Shoah. Holocaust. The words send cold shivers down the backs of decent human beings. The late Dr. David Cesarani of the University of London has crafted a brilliant book detailing the Dantean horror of Jewish murder which led to the death of over six million Jews in Hitler's evil empire which lasted from 1933-1945. The book is very long, well written with extensive bibliographic entries and pages of footnotes. The book is notable for explaining that;
1. The bloody murder of the Jews in all forms from shooting to being beaten to death, torture and ultimately in the gas chambers of Auschwitz and other hell holes is seen as a progressive descent into the lowest ring of Hell.
2. The fate of Jews in all the nations ruled by the Nazis is covered in depth.
3. Chilling anecdotes are related from the mouths of eyewitnesses to the horrors.
4. The basically indifferent response by Western democracies to the plight of the hapless Jews is explored.
5. The book shows how Nazi defeat on the steppes of Russia led to greater numbers of the Jews being slaughtered since there was no place to send them for slave labor purposes in the vast Soviet Union. The Germans had envisaged German settlers moving into Poland, Eastern Europe and Soviet Russia but they failed in this military effort.
6. The author explores how diplomacy functioned in the fate of the Jews.
This is a grim and horrible tale of man's inhumanity to man. Anti-Semitism was horrible then and it is so today. This is a readable, well written and explained exploration of the worst evil in human history. The book is destined to become a classic in its grim field.
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