Perpetrators Victims Bystanders: The Jewish Catastrophe, 1933-1945 [Paperback]

Raul Hilberg (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 1992

A narrative of the Nazis' destruction of European Jewry in the twentieth century discusses the victims, the killers, and those who saw but did nothing. By the author of The Destruction of the European Jews. 35,000 first printing. $35,000 ad/promo. Tour.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Blending capsule portraits with unemotional analysis, eminent historian Hilberg ( The Destruction of the European Jews ) gives names, faces and identites to the agents, victims, collaborators and helpless or compromised witnesses of the Holocaust. In short chapters, he explores the diverse fates of Jews who perished and of the half-million Jewish refugees who fled Germany; of intermarried Jews and those made Jewish by decree; of children, resisters and suicides. Among the leaders of the Jewish councils, which were conduits for Nazi control and for victims' petitions, Hilberg identifies crisis managers, dictators and traditional superintendents. He profiles various types of Nazi perpetrators--zealots, perfectionists, sadistic vulgarians and those with misgivings. With meticulous documentation he probes the inaction of the Western Allies in the face of the Holocaust, the long silence of church leaders, particularly Pope Pius XII, and the complicity of those Austrians, Dutch, Croats, Romanians, Ukrainians, Lithuanians and others who abetted the Nazis. This understated, provocative work opens with a profile of the chief perpetrator, Hitler. Hilberg's calm detachment gives this portrait gallery its cumulative power.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

The dean of Holocaust historians, Hilberg is noted for his monumental history, The Destruction of the European Jews , first published 31 years ago and recently revised (Holmes & Meier, 1985) in both a three-volume set and a single-volume abridgment. Altogether, it was a work of massive scholarship. Hilberg's intent in this book of essays, or "modules," as Hilberg calls them, is different. Written for the general reader, the essays are relatively short and straightforward, and they do not need to be read consecutively. Hilberg addresses many issues arranged under the three general topics given in the title. His prose sometimes suffers from a certain flatness, but it is still a powerful experience to read a historian so knowledgeable and so steeped in his sources. Highly recommended for most libraries.
- Paul Kaplan, Dakota Cty. Lib., Eagan, Minn.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 340 pages
• Publisher: Harpercollins; 1st edition (September 1992)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060190353
• ISBN-13: 978-0060190354
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,632,274 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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19 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars The Insignificant Extent of Polish-German Collaboration, September 25, 2006

By 

Jan Peczkis "Scholar and Thinker" (Chicago IL, USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

This review is from: Perpetrators Victims Bystanders: The Jewish Catastrophe, 1933-1945 (Paperback)

Raul Hilberg has written a generally balanced and thoughtful account. The only obvious shortcoming of this book is his over-reliance on tendentious sources of information (e. g., Claude Lanzmann's SHOAH, and Shmuel Krakowski).

Hilberg discusses several collaborationist governments under Nazi Germany. He also points out that, by July 1, 1942, eighteen Ukrainian Schutzmannschaft battalions alone were in existence (p. 95). The Baltic nations provided a comparable number of collaborationist police battalions and many more officers (p. 97).

The recent over-attention to the Jedwabne massacre has generated a greatly exaggerated notion of Polish-German collaboration, and the Polish Blue Police (the Policja Granatowa) has often been falsely conflated with the Ukrainian and Baltic collaborationist forces. Hilberg corrects this: "Of all the native police forces in occupied Eastern Europe, those of Poland were least involved in anti-Jewish actions...The Germans could not view them as collaborators, for in German eyes they were not even worthy of that role. They in turn could not join the Germans in major operations against Jews or Polish resisters, lest they be considered traitors by virtually every Polish onlooker. Their task in the destruction of Jews was therefore limited." (pp. 92-93). Hilberg's notion of "worthiness" is puzzling because, in spite of Hitler's objections (p. 93), the Ukrainian Schutzmannschaft battalions were nevertheless formed. The Ukrainians were regarded as Slavic untermenschen (subhumans) no less so than the Poles! The acceptance of Jewish collaboration (e. g., the infamous ghetto police), in spite of any trace of "worthiness" attributed to Jews by the Germans, needs no comment.

The draconian German occupation had caused near-starvation conditions in the countryside, putting local Poles and fugitive Jews in conflict. Hilberg realizes that Polish killings of Jews were at least sometimes motivated by this: "Food, and everything else they needed, had to be acquired or taken somewhere. One German account noted that Polish peasants, about to be attacked by Jewish `bandits", had beaten thirteen of them to death." (p. 208).

Hilberg is unafraid of provocative issues. He is candid about the Zydokomuna (Jewish Communism): "Jews, alongside a number of other non-Russians, had taken a leading part in the Communist revolution." (p. 250). He tackles the issue of overall Jewish passivity in the face of Nazi slaughter as follows: "In the Jewish councils, no pamphlets were composed and no arguments were made to show that any German action was hurtful and morally wrong. No ill will was expressed to the Germans. No threats were made to the life of any German. No rumors were started that the Allied powers would retaliate for the destruction of the Jews." (p. 178).

Hilberg has a good grasp of the actual reasons for the under-representation of Jews in the mainstream Polish Underground Army (the AK): "Many members of the Armia Krajowa were civilians during the workday and underground soldiers only on weekends and at night. The Jews, on the other hand, did not and could not have regular jobs or occupations as fugitives. For the Armia Krajowa it was important to wait for a decisive moment of German weakness to seize portions of Poland, or at least Warsaw, and to secure such a foothold before Soviet forces could arrive. In the meantime, it hoarded its weapons with the thought that it had fewer arms than men. All too often the Jews presented themselves instead as additional men without rifles, pistols, or military training. If, in addition, they were poor speakers of Polish or recognizably Jewish, their handicaps made them a self-evident liability" (p. 207).

Interestingly, and despite the imminent destruction of their Jewish communities, some Jewish leaders agreed with the overall Polish underground combat strategy: "The Socialist Bund leader Maurycy Orzech strongly believed that Jews should not fight a battle separate from the Poles; the time had not yet come." (p. 184).

The acquisition of post-Jewish properties by Poles has recently gotten a great deal of one-sided media attention through the publication of FEAR by Jan Thomas Gross, and this has been misrepresented as an outcome of Polish greed. In actuality, there was a desperate housing shortage in Poland during (and after) the war. Hilberg touches on this: "Despite gains of space as a result of ghetto formation, the Poles were still crowded. Polish Warsaw (population 1 million) was lacking 70,000 apartments...In the city of Radom, the norm was a room density of six for Jews, and three for Poles." (p. 312).

Hilberg has a realistic understanding of the impotence of the Christian church in saving its own, let alone of saving the Jews, from German actions: "The churches, once a powerful presence on the European continent, had reached a nadir of their influence during the Second World War...Even in the democratic west, churches were subordinate structures, regulating the lives of citizens mainly on Sundays, and then only in a ceremonial manner...If the protection of baptized people was problematical, any attempt to help professing Jews was to be even less promising." (p. 260, 262).

Citing German documents, Hilberg notes that Poles believed that they would be "next" (pp. 204-205) when they saw the Jews being taken to their deaths. He also writes: "In Poland, the local German administrators would order the Polish population to stay indoors and keep the windows closed with blinds drawn during roundups of Jews..." (p. 215). In various contexts, Hilberg (p. 136, 147, 160) repeatedly refers to the fact that Jews about to be deported to their deaths were told that they were being "resettled". However, Hilberg fails to make this connection with the Germans' stated eventual aim of "resettling" the Poles and other Slavs. Nevertheless, Hilberg does move beyond the genocide of Jews to the planned long-term genocide of Slavs: "There was some hope that Slavic populations in German-occupied Europe could be brought to extinction by mass sterilizations." (p. 67).

20 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Don't fault a book for sticking to its scope, March 8, 2006

By 

Alex Bueno-Edwards "break out of the cage in ... (B-W, Germany) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Perpetrators Victims Bystanders: The Jewish Catastrophe, 1933-1945 (Paperback)

I agree that most studies of atrocities in WW2 may focus excessively on the Jewish Holocaust to the detriment of other groups. However, the title of this book specifically designates it as a study of the "JEWISH" catastrophe. Hilberg aptly addresses the topic. Don't fault a book for being precise and sticking to its designated scope.

5 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Brutally Honest, February 23, 2008

By 

Thomas J. Meyer (Saskatoon, SK Canada) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Perpetrators Victims Bystanders: The Jewish Catastrophe, 1933-1945 (Paperback)

This is Hilberg's discussion of the significant individuals involved in the holocaust. His judgments are coolly stated; he lets the facts speak for themselves rather than give angry statements. Even his treatment of the Judenrat (Jewish Councils) is historical, sympathetic and familiar, and he counts them as victims, without diminishing their responsibility in facilitating the holocaust.

The understanding one is left with is complex, even as the responsibility is ultimately quite simple - he implicates both the NSDAP (Nazi) and the German pre-NSDAP bureaucracy. This understanding both angers and disgusts.

I have one minor complaint: the author decides not to translate 'reich', but rather leaves it as is: Third Reich, rather than Third Empire; this is somewhat Eurocentric, as the Third 'Reich' was not much different from other European empires, including earlier German empires (see e.g. the destruction of the Herero) except that it killed Europeans instead of non-Europeans.