A History of the Jews of Europe During the Second World War

Detailed, specific and full of examples. Almost too horrific to read all the way through, but a "must-read" to appreciate just how cruel man can be to his fellow man, and be sure we do not let it happen again. Moving.

I read this book after finishing Martin Gilbert's excellent recent book "Churchill & America", but have been largely disappointed. I find it to be a plodding and overly detailed account of the Holocaust that tells the same facts over and over again through the experiences of different people. While this is probably a theme of the Holocaust--horrible things done to many innocent people over and over again--I am not sure that verisimilitude helps keep the reader engaged.

The book is over 800 pages and while the research seems through it is a hard read as one experience after another with many similarities described. I found myself skipping parts to get to the meat of the book. Seems very well documented.

Every country in the world has crime cases that rock the very fabric of their society, their values, their very humanness. "The Holocaust" covers a period of many years before, during and after WW2 when a "civilized" nation undertook deeds of humiliation, degradation, terror, torture and murder of European Jewry with such impunity that totally defies human comprehension. This is not an easy book to read, the horrors that spring from virtually every paragraph will challenge every notion of the human race been filled with kindness and goodwill. Of the many thousands that shed blood in the villages of Poland and Russia, there were millions that looked away as their neighbors and former friends were taken into killing fields or bundled into trucks and trains to death camps. One and a half million children ... what mind can wrap itself around swinging a baby and smashing its head against a wall, or putting a bullet through a child, or in fun compete in contests of how many people one bullet could kill? In the killing fields or burning snynagues of Russia, the ghettos of Poland, the days of cattle-cart transports to the camps of Treblinka and Auschwitz-Birkenau, survival required miracles. Be warned you are going to require frequent respites from reading the horror of a culture and religion under commissioned terrorization, torture, enforced abject starvation and blatant murder. Most likely this was humanities darkest years; it makes the Spanish Inquisition read like a teddy-bears' picnic.

Reading this book is like being buried under a mountain of ashes, one shovelful at a time.

Gilbert's strategy is simple and effective. He provides a matter-of-fact outline of daily events, in chronological order, beginning in the early 1930s with the rise of the Third Reich and ending in 1946 with the persecution of post-war Jews in Poland. Places, numbers and (when known) key names are provided, along with hundreds of quotations from letters and journals. After dozens and dozens of increasingly repulsive and nearly-unbelievable chapters, the cumulative effect is simply devastating.

It's impossible to read this book and not view the behavior of modern Israel in a new light.

The treatment the Jews of Europe endured under the Nazis and their enablers has cast a shadow over human history that will endure for centuries. As the remaining survivors pass away, it is clearly the duty of thoughtful people everywhere to study and contemplate this heartbreaking calamity.

I am forever changed by reading this book.

There are no words to describe the Evils written about in this book. But the words Martin Gilbert has do describe with historical precision the destruction of the Jews of Europe by the Nazis and their various allies. The book is difficult and painful to read because of the horrible stories it tells. And as one reviewer on the store has said this is a record not of one crime but of thousands of crimes done every day, not of one cruelty but of millions of cruelties. One of the features of this historical accounting which may seem to some to disturb the flow of the overall historical narrative but which to me seemed to give tremendous weight and power of the book is the account of individual lives, the stories of those people who actually suffered and went through the Shoah. Naming of names in this way, and telling the stories of the ' little people' seems to me to give the account a human strength that more general accounts lack.

This work is as I said very difficult to read because of its painful subject matter. Reading it one certainly learns about ' man's inhumanity to man' the cruelty Mankind is capable of. One learns to know how certain specific peoples seem to display special tendencies for that cruelty. One learns about the worst chapter in all of Jewish history , and of the surviving remnant of it.

Who wishes to know and understand the full character of human history must read this book, or one like it.

G-d help us all.

This is without question the most informative single volume I have read regarding the Holocaust and in my opinion it should be required reading for every person on the planet. One criticism I have read about the book is that it does not written in the narrative style that is so common in modern historical writing. Given the sheer amount of information covering numerous aspects of the Nazi's "Final Solution," it seems to me that the narrative style would not work very well. Moreover, the narrative style is more appropriate when entertainment is one of the goals of the author. This is not entertainment, nor should it be.

There is one issue I would take with the book: Some of the anecdotes, although documented, are told not by eye witnesses but by someone who heard it from someone who was there. That is clearly a minor criticism at most. When one considers the millions of eye witness accounts that could never be written because the witnesses were murdered, the reality can only be worse than the anecdotes.

For me, this book was the last nail in the coffin of the "I was just following orders" lie/excuse. There is no possible way a few Nazis could have perpetrated evil in so many forms and on such a scale without the willing and enthusiastic participation of hundreds of thousands if not millions of accomplices.

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, Tuvia Bielsky is called "Tobias Belsky." Also, the book was written over 25 years ago and is a little dated as a result; a lot of research has been done since then. Has he put out a second edition? In the meantime, Martin Gilbert is my new superhero.

Everyone with any interest in the 20th century soon has to come to grips with the Holocaust. Whether you believe that the SS who murdered civilians were automatons acting under orders, or were psychotics, or were brainwashed by Nazi ideology, one has to come to some conclusion.

Martin Gilbert's book is an inside view of the Holocaust. There is very little theoretical material here, but only a narrative history of the genocides. Because he appears to cover as many massacres and shootings as possible, it is quite numbing to read this book. At first massacres are relatively sparse, though still horrific. As time goes on, the Einsatzgruppen step up the tempo, until sometimes it seems that every paragraph of the book describes a different massacre. There might be a shooting of ten thousand Jews at a small ghetto in Poland, or the extermination of an entire village community in Lithuania, or a shipment of Jews from Paris to Auschwitz.

The sheer number of massacres is really disturbing, and really forces one to consider how anyone could go from massacre to massacre like that, every couple of days, shooting innocent civilians, even children. Surely they cannot all have been psychotics? Many of these killers appear to have had normal backgrounds and certainly did not come from asylums.

Read this book with a strong stomach, and make your own conclusions on how such a horror could have happened.

The Holocaust by Martin Gilbert took me at least a year to read. The horror was too much to digest continually reading. Nevertheless, I recommend this book and Mr. Gilbert's other Holocaust books as necessary information for anyone who wants to understand what happened. This particular book quotes survivors, notes and diaries that are personal without all the accompanying bad writing. Mr. Gilbert is a historian but his work moves along decently. The writing is not dry. I suggest reading this, Primo Levi and Eli Weisel's accounts. There is also artwork and poetry that has been salvaged that is very telling.

When one of the world's most eminent historians takes on one of most amazing phenomena of the century, the Holocaust, it gives one pause for thought. So here we have Sir Martin Gilbert, a noted Holocaust authority, writing masterfully about the events leading up to and including the systematic persecution, deportation and murder of the Jews of Europe. His stirring and singular narrative is regularly punctuated by a number of poignant and shocking eyewitness accounts of many who lived through those numbing events. The test is extremely approachable and easy to read, so that the non-historian can appreciate the breadth and scope of his recounting of the events during the 12-year reign of terror levied by the National Socialists in Nazi Germany.

His approach is chronological, much like that employed in his best-selling three volume series on the 20th century. While he relies heavily on established secondary sources for his documentation, the power of his prose and his well-organized approach makes this an provocative and educational tome to venture into. Although nowhere near as comprehensive as some other tomes such as Klaus Fischer's "History Of An Obsession", he does trace the centuries' long tradition of anti-Semitism culminating in the official state sanctioned approach codified in the institutionalized Nuremberg laws. In all this, Gilbert brilliantly employs survivor's recollections to paint the atrocities in the hues and colors of real human beings, ordinary and identifiable individuals caught in the insanity of the Third Reich. Furthermore, he pursues their individual identities and humanity by giving the reader information on the postwar futures of these people.

So much has been written about the Holocaust that it is difficult to imagine much new or novel to arise some fifty years after the end of the war. Yet the stage always remains open for the unusual display of finely crafted historical perspectives and brilliantly executed prose. The brilliance in this dazzling book is, as Oscar Schindler would have said, in the presentation. Although I have read a number of other books about these times and events that were more detailed, more graphic, or more comprehensive, this is without a doubt the single most impressive, cohesive, and authoritative volume I have read to date regarding the Holocaust in its enormity, and placed in an understandable and comprehensible context. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in owning the single best one-volume book summarizing and explaining the realities of the Holocaust.

The book is large and difficult to hold - the content is quite factual and one can only take it small doses - the book is not new as advertised - clearly used. This book is not for everyone - just people seriously interested in the gruesome details of the Nazi era.

The Holocaust A History of the Jews of Europe During the Second World War , by prolific historian Martin Gilbert , is the most comprehensive one volume work on the Holocaust out there.
It begins with describing Hitler's rise to power and the history of anti-Semitism in Europe during the 20th century.

It goes on to describe the pogroms against Jews in Germany during the 1930's and the stripping away of their basic human rights.

Gilbert describes Kristallknacht and the destruction of Jewish homes, businesses and synagogues.
Gilbert describes how during the Holocaust , Hungary , Italy , Bulgaria and German occupied Denmark attempted to protect their Jews from Nazi genocide. No Jews were deported from Italy to death camps until after the fall of Mussolini and the German occupation of northern Italy in the autumn of 1943.

The main theme of this book is hundreds of eyewitness accounts of the unbelievable horrors perpetrated against Jewish men , women and children by the Nazis and their subordinates during the Second World War , which resulted in the destruction of six million Jews , including 1 and a half million Jewish children. One is numbed by the sheer horror and bestiality of it all, as page after page is filled with graphic inhuman cruelty and bloodshed.

Particularly heartrending is the way children were treated by the Nazis.
It is from eyewitness accounts that we discover how the SS used to amuse themselves by swinging Jewish children by their legs and then flinging them to their deaths. Another eyewitness Maria Hochberg-Marianska desribed the fate of Jewish children during the mass deportations in Cracow in March 1943 :
"At Midday cars drove up before the institution. The Gestapo men flung themselves upon the children. Little ones , three years of age , were flung into baskets and placed on platforms or hoisted on to carts. The older children were driven off to Plac Zgody , flanked by armed soldiers. There they joined the grown ups. The baskets with the little ones were emptied behind the city like so much rubbish. There they were thrown into a ditch , most of them alive. Some were killed with a blow by a rifle butt before burial."
During the liquidation of the Cracow ghetto several hundred small children were shot in the entrance to one of the houses , and several hundred old people were killed in the street. So we continue to read of the mass executions and torures and horrors inflicted on the Jews of Europe in these times.
We read accounts of Mengele's horrific experiments on adults and children , and of Jews of all ages being thrown into furnaces ,and of course the mass executions of millions of men , women and children in gas chambers and by shooting and then throwing the bodies and half-alive survivors into pits...
It is simply impossible to document how one feels reading page after page , these accounts of the scope of inhumane monstrosity
Also disturbing is the section on how after Nazi Germany was defeated , hundreds of Jews were slaughtered by anti-Semitic Poles , and how Soviet soldiers enaged in the rape of Jewish girls who had survived the concentration camps.
One of the photos in the photograph panels is a heartbreaking picture of a four year old little Jewish orphan girl , shot to death with six other Jews by an anti-Semitic Pole , just after the war.
As well as the six million Jews murdered , another ten million non-combatants were killed by the Nazis , including a quarter of a million gypsies and millions of Poles , Czechs , Serbs , Russians , French , Italians and Greeks.
Poles , Czechs , Serbs were to become subject people of the Germans in the New Order but only the Jews were singled out to be destroyed in their entirety . Every single Jewish man , women and child was to disappear so that there would be no Jewish life in Europe.
Some of the parallels with early Nazi anti-Semitism and the new anti-Semitism of the 20th century , are chilling.

For example the boycott of all Jewish shops , cafes and businesses in the 1930's in Germany is echoed by the calls for sanctions and divestment against Israel and for boycotts of Israeli products and businesses , by academics , far-left politicians and trade unions , around the world today.Also , the cultural , professional and academic boycotts of Jews in Europe then , are echoed by the cultural , professional and academic boycotts of Israel and Israelis , including the banning of Israeli scholars and research today in various universities across the world , including North America and Europe.

70 years ago the cry of the anti-Semites in Europe was 'Jew , go to Palestine!' . Today the cry of anti-Semites (Yes-anti-Semites!) around the world is 'Jew-Out of Palestine'. The book documents how between 1929 and 1939, with the rise of Nazism in Germany , a new wave of 250,000 immigrants went to the Land of Israel (Palestine) , the majority of these, 174,000, arrived in Palestine between 1933-1936, after which increasing restrictions on immigration by the British made immigration clandestine and illegal.

In 1933 in reaction to the arrival of Jewish refugees in Palestine , Arab attacks on Jews were launched , and continued unabated until 1939.
Nazi broadcasts beamed to Palestine , Syria and Egypt helped ensure Arab hostility helped ensure that Arab hostility towards the Jewish refugees from Nazism would be kept as high as possible. In response to Arab terror , and afraid of alienating Arab support , the British blocked hundreds of thousands of Jews , attempting to flee Nazi terror , to enter Palestine.
History has shown that when anti-Semitism is allowed to spread beyond the cesspool of the mind that contains it, slaughter of innocents and the destruction of entire nations seem inevitably to follow. Today, Israel is about the size of the state of New Jersey, with a Jewish population of less than 1% of the world's population. Yet, Iran's president says the Holocaust is a "myth" and Israel "must be wiped off the map."-which would mean the genocide of another 5 million Jews , nearly half of the world's Jewish population . Over half of all Holocaust survivors today live in Israel (as do many descendants of Holocaust survivors), and it would be a hideous twist of history for these too to perish in the flames of anti-Jew hatred, as they would do if Israel was destroyed by forces of evil (God forbid that this should ever be allowed to happen!)

And Venezuela's Stalinist President , Hugo Chavez , states that "descendants of those who crucified Christ...have grabbed all the world's riches for themselves."

A review excerpt on the dust cover claimed, a book that will be read with "bleeding eyes".
One would not expect a text giving a comprehensive history of the Holocaust to be a light read. Never-the-less, on turning the final page my eyes were indeed bleeding, my mind numbed and my emotions heart-fallen for this is was a tour de force, an unrelenting synopsis of over ten terrible years spanning the onset of the Third Reich to the post war recovery of Europe, guided by the hand of a master historian with an impecable drive to follow every contention with a evidential fact.
The first death at the hands of Nazi anti-semitism in the streets is recorded so matter of factly that one merely acknowledges the act as would reading a crime in today's newspaper. By the end of 900 pages though, where the death of one has evolved into thousands per event, one seems rightly agahst at the breadth of what started with the Nuremburg Laws had brought about. Crime had morphed into sheer terror.
A superb historical account covering the entirety of all events and theatres that would collectively become known as the "Holocaust".
An insight into the centuries old culture of European anti-semitism precedes a thorough introduction to the rise of Nazism, the SS and the Third Reich. The Nuremburg Laws, the activities of the SA, the Kristelnacht all merge into the crossing of the Polish border, the invasions of the West, then the Soviet Union and the ride of the Einsatzgruppen in their wake. The collaboration of nationalists, the mass grave shooting pits, the construction of the killing factories, the pillaging of the Ghettos swirl amidst the din of eye witness accounts.
For this reader, the total shock came as the tide of VE Day had swept the once conquered lands, where the absolute destruction of villages and cities may have erradicated a cultural heritage in architectural beauty but amazingly not that of Eastern Europe's base anti-semitism.
The plight of the Polish Jews surviving the camps, seeking a way home, tears one apart as the revelation becomes apparent that not only were the most nationalistic of non-Jewish Poles pleased to be rid of their Nazi overlords but equally of the millions of their Jewish breatheren just the same.
For the author, the extent of the horror came with the story of the relentless aim to liquidate Europe's Jewish children.
A work that can not be put down, begging to be read as an epitaph to the times - yet, encouraging in its historical breadth and attention to fact based detail.
Highly recommended to general readers seeking both an account of the Rise of the Third Reich and the methodical implementation of the precepts expounded in Mein Kampf. Military historians seeking to supplement their knowledge of the Allgemeine and Waffen SS will also find this an immense resource.

The hatred that manifested itself in so many petty acts was the most shocking aspect of this book. I had read enough about the Holocaust not to be shocked, or so I thought. Picture yourself crossing an eight lane busy highway just to tell someone standing on the other side he was a jerk. Of course you wouldn't; no rational person would. Nazis and their fellow travelers did, though. No act of cruelty was beneath them. Their hatred trumped everything.

I had just finished reading Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness as part of the continuing education program at the University of Chicago when I read The Holocaust. It wasn't until I finished the latter book that I understood Conrad's message: civilization is a very thin veneer. Either we are getting better, morally, or we are backsliding, there is no such thing as staying the same.

After reading about Hitler and his thugs over the years, I came away realizing that they were not a one-time aberration of mankind; it could happen again. Tragically, it has and does. We excuse it, ignore it, or deny it. Shame on us who condemn those awful Nazis and those who didn't stand up to them. We are no better. Santayana was right.

This is an excellent book that should be widely read and discussed.

Martin Gilbert has written an excellent book on the Holocaust.Using testimony from survivors,diaries of those who perished,German documents,and the words of the perpatrators themselves,Gilbert exposes, for all to see,an era of evil.The book is tough to read at times because it is so heartbreaking.The unspeakable cruelty,the sadistic acts,and the scope of crimes committed by the Nazi regime are laid out in this book.With anti-semetism once again on the rise in many parts of the world,this book should be required reading for all who think unchecked hatred is harmless

I thought I knew something about holocaust until I read this book. I had no idea how truly savage both the Nazis and the residents of other eastern European countries were to the Jews. It is equally disturbing that the rest of the world stood by and did nothing. Reading this information makes me feel ashamed to be a part of the human race. The book was very well written and easy to read, it is the content that makes it so disturbing. I think everyone should read this book so that we are all aware of the evil that lurks in human beings. Maybe knowing these things will prevent a repeat of any similar event in the future.

This is one of the ugliest chapters in the history of mankind. This book...tells it the way it needs to be told. In bold, vivid, desciptive explanations of not only it's brutality...but the machinations that were in place...to allow it. There isn't a better book. After reading it I was compelled to visit the Holocaust Museum in Los Angeles on Pico and Roxbury. Fine job Mr.Gilbert. Fine job Sir.

Recommended on a Jewish history tape from renowned Rabbi Berel Wein. Riveting. Historical events together with personal accounts. Emotionally difficult, but necessary reading to empathize and feel the brutality so called civilized people can inflict.

Gilbert presents an outstanding chronology of the Holocaust, from its orgins through the end of the war and after. This book is exactly what I was looking for in terms of an historical account. It can be difficult to read, but I highly recommend it.

The Holocaust by Martin Gilbert took me at least a year to read. The horror was too much to digest continually reading. Nevertheless, I recommend this book and Mr. Gilbert's other Holocaust books as necessary information for anyone who wants to understand what happened. This particular book quotes survivors, notes and diaries that are personal without all the accompanying bad writing. Mr. Gilbert is a historian but his work moves along decently. The writing is not dry. I suggest reading this, Primo Levi and Eli Weisel's accounts. There is also artwork and poetry that has been salvaged that is very telling.

I HAVE NEVER ENCOUNTERED A BOOK THAT HAS MOVED ME THE WAY THIS BOOK DID.I HAVE A LIBRARY OF MATERIAL ON THE HOLOCAUST AND THIS IS BY FAR THE MOST DETAILED AND THOROUGH ACCOUNT OF THE HISTORY WE SHANT EVER AND MUST NOT EVER FORGET.I THINK THIS IS A MUST READ FOR EVERYONE.BECAUSE,THIS BOOK MAKES PEOPLE FACE THE EVIL AND HORROR THAT HAPPENED NOT ALL THAT LONG AGO AND THAT COULD EASILY HAPPEN AGAIN.I RECOMEND THIS BOOK OVER ANY OTHER.

This book is a strong memorial of the horrors committed by many many many people against God's chosen. It is not enough to see a movie or an article. You must immerse yourself in the depths of the depravity led by the German people collectively, but for just a few, and joined by collusion of the rest of Eastern Europe. Never to be forgotten!!

The book is large and difficult to hold - the content is quite factual and one can only take it small doses - the book is not new as advertised - clearly used. This book is not for everyone - just people seriously interested in the gruesome details of the Nazi era.