What do you think?
Rate this book
The War Against the Jews, 1933–1945
A history of how anti-Semitism evolved into the Holocaust in “If any book can tell what Hitlerism was like, this is it” (Alfred Kazin).
Lucy Dawidowicz’s groundbreaking The War Against the Jews inspired waves of both acclaim and controversy upon its release in 1975. Dawidowicz argues that genocide was, to the Nazis, as central a war goal as conquering Europe, and was made possible by a combination of political, social, and technological factors. She explores the full history of Hitler’s “Final Solution,” from the rise of anti-Semitism to the creation of Jewish ghettos to the brutal tactics of mass murder employed by the Nazis. Written with devastating detail, The War Against the Jews is the definitive and comprehensive book on one of history’s darkest chapters.
Lucy Dawidowicz’s groundbreaking The War Against the Jews inspired waves of both acclaim and controversy upon its release in 1975. Dawidowicz argues that genocide was, to the Nazis, as central a war goal as conquering Europe, and was made possible by a combination of political, social, and technological factors. She explores the full history of Hitler’s “Final Solution,” from the rise of anti-Semitism to the creation of Jewish ghettos to the brutal tactics of mass murder employed by the Nazis. Written with devastating detail, The War Against the Jews is the definitive and comprehensive book on one of history’s darkest chapters.
710 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1975
431 people are currently reading
1826 people want to read
About the author
Lucy S. Dawidowicz
15 books18 followersLucy Schildkret Dawidowicz (June 16, 1915 – December 5, 1990), was an American historian and an author of books on modern Jewish history, in particular books on the Holocaust.
Dawidowicz was born in New York City as Lucy Bagleizer. Her parents, Max and Victoria (née Ofnaem) Schildkret were secular-minded Jews with little interest in religion. Dawidowicz did not attend a service at a synagogue until 1938.
Dawidowicz's first interests were poetry and literature. She attended Hunter College from 1932 to 1936 and obtained a B.A. in English. She went on to study for a M.A. at Columbia University, but abandoned her studies because of concerns over events in Europe. At the encouragement of her mentor, the historian Jacob Shatzky, Dawidowicz decided to focus on history, especially Jewish history. Dawidowicz made the decision to learn Yiddish and at Shatzky's urging, in 1938 she travelled to Wilno, Poland (modern Vilnius, Lithuania) to work at the Yiddish Scientific Institute (known by its Yiddish acronym as the YIVO).
Dawidowicz lived in Wilno until August 1939 when she returned to the United States. During her time at the YIVO, she became close to three of the leading scholars there, namely Zelig Kalmanovich, Max Weinreich and Zalmen Reisen. Only Weinreich survived the Holocaust and that only because he went to New York to establish a branch of the YIVO there before World War II. In particular, Dawidowicz was very close to Kalmanovich and his family, whom she described as being her real parents. During her time in Poland, she encountered anti-Semitism from the local Gentile population and her later writings on Gentile-Jewish relations in Poland were very much coloured by her memories of the time in Wilno. Dawidowicz was well known for her view that the vast majority of the Roman Catholic population in Poland was virulently anti-Semitic before and during World War II. Other historians, such as Norman Davies, have objected to the factual validity of this portrayal of Gentile-Jewish relations.
From 1940 until 1946, Dawidowicz worked as a researcher at the New York office of the YIVO. During the war, she was aware that something horrible was happening to the Jewish people of Europe, though it was not until after the war that she finally became aware of the full extent of the Holocaust.
In 1946, Dawidowicz traveled to Germany where she worked as an aid worker for the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee in the various Displaced Persons (DP) camps. During this period, she involved herself in the search for various looted YIVO books in Frankfurt. Only after the war, did she realize the full extent of the Jewish catastrophe, when she became involved with providing aid for Holocaust survivors. By her own admission, she was full of sorrow over the fate of European Jews, hatred for the Germans and pride in the tenacity of Holocaust survivors. In particular, she was filled with sadness as she realized that the world of Eastern European Jewry that she had encountered and lived among in Poland before the war had been destroyed forever, and all that was left of it were the emaciated survivors she was working with and her own memories. Moreover, Dawidowicz found it very poignant that she had left that world in August 1939; a month before the process of destruction had begun.
In 1947, she returned to the U.S. and on January 3, 1948, she married a Polish Jew named Szymon Dawidowicz. Upon her return to the U.S. she worked as a researcher for the novelist John Hersey's book The Wall, a dramatization of the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. From 1948 until 1960, Dawidowicz worked as a historical researcher for the American Jewish Committee. During the same period, Dawidowicz wrote frequently for the Commentary, the New York Times and the New York Times Book Review. An enthusiastic New York Mets fan, Dawidowicz lived the rest of her life in New York. In 1985, she founded the Fund for the Translation of Jewish Literature from Yiddis
Dawidowicz was born in New York City as Lucy Bagleizer. Her parents, Max and Victoria (née Ofnaem) Schildkret were secular-minded Jews with little interest in religion. Dawidowicz did not attend a service at a synagogue until 1938.
Dawidowicz's first interests were poetry and literature. She attended Hunter College from 1932 to 1936 and obtained a B.A. in English. She went on to study for a M.A. at Columbia University, but abandoned her studies because of concerns over events in Europe. At the encouragement of her mentor, the historian Jacob Shatzky, Dawidowicz decided to focus on history, especially Jewish history. Dawidowicz made the decision to learn Yiddish and at Shatzky's urging, in 1938 she travelled to Wilno, Poland (modern Vilnius, Lithuania) to work at the Yiddish Scientific Institute (known by its Yiddish acronym as the YIVO).
Dawidowicz lived in Wilno until August 1939 when she returned to the United States. During her time at the YIVO, she became close to three of the leading scholars there, namely Zelig Kalmanovich, Max Weinreich and Zalmen Reisen. Only Weinreich survived the Holocaust and that only because he went to New York to establish a branch of the YIVO there before World War II. In particular, Dawidowicz was very close to Kalmanovich and his family, whom she described as being her real parents. During her time in Poland, she encountered anti-Semitism from the local Gentile population and her later writings on Gentile-Jewish relations in Poland were very much coloured by her memories of the time in Wilno. Dawidowicz was well known for her view that the vast majority of the Roman Catholic population in Poland was virulently anti-Semitic before and during World War II. Other historians, such as Norman Davies, have objected to the factual validity of this portrayal of Gentile-Jewish relations.
From 1940 until 1946, Dawidowicz worked as a researcher at the New York office of the YIVO. During the war, she was aware that something horrible was happening to the Jewish people of Europe, though it was not until after the war that she finally became aware of the full extent of the Holocaust.
In 1946, Dawidowicz traveled to Germany where she worked as an aid worker for the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee in the various Displaced Persons (DP) camps. During this period, she involved herself in the search for various looted YIVO books in Frankfurt. Only after the war, did she realize the full extent of the Jewish catastrophe, when she became involved with providing aid for Holocaust survivors. By her own admission, she was full of sorrow over the fate of European Jews, hatred for the Germans and pride in the tenacity of Holocaust survivors. In particular, she was filled with sadness as she realized that the world of Eastern European Jewry that she had encountered and lived among in Poland before the war had been destroyed forever, and all that was left of it were the emaciated survivors she was working with and her own memories. Moreover, Dawidowicz found it very poignant that she had left that world in August 1939; a month before the process of destruction had begun.
In 1947, she returned to the U.S. and on January 3, 1948, she married a Polish Jew named Szymon Dawidowicz. Upon her return to the U.S. she worked as a researcher for the novelist John Hersey's book The Wall, a dramatization of the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. From 1948 until 1960, Dawidowicz worked as a historical researcher for the American Jewish Committee. During the same period, Dawidowicz wrote frequently for the Commentary, the New York Times and the New York Times Book Review. An enthusiastic New York Mets fan, Dawidowicz lived the rest of her life in New York. In 1985, she founded the Fund for the Translation of Jewish Literature from Yiddis
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 67 reviews
March 22, 2017
I have focused on Dawidowicz's penetrating perspectives on the reaction and response of German Jews to Hitler's persecution. So far, I have read only through the mid-1930s, to match where I am in writing a first draft of the sequel to A Flood of Evil.
Selected notes ...
... (after the passage of the Nuremberg Laws in 1935) ... Jews were outside the protection of the state … at the mercy of the secret police, without access to law or courts … disenfranchised … SS authority enforced laws against Jews
... Failing to prevent the Nazi's rise to power … the organized Jewish community … evolved a strategy similar to that which had served Jews in the past: hold on, bargain and negotiate
... Some Jews saw in National Socialism they admonition of God to return to traditional Judaism … to battle the internal decay exemplified by mixed marriages conversions and birth control … only teshuva - repentance and religious return - adherence to Torah ... can restore the Jews ... It is because we did not display our Jewishness with pride that we must share the blame for the degradation of Jewry
... Jewish theatrical troupes, orchestras, and choirs where are organized … operas, plays, concerts, lectures, cabaret performances, film showings, art exhibits where produced and performed exclusively for Jewish audiences … the walls of an invisible ghetto were beginning to rise around the German Jews
... the intrusion of the Gestapo in the Jewish community became ever more oppressive … listening and watching at every Jewish public gathering … Jewish organizations had to conduct business in the presence of Gestapo agents … all documents were subject to Gestapo scrutiny
Selected notes ...
... (after the passage of the Nuremberg Laws in 1935) ... Jews were outside the protection of the state … at the mercy of the secret police, without access to law or courts … disenfranchised … SS authority enforced laws against Jews
... Failing to prevent the Nazi's rise to power … the organized Jewish community … evolved a strategy similar to that which had served Jews in the past: hold on, bargain and negotiate
... Some Jews saw in National Socialism they admonition of God to return to traditional Judaism … to battle the internal decay exemplified by mixed marriages conversions and birth control … only teshuva - repentance and religious return - adherence to Torah ... can restore the Jews ... It is because we did not display our Jewishness with pride that we must share the blame for the degradation of Jewry
... Jewish theatrical troupes, orchestras, and choirs where are organized … operas, plays, concerts, lectures, cabaret performances, film showings, art exhibits where produced and performed exclusively for Jewish audiences … the walls of an invisible ghetto were beginning to rise around the German Jews
... the intrusion of the Gestapo in the Jewish community became ever more oppressive … listening and watching at every Jewish public gathering … Jewish organizations had to conduct business in the presence of Gestapo agents … all documents were subject to Gestapo scrutiny
December 5, 2017
no horror story could compare
Maybe you watched "The Killing Fields" (Cambodia), "Hotel Rwanda", or "Amistad". If you didn't, you must have seen a few films about the Holocaust. I saw a few, long ago, but for the last many years I've avoided them because they are just too painful. I've read a lot about that terrible era in human history, I've known people who lived through it, and there are museums all over America dedicated to preserving the memory of what happened. For the education of younger generations, this is good. For myself, I can't bear it. When faced with not only evil, but stupidity, rigid, unswerving bigotry, and lies---lies, bigotry and stupidity that led to the extermination of nearly six million people as a national goal, I find myself overwhelmed. But still, after all, I thought I should read THE WAR AGAINST THE JEWS one day and actually bought it a dozen years ago. I could never sum up the courage to begin. At last the day arrived and I picked up the book and started reading. I read of the poisonous, vicious lies that circulated in Germany and Europe before the Final Solution became a reality, I read of Hitler's view of Jews (I'd read `Mein Kampf' forty years ago, so this was not exactly new territory) and the anti-Semitism that lurked under German rocks for a long time before streaming out to cause the Holocaust. I reflected on how all these stupid lies still exist; some moral perverts still propagate them. You can find their sites on the Internet. Certain presidents can't find it in their hearts to condemn them. My mental state began to decline, everything began to look gray, then black, I found myself full of anger and hatred. I don't want to be that person---I refuse to be that person. I closed the book, and I didn't read further, but I assure you, it's all here in carefully documented order. If you doubt me, read some of the other reviews. I don't think I have a lot to add. When people deny the Holocaust, it's like denying that dinosaurs ever existed, that the world is round, or that school massacres take place. They tried to kill all the Jews. They managed to do a lot. But we are still here !! Life ! L'khayyim ! If you can read this book, you are just tougher than me. But if you really want to know, you have come to the right place.
Maybe you watched "The Killing Fields" (Cambodia), "Hotel Rwanda", or "Amistad". If you didn't, you must have seen a few films about the Holocaust. I saw a few, long ago, but for the last many years I've avoided them because they are just too painful. I've read a lot about that terrible era in human history, I've known people who lived through it, and there are museums all over America dedicated to preserving the memory of what happened. For the education of younger generations, this is good. For myself, I can't bear it. When faced with not only evil, but stupidity, rigid, unswerving bigotry, and lies---lies, bigotry and stupidity that led to the extermination of nearly six million people as a national goal, I find myself overwhelmed. But still, after all, I thought I should read THE WAR AGAINST THE JEWS one day and actually bought it a dozen years ago. I could never sum up the courage to begin. At last the day arrived and I picked up the book and started reading. I read of the poisonous, vicious lies that circulated in Germany and Europe before the Final Solution became a reality, I read of Hitler's view of Jews (I'd read `Mein Kampf' forty years ago, so this was not exactly new territory) and the anti-Semitism that lurked under German rocks for a long time before streaming out to cause the Holocaust. I reflected on how all these stupid lies still exist; some moral perverts still propagate them. You can find their sites on the Internet. Certain presidents can't find it in their hearts to condemn them. My mental state began to decline, everything began to look gray, then black, I found myself full of anger and hatred. I don't want to be that person---I refuse to be that person. I closed the book, and I didn't read further, but I assure you, it's all here in carefully documented order. If you doubt me, read some of the other reviews. I don't think I have a lot to add. When people deny the Holocaust, it's like denying that dinosaurs ever existed, that the world is round, or that school massacres take place. They tried to kill all the Jews. They managed to do a lot. But we are still here !! Life ! L'khayyim ! If you can read this book, you are just tougher than me. But if you really want to know, you have come to the right place.
December 17, 2013
Recommended to me by a Jewish friend whose relatives hid from the nazis in occupied France. This book has become a classic of the genre. It depicts in vivid detail the slow moral decline of a nation. In my view it should be on school curriculums everywhere. Our children should learn how it happened so that in future we are ready for the evil that forever lurks within our race.
Powerful compelling and extraordinary. It made me cry and it made me understand the sadness in my friends heart.
July 4, 2023
THE WAR AGAINST THE JEWS, wildly popular and discussed when I was a teen in the Seventies, presents an odd paradox. The most original and controversial part of this horrifying opus, on the origins of the Final Solution in Hitler's mind, is the least persuasive, while the most detailed and beautifully written part, on the survival of Jewish life in Eastern Europe during the Judeocide, is moving, satisfying but also covered by many other authors before or since Dawidowicz. What brought this book to the world's attention is Ms. Dawidowicz's claim that Hitler had already made plans for the destruction of all European Jewry as far back as 1918, when he was still in the German army and, to quote MEINK KAMPF, "had decided to go into politics". Let that sink in for a moment: Hitler was a genocidal anti-semite before Bavaria was seized by the Communists under a Jewish socialist leader; before he ever made contact with any anti-semitic political party in Munich; and before he joined one such obscure party, the German Workers Party. A careful reading of her prose, however, reveals how often Dawidowicz resorts to the word "probably". Hitler "probably" had met prominent Bavarian anti-semites, "probably" read pamphlets conflating Communism with Judaism, and "probably" decided extermination, not segregation or expulsion, was the "solution to the Jewish problem in Germany". No self-respecting historian uses the word "probably". Plus, as her critics have pointed out, Hitler's use of the word "eradication" in dealing with Jews is open to interpretation. Pogroms were rare in German history and anti-semitic parties that advocated violence against the Jews were losing ground in politics before and after Hitler joined the army. Verdict? Case unproven. THE WAR AGAINST THE JEWS is on firmer ground in documenting life in the most sanguinary of the killing zones after 1939, occupied Poland. Since Raul Hilberg exhaustively covered the extermination program in the East in his magisterial THE DESTRUCTION OF EUROPEAN JEWRY, Ms. Dawidowicz wisely chose to go in the opposite direction and focus not on death but life. Jewish synagogues, underground schools for children and adults, communal kitchens, cultural troupes (yes, there were Jewish comics under Nazi rule, and dancers and singers), and political parties, from Zionist to Communist, all managed to hang on and recreate, literally from the ashes, what Jewish life had been like before the war. If they were not as successful as, say, African slaves in the New World, it was precisely because the holocaust was unprecedented, leaving its subjects some agency, including a military uprising in the Warsaw ghetto, but no hope that death could be escaped, only postponed. Ms. Dawidowiccz rightly puts the praise on 5,000 years of Jewish communal life, a life in which even atheists had a stake in the survival of Jewish culture, at the center of the second half of her narrative. "Keep hope alive" never had such vital meaning than during those years of darkness but not total eclipse.
August 12, 2020
It was this book - which was given to me by one of my sisters in the summer of 1979 - that first made me aware of the Jewish Holocaust which was carried out against all Jews in Europe by the Third Reich.
September 27, 2015
An idiosyncratic one volume history of the holocaust. I had avoided it previously, but recently read something that gave it a plug (I don't remember what). Somewhat notorious for the negative review by Raul Hilberg author of the multivolume Destruction of the European Jews. The holocaust, being what it was, involving who it involved, being associated with so much guilt in the survivors and being followed by the creation of Israel, seems to commonly have its histories fairly thoroughly criticized (there's a sentence for you). This book is sort of the anti-Hilberg history. He concentrated on the bureaucracy of the Nazi's and gave short shrift to Jewish resistance (some say), while this book quickly summarizes the holocaust from the Nazi's view point, then concentrates on the Jewish response, Jewish political parties, and Jewish resistance, whether successful or not. I learned a great deal from it, although one could get tired of hearing how the Left wing Zionists and the Right wing Zionists differed from the Bund, Dror, the PPR, etc. I found, though, that by enriching my knowledge of the myriad of Jewish parties and groups, it served to make the Jews in that time and place more real and to make it more difficult to make blanket statements about their predicament or what they "should have done". There are a few howlers - p.72 "When he [Himmler] completed agricultural school, he got a job ... at a nitrogen fertilizer company, reflecting, no doubt, a streak of coprophilia." Really! (Not that I doubt his coprophilia, just that I don't think that working at a chemical fertilizer plant could indicate this "without doubt").
April 21, 2007
If you're interested in the Holocaust, or more specifically, why it happened, then this book is a must.
Whilst most Holocaust Historians today belong to the functionalist or situationalist school of thought, Dawidowicz is an extreme intentionalist, believing Hitler planned the Holocaust from 1924 or before, when he wrote Mein Kampf.
If you're doing research for a project, or are just generally interested in different views regarding this subject, then this book is definetly worth reading, though many of the Hitler quotes she uses are taken out of context, which is why she is very unpopular with other Holocaust Historians, and why it is important to read opposing views, such as Hitler and the Holocaust by Robert S. Wistrich.
Whilst most Holocaust Historians today belong to the functionalist or situationalist school of thought, Dawidowicz is an extreme intentionalist, believing Hitler planned the Holocaust from 1924 or before, when he wrote Mein Kampf.
If you're doing research for a project, or are just generally interested in different views regarding this subject, then this book is definetly worth reading, though many of the Hitler quotes she uses are taken out of context, which is why she is very unpopular with other Holocaust Historians, and why it is important to read opposing views, such as Hitler and the Holocaust by Robert S. Wistrich.
January 6, 2013
Having read many books about WWII and the Holocaust, this book combines the two around the overarching theme of Hitler and the Third Reich's efforts against the Jewish population of the world. More than the Holocaust of the deathcamps and the legal restrictions, this book puts the entire war in context as a war against the Jews rather than the Holocaust being merely one part of WWII. While the same information is available elsewhere, this book brings it all together concisely and thoroughly. It is also well-written and presented the historical facts like a storyteller.
April 15, 2020
Review to follow
February 9, 2024
Very thorough. Well written, well documented. More than I wanted to learn.
August 1, 2021
This is an essential book that every single person in the world must read if they wish to understand how evil incarnate can infect a society. The book is broken up into three parts. The first is the history of the actions against the Jews by the Nazis leading up and throughout WWII. The second part shows how the Jewish reaction to these events left them in a position that gave them few options, usually too late. Finally, the third section is a summary country by country of the conflict in each and the impact on their Jewish Communities.
There are three take-aways I have learned from reading this book. The first is that acceptance of hate in an effort not to make waves does not work. The second is the strategy of wait until it get's better is not a solution since it may get worse. The third is assimilation does not protect one from Antisemitism.
The Jews of Germany thought they were immune to Antisemitism since many of them had assimilated and put their German identity before their Jewish identity. Sadly this all came crashing down on September 15, 1935 when the Nuremberg laws were passed stripping anyone with a single Jewish grandparent of their German identity. Sadly, I see the same phenomena happening all around the world; especially in the US. Jews in the US believe that they are safe and secure since they assimilated into the American melting pot. Unfortunately, history is against these people since Jews have never been safe in on geography more than a couple of hundred years.
About half the Jews in Germany did leave. Many of the youth ventured to Israel, with or without proper visas. However, most of the older population simply moved to an adjacent country such as Poland. This too sealed their fate since once the Germans invaded and conquered a land, it was only a matter of time before laws were passed and liquidation of Jews began in their new home.
This book also highlights an important point that is being debated today; Poland's complicity to the atrocities of the Holocaust. Poland denies any complicity and has been passing laws making it illegal to make such a claim. However, history is clear, once Germany conquered a country, the local country did have some say in what happened to their Jews. Two cases in point, Denmark and Finland were able to save all their Jews by actions they took.
Finally, when talking about the resistance that eventually formed, mostly on the backs of the Zionist Youth Movements, it is interesting that the author excludes the Revisionist Zionists let by Vladimer Ze'ev Jabontinsky. It was Jabotinsky who implemented training programs teaching Zionist youth not only about agriculture but how to defend themselves militarily. And yet, he, his organization, and his followers are somehow excluded from this version of history.
During the time when this book was written, there was a concerted effort by the people in the Israeli Government, led by David Ben Gurion to deny the role the Revisionists had in the resistance that was formed in the ghettos. I believe the oversight in this book is due to access to information provided at the time that championed the Socialist Zionists. In 2011 Moshe Arens, former Israeli Defense and Foreign Minister published a book "Flags Over the Warsaw Ghetto" in which he attempts to show how the Revisionists were an integral part of the uprising.
This is not an easy book to read. Although the author has done a tremendous job with research and clear concise writing, the subject matter is difficult to absorb. Even so, if we are to ensure that it never happens again, we must be fully aware of how it happened in the first place.
There are three take-aways I have learned from reading this book. The first is that acceptance of hate in an effort not to make waves does not work. The second is the strategy of wait until it get's better is not a solution since it may get worse. The third is assimilation does not protect one from Antisemitism.
The Jews of Germany thought they were immune to Antisemitism since many of them had assimilated and put their German identity before their Jewish identity. Sadly this all came crashing down on September 15, 1935 when the Nuremberg laws were passed stripping anyone with a single Jewish grandparent of their German identity. Sadly, I see the same phenomena happening all around the world; especially in the US. Jews in the US believe that they are safe and secure since they assimilated into the American melting pot. Unfortunately, history is against these people since Jews have never been safe in on geography more than a couple of hundred years.
About half the Jews in Germany did leave. Many of the youth ventured to Israel, with or without proper visas. However, most of the older population simply moved to an adjacent country such as Poland. This too sealed their fate since once the Germans invaded and conquered a land, it was only a matter of time before laws were passed and liquidation of Jews began in their new home.
This book also highlights an important point that is being debated today; Poland's complicity to the atrocities of the Holocaust. Poland denies any complicity and has been passing laws making it illegal to make such a claim. However, history is clear, once Germany conquered a country, the local country did have some say in what happened to their Jews. Two cases in point, Denmark and Finland were able to save all their Jews by actions they took.
Finally, when talking about the resistance that eventually formed, mostly on the backs of the Zionist Youth Movements, it is interesting that the author excludes the Revisionist Zionists let by Vladimer Ze'ev Jabontinsky. It was Jabotinsky who implemented training programs teaching Zionist youth not only about agriculture but how to defend themselves militarily. And yet, he, his organization, and his followers are somehow excluded from this version of history.
During the time when this book was written, there was a concerted effort by the people in the Israeli Government, led by David Ben Gurion to deny the role the Revisionists had in the resistance that was formed in the ghettos. I believe the oversight in this book is due to access to information provided at the time that championed the Socialist Zionists. In 2011 Moshe Arens, former Israeli Defense and Foreign Minister published a book "Flags Over the Warsaw Ghetto" in which he attempts to show how the Revisionists were an integral part of the uprising.
This is not an easy book to read. Although the author has done a tremendous job with research and clear concise writing, the subject matter is difficult to absorb. Even so, if we are to ensure that it never happens again, we must be fully aware of how it happened in the first place.
February 2, 2010
All students of the Holocaust MUST include this excellent book in their library. A powerful overview of happenings in the whole of Europe and the many atrocities against the Jews. Excellent maps of concentration camps and extermination sites.
I just re-read the book in the winter of 2009-2010. It is definitely worth a re-read. I learned more as I reconsidered all the horror that occurred during the Nazi's reign of terror. Once again I'm reminded that within the heart of humans lies the terrible possibility of Evil.
I just re-read the book in the winter of 2009-2010. It is definitely worth a re-read. I learned more as I reconsidered all the horror that occurred during the Nazi's reign of terror. Once again I'm reminded that within the heart of humans lies the terrible possibility of Evil.
May 28, 2012
Read it for my History of Holocaust class and I was amazed learning all about how antisemitism started and the entire history. Interesting.
October 6, 2024
Where do you begin with such an important and timeless work regarding the Jewish issue and the Final Solution? The author lays out exactly what she wanted to accomplish in her introduction, and she did so with amazing and detailed research. And more importantly she took on the feeble and unjustified attempts of lunacy to claim that there was no Holocaust, that it was all just a hoax. I am afraid that the anti-Semitic voices are unfortunately very alive and thriving around the world and even in our own country. That is why it is extremely important that we educate ourselves on not only what happened during the reign of the Nazi regime, but also why it happened and where did it come from. Appendix A is a short and concise history of each country in regard to the Jew and their fate during WWII (I learned a lot just from that section alone). Appendix B gives you the final gruesome and sobering statistics of the figures related to the Final Solution. Despite the myriads of names, organizations and policies, if you persevere through the book, you will learn so much and come away with a much better understanding of Hitler, his henchmen, and the Third Reich and why it was able to execute their vicious plan during those fateful years on the Jews.
November 30, 2023
dont agree with her view but good
October 30, 2011
In the fall of 1987 I was a sophmore at Boise State University. One of the classes I was enrolled in was "20th Century Germany: A Political History". Lucy S. Dawidowicz's book was one of the reading requirements. I still own my copy. It's one of four books that I have held onto since I graduated in 1990.
At the time the professor told us that the book was already twelve years old and some of the research was out of date. I can only imagine what has happened in the field since 1987. But he wanted us to read it because of the massive amount of data and the fact that Dawidowicz did such a good job tackling concepts that had already become cliches by the early seventies, such as the belief that Hitler had hated Jews since his childhood. While she does show that Hitler might have concieved of the extermination early in his life his realtionship with Jews was more complicated than many realize.
This is an impressive piece of historical research. Dawidowicz looks at all aspects of the Holocaust. From the Jewish councils that were set up by the Germans in the various ghettos to the administrative planning of the German High Command to the total destruction of European Jews and their cultures. The book is an academic work and strives to maintain a balance. By doing so the impact is even greater than if Ms. Dawidowicz choose to write an emotional screed.
So while the book is ancient by historical research/academic standards it still packs a wallop and belongs on the shelf of anyone interested in the evil of Nazism, the Holocaust and World War II.
At the time the professor told us that the book was already twelve years old and some of the research was out of date. I can only imagine what has happened in the field since 1987. But he wanted us to read it because of the massive amount of data and the fact that Dawidowicz did such a good job tackling concepts that had already become cliches by the early seventies, such as the belief that Hitler had hated Jews since his childhood. While she does show that Hitler might have concieved of the extermination early in his life his realtionship with Jews was more complicated than many realize.
This is an impressive piece of historical research. Dawidowicz looks at all aspects of the Holocaust. From the Jewish councils that were set up by the Germans in the various ghettos to the administrative planning of the German High Command to the total destruction of European Jews and their cultures. The book is an academic work and strives to maintain a balance. By doing so the impact is even greater than if Ms. Dawidowicz choose to write an emotional screed.
So while the book is ancient by historical research/academic standards it still packs a wallop and belongs on the shelf of anyone interested in the evil of Nazism, the Holocaust and World War II.
September 30, 2016
An important book, more for its prologue than actual events during WWII and the Shoah.
Often, the idea of Hitler and the Nazis feels like a horror movie where the villain appears out of the blue, wrecking terrible destruction on all.
Unfortunately, there were plenty of warning signs available for those who were paying attention, and many did. This book provides a background to the anti-Semitism that was prevalent throughout Europe leading up to the rise of the Nazis. The author provides details into how the Nazis worked their way through German law to first remove the Jews from society and then their lives.
The latter part of the book goes into some detail regarding life in the Nazi ghettos and how Europe's Jews, with no nation on earth willing to accept them, were increasingly squeezed by a regime with one goal in mind - extermination. Dawidowicz points out how previous strategies undertaken by various Jewish communities to deal with threats of violence and hatred were of no use in this environment.
Further, within this vice, the community itself was squeezed as leaders, both communal and religious, were eliminated, leaving the remaining population with limited guidance and skills to support them. For those who ask "how did this come to pass", this is a good - but chewey, book to work through.
Often, the idea of Hitler and the Nazis feels like a horror movie where the villain appears out of the blue, wrecking terrible destruction on all.
Unfortunately, there were plenty of warning signs available for those who were paying attention, and many did. This book provides a background to the anti-Semitism that was prevalent throughout Europe leading up to the rise of the Nazis. The author provides details into how the Nazis worked their way through German law to first remove the Jews from society and then their lives.
The latter part of the book goes into some detail regarding life in the Nazi ghettos and how Europe's Jews, with no nation on earth willing to accept them, were increasingly squeezed by a regime with one goal in mind - extermination. Dawidowicz points out how previous strategies undertaken by various Jewish communities to deal with threats of violence and hatred were of no use in this environment.
Further, within this vice, the community itself was squeezed as leaders, both communal and religious, were eliminated, leaving the remaining population with limited guidance and skills to support them. For those who ask "how did this come to pass", this is a good - but chewey, book to work through.
October 16, 2020
The research is amazing.
The history put forth in this book is almost incomprehensible. To the average reader it is. The complete exploitation of European Jews by Nazi Germany is shattering. First the complete lack of their autonomy, systematic programs of mental, emotional, and physical abuse. After that came the ghettos with deliberate humiliation, disease, and starvation, and this was throughout occupied Europe, west and east. This book also proves that the Jews did not go like sheep to slaughter. There was resistance in all communities, most often futile but they did resist, not always with a gun, but with their mental and emotional will. An outstanding book and one not easily read but very much worthy of being read. Wonderful writing, it could not have been easy, but pulled off brilliantly. A great book for anyone interested in history. I must ask. How could the world have allowed this horrendous crime to happen? Germany must live with the shame but so do those countries who knew and did nothing.
The history put forth in this book is almost incomprehensible. To the average reader it is. The complete exploitation of European Jews by Nazi Germany is shattering. First the complete lack of their autonomy, systematic programs of mental, emotional, and physical abuse. After that came the ghettos with deliberate humiliation, disease, and starvation, and this was throughout occupied Europe, west and east. This book also proves that the Jews did not go like sheep to slaughter. There was resistance in all communities, most often futile but they did resist, not always with a gun, but with their mental and emotional will. An outstanding book and one not easily read but very much worthy of being read. Wonderful writing, it could not have been easy, but pulled off brilliantly. A great book for anyone interested in history. I must ask. How could the world have allowed this horrendous crime to happen? Germany must live with the shame but so do those countries who knew and did nothing.
April 16, 2024
A MONUMENTAL HISTORY OF THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE ‘FINAL SOLUTION’
Historian Lucy Dawidowicz wrote in the Introduction to the 10th Anniversary Edition of this 1975 book, “When I wrote [this book], I undertook to do three things. First, I wanted to present a coherent account of how it came about that National Socialist Germany succeeded in murdering six million European Jews… I began where the story must begin---with Hitler and with the irrational views of the Jews which shaped his mental universe. I tracked the development of Hitler’s ideology from the start of his political career… until his final testament, which he dictated just before his suicide. Next… I offered a capsule history of German nationalism and of the racist anti-Semitism that first intruded into Germany’s politics in the 1870s and soon became its most enduring staple… [Then] I undertook to describe … how the German government under Hitler and his National Socialist party began to carry out by all means available to them---law (more correctly, pseudolaw), violence, terror---those ideas that Hitler had salvaged from the rubbish heap of German anti-Semitism and elaborated on, first in ‘Mein Kampf’ and then in his second book.” (Pg. xx-xxi)
She continues, “A new scandal confronting historians of the Holocaust erupted in 1977, after one Arthur R. Butz… published a book called ‘The Hoax of the Twentieth Century,’ which claimed that the Jews of Europe had not been ‘exterminated and that there was no German attempt to exterminate them.’ Though this book was clearly the product of an unhinged mind, the author’s university connection aroused public furor… Liberty Lobby, the largest and best financed anti-Semitic organization … set up a new front organization… called the Institute for Historical Review. This institute, camouflaged as a scholarly institution, took on the task of denying the historicity of the Holocaust… In 1980 it began publishing a pseudoscholarly quarterly, ‘Journal of Historical Review.’ The institute has tried repeatedly to win academic legitimacy, mostly by mail canvasses of … professional historical associations. This denial of the Holocaust’s historical reality particularly exercised the survivors of the camps… Some of … them soon began to produce articles, pamphlets, and books… proving that [the death camps] … did exist.” (Pg. xxii-xxiii)
In the introductory chapter, she explains, “‘The Final Solution of the Jewish Question’ was the code name assigned by the German bureaucracy to the annihilation of the Jews… The histories… of European anti-Semitism are replete with proffered ‘solutions’… The classic … ‘solution’ … offered by … [the] chief adviser to Czar Alexander III in 1881: one-third of the Jews were to emigrate, one-third to convert, and one-third to die of hunger. To this concept … the National Socialists … added one new element… a metahistorical program devised with an eschatological perspective… To attain its heavenly Hell the German dictatorship launched a war that engulfed the whole world … The Final Solution transcended the bounds of modern historical experience. Never before had one people made the killing of another the fulfillment of an ideology… The German State… arrogated to itself the judgment as to whether a whole people had the right to exist… To carry out this judgment … the German dictatorship … engaged the entire bureaucratic and functional apparatus of the German state … and employed the best available technological means… I have tried to show the intellectual and historical origins of the Final Solution… [and] to demonstrate the mutual influences and interplay of ideology and action, belief and program, national character and political behavior.” (Pg. xxxvi-xxxvii)
She acknowledges, “This is not a value-free book. The very subject matter of the Final Solution precludes neutrality. In writing about a nation that transgressed the commandment ‘Thou shalt not murder,’ it is impossible to be … a ‘neutral mirror.’ Whereas the Germans … played the role of the Devil and his hosts, the Jews… were merely human… I have tried to avoid moral judgments, though I have not hesitated to describe demoralization… I have tried to present what actually happened.” (Pg. xl)
In the first chapter, she observes, “The Jews inhabited Hitler’s mind. He believed that they were the source of all evil, misfortune, and tragedy, the single factor that … explained the workings of the universe… In Hitler’s obsessed mind… the Jews were the demonic hosts whom he had been given a divine mission to destroy… Even after he had murdered the Jews, he still had not exorcised his Jewish demons… His last words to the German people were: ‘Above all I charge the leaders of the pnation and those under them to … merciless opposition to the universal poisoner of all peoples, international Jewry.’” (Pg. 21-22)
She reports, “The SD… searched for an ideological or theoretical basis for an ongoing anti-Jewish policy for the National Socialist state… Himmler, too, was developing the idea of the Jew as an enemy of the state… Thus, at a time when talk of war was becoming the everyday rhetoric of National Socialist Germany, the SS, too… began increasingly to talk of war against the ideological enemy.” (Pg. 85-86) She continues, “In [Hitler’s] scheme, war was inevitable… War would be the means to realize his quest for Lebensraum… Germany was entitled to more land… Where would the soil come from? There were, in Hitler’s plan, two sources---the ‘lost territories’ and ‘new soil.’ … The rationale for a German conquest of Russia was twofold… he advanced a historical claim of… German colonization…. But even more important was the notion … that the Jews had taken control of Russia by means of revolution and Bolshevism.” (Pg. 91)
She recounts, “Hitler himself never uttered a word publicly on von Rath’s assassination or on the events of the Kristallnacht (night of glass). Yet those events would not have occurred without his approval… the pogrom itself provided the National Socialist government with the opportunity, short of actual war, to proceed with the total expropriation of the Jews and the complete removal of their freedom.” (Pg. 101-102) She continues, “War and the annihilation of the Jews were interdependent. The disorder of war would provide Hitler with the cover for the unchecked commission of murder. He needed an arena for his operations where the restraints of common codes of morality and accepted rules of warfare would not extend.” (Pg. 111) She adds, “Poland was the launching area and testing laboratory not only for the execution of the Final Solution, but for all of Hitler’s racial and imperial ambitions, but Russia would become the arena for the … final struggle, the prelude to the millennium.” (Pg. 119)
She notes, “Though the abundant documents of the German dictatorship have yielded no written order by Hitler to murder the Jews, it appears… that the decision … was probably reached after December 18, 1940---when Hitler issued the first directive for Operation Barbarossa---and before March 1, 1941.” (Pg. 121) She goes on, “[At] The Wannsee Conference… the annihilation of the Jews had by now moved beyond ideology. The technical machinery for murder had been tested and was now under construction… the Foreign Office gave shelter and support to … bureaucrats and SS agents whose business was the Final Solution, who helped… [and] arranged for the exploitation of their labor, and, finally, speeded their deportation to the death camps.” (Pg. 138-139)
She reports, “Arriving at Auschwitz, Belzec, Chelmno, Majdanek, Sobibor, and Treblinka, the Jews encountered a standard procedure. At camps maintaining labor installations, like Auschwitz, 10 percent of the arrivals … were selected for work. The remainder were consigned to the gas chambers. They were instructed to undress; the women and girls had their hair cut. They were then… hurried along with whips, sticks, or guns, to the gas chambers… The gassing lasted from ten to thirty minutes … the bodies were right away tossed out… Later, the bodies were burned, either in the open air or in crematoria… At night the red sky Auschwitz could be seen for miles. The statistics of the death camps are only approximate. At Auschwitz… many transports .. went directly … to the gas chambers and were never statistically registered… Most victims of the death camps were Jews, but also all Gypsies and thousands of non-Jews---selected for particular reasons---were gassed.” (Pg. 148)
She notes, “Hitler’s gamble… was on a quick military victory in Poland, to be completed before Russia could gather wits or forces to act.” (Pg. 161) She explains, “Without Hitler, the charismatic political leader, who believed he had a mission to annihilate the Jews, the Final Solution would not have occurred. Without that … tradition of anti-Semitism… Hitler would not have had the fecund soil in which to grow his organization and spread its propaganda… [Hitler] believed himself to be the savior who would bring redemption to the German people through the annihilation of the Jews, the people who embodied, in his eyes, the Satanic hosts. When he spoke or wrote about his ‘holy mission,’ he used words … like ‘consecration,’ ‘salvation’… ‘God’s will.’ The murder of the Jews, in his fantasies, was commanded by divine providence… [He said] in Mein Kampf: ‘… I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator; by defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord.’” (Pg. 163)
She recounts, “Most Jews looked to their religion and their community for comfort in their distress… The most persuasive summoner to Jewish return and Jewish self-awareness was Martin Buber, whose lectures and writings … struck his Jewish audiences with the impact of revelation… The synagogues became full to overflowing. They were not only houses of prayer, but … the place that recompensed for the loneliness outside… The religious return was matched by a swelling interest in Jewish learning and in Jewish secular culture… Jewish artists performed exclusively for Jewish audiences… The walls of an invisible ghetto were beginning to rise around the German Jews.” (Pg. 177, 179)
She states, “Death bestrode the Nazi ghetto and was its true master, exercising dominion through hunger, forced labor, and disease… The deprivation of freedom was universally felt… The isolation was compounded by the removal of telephones from private homes… The ghettos were located in the oldest, most run-down parts of town, sometimes in … areas that lacked the basic facilities of the city property---paved streets, lighting, adequate sewage, sanitation facilities… People lived so crowded together that they could no longer observe the normal conventions of privacy and modesty. The sense of shame vanished… In such congestion, keeping one’s body and household clean posed Herculean tasks.” (Pg. 207-208)
She reports, “the Einsatzgruppen swept through the Jewish settlements of Eastern Europe in the summer of 1941, destroying age-old communities in cyclonic upheaval. The German invasion found the Russians unprepared militarily and the civilian population disoriented and demoralized… The Ukrainians staged mammoth pogroms, slaughtering thousands and carrying off other thousands of Jews to Einsatzgruppen headquarters. Within hours or days, those Jews who had been taken away were machine-gunned en masse at some remote desolate area.” (Pg. 279)
She points out, “No Jewish community had ever before faced a comparable threat of annihilation. In their history the Jews had been subjected to the slaughter of many, enslavement, abduction of women or children, dire economic and religious sanctions. Those persecutions, reflecting the tensions between a hostile non-Jewish ruler and a local Jewish community, provided certain models in rabbinic teaching for the traditionally correct Jewish response.” (Pg. 284) She goes on, “The defense of the ghetto as the objective of Jewish resistance symbolized the isolation of the Jews in Eastern Europe… A resistance organization, to receive aid, had to have the political backing of its government-in-exile and be able to render useful… military services to the Allies… The surviving Polish Jews, imprisoned in ghettos and SS labor camps, did not fit into any conventional framework that would entitle them to aid from either Allied or Soviet channels. The Jewish resistance organizations in the ghettos had no access to areas where they could perform useful military tasks.” (Pg. 318-319) She adds, “Only in the Warsaw ghetto did Jewish resistance attain its objectives.” (Pg. 332)
She recounts, “Every day the number of surviving Jews dwindled. In the cities, Polish police.. Gestapo agents, and Security Police hunted down Jews, especially Jewish leaders. In the forest, unfriendly peasants and anti-Semitic … partisans found it easier to destroy Jews than Germans… As for the labor camps… the Germans liquidated them in rapid order. There were no Jewish communities anymore, no synagogues, no Jewish schools, no Jewish life to sustain. Blood-soaked debris of Yiddish and Hebrew books… were all that remained of the thousand-year-old civilization of Jews in Poland.” (Pg. 340)
She explains, “The European Jews discerned three stages in the historical situation that confronted them after the National Socialists came to power. The first stage, disemancipation… ended with Kristallnacht… The second stage, that of the ghetto and yellow star, coincided with the German conquest and occupation of most European nations and with the establishment of German hegemony over nearly all the others… The third stage, annihilation, unfolded with mass killings by the Einsatzgruppen … and continued until the end of the war with the operation of the death camps.” (Pg. 343)
This book will be “must reading” for anyone seriously studying the Holocaust and its background.
Historian Lucy Dawidowicz wrote in the Introduction to the 10th Anniversary Edition of this 1975 book, “When I wrote [this book], I undertook to do three things. First, I wanted to present a coherent account of how it came about that National Socialist Germany succeeded in murdering six million European Jews… I began where the story must begin---with Hitler and with the irrational views of the Jews which shaped his mental universe. I tracked the development of Hitler’s ideology from the start of his political career… until his final testament, which he dictated just before his suicide. Next… I offered a capsule history of German nationalism and of the racist anti-Semitism that first intruded into Germany’s politics in the 1870s and soon became its most enduring staple… [Then] I undertook to describe … how the German government under Hitler and his National Socialist party began to carry out by all means available to them---law (more correctly, pseudolaw), violence, terror---those ideas that Hitler had salvaged from the rubbish heap of German anti-Semitism and elaborated on, first in ‘Mein Kampf’ and then in his second book.” (Pg. xx-xxi)
She continues, “A new scandal confronting historians of the Holocaust erupted in 1977, after one Arthur R. Butz… published a book called ‘The Hoax of the Twentieth Century,’ which claimed that the Jews of Europe had not been ‘exterminated and that there was no German attempt to exterminate them.’ Though this book was clearly the product of an unhinged mind, the author’s university connection aroused public furor… Liberty Lobby, the largest and best financed anti-Semitic organization … set up a new front organization… called the Institute for Historical Review. This institute, camouflaged as a scholarly institution, took on the task of denying the historicity of the Holocaust… In 1980 it began publishing a pseudoscholarly quarterly, ‘Journal of Historical Review.’ The institute has tried repeatedly to win academic legitimacy, mostly by mail canvasses of … professional historical associations. This denial of the Holocaust’s historical reality particularly exercised the survivors of the camps… Some of … them soon began to produce articles, pamphlets, and books… proving that [the death camps] … did exist.” (Pg. xxii-xxiii)
In the introductory chapter, she explains, “‘The Final Solution of the Jewish Question’ was the code name assigned by the German bureaucracy to the annihilation of the Jews… The histories… of European anti-Semitism are replete with proffered ‘solutions’… The classic … ‘solution’ … offered by … [the] chief adviser to Czar Alexander III in 1881: one-third of the Jews were to emigrate, one-third to convert, and one-third to die of hunger. To this concept … the National Socialists … added one new element… a metahistorical program devised with an eschatological perspective… To attain its heavenly Hell the German dictatorship launched a war that engulfed the whole world … The Final Solution transcended the bounds of modern historical experience. Never before had one people made the killing of another the fulfillment of an ideology… The German State… arrogated to itself the judgment as to whether a whole people had the right to exist… To carry out this judgment … the German dictatorship … engaged the entire bureaucratic and functional apparatus of the German state … and employed the best available technological means… I have tried to show the intellectual and historical origins of the Final Solution… [and] to demonstrate the mutual influences and interplay of ideology and action, belief and program, national character and political behavior.” (Pg. xxxvi-xxxvii)
She acknowledges, “This is not a value-free book. The very subject matter of the Final Solution precludes neutrality. In writing about a nation that transgressed the commandment ‘Thou shalt not murder,’ it is impossible to be … a ‘neutral mirror.’ Whereas the Germans … played the role of the Devil and his hosts, the Jews… were merely human… I have tried to avoid moral judgments, though I have not hesitated to describe demoralization… I have tried to present what actually happened.” (Pg. xl)
In the first chapter, she observes, “The Jews inhabited Hitler’s mind. He believed that they were the source of all evil, misfortune, and tragedy, the single factor that … explained the workings of the universe… In Hitler’s obsessed mind… the Jews were the demonic hosts whom he had been given a divine mission to destroy… Even after he had murdered the Jews, he still had not exorcised his Jewish demons… His last words to the German people were: ‘Above all I charge the leaders of the pnation and those under them to … merciless opposition to the universal poisoner of all peoples, international Jewry.’” (Pg. 21-22)
She reports, “The SD… searched for an ideological or theoretical basis for an ongoing anti-Jewish policy for the National Socialist state… Himmler, too, was developing the idea of the Jew as an enemy of the state… Thus, at a time when talk of war was becoming the everyday rhetoric of National Socialist Germany, the SS, too… began increasingly to talk of war against the ideological enemy.” (Pg. 85-86) She continues, “In [Hitler’s] scheme, war was inevitable… War would be the means to realize his quest for Lebensraum… Germany was entitled to more land… Where would the soil come from? There were, in Hitler’s plan, two sources---the ‘lost territories’ and ‘new soil.’ … The rationale for a German conquest of Russia was twofold… he advanced a historical claim of… German colonization…. But even more important was the notion … that the Jews had taken control of Russia by means of revolution and Bolshevism.” (Pg. 91)
She recounts, “Hitler himself never uttered a word publicly on von Rath’s assassination or on the events of the Kristallnacht (night of glass). Yet those events would not have occurred without his approval… the pogrom itself provided the National Socialist government with the opportunity, short of actual war, to proceed with the total expropriation of the Jews and the complete removal of their freedom.” (Pg. 101-102) She continues, “War and the annihilation of the Jews were interdependent. The disorder of war would provide Hitler with the cover for the unchecked commission of murder. He needed an arena for his operations where the restraints of common codes of morality and accepted rules of warfare would not extend.” (Pg. 111) She adds, “Poland was the launching area and testing laboratory not only for the execution of the Final Solution, but for all of Hitler’s racial and imperial ambitions, but Russia would become the arena for the … final struggle, the prelude to the millennium.” (Pg. 119)
She notes, “Though the abundant documents of the German dictatorship have yielded no written order by Hitler to murder the Jews, it appears… that the decision … was probably reached after December 18, 1940---when Hitler issued the first directive for Operation Barbarossa---and before March 1, 1941.” (Pg. 121) She goes on, “[At] The Wannsee Conference… the annihilation of the Jews had by now moved beyond ideology. The technical machinery for murder had been tested and was now under construction… the Foreign Office gave shelter and support to … bureaucrats and SS agents whose business was the Final Solution, who helped… [and] arranged for the exploitation of their labor, and, finally, speeded their deportation to the death camps.” (Pg. 138-139)
She reports, “Arriving at Auschwitz, Belzec, Chelmno, Majdanek, Sobibor, and Treblinka, the Jews encountered a standard procedure. At camps maintaining labor installations, like Auschwitz, 10 percent of the arrivals … were selected for work. The remainder were consigned to the gas chambers. They were instructed to undress; the women and girls had their hair cut. They were then… hurried along with whips, sticks, or guns, to the gas chambers… The gassing lasted from ten to thirty minutes … the bodies were right away tossed out… Later, the bodies were burned, either in the open air or in crematoria… At night the red sky Auschwitz could be seen for miles. The statistics of the death camps are only approximate. At Auschwitz… many transports .. went directly … to the gas chambers and were never statistically registered… Most victims of the death camps were Jews, but also all Gypsies and thousands of non-Jews---selected for particular reasons---were gassed.” (Pg. 148)
She notes, “Hitler’s gamble… was on a quick military victory in Poland, to be completed before Russia could gather wits or forces to act.” (Pg. 161) She explains, “Without Hitler, the charismatic political leader, who believed he had a mission to annihilate the Jews, the Final Solution would not have occurred. Without that … tradition of anti-Semitism… Hitler would not have had the fecund soil in which to grow his organization and spread its propaganda… [Hitler] believed himself to be the savior who would bring redemption to the German people through the annihilation of the Jews, the people who embodied, in his eyes, the Satanic hosts. When he spoke or wrote about his ‘holy mission,’ he used words … like ‘consecration,’ ‘salvation’… ‘God’s will.’ The murder of the Jews, in his fantasies, was commanded by divine providence… [He said] in Mein Kampf: ‘… I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the Almighty Creator; by defending myself against the Jew, I am fighting for the work of the Lord.’” (Pg. 163)
She recounts, “Most Jews looked to their religion and their community for comfort in their distress… The most persuasive summoner to Jewish return and Jewish self-awareness was Martin Buber, whose lectures and writings … struck his Jewish audiences with the impact of revelation… The synagogues became full to overflowing. They were not only houses of prayer, but … the place that recompensed for the loneliness outside… The religious return was matched by a swelling interest in Jewish learning and in Jewish secular culture… Jewish artists performed exclusively for Jewish audiences… The walls of an invisible ghetto were beginning to rise around the German Jews.” (Pg. 177, 179)
She states, “Death bestrode the Nazi ghetto and was its true master, exercising dominion through hunger, forced labor, and disease… The deprivation of freedom was universally felt… The isolation was compounded by the removal of telephones from private homes… The ghettos were located in the oldest, most run-down parts of town, sometimes in … areas that lacked the basic facilities of the city property---paved streets, lighting, adequate sewage, sanitation facilities… People lived so crowded together that they could no longer observe the normal conventions of privacy and modesty. The sense of shame vanished… In such congestion, keeping one’s body and household clean posed Herculean tasks.” (Pg. 207-208)
She reports, “the Einsatzgruppen swept through the Jewish settlements of Eastern Europe in the summer of 1941, destroying age-old communities in cyclonic upheaval. The German invasion found the Russians unprepared militarily and the civilian population disoriented and demoralized… The Ukrainians staged mammoth pogroms, slaughtering thousands and carrying off other thousands of Jews to Einsatzgruppen headquarters. Within hours or days, those Jews who had been taken away were machine-gunned en masse at some remote desolate area.” (Pg. 279)
She points out, “No Jewish community had ever before faced a comparable threat of annihilation. In their history the Jews had been subjected to the slaughter of many, enslavement, abduction of women or children, dire economic and religious sanctions. Those persecutions, reflecting the tensions between a hostile non-Jewish ruler and a local Jewish community, provided certain models in rabbinic teaching for the traditionally correct Jewish response.” (Pg. 284) She goes on, “The defense of the ghetto as the objective of Jewish resistance symbolized the isolation of the Jews in Eastern Europe… A resistance organization, to receive aid, had to have the political backing of its government-in-exile and be able to render useful… military services to the Allies… The surviving Polish Jews, imprisoned in ghettos and SS labor camps, did not fit into any conventional framework that would entitle them to aid from either Allied or Soviet channels. The Jewish resistance organizations in the ghettos had no access to areas where they could perform useful military tasks.” (Pg. 318-319) She adds, “Only in the Warsaw ghetto did Jewish resistance attain its objectives.” (Pg. 332)
She recounts, “Every day the number of surviving Jews dwindled. In the cities, Polish police.. Gestapo agents, and Security Police hunted down Jews, especially Jewish leaders. In the forest, unfriendly peasants and anti-Semitic … partisans found it easier to destroy Jews than Germans… As for the labor camps… the Germans liquidated them in rapid order. There were no Jewish communities anymore, no synagogues, no Jewish schools, no Jewish life to sustain. Blood-soaked debris of Yiddish and Hebrew books… were all that remained of the thousand-year-old civilization of Jews in Poland.” (Pg. 340)
She explains, “The European Jews discerned three stages in the historical situation that confronted them after the National Socialists came to power. The first stage, disemancipation… ended with Kristallnacht… The second stage, that of the ghetto and yellow star, coincided with the German conquest and occupation of most European nations and with the establishment of German hegemony over nearly all the others… The third stage, annihilation, unfolded with mass killings by the Einsatzgruppen … and continued until the end of the war with the operation of the death camps.” (Pg. 343)
This book will be “must reading” for anyone seriously studying the Holocaust and its background.
January 2, 2021
This books makes it clear the Holocaust did not just fall out of the sky, because Hitler was just crazy. The author explains the circumstances, forces, rationale, and purposeful intent that brought it into being and carried it out.
The author examines in detail how the German people's reaction to fascism as it developed allowed the Holocaust to be successful. Also the world's reaction. And covered much more extensively than in most other texts is the Jewish response, in heroically and courageously resisting, or not resisting, or enabling fascism, and how this varied widely in the many different sections, organizations, political factions, and classes of Jewish society.
The author examines in detail how the German people's reaction to fascism as it developed allowed the Holocaust to be successful. Also the world's reaction. And covered much more extensively than in most other texts is the Jewish response, in heroically and courageously resisting, or not resisting, or enabling fascism, and how this varied widely in the many different sections, organizations, political factions, and classes of Jewish society.
June 25, 2015
This was a different take on the Holocaust. The author explained the German methods for the Final Solution and their rationale (other than just being crazy). Then she showed the Jewish response and their rationale. It was enlightening to see the reasons for the Jews refusal to resist Nazi control; they had seen much of this before and Judaism has a tradition of optimism rather than resistance. I didn't rate it higher because it was sometimes pedantic...and if you use "unadumbrated," "disemancipation," "quixotic," and "coprophilia" in the same paragraph, you're just showing off...
February 10, 2016
This is a thorough but biased book about Adolf Hitler's time in control of most of Europe and the Holocaust. Lucy Dawidowicz is a Jew who lost family in the Holocaust so though this is used as a textbook in Holocaust courses, keep in mind that it is not unbiased. Parts of it got tedious and bogged down and she offered a lot of names of people and a bit about their lives then moved right on while you are still trying to digest what she said about them and then they are never brought up again. This isn't a book you sit down to read unless you are ready to slog through.
February 14, 2017
Somehow, this author really makes a very clear understanding of what happened during World War 2; it's scholarly but extremely readable. Actually resonates deeply during these times when the consequences are dire for refugees fleeing death for a life of peace somewhere else. Anyone who wants an understanding of the history particular to the pernicious hatred of the Jewish people through centuries to the rise of Hitler/isolationism in the 1930s should read this book. I highly recommend it. For me, this was a rereading.
January 5, 2020
In June, when I returned from a trip to Central Europe (including Auschwitz) in June, I decided to read this book and several others about the holocaust that were in my bookcase because one of my children read them for a class. This is the first one I started. Mainly, I read Appendix A: The Fate of the Jews in Hitler's Europe: By Country. It's pretty grim. Not sure I want to read a lot more, but it is something that most people on earth should have to know something about. Perhaps it would help us all find ways and means to love and care for each other in better ways.
January 20, 2010
The title of this study is also a thesis: Here Dawidowicz contends that the cliche, "Hitler used Jewery as a scapegoat" mistates Hitler's motives and practice. Awful to think that he succeeded in his main desire: to kill Jews. Recently Herman Wouk, in The Will to Survive, restated the issue: Hitler, Wouk said, intended to deal Judaism such a blow it would never recover, then Wouk asks, Did he succeed ?
May 23, 2008
Old by scholarship standards (1975?) - so much has been uncovered and published since then.
Still, I'll never forget the cold chills down my back as I read through this encyclopedic treatment of Hitler's rational plan to rid Europe of every Jewish man, woman and child. The sheer scope of murder was beyond me.
Still, I'll never forget the cold chills down my back as I read through this encyclopedic treatment of Hitler's rational plan to rid Europe of every Jewish man, woman and child. The sheer scope of murder was beyond me.
September 9, 2013
A comprehensive book on the Holocaust. It tells us how the Nazis perpetrated murder & genocide on such a global scale. The nuts and bolts of the Nazi war machine are exposed. While a part of you is amazed at how they did it, the other part will be disgusted at what was done. This book is a must-read.
October 12, 2019
This book is an interesting read that provides a significant amount of content with regards to the persecution, and destruction of the Jewish community within the European territories. It is not a geopolitical but rather a humanitarian viewpoint of the pre and World War Two times. An excellent read, however there is so much information that you are sometimes left overwhelmed.
August 1, 2020
Monumental and detailed account of the Holocaust. According to Davidowicz, Hitler's manic main goal during WWII was the elimination of the Jews and other sub-humans in order to make more room for the pure Aryan race. This took precedence over the war effort in terms of materials (train cars) and productivity (killing skilled Jewish workers).
Read
July 28, 2011One of the comprehensive, overall histories. She argues Hitler conceived of the actual mass killing very early in his career and followed an intentional path to make it happen. This assertion is known as the "intentionalist" argument. She lost a son in the 1967 Six-Days War.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 67 reviews