The Seventh Million: The Israelis and the Holocaust

by Tom Segev, Haim Watzman (Translator)

Overview

This monumental work of history, The Seventh Million, shows the decisive impact of the Holocaust on the identity, ideology and politics of Israel.

With unflinching honesty, Tom Segev examines the most sensitive and heretofore closed chapters of his country's history, and reveals how this charged legacy has at critical moments (the Exodus affair, the Eichmann trial, the Six-Day War) been molded.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780809085798
Publisher:	Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Publication date:	11/12/2019
Sold by:	Macmillan
Format:	eBook
Pages:	593
Sales rank:	276,210
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Tom Segev is a columnist for Ha'aretz, Israel's leading newspaper, and author of works on the history of Israel, 1949: The First Israelis, The Seventh Million: The Israelis and the Holocaust, and One Palestine, Complete: Jews and Arabs under the British Mandate. He lives in Jerusalem.
Tom Segev is a columnist for Ha'aretz, Israel's leading newspaper, and author of several works on the history of Israel: 1949: The First Israelis; The Seventh Million: The Israelis and the Holocaust; and One Palestine, Complete: Jews and Arabs under the British Mandate. He lives in Jerusalem.

Table of Contents

	Acknowledgments	vii
	Prologue: Ka-Tzetnik's Trip	3
Part I	Hitler: The Yekkes Are Coming
1.	"The Streets Are Paved with Money"	15
2.	"A Son of Europe"	35
Part II	Holocaust: It Was in the Papers
3.	"Rommel, Rommel, How Are You?"	67
4.	"Happy Is the Match"	82
5.	"A Warm Jewish Heart"	97
Part III	Israel: The Last Jews
6.	"At First I Thought They Were Animals"	113
7.	"A Certain Distance"	123
8.	"Six Million Germans"	140
9.	"A Barrier of Blood and Silence"	153
Part IV	Restitution: How Much Will We Get for Grandma and Grandpa?
10.	"Add a Few Moral Arguments"	189
11.	"Gas against Jews"	211
12.	"The Baby Went for Free"	227
Part V	Politics: The Kastner Affair
13.	"It Is Hard for Us, the Judges of Israel"	255
14.	"His Soul to the Devil"	276
15.	"The Walls Are Beginning to Crack"	285
16.	"Jeremiah the Prophet, for Example"	296
17.	"There Is No Certainty That Our Children Will Remain Alive"	311
Part VI	Trial: Eichmann in Jerusalem
18.	"Let Them Hate, and Let Them Go to Hell"	323
19.	"Six Million Times No!"	345
20.	"Gloom Shall Not Prevail"	367
Part VII	Growing Up: From War to War
21.	"Everyone Thought about It"	387
22.	"Hitler Is Already Dead, Mr. Prime Minister"	396
23.	"Deep in Our Souls"	405
Part VIII	Memory: The Struggle to Shape the Past
24.	"Holocaust and Heroism"	421
25.	"The Rest of Your Life with Monik and Frieda"	446
26.	"What Is There to Understand? They Died and That's It"	458
27.	"When You See a Graveyard"	477
28.	"What Does It Do to Me?"	487
	Epilogue	509
	Notes	519
	Index	581

Editorial Reviews

The Jewish community of pre-Israel Palestine had a ``less than compassionate response'' to the destruction of European Jewry, charges Segev, an Israeli journalist, in this blockbuster. Palestine's Zionist establishment stereotyped German Jewish immigrants fleeing Nazism as yekkes --cold, blockheaded and alienated from Judaism. The Zionist community's first pained, uncomprehending encounter with the Holocaust survivors, according to Segev, gave rise to the silence that surrounded the Holocaust through the 1950s. Drawing on a trove of newly declassified Israeli documents, Segev ( 1949: The First Israelis ) illuminates secret 1951 German-Israeli negotiations over reparation payments, the ``vengeance operations'' of militant Holocaust survivors against Germany, and controversy over Israel's nuclear weapons program. With great sensitivity, he explores how the collective memory of the Holocaust has shaped Israel's response to a host of issues, from the Adolf Eichmann trial to the Persian Gulf war. (Apr.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Segev ( 1949: The First Israelis , LJ 2/1/86), a highly respected Israeli journalist-historian, presents a compelling work of scholarship. This tour de force draws on previously untapped archival sources, including thousands of unpublished and recently declassified documents and scores of personal interviews. Segev belongs to the generation of Israelis about which, in part, he writes. He portrays dramatically how the Yishuv (the Jewish community in Palestine prior to 1948) faced the challenges of Nazi Germany and wartime Zionist politics as well as the subsequent impact of the Holocaust on Israeli society. Segev unearths and probes a range of disturbing and delicate historical issues, raising important questions about the use and misuse of Holocaust instruction to today's Israeli youth--a generation born after the Yom Kippur War of 1973. This path-breaking volume will enrich any public or academic collection on Israel, Zionism, or the Holocaust.-- Mark A. Raider, Brandeis Univ., Waltham, Mass.

Library Journal

Superb . . . Throws new light on the central trauma of Israeli society, and the uses and abuses of this trauma for political manipulation. I, for one, learned from this book that, in order to survive, societies must learn not only to remember but also to forget.” —Amos Elon, author of Founders and Sons

“This book is indispensable reading for anyone interested in Israel's self-image and identity . . . Any further discussion of the Holocaust must confront Tom Segev's work.” —George L. Mosse, author of Nazi Culture

“Frank and eye-opening . . . A valuable addition.” —Lawrence L. Langer, The New York Times Book Review

“Richly documented and written with great passion.” —Elie Wiesel, Los Angeles Times Book Review

From the Publisher