Oberbrechen A German Village Confronts its Nazi Past: A Graphic History

Oberbrechen: A German Village Confronts Its Nazi Past is a new title in OUP's Graphic History Series that chronicles the events of the Holocaust and its aftermath in a small village in rural Germany. Based on meticulous research and using powerful visual storytelling, the book provides a multilayered narrative that explores the experiences of both Jewish and non-Jewish villagers from the First World War to the present. Its focus on how "ordinary" people experienced this time offers a new and illuminating insight into everyday life and the processes of violence, rupture, and reconciliation that characterized the history of the twentieth century in Germany and beyond. The graphic narrative is accompanied by source documents published in English translation for the first time, an essay on the wider historical context, and an incisive reflection on the writing of this book--and of history more broadly.

Stefanie Fischer holds a Ph.D. from Technische Universität Berlin. She is currently a faculty member at the Center for Antisemitism Research at Technische Universität Berlin. Her fields of scholarly research are German-Jewish history and Holocaust Studies. Fischer is the author of Jewish Cattle Traders in the German Countryside, 1919-1939: Economic Trust and Antisemitic Violence (2024) and has published numerous articles on German-Jewish history and culture. Kim Wünschmann is Director of the Institute for the History of the German Jews in Hamburg. She obtained her Ph.D. from Birkbeck, University of London. Her research centers on German-Jewish history, Holocaust Studies, and legal history. She is the author of Before Auschwitz: Jewish Prisoners in the Prewar Concentration Camps (2015) and coeditor of Living the German Revolution 1918-19: Expectations, Experiences, Responses (2023). Liz Clarke is a professional illustrator based in Cape Town, South Africa. She has contributed to a variety of graphic history publications, including several titles in the Graphic History Series published by Oxford University Press.

ISBN: 9780197566039
Format: Paperback
Pages: 280
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: October 23, 2024

"Stefanie Fischer and Kim Wünschmann are to be congratulated on writing one of the most creative and usable books on the history of the Holocaust since the appearance of Art Spiegelman's Maus. Based upon impressive historical research, this slender but packed volume represents a new way of approaching the history of the Holocaust and the still looming shadow of that terrible event." --John Efron, University of California, Berkeley"Based on deep local research, this remarkable and highly original graphic history tells the moving story of the Hessian town of Oberbrechen and how it came to face the truth of its Nazi past. With crisply written text and evocative drawing, it narrates this history as a German story, a Jewish story, and as a story of German/Jewish cooperation. An inspired work—a must read!" --Helmut Walser Smith, Vanderbilt University "This graphic history offers an engaging and moving portrayal of the experiences of and relations between Jews and non-Jews before, during, and long after the ravages of Nazism and the Holocaust. It vividly brings to life letters, newspaper articles, diary entries, and court proceedings (included in the volume) that chart the lives, displacement, murder, and attempts at evasion and reconciliation of the villagers of Oberbrechen." --Katherine R. Jolluck, Stanford University "Fischer, Wünschmann, and Clarke's exciting new graphic history grapples with the history of the Holocaust and its aftermath in a small town in rural Germany. Locally focused but global in scope, the book explores not only the web of relations between the Jewish and non-Jewish inhabitants of Oberbrechen, but also offers a compelling meditation on the tension between personal history and professional practice." --Emily Gioielli, Worcester Polytechnic Institute