What more can be said about the Holocaust? Much, but it is not said
here, though Benz is one of Germany's leading Holocaust scholars.
Instead, this is a simple, straightforward account, chronologically
told, of the central event of this fast-closing century. Touted
somewhat alarmingly by its publisher as Holocaust history from the
"German perspective," this is by no means an apologist work. Benz
(Antisemitism Research/Technical University of Berlin; The Jews of
Germany, 1933-1945, not reviewed) clearly recognizes that the
Holocaust was an event of a monstrosity unimaginable to most -
though unfortunately not to the Nazis. He opens with the infamous
Wannsee conference of January 20, 1942, correcting the common
misapprehension that it was here the Nazis decided upon the Final
Solution, which in fact had already been "settled." Benz also
elliptically alludes to the mass collusion of ordinary Germans,
reminding us that people all over Germany could hear Thomas Mann's
radio broadcasts from London, which informed Germans what the
Wehrmacht and Nazis were doing in occupied Europe. From the Wannsee
Conference, the author retreats into the immediate past to examine
Nazi policy toward the Jews and the increasingly difficult and
dangerous conditions under which German Jews lived. He delineates
the rapid and, in hindsight, inevitable progression from stripping
Jews of their civil rights to sending them to the gas chambers.
Benz also provides excellent coverage of the ghettos in occupied
eastern Europe, the massacres carried out by the Einsatzgruppen on
the eastern front, and the near-genocide of the Sinti and Roma
people. He raises but does not address the "intentionalist" vs.
"functionalist" debate (intentionalists believe Hitler always
intended to exterminate the Jews, while functionalists believe the
Holocaust was an exigency created by the chaos of war) and makes no
mention of the euthanasia program that both chronologically and
psychologically preceded genocide. Cursory, but competent. (Kirkus
Reviews)
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.
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