Perpetrators Victims Bystanders: Jewish Catastrophe 1933-1945

by Raul Hilberg

Overview

The man the New York Times has called "the preeminent scholar of the Holocaust" tells the stories of those who caused, experienced, and witnessed the great human catastrophe.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780060995072
Publisher:	HarperCollins
Publication date:	09/15/1993
Series:	Harper Perennial
Pages:	352
Sales rank:	492,295
Product dimensions:	5.31(w) x 8.00(h) x 0.79(d)

Editorial Reviews

Blending capsule portraits with unemotional analysis, eminent historian Hilberg ( The Destruction of the European Jews ) gives names, faces and identites to the agents, victims, collaborators and helpless or compromised witnesses of the Holocaust. In short chapters, he explores the diverse fates of Jews who perished and of the half-million Jewish refugees who fled Germany; of intermarried Jews and those made Jewish by decree; of children, resisters and suicides. Among the leaders of the Jewish councils, which were conduits for Nazi control and for victims' petitions, Hilberg identifies crisis managers, dictators and traditional superintendents. He profiles various types of Nazi perpetrators--zealots, perfectionists, sadistic vulgarians and those with misgivings. With meticulous documentation he probes the inaction of the Western Allies in the face of the Holocaust, the long silence of church leaders, particularly Pope Pius XII, and the complicity of those Austrians, Dutch, Croats, Romanians, Ukrainians, Lithuanians and others who abetted the Nazis. This understated, provocative work opens with a profile of the chief perpetrator, Hitler. Hilberg's calm detachment gives this portrait gallery its cumulative power. (Sept.)

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

The dean of Holocaust historians, Hilberg is noted for his monumental history, The Destruction of the European Jews , first published 31 years ago and recently revised (Holmes & Meier, 1985) in both a three-volume set and a single-volume abridgment. Altogether, it was a work of massive scholarship. Hilberg's intent in this book of essays, or ``modules,'' as Hilberg calls them, is different. Written for the general reader, the essays are relatively short and straightforward, and they do not need to be read consecutively. Hilberg addresses many issues arranged under the three general topics given in the title. His prose sometimes suffers from a certain flatness, but it is still a powerful experience to read a historian so knowledgeable and so steeped in his sources. Highly recommended for most libraries.-- Paul Kaplan, Dakota Cty. Lib., Eagan, Minn.

Library Journal