Auschwitz: A New History - Hardcover

Laurence Rees

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1567319467 ISBN 13: 9781567319460

Publisher: Mjf Books, 2005

Synopsis

Auschwitz-Birkenau is the site of the largest * in human history. Yet its story is not fully known. In Auschwitz, Laurence Rees reveals new insights from more than 100 original interviews with Auschwitz survivors and * perpetrators who speak on the record for the first time. Their testimonies provide a portrait of the inner workings of the camp in unrivalled detail—from the techniques of *, to the politics and gossip mill that turned between guards and prisoners, to the on-camp brothel in which the lines between those guards and prisoners became surprisingly blurred. Rees examines the strategic decisions that led the * leadership to prescribe Auschwitz as its primary site for the extinction of Europe's Jews—their "Final Solution." He concludes that many of the horrors that were perpetrated in Auschwitz were driven not just by ideological inevitability but as a "practical" response to a war in the East that had begun to go wrong for Germany. A terrible immoral pragmatism characterizes many of the decisions that determined what happened at Auschwitz. Thus the story of the camp becomes a morality tale, too, in which evil is shown to proceed in a series of deft, almost noiseless incremental steps until it produces the overwhelming horror of the industrial scale slaughter that was inflicted in the gas chambers of Auschwitz.

Edition details

• Publisher: Mjf Books
• Publication date: 2005
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1567319467
• ISBN 13: 9781567319460
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 327