Summary
An exploration of the most commonly asked questions about the Holocaust challenges misconceptions and discusses how no single theory fully explains the tragedy, drawing on a wealth of scholarly research and experience to offer new insights. Full description
- Introduction:
- Why Another Book on the Holocaust?
- 1.
- Targets: Why the Jews?
- Antisemitism
- Emancipation and backlash
- 2.
- Attackers: Why the Germans?
- Nation and Volk
- Hitler's opportunity
- 3.
- Escalation: Why Murder?
- From Aryanization to atrocity
- Gentile and Jewish responses
- 4.
- Annihilation: Why This Swift and Sweeping?
- From bullets to Gas
- Perpetrators: the "generation without limits"
- Enslavement
- 5.
- Victims: Why Didn't More Jews Fight Back More Often?
- Compliance and resistance
- The world of the camps
- 6.
- Homelands: Why Did Survival Rates Diverge?
- Varieties of behavior
- The case of Poland
- 7.
- Onlookers: Why Such Limited Help from Outside?
- Prewar evasions
- Wartime priorities
- 8.
- Aftermath: What Legacies, What Lessons?
- Return, resettlement, retribution, and restitution
- Memory, myths, and meanings.