Saul Friedlander: Nazism historian wins Frankfurt Book Fair's top award
Saul Friedlander's feelings on being awarded the prestigious [25,000 Euros] Peace Prize of the German Book Trade are "complex" he admitted today in Frankfurt. Friedlander, the author of a magisterial two-volume work on Nazi Germany and the Jews, and a world authority on the Holocaust, said that while he accepted the honour with "the utmost pleasure", he had to acknowledge that he had been awarded it because of his work, which reflects the experience of his life and is linked to the extermination of his entire family. "It is a double-bind emotion," he confessed.
riedlander was born in Prague in 1932 to German-speaking Jews. He grew up in France and survived the German occupation by hiding in a Roman Catholic monastery. However, his parents were arrested by Vichy police while attempting to flee to Switzerland, handed over to the Germans and gassed at Auschwitz. In June 1948, when he was 15, he moved to Israel, later studied in France and now lives in the US. His massive history of Nazi Germany 1939-1945 is, he said, his attempt to write an "integrated history" of the time, which includes the victims as part of the narrative flow.
"The topic chose me," he replied when asked why he had decided to delve into the history of the Third Reich in such depth. While working on a book for his doctoral degree in Paris, a military history looking at how the US entered the second world war, he made a chance discovery which was to change the course of his academic life.
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riedlander was born in Prague in 1932 to German-speaking Jews. He grew up in France and survived the German occupation by hiding in a Roman Catholic monastery. However, his parents were arrested by Vichy police while attempting to flee to Switzerland, handed over to the Germans and gassed at Auschwitz. In June 1948, when he was 15, he moved to Israel, later studied in France and now lives in the US. His massive history of Nazi Germany 1939-1945 is, he said, his attempt to write an "integrated history" of the time, which includes the victims as part of the narrative flow.
"The topic chose me," he replied when asked why he had decided to delve into the history of the Third Reich in such depth. While working on a book for his doctoral degree in Paris, a military history looking at how the US entered the second world war, he made a chance discovery which was to change the course of his academic life.