Joanna Salapska-Gelleri

In this chapter, we discuss how human decision-making varies as a function of individual facets of the person as well as constructive elements inherent to the decision task. To address our thesis, we provide an overview of theories on decision-making, focusing on the components that involve thinking and the role of human variability. We then highlight research addressing how thinking may influence decision-making outcomes. We focus our analysis on two essential ways in which all humans vary, i.e., cognition and age, and show how variability in both can depict differences in thinking propensity and produce identifiable and predictable differences in decision-making performance. Finally, we review contemporary research from our labs that provide insight into the emerging view of thinking and decision-making. In our final summary, we provide an overall model to assist in organizing and interpreting how a person’s level of thinking interacts with varying levels of decision complexity to yield predictable performance differences in decision-making.

The oral testimonies of survivors and witnesses of the Holocaust stand as a most personal and visceral record of the strength of the Jewish people, of those who helped, and those who murdered, and so that we may remember the lives and futures lost of those who perished during the Holocaust. Oral accounts bring to life the seemingly impossible circumstances of the persecuted and the hunted, who lived and died through the most horrible of circumstances at the hands of their fellow men and women. Through these testimonies can also learn about the hopes, dreams, and acts, of those who lived and whose lives were recorded by the survivors. They give the briefest glimpse into the lives of the innocents which were cut short simply because of their beliefs and heritage.

This chapter considers a range of different experiences of women’s lives on the home front during the Second World War. These differences were for the most part due to a combination of factors involving culture, language, and political affiliations, among others. The chapter’s focus on women on the transnational home front reflects the respective areas of the authors’ expertise, with Frances Davey looking at women in the United States and Joanna Salapska-Gelleri covering Central and Eastern Europe. The primary difference was proximity to combat, notwithstanding the impact that the war had on home and family generally. This chapter thus explores the everyday realities of women’s lives on the home front, wherever that home front might have been. The chapter disrupts a common conceit: that the home front, which is often presumed to refer to the United States or Britain, is contained within national boundaries. Instead, the chapter zooms out to understand the home front from a transnational perspective; specifically, the United States and Central and Eastern Europe. The chapter does this through the lens of oral history.