The Last Transport by Anthony Mcelligott

The Last Transport by Anthony Mcelligott

The deportation of 1,755 Jews from the islands of Rhodes and Cos in July 1944, shortly after the last deportation from Hungary, was the last transport to leave Greece for Auschwitz and brought to a close the last significant phase of the genocide of Europe’s Jews (notwithstanding the death marches). Within six weeks of their deportation, the Germans were retreating from Greece and the Balkans as Hitler’s empire shrank. This last deportation is frequently acknowledged in Holocaust literature but its significance for our understanding of the Nazi genocide of the Jews remains largely overlooked. The timing of the transport, when it was clear to the German military elite that Nazi Germany had lost the war, raises important questions in relation to long-term ideological Nazi goals and the immediate contingency thrown up by war.

Anthony McElligott, in this account of the last Greek transport of Jews to Auschwitz, tells a compelling story of this previously underexplored event and sheds light on an important aspect of the Holocaust through an in-depth study of one Eastern Mediterranean community.

This book was a finalist for the 2025 Yad Vashem International Book Prize for Holocaust Research.

The Last Transport is a masterpiece of scholarshipThis meticulously researched and evocative book presents the full story of the Jews of Rhodes before, during, and after World War II. A vital and ground-breaking contribution to our understanding of the Holocaust and the end of Sephardi life in the Eastern Aegean. * Aron Rodrigue, Professor of Jewish Culture and History, Stanford University, USA *
The Last Transport tells the harrowing story of the Nazi extermination of the Jewish population of the Greek island of Rhodes. With his customary fine-grained detail, Anthony McElligott describes Jewish life on the island, its brutal destruction in July 1944, and the fate of its victims and survivors. Moving, humane and brilliantly researched, this is a masterpiece. * Sir Richard Evans, Emeritus Fellow, University of Cambridge, UK. *
A moving and rigorous study of the community that tragically constituted the final transport to Auschwitz. It introduces us to some of the individuals who were swept up in it while vividly painting the East Mediterranean world of which they were so central a part -- now irrevocably lost. * K. E. Fleming, Alexander S. Onassis Professor of Hellenic Culture and Civilization, NYU, USA *

Anthony McElligott is Emeritus Professor of History at the University of Limerick, Ireland. His most recent books are Rethinking the Weimar Republic: Authority and Authoritarianism, 1916-1936 (Bloomsbury, 2014) and (editor with Jeffrey Herf) Antisemitism Before and Since the Holocaust: Altered Contexts and Recent Perspectives (2017). He was elected a fellow of the Royal Historical Society in 1999 and to the Royal Irish Academy in 2015.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9781474227988
ISBN 10	1474227988
Title	The Last Transport
Author	Anthony Mcelligott
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Hardback
Publisher	Bloomsbury Publishing PLC
Year published	2024-11-14
Number of pages	544
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.