Product Description

Himself a survivor, Friedlander has been a leading figure in 'Holocaust Studies' for decades and this book represents a magesterial summing up of his research and that of hundreds of other historians. It should remain a standard work for students and others for many years NAZI GERMANY AND THE JEWS is perhaps the richest examination of the subject yet written, and, crucially, one that never loses sight of the experiences of individuals in its discussion of Nazi politics and the terrible statistics and technological and administrative sophistication of the Final Soloution.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #54317 in Books
• Published on: 1998-01-19
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 448 pages

About the Author
Saul Friedlander was born in Prague in 1932. He fled to France where he survived the war in hiding. He arrived in Israel in 1948 and took part in the Israeli War of Independence. Since 1987 he was been Professor of Holocaust Studies at UCLA. In 2008 he was awarded the general non-fiction Pulitzer prize for his book THE YEARS OF EXTERMINATION: Nazi Germany and the Jews, 1939-1945. He lives in Los Angeles.

Customer Reviews

Undeniable record of the overture for the Holocaust
Saul Friedlander documents the tragic loss of moral courage and responsibility among the vast majority of Germans some seventy years ago, and how this loss allowed the growing oppression and persecution of their fellow citizens, the Jews. While so-called revisionists and Holocaust deniers focus on the still barely-imaginable campaign of murder carried out by the Germans and their willing helpers from the Baltic to the Balkans, Saul Friedlander's account is of the mounting radicalisation of anti-Jewish policies and public indifference to the Jews' fate. The text is deeply depressing, but is essential reading for anyone who is trying to come to terms with the crimes of the Holocaust itself. Holocaust deniers use the "holes" in accounts of the Holocaust to support their shoddy, deranged arguments. A reading of this book provides massive, incontrovertible evidence of the Nazis' murderous hatred for the Jews and the policies they used to deny them any kind of life in Germany before the war. An unforgettable voyage into a time of mass moral insanity

Prelude to Holocaust
This book tracks the gradual de-emancipation and persecution of German Jewry and later of the Austrian and Tchechoslovakian Jewish communities through the increasingly discriminatory laws issued by the Nazi government. Friedländer here introduces the same technique that he employs in his subsequent "Years of Extermination", that of following numerous individual examples to concretize the effects of these laws. Also, the author takes great care to study prevalent attitudes outside Germany. Not a single voice of any consequence, inside or outside of Germany, was raised to protest against these developments. He makes the bewildering Nazi bureaucracy understandable which is a feat. His concept of "redemptive anti-Semitism" makes understandable the ferocious drive which was to develop during the coming war years. This book lays a thoroughly solid foundation for his magnum opus, "The Years of Extermination".