Condition: Acceptable. Please see the images for more details. May show signs of wear such as:
• Shelf wear or scuffing on the cover
• Creases, marks, or small tears on pages or dust jacket
• Possible remainder marks or previous owner’s name/notes inside
Jacket design by Michael Louridas
Blurb: “ MESSENGERS FROM THE DEAD Literature of the Holocaust by IRVING HALPERIN
This book is concerned with significant eyewitness accounts, diaries, and novels written by the survivors of the European Holocaust, 1933-1945. They add an important chapter to the spiritual and psychological history of our time. What emerges from them is the dominant theme of spiritual resistance-how men deal with extreme suffering and the place of religious faith in man's deepest needs.
This literature is not a bid for sympathy or an attempt to teach "lessons" to the living, but rather a challenge to the reader to ask himself, man, and God such Jobian questions as: Why did God let all that suffering happen? How was it possible for prisoners to exercise "the last of human freedoms"-the ability
"to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances"? In the name of what principle did the persecuted have the right to kill their oppressors? By what values shall one try to live after Ausch-witz?
But more important, these writings testify to the mystery and miracle of human survival itself and of man's astonishing ability to exercise compassion and sacrifice
under the most brutalizing circum-stances. They pay homage to the many instances of spiritual resistance exercised by the oppressed in the camps and ghet-tos—an inner resistance that strongly affirmed the human spirit in defiance of those who would debase it and that sought to preserve and sanctify life in the midst of death.
One of the book's features is a comprehensive examination of the first five novels of the internationally acclaimed writer Elie Wiesel. Another feature is a detailed interpretation of the highly significant eyewitness account of the Nazi destruction of the Warsaw Jewish community, Scroll of Agony, by Chaim Kaplan.
IRVING HALPERIN is Professor of English and Creative Writing, San Francisco State College. He has also taught at Northwestern University, the University of Illinois, and in India and Western Ger-many. He is a graduate of Roosevelt Uni-versity, State University of lowa, and Washington University (Ph.D.).