Inhalt: | Essays mapping the history of relief parcels sent to Jewish prisoners during World War II. Cover -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Contents -- Abbreviations -- Introduction: Relief Parcels in an Era of Nazi Camps and Ghettos -- Part I. Relief from the Allies and Neutral States -- 1. Ties That Bind: Transnational Support and Solidarity for Polish Jews in the USSR during World War II -- 2. "Because I know what that means to you": The RELICO Parcel Scheme Organized in Geneva during World War II -- 3. Help for the Ghettos and Concentration Camps: Exile Governments, Jewish Agencies, and Humanitarian Aid for Deported Jews during the War -- 4. An Undeniable Duty: Swedish Jewish Humanitarian Aid to Jews in Nazi-Occupied Europe during World War II -- 5. "Weapon of Last Resort": The International Red Cross and Relief Efforts for Jews during the Holocaust, 1942-45 -- 6. Making Sure They Are Alive to Be Rescued: The War Refugee Board's Food Package Program -- Part II. Under Regimes Aligned with Nazi Germany -- 7. Jewish Food Aid in Vichy's Internment Camps, June 1940-November 1942 -- 8. Jewish Humanitarian Aid for Transnistrian Deportees, 1941-44 -- Part III. Under Nazi Occupation -- 9. "Stay healthy. Send parcels": Relief in the Warsaw Ghetto -- 10. The Jewish Aid Agency in the Generalgouvernement in Occupied Kraków, 1942-44 -- 11. Parcels Shipped from Denmark to Inmates of Theresienstadt -- Acknowledgments -- Suggested Further Reading -- Contributors -- Index. "More than Parcels: Wartime Aid for Jews in Nazi-Era Camps and Ghettos edited by Jan Lánícek and Jan Lambertz explores the horrors of the Holocaust by focusing on the systematic starvation of Jewish civilians confined to Nazi ghettos and camps. The modest relief parcel, often weighing no more than a few pounds and containing food, medicine, and clothing, could extend the lives and health of prisoners. For Jews in occupied Europe, receiving packages simultaneously provided critical emotional sustenance in the face of despair and grief. Placing these parcels front and center in a history of World War II challenges several myths about Nazi rule and Allied responses. First, the traffic in relief parcels and remittances shows that the walls of Nazi detention sites and the wartime borders separating Axis Europe from the outside world were not hermetically sealed, even for Jewish prisoners. Aid shipments were often damaged or stolen, but they continued to be sent throughout the war. Second, the flow of relief parcels-and prisoner requests for them-contributed to information about the lethal nature of Nazi detention sites. Aid requests and parcel receipts became one means of transmitting news about the location, living conditions, and fate of Jewish prisoners to families, humanitarians, and Jewish advocacy groups scattered across the globe. Third, the contributors to More than Parcels reveal that tens of thousands of individuals, along with religious communities and philanthropies, mobilized parcel relief for Jews trapped in Europe. Recent histories of wartime rescue have focused on a handful of courageous activists who hid or led Jews to safety under perilous conditions. The parallel story of relief shipments is no less important. The astonishing accounts offered in More than Parcels add texture and depth to the story of organized Jewish responses to wartime persecution that will be of interest to students and scholars of Holocaust studies and modern Jewish history, as well as members of professional associations with a focus on humanitarianism and human rights"-- |
