Auschwitz: A New History by Laurence Rees Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of Auschwitz: A New History
Book Review: Industrial Strength Killing
Summary: 5 Stars
Innumerable books have talked about Auschwitz, but this is the first time that I've seen a whole book about it. The detail in this book is incredible. A surprising part of the book is the current attitude of the guards that were interviewed. They do not give the standard only following orders but still believe that the monstrous acts they performed were proper.
The book covers every aspect from the basic decisions to establish Auschwitz, to the transportation system, to the social impacts. This book has a wealth of information and is extremely well written.
Book Review: Definitve Book Unveils the Horrid Significance of Auschwitz
Summary: 5 Stars
Laurence Rees is a fine scholar and a fine writer and has the courage to present an historical summary of the one of the most horror-laden atrocities of the twentieth century - the Nazi camp called Auschwitz. Even the name conjures up loathing and nausea and near disbelief that such unimaginable mass killings, human medical experimentation, torture, and genocide could have possibly been real. But without denying any of the truths well documented since the Nuremberg Trials, Rees explores the initial beginnings of the concepts for the camp and the events that lead the Third Reich to push this Polish town site into world memory.
World War I laid the seeds for the rise of German resentment for the loss of a war they felt was turned against them. At the core, in search for a causative factor, the Jews were perceived as the evil reason for Germany's losses. Not that anti-Semitism was limited to Germany: Rees wisely shows that those feelings were fairly widespread throughout the world. Yet it took the early fanatics that included Adolph Hitler to strive to purify Germany, rid the fatherland of the useless consumers of food that robbed the Germans of their rightful needs, and repatriate lost Germans to the fatherland at any cost. Rees postulates (with excellent quotations from both Nazi perpetrators and concentration camp survivors throughout this book) that the primary goal of creating concentration camps such as Auschwitz was to provide way stations for gathering non-Germans for deportation to make room for the return of 'lebensraum' for those of pure German blood.
The progress from these initial postulates to the eventual conversion of the concentration camps as places for extermination of not only Jews but also any 'outsiders' ending with the gassing and cremation of millions of human beings is the trail Rees outlines for the reader. He also uses his hundreds of interviews with camp survivors to explore the inner workings of the camps, from the hierarchy of the Capos, the survival techniques, the trading issues with the Poles outside the camps, the brothels within the camps that serviced not only the Guards but also the inmates, and the day to day mechanisms of progressive annihilation of the inmates.
This book is not easy reading: the approach is scholarly yet fascinating and the subject matter can induce waves of nausea in even the most iron-willed reader. But the book is terribly important. If our response to the Nazi genocide camps is only one-sided horror without the information as to how such camps evolved from first idea to ultimate tragedy, then we stand to see history repeat itself. We need only to look at Abu Ghraib, Sudan, and other contemporary mini-counterparts to see how feasible this line of thought is. This is a very important book and recommended to everyone who cares about the human race. Grady Harp, January 2005
Book Review: Historical page turner
Summary: 5 Stars
This is one of the best books that I have read on the holocaust. The Mr. Rees has centered the story around Auschwitz but puts it into the context of the Nazi solution for the Jews. Using personal stories and interviews from both sides to explore the feelings and motives makes for a thought provoking read. The personal stories of courage and faith show the few shining lights in what is a black period of history.