Holocaust: A History [Paperback]

Deborah Dwork (Author), Robert Jan Van Pelt (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0393325245 | ISBN-13: 978-0393325249 | Publication Date: September 2003

A magisterial, dramatic account that reshapes the way we think and talk about the greatest crime in history.

Unrivaled in reach and scope, Holocaust illuminates the long march of events, from the Middle Ages to the modern era, which led to this great atrocity. It is a story of all Europe, of Nazis and their allies, the experience of wartime occupation, the suffering and strategies of marked victims, the failure of international rescue, and the success of individual rescuers. It alone in Holocaust literature negotiates the chasm between the two histories, that of the perpetrators and of the victims and their families, shining new light on German actions and Jewish reactions.

No other book in any language has so embraced this multifaceted story. Holocaust uniquely makes use of oral histories recorded by the authors over fifteen years across Europe and the United States, as well as never-before-analyzed archival documents, letters, and diaries; it contains in addition seventy-five illustrations and sixteen original maps, each accompanied by an extended caption. This book is an original analysis of a defining event. 14 maps, 75 illustrations

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

During the past half-century Holocaust studies have perhaps become the most vital area of historical research. Yet books with the significance of this new history of the Holocaust are rare it is exhaustive as well as consistently insightful. From the opening chapters in which the authors, contradicting popular wisdom, argue that the direct eliminationist roots of the Holocaust are found not so much in the centuries-old European anti-Semitic legal regulations, but in the Inquisition's intention of social purification, the Terror of the French Revolution and the massacre of 1.5 million Armenians by the Turks in 1915 Dwork and van Pelt challenge and provoke. Rather then viewing the Holocaust as a distinct historical phenomenon, the authors do their best to integrate it into a wide range of historical, cultural and social conditions. In discussing the German subjugation of Poland, for example, they focus on how gentile Poles saw the extermination of Jews as a precursor to their own fate; in their discussion of how Jews coped with ghetto life, the authors examine in detail the underground schooling systems that benefited both students and teachers. They also place the history of rescue efforts (usually based on personalities such as Oskar Schindler and Raoul Wallenberg) in a broader and more complicated geographic and social perspective. The book is also filled with fascinating details that challenge our preconceptions for instance, it is a myth, they note, that King Christian of Denmark wore a yellow star in sympathy with his country's Jews, since no Nazi order was ever given for Danish Jews to be so identified. Like their important earlier work Auschwitz (winner of a National Jewish Book Award), this is beautifully and lucidly written, presenting complex and important information in a highly accessible manner. 75 illus., 16 maps.
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Library Journal

This thoroughgoing work does not treat the Holocaust as an addendum to World War II but as a separate event deserving its own account.
Copyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 464 pages
• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company (September 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393325245
• ISBN-13: 978-0393325249
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6.5 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #30,492 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #63 in Books > History > Military Science

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Overlooked history of the Holocaust, April 8, 2003

By 

de Pizan (Oregon, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Holocaust: A History (Hardcover)

This book almost more a history of anti-semitism, the main focus being anti-semitism during the Holocaust. It deals more with why the Holocaust happened, what the conditions were in Europe that led to it, and what attitudes were like toward the Jews. It explores what conditions were like in occupied countries and how the non-Jews were treated by the Germans. This treatment by the Nazis would often reflect on whether or not the country helped the Nazis in their efforts against the Jews. Many countries would collaborate if the general population was being treated well, but then again many would collaborate if they were being treated harshly and blame the Jews as the cause. The book also deals with the various plans the Nazis came up with in their effort to find the "perfect" plan to dispose of the Jews. There is only one rather short chapter on concentration camps, the rest covers quite a lot of new ground that I haven't read before in books dealing with the Holocaust. I gave it four stars because a few times it seemed to be getting away from the main topic of the book, but all in all it's an exactly source.

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Holocaust: A History, March 8, 2007

By 

Bob (Illinois) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Holocaust: A History (Paperback)

This is a superb, hard-to-put-down book. I found it to be well written, well organized, and, as a previous reviewer noted, meticulously footnoted. Consequently, I was surprised at what I found when I checked the source of one of the footnotes. On page 301 of the hardcover edition, the authors, critical of America's skepticism of Nazi atrocities in German-occupied Poland, state that "Time (Magazine) mockingly called the news from Poland the atrocity story of the week." Knowing that Time has an archive website and curious about this charge, I checked the footnoted source, the September 18, 1939 edition of Time (Footnote 54). What Time mocked was not allegations of Nazi atrocities but rather a United Press correspondent and German officers who had claimed that hundreds of German civilians had been killed and mutilated by retreating Poles. I don't doubt that there were some in America back then who doubted Nazi atrocities. Indeed, unfortunately a few still do. But the Time Magazine article does not support the authors' case. I had no interest in checking additional citations and I hope this was an isolated error in an otherwise outstanding book.

12 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Inhuman Savagery of Man, June 17, 2003

By 

dougrhon "dougrhon" - See all my reviews

This review is from: Holocaust: A History (Hardcover)

The scholar seeking to write a comprehensive history of the Holocaust is confronted at the outset with two significant problems. Too broad a focus on the big picture will tend to obscure the humanity of the individual victims who will come to seem abstract. Too narrow a focus on individual stories will, inevitably, diminish the shear scope of the horror which is really too great for the human mind to comprehend. The scholar must, therefore, try to reconcile both the larger picture and also to humanize the victims, to give them faces and names and backgrounds, to demonstrate their suffering. In this brilliant new book, which is destined to become the new standard one volume text on the Holocaust, the authors succeed brilliantly.

They begin by developing the broader picture, showing how racial anti-Semitism grew in Europe and how it metastasized in Germany under Hitler. The book then follows the horrible story chronologically as the Nazis systematically remove the Jews from all aspects of German society setting the stage for genocide with the outbreak of war. Not neglected is the role played by other European countries in supporting the annihilation of European Jewry. Repeated are the familiar stories of how Denmark rescued its Jewish citizens and how France cooperated with its Nazi overlords. Not well known, however, is the fact that Romania, actually carried out its own formal program of genocide, independent of Germany, the only European country to do so

The book is meticulously footnoted and quite scholarly but the writing is always lively and riveting. It is filled with quotes and anecdotes from a number of survivors and presents their stories in detail. All aspects of the Holocaust are covered, including resistance movements, and the actions of the righteous who saved thousands of lives. No book I have read covers the harrowing details of life in the Ghetto prisons as well and as comprehensively as this one.

The goal of Holocaust scholarship must be to keep the story alive. The Shoah was remains and pray to God will always be, the worst atrocity in human history. The scale of it staggers the mind. This book succeeds admirably in exposing the sheer evil while maintaining a proper reverence for the memory of the victims. It is necessary to avoid any implication of a mitigation of the horror. For example, as the authors state in the chapter on the Righteous Gentiles: It is not appropriate to say six million perished but thousands were saved by good people. It is necessary to say six million perished AND thousands were saved by good people. To understand the distinction between these two sentences is to understand the proper way to study the Holocaust. This is a book that must be read by everyone so that we should NEVER FORGET.