Introduction
The Protection of Stefan Jerzy Zweig
Building the Buchenwald Myth
The Genesis and Impact of Naked among Wolves
The Cinema Film of Naked among Wolves
Stefan Jerzy Zweig and the GDR
The Deconstruction of the Buchenwald Child Myth
Epilogue
Bibliography
Index
BILL NIVEN is Professor Emeritus of History at Nottingham Trent University, UK
In this original and thoroughly researched analysis, Bill Niven
picks his way with admirable clarity through the tangled webs of
spin and counter-spin, never claiming to attain a definitive
narrative of what 'really' happened, but also not shrinking from
robust censure of overt distortion or partisanship.
*TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT*
[A] very well-researched work of great insight and sophistication,
a fine piece of scholarship that furthers our understanding of the
way ideology was formed under Communism.
*CENTRAL EUROPEAN HISTORY*
[A] lucidly written and fascinating study which draws on a variety
of sources (interviews, archive, literature, film). It is that rare
thing, a truly scholarly book that addresses and deserves a wide
audience.
*JOURNAL OF EUROPEAN STUDIES*
Zweig was persecuted as a 'Jew' and rescued in Buchenwald as a
'symbol of resistance' against Hitler. Both his persecution and
rescue were used ideologically by the German Democratic Republic.
Niven's study shows that Zweig was critical of the fact that the
DDR used him, but that he simultaneously felt obligated to the
memory of his Communist rescuers.... Stefan Jerzy Zweig became an
object of the collective German memory and obviously this burden
was his undoing.
*HUMANITIES -- SOZIAL- UND KULTURGESCHICHTE*
Bill Niven traces the evolution of the story of the rescue of
Stefan Jerzy Zweig, a four-year-old Jewish child imprisoned at
Buchenwald ... in its transformation from a narrative that
glorified the individual actions of the concentration camp inmates
to one that legitimated the antifascist credentials of the East
German state to its post-unification deconstruction.... What is
most unique and refreshing about this study, however, is that the
author never loses sight of the impact these changing narratives
had on the original victim ... who became 'thrice a victim: first
of the Nazis, then of the GDR's manipulation of his rescue, and now
of united Germany's redefinition of it.
*H-NET GERMAN*
[T]his is a strong book that describes accurately the problems of
interpreting the period of the second world war and the Holocaust
under various political and historical conditions, and the personal
costs of the consequential revaluations. Niven's book is further
proof of the fact that memories of the second world war today are
still crucial for national identities in virtually every
nation....
*JOURNAL OF CONTEMPORARY HISTORY*
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