The Holocaust

by Benz, Wolfgang

• ISBN13: 9780231112147
• ISBN10: 0231112149
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1999-06-01
• Publisher: Columbia Univ Pr

Summary

The history of the Holocaust keeps being written and rewritten in ever greater detail, but almost always by Jews. Wolgang Benz's book makes an important contribution by bringing the German perspective to this horrific event. A masterpiece of compression, the books covers all the major topics and issues, from the Wannsee Conference of January 20, 1942, to stripping Jews of their civil rights, from the establishment of ghettos to the creation of killing centers and the development of an efficient system for extermination. The book also includes a chapter on "The Other Genocide: The Persecution of the Sinti and Roma," detailing the crusade against the Gypsies. From the Foreword by Arthur Hertzberg: Benz's account is the necessary 'first course' for anyone who wants to know about the Holocaust and to think further about its meaning for humanity. It is of particular importance that the historian who has written this book is a German. This account is trustworthy because its author combines within himself the rare authority of someone who belongs to the past of his nation. He has both understood and transcended its history in this century. The subject of the book, the Holocaust, is somber beyond words, but this account in Benz's words is a cause for hope.

Table of Contents

Foreword	vii
Arthur Hertzberg
Acknowledgments	xi
Talks Followed by Breakfast
The Wannsee Conference of January 20, 1942	1	(13)
German Jews and National Socialism
Self-Image and Threat	14	(10)
Exclusion and Discrimination of the Jews in Germany, 1933-1939	24	(10)
Jewish Emigration, 1933-1941	34	(53)
Aryanization and the Jewish Star
German Jews Are Totally Stripped of Their Civil Rights, 1939-1941	39	(3)
Ghettos in Occupied Eastern Europe
The Beginning of the Final Solution of the Jewish Question	42	(19)
From Antisemitism to Genocide
The Genesis of the Final Solution	61	(13)
Massacre in the East
Einsatzgruppen and Other Killing Units in the Occupied Territories, 1941-1942	74	(13)
The Deportation of the Jews from Germany	87	(16)
Theresienstadt	103	(28)
The Other Genocide
The Persecution of the Sinti and Roma	119	(12)
Industrialized Mass Murder in the Extermination Camps, 1942-1944	131	(26)
Bibliography	157	(6)
Index	163