Book Description
The Destruction of the European Jews is widely considered the landmark study of the Holocaust. First published in 1961, Raul Hilberg's comprehensive account of how Germany annihilated the Jewish community of Europe spurred discussion, galvanized further research, and shaped the entire field of Holocaust studies. This revised and expanded edition of Hilberg's classic work extends the scope of his study and includes 80,000 words of new material, particularly from recently opened archives in eastern Europe, added over a lifetime of research. It is the definitive work of a scholar who has devoted more than fifty years to exploring and analyzing the realities of the Holocaust.
Spanning the twelve-year period of anti-Jewish actions from 1933 to 1945, Hilberg's study encompasses Germany and all the territories under German rule or influence. Its principal focus is on the large number of perpetrators -- civil servants, military personnel, Nazi party functionaries, SS men, and representatives of private enterprises -- in the machinery of death.
Customer Reviews:
A WONDERFUL RESEARCH!.......2006-11-08
One of the best books I have ever read about the holocaust. A serious research and it is indeed a great contribution for the studies on this horrible moment of the history of mankind!
A Seminal Work on the Holocaust.......2006-01-01
Hilberg's brilliant and dispassionate treatment of attempts throughout history to destroy the Jews sets a new standard for scholarship and for the historical analysis of emotionally charge subjects. Through his own efficient analytic framework of precedents, antecedents, and scope of organization, Hilberg gives us a lucid formula for both understanding and explaining the subtext, context, and pretext of the 1500-year old continuously running saga of anti-Semitism. The effect is to place the reader in the cockpit of the planners of one of the worst disasters known to man, the holocaust of World War-II. But more importantly, he also provides us with all the necessary facts that go with, and that load his framework.
The context of the holocaust is 1500 years of progressive improvements in ways of addressing the so-called "Jewish problem (or threat)," and corresponding Jewish cultural adaptations to these improved attempts to annihilate them. The improvements have ranged from failed attempts by Catholics to convert Jews into Christians, to expelling them from Europe, to Hitler's creation of a bureaucracy of industrialized death to implement his "final solution." (The author summarizes this progression as conversion, expulsion, and annihilation.)
The subtext of anti-Semitism ostensibly has always been about the "predatory Jewish character" but in fact has been about fears, fears of cultural, religious and ethnic differences and about independence from ordinary orthodoxy. It is precisely these fears that are the most easily serviceable, and most easily ignited into action during times of stress. They are best facilitated through hatred -- especially when guided by a catalyst of evil, ignorance, demagoguery, or demented and corrupt leaders. Inexorably they pass through a process of condoned and sanctioned violence to collective murder. (Fear of Jewish independence and failure to accept the Christian Jesus as their religious messiah and savior have throughout history served as one of the key subtexts of anti-Semitism).
Just as the pattern that serves as the subtext for anti-Semitism is generalizable to other forms of chauvinism, racism and hatred, so too is the pretext: The target is first demonized, dehumanized and vilified; and then disenfranchised, hounded and spatially as well socially segregated. This process of dehumanization then leads logically to, and serves as justification and collective psychological cover for, committing criminal acts against the targeted groups -- including mass industrialized murder. (Jewish religious idolatry, and ethnic character flaws, i.e. their predatory business acumen and slipperiness, their fear of honest work, etc. has throughout history served as the pretext for justifying criminal acts against Jews).
This book puts to rest the popular "magic bullet theory" of the holocaust: that explaining Hitler explains everything anyone would ever need to know about the holocaust. It does not. The anti-Semitic pressures along fault lines leading up to the holocaust had been building up for more than 1500 years. It was these pressures and not Hitler that bear the primary responsibility for the holocaust. Hitler just happened to be the demented catalyst that sparked an anti-Semitic eruption at a time when a demoralized German people needed a tonic for restoring their national pride.
Five Stars.
Obligatory.......2005-11-13
The text I read (three volume hard cover) is the definitive work on the Holocaust. It profiles all aspects of a demonic criminal conspiracy, as well as the practical planning and ultimate consequences.
I urge all to read Hilberg. It is the standard work.
Concise and revealing.......2005-05-30
I have several dozen books on the Holocaust, and more than that on my wish list. For a few years now, I have wanted to know 'How did it happen, and Why?'. I found myself stopping every other page to think about the words I had read, and the ideas they conveyed. This book is by far one of the best, seconded only by Martin Gilbert's 'The Holocaust'. I see survivor's messages that ask 'How could it happen...Where was God...Why the Jews?' I am slowly coming away with an answer in my head that just won't go away. Perhaps we would all {those of us deemed worthy to live, anyway} be speaking German today if Hitler hadn't focused so much effort on obliterating such a wonderful and gentle people. If there has to be a reason, maybe the Jews saved the world from the Nazi's!
The single best work on the subject.......2005-02-04
This is the most comprehensive and accurate single book on the subject and ought to be necessary reading for anyone studying it. Hilberg integrates the ground-level activities (what was happening to the victims), with an account of the higher level decision-making. Definitely worth it!
Book Description
During the Second World War, six million Jews--as well as other targeted groups such as Gypsies, Poles, the handicapped, and homosexuals--were systematically murdered by Adolf Hitlers Nazis and their collaborators. The Holocaust Chronicle, written and fact-checked by top scholars, recounts the long, complex, anguishing story of the most terrible crime of the 20th century. A massive, oversized hardcover of more than 750 pages, The Holocaust Chronicle: A History in Words and Pictures is an excitingly unique, not for-profit endeavor that is a personal project of the publisher, Louis Weber, C.E.O. of Chicago-based Publications International, Ltd. As a book publisher, I am in a unique position to create this ambitious project, Weber says. The son of Polish Jews who settled in America in the 1920s, Weber conceived The Holocaust Chronicle in order to give something back to the Jewish community, and to bring the truth of the Holocaust to as many people as possible. The mission of The Holocaust Chronicle is to report the facts, clearly and free of bias or agenda. Featured are more than 2000 photographs selected after intensive research in the collections of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. and Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, as well as other archives and private collections located around the world. Many of these images are in full color and most are published in book form for the first time. The photographs chronicle the Holocaust in starkly visual terms, capturing victims and perpetrators alike, as well as Allied leaders and the multitude of peripheral figures. Caption-text is detailed, and rich with facts and human interest. The books 3000-item timeline of Holocaust-related events is unprecedented in its scope and ambition. Spanning the years 1000 B.C. to 1999 A.D., the timeline pinpoints deportations, atrocities, and important developments in the Nazis Final Solution, as well as individual acts of cruelty, compassion, and heroic Jewish resistance. Illustrated chapter-opener essays place the most important years of the Holocaust and its immediate aftermath, 1933-1946, into sharp perspective. Nearly 300 sidebars detail significant people, places, issues, and events. More than 30 full-color, specially commissioned maps show the reader where events took place.
The sentiments and hatreds that gave rise to the Holocaust were not confined to the 12 years of Adolf Hitlers Thousand-Year Reich. The books illustrated prologue surveys the antisemitism that was expressed over many centuries in Europe as bloody pogroms, exclusionary laws, and other persecution. The illustrated epilogue documents the long, painful healing process that has lasted for generations and may never be completed.
Customer Reviews:
Excellent Book on The Holocaust.......2007-04-12
They say, "a picture is worth a thousand words." But sometimes you need to put words into context to understand the picture. This encyclopedia does just that: It chronicles the history of the Holocaust from beginning to end, providing literally hundreds of pictures with detailed commentary. Several scholars and historians paid their contributions to this project, making it a very comprehensive book. What you will find inside may very well change your views on humanity.
The authors will take you on a journey to examine one of History's darkest events. And while you may wonder how a "civilized" society could possibly be capable and willing of committing such heinous crimes, the authors do offer some explanations. A brief history of anti-Semitism is outlined and its links to the Third Reich are pointed out to explain the roots of the Holocaust. The slaughter of the Gypsies, Jehovah Witnesses, homosexuals, mentally ill and others are also documented, including the controversies surrounding the Vatican, in which the authors objectively cite both defenders and critics of Pius XII and the Catholic Church, leaving the reader to form his or her own opinion. From the rise of Hitler to the aftermath of the Final Solution, this book covers it all.
Anyone looking for a complete, yet introductory study on the Holocaust should pick up this book. Although it is massive in size, don't be intimidated; most pages are filled with pictures. I must warn, however, that many of the pictures are very explicit, and personally, I would not recommend anyone under 14 to view them. But aside from that, this book is very well put together and it will inform you as much as it will shock you. I highly recommend it.
The Holocaust Chronicle.......2007-02-16
Excellent source of information. My 16 year old granddaughter is studying the Holocaust in school this year and she has a younger sister and brother that will find this helpful at a later date. I feel so strongly that this period of our history should never be forgotten, so I am pleased to leave this book out for anyone to pick up while visiting me.
The enabling preconditions, actual events and aftermath of the Holocaust........2006-09-13
Three books in one: A detailed 1) history, 2)timeline and 3)personal vignettes that create a rich hologram-like view of the enabling preconditions, actual events and aftermath of the Genocide of the Jews of Europe at the hands of the Nazis.
Back in July of this year, I wrote a review of Ellie Wiesel's "Night," a new edition that had been translated by his own daughter. This small book captured the essence of one man's subjective experience with the subject of this much larger effort, contributed to by dozens of historians and scholars and published by a non-profit organization. This is not a `sit down and read a book today' publication. Each of it's 750 richly illustrated pages are packed with personal stories about individual people, a detailed on-going time-line, detailed with specific events beginning in 1500 BCE (The modern Jewish term for "BC", standing for "Before the Common Era."), and passing through the establishment of the State of Israel and into the late 1990's, and a continuous narrative history of more details than most people have ever imagined were available in the telling of this particularly horrific tale of humanity gone wrong. There is, in fact, so much information, that each page calls for a slow overview, and then at least several readings to capture the totality of what is being presented. It is a book to which ongoing time must be devoted to really appreciate what it gives us: As Dragnet's Sgt. Joe Friday would have said, "Nothing but the facts."
The Preconditions:
Through hundreds of historical, scholarly, organizational and literary references, this book makes it clear that without certain preconditions having been developing in European (and, indeed, in world-wide) culture for many centuries, Hitler could never of orchestrated what in the Jewish Community is referred to as the Sho'ah. Ascribing Germany's readiness to follow their fascist leader and his cronies into the annihilation of about six-million Jews as well as millions of Catholics, Gypsies, Jehovah's Witnesses, physically handicapped and mentally ill people, homosexuals and others to the aftermath of Versailles is shown to be a gross over-simplification. Anti Semitism (not always known by that now well-known name) had existed across the face of much of the globe for many centuries. The realities across the world, indeed including here in our own United States, were active contributors to creating the preconditions that allowed the Holocaust to happen. Impressive in this particular book is that unlike so many others, the authors painstakingly provide documentary evidence and facts that support this and other key concepts. As is the case with the other two parallel tracks of this volume, the actual events of the Holocaust itself and the aftermath, the preconditions are examined and documented through all three of the `tracks' of this book: The narrative history, the timeline and the individual storied and personal vignettes.
The Event Itself:
The Holocaust itself - the trail leading up to the actualization of what was referred to, privately amongst the Nazi leadership, as the "Final Solution?" - and their ultimate efforts to completely eliminate Jewry from the face of the parts of the world they controlled are carefully documented as well. This is the part of the story best known to modern audiences, but is given here a context far more comprehensive than what has been attempted before - and it is all written in non-technical terms that make the massive information it contains available to most people who 1) can read, 2) are interested in the subject, and 3) are willing to spend the appreciable time it takes to go through and absorb the rather massive amount of information contained in these pages. The events of planful, deliberate genocide are not and can not be fully separated from the preconditions described both earlier in the book and periodically referred to as the timeline progresses.
No one is held harmless. From the Nazis themselves, to the many nations of the Earth, including our own, that denied sanctuary via more open immigration policies in the late 1930's when it became undeniably clear what the goals and activities of Hitler's regime was.
The Aftermath:
This section of the book concerns itself with what happened as a result of the genocide, both in the short run and continuing into modern times. The establishment of the State of Israel, the multiple issues associated with that; the Germany of the post-war era, both as a modern economic force as well as the bearer of so much of the responsibility for one of mankind's darkest hours, the relationships of the Catholic Church and of the American government to the past, present and future of humanity: None of these escape the attention of the authors and compilers of this impressive, comprehensive and engaging book.
Suffice it to say that this review only scratches the surface of the material covered and the depths to which it is articulated in this volume. I make no apologies for being relatively brief. If you have the interest and the time, this is one of those handful of published works that just might change your life. It is simply not possible to have so much revealed, in so many forms at so many levels, and not be somehow reshaped by the experience.
The most reader-friendly and clearest description of one of humanities greatest calamities I have ever read. I think you will agree.
A Crying Shame...And A Constant Reminder!.......2006-06-10
As a child who lived in the Chicago housing projects prior to moving to Germany I became lost for words as I turned the pages of one of the most moving books I've ever experienced. Places I've seen as a playful child running across the country side now become surreal in my mind as I think about the innocent lives that were slaughtered on that same ground. And now that I've observed the photographs of my Jewish brothers and sisters in this book "The Holocaust Chronicle" some things will never be the same for me. I also believe that you will view life differently after you've read this book.
For one this book describes the ghetto's of Europe during the Holocaust using pictures and words that one would never imagine. It has so much depth and meaning even in the words that it is quite amazing. For instance the word "ghetto" (which in the United States has become a word referencing the slums where poor Americans live) will no longer have the same meaning for me as it use to. Some call the Housing Projects that I came from in Chicago a ghetto...but this is a poor, poor use of the word now that I've observed the ghettos of Europe during the Holocaust. Read the book and you'll see exactly what I mean.
The Holocaust Chronicle is an excellent resource for virtually anything you would like to know about this event in history. This book should instantly become a part of all libraries in every community, private and personal.
Having lived in Germany for nearly 5 years as a lad I've alway's considered myself quite a history buff especially concerning military affairs since my father spent his whole life serving the U.S. Army. But I must say this amazing book proves that I am very ignorant of what went on from 1933-1946. The humiliation, the physical and mental anguish, even the use of art and symbols were all reconstructed to try to destroy the Jew but thank God they were delivered from the hands of their enemies. Although this book does not turn its face away from death but sometimes deals with it head on it still contains with in it the hope of deliverance, the determination of faith and the triumph of those who suffer persecution.
I have now done much diligence to understand this part of history so that I can connect with other human beings on this planet in a way that is respectful. I must say Louis Weber the publisher and all the contributing Authors and Consultants who poured their hearts and souls into the development of "The Holocaust Chronicle" deserve much credit.
Although there is much suffering between these pages the details within this book give us great understanding. It helps us all to realize, respect and appreciate why we should be committed to never allow this to happen again regardless of our religious beliefs, cultural, racial or ethnic background. As you turn the pages you will be exposed to the criminals but at the same time you will find yourself rejoicing when heroic men and women went beyond what their government would not give them the authority to do. Please hurry up and get this book, read it today and share your ideas with others as I dedicate this review to my Jewish mother Anita Gold.
Your Servant,
Deremiah, *CPE
Nothing short of extraordinary........2006-03-11
This book is massive! It is far larger than any of my college texts. Yet, every one of the nearly 800 pages is poignant and necessary. This easy-to-read chronicle of one of the most incomprehensible tragedies in all of history is extremely well-written in prose that is eloquent and yet still quite succinct. Nearly each page contains photographs that display different perspectives on the Holocaust, each one helping to comprise the complete picture of the atrocities which took place. On many pages there are more photographs than words, and each one truly tells its own story. In reading this chronicle and studying the photographs you will experience a range of emotions you never would have believed you were capable of experiencing. It is true that we can never feel how the concentration camp prisoners felt; we can never know the starvation, the death, the oppression that they and others affected by the Holocaust knew all too well--but the Holocaust chronicle brings us perhaps one step closer than we've ever been to understanding this world of unthinkable brutality and suffering.
Amazon.com
Was IBM, "The Solutions Company," partly responsible for the Final Solution? That's the question raised by Edwin Black's IBM and the Holocaust, the most controversial book on the subject since Daniel Jonah Goldhagen's Hitler's Willing Executioners. Black, a son of Holocaust survivors, is less tendentiously simplistic than Goldhagen, but his thesis is no less provocative: he argues that IBM founder Thomas Watson deserved the Merit Cross (Germany's second-highest honor) awarded him by Hitler, his second-biggest customer on earth. "IBM, primarily through its German subsidiary, made Hitler's program of Jewish destruction a technologic mission the company pursued with chilling success," writes Black. "IBM had almost single-handedly brought modern warfare into the information age [and] virtually put the 'blitz' in the krieg."
The crucial technology was a precursor to the computer, the IBM Hollerith punch card machine, which Black glimpsed on exhibit at the U.S. Holocaust Museum, inspiring his five-year, top-secret book project. The Hollerith was used to tabulate and alphabetize census data. Black says the Hollerith and its punch card data ("hole 3 signified homosexual ... hole 8 designated a Jew") was indispensable in rounding up prisoners, keeping the trains fully packed and on time, tallying the deaths, and organizing the entire war effort. Hitler's regime was fantastically, suicidally chaotic; could IBM have been the cause of its sole competence: mass-murdering civilians? Better scholars than I must sift through and appraise Black's mountainous evidence, but clearly the assessment is overdue.
The moral argument turns on one question: How much did IBM New York know about IBM Germany's work, and when? Black documents a scary game of brinksmanship orchestrated by IBM chief Watson, who walked a fine line between enraging U.S. officials and infuriating Hitler. He shamefully delayed returning the Nazi medal until forced to--and when he did return it, the Nazis almost kicked IBM and its crucial machines out of Germany. (Hitler was prone to self-defeating decisions, as demonstrated in How Hitler Could Have Won World War II.)
Black has created a must-read work of history. But it's also a fascinating business book examining the colliding influences of personality, morality, and cold strategic calculation. --Tim Appelo
Book Description
IBM and the Holocaust is the stunning story of IBM's strategic alliance with Nazi Germany -- beginning in 1933 in the first weeks that Hitler came to power and continuing well into World War II. As the Third Reich embarked upon its plan of conquest and genocide, IBM and its subsidiaries helped create enabling technologies, step-by-step, from the identification and cataloging programs of the 1930s to the selections of the 1940s.
Only after Jews were identified -- a massive and complex task that Hitler wanted done immediately -- could they be targeted for efficient asset confiscation, ghettoization, deportation, enslaved labor, and, ultimately, annihilation. It was a cross-tabulation and organizational challenge so monumental, it called for a computer. Of course, in the 1930s no computer existed.
But IBM's Hollerith punch card technology did exist. Aided by the company's custom-designed and constantly updated Hollerith systems, Hitler was able to automate his persecution of the Jews. Historians have always been amazed at the speed and accuracy with which the Nazis were able to identify and locate European Jewry. Until now, the pieces of this puzzle have never been fully assembled. The fact is, IBM technology was used to organize nearly everything in Germany and then Nazi Europe, from the identification of the Jews in censuses, registrations, and ancestral tracing programs to the running of railroads and organizing of concentration camp slave labor.
IBM and its German subsidiary custom-designed complex solutions, one by one, anticipating the Reich's needs. They did not merely sell the machines and walk away. Instead, IBM leased these machines for high fees and became the sole source of the billions of punch cards Hitler needed.
IBM and the Holocaust takes you through the carefully crafted corporate collusion with the Third Reich, as well as the structured deniability of oral agreements, undated letters, and the Geneva intermediaries -- all undertaken as the newspapers blazed with accounts of persecution and destruction.
Just as compelling is the human drama of one of our century's greatest minds, IBM founder Thomas Watson, who cooperated with the Nazis for the sake of profit.
Only with IBM's technologic assistance was Hitler able to achieve the staggering numbers of the Holocaust. Edwin Black has now uncovered one of the last great mysteries of Germany's war against the Jews -- how did Hitler get the names?
Download Description
'IBM and the Holocaust is the stunning story of IBM's strategic alliance with Nazi Germany - beginning in 1933 in the first weeks that Hitler came to power and continuing well into World War II. As the Third Reich embarked upon its plan of conquest and genocide, IBM and it's subsidiaries helped create enabling technologies, step-by-step, from the identification and cataloging programs of the 1930s to the selections of the 1940s. IBM and the Holocaust takes you through the carefully crafted corporate collusion with the Third Reich, as well as the structured deniability of oral ageements, undated letters, and the Geneva intermediaries - all undertaken as the newspapers blazed with accounts of persecution and destruction. Just as compelling is the human drama of one of our century's greatest minds, IBM founder Thomas Watson, who cooperated with the Nazis for the sake of profit. Only with IBM's technologic assistance was Hitler able to achieve the staggering numbers of the Holocaust. Edwin Black has now uncovered one of the last great mysteries of Germany's war against the Jews - How did Hitler get the names?
Customer Reviews:
IBM and the Holocaust.......2006-12-08
I did not want to read this book.
My grandfather worked for International Time Recording (ITR) in Endicott, NY before IBM was formed and Mr. Watson came on board. My father's first job, at the age of seventeen, was caretaker of the Watson Homestead. My family has had a hand in virtually every product that issued from the IBM manufacturing effort since its inception in 1924. I have deep affection for the company my family labored to build.
I approached "IBM and the Holocaust" with a high degree of skepticism. The book sat on my nightstand for two months before I opened it. Finally picked it up for the sake of completing my 14-book IBM historical reading cycle.
This book is astounding. It is impeccably researched, artfully written, highly detailed, painstakingly documented, remarkably objective and thoroughly engaging.
"IBM and the Holocaust" has finally exposed the undeniable truth: IBM became the world's most powerful corporation largely because it assisted in identifying, cataloging and exterminating millions of innocent people for Hitler. The evil that lurks in IBM history was not exposed previously only because IBM management was smart enough and powerful enough to "hide its tracks" in Nuremburg. No investigator has ever dug deeper into IBM history than Edwin Black.
A close reading of the book makes it absolutely clear that Mr. Watson (IBM CEO) knew the exact purpose, goal and expected outcome of the IBM solution in Europe. The book details the fact that unlike previous IBM engagements for the Third Reich that were completed by Dehomag (IBM's German subsidiary), the engagement in Romania (1941) was conducted directly under the management of IBM New York. That engagement resulted in the swift identification, transportation and extermination of hundreds of thousands of innocent Jews. All in the name of "IBM."
As a result of reading "IBM and the Holocaust", I no longer view Mr. Watson as the glamorous benevolent industrial icon depicted in hollywoood newsreels. Though the affectionate "shop talk" tossed through the air when I was young still captures my imagination, Mr. Watson is no longer the focus of my unqualified admiration.
Watson, for me, now stands beside Carnegie, Rockefeller, Vanderbilt, Mellon, Jeffrey Skilling, Kenneth Lay and all the other American Industrialists throughout history who had many fine qualities yet are outrageously flawed--so good yet so very, very bad.
This book is remarkable. Have since read "Internal Combustion", Banking on Baghdad" and "War Against the Weak."
Edwin Black is "the bomb."
If you have an interest in history, corporations, corruption, good, bad, evil or fine nonfiction; you will appreciate the works of Edwin Black.
NancyRae Kjelgaard
Tallahassee, FL
December 7, 2006
a tale of two maniacs.......2006-08-03
Once upon a time in America there was a tabulating company executive who had almost done time for illegal business practices. This executive believed that the only way that he could stay in business was by selling the best tabulating machines on the market, and mercilessly crushing his competitors. Unfortunately for humanity, this maniac was doing business in a country run by another maniac, who had come to power by fomenting ethnic hatred. Even as things went down the drain, and the persecution of the Jews and other minorities reached loathsome heights, the American business executive didn't want to terminate his activities in Germany, and was supportive enough of the Nazis to accept the highest medal the Nazis could give him.
Even worse, by the time the war was in full swing, and the Nazis began the Holocaust the maniac of which I write, Tom Watson of IBM, saw no need to terminate IBM's business relationships with the Nazi governments, and, provided irreplaceable services in organizing the Holocaust. In France, where a courageous IBM employee refused to cooperate, the Nazis were "only" able to murder 25% of the Jews. Where IBM cooperated, as in the Netherlands, rates of 75% resulted. Life isn't fair; the brave Frenchman who refused to cooperate died at Dachau, the company that gladly cooperated wasn't punished. The horror, the horror.
Edwin Black has done a superb job of documenting (most of) this horror story in indisputable detail. Nevertheless I suspect that he doesn't tell the entire story, particularly when he claims that nobody guessed what was going on. Anyone who understands just how indispensable IBM's punch card machines were to the Allies during the war, "our ability to organize wouldn't have been remotely near what it was without them" to paraphrase one mathematician involved, must have wondered how the Germans were able to coordinate the logistics of their Blitzkrieg. Anyone in the punch card industry would have known of IBM's presence in Germany.
All in all this is a great book illustrating the banality of evil.
This book is chilling, and is a "must read".......2006-04-21
Reading this book, and the knowledge that IBM had during WWII and the genocide of millins of humans puts a face on cooprorate greed and hate unjlike any of the comparisions given to Halliburton today. IBM aided Hitler in his termination of the Jews, and others, and it has never, to my knowledge owned up to this, nor have they done any actions to make changes in the way companies help with genocide. Great book, great writer.
An Extraordinary Work.......2006-03-18
As proud as I am to be an American, this thoroughly documented, utterly revealing book, has for the first time made me look at the extents to which U.S. corporate greed and the amorality of one man, Thomas J. Watson, chairman of IBM, will go to satisfy there lust for money and power.
It is hard to believe that it took from the early 30's to 2001 before anyone, anywhere, put it all together. How could an American icon of business turn out to be a war criminal and go on to preside over, and build on to, a company which most of us used to consider as a proud example of American business ingenuity and integrity.
A shocking, sickening, and gut wrenching account of the most vile group of humans ever assembled, the Germans of the Third Reich, and how they could not possibly have achieved the sheer numbers of murders during the holocaust, had it not been for day to day involvement, and complete knowledge, of IBM and Thomas J. Watson.
I highly recommend this book.
Painful but needs to be exposed.......2005-08-14
I recently finished reading your extremely interesting book "IBM and the Holocaust" and want to commend you for a thorough investigation of the subject. Several years ago I too had been to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and seen the exhibit of the Dehomag Hollerith machine and wondered what was the entire story. Now I know, and I no longer view IBM the same way as I once did. Thanks for a well researched and interesting, if depressing, examination of when corporate loyalty and profits are placed above human suffering and survival.
Book Description
A great historian crowns a lifetime of thought and research by answering a question that has haunted us for more than 50 years: How did one of the most industrially and culturally advanced nations in the world embark on and continue along the path leading to one of the most enormous criminal enterprises in history, the extermination of Europe's Jews?
Giving considerable emphasis to a wealth of new archival findings, Saul Friedlander restores the voices of Jews who, after the 1933 Nazi accession to power, were engulfed in an increasingly horrifying reality. We hear from the persecutors themselves: the leaders of the Nazi party, the members of the Protestant and Catholic hierarchies, the university elites, and the heads of the business community. Most telling of all, perhaps, are the testimonies of ordinary German citizens, who in the main acquiesced to increasing waves of dismissals, segregation, humiliation, impoverishment, expulsion, and violence.
Customer Reviews:
Fantastic!.......2005-04-09
This is a wonderful book albeit with few personal experiences of the victims but on the whole you will enjoy the book. The writer's grasp of English is exceptional and in fact taking this parameter alone you can enjoy the book and learn something new in word and sentence formations. Though at first glance it may look like one of those boring and dry books, which inhabit the shelves of libraries all over the book without being opened for many years to come. The book is excellent and shows the level of utter nadir reached by Nazis and German people while persecuting their own. Seems to have been a sort of a collective disease in which even a modicum of humanity or decency taken a permanent back seat. The author has presented the facts and names of very difficult and guttural German names with such ease that there is no confusion to the reader.
I wonder why Israelis have to have any kind of relationship with Germany or Poland. . I think Israeli children are not really taught history but some kitsch formulated to draw their minds away from the murderers of their grandfathers to Palestinians. I think Israelis pretend that the Palestinians are the Germans of 1930's and 1940's, hence the highly ambiguous stance and conflicting gestures. Though it must be remembered that Arabs briefly flirted with Nazis like the Great Indian Leader Subhash Chandra Bose who fought against British imperialism - who excelled in demonstrative racial discrimination that was religiously followed by Germans with such ardor. I support the bombarding of German cities and also of the London Blitz. No doubt such "innocent" darlings hugely deserved each other.
Great Work from A Great Historian.......2004-03-10
I've taken several seminars at UCLA with Saul Friedlander, and to say that he is an objective and very insightful historian is an understatement. This book is terrific and deserves all the critical praise that it has received. Even if you are just curious about the Holocaust, or you are a serious historian of the time period, you should definitely pick this book up.
Excellent Intro to Hitler's Germany.......2003-07-04
This book is an excellent book for anyone wanting to learn about the rise of Fascism in Germany. It is factual and yet easy to read. Anyone that wants to understand how Hitler got his power should read this. The author's bias is kept to a minimum.
What a shame.......2001-07-21
This is an outstanding history. It is measured, detailed and backed by meticulous research. It is by far the best of this genre
The shame is that the much anticipated sequel is now not planned for publication.
But half a classic is better than none
Intriguing Study Of Nazi Persecution of Jews 1933-1939.......2000-07-03
This first in a two volume work by acclaimed historian is a remarkably objectivean , comprehensive and scrupulously scholarly work and represents a very critical contribution to historians' efforts to comprehend just how and why one of the most civilized and sophisticated countries in Europe descended into the systematic attempt to exterminate the Jews. The book proceeds along a chronological axis in recounting the slow but inexorably tightening of restrictions on the Jewish population within Germany during the years of the mid to late 1930s.
While centering his account of what went wrong in Nazi Germany during the pre-war years, he also humanizes his narrative considerably by interspersing individual accounts of people caught confused and unaware of what was really occurring in the crucible of cultural change. As substantiated in other recent accounts such as Victor Klemperer's "I Shall Bear Witness", Jews were very slow to recognize just how malevolent and serious the national Socialists were about ridding Germany of its Jewish population and also nationalizing and "Aryanizing" their resources and assets.
It is important to note that the author does not overlay any overall interpretive spin of his own, intent more on presenting the best evidence of what was going on than in coming to any premature general interpretation of what the mass of evidence in total might mean. This is not to suggest he offers no interpretation; on the contrary, he offers a series of brilliant insights in various aspects of the evidence. But unlike other recent authors like Goldhagen, he makes no sweeping interpretative conclusions based on all of the evidence he presents. Also, one must remember that this is the first of two volumes, and one would expect that he intends to fully conclude his systematic and chronological presentation of all of the available evidence before engaging in that sort of interpretative analysis.
In sum, I find this work to be an excellent book that is engaging, well-written and argued, and a joy to read despite its tragic and dispiriting subject matter, and a book that offers an amazing look at a wide variety of different perspectives and social situations within the Third Reich as it descended into the abyss. After finishing this volume I immediately ordered the second volume, which is slated for formal publication release later this year. This is a work that belongs on the bookshelf of any serious student of the Holocaust.
Book Description
When The Holocaust first appeared in Israel in 1987, it was hailed as the finest, most authoritative history of Hitler's war on the Jews ever published. Representing twenty years of research and reflection, Leni Yahil's book won the Shazar Prize, one of Israel's highest awards for historical work. Now available in English, The Holocaust offers a sweeping look at the Final Solution, covering not only Nazi policies, but also how Jews and foreign governments perceived and responded to the unfolding nightmare. The Holocaust is astonishingly comprehensive. Yahil weaves a gripping chronological narrative that stretches from the Norwegian fjords to the Greek islands, from Amsterdam to Tehran--and even Shanghai. Her writing is balanced, objective, and compelling, as she systematically explores the evolution of the Holocaust in German-occupied Europe, probing its politics, planning, goals, and key figures. Yahil uses her command of the many relevant languages to marshal an impressive array of documentary and statistical evidence, driving her narrative forward with telling details and personal accounts--such as a survivor's description of her perseverance during a death march, or the story of the Struma, a boat that sank with over 700 Jewish refugees when the British refused to receive it in Palestine. Along the way, she destroys persistent myths about the Holocaust: that Hitler had no plan for exterminating the Jews, that the Jews themselves went peacefully to the slaughter. Though Yahil finds that Nazi policies were often inconsistent, particularly during the years before the war, she conclusively demonstrates that Hitler was always working toward a final reckoning with world Jewry, envisioning his war as a war against the Jews. The book also recounts numerous uprisings and acts of resistance in ghettos and concentration camps, as well as the activities of Jewish partisan units. Yahil describes the work of Jews in America, Palestine, and world organizations on behalf of Hitler's victims--often in the face of resistance by the Allied governments and neutral states--and explores the factors that affected the success of rescue efforts. The Holocaust is a monumental work of history, unsurpassed in scope and insightful detail. Objective yet compassionate, Leni Yahil brings together the countless diverse strands of this epic event in a single gripping account.
Customer Reviews:
Full of objective facts.......2000-09-13
This is one of the best accounts of the Holocaust that I have read. It is completely objective, just leading the reader through the facts. Instead of taking the stance of "Hitler is evil and to blame for it all," the book shows the reader who all the players were, and how they were created. I strongly recommend this book to anyone who wants the facts.
Customer Reviews:
True stories of moral courage and goodness.......2000-04-06
On the front cover of "Rescuers" are 12 photographs of some very nice looking people. They are pictures of people that you might meet every day; of friends and family, or someone that you might pass by on the street. They are the faces of very ordinary people, but they are also much more than that. They are the faces of people that risked their lives to save the lives of others during the Holocaust. They are the faces of the rescuers. There are many more photographs inside the book, of rescuers from countries all over Europe. Author Malka Drucker and photographer Gay Block interviewed and photographed the rescuers, seeking the heart of compassion and moral courage. They found that heart in men and women; the young and the old; and in people from all walks of life. Every story told by the rescuers is very moving. Some rescuers saved one person from death; some saved many thousands. All of the rescuers are worthy of the greatest respect and honor. The rescuers were sometimes asked the question of why they helped others to live, when so many other people stood by and did nothing. The rescuers would answer that question by saying that they were only doing what they knew was right. By caring for other people, they were acting the way that everyone should have been acting. One of the most inspiring truths found in the book, is the thought that we all have that same spark of goodness within our hearts, that was shown so nobly by the rescuers. We all have the capacity for doing what is right, even in times of the greatest fear and terror. This is a book that will warm your heart, and it is well worth reading.
A beautiful photo-interview essay on altruism..........1999-01-19
This book is wonderfully formatted, arranged by geographic area of Europe. Each interview starts with black and white photos a person who helped Jews and other persecuted people during WWII. A personal narrative of that time in their lives follows, and each interview closes with a color photo of that person as they were in 1992 when the interviews were done. A complicated and moving picture of altruism emerges, and one gets a glimpse of how individuals chose to protect others at the risk of threat to themselves and their families.
Customer Reviews:
in one volume.......2007-07-02
Anyone looking for a single volume history of the Holocaust should start with this one. It is not an easy read, but it is informative and works well as a reference book. The table of contents sets up the material well, though it is by no means encyclopedic. The writing is straight forward, allowing the facts to speak so that readers make value judgments for themselves. The starkness of the tone serves as a reminder of how the Third Reich went about its final solution to the Jewish question, business as usual. Those of us who read it as an assigned text for an Issues in the Study of the Holocaust class found it somewhat dry at times, but our own outrage at how an "advanced society" could do such things made up for any tediousness of the book.
My 20 year old copy holds a place of honor on my shelf of frequently used history books.
Book illumates history and causes for Holocaust.......2007-01-09
At a family gathering, a relative of mine asked the question "why didn't the Jews fight back in a more organized way during WWII?" Not having an immediate answer, I went in search of one, which this book supplied. The background of the philosophical underpinnings, as well as the reasons for the way the Jewish community reacted, enhanced my knowledge of the Holocaust immensely, and have led to many other readings. Very accessible.
One of the most important books written about the Holocaust.......2006-01-23
This work is still considered by many to be one of the best books written about the 'Holocaust.' It goes into great detail explaining the roots of the Nazi, and specifically Hitler's determination to destroy the Jewish people. It shows how the program to destroy the Jews went hand-in- hand with the Third Reich''s overall effort to conquer Europe.
It also goes into great detail describing the destructions and terrible suffering the Jews went through in various communities in Europe.
It in short describes the roots and execution of what is arguably the greatest crime in human history, the deliberate Nazi effort to destroy an entire people, wherever they were on earth.
Important History.......2004-02-17
Hitler. The very name seems to invoke black and white images of a charasmatic madman pushing his country to global domination. But the story goes much deeper than that. His intense hatred of the Jews pushed him to implement his "Final Solution". To exploit and then kill every Jew in Europe before they, in his twisted mind, did the same to every one else.
Thankfully, his "appointed" task was never completed. But not before nearly six million Jews and countless others who either resisted or simply didn't conform to his Ideas of the perfect human were destroyed.
This is the story of those Jews who died and those survived the largest mass murder in recorded history. These are the things they didn't show or talk about in Public School. This book shows the strength and weakness of a people on the edge of anihalation. It doesn't show the Jews as a strong race overcoming their problems, or as a weak race sniveling and grovelling, waiting to die. It shows them as any other group of humans reacting to their circumstances in a wide variety of ways.
This is probably the longest time I have ever spent reading a book. After reading a page or two (especially in the second half of the book), I would generally have to put it down for a few days to read some lighter material. Overall I think it took me about nine to ten months to read. But I would definatly put it in the best books I have read.
So, if you are looking to understand what was happening to the Jews during WW2, or if you are just looking to fill in some of the gaps from history class, then I would heartily recomend this brilliant work.
The Holocaust book by which others are measured.......2003-09-23
Although an ocean of material has been written about the Holocaust, this book stands alone. The author has chosen the best way to present the material; by simple factual recitation. No amount of pejoratives would suffice, and even one would cheapen the book. Salut!!!!!!!!
Davidowicz examines the underpinnings of pan-European anti-Semitism, its "legitimization" by the Third Reich, its consequences on the victims, and the awful results masterfully. Especially excellent are the sections on why so little resistance was offered until the end, when resistance was a gesture, not a viable tactic.
You will never forget the first mayor of the Warsaw ghetto, Adam Czerniakow. This book is unforgettable, and earns the highest rating possible.
Average customer rating:
|
That Time Cannot Be Forgotten: A Correspondence on the Holocaust
Emil Georg Sold , and
Paul Friedhoff
Manufacturer: Indiana University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
 General
| Biographies & Memoirs
| Subjects
| Books
Jewish
| Ethnic & National
| Biographies & Memoirs
| Subjects
| Books
Holocaust
| Jewish
| World
| History
| Subjects
| Books
General
| World
| History
| Subjects
| Books
General
| Germany
| Europe
| History
| Subjects
| Books
General
| World War II
| Military
| History
| Subjects
| Books
ASIN: 0253340926 |
Book Description
In a gripping exchange of letters written in the closing years of the 20th century, two men linked by history though separated by time and space struggle to come to terms with the signal event of their time, the Holocaust. Paul Friedhoff, a German Jew born in the Rhineland-Palatinate region in 1907, and Dr. Emil Georg Sold, a Catholic born in the same region in 1920, struck up a correspondence decades after the end of the war. Despite the obstacle of never having seen one another, the two grew to become very good friends, and the correspondence became an integral part of their lives. In remembering and attempting to understand the Holocaust, Friedhoff and Sold hope to save future generations from enduring what their generation has endured. And in that way, their letters are not so much about the past as they are about the future.
Customer Reviews:
Make Time to Read This.......2004-10-23
This book was one of the best first person to first person histories of the German Holocaust. It deals with real issues that Germans on both sides of the war had to work through. If you need to get a wonderful history to understand what the "common" German man would have experienced and what it meant to him many years later upon reflection, this is a book for you to add to your library. The translation by Ivan Fehrenbach is right on the money. Both of the author's are intellectually honest and thorough. The use of letters made the reading personal,yet it always would give a great back and forth "conversation" that you could follow.
Get this book. You will be glad you did.
Amazon.com
The second volume of Victor Klemperer's searing diary, kept in secret during the 12 years he suffered under the Nazi regime, covers the period from 1942 to 1945. The humiliations visited on even such "privileged" Jews as Klemperer (whose wife was Aryan) grew increasingly severe, with house searches, arbitrary arrests, and brutal beatings becoming virtually routine. The 60-year-old historian is forced to shovel snow despite his heart condition; hunger gnaws at him as rations are mercilessly cut. Yet he clings to an intellectual life, continuing his reading and making notes on the lies and obfuscations of official Nazi discourse that would become his postwar masterpiece, Lingua Tertii Imperii. "The Russians, who have only just been annihilated, are tremendous and quite inexhaustible opponents," he notes sardonically after reading a mendacious fascist article in 1942. His lengthy account of his escape with his wife from Dresden after the Allied bombings of 1945 unforgettably captures the chaos of World War II's final days and the mixed feelings of a Jew who could never wholeheartedly gloat over the defeat of the nation that had persecuted him. Above all, his unflinching depiction of human nature and society in extremis amply justifies his cherished belief that even the Nazis "cannot prevent language from testifying to the truth." --Wendy Smith
Book Description
Destined to take its place alongside
The Diary of Anne Frank and Elie Wiesel's
Night as one of the great classics of the Holocaust,
I Will Bear Witness is a timeless work of literature, the most eloquent and acute testament to have emerged from Hitler's Germany. Volume Two begins in 1942, the year the Final Solution was formally proposed, and carries us through to the Allied bombing of Dresden and Germany's defeat.
Customer Reviews:
Final Journey to freedom.......2007-09-03
One should read this book only after the first volume covering the years 1933-41. The story of Victor & Eva's survival of detention in the Jews' house, the Dresden bombing and subsequent wanderings stunned me. But Victor's courage in continuing his secret diary for 12 years comes through - as does his humanity ad personal growth.
The diary jotting sryle means you pick it up and read a section at a time, but you will most likely be drawn into finishing it within a short time.
Great Book.......2007-02-09
And I will get the other years of this author's diary. This is not a fast paced WWII battle book; this is the diary of a poor soul who had to live through every moment of a terrible regime, to endure even more when he thought he'd reached his limit. If you're interested in what it was like to live day to day in Hitler's Germany (as a Jew or a gentile)--to understand what it was like to watch it begin and grow and eventually implode--this is an excellent read. I would say it is for those deeply interested in the psychology of the times; not a passing interest. I'll get the other books and read them in order of the years they cover. I really want to understand how the Third Reich could ever BE.
A Courageous, One-of-a-Kind View Inside Nazi Germany.......2006-07-04
This is actually the second volume of Klemperer's diaries, published in two volumes. I highly recommend that you buy both volumes as a set and read from the beginning how a bureaucratic mindset advanced towards ultimate evil.
In the end, Klemperer's diary doesn't fully answer the haunting question, "How could it have happened?" But you will find some definitive answers here to questions that Holocaust scholars have debated over the years.
For example, Klemperer's experience answers the charge that virtually all Aryan Germans knew from the beginning exactly what the Third Reich's intentions were towards the Jews. Klemperer's actual interactions stand as refutation of this blanket indictment. Often when he visited Aryan acquaintances to conduct business - he would then jovially be invited to come back that evening for schnapps. Klemperer had to explain that he couldn't come back later for schnapps - that as a Jew, he was prohibited from boarding any vehicle of public transportation after 6:00 PM, that he had a general curfew, and that of course, he had long since been banned from owning his own car.
Klemperer was always circumspect in recounting these laws he labored under to his "Semitophile" acquaintances. (That's an awkward translation of the German phrase Klemperer probably used to refer to Aryans who were sympathetic to Jews. But it is perhaps the only word that was available to Martin Chalmers, who otherwise has produced a generally fluid translation of Klemperer's journals.) At any rate, Klemperer was careful never to appear too whining or too critical of the restrictions placed on him. He didn't want to alienate these Aryan allies. Nevertheless, he repeatedly found himself in the position of having to enlighten them about the government's latest round of restrictions. And his listeners were almost always genuinely surprised to hear about these laws. Their ignorance in the face of all the anti-Semitic propaganda blared daily from radios, blazoned from the newspapers, seemed to be more a function of people's tendency towards plodding self-preoccupation than an indication of any active complicity with the advancing evil.
I think you'll find that Klemperer's account also carries a very relevant warning to us in our current pursuit of terrorists at all costs. Klemperer survived the early rounds of call-ups for the concentration camps because he was a decorated World War I hero, and because he was married to an Aryan. For these reasons, he was given some initial grudging dispensation from the worst Nazi reprisals. However as the War progressed, his past service to Germany and his Aryan affiliation came to count for less and less. Finally his number was up and he, along with the last handful of Jews remaining around Dresden, were scheduled for transport. The only thing that saved him was the Allied bombing of Dresden. Most local Nazi records were destroyed in this notorious bombardment. So Klemperer and his wife, having survived the bombing, were also able to survive those last most brutal months of the Nazi regime by assuming new identities and wandering through the German countryside from town to town, passing themselves off as a typical displaced Aryan couple. If the Nazis' meticulous records (documenting family lineages and confirming who was where) had remained intact, Klemperer would certainly have been deported to the gas chambers.
So if you don't already have doubts about the increasing surveillance measures being taken in the U.S., presumably to guard against terrorists and other "evildoers" - reading these journals will give you pause. One of the lessons of Klemperer's journal is how tyranny proceeds by little increments of paperwork. Its power is in keeping tabs.
Klemperer risked his life to write the entries in these journals, because it eventually became a capital crime for a Jew to possess paper or any pen/pencil. So it feels almost sacrilegious to make any criticism of this supremely brave and literate account. However I do have one small criticism. And that is Klemperer's common masculine tendency to put his wife in the background of his life. Eva Klemperer comes off in the diary as a shadowy adjunct to the importance of Victor's work producing these pages.
She is mentioned, more frequently in the first volume of the diaries, but this mention is usually limited to reports of the fact that she had another hysterical fit that day, or that she engaged Victor in another round of angry lamentation, or that she suffered some physical malady. He does acknowledge her collaborative bravery. She also risked her life every time she smuggled the pages of his work out of their small assigned apartment into the hands of friends for safekeeping. But we never directly hear Eva's voice in all this. The reader is only left to guess at the actual substance of her outbursts.
You will probably feel impelled to read between the lines to flesh her out. Perhaps Eva wasn't the prettiest girl in school, so she took the one marriage proposal that came her way. She married the intellectually accomplished Victor. Victor was available because Aryan prejudice, even in those early years, already limited him socially. We can imagine her outbursts of recrimination as the Nazi noose grew tighter around their yoked necks. Why did you have to be Jewish? Why have you dragged me down with you? I could have led such a happy life. And instead, look at me - scrounging for rotten potatoes, under constant threat of beatings and death - and all because of you!
If only Eva had written her own diary, we might have had some additional fascinating insights into why and how a couple stays together under such trying circumstances. We might have gained a greater understanding of the ties of love and the chains of having nowhere else to go. As it is, we have only Victor's side of the story. But that is a powerful, must-read insight into how tyranny grows, brick-by-brick, petty edict by petty edict.
The most compelling book I have ever read.......2006-03-22
Because my friends all know what a book-hound I am, people often ask me what my all-time favorite book is. Admittedly the answer to this would change over time, but, at present, "I Will Bear Witness" is the one that first pops into my mind.
I found this very personal account of the days and nights of a German Jewish man--an inoffensive and formerly rather conservative German nationalist academic married to a Gentile--during the Nazi terror regime to be absolutely breathtaking. Indeed, I was so caught up in his account that I took an unexpected day of vacation from work just to not interrupt my reading once I had started.
Further, I found myself sprawled on my bed, as is sometimes customary with me, surrounded by ancillary books, atlases, and maps --a behavior that signifies I'm reading a book that has utterly gripped me and a book that is expanding my horizons.
Klemperer was (just barely) saved from being sent to a concentration camp due to his marriage to a non-Jew. However, he lived every day under the threat of torture and deportation to a camp and his journal tells of the years of grinding anxiety over his fate and the fate of his wife, friends, and relatives-many of whom were taken. It also speaks to the minutiae of life under the Nazi's--such things as their penchant for legalisms to justify their treatment of the Jews embodied in his incessant embroilment in Nazi demands that he take part in the legalisms of their confiscation of his property. Moreover, as the war draws to a close, he draws a stunning portrait of life as a war refugee--a picture that applies to war refugees the world over throughout time.
Kudos to those who elevated this book to number one among the history choices-it deserves it and in my mind deserves even more.
Life-Affirming, Edge-of-your-seat, Nonstop Reading.......2006-01-30
Victor Klemperer's diary of the years of the Hitler dictatorship and his recording of the day-to-day lives of the Jews of Dresden, his thoughtful and insightful commentary on the methods (particularly the language of the propaganda) of the Third Reich, the heart-wrenching stories of those who were taken away never to be seen again, his experience in the firebombing of Dresden in 1945 and his miraculous journey home should be required reading for everyone about the horrors of tyranny and war. It is also a tribute to the true human spirit and the power of the intellect. Klemperer never lost his determination to live, despite all the blows of terror that were aimed at him, his family, and his friends. That he believed there was something to live for--in the midst of utter barbarity--should inspire all of us to work for a better world. It did me.
A remarkable record of a dark time. Reading it gives one the courage to carry on in the dark times that have come again.
Book Description
These 213 documents on the theory, planning, and execution of, and reaction and resistance to, the Nazi plan to exterminate European Jews date from the 1920s through the closing days of World War II and focus on the experience of eastern Europe.
The crystallization of the principles of Nazi anti-Semitism, the policies of the Third Reich toward the Jews, the period of segregation and enclosed ghettos, and the stages through which the ‘final solution’ were implemented are some of the topics covered. Other documents shed light on Jewish public activities and the organization of the Underground and Jewish self-defense. Many of the documents of Jewish origin were not published previously. This comprehensive collection is essential for understanding the history of the Holocaust.
Customer Reviews:
The history of the Nazis war against the Jewish people.......2003-02-26
This series of legal documents, decrees, orders, instructions or live accounts describes better than any litterary form the progression in horror which our Jewish parents, brothers, sisters, nieces, and nevews had to suffer from April fools' day of 1933 when waring the David star was enforced to this community until the end of the second world war in mid 1945.
As a Christian I was surprised to discover that the trauma resulting from the horrifying murders is so deep in the Jewish community that, for most, its members if they do know about the holocaust, actually don't have a real view of it. Naturally the massive and sadistic aggresion against the Jewish people screens, in this book, the fate of the ones who shared their fate for having protected them or for having fought the Nazis.
After all Jewish people suffered between two third and three quarter of the enormous human non-military losses under surrealistically inhuman conditions.
This book should be handled with the respect normally due to religious books: it represents the steps of the martyrdom of the Jewish families under Nazi madness.
The content of the book should be remembered in details by every western culture including Israel's right wing (after all "Nazi" represents the danger of mixing nationalism and socialism...) Americans should learn from this book that being more powerful doesn't mean being better. Europeans could find in it how non elected "public servants" laugh at democratically elected representatives (elected ones disappear over the time, bureaucrats remain and never have to respond for diffused results).
For the content of this book to be fully meaningful, it should be enlightened by Milgram's explanation of how "Obedience to authority" made it possible for these horror to happen.
A major book which supplies everything Jewish and non Jewish need to know. A reedition with a lot of proper photographs of the murders by the Einsatzgruppen, of the Gettos and of the concentration camps conditions would be welcome.
The history of the Nazis war against the Jewish people.......2003-02-26
This series of legal documents, decrees, orders, instructions or live accounts describes better than any litterary form the progression in horror which our Jewish parents, brothers, sisters, nieces, and nevews had to suffer from April fools' day of 1933 when waring the David star was enforced to this community until the end of the second world war in mid 1945.
As a Christian I was surprised to discover that the trauma resulting from the horrifying murders is so deep in the Jewish community that, for most, its members if they do know about the holocaust, actually don't have a real view of it. Naturally the massive and sadistic aggresion against the Jewish people screens, in this book, the fate of the ones who shared their fate for having protected them or for having fought the Nazis.
After all Jewish people suffered between two third and three quarter of the enormous human non-military losses under surrealistically inhuman conditions.
This book should be handled with the respect normally due to religious books: it represents the steps of the martyrdom of the Jewish families under Nazi madness.
The content of the book should be remembered in details by every western culture including Israel's right wing (after all "Nazi" represents the danger of mixing nationalism and socialism...) Americans should learn from this book that being more powerful doesn't mean being better. Europeans could find in it how non elected "public servants" laugh at democratically elected representatives (elected ones disappear over the time, bureaucrats remain and never have to respond for diffused results).
For the content of this book to be fully meaningful, it should be enlightened by Milgram's explanation of how "Obedience to authority" made it possible for these horror to happen.
A major book which supplies everything Jewish and non Jewish need to know. A reedition with a lot of proper photographs of the murders by the Einsatzgruppen, of the Gettos and of the concentration camps conditions would be welcome.
Books:
- The Endurance: Shackleton's Legendary Antarctic Expedition
- The God Delusion
- The Great Novels of Anatole France: Penguin Island, the Crime of Sylvestre Bonnard And the Revolt of the Angels
- The Harmless People
- The Lakota Way: Stories and Lessons for Living
- The Lost Boy: A Foster Child's Search for the Love of a Family
- The Machu Picchu Guidebook: A Self-Guided Tour
- The Mystery of Capital: Why Capitalism Triumphs in the West and Fails Everywhere Else
- The New Kayak Shop: More Elegant Wooden Kayaks Anyone Can Build
- The New Oxford History of Music: Volume I: Ancient and Oriental Music (New Oxford History of Music, Vol.1)
Books Index
Books Home
Recommended Books
- Scavenger
- Dragon of the Red Dawn
- The Haemodynamic Effects of Nitric Oxide
- The Diary of Frida Kahlo: An Intimate Self-Portrait
- American Cinematographer Manual, Ninth Edition
- Energy Autonomy: The Economic, Social and Technological Case for Renewable Energy
- Birds Off the Perch: Therapy and Training for Your Pet Bird
- The Story of the Synagogue: A Diaspora Museum Book
- The Outhouse Revisited
- Insects and Flowers: A Biological Partnership
Perpetrators Victims Bystanders: Jewish Catastrophe 1933-1945
The Politics of Memory: The Journey of a Holocaust Historian
Ordinary Men: Reserve Police Battalion 101 and the Final Solution in Poland
The War Against the Jews: 1933-1945
The Holocaust: A History of the Jews of Europe During the Second World War
