Peter C. Appelbaum
Peter C. Appelbaum
Habsburg Sons describes Jewish participation in the Habsburg Army, 1788-1918, concentrating on World War I. Approximately 300,000-350,000 Jews fought in the Austro-Hungarian Armies on all fronts; of these, 30,000–40,000 died of wounds or illness, and at least 17% were taken prisoner in camps all over Russia and Central Asia. Read More
When published in 1929, Avigdor Hameiri’s The Great Madness was compared to All Quiet on the Western Front published a year earlier. Drawing on his wartime experiences, Hameiri’s work quickly became a bestseller. This new translationwith annotations and extensive introduction presents an intensely personal perspective of warfare on the First World War’s Eastern Front. Read More
The diagnosis of Jewish self-hatred has become almost a commonplace in contemporary cultural and political debates, but the concept’s origins are not widely appreciated. In its modern form, it received its earliest and fullest expression in Theodor Lessing’s 1930 book Der jüdische Selbsthaß. Read More
This is the first English translation of a volume of 44 short cinematic stories based on Israeli author Avigdor Hameiri's release from captivity as a prisoner of war of the Russians after the Russian withdrawal from the First World War. Hameiri, a former Hungarian officer arrived in Odessa during the Russian Civil War and writes of the anti-Jewish riots and pogroms. The entire book has the pacing of prose poetry in its sparse-cinematic style. Read More
In this unique memoir, now in English for the first time, Israel’s first Poet Laureate Avigdor Hameiri details a trip to Europe in 1930 from the perspective of a Hungarian Jew who had served in the Habsburg Army. Upon visiting Austria, Hungary, Romania (including parts of ceded Hungarian Transylvania), and Czechoslovakia (including his Carpatho-Ruthenian homeland), he sees Europe in flux on the brink of an unknown disaster. Read More
The Jewish doctor Bernhard Bardach served with the Austro-Hungarian and his diaries from that period, unpublished and largely overlooked until now, represent a distinctive and powerful record of daily life on the Eastern Front. Read More
The first Word War changed the world. It also changed the lives of millions of soldiers and civilians. Though many often think of the Western Front, there was also the oft-forgotten Eastern Front from which the writings in this book are derived..
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The Tragedy of The First World War shaped the twentieth century. War changes lives in ways otherwise unimaginable and creates generational legacies of loss. Giving voice to the traumas and experiences of war is something that is frequently best expressed through the words of poets who can speak with one voice for many soldiers. Their words convey emotions, sentiments, and experiences that are often too dif cult for others to express.
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February 2020 announcement: Peter C Appebaum is the winner of THE TLS-RISA DOMB/PORJES PRIZE FOR HEBREW-ENGLISH TRANSLATION 2019 for Hell on Earth Jewish Book Week
Hell on Earth is the second book written by Avigdor Hameiri about his experiences as a Russian prisoner of war during the second half of World War I. Translator Peter C. Appelbaum first became interested in Hameiri’s story after learning that one quarter of the Austro-Hungarian army was captured and imprisoned, and that the horrific events that took place at this time throughout Russia and central Asia are rarely discussed in scholarly texts.
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Loyal Sons, with a historical introduction by Jay Winter and personal reminiscences by Inge Auerbacher and Peter Waldmann, describes, for the first time in English, the experiences of Jews in the German army during the First World War.
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Approximately thirty Jewish chaplains served in the German army during the First World War. Documents produced by Jewish chaplains include texts of sermons they delivered, diaries, articles written for Jewish journals, official reports sent to Army Headquarters, memoires written shortly after the war,
and photographs.
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Literature, in many different languages, was one of the hallmarks of The Great War. It behooves us to take a closer look at Kurt Tucholsky,one of the most brilliant German writers and satirists of the 20th century, with regard to his writings on the Great War.
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This book represents an anthology of Avigdor Hameiri’s ten most compelling war stories and poetry. His war stories are unique, and different from his Hebrew writer contemporaries in that they mix the supernatural and macabre with war, pogroms, and antisemitism. These stories and poems reflect like no other the unique complexity of the Jewish soldier’s experience of the most vicious and shocking war the world had witnessed to date — the battles, the agony, the dilemmas faced by the Jewish soldier, bravery versus cowardice, the notion of imminent death, breaking the sixth commandment (Thou Shalt Not Murder), elements of pacifism (particularly involving camaraderie between the common soldiers on both sides of the battlefield and their shared hatred for rank), and more.
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