaust, and compares and contrasts this analysis with the experiences of people who have been colonized or enslaved. Using numerous victim accounts and a wide range of primary sources, the book moves away from the 'continuity thesis', with its insistence on colonial intent as the reason for victimization in relation to other historical examples of mass political violence, to look at the victim experience on its own terms. By affording each constituent case study its own distinctive aspects, The Victims of Slavery, Colonization and the Holocaust allows for a more enriching comparison of victim experience to be made that respects each group of victims in their uniqueness. It is an important, innovative volume for all students of the Holocaust, genocide and the history of mass political violence.

Kitty Millet is Professor of Holocaust Studies and Comparative Jewish Literatures at San Francisco State University, USA.

[An] ambitious and complex book ... Significant for graduate collections. Summing Up: Highly recommended. Graduate students, faculty. * CHOICE * Kitty Millet's study sounds the subjectivity of persecution by looking at victims' lived experiences of colonial occupation, physical confinement, and large-scale violence. I was moved as much as informed by her evocation of "what was lost": the sense of absence, the being with death, a feeling "outside the world," "a people without the memory of autonomy." A thorough and creative inquiry into the shared sense of experience. * Dennis B. Klein, Professor of History and Director of Jewish Studies Program, Kean University, USA * With The Victims of Slavery, Colonialism, and the Holocaust, Kitty Millet has delivered an extraordinarily compelling interpretation of three historical spheres that are rarely examined comparatively. Drawing primarily on victim and perpetrator narratives, Millet's brilliant analysis focuses on the victims' self-imagination, including their minds and physical bodies, toward the goal of surviving persecution. * Michael Berkowitz, Professor of Modern Jewish History, University College London, UK * Kitty Millet's comparative study offers a thought-provoking exploration of the imagined communities of victims and perpetrators of mass atrocities. In lucid prose, she draws from individual narratives to consider the subjectivity of victimization. A valuable addition to Genocide Studies. * Kjell Anderson, Lecturer/Researcher and Coordinator of Master in Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies (NIOD), The Netherlands *