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Rating: 
Summary: The Holocaust book by which others are measured
Review: Although an ocean of material has been written about the Holocaust, this book stands alone. The author has chosen the best way to present the material; by simple factual recitation. No amount of pejoratives would suffice, and even one would cheapen the book. Salut!!!!!!!!Davidowicz examines the underpinnings of pan-European anti-Semitism, its "legitimization" by the Third Reich, its consequences on the victims, and the awful results masterfully. Especially excellent are the sections on why so little resistance was offered until the end, when resistance was a gesture, not a viable tactic. You will never forget the first mayor of the Warsaw ghetto, Adam Czerniakow. This book is unforgettable, and earns the highest rating possible.
Rating:
Summary: The Holocaust book by which others are measured
Review: Although an ocean of material has been written about the Holocaust, this book stands alone. The author has chosen the best way to present the material; by simple factual recitation. No amount of pejoratives would suffice, and even one would cheapen the book. Salut!!!!!!!! Davidowicz examines the underpinnings of pan-European anti-Semitism, its "legitimization" by the Third Reich, its consequences on the victims, and the awful results masterfully. Especially excellent are the sections on why so little resistance was offered until the end, when resistance was a gesture, not a viable tactic. You will never forget the first mayor of the Warsaw ghetto, Adam Czerniakow. This book is unforgettable, and earns the highest rating possible.
Rating:
Summary: Important History
Review: Hitler. The very name seems to invoke black and white images of a charasmatic madman pushing his country to global domination. But the story goes much deeper than that. His intense hatred of the Jews pushed him to implement his "Final Solution". To exploit and then kill every Jew in Europe before they, in his twisted mind, did the same to every one else.
Thankfully, his "appointed" task was never completed. But not before nearly six million Jews and countless others who either resisted or simply didn't conform to his Ideas of the perfect human were destroyed.
This is the story of those Jews who died and those survived the largest mass murder in recorded history. These are the things they didn't show or talk about in Public School. This book shows the strength and weakness of a people on the edge of anihalation. It doesn't show the Jews as a strong race overcoming their problems, or as a weak race sniveling and grovelling, waiting to die. It shows them as any other group of humans reacting to their circumstances in a wide variety of ways.
This is probably the longest time I have ever spent reading a book. After reading a page or two (especially in the second half of the book), I would generally have to put it down for a few days to read some lighter material. Overall I think it took me about nine to ten months to read. But I would definatly put it in the best books I have read.
So, if you are looking to understand what was happening to the Jews during WW2, or if you are just looking to fill in some of the gaps from history class, then I would heartily recomend this brilliant work.
Rating: 
Summary: Dangerous Ethnocentric Rag!!!!
Review: The massive and continuing propaganda campaigns of the "holocaust" go even beyond the propaganda campaigns of the Nazis themselves. Due to the nature and quantity of all the dis(and mis)information, of which this rag more than qualifies, a rebuttal here is very necessary. Up front, the author does a disservice with the numerous typos and some of the passionately biased, and unnecessary, verbiage through which the reader has to wade. Next, did Jews die over in Europe during said time period? I'll say yes, but...I'll qualify shortly. Probably the most lamentable fact is that whenever people, surrounding this topic deign to question key elements and/or the figures continually dumped on them, they're immediately vilified, shouted down and branded as racist &/or anti-semitic.
To anyone who has even a cursory understanding of what REALLY happened over the "holocaust", or who can at least think or question anything even at an imbecile's level, this book 'll go down in history as one of the vilest pieces of garbage ever to hit paper. It's success requires a very gullible readership to have either no REAL knowledge of what happened concerning this era, a substantial bias towards it already, or a combination of the 2. The author uses some long-since discredited and FAR FAR EXAGERATED figures that have been adjusted significantly downward by about 1/2-1/6, in light of new evidence that has come forward as to how many died, and how they died. Depending on which MORE ACCURATE accounts & figures one reads, the greater majority of those were dying from typhus and numerous other infestations which they had before even being brought in to the ghettos and camps.
Considering the importance of skilled labour, particularly in the aircraft industry, I feel the author doesn't go far enough in talking about how important the Jews were to German industry and how the Germans had a vested interested in keeping at least a few of them around, & keeping them healthy so as to be productive. Concomitantly, for Jews who fell ill in the camps, there was appreciably little mention of the German guards who helped them and infirmaries nursing the Jews back to health, at least as best they could given the allies raiding supply depots and destroying their supply lines, thus making it tough for the Germans to have the resources to help some of the internees. This last of which strikes at the heart of what the "final solution" is all about; to the informed it was deportation not extermination. Considering the importance of it, I'm shocked there was so little detail on the Madagascar Plan. I guess we could at least be fortunate it is/was mentioned in the book? Because of risks, logistics & expenses, among other things the Nazis were never able to implement it.
There are numerous books which focus on the evidence of what happened. I believe this is why the Jewish community has shifted into overdrive with pap like this to try and further becloud & hide the truth; and most significantly prevent people from examining the evidence over what happened. To the author I posit the question," if all this was so cut and dry, why was it necessary at Nuremberg to intimidate and threaten defense witnesses, suppress/deny defense evidence, and deny the accused adequate representation that they could even sufficiently communicate with on a technical legal level? And why was it necessary to torture out so many "confessions"? To anyone who understands civilized law & courts, tortured confessions are usually discounted ones.
Divisive propagandistic rags like this will hopefully be recognized for what they are, propaganda. For a rating, this book deserves 100 stars at being the best, OF THE WORST. This book truly does belong in every library, as an example of what we need to safeguard ourselves against.
Rating:
Summary: A Good Discription of Why it Happened
Review: This book provides a good detail of how the German leadership convinced itself that genocide was not only correct and legal, but a necessity for their survival. I thought the book was going to be a description of one atrocity after another, but it provides the reader with more of the details of why it was happening. Don't get me wrong, there is enough of the horror represented here. I would have liked a larger review of all of the holocaust crimes across Europe, but there are limits to the size of any one book. This book is a good start to find out why it happened.
Rating: 
Summary: Terrific History Of The Evolution Of The Holocaust
Review: This seminal classic historical work by scholar and teacher Lucy Dawidowicz is a stunning book that both graphically and systematically spells out the details of the horrifying war of annihilation forged against the European Jews by the Third Reich. In a world that seen so much published regarding this subject, this work stands as benchmark. Ms. Dawidowicz addresses herself to the most fundamental of questions regarding this unspeakable policy of ritual race murder; how could a modern, sophisticated and industrial country such as Germany have perpetrated such a deliberate reign of horror against a whole people simply because they were Jewish? And, although we have seen recent books such as "Problem From Hell" that deal more systematically with the issue of modern examples of state sponsored genocide, the simple fact is that the Holocaust seems to have occurred because, for the first time in modern history, it was both politically and logistically possible. In other words, the Nazis had both the method and the impetus to do the unspeakable. Seen in this fashion, the equation becomes at once political, social, and technological; given the irrational impulse to do so, the modern Nazi regime was able to harness all of its energies, spiritual, political and material, into such a devastating and sustained campaign against the Jews, and was therefore uniquely able to forge the most bloody of final results. The author's approach winds the reader through several phases of the Holocaust phenomenon with a careful, meticulous and methodical consideration of the social, economic, and political influences swirling through this witches' brew of evil. In the first part of the book, entitled "The Final Solution", she traces the origins and growth of anti-Semitism, a form of patent racism so virulent it threatened to exterminate the Jews from all of continental Europe. In so tracing the roots and origins of the Nazis and their fellow travelers, she shows how the rise of National Socialism revolved around the scapegoating of the Jews. The execution of this plan was enacted in the ghettos and small towns of Poland and Germany as well as in a network of forced labor camps and concentration camps throughout Eastern Europe. In the second part of the book, ""The Holocaust", the author dramatically describes how the plight of the Jews was gradually worsened and how the violence and deprivation grew systematically more and more horrible with each passing month. Inhabitants of camps or ghettos led lives of incredible hardship and deprivation, struggling helplessly against hunger, disease, exposure to extremes of temperature and weather, and of course, to the wanton cruelties of the Nazi regime. This is indeed interesting material, detailing the ways in which Jewish groups both within the ghettos and the death camps worked together to make the best out of an impossible situation. This is a heart-rending book, one that accurately portrays the ways in which Jews were deceived and betrayed by the authorities, convinced they were being resettled rather than being slated for extermination. Ms. Dawidowicz writes with compassion and authority covering this intrinsically difficult issues, as one reads of lives torn asunder, families ripped apart, and wholesale rape, mutilation, and murder. This book, published more than thirty years ago, is one of the most comprehensive, best documented, and well-written book to have appeared on the subject of the Holocaust. I recommend it for anyone with an interest in the subject.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent Book but Not A Complete History
Review: This very well written history of the origins and progession of the Holocaust has much to recommend to it. It provides a strong and concise overview of Naziism and advances the disturbing but plausible idea that World War II was intended in part as a cover for the Holocaust to come. It offers a chilling look inside the ghettos of Eastern Europe and shows how wretched life was and also how life didn't stop immediately despite the horrors heaped upon the Jews. Where she forcuses her attention, she provides a strong and complete overview. However, the book stops at the gates of the death camps and at the western boundaries of Germany. While an appendix touches on the fate of all of Europe's Jews, the body of the work leaves out the progression of atrocities in Western and Southern Europe. Maybe there was little to say as most of the Jews ended up in the ghettos but she doesn't make it clear till the appendix. And she makes no effort to talk about like in the labor camps or death camps. While there was little to talk of but doom and the barest hope of survival, many books since have covered this topic, so I wonder why she didn't. Still, this work makes an excellent overview to the Holocaust, to the inhumanity of the Germans, and to the efforts, no matter how small, by the Jews to never surrender.
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