The War Against the Jews: 1933-1945 (Paperback)

by Lucy S. Dawidowicz (Author) "If at the beginning of the War and during the War," Hitler wrote in the last chapter of Mein Kampf, "twelve or fifteen thousand of..." (more)
Key Phrases: varshever geto, min hadleka, letstn khurbn, National Socialist, Mein Kampf, German Jews (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
Here is the unparalleled account of the most awesome and awful chapter in the moral history of humanity. Lucid, chilling and comprehensive, Lucy S. Dawidowicz’s classic tells the complete story of the Nazi Holocaust–from the insidious evolution of German Anti-Semitism to the ultimate tragedy of the Final Solution.

About the Author
Lucy S. Dawidowicz was educated at Hunter College and Columbia University in New York and studied East European Jewish life firsthand at the Yivo Institute of Jewish Research, formerly in Vilna, Poland. She has taught modern Jewish history at Yeshiva University, Stanford University, and the State University of New York at Albany.

Product Details

• Paperback: 467 pages
• Publisher: Bantam (March 1, 1986)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 055334532X
• ISBN-13: 978-0553345322
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.1 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #166,375 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

39 of 42 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Terrific History Of The Evolution Of The Holocaust, July 10, 2002

By	Barron Laycock "Labradorman" (Temple, New Hampshire United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This seminal classic historical work by scholar and teacher Lucy Dawidowicz is a stunning book that both graphically and systematically spells out the details of the horrifying war of annihilation forged against the European Jews by the Third Reich. In a world that seen so much published regarding this subject, this work stands as benchmark. Ms. Dawidowicz addresses herself to the most fundamental of questions regarding this unspeakable policy of ritual race murder; how could a modern, sophisticated and industrial country such as Germany have perpetrated such a deliberate reign of horror against a whole people simply because they were Jewish? And, although we have seen recent books such as "Problem From Hell" that deal more systematically with the issue of modern examples of state sponsored genocide, the simple fact is that the Holocaust seems to have occurred because, for the first time in modern history, it was both politically and logistically possible. In other words, the Nazis had both the method and the impetus to do the unspeakable.

Seen in this fashion, the equation becomes at once political, social, and technological; given the irrational impulse to do so, the modern Nazi regime was able to harness all of its energies, spiritual, political and material, into such a devastating and sustained campaign against the Jews, and was therefore uniquely able to forge the most bloody of final results. The author's approach winds the reader through several phases of the Holocaust phenomenon with a careful, meticulous and methodical consideration of the social, economic, and political influences swirling through this witches' brew of evil. In the first part of the book, entitled "The Final Solution", she traces the origins and growth of anti-Semitism, a form of patent racism so virulent it threatened to exterminate the Jews from all of continental Europe. In so tracing the roots and origins of the Nazis and their fellow travelers, she shows how the rise of National Socialism revolved around the scapegoating of the Jews.

The execution of this plan was enacted in the ghettos and small towns of Poland and Germany as well as in a network of forced labor camps and concentration camps throughout Eastern Europe. In the second part of the book, ""The Holocaust", the author dramatically describes how the plight of the Jews was gradually worsened and how the violence and deprivation grew systematically more and more horrible with each passing month. Inhabitants of camps or ghettos led lives of incredible hardship and deprivation, struggling helplessly against hunger, disease, exposure to extremes of temperature and weather, and of course, to the wanton cruelties of the Nazi regime. This is indeed interesting material, detailing the ways in which Jewish groups both within the ghettos and the death camps worked together to make the best out of an impossible situation.

This is a heart-rending book, one that accurately portrays the ways in which Jews were deceived and betrayed by the authorities, convinced they were being resettled rather than being slated for extermination. Ms. Dawidowicz writes with compassion and authority covering this intrinsically difficult issues, as one reads of lives torn asunder, families ripped apart, and wholesale rape, mutilation, and murder. This book, published more than thirty years ago, is one of the most comprehensive, best documented, and well-written book to have appeared on the subject of the Holocaust. I recommend it for anyone with an interest in the subject.

26 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars For every student of the 20th century, August 4, 1999

By A Customer

Ms. Dawidowiczs managed to hold me through the grim realities of the shoa as no other author has. I believe it to be the definative text on the development of European, and particularly German anti-semitism. I wish I had read it twenty years ago. She explains how the enlightenment notions of individual autonomy challanged the notions of the clan and ethnic nationalism held so tightly by the Nazis. Hitler reject his own Catholic background, from which the enlightenment had arisen. He replaced the God of the Jews and Christians with the Gods of Nordic mythology. Individuals were of no importance in Hitler's world view only the tribe mattered. Dawidowiczs explains how Hitler found fertile territory for his avowed hatred of Jewry in Europes long history of anti-semitism. She explains in frightening detail how Hitler took anti-semitism into the land of terror. Hitler, as she explains, used the ideals of ethnicity and tribalism to convince Germans that they were under attack from within by a virus called Judaism that would destroy them if they did not destroy the Jews first. Hence "the final solution". Dawidowiczs style is reader friendly. She manages to pull the reader along through horrible subject matter with clear and precise prose. The use of charts and graphs to show the decline in pre and post war Jewry is staggering and a great illustration of the ferocity of Natzi hatred and fear. How ironic that the Nazi motive for the murder of Jews was that they were afraid of them. Nordic supermen notwithstanding, their pathological fear lead to slaughter. All serious students of the 20th century should read this book.

18 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Good Discription of Why it Happened, April 6, 2002

By	John G. Hilliard (Toronto Canada) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This book provides a good detail of how the German leadership convinced itself that genocide was not only correct and legal, but a necessity for their survival. I thought the book was going to be a description of one atrocity after another, but it provides the reader with more of the details of why it was happening. Don't get me wrong, there is enough of the horror represented here. I would have liked a larger review of all of the holocaust crimes across Europe, but there are limits to the size of any one book. This book is a good start to find out why it happened.