Jean-François Steiner
| Jean-François Steiner | |
|---|---|
|
Front cover of Treblinka: The Revolt of an Extermination Camp by Steiner, ISBN 0452011248 | |
| Born |
17 February 1938 Paris, France |
| Occupation | Writer, academic |
| Nationality | French |
| Genre | World War II history |
Jean-François Steiner is a French-Jewish writer born on 17 February 1938 in Paris, France. He is best known for his controversial non-fiction novel Treblinka: The Revolt of an Extermination Camp first published in 1966 as Treblinka: la révolte d'un camp d'extermination;[1][2] translated a year later by Helen Weaver for Simon & Schuster.[3] Written in the first person, the book blames members of the Jewish Sonderkommando for assisting the German SS in perpetrating a genocide. Following outrage among French, Jewish and foreign academics,[4] Steiner agreed to republish his book (which became a bestseller),[5] by presenting it as a fictional account of the Treblinka extermination camp operation. The book remains very popular in France.[6][7]
Treblinka
When asked upon the publication of his book why death camps such as Treblinka had been 'avoided' by his own French contemporaries, Steiner replied: "In Treblinka, as in all the other extermination camps, the Germans had designed 'the machine' (as they referred to the methods of extermination) in such a way that it would almost run itself. It is the Jews who did everything."[8] Professor Samuel Moyn in his Treblinka Affair explained that Steiner claimed to direct his non-fiction novel at the "problem" of the Jew's complicity in a manner reminiscent of parts of Raul Hilberg's Destruction of the European Jews or Hannah Arendt's Eichmann in Jerusalem.[8]
Works
- Treblinka : la révolte d'un camp d'extermination with Preface by Gilles Perrault and Simone de Beauvoir. First published in 1966 by Fayard; 169 editions: 1968, 1970, 1974, 1985, 1994.
- Si Paris..., Paris, Balland, 1970, photographs of Daniel Chaplain.
- Les Métèques, Paris, Fayard, 1970.
- Varsovie 44, l'insurrection, (testimony and documents collected and translated by Jean-François Steiner), Paris, Flammarion, 1975.
- La sémiométrie – Essai de statistique structurale, in collaboration with Ludovic Lebart and Marie Piron, Paris, Dunod, 2003; ISBN 978-2-7021-4681-1.
References
- ↑ OCLC WorldCat. "Treblinka. La Révolte d'un camp d'extermination by Jean-François Steiner". OCLC 28654242. Paris, A. Fayard, 1968.
- ↑ OCLC WorldCat. "Treblinka by Jean-François Steiner". Preface by Simone de Beauvoir. Introduction by Terrence Des Pres. ISBN 0452011248. Paperback, 415 pages, published by Meridian, 1994 (first published in 1966).
- ↑ OCLC WorldCat. "Treblinka by Jean-François Steiner". Mazal Holocaust Collection. Publisher: Simon and Schuster, 1967.
- ↑ Moyn, Samuel (2005). A Holocaust Controversy: The Treblinka Affair in Postwar France. UPNE. ISBN 1584655097 – via Google Books.
- ↑ Romanov, Sergey (October 17, 2006). "Richard Glazar on Jean-Francois Steiner". Treblinka survivor Richard Glazar's critique of Jean-Francois Steiner's book about Treblinka. Yad Vashem catalogue numbers: E/72-1-4, E/1152; Ing. Richard Glazar, Prague, 29th June 1968.
- ↑ Bracher, Nathan (2006). "Reviewed Work". A Holocaust Controversy: The Treblinka Affair in Postwar France by Samuel Moyn. South Central Review. Vol. 23, No. 2 (Summer, 2006), pp. 128-133. Published by Johns Hopkins University Press on behalf of The South Central Modern Language Association.
- ↑ Moyn, Samuel (19 August 2014). Fellows of Harvard College. "Abstract". A Holocaust Controversy: The Treblinka Affair in Postwar France. Waltham: Brandeis University Press, 2005.
- 1 2 Moyn 2005, The Treblinka Affair, p. 4.