Non­fic­tion

How Was It Pos­si­ble?: A Holo­caust Reader

  • Review
By – June 1, 2015

Peter Hayes, a pro­fes­sor of his­to­ry and Holo­caust stud­ies and the edi­tor of this impor­tant book, has gath­ered pas­sages from the works of schol­ars who have attempt­ed to explain the mechan­ics of what made the Holo­caust possible.

The read­er is divid­ed into nine chap­ters: The Con­text,” Nazism in Pow­er,” Imped­i­ments to Escape,” The New Order in Europe,” Jews in the Nazi Grip,” The Ger­man Killers and Their Meth­ods,” Col­lab­o­ra­tion and its Lim­its,” Res­cu­ing Jews — Means and Obsta­cles,” and After­math.” Among the many well-known schol­ars and sur­vivors whose writ­ings are excerpt­ed in this vol­ume are Saul Friedlän­der, Gun­ner Pauls­son, Richard Bre­it­man and Alan Kraut, Robert Wistrich, Amos Elon, Sebas­t­ian Haffn­er, Richard Rhodes, and Pri­mo Levi.

As the Holo­caust recedes from liv­ing mem­o­ry, future gen­er­a­tions of stu­dents will no longer have access to the tes­ti­mo­ny of the sur­vivors of the Shoah. Thus film doc­u­men­taries, mem­oirs, and schol­ar­ly works, such as those excerpt­ed in this vol­ume, will car­ry the onus for keep­ing the mem­o­ry of this ter­ri­ble peri­od of twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry his­to­ry unfor­got­ten. The anthol­o­gy should prove valu­able not only to aca­d­e­m­ic spe­cial­ists, but to col­lege stu­dents, their teach­ers, as well as the gen­er­al reader.

Relat­ed Content:

Jack Fis­chel is pro­fes­sor emer­i­tus of his­to­ry at Millersville Uni­ver­si­ty, Millersville, PA and author of The Holo­caust (Green­wood Press) and His­tor­i­cal Dic­tio­nary of the Holo­caust (Row­man and Littlefield).

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