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Rethinking the Holocaust
Yehuda Bauer, one of the world’s premier historians of the Holocaust, here presents an insightful overview and reconsideration of its history and meaning. Drawing on research he and other historians have done in recent years, he offers fresh opinions on such basic issues as how to define and explain the Holocaust; whether it can be compared with other genocides; how Jews reacted to the murder campaign against them; and what the relationship is between the Holocaust and the establishment of Israel.
The Holocaust says something terribly important about humanity, says Bauer. He analyzes explanations of the Holocaust by Zygmunt Bauman, Jeffrey Herf, Goetz Aly, Daniel Goldhagen, John Weiss, and Saul Friedländer and then offers his own interpretation of how the Holocaust could occur. Providing fascinating narratives as examples, he deals with reactions of Jewish men and women during the Holocaust and tells of several attempts at rescue operations. He also explores Jewish theology of the Holocaust, arguing that our view of the Holocaust should not be clouded by mysticism: it was an action by humans against other humans and is therefore an explicable event that we can prevent from recurring.
The Holocaust says something terribly important about humanity, says Bauer. He analyzes explanations of the Holocaust by Zygmunt Bauman, Jeffrey Herf, Goetz Aly, Daniel Goldhagen, John Weiss, and Saul Friedländer and then offers his own interpretation of how the Holocaust could occur. Providing fascinating narratives as examples, he deals with reactions of Jewish men and women during the Holocaust and tells of several attempts at rescue operations. He also explores Jewish theology of the Holocaust, arguing that our view of the Holocaust should not be clouded by mysticism: it was an action by humans against other humans and is therefore an explicable event that we can prevent from recurring.
352 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2000
About the author
Yehuda Bauer
61 books31 followersYehuda Bauer was a Czech-born Israeli historian and scholar of the Holocaust. He was a professor of Holocaust Studies at the Avraham Harman Institute of Contemporary Jewry at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
October 13, 2013
This is an essential survey of contemporary thinking about the Holocaust by one of its greatest historians. To clarify my own thinking - and maybe to be useful for anyone else trying to get a grip on this huge topic - I wanted to summarise my reading.
So here is my path through the labyrinth.
I divided the entire subject under eight headings :
ONE: GENERAL HISTORIES AND DISCUSSIONS
TWO: THE CAMPS
THREE: ACCOUNTS OF SPECIFIC CAMPS
FOUR : LIBERATION AND AFTERMATH
FIVE : FICTIONALISED ACCOUNTS
SIX : PERPETRATORS : HITLER
SEVEN : PERPETRATORS : OTHER NAZIS
EIGHT : CONTEMPORARY REVERBERATIONS
To begin, a quote :
The Holocaust is the definitive refutation of the grand illusion that human beings become better as they become more educated.
- Carol Rittner
And a radical summary of the Jewish Holocaust
The Nazis murdered between 5 and 6 million Jews which was one third of the total global Jewish population and two thirds of all European Jews.
75% of the murdered Jews were from Poland and the Soviet Union
50% of all victims died in the 6 extermination camps
25% died in shootings by the Einsatzgruppen
25% died in ghettos, and in concentration camps
50% of victims died in the year between March 1942 and March 1943
***
PART ONE : GENERAL HISTORIES.
I have found the following very useful or at least extremely interesting
1. The Nazi Holocaust : Ronnie S Landau 1992
2. Nazi Germany and the Jews : Saul Friedlander 1997
3. The Holocaust : The Fate of European Jewry 1932-1945: Leni Yahil 1987
This one is all you really need for a basic history
And a note on
The Holocaust – Martin Gilbert 1986
This one I had a big problem with – unlike Leni Yahil's account, I found it to be a harrowing horrible plod through atrocity after atrocity. You need a measured approach to this subject otherwise any reader with any sensitivities at all will be revolted and appalled to the extent of not wishing to continue. So I would suggest avoiding Martin Gilbert for that reason. I know this book has a lot of admirers.
5. The Nazi Dictatorship – Ian Kershaw 1985
Excellent nuts and bolts political and economic examination of the Nazi's total control over the German people.
6. Approaches to Auschwitz : the Legacy of the Holocaust – Rubenstein & Roth 1987
Unmissable philosophical/theological exploration of the Holocaust – see my review for further details.
7. The Holocaust in Historical Perspective : Yehuda Bauer 1978
8. Rethinking the Holocaust : Yehuda Bauer (2001)
These are essential – see review on the first of the two. For me Bauer is the greatest thinker about the Holocaust.
9. The Holocaust in History : Marrus 1988
This is also essential. Was the Holocaust unique? Many these days like to categorise it along with other slaughters (Rwanda, Armenia). But like Marrus I believe it was unique.
10. Shoah : Claude Lanzmann (film, 1986, and book)
The documentary is tough going and I have a lot of problems with it. (Available on dvd). Claude Lanzmann crops up in Explaining Hitler (see later) and comes across as a bit of a nutcase.
11. Long Shadows : Truth, Lies and History : Erna Paris 2001
An extraordinary book about how nations cope with their guilty bloodstained past – one chapter relates to the Holocaust. It's really excellent stuff.
12. A Mosaic of Victims : Non-Jews persecuted and Murdered by the Nazis - edited by Michael Berenbaum
See review. This is a very important collection of essays about the non-Jewish part of the Nazi war on humanity, i.e. the Roma, homosexuals, the mentally ill, and all the Slavic nations who were killed either deliberately or more likely as an unregarded consequence of the vast slave labour system. I understand why the Jewish Holocaust is the central event of the Nazi period but I think it's unfortunate that there seems to have been an idea that discussing the millions of non-Jewish victims in some way takes our attention from that, which I do not think is true.
PART TWO : THE CAMPS
1 The Tragedy of Nazi Germany : Peter Phillips 1969
2. The Theory and Practise of Hell : Kogon
3 Documents of Destruction : Raoul Hilberg
These are good and very horrifying descriptions of the camp system.
2. The Survivor : An Anatomy of Life in the Death Camps : Terrence Des Pres 1976
This is a pitiless examination of what it took to survive these most extreme of human conditions. Recommended, but a very strong stomach is required.
PART THREE : ACCOUNTS OF SPECIFIC CAMPS
The corpses in front of the block accumulated daily. We passed them with indifference. Even the glimpse of a familiar face that had belonged to a person with whom one had conversed only a few days before produced no reaction. (Stutthof survivor).
a) scholarly
1.The Death Camp Treblinka – Donat 1979
2.Mauthausen – le Chene 1971
3.Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka – Yitzhak Arad
b) survivor memoirs
There are a lot of these. I think most people would single out Primo Levi as one of the – if not the – greatest Holocaust autobiographer. All his writings should be at the top of any Holocaust reading list :
If This is a Man
The Truce
The Drowned and the Saved
Moments of Reprieve
The Periodic Table
Some others I haphazardly came across :
Auschwitz – Nyiszli 1962
Five Chimneys – Olga Lengyel 1950
Inside Belsen – Levy-Haas
A Time to Speak – Lewis 1993
Night - Wiesel 1960
Why did the Heavens not darken? - Arno Mayer
PART FOUR : LIBERATION AND AFTERMATH
1.The Day of the Americans – Nerin Gun 1961
2.Inside the Vicious Heart – Robert Abzug 1985
3.Deliverance Day : The Last Hours at Dachau – Michael Selzer
4.The Journey Back from Hell – Anton Gill 1988
PART FIVE : FICTIONALISED ACCOUNTS
These are often memoirs-with-dialogue, but a few do try the very difficult task of rendering the horrors into something approaching the art of literature.
1.Maus 1 & 2 – Spiegelman 1986/91
2.A Scrap of Time – Fink 1988
3.This Way to the Gas, ladies and Gentlemen – Borowski 1959
4.Auschwitz: True Tales from a Grotesque Land – Nomberg-Przytyk 1985
5. Reading the Holocaust : Inga Clendinnen 1999
This is a survey of fictionalised accounts of the Holocaust. Only skimmed it so far but looks very good.
PART SIX : THE PERPETRATORS : HITLER
1. Adolf Hitler – a biography by John Toland 1976
I know this is a very racy, journalistic book and one the serious scholars would probably throw in the bin, and I know I should get hold of Ian kershaw's two volume acknowledged masterwork, but John Toland's 1000 page bio blew my mind open many years ago and if anything to do with Hitler can be regarded fondly, I look back on reading this with a sense of excitement. It's a truly amazing story.
2. Explaining Hitler – Ron Rosenbaum 1998
This is my favourite book on Hitler because it's a tour of all the current (and past) explanations of where this disgusting insanity came from. I believe the statement "No Hitler, no Holocaust". See my long review on this for more info.
3. The Hitler of History : John Lukacs (1997)
Excellent if quite contentious examination of what historians have made of the whole phenomenon.
PART SEVEN : THE PERPETRATORS : OTHER NAZIS
1. The Face of the Third Reich : Joachim Fest 1963
Great tour through the brains of the top 15 Nazis and a few crucial professions too (e.g. doctors). I need to reread this.
2. Into that Darkness : Gita Sereney 1974
Interviews with Fritz Stangl, commandant of Treblinka. Amazing interviews with the commandant of an extermination (as opposed to concentration) camp commandant. After the last of these interviews Stangle keeled over and died of a heart attack. Gitta Sereney is a brilliant writer on what you might call Difficult Cases – see her two excellent books on Mary Bell.
3. Eichmann in Jerusalem : Hannah Arendt 1964
No comment, haven't read this yet
4. Ordinary Men : Browning
See review elsewhere – this and Explaining Hitler are what I would give to anyone after they've read a Hitler bio.
5. Himmler : Reichsfuhrer-SS : Peter Padfield
Actually I didn't like this biography so this one is a kind of place-holder until I find a good one of the completely insane Himmler.
6. Hitler's Willing Executioners : Daniel Goldhagen
I haven't read this but it belongs on any list of Holocaust books. Very famous, enormously controversial, hated and celebrated. Basically says that the whole German nation was profoundly antisemitic and couldn't wait for Hitler to fire the starting pistol so they could all get stuck in. So this is as opposed to the view that the Nazis hijacked German society and carried out the genocide in secret and that decent Germans who were the majority would never have supportd it, and that's why it was kept secret.
PART EIGHT : CONTEMPORARY REVERBERATIONS
1.Denying the Holocaust : The Growing Assault on Truth and memory – Deborah E Lipstadt 1993
2.History on Trial : Lipstadt
The first is a survey of the vile denial underground and the tendrils it was just poking above ground when the book was published. It needs an update because denial has become a big feature of a whole lot of Muslim jihadi propaganda. And yes, that would be a very difficult area to write about, but it has to be done.
The second book is the account of Deborah and Penguin books winning the libel suit brought against them by the maverick nutjob David Irving. She called him a denier, he sued, he made the trial all about proving if Jews were gassed in Auschwitz, they proved this in court (which was a judicial first), and Irving lost & was financially ruined. Result!
3. In Hitler’s Shadow : West German Historians and the Attempt to Escape from the Nazi Past : Richard Evans 1989
4.The Holocaust and Collective Memory : Peter Novick
An intriguing investigation into the way the Holocaust grew from hardly getting any mention in the immediate postwar period to being the central event of the 20th century by the 1990s.
5. The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering By Norman G. Finkelstein
Pretty controversial stuff, and I'm sure the author has been called a self-hating jew many times, and of playing into the hands of the jihadis, but he wants to protest against the Holocaust being used as a protective shield around any Israeli government policy which might otherwise be called expansionist.
So here is my path through the labyrinth.
I divided the entire subject under eight headings :
ONE: GENERAL HISTORIES AND DISCUSSIONS
TWO: THE CAMPS
THREE: ACCOUNTS OF SPECIFIC CAMPS
FOUR : LIBERATION AND AFTERMATH
FIVE : FICTIONALISED ACCOUNTS
SIX : PERPETRATORS : HITLER
SEVEN : PERPETRATORS : OTHER NAZIS
EIGHT : CONTEMPORARY REVERBERATIONS
To begin, a quote :
The Holocaust is the definitive refutation of the grand illusion that human beings become better as they become more educated.
- Carol Rittner
And a radical summary of the Jewish Holocaust
The Nazis murdered between 5 and 6 million Jews which was one third of the total global Jewish population and two thirds of all European Jews.
75% of the murdered Jews were from Poland and the Soviet Union
50% of all victims died in the 6 extermination camps
25% died in shootings by the Einsatzgruppen
25% died in ghettos, and in concentration camps
50% of victims died in the year between March 1942 and March 1943
***
PART ONE : GENERAL HISTORIES.
I have found the following very useful or at least extremely interesting
1. The Nazi Holocaust : Ronnie S Landau 1992
2. Nazi Germany and the Jews : Saul Friedlander 1997
3. The Holocaust : The Fate of European Jewry 1932-1945: Leni Yahil 1987
This one is all you really need for a basic history
And a note on
The Holocaust – Martin Gilbert 1986
This one I had a big problem with – unlike Leni Yahil's account, I found it to be a harrowing horrible plod through atrocity after atrocity. You need a measured approach to this subject otherwise any reader with any sensitivities at all will be revolted and appalled to the extent of not wishing to continue. So I would suggest avoiding Martin Gilbert for that reason. I know this book has a lot of admirers.
5. The Nazi Dictatorship – Ian Kershaw 1985
Excellent nuts and bolts political and economic examination of the Nazi's total control over the German people.
6. Approaches to Auschwitz : the Legacy of the Holocaust – Rubenstein & Roth 1987
Unmissable philosophical/theological exploration of the Holocaust – see my review for further details.
7. The Holocaust in Historical Perspective : Yehuda Bauer 1978
8. Rethinking the Holocaust : Yehuda Bauer (2001)
These are essential – see review on the first of the two. For me Bauer is the greatest thinker about the Holocaust.
9. The Holocaust in History : Marrus 1988
This is also essential. Was the Holocaust unique? Many these days like to categorise it along with other slaughters (Rwanda, Armenia). But like Marrus I believe it was unique.
10. Shoah : Claude Lanzmann (film, 1986, and book)
The documentary is tough going and I have a lot of problems with it. (Available on dvd). Claude Lanzmann crops up in Explaining Hitler (see later) and comes across as a bit of a nutcase.
11. Long Shadows : Truth, Lies and History : Erna Paris 2001
An extraordinary book about how nations cope with their guilty bloodstained past – one chapter relates to the Holocaust. It's really excellent stuff.
12. A Mosaic of Victims : Non-Jews persecuted and Murdered by the Nazis - edited by Michael Berenbaum
See review. This is a very important collection of essays about the non-Jewish part of the Nazi war on humanity, i.e. the Roma, homosexuals, the mentally ill, and all the Slavic nations who were killed either deliberately or more likely as an unregarded consequence of the vast slave labour system. I understand why the Jewish Holocaust is the central event of the Nazi period but I think it's unfortunate that there seems to have been an idea that discussing the millions of non-Jewish victims in some way takes our attention from that, which I do not think is true.
PART TWO : THE CAMPS
1 The Tragedy of Nazi Germany : Peter Phillips 1969
2. The Theory and Practise of Hell : Kogon
3 Documents of Destruction : Raoul Hilberg
These are good and very horrifying descriptions of the camp system.
2. The Survivor : An Anatomy of Life in the Death Camps : Terrence Des Pres 1976
This is a pitiless examination of what it took to survive these most extreme of human conditions. Recommended, but a very strong stomach is required.
PART THREE : ACCOUNTS OF SPECIFIC CAMPS
The corpses in front of the block accumulated daily. We passed them with indifference. Even the glimpse of a familiar face that had belonged to a person with whom one had conversed only a few days before produced no reaction. (Stutthof survivor).
a) scholarly
1.The Death Camp Treblinka – Donat 1979
2.Mauthausen – le Chene 1971
3.Belzec, Sobibor, Treblinka – Yitzhak Arad
b) survivor memoirs
There are a lot of these. I think most people would single out Primo Levi as one of the – if not the – greatest Holocaust autobiographer. All his writings should be at the top of any Holocaust reading list :
If This is a Man
The Truce
The Drowned and the Saved
Moments of Reprieve
The Periodic Table
Some others I haphazardly came across :
Auschwitz – Nyiszli 1962
Five Chimneys – Olga Lengyel 1950
Inside Belsen – Levy-Haas
A Time to Speak – Lewis 1993
Night - Wiesel 1960
Why did the Heavens not darken? - Arno Mayer
PART FOUR : LIBERATION AND AFTERMATH
1.The Day of the Americans – Nerin Gun 1961
2.Inside the Vicious Heart – Robert Abzug 1985
3.Deliverance Day : The Last Hours at Dachau – Michael Selzer
4.The Journey Back from Hell – Anton Gill 1988
PART FIVE : FICTIONALISED ACCOUNTS
These are often memoirs-with-dialogue, but a few do try the very difficult task of rendering the horrors into something approaching the art of literature.
1.Maus 1 & 2 – Spiegelman 1986/91
2.A Scrap of Time – Fink 1988
3.This Way to the Gas, ladies and Gentlemen – Borowski 1959
4.Auschwitz: True Tales from a Grotesque Land – Nomberg-Przytyk 1985
5. Reading the Holocaust : Inga Clendinnen 1999
This is a survey of fictionalised accounts of the Holocaust. Only skimmed it so far but looks very good.
PART SIX : THE PERPETRATORS : HITLER
1. Adolf Hitler – a biography by John Toland 1976
I know this is a very racy, journalistic book and one the serious scholars would probably throw in the bin, and I know I should get hold of Ian kershaw's two volume acknowledged masterwork, but John Toland's 1000 page bio blew my mind open many years ago and if anything to do with Hitler can be regarded fondly, I look back on reading this with a sense of excitement. It's a truly amazing story.
2. Explaining Hitler – Ron Rosenbaum 1998
This is my favourite book on Hitler because it's a tour of all the current (and past) explanations of where this disgusting insanity came from. I believe the statement "No Hitler, no Holocaust". See my long review on this for more info.
3. The Hitler of History : John Lukacs (1997)
Excellent if quite contentious examination of what historians have made of the whole phenomenon.
PART SEVEN : THE PERPETRATORS : OTHER NAZIS
1. The Face of the Third Reich : Joachim Fest 1963
Great tour through the brains of the top 15 Nazis and a few crucial professions too (e.g. doctors). I need to reread this.
2. Into that Darkness : Gita Sereney 1974
Interviews with Fritz Stangl, commandant of Treblinka. Amazing interviews with the commandant of an extermination (as opposed to concentration) camp commandant. After the last of these interviews Stangle keeled over and died of a heart attack. Gitta Sereney is a brilliant writer on what you might call Difficult Cases – see her two excellent books on Mary Bell.
3. Eichmann in Jerusalem : Hannah Arendt 1964
No comment, haven't read this yet
4. Ordinary Men : Browning
See review elsewhere – this and Explaining Hitler are what I would give to anyone after they've read a Hitler bio.
5. Himmler : Reichsfuhrer-SS : Peter Padfield
Actually I didn't like this biography so this one is a kind of place-holder until I find a good one of the completely insane Himmler.
6. Hitler's Willing Executioners : Daniel Goldhagen
I haven't read this but it belongs on any list of Holocaust books. Very famous, enormously controversial, hated and celebrated. Basically says that the whole German nation was profoundly antisemitic and couldn't wait for Hitler to fire the starting pistol so they could all get stuck in. So this is as opposed to the view that the Nazis hijacked German society and carried out the genocide in secret and that decent Germans who were the majority would never have supportd it, and that's why it was kept secret.
PART EIGHT : CONTEMPORARY REVERBERATIONS
1.Denying the Holocaust : The Growing Assault on Truth and memory – Deborah E Lipstadt 1993
2.History on Trial : Lipstadt
The first is a survey of the vile denial underground and the tendrils it was just poking above ground when the book was published. It needs an update because denial has become a big feature of a whole lot of Muslim jihadi propaganda. And yes, that would be a very difficult area to write about, but it has to be done.
The second book is the account of Deborah and Penguin books winning the libel suit brought against them by the maverick nutjob David Irving. She called him a denier, he sued, he made the trial all about proving if Jews were gassed in Auschwitz, they proved this in court (which was a judicial first), and Irving lost & was financially ruined. Result!
3. In Hitler’s Shadow : West German Historians and the Attempt to Escape from the Nazi Past : Richard Evans 1989
4.The Holocaust and Collective Memory : Peter Novick
An intriguing investigation into the way the Holocaust grew from hardly getting any mention in the immediate postwar period to being the central event of the 20th century by the 1990s.
5. The Holocaust Industry: Reflections on the Exploitation of Jewish Suffering By Norman G. Finkelstein
Pretty controversial stuff, and I'm sure the author has been called a self-hating jew many times, and of playing into the hands of the jihadis, but he wants to protest against the Holocaust being used as a protective shield around any Israeli government policy which might otherwise be called expansionist.
December 29, 2023
It's an interesting read but the same time it's quite complex and hard to follow. It's interesting to read about how literature can be a reason for people's ignorance and stuff happening multiple times. But as said the book is for me a slow read and I did not finish it all and mostly read the parts needed for my essay but the thought process is interesting
February 18, 2017
Zagłada, zwana najczęściej Holocaustem (całopaleniem) lub Shoah (całkowitą zagładą, zniszczeniem) to zdaniem Bauera i innych badaczy zjawisko w historii ludzkości unikalne. Z punktu widzenia ofiar nie ma oczywiście różnicy, czy poniosły one śmierć w wyniku "jedynie" masowych mordów, ludobójstwa, czy tak jak Żydzi w latach 40. XX wieku ginęli jako przedstawiciele narodu, który zdaniem autorów i wykonawców Zagłady powinien w całości zniknąć z planety. Zrozumienie jak do tego mogło dojść, na czym polegała obłędna ideologia nazistów i jakie warunki musiały zaistnieć, aby wykonawcy i świadkowie Zagłady mogli w niej uczestniczyć to nieustający przedmiot refleksji dużej grupy badaczy. Bauer robi przegląd niektórych najbardziej znanych teorii Holocaustu. Zajmuje się też reakcjami ofiar, negując tezę o bezwolności Żydów, i to bynajmniej nie tylko przytaczając próby oporu zbrojnego, ale również opisując samoorganizację społeczności żydowskich spędzanych do getta i rolę, jaką w tym procesie odgrywały (lub mogły odgrywać) Judenraty. Ów "opór bez broni" nazywa amidą, czyli uświęceniem życia, i poświęca mu sporo miejsca
"Wy, wasze dzieci i dzieci waszych dzieci nigdy nie bądźcie sprawcami (...) nigdy nie pozwólcie, abyście stali się ofiarami (...) nigdy, p r z e n i g d y nie bądźcie biernymi obserwatorami masowego mordu, ludobójstwa lub (oby się nigdy nie powtórzyła) tragedii podobnej do Zagłady." - tak Yehudi Bauer, izraelski badacz Holocaustu zakończył swoje przemówienie wygłoszone 27 stycznia 1998 roku w niemieckim Bundestagu. Książka kończy się Aneksem zwierającym to przemówienie.
Nie jest to łatwa lektura i z pewnością dla czytelników nie-specjalistów nie wszystkie jej części będą równie interesujące. Zainteresowani judaizmem na pewno docenią rozdział Teologia, czyli Bóg chirurg. Ci, którzy z niepokojem obserwują Bliski Wschód i losy Izraela mogą chcieć dowiedzieć się jak według Bauera wyglądała droga Od Zagłady do państwa Izrael. Jest też w książce rozdział, którego tytuł nawet wśród szanownych kolegów profesora Bauera może wywołać lekkie zdziwienie: Problem gender: przypadek Gisi Fleischmann.
"Wy, wasze dzieci i dzieci waszych dzieci nigdy nie bądźcie sprawcami (...) nigdy nie pozwólcie, abyście stali się ofiarami (...) nigdy, p r z e n i g d y nie bądźcie biernymi obserwatorami masowego mordu, ludobójstwa lub (oby się nigdy nie powtórzyła) tragedii podobnej do Zagłady." - tak Yehudi Bauer, izraelski badacz Holocaustu zakończył swoje przemówienie wygłoszone 27 stycznia 1998 roku w niemieckim Bundestagu. Książka kończy się Aneksem zwierającym to przemówienie.
Nie jest to łatwa lektura i z pewnością dla czytelników nie-specjalistów nie wszystkie jej części będą równie interesujące. Zainteresowani judaizmem na pewno docenią rozdział Teologia, czyli Bóg chirurg. Ci, którzy z niepokojem obserwują Bliski Wschód i losy Izraela mogą chcieć dowiedzieć się jak według Bauera wyglądała droga Od Zagłady do państwa Izrael. Jest też w książce rozdział, którego tytuł nawet wśród szanownych kolegów profesora Bauera może wywołać lekkie zdziwienie: Problem gender: przypadek Gisi Fleischmann.
July 31, 2007
This is a complex evaluation of a life's worth of exegesis. Bauer enhances the foundation for some of his arguments while recognizing flaws in others. He reconciles with texts of various Holocaust experts in effort to demonstrate his delicate position on the functionalist-intentionalist continuum. This work is incredibly dense and requires multiple readings. The title may be misleading, as Bauer's book should not be read for an overview of contemporary Holocaust debate. Only after one has read the works of the many authors addressed by Bauer (and his ouvre as well) should he open this volume.
May 8, 2014
I really struggled with this book, partly because of the writing style which I found stilted and also due to the lack of paragraphs and chapter sections. The author makes some interesting points, especially in the final chapters, however, for me it wasn't enough to make this worth recommending.
Read
September 13, 2015Published in 2000, Bauer looks at some of the recent scholarship on the Holocaust and how Holocaust History is being defined and interpreted. A good read on the current controversies (such as 'The Goldhagen Affair') and trends in the field
November 10, 2024
Essential reading. The book is a masterpiece of Holocaust studies. It’s more than historical investigation: it’s a deep reflection on Holocaust, its historiography, its representations and its unfortunate trivializations. Highly recommended, especially its chapter on the relationship between the Holocaust, Zionism and the emergence of the State of Israel.
June 14, 2024
Yehuda Bauer told a different perspective of the holocaust; he allowed you to see things you wouldn't have even considered. This book was beautifully put and very educating.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews