The Holocaust of Volhynian Jews: 1941-1944

by Shmuel Spector, Jerzy Michalowicz (Translator)

English (translation)
Original Hebrew

384 pages, Hardcover

First published May 31, 1990

Reviews

[Stuart]

A book detailing in matter of fact scholarly detail the horror of ethnic cleansing. An entire population of Jews in a region starved and murdered in a mere year and a half. Then the Poles in the region were murdered next (not the focus of this book). Devastating. I could only read it in small doses.

I've always disliked silver lining portraits of the Holocaust, the tales of heroes who saved handfuls to hundreds. I've sometimes found them perverse in their desperate effort to tell an uplifting tale during a time of overwhelming evil. But this book tests my view that it's best to lay out the story of the Holocaust without editorializing or moralizing and to simply state the grim facts and numbers.

I need to lighten my load next and read a smart comedy where the worst thing that happens is that someone slips on a banana peel.