Murder in Our Midst: The Holocaust, Industrial Killing, and Representation [Hardcover]

Omer Bartov (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0195098471 | ISBN-13: 978-0195098471 | Publication Date: February 29, 1996

This text analyzes the ways in which the Holocaust has been represented in various mediums - academic histories, literature, poetry, art, cinema and museums. It addresses such issues as how different cultures have come to terms with the Holocaust and with what effects in times of peace and war.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"By articulating new conceptual categories and identifying unexpected connections, Omer Bartov has made a profound and original statement on the links between war and genocide, representations of violence and its enactment, industrial killing and the crisis of modern European civilization."--Saul Friedlander, University of California, Los Angeles and Tel Aviv University

"Thoughtful and thought-provoking, Bartov's essays offer disturbing reflections on the capacity for genocide in modern society."--Ian Kershaw, Univesity of Sheffield

"In Murder in Our Midst, Omer Bartov provides a searching, informed, and impassioned view of the origins and aftermath of the Holocaust. Few other writers have brought to bear the combination of historical learning and contemporary social awareness with which Bartov addresses this subject."--Berel Lang, State University of New York, Albany

"...this book is well worth reading, both for its originality and its capacity to provoke thought on a compelling subject."--American Historical Review

"...absorbing reading..."--National Forum

--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

About the Author

Omer Bartov is at Rutgers University. --This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 272 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA (February 29, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0195098471
• ISBN-13: 978-0195098471
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.5 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #5,585,165 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A Good Start, May 7, 2000

By 

seydlitz89 "seydlitz89" (Portugal) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Murder in Our Midst: The Holocaust, Industrial Killing, and Representation (Paperback)

"In what way have we sinned, that we should be treated worse than animals? Hunted from place to place, cold, filthy and in rags, we wander about like gypsies and in the end are destroyed like vermin!"

The origin of this lamentation-- perhaps a victim of the Holocaust? No, rather an excerpt for a letter written by a German soldier on the Western Front in November of 1915. I found this book very interesting as far as it went. Omer Bartov sets the stage for the argument that the experience of the Great War set the paradigm which made the Holocaust possible. Personally I've suspected this for a long time and Bartov mentions many similarities between trench warfare and the death camps. Less pervasive is his description of the perpetrators as "frustrated pacifists". In addition Bartov has interesting comments concerning the way that industrial killing in general and the Holocaust in particular are commemorated. In the end however I thought he could have carried his main argument further, but all in all a worthwhile book and definitely needed in this field.