The trial of Adolf Eichmann began in 1961 under a deceptively simple label, "criminal case 40/61." Hannah Arendt covered the trial for the "New Yorker" magazine and recorded her observations in "Eichmann in Jerusalem: The Banality of Evil." Harry Mulisch was also assigned to cover the trial for a Dutch news weekly. Arendt would later say in her book's preface that Mulisch was one of the few people who shared her views on the character of Eichmann. At the time, Mulisch was a young and little-known writer; in the years since he has since emerged as an author of major international importance, celebrated for such novels as "The Assault" and "The Discovery of Heaven."Mulisch modestly called his book on case 40/61 a report, and it is certainly that, as he gives firsthand accounts of the trial and its key players and scenes (the defendant's face strangely asymmetric and riddled by tics, his speech absurdly baroque). Eichmann's character comes out in his incessant bureaucratizing and calculating, as well as in his grandiose visions of himself as a Pontius Pilate-like innocent. As Mulisch intersperses his dispatches from Jerusalem with meditative accounts of a divided and ruined Berlin, an eerily rebuilt Warsaw, and a visit to the gas chambers of Auschwitz, "Criminal Case 40/61, the Trial of Adolf Eichmann" becomes as a disturbing and highly personal essay on the Nazi extermination of European Jews and on the human capacity to commit evil ever more efficiently in an age of technological advancement.Here presented with a foreword by Deborah Dwork and translated for the first time into English, "Criminal Case 40/61" provides the reader with an unsettling portrait not only of Eichmann's character but also of technological precision and expertise. It is a landmark of Holocaust writing.

A magisterial, dramatic account that reshapes the way we think and talk about the greatest crime in history.

Unrivaled in reach and scope, Holocaust illuminates the long march of events, from the Middle Ages to the modern era, which led to this great atrocity. It is a story of all Europe, of Nazis and their allies, the experience of wartime occupation, the suffering and strategies of marked victims, the failure of international rescue, and the success of individual rescuers. It alone in Holocaust literature negotiates the chasm between the two histories, that of the perpetrators and of the victims and their families, shining new light on German actions and Jewish reactions.

No other book in any language has so embraced this multifaceted story. Holocaust uniquely makes use of oral histories recorded by the authors over fifteen years across Europe and the United States, as well as never-before-analyzed archival documents, letters, and diaries; it contains in addition seventy-five illustrations and sixteen original maps, each accompanied by an extended caption. This book is an original analysis of a defining event. 14 maps, 75 illustrations . A Publishers Weekly Best Book of 2002.

"[A] scholarly miracle....a sophisticated and gripping contribution to Holocaust education."—Rabbi Irving Greenburg, President, Jewish Life Network; Chairman, United States Holocaust Memorial Council 2000-2002

"[A]n elegantly written, thoroughly researched and compelling narrative...certain to be a standard work in the field of Holocaust studies."—Dr. William L. Shulman, President, Association of Holocaust Organizations

"[T]he focus is on the fate of named individuals on almost every page. That creates the unusual passion and strength of this remarkable book."—Rabbi Herbert A. Friedman

"A rare achievement that will take its place among the best histories of the destruction of European Jews."—Michael R. Marrus, Professor of Holocaust Studies and Dean of the School of Graduate Studies at the University of Toronto

"An elegantly written, thoroughly researched, and compelling narrative that is certain to be a standard work in the field of Holocaust studies."—Dr. William L. Shulman, president, Association of Holocaust Organizations

"A signal contribution to the vast literature on the history of the Holocaust.... a volume from which general readers and scholars can both benefit."—Douglas Greenberg, President and Chief Executive Officer, Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation

"[A] 'must read' for anyone interested in understanding the true history of this extremely tragic time."—Roman Kent, Chairman, American Gathering/Federation of Jewish Holocaust Survivors

"The reader looking for a clear and readable account of how Hitler and the Nazis came to conceive and carry out their diabolical project need look no further than this book."—Boston Globe

"Holocaust is a superb work."—The Forward

"A monumental, sobering attempt to make sense of collective insanity."—Kirkus Reviews starred review

"Through it all, the faces of the victims, and their persecutors, are clearly visible, making the reader aware of the human dimension of the Shoah and providing what Holocaust studies desperately needs: a single volume suitable for a wide audience."—Library Journal starred review

"A distinctive blend of moral intensity, attention to detail and multifaceted breadth."—Los Angeles Times

As persecution, war, and deportation savaged their communities, Jews tried to flee Nazi Europe through both legal and clandestine routes. In this riveting tale of Jewish refugees during and after the Nazi era, Deborah Dwork and Robert Jan van Pelt thread together official papers and personal accounts to weave the history of refugees lives into the history of the Holocaust. "

"[A] peerless work of documentation and research that sheds new light on this century's darkest address."—Kirkus Reviews starred review

No symbol of the Holocaust is more profound than Auschwitz. Yet the sheer, crushing number of murders—over 1,200,000—the overwhelming scale of the crime, and the vast, abandoned site of ruined chimneys and rusting barbed wire isolate Auschwitz from us.

How could an ordinary town become a site of such terror? Why was this particular town chosen? Who conceived, created, and constructed the camp? This unprecedented history reveals how an unremarkable Polish village was transformed into a killing field. Using architectural designs and planning documents recently discovered in Poland and Russia and over 200 illustrations, Auschwitz tells how this town became the epicenter of the Final Solution. A National Jewish Book Award winner. 24 pages of b/w illustrations.

"This is truly the definitive history of the town and camp."—Booklist

"The important story [told]—really for the first time—is not 'why the Holocaust?' but 'why Auschwitz?'"—Boston Globe

"A milestone in Holocaust literature."—Nechama Tee, author of Defiance: The Bielski Partisans

"The little children had little parents in the [twins'] block [in Auschwitz]. For example, I was a little mama for twins, two girls named Evichka and Hanka...My sister was the mother for Hanka and I was the mother for Evichka...Evichka told me that she got a mother and a father, but that they had gone away on transport. The twins were four years old. I said to her, 'I will be your mother.' She said, 'But you are only sixteen years old; it doesn't matter?' I said, 'No, it doesn't matter because it is more important that we are together and that we are not alone. You have a mother and I have a daughter.'" -Magda Magda Somogyi Many books have been written about the experiences of Jews in Nazi Europe. None, however, has focused on the persecution of the most vulnerable members of the Jewish community-its children. This powerful and moving book by Deborah Dwork relates the history of these children for the first time. The book is based on hundreds of oral histories conducted with survivors who were children in the Holocaust, in Europe and North America, an extraordinary range of primary documentation uncovered by the author (including diaries, letters, photographs and family albums), and archival records. Drawing on these sources, Dwork reveals the feelings, daily activities, and perceptions of Jewish children who lived and died in the shadow of the Holocaust. She reconstructs and analyzes the many different experiences the children faced. In the early years of Nazi domination they lived at home, increasingly opposed by rising anti-Semitism. Later some went into hiding while others attempted to live openly on gentile papers. As time passed, increasing numbers were forced into transit camps, ghettos, and death and slave labor camps. Although nearly ninety percent of the Jewish children in Nazi Europe were murdered, we learn in this history not of their deaths but of the circumstances of their lives. Children with a Star is a major new contribution to the history of Europe during the Nazi era. It explains from a different perspective how European society functioned during the wary years, how the German noose tightened, and how the Jewish victims and their gentile neighbors responded. It expands the definition of resistance by examining the history of the people-primarily women-who helped Jewish children during the war. By focusing on children, it strips away rationalizations that the victims of Nazism somehow "allowed or "deserved" their punishment. And by examining the experience of children and thereby laying bare how society functions at its most fundamental level, it not only provides a unique understanding of the Holocaust but a new theoretical approach to the study of history.