The third revised and updated edition of this comprehensive two-volume history by one of the world's leading experts on the Holocaust provides unparalleled perspective on the destruction of Hungarian Jewry during the Nazi era. A critical component of any collection on the Holocaust, this work not only provides a detailed chronicle of the complex domestic and international developments that led to one of World War II's darkest events but also works as a complete reference of maps, dates, people, and other essential, hard-to-find materials. This edition identifies and analyzes within Hungarian history, world history, and international politics the historical, political, ideological, and socioeconomic factors that shaped the attitudes and policies of the Holocaust's main players. An exhaustive resource of everything we now know, The Politics of Genocide is essential reading for a richer understanding of this atrocity and its legacy.

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.

This volume is the twenty-sixth in the Holocaust Studies Series sponsored by the Rosenthal Institute for Holocaust Studies at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. It contains ten seminal studies the catastrophe that befell the Jews of Europe during the Nazi era. It also reprints two historically crucial documents relating to the so-called Hungarian Gold Train, a freight train that, in 1944, carried stolen or confiscated Jewish valuables from Hungary.

Essays recount the unfolding of the Holocaust in Hungary and the history of the Jews in Europe. They detail the elimination of Jews in Greece, particularly from the large Sephardic community of Salonika, and describe the rescue of Jews in Albania. Nonhistorical essays concern autobiographical narratives in which survivors and their descendents reflect on the return to former shtetls in East Central Europe and the attitudes of victims toward the perpetrators of Holocaust crimes. Taken altogether, this volume formulates a more complete understanding of the Holocaust in Eastern Europe.

This volume is a systematic and extensive bibliography of studies published between 2000 and 2007.

This is a unique and indispensable sourcebook for anyone interested in the catastrophe that befell Hungarian Jewry during the Nazi era. It includes close to six thousand annotated references to independent and periodical literature on all aspects of the history of Hungarian Jewry before, during, and after the Holocaust. Supplied with author, name, and geographic indexes, the sourcebook is easily usable.

This book describes the attempt in post-Communist Hungary to distort and denigrate the Holocaust, often by respectable public figures such as intellectuals, members of parliment and influential government and party figu. Such figures appear resolved to explain and justify Hungary's linkage to Nazi Germany, rehabilitate the Horthy regime, and absolve the country of any responsibility for the destruction of approximately 550,000 of its citizens of the Jewish faith or heritage.

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.