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Witness to the Holocaust
50 years after the liberation of the death camps in Nazi Germany, the former project director of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC, and current director of its Research Institute, compiles a fascinating collection of firsthand accounts of the Holocaust. From the first boycott of Jewish businesses in Germany in 1933 to testimony at the Nuremberg Trials in 1946, this illustrated volume includes survivor testimonies, letters, government documents, newspaper reports, diary entries and other firsthand materials, as well as Holocaust scholar Michael Berenbaum's insightful commentary putting the materials into context. The book's chronologically organized documentary approach provides a unique perspective on this much-published subject, and drawing on the most current research in the field of Holocaust studies, offers readers an unforgettable and engrossing history of the Nazis' largely successful effort to eradicate the Jews and other "undesirables" of Europe.
400 pages, Hardcover
First published April 23, 1997
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
March 3, 2024
A TREMENDOUS SUMMARY, AND INCLUSION OF IMPORTANT DOCUMENTS
Author Michael Berenbaum wrote in the Introduction to this 1997 book, “[This book] presents in specific detail---in documents, diaries, letters, and testimony---the evolution of the Holocaust… permit me in this brief introduction to present an overview of an event that unfolded over twelve years in many different countries… The Nazis came to power in Germany legally; they were elected to the Reichstag. Adolf Hitler assumed office in 1933 as head of a coalition government with his opponents gambling that once in power he would be forced … to moderate … the anti-Semitic, racist, and dictatorial aspects of his platform…. In the Nuremberg legislation of 1935, German law defined the Jews not by … religion… but biologically, based on the religion of their grandparents. The enemy was all Jews… Property was confiscated, civil liberties were abridged and then violated… At first, it was an effort to force the Jews to emigrate… this policy evolved slowly...
“Within a month of the beginning of World War II, more than two million Jews came under Nazi domination when the Germans conquered Poland. Forced emigration of so vast a population became an ever more distant fantasy. Shortly afterwards, the first killings began, not of Jews but of the mentally retarded and physically disabled Germans. Within two years, six killing centers were established with gas chambers… Sometime in the winter of 1940-41 a policy decision was made and crowned with the title, ‘The Final Solution to the Jewish Problem.’ The ‘solution’ envisioned was… the murder of all Jews under German domination… By 1943 most of the Jews to be killed in the Holocaust were already dead. Three camps were reserved exclusively for killing: Sobibor, Treblinka, and Belzec; Auschwitz and Majdanek served multiple functions as killing centers, slave labor camps, and concentration camps… As the Allied armies swept through Europe in 1944 and 1945, they found seven to nine million displaced people living in countries not their own.”
He reports of Kristallnacht, “On the evening of November 9, 1938, anti-Jewish violence erupted through the Reich… The outburst appeared to be a spontaneous eruption of national anger at the assassination of a minor German embassy official in Paris by a 17-year-old Jewish youth… However, the violence was in fact precisely choreographed… Within 48 hours, 1,300 synagogues were burned… 30,000 Jews were arrested and sent to concentration camps; 7,000 businesses were smashed and looted; and 236 Jews were killed… Jews are to disappear from German economic life… Apartheid is introduced. Jews are barred from theaters; they are to travel in separated compartments on trains… By a series of policy decisions, the Nazis transformed Kristallnacht into a program designed to eliminate Jews from German economic life.” (Pg. 40-41)
He explains, “No aspect of Jewish behavior during the Holocaust is more controversial than that of the Judenrat, the German initiated Jewish Councils, presiding over the ghetto population… the Jewish Councils were … subject to criticism from all sides. To the German authorities they were an instrument to dominate and rule the ghetto… To the Jews they were the representatives and enforcers of German decrees who did the Germans’ dirty work for them.” (Pg. 78)
He notes, “the Nazis did not confine their persecution to Jews alone. They attacked their political opponents, socialists and liberals, trade unionists, and dissident clergy… mentally retarded, physically handicapped, or emotionally disturbed Germans were not suitable raw material for breeding the ‘master race.’ … Jehovah’s Witnesses, who would not swear allegiance to the state nor serve in the army of the Third Reich, were targeted as were pacifists. Gypsies… were distrusted and despised… Male homosexuals were arrested and their institutions destroyed… Lesbians were often ignored… The murder of the handicapped was a prefiguration of the Holocaust. Killing centers for the handicapped were the antecedent of death camps.” (Pg. 102, 104)
He says of the Einsatzgruppen, “The men who ran the mobile killing units that rounded up and murdered Jews were not German criminals but ordinary citizens… The killers drank heavily. Alcohol somehow made it easier. They spoke in euphemisms, never quite saying what they were doing. Their language never spoke of murder and killing but of special actions, special treatment, executive measures, cleansing, resettlements, liquidation, finishing off, appropriate treatment.” (Pg. 113)
He recounts, “Jews fought the Nazis in the forests of the eastern Europe and in the ghettos of Poland; they fought as part of the Marquis in France and with Tito in Yugoslavia, they took up arms alone in Poland, and resisted alongside Soviet partisans. Even in the death camps of Birkenau, Treblinka, and Sobibor, Jews resisted with arms; crematoria were blown up, escapes were organized. (Pg. 149)
He reports, “the policy of genocide evolved over time. Until 1939, the basic aim of Nazi policy was the forced emigration of Jews. The policy failed as few countries were willing to offer the Jews a haven… When the Nazis invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, the killing of Jews began immediately… By the summer of 1941… the infrastructure for the annihilation---the massive killing centers---was set in place… The Wannsee Conference of … 1942, produced the announcement of a policy decision---the Final Solution to the Jewish Problem… Those at the conference fully understood the circumspect language. ‘Evacuation… to the East’ was a euphemism for concentration camps, and ‘the Final Solution’ really meant systematic murder… Within months of this meeting, three new killing centers… were in operation… And the murder of Jews held in the ghettos had begun.” (Pg. 158-160)
He explains, “The Warsaw Ghetto uprising began on April 19, 1943… its commandant, Mordecai Anielewicz… wrote to ... a unit commander: ‘What really matters is that the dream of my life has become true. Jewish self-defense in the Warsaw Ghetto has become a fact. Jewish armed resistance and the retaliation have become a reality. I have been witness to the magnificent heroic struggle of the Jewish fighters.’” (Pg. 232-235)
He recounts, “During the spring and summer of 1944 Jewish leaders implored that Auschwitz be bombed… there were fierce debates among world Jewish leaders … Some feared killing innocent civilians; some were afraid that the Germans would have a major propaganda advantage in blaming Allies for Jewish casualties. Others … could not fully perceive the reality of Auschwitz even as they were receiving accurate information confirming the worst of their fears… Still, the industrial targets at Auschwitz III… were targeted, yet the death camp and the railway lines leading to it remained untouched.” (Pg. 295-296)
Of the Nuremberg Trials, he states, “The trials touched only a few of those who perpetrated the crime… Most of those responsible escaped judgment. Some Nazi officials … fled to South America.. [or] in the Middle East among the enemies of Israel… Those who dismiss the trials argue that little was accomplished---most especially in proportion to the crime. And yet, for the first time in history, leaders of a regime were held legally accountable for crimes committed within the framework of their policy. Individuals were held responsible for their deeds; they could not seek shelter in the defense that they were merely carrying out orders. New standards were introduced into the world community, standards often breached, but standards nevertheless.” (Pg. 329)
This book---and the many historical documents it reproduces---will be “must reading” for anyone studying the Holocaust.
Author Michael Berenbaum wrote in the Introduction to this 1997 book, “[This book] presents in specific detail---in documents, diaries, letters, and testimony---the evolution of the Holocaust… permit me in this brief introduction to present an overview of an event that unfolded over twelve years in many different countries… The Nazis came to power in Germany legally; they were elected to the Reichstag. Adolf Hitler assumed office in 1933 as head of a coalition government with his opponents gambling that once in power he would be forced … to moderate … the anti-Semitic, racist, and dictatorial aspects of his platform…. In the Nuremberg legislation of 1935, German law defined the Jews not by … religion… but biologically, based on the religion of their grandparents. The enemy was all Jews… Property was confiscated, civil liberties were abridged and then violated… At first, it was an effort to force the Jews to emigrate… this policy evolved slowly...
“Within a month of the beginning of World War II, more than two million Jews came under Nazi domination when the Germans conquered Poland. Forced emigration of so vast a population became an ever more distant fantasy. Shortly afterwards, the first killings began, not of Jews but of the mentally retarded and physically disabled Germans. Within two years, six killing centers were established with gas chambers… Sometime in the winter of 1940-41 a policy decision was made and crowned with the title, ‘The Final Solution to the Jewish Problem.’ The ‘solution’ envisioned was… the murder of all Jews under German domination… By 1943 most of the Jews to be killed in the Holocaust were already dead. Three camps were reserved exclusively for killing: Sobibor, Treblinka, and Belzec; Auschwitz and Majdanek served multiple functions as killing centers, slave labor camps, and concentration camps… As the Allied armies swept through Europe in 1944 and 1945, they found seven to nine million displaced people living in countries not their own.”
He reports of Kristallnacht, “On the evening of November 9, 1938, anti-Jewish violence erupted through the Reich… The outburst appeared to be a spontaneous eruption of national anger at the assassination of a minor German embassy official in Paris by a 17-year-old Jewish youth… However, the violence was in fact precisely choreographed… Within 48 hours, 1,300 synagogues were burned… 30,000 Jews were arrested and sent to concentration camps; 7,000 businesses were smashed and looted; and 236 Jews were killed… Jews are to disappear from German economic life… Apartheid is introduced. Jews are barred from theaters; they are to travel in separated compartments on trains… By a series of policy decisions, the Nazis transformed Kristallnacht into a program designed to eliminate Jews from German economic life.” (Pg. 40-41)
He explains, “No aspect of Jewish behavior during the Holocaust is more controversial than that of the Judenrat, the German initiated Jewish Councils, presiding over the ghetto population… the Jewish Councils were … subject to criticism from all sides. To the German authorities they were an instrument to dominate and rule the ghetto… To the Jews they were the representatives and enforcers of German decrees who did the Germans’ dirty work for them.” (Pg. 78)
He notes, “the Nazis did not confine their persecution to Jews alone. They attacked their political opponents, socialists and liberals, trade unionists, and dissident clergy… mentally retarded, physically handicapped, or emotionally disturbed Germans were not suitable raw material for breeding the ‘master race.’ … Jehovah’s Witnesses, who would not swear allegiance to the state nor serve in the army of the Third Reich, were targeted as were pacifists. Gypsies… were distrusted and despised… Male homosexuals were arrested and their institutions destroyed… Lesbians were often ignored… The murder of the handicapped was a prefiguration of the Holocaust. Killing centers for the handicapped were the antecedent of death camps.” (Pg. 102, 104)
He says of the Einsatzgruppen, “The men who ran the mobile killing units that rounded up and murdered Jews were not German criminals but ordinary citizens… The killers drank heavily. Alcohol somehow made it easier. They spoke in euphemisms, never quite saying what they were doing. Their language never spoke of murder and killing but of special actions, special treatment, executive measures, cleansing, resettlements, liquidation, finishing off, appropriate treatment.” (Pg. 113)
He recounts, “Jews fought the Nazis in the forests of the eastern Europe and in the ghettos of Poland; they fought as part of the Marquis in France and with Tito in Yugoslavia, they took up arms alone in Poland, and resisted alongside Soviet partisans. Even in the death camps of Birkenau, Treblinka, and Sobibor, Jews resisted with arms; crematoria were blown up, escapes were organized. (Pg. 149)
He reports, “the policy of genocide evolved over time. Until 1939, the basic aim of Nazi policy was the forced emigration of Jews. The policy failed as few countries were willing to offer the Jews a haven… When the Nazis invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, the killing of Jews began immediately… By the summer of 1941… the infrastructure for the annihilation---the massive killing centers---was set in place… The Wannsee Conference of … 1942, produced the announcement of a policy decision---the Final Solution to the Jewish Problem… Those at the conference fully understood the circumspect language. ‘Evacuation… to the East’ was a euphemism for concentration camps, and ‘the Final Solution’ really meant systematic murder… Within months of this meeting, three new killing centers… were in operation… And the murder of Jews held in the ghettos had begun.” (Pg. 158-160)
He explains, “The Warsaw Ghetto uprising began on April 19, 1943… its commandant, Mordecai Anielewicz… wrote to ... a unit commander: ‘What really matters is that the dream of my life has become true. Jewish self-defense in the Warsaw Ghetto has become a fact. Jewish armed resistance and the retaliation have become a reality. I have been witness to the magnificent heroic struggle of the Jewish fighters.’” (Pg. 232-235)
He recounts, “During the spring and summer of 1944 Jewish leaders implored that Auschwitz be bombed… there were fierce debates among world Jewish leaders … Some feared killing innocent civilians; some were afraid that the Germans would have a major propaganda advantage in blaming Allies for Jewish casualties. Others … could not fully perceive the reality of Auschwitz even as they were receiving accurate information confirming the worst of their fears… Still, the industrial targets at Auschwitz III… were targeted, yet the death camp and the railway lines leading to it remained untouched.” (Pg. 295-296)
Of the Nuremberg Trials, he states, “The trials touched only a few of those who perpetrated the crime… Most of those responsible escaped judgment. Some Nazi officials … fled to South America.. [or] in the Middle East among the enemies of Israel… Those who dismiss the trials argue that little was accomplished---most especially in proportion to the crime. And yet, for the first time in history, leaders of a regime were held legally accountable for crimes committed within the framework of their policy. Individuals were held responsible for their deeds; they could not seek shelter in the defense that they were merely carrying out orders. New standards were introduced into the world community, standards often breached, but standards nevertheless.” (Pg. 329)
This book---and the many historical documents it reproduces---will be “must reading” for anyone studying the Holocaust.
November 27, 2007
I strongly recommend all of Berenbaum's books.
December 21, 2021
It is difficult to read this whole work with dry eyes.
Berenbaum has compiled a long series of primary documents from the Holocaust--letters and diary entries from perpetrators and victims, Nazi directives and meeting notes, etc.--interspersed with commentary. The impression one is left with is one of insidious development. The Third Reich's answer to the "Jewish Problem" became more depraved as she became more powerful and more desperate. When unable to deport the Jews en masse to what would become the Allied Powers, for example, the Nazi's twisted this as implicit support for their next choice of total annihilation.
Perhaps the most difficult documents in this book to read are: first, the letter a Jewish mother gave along with her newborn, with directions for some stranger somewhere who might care for the child; secondly, the account of a female Jewish OB-GYN in one of the concentration camps who would carress the children she secretly delivered in the women's barracks before strangling them to protect the women; and thirdly, the accounts of the massacre of Kiev, where something like 30,000 Jews were taken out of town, laid in a pit, and shot. My eyes are misty now just remembering these accounts.
It is difficult for me to grasp the logic of Holocaust denial which, unfortunately, is still alive and well in the world, and is usually accompanied by other anti-Semitic conspiratorial views. Here is a helpful volume of primary documents which, though unlikely to be enough to subvert the odd and iron reasonings of Holocaust deniers, should be read and remembered by all of us who love the Jews, weep with those who weep, and hate evil.
Berenbaum has compiled a long series of primary documents from the Holocaust--letters and diary entries from perpetrators and victims, Nazi directives and meeting notes, etc.--interspersed with commentary. The impression one is left with is one of insidious development. The Third Reich's answer to the "Jewish Problem" became more depraved as she became more powerful and more desperate. When unable to deport the Jews en masse to what would become the Allied Powers, for example, the Nazi's twisted this as implicit support for their next choice of total annihilation.
Perhaps the most difficult documents in this book to read are: first, the letter a Jewish mother gave along with her newborn, with directions for some stranger somewhere who might care for the child; secondly, the account of a female Jewish OB-GYN in one of the concentration camps who would carress the children she secretly delivered in the women's barracks before strangling them to protect the women; and thirdly, the accounts of the massacre of Kiev, where something like 30,000 Jews were taken out of town, laid in a pit, and shot. My eyes are misty now just remembering these accounts.
It is difficult for me to grasp the logic of Holocaust denial which, unfortunately, is still alive and well in the world, and is usually accompanied by other anti-Semitic conspiratorial views. Here is a helpful volume of primary documents which, though unlikely to be enough to subvert the odd and iron reasonings of Holocaust deniers, should be read and remembered by all of us who love the Jews, weep with those who weep, and hate evil.
September 12, 2025
A selection of documents that provides a disturbing and comprehensive account of the Holocaust. Dense, but deeply informative.
“It would be wise to read these two testimonies not as acts by men without conscience, but as statements by men who must adjust their conscience to take cognizance of the deeds they committed.
“It would be wise to read these two testimonies not as acts by men without conscience, but as statements by men who must adjust their conscience to take cognizance of the deeds they committed.
December 4, 2014
I thought the the book was very informative with extra details dealing with the Holocaust. It showed multiple stories and tales from German's getting their reign in power to just personal stories about Jews and their perspectives. One of my favorite stories(Note this book is cut up in to many stories)is On Page 149, XII. THE CALL TO ARMS. In the story, Jews actually fought against Germans in forests in eastern Europe. And while some used violence, others used spiritual means to fend of German soldiers. This book was very descriptive and is a very good read!
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November 1, 2017I thought it was pretty good. Just sorta confusing when it switched from different characters.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews