New Voices: Contemporary Writers Confronting the Holocaust

The editors selected 58 images from noted collections consisting of vintage photography, propaganda posters, newsreel stills and the like, matching each to a poet, short story or flash fiction writer, plus features by essayists. Each writer interpreted these ‘silent witnesses’ from the period in their own unique way. The book includes four parts: Part I covers the rise of Nazism and heightening antisemitism. Writers focus on key events such as the Beer Hall Putsch and the Berlin Olympics. Part II revolves around forced labor, ghettos, and extermination, dealing with such topics as death squads, the ‘final solution’ and collaborators. Part III is all about escape, rescue, and resistance, including the Danish rescue of its Jewish population and the Warsaw ghetto uprising. Part IV deals with the aftermath, the liberation of concentration camp prisoners, the refugee crisis and the Nuremberg trials. Together this diverse group, including writers of color, Christian, Jewish, Muslim, LGBTQ, prominent and emerging writers, have contributed a powerful body of work, that challenges international trends of xenophobia and anti-democratic movements by using power of art to portray truth.