Loading...
133rd out of 273 books
—
833 voters
My rating:
add to my books
The Holocaust
Deftly weaving together historical research and survivors' testimonies, "The Holcaust "is Gilbert's acclaimed and definitive history of the European Jews, fom Hitler's rise to power to Germany's surrender to the liberation of the prisoners of the concentration camps.
Published
There is a good chance some of your friends read this book. Sign in to see!
sign in »
Friend Reviews
To see what your friends thought of this book,
please sign up.
Community Reviews
(showing
1-30
of
500)
This chronicle of the atrocities of the Holocaust is a stunning achievement. The figure of 6 million jews killed by the Nazis is a number that is difficult to comprehend, just because of its sheer scale. Books like "If This is a Man" by Primo Levi and "Schindlers Ark" by Thomas Kennealy bring home the reality and bestial horror of life and death in the camps, but just how do you get your head around 6,000,000? A bit less than the whole of London..........meaningless.
...more
...more
Bettie
marked it as to-read
This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it,
click here.
Excellent book. Fantastically researched. From beginning to end, chronologically, explains how the Jews became the group targeted by Hitler. Methodically describing how Jews were hunted down and executed village by village, rounded into ghettos, sent to labor camps and death camps. First the numbers were small, and this book imprints upon one the realization of how many times several thousand people had to be executed to reach 6 million Jews and 6 million others. Horrifying. The systematic,...more
There were times, while reading this tragic time in history, that I just had to put the book down, even though I didn't want to. It was hard to imagine that people lived in this world that would do such atrocities to fellow human beings, and worse, take delight in it. I do feel it is a must read for all - so history will not repeat itself.
I picked this book up because I was looking for more infromation about Bialystok Ghetto, and this book has it. There's a quote from Elie Wiesel on the back of my edition. The quote reads, "This book must be read and reread. It will be painful to you, but you must read it anyway. To know? No. To understand? No, not that either. But simply to remember all those whom the world, once upon a time, tried to forget".
Gilbert's book stops from becoming a death list because o...more
Gilbert's book stops from becoming a death list because o...more
This is a tour-de-force of history. Martin Gilbert had an ambitious project -- cover the whole Holocaust from the pre-Hitler days to after the war, all over Europe -- but he was able to accomplish his ends without either glossing over anything or making it too long. I was dizzied by the number of sources he quoted. The guy really knows how to write, too, and put his sources together into one coherent narrative.
Two caveats: Gilbert transliterates proper names strangely. For example, Tuv...more
Two caveats: Gilbert transliterates proper names strangely. For example, Tuv...more
This is one of the most horrific books I have ever read, because it's true. The passage of time generally removes much of the emotion from history, but not with the Holocaust and not with this book. I found myself in tears within ten pages and pretty much cried my way through its entirety. It left me shaken and disturbed, as it should.
If you want to really feel what the Holocaust was like, to see snapshots from lives, to experience the sheer inhumanity and horror of the Nazi death-camp...more
If you want to really feel what the Holocaust was like, to see snapshots from lives, to experience the sheer inhumanity and horror of the Nazi death-camp...more
Gilbert starts by tracing the history of anti-semitism. By the time Luther published his own exhortation to destroy Jewish homes and drive Jews out of the country in 1543, they had already been expelled from England, France, Spain and Portugal. Moreover, in Italy they were confined to a special area of towns, the 'ghetto', and in Tsarist Russia, to a special region of the country. Though such oppression had seemingly halted in Western Europe during the nineteenth century, as Jews were integrated...more
The Holocaust overwhelms. It is a crime that beggars the imagination. My mind cannot fully grasp the concept of six million anything, much less six million people, much less six million people rounded up and murdered, burned to ash, and scattered across a continent. What happened in Europe between 1939 and 1945 is almost too much to handle on any but the most abstract terms.
Perhaps that is why, if you search “Holocaust” on Amazon.com, you are given titles that represent thin slices ...more
Perhaps that is why, if you search “Holocaust” on Amazon.com, you are given titles that represent thin slices ...more
view 1 comment
This review would mostly be a repeat of what I said about "Roots" in my latest review, but I will repeat, for fear of history repeating itself. The inhumanity of man to his own species (let alone the planet and animal life) is one which can sicken the strong of heart. Weep over this book, but don't forget it.
Extremely comprehensive and informative, but also overwhelming. Rather than take a comprehensive view of any one episode, this book catalogues the horror from place to place in ferocious detail. This is a book that is hard to put down, but it is also a book that may fill you with extreme and violent anger.
This is one of the greatest books ever written on The Holocaust.
It is full of detail and eyewitness accounts of the crimes
that the Nazi's and Hitler committed against the Jewish people
of Europe during World War 2.
This book is a must read.
It is full of detail and eyewitness accounts of the crimes
that the Nazi's and Hitler committed against the Jewish people
of Europe during World War 2.
This book is a must read.
It's tough to rate this one "I really liked it" based on the content, but the writing was great and the book was extremely informative which is what I was looking for.
loaded with information...intense...i read every page, but i couldn't do many at one sitting because of the subject matter.
Very good book. A long and hard read. Very disturbing imagery. Amazing what man does to man.
This is an excellent book and very well researched, an in depth study of the Holocaust.
Mind numbing to read all the way through, but an excellent resource.
Instead I would recommend "The Holocaust : The Fate of European Jewry 1932-1945" by Leni Yahil which i think will become the standard history. Gilbert catalogues the individual horrors in an unceasing page after page torrent of horror and misery, and with this subject, if you do not strive for a measure of dispassion and objectivity, you will drown. Gilbert's book drowns the reader. Yahil's book gives the reader the big picture - the huge picture - and the necessary details.
Since I managed to skate through all of school without learning more than a teasponful of history, I thought it was time I learned some ... this comes under the category:
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
George Santayana
Reason in Common Sense, The Life of Reason, Vol. 1
Excellent read although slow to get through. Very much Holocaust 101 for me. I highly recommend but it takes a commitment to get through.
Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
George Santayana
Reason in Common Sense, The Life of Reason, Vol. 1
Excellent read although slow to get through. Very much Holocaust 101 for me. I highly recommend but it takes a commitment to get through.
Shocking. Chilling. Will add furrows to your brow.
Probably the finest, most comprehensive and beautifully written work on the 20th Century's ultimate nadir. This work should be read by everyone, but like most important works on the 20th Century's darkest period, it will be read by those who least need to read it and will be ignored by those that should read it.
I read this book for an intensive summer history course. The course made me a little crazy for 6 weeks. This book will make you numb and angry. Lists and lists of death and complacency. People should read this book. History is damned important.
Terribly long and excruciatingly detailed. If you read about the Holocaust it is wonderful if not... don't bother.
I loved this book although some parts were truly harrowing and sad. Would definitely recommend.
All-you-ever-wanted-to-know-about-the-holocaust-and-more. It was incredibly informative.
Read this for one of my many history classes and I was never the same again.
the book givs lots of information
Jeffrey Middleton
marked it as to-read
Lisa
marked it as to-read
There are no discussion topics on this book yet.
Be the first to start one »
Readers Also Enjoyed
Sir Martin John Gilbert is a British historian and Fellow of Merton College, University of Oxford. He is the author of over eighty books, including works on the Holocaust and Jewish history. Gilbert is a leading historian of the modern world, and is known as the official biographer of Sir Winston Churchill.
More about Martin Gilbert...
Share This Book
No trivia or quizzes yet. Add some now »
