"The Good Old Days" [Hardcover]

Willi Dressen (Author), Volker Riess (Author), Ernest Klee (Editor), Hugh Trevor-Roper (Translator)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 21, 1991

The title "The Good Old Days" comes from a private photo album kept by a concentration camp commandant. This macabre title introduces an equally disturbing collection of diaries, letters home, and confidential reports written by the executioners and sympathetic observers of the Holocaust, and illustrated with numerous photographs they took as "souvenirs" of their work.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The title refers to a caption in the scrapbook of Kurt Franz, the commandant of the Treblinka concentration camp. Underneath the heading "Those Were the Days," and reproduced here, are pictures of smiling officers at a site where some 700,000 people were exterminated in the gas chambers. To refute revisionist historians who negate the testimony of Holocaust survivors, and to disprove those Germans who said they were coerced into murdering Jews, the German authors--Klee is a journalist, Dressen a lawyer and Riess a historian--present the damning and harrowing diaries, letters, photo albums and official reports of Germans who willingly participated in the Final Solution. A member of a unit that killed 33,771 Jews in the Ukranian Babi Yar ravine boasts: "It's almost impossible to imagine what nerves of steel it took to carry out that dirty work down there." Of the annihilation of thousands of Jews in White Russia, a commander says, "The action rid me of unneccessary mouths to feed." And wagging its tail for the camera is Franz's dog, which on numerous occasions was set upon Jews to bite off their genitals.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

As the first sentence of the foreword states, "This is a horrible book to read, and yet one that should be read." Klee, Willi Dresen, and Volker Riess have compiled a brutal and chilling rebuttal to the revisionist historians who question the statistics on, as well as the very existence of, the "final solution." This book is a collection of interviews, photographs, diary entries, and reports from German eyewitnesses, including members of the SS. They offer frightening insight into the mindset of the people who carried out the attempted extermination of an entire race. A disturbing, necessary reminder of the past and a warning for the future, this is recommended for larger public libraries as well as special collections.
- D.L. Braddock, Corbit-Calloway Memorial Lib., Odessa, Del.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: Free Press (October 21, 1991)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0029174252
• ISBN-13: 978-0029174258
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.2 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (31 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,060,760 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

98 of 104 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Very Powerful, April 13, 2002

By 

John G. Hilliard (Toronto Canada) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Good Old Days: The Holocaust as Seen by Its Perpetrators and Bystanders (Hardcover)

This book really makes one shiver. I have read a number of books on the holocaust and World War 2 and this book absolute is the rawest of the books covering the genocide. That is not to say the book had a blow by blow account of the methods of killing, but just the history of this group of solders and the off handed way the mass killing was described. The people doing this killing were just normal guys, not unlike friends, family or myself. Wow, it is just amazing to me the way they try to justify what they were in charge of, the crimes against humanity that they committed. That is what was so disturbing to me. It is much easier to think that the mass killing was done by some group of homicidal maniacs let out of the asylum and given guns that that is not the case.

The details you get here are very hard to take once you have finished the book and think about it. This is one of the few books that for weeks after I finished it I would continue to think about it I do not think I can recommend this book enough; it really gives you a feel for the tremendous crime that took place. You will not be able to stop reading the book until you have completed it. I could go on and on. Even if you are not overly interested in WW 2 or the Holocaust you should read this book, there is no way you will not be griped by it.

51 of 56 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars German precision and exactness to the ultimate extreme, March 14, 2004

By 

Mannie Liscum (Columbia, MO United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: The Good Old Days: The Holocaust as Seen by Its Perpetrators and Bystanders (Hardcover)

"The Good Old Days" is a haunting and disturbing glimpse into the Holocaust. This book chronicles a number of events associated with the Nazi attempts to exterminate the entire Jewish people from the globe. Certainly any story of the Holocaust is disturbing to a rational person but "The Good Old Days" presents these events through the words/tales of people who were there - soldiers, killers, non-Jewish citizenry. Most of the events described are related through several people (making the reading a bit tedious) and in all cases the stories, while slightly different in detail - and almost always apologetic when told after the passage of time - would make my stomach wrench at how indifferently the waste of human life was taken. This is especially true in cases where stories are supported by diaries written at the time of the events. It is a oft used generalization that the Germans are a people of exactness and precision. This has never been more true than in assiocation with the Holocaust. The SS and its minions went about their gruesome business with the efficiency stereotypically expected of the Germans - they kept exacting notes, approached it impassively as to not become emotionally attached to the situation (or they were removed from the situation - generally voluntarily, or so it is claimed), and strove to generate more efficient, quick and "humane" ways to dispose of those felt inferior. The passages in this book are presented without any candy coating and thus this text is not for the faint of heart. Yet in doing so the reader is truly left with a feeling of collective human guilt that any culture could perpetrate such acts and in such a detacted fashion. To say that no one in Germany cared about what was happening is unfair, yet it is fair from this text and others on the subject that many were active participants and while some revelled in the experience - which is disturbing enough - most acted as murderers out of duty to service, comrades, Fatherland, and/or their Fuhrer - and this is a TRULY DISTURBING thought. How far mankind is capable of sinking.

This is a solid 4 star effort. It is only the repetitive nature of the text that keeps it from being a 5 star book. Having said this, it is clear why the editors chose to present each story multiple times from several sources: for impact by showing that these were not simply acts of a few that no one knew about or that were ebing acting fought against - in short to show the impassive brutality and collusion of cause. "The Good Old Days" is recommended reading for anyone trying to understand the Holocaust and how such an event so pivotal in the history of man could have happened. Yet beware of the content going into it - it is highly disturbing and often graphic.

38 of 42 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The cold and hard reality of being on the "otherside"., May 6, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: "The Good Old Days" (Hardcover)

"The Good Old Days" caught my eye upon seeing the cover photo. It depicts several Germans in WWII uniforms at a "Gasthaus" enjoying a few beers, with relaxed and unconcerned expressions. The title was perfect for the content.

Being in the military, and stationed in Germany when I purchased the book, I was interested in the subject that was never talked about by my closest German friends. Now, I know why my German friends never discussed the war.

This book is a collection of diaries, official and personal letters, and eyewitness accounts of answers to the "Jewish Question". There is no hearsay or rumors. It is a cold, hard, and blunt account of the extreme cruelty that people are capable of.

This is an excellent piece of history that is rarely seen in the U.S. It doesn't contradict the facts regarding the Jewish extermination. Rather, it makes you understand what it was like to be the "bad guy".

The old "I was only following orders" defense is put to rest. A common theme was that the people who took part in the extermination knew that they could refuse. Without any punishment. However, the persons portrayed in the book, felt it was their duty. And some even enjoyed it. The majority of the documents used in this book appear to be written with no emotion. As if accounting for the number of dead, was just another boring task of completing the daily "red tape".

It makes you wonder. If you were in their shoes, would you do the same?