The Diary Of Bergen-belsen: 1944-1945

Description

The Diary of Bergen-Belsen is a unique, deeply political survivor's diary from the final year inside the notorious concentration camp. Hanna Levy-Hass, a Yugoslavian Jew, emerged a defiant survivor of the Holocaust. Her observations shed new light on the lived experience of Nazi internment. Levy-Hass stands alone as the only resistance fighter to record on her own experience inside the camps, and she does so with unflinching clarity and attention to the political and social divisions inside Bergen-Belsen.

Born in Sarajevo, Hanna Levy-Hass was an activist in the Resistance to the German occupation of Yugoslavia. She was taken from Montenegro to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp by the Nazis in 1944. Her diary has been published in many languages. Amira Haas writes a regular column in Ha'aretz newspaper, and is the author of Drinking the Sea at Gaza: Days and Nights in a Land under Siege, and Reporting from Ramallah: An Israeli Journalist in an Occupied Land

"In March 1945, the final month before liberation, nearly 20,000 prisoners died there. Levy-Hass described this form of genocide in her diary: "the slow, vile, calculated destruction by hunger, violence, terror, and deliberately sustained epidemics". Her rare description of the final months of the Holocaust is marked by political consciousness, moral understanding, and perceptive observation. Levy-Hass has much to tell us of death and survival." Steve Hochstadt, historian, Illinois College; author, Sources of the Holocaust "A compelling document of historic importance which shows, with remarkable composure, that ethical thought about what it means to be human can be sustained in the most inhuman conditions. Hanna Levy-Hass teaches us how a politics of compassion and justice can rise out of the camps as the strongest answer to the horrors of the twentieth century." Jacqueline Rose, historian, Queen Mary University of London; author, The Question of Zion "There are many testimonies of the Nazi concentration and extermination camps, but very few have the quality and the strength of this diary from Bergen-Belsen by Hanna Levy-Hass. A Jew and a member of the Resistance, Levy-Hass belongs to the group of detainees that as Primo Levi emphasized in The Drown and the Saved had the resources to preserve their humanity against the planned annihilation by the Nazi machine.... The history of the Holocaust is often reduced to a simple conflict between the persecutors and their victims, but it was a much more complex process. It was also the history of the struggle against the barbarism of Twentieth century: and that is the reason why this diary is so important to us." Enzo Traverso, historian, University of Picardie, France; author, The Origins of Nazi Violence "In March 1945, the final month before liberation, nearly 20,000 prisoners died there. Levy-Hass described this form of genocide in her diary: "the slow, vile, calculated destruction by hunger, violence, terror, and deliberately sustained epidemics". Her rare description of the final months of the Holocaust is marked by political consciousness, moral understanding, and perceptive observation. Levy-Hass has much to tell us of death and survival." -Steve Hochstadt, historian, Illinois College; author, Sources of the Holocaust "A compelling document of historic importance which shows, with remarkable composure, that ethical thought about what it means to be human can be sustained in the most inhuman conditions. Hanna Levy-Hass teaches us how a politics of compassion and justice can rise out of the camps as the strongest answer to the horrors of the twentieth century." -Jacqueline Rose, historian, Queen Mary University of London; author, The Question of Zion "There are many testimonies of the Nazi concentration and extermination camps, but very few have the quality and the strength of this diary from Bergen-Belsen by Hanna Levy-Hass. A Jew and a member of the Resistance, Levy-Hass belongs to the group of detainees that-as Primo Levi emphasized in The Drown and the Saved-had the resources to preserve their humanity against the planned annihilation by the Nazi machine.... The history of the Holocaust is often reduced to a simple conflict between the persecutors and their victims, but it was a much more complex process. It was also the history of the struggle against the barbarism of Twentieth century: and that is the reason why this diary is so important to us." -Enzo Traverso, historian, University of Picardie, France; author, The Origins of Nazi Violence