Murder in Our Midst: The Holocaust, Industrial Killing, and Representation

by Omer Bartov

Murder in Our The Holocaust, Industrial Killing, and Representation examines the emergence, implementation, and representation of industrial killing, an inherent and crucial component of modernity whose most extreme manifestation was the Holocaust.
The mechanized, impersonal, and sustained mass destruction of human beings, organized and legitimized by states, scientists, jurists, and intellectuals, is rooted in the industrial slaughterhouse of the Great War. In Murder in Our Midst, Omer Bartov argues that the Nazi death factories are best understood in the context of modern warfare, beginning with the First World War. He shows how the way we understand ourselves reflects the ambivalent effects of the Holocaust on our perceptions of war and violence, history and memory, progress and barbarism.
Analyzing a wide array of historical texts, works of fiction, films, and museums, Bartov leads the reader from ancient myths of heroism to the trenches of the Western Front, from Thomas Mann's romantic vision of war to Primo Levi's stark depictions of genocide, from colonial war museums to the visual art of the Holocaust. These representations of killing share some of the same important features. They attempt to form coherent images from horrific events, to draw didactic lessons from them, and to use them for political ends.

Genres: Holocaust, War, Film, Nonfiction, History

272 pages, Hardcover

First published February 29, 1996

About the author

Omer Bartov is an Israeli-born historian. He is the Samuel Pisar Professor of Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Brown University, where he has taught since 2000. Bartov is a noted historian of the Holocaust and is considered one of the world's leading authorities on the subject of genocide.

Reviews

[Jan · Rating 1 out of 5]

I read Anatomy of a Genocide: The Life and Death of a Town Called Buczacz and Erased: Vanishing Traces of Jewish Galicia in Present-Day Ukraine closely and with great interest. This book I just cannot take. The writing style is so distracting that I found myself circling the introductory phrase or transition word at the beginning of just about every single sentence. Then, in another chapter, just about every single sentence included a parenthetical remark. It is hard to believe that the same person wrote both chapters. I have no idea what Bartov's argument was. It seemed as though I was reading a bunch of random sentences about the perpetration of war. I quit. I could not take it.

[Tracy · Rating 2 out of 5]

It was decided in my film/history class that it took a certain type to like this book. The idea was interesting but the execution was terrible. As a result the book was dry, confusing, and pretentious.