War Against the Jews 1933-1945

Summary: "[This is] a major work of synthesis, providing for the first time a full account of the Holocaust not merely as it completed the Nazi vision but as it affected the Jews of Eastern Europe. Drawing upon materials in half a dozen languages and writing with a restraint that seems almost beyond credence, Ms. Dawidowicz, a professor of History at Yeshiva University, has produced a work of high scholarship and profound mor...al import....In [her] severely controlled narrative there are chapters on the camps as total institutions, the pitiful efforts of the German Jews to maintain a fragment of dignity, and the close relation between German foreign policy and race....Even about the much-despised Judenrate, the Jewish local authorities sometimes set up by Nazi decree and sometimes meant to thwart the oppressors, Mrs. Dawidowicz writes with objectivity and compassion." [read more]