Customer Reviews

Holocaust: A History

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

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.

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.

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.

Last January I began a comprhensive study of the holocaust. I was looking for a book that would provide me with an accurate overview and a good working framework to organize my study. This book provided me with all the tools I needed.It is well researched, well organized and well written.I cannot understand why anyone would call this excellent text boring or difficult to raad unless that person had little interest in the holocaust to begin with. I highly recommend this book.

I was looking for a readable, reasonably detailed overview of the Holocaust and this book fit the bill perfectly. I appreciate the "voice" of the authors, which enters the writing regularly. They don't shy away from making judgments of the masses of people who acquiesced in the early stages of the Holocaust and stood by as the final solution unfolded. As I read the book, I constantly wondered how people could do these terrible things. The one thing I would have liked to see is a little more on that question. I would have liked an overview of theories, and also a little more background on anti-semitism. One of the depressing things about the Holocaust is that so many countries were happy to go along with Hitler's war against the Jews. Perhaps one volume just can't deal with all issues...now I'm looking for a follow up that deals more with "why?"

If you are looking for facts, this book is what you want.

I am a lifelong WWII history buff and I have read many, many books on this subject. I didn't think it was possible to write a boring book on the Holocaust. I was wrong. Dwork succeeded.

The facts are there, no question. In fact, you'll get an avalanche of factual information. But it's presented with about as much feeling and emotion as if the writer's subject was plastering a ceiling. It's hard reading and by the latter part of the book I was slogging through it and thinking longingly of the fascinating books on the Holocaust that grab you by the throat and don't let go. Not this one. I was glad to put it down.

This was essentially what I thought I was looking for: a chronicle of events, a historical context, what happened where. But there were two problems for me, one is the problem with history in general: that it is a generalization or informed opinion about millions of individual different histories that taken altogether don't form anything comprehensible, at least comprehensible by humans, and secondly, I still don't understand the psychology of mass murderers. The authors did a very good job: neither over-emoting nor trivializing, and they write well. The connection between the 20th century totalitarian states and the French Revolution is quite interesting, but I think the desire of one group to annihilate another it perceives as threatening is as old as mankind. My questions were why did the Germans feel threatened,why so much hostility towards the very small and highly proficient and functional population of Jews,and what is it about German-ness that has them so enthralled with themselves and how did it come to be? The Germans were the great killers of the era in the sense of efficiency, both in battle and in civilian murder, they made the best weapons and they devised a means of mass murder that allowed the ordinary citizens to ignore it. The authors make this last point. But I guess I wonder most: what is it like to be someone that can kill an innocent person, what is the psychological environment of that person and his sympathetic followers? How is it that beliefs people are willing to kill for and die for can be so erroneous? I mean what is it about people that enables them to believe erroneous, impossible (as Alice in Wonderland would say) things? Millions and millions of innocent people were murdered during the 20th century because of political, ethnic, religious beliefs; is this what Nature is really like? Are the people who imagine, like me, that they could never do something like that the abnormal ones? I guess I was looking for more philosophy and psychology than history. Nevertheless, it's a very good book and highly recommended. I think everyone should know just as points of common reference for the future where and what Treblinka and Auschwitz and all the rest were, who Eichmann was, what the Romanians did, and so forth. The story too of how the facts only gradually emerged is quite interesting.