Product Description

'Thank god...that occasionally books of the stature of Laurence Rees' superb "Auschwitz: The Nazis and the 'Final Solution'" are published that try to redress the balance...fascinating' - Andrew Roberts, "Evening Standard". In his highly acclaimed bestseller "Auschwitz", author and broadcaster Laurence Rees tells the definitive history of the most notorious Nazi institution of them all. we discover how Auschwitz evolved from a concentration camp for Polish political prisoners into the site of the largest mass murder in history - part death camp, part concentration camp, where around a million Jews were killed. Rees uses Auschwitz as a window through which to examine the Holocaust in its broader context.He argues that, far from being an aberration, the camp was a uniquely important institution in the Nazi state, one that played a vital role in the 'Final Solution'. "Auschwitz" examines the mentality and motivations of the key Nazi decision makers, and perpetrators of appalling crimes speak here for the first time about their actions. Fascinating and disturbing facts have been uncovered - from the operation of a brothel to the corruption that was rife throughout the camp. The book draws on intriguing new documentary material from recently opened Russian archives, which will challenge many previously accepted arguments. Auschwitz lay at the hub of a complex system of extermination that spread throughout Nazi Europe. Rees addresses uncomfortable questions, such as why so few countries under Nazi occupation protected their Jews and why the Allies did little directly to prevent the killing even after they knew about the existence of the camp.Laurence Rees' unforgettable account of the notorious Nazi camp is a story of murder, brutality, courage, escape and survival, and a powerful study of how a human tragedy of such immense scale could have happened.'Excellent' - Boyd Tonkin, "Independent". '...a key to understanding man's inhumanity to man' - Ian Thomson, "Guardian". 'Well-written...with striking testimonies from bystanders, perpetrators and victims...The interviews with SS men, and sundry European Fascists, are genuinely revealing, and must have been exceptionally difficult to negotiate' - Michael Burleigh, "Daily Telegraph".'Devastating...Rees' research is impeccable and intrepid...Ultimately he does at the gut level what Hannah Arendt achieved some 40 years ago at the level of philosophy: he forces the reader to shift the Holocaust out of the realm of nightmare or Gothic horror and acknowledge it as something all too human. ..Scrupulous and honest, this book is utterly without illusions' - David Von Drehle, "Washington Post", USA. 'This magnificent book...exciting and disturbing at the same time' - Rafael Nunez Florencio, "El Mundo", Spain. 'I believe that Rees' book will be included in the canon of fundamental works shaping our knowledge about the Holocaust' - Wladyslaw Bartoszewski, former Polish Foreign Minister and one-time inmate of Auschwitz.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #8745 in Books
• Published on: 2005-09-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 400 pages

Review
"'Thank God...that occasionally books of the stature of Laurence Rees's superb 'Auschwitz' are published' - Andrew Roberts, Evening Standard 'excellent' Boyd Tonkin, Independent '...a key to understanding man's inhumanity to man.' Ian Thomson, Guardian 'Well-written...with striking testimonies from bystanders, perpetrators and victims... The interviews with SS men, and sundry European Fascists, are genuinely revealing, and must have been exceptionally difficult to negotiate.' Michael Burleigh, Daily Telegraph 'Devastating... Rees's research is impeccable and intrepid... Ultimately he does at the gut level what Hannah Arendt achieved some 40 years ago at the level of philosophy: he forces the reader to shift the Holocaust out of the realm of nightmare or Gothic horror and acknowledge it as something all too human... Scrupulous and honest, this book is utterly without illusions.' David Von Drehle, Washington Post, USA 'This magnificent book... exciting and disturbing at the same time.' Rafael Nunez Florencio, El Mundo, Spain 'I believe that Rees's book will be included in the canon of fundamental works shaping our knowledge about the Holocaust.' Wladyslaw Bartoszewski, former Polish Foreign Minister and one-time inmate of Auschwitz."

Ian Thomson, Guardian
‘…a key to understanding man’s inhumanity to man.’

Michael Burleigh, Daily Telegraph
‘Well-written…with striking testimonies from bystanders, perpetrators and victims… '

Customer Reviews

A Harrowing Read
I guess both an interest in WWII and a curiosity about human behaviour drove me to purchase this book. It is without a doubt a gripping read and each time you think the story couldn't get any worse another horror prevails. There were however times that I just had to put the book down for fear of dropping into a state of intense depression. The stories, especially those of the children are bound to stir deep emotions in any reader, especially those with children of their own. Perhaps the most curious of the conclusions you can draw from the book is just how powerful propaganda can be at brain washing the masses. It is evident that the holocaust was not engineered by one lunatic, but by hundreds of them all working under their own autonomous remit. Some of the SS that were interviewed still show no remorse today, I really struggle to see how the interviewer managed to retain their composure when researching the material. I cautiously recommend this, but if you are an emotional person or suffer from depression I would give it a miss.

Thought-provoking
For me the name Auschwitz conjures up images of torture, human suffering and horror quicker than any other word in the dictionary. It is probably the most famous 'facility' of the Second World War and this book gives an indept look at how Auschwitz came about and its part in 'The Final Solution'. Beginning in 1942, the camp became the site of the greatest mass murder in the history of humanity and the most disturbing aspect of the entire book is the attitude of those in charge who never showed any remorse for their actions.

This is a book which should be read by everyone in the hope that such a travesty should never happen again.

I gave the book 4 stars because I found the editing of the book infuriating.....some sentences were repeated, some finished mid-sentence. Not many.....but enough to annoy me! Don't let this stop you buying it though!

A book which admirably complements the DVD
The book which parallels the BBC television series on Auschwitz ... and one which can most effectively be read in conjunction with a viewing of the series (either on television or DVD). The BBC has developed considerable skill in combining scholarly but accessible written and visual history, and this is no exception.

For the most part, Rees' book is highly accessible, especially given the emotional volatility of his subject matter. He achieves a laudable degree of balance and objectivity, avoiding the urge to be judgemental. Present the facts - the reader is well capable of making his/her own judgement.

The central theme is that Auschwitz was not simply a death camp. It was conceived as an industrial complex, as a profit-making concern which would wring the maximum work from a force of slave labourers. German industry profited from it ... and, in due course, the complex that was Auschwitz would be run on industrial principles as its managers created a production line of death.

Mass murder, here, was a process. Over a million would be murdered in Auschwitz, but the thousands of people who contributed to its operation were, for the main, 'ordinary' people. The writer Hannah Arendt commented that she attended the trial of Adolf Eichmann, the German officer in charge of the final solution: she had expected to look into the face of evil; instead, she found herself facing an innocuous, petty bourgeois, bald, insignificant old man, devoutly sticking to the mantra that he had only been following orders and couldn't be held responsible. [ See Hannah Arendt, "Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil".]

Rees demonstrates that the thousands of bureaucrats, workers, even the guards, were simple jobsworths who rubber stamped murder and treated genocide as a matter of double-entry accounting. The victims were a commodity to be processed, stripped of their dignity, stripped of their humanity, sent to their death packed into cattle wagons. It was a job. How many this week? Evil is not a matter of consciously deciding to commit some horrific act or uphold an abominable philosophy: evil is simply ordinary people not questioning, not objecting ... because they are too scared, too greedy, too busy, or so corrupted that they accept that someone else is no longer to be regarded as human, someone else deserves their fate.

The commandant of Auschwitz, Rudolf Höss, was an ambitious Nazi functionary whose business management skills were devoted to the task of making the executions more efficient and cost-effective - finding better, less costly ways to kill in numbers and then dispose of the bodies.

The great evil here is the blind conviction that the individual can abdicate responsibility, that s/he is only following orders. Even Jews collaborated in murdering others. What is most disturbing about the 60th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz is that genocide is still occurring - it is only a matter of years since it last flared up in Europe in the former Yugoslavia. And when Rees analyses the way the Jews were made less than human in the decades before the outbreak of World War 2, it's worth considering how readily we can all demonise and dehumanise others because of their religion, race, nationality, or whatever.

Laurence Rees offers a thoroughly researched account of the building and role of Auschwitz, made all the more vivid by the wealth of first hand accounts he includes. It seems that half of Britain's teenagers have never heard of Auschwitz. Rees demonstrates precisely why it is vital everyone is reminded of the name - it is only too easy to find yourself acting as a jobsworth, turning a blind eye to this or that. Chilling, disturbing, but essential reading. [For the interested, I'd also recommend Primo Levi's "If This Is a Man", the account of a survivor, and Deborah Dwork's "Auschwitz", where she dissects how the town became the centre of death.]