Isaiah Trunk (1905–1981)

Steven Katz, Director of the Elie Wiesel Center for Judaic Studies at Boston University, has chosen to discuss Isaiah Trunk’s Judenrat: The Jewish Councils in Eastern Europe under Nazi Occupation , on FiveBooks (http://five-books.com) on his list of essential reading on The Holocaust, saying that:

“…After the war there was tremendous debate about the role of the Jewish councils in the ghettos, about how they acted, about the morality of some of them. So this subject is at the very show more centre of the study of the Holocaust. Isaiah Trunk, who is a survivor, undertook a study of the various Jewish councils that ran the ghettos and investigated the question of collaboration and of cowardice, of heroism, of support for resistance or lack of support. The bottom line of Trunk’s evaluation is that their behaviour really made no difference..."

The full interview is available here: http://thebrowser.com/books/interviews/steven-katz show less

Historical antecedents; the response to Nazism through eyewitness testimonies