Auschwitz by Laurence Rees

Auschwitz by Laurence Rees

Auschwitz-Birkenau is the site of the largest mass murder 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 Nazi 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 mass murder, 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 Nazi 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.

Laurence Rees is Creative Director of History Programs for the BBC and author of five books, including The Nazis: A Warning from History and Horror in the East: Japan and the Atrocities of World War II. He lives in London.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9781586483579
ISBN 10	1586483579
Title	Auschwitz
Author	Laurence Rees
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	PublicAffairs,U.S.
Year published	2006-01-10
Number of pages	368
Prizes	Commended for National Jewish Book Award (Jewish Life) 2006
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.
Note	Unavailable